When newspapers are gone, what will you miss? - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/when-newspapers.html <comment><USER2> The only newspaper I would miss is The Economist - global, comprehensive, opinionated (for good or bad), analysis in depth. But I won't have to miss it, since The Economist is doing very well, probably for precisely the same reasons that so many people like me would miss it...

<comment><USER3> The Economist is doing well I believe, as is the Atlantic monthly.

People are willing to pay for quality opinion.

People are also willing to pay for late breaking news from the AP and Bloomberg.

In addition to the option of paying for late breaking news, TV and radio both give it away for free.

The papers are just middle men. They add nothing of value to the AP feed that they just regurgitate.

And their editorial work is not anywhere near as good as that of the Economist or the Atlantic.

 _They add nothing of value._

<comment><USER4> It is oversimplistic to say that papers add nothing of value. Surely you admit that the NYT, Wash. Post, and WSJ do original investigative research? Others papers sometimes do this also, although this seems to be decreasing. Everytime I visit my hometown in flyover country, I am frightened by how worthless the local paper has become. But there was a time, not long ago, when that paper had a staff in most major cities around the world. I assume that we are simply missing stories that would otherwise have gotten broken with more feet on the ground. (We don't realize we're missing them since we are missing them...)

Maybe the economist et al. are adding staff, but I suspect there are simply many fewer total investigative journalists, and so less investigative journalism. Maybe if the Chicago tribune hadn't cut so much, they would have broken the Blagojevich story instead of the FBI?

<comment><USER5> > Maybe if the Chicago tribune hadn't cut so much, they would have broken the > Blagojevich story instead of the FBI?

The Trib did break the Blago story - the FBI wanted to keep it under wraps for a while because they didn't have all the goods. The Trib wanted to sell papers today.

The Trib has had decades to address Chicago corruption. They didn't do it when they had lots more resources, so it's silly to think that they'd do it now if they still had those resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll miss the quiet "me time" of reading the newspaper in pyjamas in the morning, or at a restaurant on my lunch break (not in pyjamas).

I'll miss the local sports coverage, box scores, etc. All of this is online, more or less, but it's just not the same.

I'll miss the local news. Our local newspaper plays a valuable role as watchdog. They recently brought down a corrupt mayor, for example. But even the mundane news is useful: road construction, a new restaurant opening, what's playing at the local theatre, etc.

But, I was raised in a home where both my mom and dad read the newspaper everyday. So, I've been reading the newspaper for almost my entire life. Whenever I move, I leave one local newspaper behind and start reading a new one. It gives me a sense of place. A sense of community.

So it's hard for me to imagine a world without newspapers. Sadly, it appears to be inevitable. My local paper recently announced that they'll be cutting home delivery to 3 days per week...

<comment><USER7> Re: local news, here's an example of a local paper doing quite nicely:

<http://www.7dvt.com/about-us>

Like your local paper, this one isn't a daily. I think this could be a trend. Local papers will be weeklies, and they'll continue to exist. The switch from daily to weekly will be stressful.

(Related submission to HN, didn't get traction when posted, but gives a little more context: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=431498>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not confident that blogs will replace professional commentators. I don't know any blogs that have the same kind of quality as the Financial Times comment section (except Willem Buiter's, which the FT publishes). The same goes for something like The Economist. These people are paid to write, and given budgets that allow them to research stories. They are a world away from unpaid blogging.

<comment><USER9> And there's also a fear factor. If you're alone guy, how can you fight against big corporation that is able to spend millions on lawyers?

<comment><USER10> However, I think it's more likely that someone in the possession of whistle blower information would contact a prominent blogger than some hot shot Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist at NY Times.

Also if there are a lot of bloggers out there, chances are greater that "someone" would feel that they have so little to to lose and lots to win from breaking a controversial story, even though some company would sue them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _What's left is local news, investigative journalism and intelligent coverage of national news. Perhaps 2% of the cost of a typical paper._

I'd like to see a citation on that "2%". I don't believe it.

What will we miss? Obviously, the basic reportage function of newspapers is what we'll miss--the boring research, interviewing, verifying, and so on. This is something that bloggers cannot reproduce without a news infrastructure and being on salary.

<comment><USER4> 2% seems to me laughably low. I would think it is something like 50%. It might take up 2% of the _space_ of a paper, but the reasons we will miss it is because no one else appears ready to do it. Why not? Expense.

<comment><USER12> How many investigative journalists do you think the NY Times employs? IIRC they have about 800 employees, so maybe 100 tops. Let's say the cost of employing them is 20M per year. Last year the NYT made 6 million on revenue of 748 million, which means their costs must be 742 million. This makes Seth's numbers roughly correct.

<comment><USER4> You seriously believe that 98% of the NYT expenses are consumed by movie reviews, the crossword guy, and David Brooks? Anyway, the fact is, Seth pulled that number out of his ass, and that is irresponsibly sloppy at best. (And, ironically, an excellent example of the kind of thing editors and fact- checkers are for...)

<comment><USER5> > You seriously believe that 98% of the NYT expenses are consumed by movie > reviews, the crossword guy, and David Brooks?

You're forgetting the actual paper and the cost of distributing it.

We know the revenues (roughly) and that the expenses are about the same. How many actual investigative reporters do you think that the NYT has? Multiply that number by your guess of their average burdended cost and compare that to the total expenses.

My guess is that the NYT has at most 30 investigative reporters and they cost, on average, $200k/year. That's $6M. If there are actually 100, that's $20M.

<comment><USER4> Frankly, you are also forgetting about the actual paper and cost of distributing it! I can believe your kind of calculations only in the context of a plausible accounting for all NYT expenses. With out factoring management, lawyers, plane tickets, real estate, etc., you will be way off.

BTW 30 is absurdly low. The NYT has more than 30 _offices_!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_York_Times_empl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_York_Times_employees)

<comment><USER12> According to Wikipedia the Times only has 350 writers total. It's clear that the majority of these are not doing investigative journalism, they are following the candidates around and rewriting press releases and such. I don't see how the number of actual investigative journalists could possibly be more than 100.

<comment><USER11> <http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=NYT>

Full Time Employees: 10,231

The question isn't "writers" but all of the employees involved in actual news creation. I have no idea what it might actually be, but a 1:10 ratio between "operatives" and "support staff" is my guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll miss the attention to local politics. Not everyone who runs for office is honest - as the bush administration showed us. For local politics, the only attention comes from local newspapers - unless there has been some outrageous behavior so bad that the stink can be smelled hundreds of miles away.

There are some local issues I care about. Enough to make me run for office. These issues would get lost in the noise if I only had national media available. And that the folks who blog about some of them, well, they tend to be single-issue-cranks who only care about their own spin on things.

disclaimer: I ran for election this past November and lost. My estimate is that less than 1 in 1000 Americans ever run for political office at any time during their life.

</comment><comment><USER14> Being able to read news on the subway where there is no wireless access for my phone.

Getting a wider net of news. Maybe others read more broad news online, but mine tends to be filtered down a lot and so I lose out on certain local stories and stories that I might not otherwise be interested in, but seem worth reading after I've read them as a captive audience of their editing.

<comment><USER15> look into caching rss readers. They're very nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'll miss actually holding a newspaper in my hands. Folding it into the perfect size. Tossing a particular section over to somebody within my vicinity with articles circled. I'll miss ripping articles out and putting them on the fridge or a cork board. I'll miss taking silly putty, pressing it up against the sunday funnies and reading it off of the pink blob. I'll miss sharing a newspaper with somebody on the bus after I'm done with it. There's a bonding that happens when you're able to leave information with somebody else in a truly tangible manner.

There's a whole cognitive aspect to newspapers that Seth is deliberately ignoring. Maybe it's nostalgia, but still. That's what I'll miss.

</comment><comment><USER17> Won't miss anything, haven't picked up a newspapers in years.

<comment><USER18> Likewise. I kind of felt like saying "I'll miss all the same stuff I missed already 10 years ago, like investigative reporting." But now I can't even remember if they were doing that 10 years ago.

<comment><USER17> Actually, I do know one thing I'll miss... I'll miss the cheap packing material for my dishes when I move.

<comment><USER18> I grew up with the family tradition of wrapping gifts in the comics sections. The kids would actually unwrap the gifts and then read any comics that were still legible too, haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'll miss settling down in my favourite pub with a weekend edition full of analysis and commentary from people who are truly experts in their fields.

Casually reading a broadsheet on a Sunday afternoon is a decadent pleasure (pretty-much gone now that many newspapers have moved to a smaller format) and I will truly miss it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hmm... I guess that newspapers' collapse means mostly lack of deep analysis in one place; instead, you'll have to find them in many blogs, and sometimes it is hard to either find them or evaluate their credibility.

There's also a personal bit. My mother used to work for a small local newspapers for many years; she's not working there anymore but somehow I felt, especially in the small communities, newspapers integrated the people and them more aware about the local events.

</comment><comment><USER20> I will miss the serendipitous discovery of information gained by casually browsing a newspaper. Kind of like reading a social news site. I rarely pick up a paper to read a particular article; I read for the sake of reading.

However, I disagree with the underlying assumption: newspapers are not going to go away completely. Instead, the industry will become strongly segmented into hyperlocal and national divisions.

Hyperlocal papers (the myriad 20k-circ dailies and weeklies) are doing great right now, primarily because they provide coverage of news and events that isn't available anywhere else.

A handful of national papers will survive, too, in order to satisfy those who still enjoy getting national news from dead trees (a segment that, while shrinking, is unlikely to completely disappear). My money is on The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and perhaps The New York Times weathering the storm.

Mid-level papers, on the other hand, are doomed. They are the "mushy middle," satisfying nobody's needs well.

I used to work at a newspaper, and I feel sentimental about them, but emotion does not change business reality.

</comment><comment> puzzle-out Despite the financial weaknesses, Seth ignores one reason why newspapers remain valuable: influencing opinion. Look down the ownership of significant papers - it does not matter if they cost money, as long as they create goodwill / influence opinion in favour of their owning tycoon's other businesses and activities. Their readership figures may be dropping generally, but if you go to important opinion forming places - parliament's private chambers, college common rooms - there remains a vibrant newspaper reading culture.

</comment><comment><USER21> There seems to be some confusion between the concept of 'newspapers' and 'news printed on paper.' This post jumps between talking about gasping for air under huge debt and tree farmers going out of business.

The only thing I will miss from 'news printed on paper' is the crossword puzzle. My grandmother would miss the obituaries.

I am confident that the news organizations which do a good job of keeping government in check will survive, though the delivery medium will likely become entirely electronic.

</comment><comment><USER22> I work at a newspaper. If they do it right, they won't be gone, they'll just adapt.

<comment><USER23> What is "right", moving online, incorporating bloggers, interactive visuals? (legitimately curious)

<comment><USER22> Get small fast, hire hackers, leverage your position as a middle-man between a local audience and local businesses online, and capitalize on the decades of valuable content sitting in your archives. Forget breaking news in print, focus on investigative stories that no one else is going to do but some will pay for. Reduce your publishing cycle to one or two times a week. Adopt a "can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality when it comes to Craigslist and other local competitors. Launch your own local self-serve ad network. Map your area to an insane depth and resell that content to local businesses and utilities. Watch what Google is doing with Google Local and Street View, mimic and surpass.

All of this is possible, but the change is so dramatic that most newspapers will not do it or will go into shock and instead of focusing on long-term recovery will destroy the one asset they have (a local audience) by adopting fast-money tactics (obnoxious banners and spammy marketing).

<comment><USER24> can i pick you to be on my team?

<comment><USER22> Our team is hiring: <http://djangogigs.com/gigs/468/> :-)

<comment><USER25> "Experience with Smalltalk or a dialect of Lisp a plus."

Clever filter :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I already miss watching my grandma do the crossword and crypt-o-quip puzzles. :`(

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't know; when books are gone, what will you miss?

Or: when vinyl is gone, what will you miss?

Etc.

</comment><comment><USER28> Seating on a porch and spreading a crisp newspaper with my two hands while sipping on a hot coffee. That I will miss, but certainly not the content.

<comment><USER29> That's quite some maneuver. Do you have a tail?

<comment><USER28> There is nothing like it on a sunday morning. Specially if you have a nice view (which I do not have).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> perfectly sized and flexible dog poop bags.

relaxing morning read without getting sucked into internet. i still prefer the multiple perspectives and interaction i get from web 2.0 news, but i can imagine the nostalgia for simpler, more passive times :-)

also, nytimes is really annoying to read online because i have to find login info.

<comment><USER31> If your using Firefox just use the bugmenot addon so you just have to right click on the username field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Being able to go around to my co-workers desks and get old WSJs to use as bird cage liner.

</comment><comment><USER33> The serendipity of browsing for one thing and reading something else.

</comment><comment><USER34> Research and less bandwagon reporting.

</comment><comment><USER35> sunday funnies

<comment><USER36> Not unless they bring back gigantic Winsor McKay-style full-page illustrations. Or long-form Will Eisner-style comic tales. Otherwise I'll read 'em online. Small one-to-five panel jokes work just as well online.

The last comic I can remember that tried to take any real advantage of the print medium was _Calvin and Hobbes_.

<comment><USER37> How?

<comment><USER38> Watterson convered this in some of Calvin and Hobbes reprint books, but basically, a Sunday strip is at most 12 panels (call it 12 units) long. By modern convention, you have a 4-unit title panel, a 2 unit panel with a single throw away joke (or two 1 unit panels with a throw away joke), leaving 6 units left for the main Sunday joke.

A newspaper then has several options for displaying the Sunday comic. They can run the full 12 units. They can eliminate the 4-unit title and run 8 units. They can also substitute the 4-unit title for a 1-unit title and run a 9-unit strip. They can drop the 2 unit throw-away joke for a 10 unit strip. They can drop the title and throw away joke for a 6 unit strip (smallest they can run).

After Watterson's sabbatical in the early 90s (I think it was 1990), he fought for a full 12-unit (in a 4x3 layout), and won (since his strip was so popular), in which he was able to work without any constraint. He could basically do a huge 1-unit Sunday strip, or a 24 small panel strip, or strips without panels, or what ever he felt was needed for the Sunday strip. The artwork for the late Calvin and Hobbes Sunday strips was phenomenal and probably nothing like it had been seen for 60 or 70 years (and nothing like it since).

<comment><USER37> Thanks. I remember.

But didn't he remove a special limitation of newspapers instead of exploiting a special feature?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google App Engine community support is moving to Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/google-appengine/Z6XN_64cA7w/Jf1OcUK4cF0J <comment><USER2> While Stack Overflow might be better than the current support situation for GAE, this is not a move that says: "Google really cares about GAE users".</comment>


WebObjects 4.0 Developers Guide (1998) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/LegacyTechnologies/WebObjects/WebObjects_4.5/System/Documentation/Developer/WebObjects/DevGuide/WebObjectsDevGuide.pdf <comment><USER2> I worked on some WebObjects applications in the nineties and received Apple training. It was a really nice framework in many ways, with very nice tooling for working with databases, although I did not (and still do not) really love Java. One of the nice things was that I was easily able to integrate a bunch of code written in Kawa (Scheme in Java). I have not been a web developer in some time but browsing this was an interesting quick trip down memory lane -- thanks!

<comment><USER3> I developed mostly in Objective-C and even WebScript [1], the Java transition was hard but I stuck with WO and EOF until the early 2000s. It was my first stage as a working developer, so it will always have a special spot even if it's URLs make me cringe nowadays.

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Leg...](https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/LegacyTechnologies/WebObjects/WebObjects_3.1/PDF/DEVGUIDE/SCRIPT.PDF)</comment></comment>


Did we just turn down TechCrunch 50? - <AUTHOR> http://www.majorgrooves.co.uk/2009/09/51st-company.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comments.

I didn't really mean to focus hype on the TC50 conference. Rather, I think it makes an interesting story about trying to get in to a decent product launch conference - we get told by the main main we've got 80% chance getting in [yah!], we don't get in [boo!], we get email saying 'actually you are in' [yah!], but then we realise we can't do it [boo!]. I'd hope it's at least vaguely interesting, regardless of the conference.

I agree there is a danger of getting caught up in the TechCrunch hype bubble, just as there is in getting caught up in the Y Combinator programme hype. As has been pointed out, the reality is that 99.9%+ of successful web startups have nothing to do with TC50 or YC. Nevertheless TC (just as YC) have had some notable successes that fuel the hype - just look at Mint (TC40 2007 winner) being acquired today.

I'd say that in terms of web product launch conferences, TC50 is about as good and prestigious an opportunity you can get. However after that it is unlikely I would have a need to attend again - it's not the sort of conference where you sell your service.

Part of the reality check we took in saying "no" to this opportunity was to remind ourselves that it is "just a conference" - it's not the be all and end all. It won't break us not to attend. I think that shows that we were able to resist the hype. As is said below - we want to do things right - not do something for the sake of it.

wrt to DemoPit - according to the information we received, the DemoPit was only for the TC50 semi-finalist companies. I haven't seen any mention of being able to buy your way in otherwise. That said, if you did want to do DemoPit you had to pay a few thousand dollars. In that regard it becomes just a regular exhibition. We were offered a free DemoPit place just in case we weren't actually needed on the stage.

</comment><comment><USER2> Techcrunch did not start hitting the HN front page 10-20 times a day until the last 12 months or so, and Google Trends (<http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22techcrunch+50%22>) seems to indicate that I'm not the only one who hasn't heard of their conference until this month. In summary: the excitement does not seem to be based on reputation.

I get that the companies that are going want us to think it's important, but why would a startup that's not going hype it up?

<comment><USER3> When your entire world becomes immersed in startup life, these types of events grow to paramount importance in the minds of entrepreneurs, often to unrealistic levels. It's the same reason an entrepreneur broke into Arrington's house to get a story, spat in his face, etc. Furthrmore, making yourself deceptively important allows you to charge ~$2k/company, which Arrington is particularly good at.

To be fair, several companies that have launched at TC40/50 are rapidly growing. Mint is the first example that comes to mind, and I think DropBox and Xobni as well.

For all the companies whose TC press has helped them, I would approximate that more than 99% of successful companies have not relied on TC for press. That's the danger of living in a bubble and I believe why this particular author hypes it up.

<comment><USER2> The examples of companies that have benefited helped explain the hype for me, thanks.

I hope I don't sound critical of startups getting excited about a chance to shine--my grumpiness has much more to do with the greasiness of advertising than the oddities of human nature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gotta admit, it takes guts to turndown an opportunity like that (even if it wasn't a certainty). It's the fine line between 'release early, release often' and 'you only get one chance to make a first impression'.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, you can tell from the article that they want to do it right, even if that means waiting a little bit longer. I respect that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if TC50 is struggling this year.

I also heard that you can now just buy your way into the DemoPit which used to be for overflow of companies that didn't quite make the cut (in theory startups 51-150).</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any blockchain startups selling a product successfully? - <AUTHOR> I am trying to better understanding blockchain applications in the real world. Are there any startups using blockchain technology that have actually gained traction in their industry or proved disruptive? Note, I'm interested in finding companies that have actually proved product market fit; not ICOs, big fundraises, or have the potential to be disruptive. <comment><USER2> \- The Brave browser is being used by millions of users every months, it's powered by the BAT Token (used to pay web publishers instead of showing ads).

\- The Golem token is being used to render 3d models on the Blockchain (instead of using your computer), tens of thousands of tasks have been performed by the system since it launched a few weeks ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> None that I know of except companies solving specific problems for the crytocurrency community.

There are lots of companies doing useful things claiming to use blockchain but when you deleve into the details aren't actually using blockchain like GUTS Ticketing [https://guts.tickets/](https://guts.tickets/)

And there are lots of companies really using blockchain but of no real use like HDAC [https://www.hdactech.com/](https://www.hdactech.com/)

The intersection of useful and blockchain comprises of virtually no companies.

</comment><comment><USER4> The one that springs to mind for me is [https://chain.com/](https://chain.com/)

They manage balances. Sounds easy, just a database column?

The problem with storing balances is securing it against unauthorised users. i.e. Hacker, DB admin.

A blockchain can be used for this, as the requests to change a balance all have to be signed. And it's very hard to re-write the blockchain history.

</comment><comment><USER5> No, but large players could band together for intermodal waybills. They would never trust a startup to operate such a thing.

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

</comment><comment><USER6> Do services for other crypto companies count? If so, there are some, along the lines of helping creating tokens, validating code security, building wallets, and of course helping with the ico process.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think Steemit has some traction as a Reddit-like blockchain company. Wikileaks has been funded with Bitcoin donations.

</comment><comment><USER8> They all are, ICO IS the product.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ripple signed on some 100 banks to use their tech, not their tokens though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hashed Health & Change Healthcare over here in the South.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking at Hashed Health (particularly their What We Do on the enterprise tab of website) they appear more like a blockchain consultancy.

What is the product they are selling?</comment></comment>


Social Traveling - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, we've been working on a little project, Travel Stories (http://www.mytravelstories.net) and will love to have feedback on user experience. The website is a platform to share travel experiences with others using pictures and keeping journals. Any form of feedback on what you think can be done to improve will be very much appreciated. Please bear in mind it is a continuously improving website so there will be constant improvement, especially with the feedback we get from you guys. Thanks. <comment><USER2> It would be nice to have a link to the Sign In/Register page in the navbar. I was going to sign up after browsing through the pages, but couldn't figure out how without navigating back to the homepage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot. That has been effected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> \- After signing up, it doesn't automatically log me in. Had to login in another step.

\- On the Share Story page:

> I don't think the user should need to enter information into so many fields.

> Why have both the region and the country? Country should be enough.

> After I save the story, when trying to upload pictures I get the following > error: Cannot GET /<userID>/journals/<userID>/travels/test-hn1/upload

\- After I login, I see a bunch of travel stories that others have shared. It would be nice to have some of them featured on the front page itself where site visitors can see them without the need for signing up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks boca. \- The automatic login has been implemented as you suggested. \- We are back to the drawing board to see what fields we can take off to make sharing faster, same with region/country. The save error has been corrected as well. \- Your suggestion about showing some featured stories on the front page is currently being looked into as well.

Thanks for taking the time to go through. We really appreciate it.</comment></comment>


Map/Reduce in Bash - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/erikfrey/bashreduce <comment><USER2> a cool hack, but a large part of what makes map reduce map reduce isn't just the "map" and "reduce" but all the necessary fault tolerance features to ensure that when you run a job that's computable, it damn well is going to finish even if a meteor takes out half your data center.

<comment><USER3> That is not difficult to handle in bash. The expectation going in should be that individual computations and even computers might fail in ways that keep them from reporting failure, at which point the fact that it is written in a language running on a VM with a poor memory manager (as it really wasn't designed for this kind of stress, and rapidly dominates RAM and fragments its heap to hell) is not a problem. (This happens to be a sore point of mine, as I had a rather unenlightened professor in grad school who refused to believe I could effectively solve this one massive distributed problem that came up with a "simple shell script for doing the distribution", giving me a bad grade in his class and never forgiving me for having made the claim. This being despite the fact that I then sent him the finished result three days later, having narrowed the search space with some light intelligence enough to have gotten the same answer his system took a week to do on better hardware, and his beloved not-a-shell-script. _sigh_ ;P)

<comment><USER2> It seems easier said than done, unless you think Hadoop's architecture and fault tolerance logic is over-engineered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, but considering the rich set of tools growing up around Hadoop infrastructure (e.g., Mahoot, Cascading, etc.) I think that it makes much more sense to scale out horizontally using Hadoop and related technologies.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very cool, something I'll try utilitize internally for processing large files.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know if this really qualify as "map-reduce". It's very cool, anyway :)

<comment><USER7> Why not? There appears to be both a mapper and a reducer, so...

<comment><USER8> There is both a mapper and a reducer internally, but a real map-reduce implementation should let you run custom code on both the map and the reduce, and a full-featured one should let you independently specify how many nodes you have mapping and reducing.

I may have missed it, but I don't see those things.

(I'm ignoring the fact that it is nice to be able to pass around arbitrary data structures. While true, I wouldn't expect that out of a bash implementation.)

<comment><USER9> map/reduce is a very simple, very general idea. It is also Google's and Hadoop's specific implementations with lots of bells and whistles. It's also everything in between. This implementation has more than the minimum two necessary features. If you are arguing that it isn't a true map/reduce implementation, then I would argue that you aren't a true software developer. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_scotsman>

<comment><USER8> The idea of MapReduce was introduced to the world in the paper <http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html>. The abstract starts off with _MapReduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large data sets. Users specify a map function that processes a key/value pair to generate a set of intermediate key/value pairs, and a reduce function that merges all intermediate values associated with the same intermediate key. Many real world tasks are expressible in this model, as shown in the paper._

If you lack that feature set, then you can't solve most of the problems that MapReduce is actually used for in practice. Conversely if you have that feature set, then you can, though not necessarily with good reliability or at optimal speed. Therefore that description is what I take as the canonical description of what it means to have implemented MapReduce.

As for your arguing that I am not a true software developer, guilty as charged. I've been joking for years that I am merely a profitably displaced mathematician, and my current job role is a weird cross between software development and system administration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> heh. considering that a shell by definition must rely on other programs to do something, a simpler implementation can be:

#!/bin/sh /bin/hadoop start-all

<comment><USER10> ...also close your eyes and imagine a line break there.</comment></comment>


Kim Dotcom claims over one million Mega users during outrageous launch party - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/20/3897378/kim-dotcom-mega-passes-one-million-users-24-hours

<comment><USER2> Instead of partying they should have been monitoring bandwidth, load and user experience.

2 hours to upload a 5k file and after 12 hours on a 2gb file it stuck at 12% and never moved again.

I give up on using it for now maybe I'll try next week.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to sell a domain? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to sell one of my domains, but am unsure the best way to do it. Go Daddy, Namecheap, etc. have auctions/markets but they are flooded with random names like asdfasdf.com.<p>Is there a smaller but higher quality domain name marketplace? <comment><USER2> The guy at DomainSherpa.com has a lot of good info + interviews you should check out:

[http://www.domainsherpa.com/how-to-sell-a-domain- name/](http://www.domainsherpa.com/how-to-sell-a-domain-name/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Flippa. It's not a small marketplace, but there are constantly sites ranging from $100 - $X,XXX,XXX+

[https://flippa.com/](https://flippa.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sedo is where a lot of better names are sold

</comment><comment><USER5> I have these domains and you can buy them on godaddy for $50

buy555.com born1.com shoppying.com payper.com

</comment><comment><USER6> what domains you have?</comment>


Can you sue a racist AI? - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/160196/the-google-photos-gorilla-fail-wont-be-the-last-time-ais-offend-us/

<comment><USER2> "When the news surfaced on Twitter, a Google engineer almost immediately tweeted an apology"

The AI is not 'racist'. It used data and statistics and based on this data, mis-categorized these pictures.

I wish there were more people (and companies) standing up to this political- correct bullshit instead of bowing down to it and running scared in the corner because they are afraid they will be fired or have their careers ruined.

Nobody has the right to not be offended.

<comment><USER3> What do you think the skin tone of the people that came up with the AI is? Can you say with a straight face that this has 0 influence on how they initially calibrated the models? I would imagine that they tried their best to have the algorithm learn equally well across all skin tones...but my impression is that as a gut reaction, people generally envision an unknown person as someone of their own race.

Even though the association between blackness and great apes is a longstanding racist trope, I don't think anyone should be suing anyone over something like this. Instead of getting on your soap box though, you could at least acknowledge that there are increasingly meaningful decisions being made by algorithms that may or may not be monitored by human discretion. What happens when someone does actually get physically hurt, or experiences financial misfortune, due to shoddy programming? That's what the article is getting at -- you merely fell for the clickbait.

Nobody has the right to not be offended... but certain relationships between users and companies can engender certain obligations and duties between one or the other. _That 's_ the point of this article, and image connotations that stir up bad feelings are merely the latest topic to bring the subject to light.

P.S.: What exactly is "bullshit" about people expressing their dismay about associating blackness with monkeys? Just like people don't have a right to "not be offended," those same people have a right to voice their displeasure at the company and people that promote these shitty images. The fact that you're trying to silence their response makes you no better than those that wish to sue Google for something like this.

<comment><USER2> "What do you think the skin tone of the people that came up with the AI is? Can you say with a straight face that this has 0 influence on how they initially calibrated the models?"

Are you really being serious right now? You can't really see how AI could make the mistake that it made?

"What happens when someone does actually get physically hurt, or experiences financial misfortune, due to shoddy programming?"

This has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Companies already experience financial misfortune from AI through mistakes made through algorithmic trading.

Why are we going as far as AI? It's not here yet. What about when people spread lies online and it ruins a career or when sites like Wikileaks spreads undercover operative positions and someone gets killed by a foreign government?? There are no consequences.

"those same people have a right to voice their displeasure at the company and people that promote these shitty images. The fact that you're trying to silence their response makes you no better than those that wish to sue Google for something like this"

It only goes one way, however. This is the problem. For example, people have been fired for expressing their dislike of gay marriage on Facebook (which I don't consider homophobia). However, I don't see anyone getting fired for spreading their dislike of religions or religious people (another protected class) which I see plastered all over social media. There are countless examples of this and it's making our society a pretty scary place.

This should be the real discussion here: Why are some people free to bully, torment, and slander another class of people with virtually no repercussions?

<comment><USER3> I can most definitely see how the AI made the mistake. My point is that it might be possible that the human creators of those programs might have had an unwitting role that lead to that mistake.

What is "slanderous" about stating the truth regarding someone's opinion? People are free to criticize those who oppose gay marriage... no one is free from public backlash to backwards opinions.

<comment><USER2> "People are free to criticize those who oppose gay marriage"

Everyone should have the freedom to their opinion. However, if I say I don't like gay marriage..I have a really good possibility of getting fired from my job and being called "homophobic". I've even heard that even stating this opinion is a form of discrimination. Let's be clear here, I'm not talking about bullying people that are gay or attacking them personally.

Along those same lines, I've seen horrible things being said about anyone religious. Horrible and bigoted shit. Yet, there is no outcry. Nobody is getting fired for essentially doing the same thing to another group of human beings.

<comment><USER3> Saying you "don't like gay marriage" is a bit like someone in 1950s America saying they "don't like interracial marriage." I don't think that someone should get fired from their job for believing that (because I wouldn't wish that on many people), but it seems that it would be hard for someone to reconcile those beliefs with fair and positive treatment of all people in their work-world. How can you feel that someone shouldn't be entitled to get civilly married while still fully respecting them as a person?

Do you have any stories or links for things about people saying "horrible and bigoted shit" about Christians or some other majority religion and then _not_ getting ridiculed/lambasted by some other portion of the population, or not being criminally charged? Wherever I see atheist billboard controversy, I see Christian backlash. Whenever I see Christian billboard controversy, I see agostic/atheist backlash. My general perception is that this is how free speech is supposed to work.

Free speech that infringes (or encourages infringement of) on the rights of others to peaceably live their lives with dignity(i.e., for a gay couple to get married) is where I imagine the line between harassment and free speech occurs. This is a critical difference: as demonstrated by recent events (Charleston, etc.), there are terrible people that will take the "bigoted shit" to an extreme and cause physical harm. However, I've _never_ seen an instance of American on American crime where "bigoted shit" led to material harm against a Christian, without the wheels of justice being spun full blast in pursuit. The same cannot be said for historically discriminated populations, e.g. gay people until this generation, black people until maybe the generation before that, and Irish and Italians in the 19th century, for example.

Apologizing for a picture that has "gorilla" next to a black person's face isn't about persecution, or gay people, or about any other class of people (as you've somehow made this conversation about); it's about realizing that people in the past were shitty, and we can do better than that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Better solution for quick group chat than Firebase real time db? - <AUTHOR> I built out a simple group chat (rooms with members) using firebase real time database.
What I've built feels brittle because I have 3 client side implementations (web, ios, android) for chat and have to make sure I don't mess up my data structure.  I do like the rules and how easy they are to configure.
I've been looking at twilio, and it seems pretty easy to set up chat. What are some good solutions for chat which have SDKs for web, android, and ios?  Prefer sticking to something that works out of the box on these platforms (like firebase), and also maybe you have used before.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Have you looked at [https://supabase.io/](https://supabase.io/)?

<comment><USER3> Here's a 3 minute demo showing how to deploy a slack clone using Supabase:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oqIZW5S-lQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oqIZW5S-lQ)

Disclaimer: Supabase cofounder. Thanks for the shout-out @johnhenry

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, really cool stuff!

Right now it seems I can use it easily on web with the supabase web sdk, how would you suggest using this in mobile iOS and android codebase?

Overall, supabase could be a better solution for me since I am also using postgres for my main data repo, and only used firebase for auth and now chat because of how easy (literally <30 min) it was to set up.

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> > mobile iOS and android codebase

Unfortunately we don't have libraries for iOS and Android yet, however you can vote on them ([https://github.com/supabase/supabase/issues/5](https://github.com/supabase/supabase/issues/5)), or you could use a JS wrapper (Expo/ReactNative/Ionic etc)

> literally <30 min

Hopefully we can make this even faster soon..</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I reverse-engineered a $500M Artificial Intelligence company in one week - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ai-academy.com/i-reverse-engineered-a-500m-artificial-intelligence-company-in-one-week-heres-the-full-story-d067cef99e1c#.378xg911u <comment><USER2> Previous: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13964685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13964685)

</comment><comment><USER3> This isn't reverse-engineering at all. Frankly, I think this is a reasonably cool project, but it's brazenly dishonest of the author to claim he "reverse- engineered a company" when all he did was conduct elementary statistics on an open dataset. You can reasonably expect that there's much more to OPower's data analytics suite, and furthermore, a _company_ is of course much more than its flagship product.

There are lots of smart metering companies: why is OPower among the most successful? Maybe the interesting thing to really think about is not their analytics but their sales and marketing strategies.

</comment><comment><USER4> The author of this story clearly does not know what "reverse engineer" means.

This is reverse engineering AI companies: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.02943](https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.02943)

</comment><comment><USER5> That's nothing. I reverse-engineered Twitter in one hour using Wordpress.

Sorry. I try not to be to mean, but this title was just crying out for it.

</comment><comment><USER6> i suggest removing the unnecessary $500M and one week from the title. those things are total clickbait.

<comment><USER7> I suggest leaving them in for the same reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Baity title for maximum effect, but the article itself is not so bad. Content marketing, but ok.</comment>


SmartPlane - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/745804289/smartplane

<comment><USER2> Wow very interesting project. I am wondering does it required to write control code or if it comes with built in autopilot which control software do you use?</comment>


A modern CSS framework – versatile, well documented - <AUTHOR> https://teutonic.co/ <comment><USER2> My first impressions of the real world examples page was that this could hardly be called modern - it looks like UI design from the 90s.

I am sure the modern part relates to the best practices and flexbox usage, but I think you may struggle to get any adoption of this without providing a really nice example page of what could be possible.

<comment><USER3> It really doesn't (look like UI design from the 90s). There is definitely something retro about it but for the web it's definitely beyond 90s. The more I looked at it the more I liked it. I wouldn't use it on a project but I wouldn't harshly judge a site or app that used it.

I think a palette shift would completely remove the retro aesthetic. They should probably do that if they want people to seriously consider using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great. Clean and simple. Will for sure check out some css examples from here when I need.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ah, the daily "new css/html framework that nobody asked for and nobody needs" post.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, not sure, but appreciate the real world examples section. Nice work

</comment><comment><USER7> It might perform like a modern framework, but it hardly looks like one. Input field focus with inner shadow looks rather bad.

</comment><comment><USER8> troll.css?

</comment><comment><USER9> carousel?

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems like a troll post. The css is insanely ugly. You are better off using native browser styles.</comment>


How to Pirate Movies, Music, TV Shows, and Books Without Getting Caught - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5927849/how-to-pirate-movies-music-tv-shows-and-books-without-getting-caught

<comment><USER2> How do sites like Gizmodo and Lifehacker get away with these posts? I know they're not illegal per se, but surely their corporate parent must frown upon them?

Since both sites publish 99% worthwhile content (at least to their target audience), the only thing I can surmise is that these types of posts must be SEO gold mines to be worth the backlash.</comment>


A Vital Measure: Your Surgeon's Skill - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/a-vital-measure-your-surgeons-skill/ <comment><USER2> The UK has a concept of patient choice. The patient can choose one of four hospitals to have their surgery. This is supposed to drive up quality.

Obviously it doesn't. Experts have difficulty telling why one surgeon is better than another (Ann works on more difficult cases than Bob; Ann uses an older technique than Bob; Ann isn't as good as Bob; etc etc) so patients end up choosing based on waiting times, or the car parks, or weird things.

There's a lot of room in medicine for better use of numbers. It's weird that "ethics" prevents us from using these data to save lives.

<comment><USER3> Ethics used to prevent pharmacists from telling patients what was in medication bottles. Norms can change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> People often forget that the medical profession's highest priority isn't the health of you, the patient. If you were to grab a medical ethics book you will first be told that the well being of the population as a whole surpasses any individuals rights.

Let's assume a hypothetical where doctors are ranked, let's also assume that insurance will pay for all doctors. Naturally demand for these physicians or surgeons will rise dramatically. If we take Ontario (Canada) as a case, we can see a situation where there is not a free market and physicians can't start charging more. What happens? Well wait times become significantly longer and people start waiting longer to see the best physician possible rather than having a more immediate operation with a lower ranked physician. There is, of course, increased risk the longer you wait for an operation even as simple as a hernia. But patients often don't understand that and can't make logical choices without being 'forced', for lack of a better word, and told they must do it soon with surgeon X. In this case overall population health decreases, complications, morbidity and mortality rise from delays. You also run the risk of complex patients being unable to be operated on by the best because they are too busy doing an operation on a cut and dry case. This is the case in Ontario (largely anecdotal evidence, albeit from a very large pool) where people flock to Toronto on the perceived notion that surgeons affiliated with the most academically prestigious medical school are better than those in a community centre.

It is important to ask whether the lower ranked surgeons should or should not be able, and allowed, to perform the operations, if they are unqualified they shouldn't be allows to practice. The idea of rankings to improve patient care really rests on the notion that the lower ranked surgeons have an effectively higher risk rate (note that I did not say statistically significant). Saying that complications go down from 2% to 1% with higher surgeons while significant is not effectively a difference that should affect choice. I don't know the precise numbers but this is something that must also be considered before making any judgements. While I have no vested interest, and no opinion on the matter, it is important to think why the system is the way it is rather than blindly changing things in the name of progress. This system would allow physicians to charge more in the US (due to more demand, which has it's own slew of ethical considerations) and the medical establishment is greedy to say the least. If the top surgeons could make more money with little to no harm they would.

<comment><USER5> Rationing with waiting lists is dumb, always has been and always will be. The smart ways to ration are by money (better surgeons charge more), or by QALY (better surgeons do more important operations on sicker people). And even with single-payer, there's no reason you can't pay better surgeons more.

It's true that not everyone can have a top surgeon. But for serious surgery, the "complication" is frequently _death_. It's extremely silly to tell people that 1% chance of death vs. a 2% chance of death "shouldn't affect their choice". I don't know about you, but I _don 't want to die_, even as I accept that small chances of death are sometimes unavoidable.

Regarding medical ethics, obviously _in the abstract_ we should prefer saving ten lives to one life. But _in practice_ , it's often better to have a rule like "don't kill people" than "kill people when it serves the common good". "Don't kill people" is very easy to understand, and very easy to enforce. The "common good" is abstract and fuzzy, and can be used to justify anything from fighting malaria in Africa to Stalin's Holodomor ("can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs").

<comment><USER4> Sorry but you're incorrect. Your assumption of the complication being death is exaggerated, the surgery in question here is not that serious. Even if it were death someone would have to model the adverse effects of the increased waiting list. People waiting might result in an increase in mortality surpassing the doubled risk from surgeon error.

How do you quantify which surgeons are better? I'm not an expert but surely this study's methodology is not without it's own assumptions. Things like complication rate vary wildly with patient population and other factors. This isn't a telemarketing job where you quantify easily. Similarly how can you quantify who the best programmer is? What is the economic cost of quantifying who the best surgeon is? How expensive is it to apply this study to every surgery? We must ensure that the rankings system is valid before applying it to prevent perverse incentives such as only taking low risk cases. You don't want a USNews Week type system like you have for universities which has obvious flaws and biases.

You say waiting lists are dumb, but why? Are you 'killing people' by letting an inferior surgeon operate? Why is 'don't kill people' easy to understand and enforce? By not killing one to save ten are you not killing ten people? You're seeing this as black and white. This is not the case. Whether it is better to save one or ten I am not the person to judge, but you are oversimplifying this drastically.

The ethical question here is NOT sentencing someone to death like killing someone to harvest organs. It's more similar to doing nothing to save someone most likely to die in order to save ten, like how they do military triage.

Life is 'abstract and fuzzy'. This isn't an engineering challenge, as you say there are several things to consider. Stalin ignored the human aspect, is this right or wrong? How can you blindly answer this without supporting your conclusion. What seems humane isn't always the right answer to things. By your same argument are layoffs ever justified despite it being for the common good for the company and the remaining employees?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Data on patient outcomes for individual healthcare providers is not currently available, but the data at the hospital level is. If a hospital is a Medicare- certified, then it is required to report quality of care metrics including deaths, complications and readmissions.

When researching and comparing doctors, as rschmitty mentions, gather all the relevant publicly-available data such as your state's malpractice claims database, research publications, and quality of associated institutions.

Check out Medicare's Hospital Compare tool to see the quality of care metrics for your local hospitals: [http://www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html](http://www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html)

Here is the quality of care dataset that includes over 4,800 US hospitals: [https://data.medicare.gov/Hospital-Compare/Agency-For- Health...](https://data.medicare.gov/Hospital-Compare/Agency-For-Healthcare- Research-And-Quality-Measure/vs3q-rxc5)

</comment><comment><USER7> The state of New York, every couple of years, publishes a report that rates all of the heart surgeons, including how many operations they did and how many of their patients died. This data is shown at both the surgeon and the aggregated hospital level:

[http://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/diseases/cardiovascular/](http://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/diseases/cardiovascular/)

AFAIK, NY is the only state that does this. Looking at the report gives you a good idea of how complicated doing any kind of indexing of performance is...for example, there is an attempt to calculate expected mortality rate, as a high mortality rate for a surgeon may indicate that that surgeon, being the top of his or her field, may deal with the most critical and difficult cases.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a link to the medical journal article discussed in the newspaper column submitted here:

"Surgical Skill and Complication Rates after Bariatric Surgery"

John D. Birkmeyer, M.D., Jonathan F. Finks, M.D., Amanda O'Reilly, R.N., M.S., Mary Oerline, M.S., Arthur M. Carlin, M.D., Andre R. Nunn, M.D., Justin Dimick, M.D., M.P.H., Mousumi Banerjee, Ph.D., and Nancy J.O. Birkmeyer, Ph.D. for the Michigan Bariatric Surgery Collaborative

N Engl J Med 2013; 369:1434-1442 October 10, 2013 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1300625

[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1300625](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1300625)

"Background

"Clinical outcomes after many complex surgical procedures vary widely across hospitals and surgeons. Although it has been assumed that the proficiency of the operating surgeon is an important factor underlying such variation, empirical data are lacking on the relationships between technical skill and postoperative outcomes."

My mother was a surgical nurse at my state's best teaching hospital. She once was able to line up the "all star team" when one of my near relatives needed surgery. When the best surgeon at the hospital operates with the best surgical resident at the hospital, assisted by the best anesthesiologist and the best team of surgical nurses (my mom, of course, did NOT join the surgery team, as it is just too tense to operate on a near relative) work together, the surgery outcomes are fine. Informal referrals like this work for patients who know someone who knows who the good surgeons are. For the long-term development of better patient outcomes, it will be important to have a data-gathering system that turns informal impressions of who does good work from anecdotes into carefully measured data that are shared with hospital administrators and residency program teachers and insurers and others who have power to nudge poor-performing surgeons either to improve their skills or change their areas of practice.

</comment><comment><USER8> I had this surgery, a roux-en-y, so as you can imagine I found the videos very interesting! (Wonder if somebody recorded my surgery?)

Before I had the operation I did a lot of research on the internet, but it was difficult to pin down particular surgeons. As the article points out, you can find stats on hospitals, so I went with that. In addition, surgeons can be certified by various boards, so I also used that. Then you can look at complication rates by surgical center -- very important. Finally, you can look at the size of the practice and how many patients they process per year. More is better. Surgeons who do a lot of the same thing for many years with lower complications than average are probably working towards the top of their game.

But that was hours and hours of research, and I imagine it all boils down to exactly what this article brings out: skill in the operating theater. (From my experience I think a strong secondary trait is the ability to carefully pre- screen future patients)

</comment><comment><USER9> So, how do surgeons train? The commentary in the videos reminds me of martial arts training. It takes years to become fluent in most martial arts and the requirements are quite similar - a steady hand, economy of motion, spatial awareness, etc. But a good art has a curriculum where those skills can be trained independently of situations where you might injure yourself or others. Another possibility is - perhaps some people just don't have the knack for it and won't develop it. Is anything done to weed them out at the start of their training?

<comment><USER10> Some Canadian dental schools require passing a dexterity test. This is not a requirement in the u.s.

<comment><USER11> My brother is in dental school in the USA. A dexterity test was part of the _admissions_ process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why hasn't it occurred to anyone before now that surely all surgeons are not created equal? As an engineer, I can't legally share examples of my work with potential employers because it's owned by the company I work for. Does anyone know if this applies to surgeons too? Can potential employers of surgeons request to see these videos to assess their performance?

<comment><USER13> All that matters is the success rate. Watching videos of individual surgeons is pointless to pretty much everyone except surgeons.

I'd love to have the stats on each doctor.

<comment><USER14> Stats are hard because of all the other factors involved. It would be quite likely for the very best surgeons to have lower survival rates than mediocre surgeons, simply because the mediocre surgeon would refer the objectively harder cases to the expert, which would give better chances for that particular patient while lowering his 'batting average'. And if you give direct financial motivation for doctors to avoid taking such patients, then it's a bad thing for the whole system.

Stats can help you weed out obvious outliers - i.e., the ones who should be kept away from patients; but it's not so simple to make them useful in actual prioritization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting article. My wife is a surgeon and I'm interested to see what she has to say about it. One small anecdote - recently she had a colleague (another surgeon) ask her discreetly whether she would recommend another surgeon for an operation. Her colleague had known this other surgeon for many years, worked in the same department as them in fact, and still did not know if the other surgeon was good or not.

</comment><comment><USER16> The best way to choose a surgeon is to get a personal recommendation from a doctor who is a personal friend. This will at least prevent you from getting the absolute bottom of the barrel.

<comment><USER15> See my other post in this thread about this, but I disagree. Even other surgeons often do not know how good another surgeon is - unless they have operated with them directly.

<comment><USER11> Many members of my family have been on the staffs or in the employ of various hospitals. From what I've heard, if one has an inside connection it would be very difficult to _avoid_ learning of a particular surgeon's poor therapeutic outcomes. It's true that past results are not perfect indicators of future results, but unless you just transferred to this hospital, every nurse on every floor has a firm opinion of whether she'd let you operate on her family.

<comment><USER15> I guess it depends on who you ask. My wife (a surgeon) says that this is often not true for most of the staff. For example if you ask the OR/Floor nurses they will know if the surgeon is truly terrible, but in her experience (hearing from the nurses) she says that she is often surprised by who they think is a good surgeon. She does say however that the anesthesiologists working with the surgeon usually have a good idea.

<comment><USER11> I'm sure she's right, in that many nurses, administrators, and non-surgical physicians wouldn't have the nuanced understanding of surgical ability that she does. Just the same, I expect their rough sorting isn't _too_ far off the mark. They certainly know more than the general public!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Skill" as a catch-all term is a meaningless word bandied about by those trying to sound as though they know what they are talking about.

There are two sets of attributes, the first (commonly called "skill" but perhaps better called "technique") describes how well you can carry out the "motor" activities of your job. The other, and more important in critical circumstances, is "judgement".

To describe it by analogy with driving, in the beginning you concentrate on developing experience in operating the vehicle, eventually this becomes more or less automatic. People call this skill and they are wrong, it is a set of learnt reflexes. More important is judgement, knowing how to maintain road awareness, knowing when and how to overtake, when to speed up and when to slow down etc, etc. NB when people talk about the dangers of drinking and driving it is impaired judgement they are mostly talking about (although there is some impaired skill such as poor reaction times which stops them getting out of problems their degraded judgement has got them into).

Judgement comes with experience and follows skill acquisition. With surgeons you would hope they know how to make a cut (they have technique). What you really want is someone who knows where and what to cut (they have judgement).

And yes, all of this applies to programming and systems design.

<comment><USER18> _The other, and more important in critical circumstances, is "judgement"._

Whether I die because the surgeon was clumsy and nicked my aorta or because the surgeon exercised poor judgement by not counting sponges routinely so he left one that caused a fatal blood clot would be irrelevant to me because I would be dead.

All that matters are outcomes based upon an apples to apples comparison of similar patient contexts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd be interested in reading the original paper. It wasn't immediately obvious if the researchers had stratified surgeons by experience (either number of times procedure had been done or years in the field). I would imagine less experienced surgeons to still be developing their technique.

</comment><comment><USER20> In the film "Manda Bala", there's a scene where a team of surgeons, led by the world expert in this particular procedure, insert a scrap of reshaped intercostal cartilage under a patient's scalp to reconstruct an amputated ear. The motion the team displays in that two second clip is a beautiful as any choreographed dance move.

</comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me of this old Kids in the Hall skit:

Bad Doctor: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbjypn9JtKE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbjypn9JtKE)

</comment><comment><USER22> Anyone knows what operation are they doing in the video?

<comment><USER23> Looks like a gastric bypass.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can You Recommend a Good Brand of Jerky? - <AUTHOR> I've recently been eating less carbs and more protein, as I find the latter more satisfying in smaller quantities. Jerky, especially beef, has been really useful as a snack lately, but the ones I've bought from the store tend to be pretty underwhelming. Worse, some have a strong metallic aftertaste that I don't appreciate. I started to search online for specialty jerky, but there are so many small and large brands!
I know that in addition to intellectual pursuits, plenty of people here are into alternative diets and food in general, and might know something about jerky. I'd really appreciate and specific brands, or general tips to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Thanks very much if you've read this far, and thanks again if you can help. <comment><USER2> EPIC Bites and Snack Strips. I have been following a similar diet and these are awesome. Low sugar, too. I recommend the Cracked Black Pepper Venison Strip and the Hickory Smoked Bacon and Pork Bites. I live in Maryland and have been able to find them at both Whole Foods and Giant. [https://epicbar.com/products](https://epicbar.com/products)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://smokedmeats.com](https://smokedmeats.com)

Without a doubt you need to make a drive up 395 on the Eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. Stop in Bishop at Mahogany. Get some jerky. Hint: the habanero is HOT!

This is the real deal. No industrial processed BS.

Continue driving north to Lee Vining. Eat at Mono Cone. Look across Mono Lake to where High Plains Drifter was filmed. Go further north to Bodie. (You have already eaten all of your jerky, because you didn't buy enough).

Or just get mail order deliveries. Not quite the same. But excellent nonetheless.

Greetings from Mammoth Lakes, CA.

<comment><USER4> For $39/lb, it had better be awesome.

I used to buy from Luther's, but not recently.

[http://jerkyusa.com](http://jerkyusa.com)

The Krave Black Cherry BBQ is good and sometimes pops up at Grocery Outlet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> you can make your own in your oven, search for a recipe, I haven't made it in a while google a recipe.

Basically buy a cut of beef on sale, slice in to strips place on a wire rack over a sheet pan.

Turn your oven down to the lowest temp, and some even say crack the door slightly so the temp stays low.

A better fall or winter project but a nice way to test it out.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/241555/homemade-beef- jerky...](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/241555/homemade-beef-jerky/)

<comment><USER5> We just made ours with salt and pepper and it was the best I've ever had.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much to everyone who responded! I'm going to try (over time) all of your suggestions, including DIY. This is a great community and I appreciate your help.

<comment><USER6> I used this video and made a simple marinade with soy sauce, hot sauce, and pepper. It was the best jerky I've ever had: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDVo0XW2GOM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDVo0XW2GOM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> DIY is the way to go. Shell out for a dehydrator with a half-dozen trays, have your butcher thin-slice the best cuts of meat, spice to taste..

</comment><comment><USER8> Tillamook (from the Oregon Coast town of the same name) has some amazing jerky.

</comment><comment><USER9> The best jerky ive found is trader joes</comment>


Weapons in the battle vs. potholes: The Pothole App - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/02/09/weapons_in_the_battle_vs_potholes/

<comment><USER2> Attempting to automate and crowd source the detection of potholes using the accelerometer and GPS of smart phones is an interesting idea.

I wonder what other municipal activities could be distributed in this way?

I also wonder if the rewards (safer roads and a diluted sense of ownership) is enough to entice people to use the App?</comment>


Convoluted TOS and "Open" APIs Will Be the Death of Us - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/07/convoluted-tos-and-open-apis-w.php#.TjRKUomqNOc.hackernews <comment><USER2> No matter how good my idea might be, I won't build on somebody else's platform (for more than a hobby project) until I'm treated as a partner. The cost of developing something and the risk of having access turned off with no legal recourse is too great.

It surprises me that investors would be willing to sink money into companies that are on such precarious footing.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. The obvious exception are the APIs that you pay for such as payment gateways and other things you don't want to reinvent.

The APIs with problems tend to be those 'free' ones (usually social related) which are just granting access to their data and really just provide ways to create neat mashups.

Cheers from another hacker in Utah :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Being able to pay instead of getting cut off would be a better than the current situation. Lots of devs are (and the ones that aren't should be) unwilling to build upon an API they don't control, or have an promises for.

Hopefully the prices will be reasonable - what ever reasonable is.</comment>


U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple's Help to Unlock iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/technology/apple-fbi-hearing-unlock-iphone.html <comment><USER2> I suspect that the intelligence and law enforcement communities are afraid that if this case goes to the Supreme Court the All Writs Act may be scaled back or ruled unconstitutional.

The All Writs Act goes back to 1789 and is used for all sorts of things, like wire tapping, obtaining call and ISP records, etc., and now trying to force Apple to make malware for their own phone.

It's definitely a risk for the FBI to fight this battle and potentially lose a tool they use all the time. Since there is probably no new info on the phone, it may not be worth the risk of making this a big fight with a motivated and well-financed adversary like Apple.

<comment><USER3> So why did they push it so far? Was it really just a game of chicken where the FBI wanted to stare down Apple?

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't be surprised. The fact that we don't hear about companies standing up like this every couple of weeks might imply that the standard response is compliance.

<comment><USER5> Which in turn could mean that the standard request is valid, or appears to be valid to the respective party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suspect this is a "Strategic Retreat" on the Justice department. The ability to reflash the phone and avoid triggering the unlock erase was a pretty obvious workaround.

So after investing a lot of time and money in trying to get case law to expand the DoJ's power over corporations to conscript them into the War on the 4th Amendment, it become possible that they would see a judgement against them (especially if the Supreme court becomes more liberal with the next appointment).

So I suspect the risk/reward outcomes of pushing this to a conclusion flip flopped into more risk than reward and someone fairly high up said, "Ok kill this whole effort before it makes things worse than they are."

Just an opinion of course but I think it fits the observed actions.

<comment><USER7> _especially if the Supreme court becomes more liberal with the next appointment_

This is the only thing I'm not so sure about. This issue doesn't seem to divide neatly along liberal/conservative lines.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, this is one of those issues where Democrats and Republicans both just assume that their party is the "good guys" and the other party is the "bad guys," when in fact it's not a particularly partisan issue at all.

("Free speech" is another one of those--both parties have been pretty shitty on free speech since 9/11, but everyone plays down their own party's sins and screams about the other's.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So basically they're saying, "This isn't going according to plan. Let's wait for another opportunity and try again."

<comment><USER10> And lets screw over Apple by claiming that we can crack the phone after Apple claims that no one can.

We'll never have to prove it, so we win, Apple loses.

<comment><USER11> I don't think Apple has claimed no one can crack the phone. That's not what this case was about.

<comment><USER10> There's a big difference between the actual details of the case (which few outside of the technology fields understand) and the public perception of the case. To the public, it was:

FBI: We need Apple to hack this terrorist's phone Apple: We could, but we won't"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of three things is true:

1\. The FBI is lying to save face,

2\. Someone -- but probably needs to be some _people_ \-- from Apple is willing to help them,

3\. There is an undisclosed vulnerability in iOS which Apple is unaware of.

I find it really hard to believe that someone would disclose a zero day exploit to the FBI without charging significant $ for it.

Am I missing something obvious?

<comment><USER13> _> Am I missing something obvious?_

John McAfee did promise to do it for free. /½ s

The guy is eccentric but I don't think he's an idiot and I do think he is likely talented, or at least rich enough to hire those who are.

That being said - he admits he was full of shit [0] and then claims that he has a proper method that isn't full of shit but which he didn't want to disclose. Chances are he's probably full of shit on that one too, given the track record, but who knows?

[0] [http://www.dailydot.com/politics/john-mcafee-lied-iphone- app...](http://www.dailydot.com/politics/john-mcafee-lied-iphone-apple-fbi/)

<comment><USER14> He is an eccentric idiot. I am just enough _not_ of an idiot not to bet my shoe for dinner that he had nothing to do with this, but I'm really close. If I had smaller feet, I'd take that bet.

<comment><USER15> I'm a size 8 and willing to let you eat one from my pair of favourite shoes, if that is more amenable.

But of course, only if The Most Interesting Douchebag In the World™ is even remotely involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it possible that Apple could file for a declaratory judgement with respect to the All Writs Act, to remove the potential of the government filing substantially the same request at a later date?

Until that happens, it seems like a very real risk to Apple's security claims.

</comment><comment><USER17> I just want to point out that lots of HN recently has been saying "Apple would NEVER deal with the FBI, there's too much risk of a leak!".. and yet, with the example of what happened to Manning, Snowden (ETC) -- would you, with a 6 figure salary, want to tell the world of misdeeds when you could toil away comfortably?

"So obvious no one will ever notice"

Apple removed their warrant canary about a year ago timed with press releases about "revamping their privacy policy for better security and user happiness" and a bunch of marketing bullshit. What I saw was the guarantees that they had done everything they could to protect your data was gone, replaced by "we'll follow the law" AKA they will screw you over willingly if they need to.

\---

Also, the FBI is NOT dumb. "Poor legal council" was mentioned in this thread. With their budget, why would you not assume they have Grade AAA legal council?

\---

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11332377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11332377)

<comment><USER18> What? Apple are quite good with privacy. Unlike Microsoft, for example, Apple's operating systems have encryption on by default.

<comment><USER19> They removed their warrant canary. That's a giant red flag if there ever was one. Cooperation w/ governments negates encryption, no matter how good.

<comment><USER17> Front page of HN says Apple suspects "third party tampering" with servers en route to them. The plot thickens.

If you didn't build it, you can't trust it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's interesting about this case is, when it started, the sides were split 50/50 between Apple and the FBI. But as time went on, and Apple's PR, legal, and executive machine spoke and educated more people on the issue, the side tipped towards Apple.

Then the congressional hearing happened, where Issa (R - Calirfornia) knew more about the technical details of the phone than Commey. Given that Commey didn't bring a technical aide with him, and him saying things like 'this software would be obsolete because of newer iPhones, and wouldn't work on the 6 and 6S' were completely false and hard to imagine were made with merely negligence (i.e. He was very clearly lying).

And after all that, and the FBI and DOJ PR machine trying to fight back, it became clear that media was starting to side with Apple (Morning Joe on MSNBC is a perfect example of what a 2-3 week time span can do to an opinion).

I even suspect the Judge would have also sided with Apple and the FBI would be fighting for the appeal, and they would have known that. It's smart for the FBI to drop the case, but timing + intentions to bring up the case in the first place were scummy.

Let's remember that Commey, the director of the FBI, was a NY prosecutor. Given that the current NY prosecutor wanted to unlock phones with ease (as they don't have the resources of the FBI and access to the NSA), Commey was "simply" trying to help a friend by deceiving the public and forcing Apple to do something it didn't want to, that Apple knew it shouldn't. It simply wasn't worth the fight, and I do believe it put the FBI in their place, as even a terror attack couldn't even get them the mandate they sought. This is likely not the end, and the FBI knows that any company that has the reach they need will likely set a precedent against them, so it'll be interesting to see what they do next.

All in all, what the FBI got out of this mess: making a whole lot of devices and services more secure.

</comment><comment><USER21> > On a conference call with reporters late Monday, a law enforcement official > ... said the case was never about setting a precedent, but only about > getting information from a dead terrorist's phone

Pure 100% unpasteurized bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER22> They could just contact geohot...

In some ways I suspect that the FBI's arguments are a smoke-screen to keep us from talking about the fact that unknown 0-days exist and perhaps the NSA even has a few.

<comment><USER23> It's not a very good smoke screen, since the most probable interpretation of the filing is that the NSA has an exploit.

At least one security expert reported they were rebuffed by the FBI when they offered to help, so I seriously doubt the "outside party" is outside the government.

<comment><USER24> > It's not a very good smoke screen, since the most probable interpretation of > the filing is that the NSA has an exploit.

I've wondered if the NSA already had the phone cracked, and Apple's help was just parallel construction to not reveal capabilities.

<comment><USER25> Could the NSA crack the phone in a way that Apple engineers would not be able to tell the phone had been cracked?

<comment><USER22> Presuming that we are unaware of the NSA's capabilities, the answer must be "yes".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There was no reason to think this phone, unlike every other system, was uncrackable. Apple is setting impossible expectations, especially when the attacker has the resources of the U.S. goverment.

</comment><comment><USER27> _May?_ That's rich. They've always had the ability to circumvent the encryption on Farook's phone since day one. They could have made a byte-by- byte copy of the encrypted drive and bruteforced copies over and over. It's just that they prefer to coerce Apple into making it _easier_ for them by making GovtOS.

</comment><comment><USER28> oh no what about that "dormant cyber pathogen" ?!?!?

</comment><comment><USER29> Can somebody please point out to me the obvious fact I am missing. Don't Apple design their security such that even they themselves can't crack it? Like storing hashed passwords, they don't want that kind of accountability. The media keeps suggesting that Apple _won 't_ do it, I thought it would be the case that Apple _can 't_ do it...

<comment><USER30> Apple did try to design encryption that it can't break. But they also want to be able to fix bugs. So they can update the OS on the phone even if it is locked.

So by writing a new update, they could remove some of the ancillary security features that reinforce short passcodes: the "wipe after 10 tries" feature, and the "progressively longer delay between tries" feature. Without these, a numeric (short) passcode can be brute-forced in a day or two. This is what the FBI has been trying to force them to do: write a new update to remove these features. That's what Apple has been refusing to do.

BTW, if you use a long alphanumeric passcode, then it wouldn't matter if Apple was forced to push this update. A 15 character passcode with upper case, lower case, numbers, and symbols would probably be safe from brute forcing no matter how fast someone tries. But most folks are not willing to remember or type in 15 characters on their phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What courses of action are available for private persons to bring questions like this in front of the Supreme Court? Is there something here that a private individual / corporation could find cause for a suit against the USG, so that the high courts have the opportunity to narrow the scope?

Or are we just left to petitioning and lobbying Congress to rewrite parts of it?

</comment><comment><USER32> Dicks. They know they're fucked. They don't want a precedent. And they want to bully everyone else like they did Lavabit.

</comment><comment><USER33> Surveillance only works when people believe their communications are private and secure.

The 3rd party was probably NSA and they did not intervene up until because it would reveal the existence of a cracking technique.

What changed is that weighed against a possible court verdict that would tell every terrorist that no U.S. made device or encryption could possibly be secure, (causing targets to avoid using broken crypto) revealing the existence of a possible forensic technique was low risk.

The belief that it is possible to communicate securely is the most important thing for spies to maintain. The FBI wants to discourage people from believing it because they think it will make people less likely to commit crimes. The spies want to encourage the belief because it ensures they can collect the intelligence they need to maintain the status quo.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wouldn't it be great if Apple sued the FBI for details of the exploit, for public interest reasons

</comment><comment><USER35> Beautiful. Congrats to the DOJ for seeing the light.

Will Obama now stop seeking "middle ground" as he mentioned at SXSW? Will Burr-Feinstein halt their work on a backdoor bill? Nothing has changed on this front, and there are still a host of reasons why a backdoor law is a bad idea.

<comment><USER36> Knowing both Burr and Feinstein past how little good their bills ever did, I would highly doubt they ever stop wasting tax payers money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Here's one approach you could use if you had a reliable zero-day at your disposal. I've been out of the jailbreak scene for a while, so I might be way off the mark:

1) Have zero-day ([0]) that can be used to deliver executable payload over SMS (think Stagefright). iOS devices can receive text messages _before_ the filesystem is decrypted. Perhaps Apple should close this vector.

2) Deploy dylib that patches the SpringBoard UI (where the lock screen lives), disabling the code that counts incorrect passcode attempts

3) Brute force the passcode

[0] [http://www.wired.com/2015/11/hackers-claim-million-dollar- bo...](http://www.wired.com/2015/11/hackers-claim-million-dollar-bounty-for- ios-attack/)

<comment><USER38> > Perhaps Apple should close this vector.

Perhaps. However, it's very likely that receiving SMS before decryption is not a bug, but a feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Is it normal to refer to the Justice Department as the U.S.? If I understand correctly it is part of the Government, yes, but this whole issue was promoted as FBI vs Apple, not US vs Apple. Not a native speak, just sounds strange to me.

<comment><USER40> I think it's just an easier-to-read headline; there's always some oversimplification in those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Let's realize something here that I can attest to being 100% correct; the US government is abysmally behind the curve ball on anything and all things technology. I really even hate stating that because we are operating on a kind of inertial perception of America's cyber might that partially was conjured through movies and perception, but reality is that we are really bad off. We're not just behind the curve ball, we're on a short bus trying to figure out how to get to the damn ballpark.

The problem is a systemic one too, a lack of actual leadership, a personnel problem if you will.

</comment><comment><USER42> And wouldn't it be ironic if the "outside party", referenced in the article, was Apple itself. Maybe through several layers of indirection. Something to think about, but most probably not the case.

</comment><comment><USER43> Martin Hector (@marcan42) from the established hardware hacking group fail0verflow has to say about the situation: [https://marcan.st/2016/03/untangling-ios-pin-code- security/](https://marcan.st/2016/03/untangling-ios-pin-code-security/)

Essentially you can just automate the backup/restore of the eMMC flash storage and brute force the PIN. :)

</comment><comment><USER44> So does qualified immunity mean that Apple can't sue the Justice Department for the (substantial) legal expenses it incurred?

</comment><comment><USER45> It seems far more likely then most of the conspiracy theories here that the FBI was simply running parallel work for breaking into the phone that has recently yielded results.

Since the All Writs Act has as a test, necessity, to stay within the law they're required to notify the courts if that changes.

</comment><comment><USER46> Can someone explain to me why is it wrong (cynical) to think they didn't have this capability all along?

<comment><USER47> It's not, and they did. What I don't understand why so-called "reporters" are regurgitating the blatant trash from "unnamed FBI sources" as if it's fit to print. I would hope at least to see front page NYT and WP editorials blasting the FBI for their obvious failed attempt here to capitalize on a mass murder for their own legal/policy purposes.

A few weeks ago they couldn't figure out how to unlock the phone, when it's blatantly obvious the security weaknesses of the 5c, and today they suddenly have seen the light but it just needs more testing? Department of Homeland Security has been funding research into NAND-blockers for at least 6 years now.

In a fair and adversarial system, the court would somehow sanction the FBI for their prior sworn testimony that they couldn't do this themselves. But of course when Federal agents lie under oath, it's not a crime, just a misunderstanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've always wondered what the FBI really expected to find on the phone, and more importantly, whether what they find will be worth the publicity and debate.

If they find nothing, the perceived motive that they just wanted a backdoor more than the device's data would feel all but confirmed.

</comment><comment><USER49> Because iOS is closed source, proprietary software, the latest update might as wel include a backdoor. Nobody knows. This isn't an issue about privacy but rather with people comfortably trusting closed source software by the color of Tim Cook's eyes.

</comment><comment><USER50> I know this is somewhat counterintuitive, but this is potentially good news. It means that we have not established precedent that the government can force a private company to destroy even the illusion of privacy.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is the outcome I was hoping for... Apple is not weakening their products and the USA is getting intel.

I would probably bet theyre getting in via an exotic side channel attack of some sort to spy on the keys.

</comment><comment><USER52> What happens when Apple finds a way to secure this new attack vector. Is Apple now actively working against the feds? That is certainly how it will be seen by the US Gov.

</comment><comment><USER53> If they actually manage to break into the phone, will that damage Apple's reputation in the realm of security?

Anybody have any ideas what this 3rd party method could be?

</comment><comment><USER54> There needs to be a constitutional amendment blocking the federal government from this type of business disruption in the future.

<comment><USER55> This sounds to me like the type of law that appears to solve a problem in this particular case but would open a can of worms in other cases that involve legitimate investigation into faulty business practices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> [http://www.iphoneasyunlock.com/](http://www.iphoneasyunlock.com/) FTW

</comment><comment><USER57> There is always a coward willing to sell out their freedom and yours for their own profit & "security".

</comment><comment><USER58> IMO.

1\. NSA and any other govt. organization do not need a help from Apple to gain necessary information

2\. Most probably Apple and govt. are working together for the face of good PR

3\. Now after Apple keynote, seems like sales are ok, now they can publish actual story step by step

In summary: digital is not secure enough to rely on, all other things are PR

</comment><comment><USER59> Perhaps they think they've successfully moved the Overton Window.

</comment><comment><USER60> what if Apple agreed to unlock it (either by custom software or by some other means) but FBI won't say it publicly so Apple gets to save their face and FBI gets what they want.

</comment><comment><USER61> a greater concern is the NSA data hook that NSA is using to press any US agency to mount court cases to support NSA's destroy encryption agenda...

</comment><comment><USER62> While the legal maneuvering is interesting, I'd like to talk more about the technical mechanisms. Is it _actually_ possible?

Snowden said the FBI is full of shit[1] and of course the phone is hackable, citing an ACLU report.[2] This report states that one could "easily" bypass the auto-erase-after-10-attempts function by popping out the Flash memory chip, copying its contents into some sort of test rig wired in its place, and then restoring it whenever it gets erased.

This is an interesting modification of an attack scenario laid out in an excellent review of iPhone/iOS8 security by Matthew Green:

 _" Since only the device itself knows UID -- and the UID can't be removed from the Secure Enclave -- this means all password cracking attempts have to run on the device itself. That rules out the use of FPGA or ASICs to crack passwords. Of course Apple could write a custom firmware that attempts to crack the keys on the device but even in the best case such cracking could be pretty time consuming, thanks to the 80ms PBKDF2 timing."[3]_

What this theoretical rig changes is it essentially allows a custom chip to run on the device (namely a delete-proof Flash chip), bypassing the need for Apple to write custom firmware. So a typical 6 digit one would take under a day to crack, based on the 80ms cost per attempt.

So, it does seem possible to crack the pre-A7 phone in question with this rig.

However, and here is where it gets interesting, Apple has said conflicting things about current phones. One the one hand, ever since the A7 they've added a hardware-level escalating time delay between failed passcode attempts:

 _" On devices with an A7 or later A-series processor, the delays are enforced by the Secure Enclave. If the device is restarted during a timed delay, the delay is still enforced, with the timer starting over for the current period."[4]_

This would in theory make it infeasible to attempt this kind of rig on a current iPhone. Even a typical weak passcode would encounter an hour-long delay at least once every 10 attempts. It could take years to bruteforce all but the most predictable passcodes.

However, Apple has also said that "Yes, it is certainly possible to create an entirely new operating system to undermine our security features as the government wants."[5] This would seem to suggest that software alone could enable bruteforcing, and this implication is in stark contrast to the statement on hardware defenses within the secure enclave. (Did they mean possible _only on pre-A7 phones?_ It sure feels like they feel there's more at stake than that.)

So I don't know what to believe at this point. The ACLU seems wrong in suggesting that this particular rig would work on anything but old pre-A7 iPhones, based on the current secure enclave's time delay. But Apple has outright stated that GovtOS could enable the cracking of iPhones. So... how?

[1] [https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/707299113449230336](https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/707299113449230336)

[2] [https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major- claims-...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-claims- iphone-case-fraudulent)

[3] [http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/10/why-cant- app...](http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/10/why-cant-apple- decrypt-your-iphone.html)

[4] [https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)

[5] [http://www.apple.com/customer- letter/answers/](http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/answers/)

</comment><comment><USER63> Cold feet or technology?

</comment><comment><USER64> There's a lot of cynicism in this thread. Would you prefer that they try to force Apple's hand anyway, even though they might have found another way that makes the issue moot?

<comment><USER63> > Would you prefer that they try to force Apple's hand anyway, even though > they might have found another way that makes the issue moot?

Yes, very much so. That way we can put this behind us rather than to wait for the inevitable re-run with conditions carefully arranged to be more favorable in order to set precedent.

<comment><USER64> Their legal reasoning heavily relies on Apple being the only party capable of assisting with unlocking the phone. They are talking about compelling someone, so if there's a possibility that it's not necessary, they have a duty to find out. Also, US courts don't rule on abstract ideas or hypothetical cases. No "case or controversy", no judicial standing. If the FBI can unlock the device without compelling Apple, there's no controversy since the FBI agrees Apple wouldn't be required to help in that case.

<comment><USER63> Yes, but _that_ line of reasoning requires you to believe this was about the phone's contents to begin with and it would take a serious act of suspension of disbelief to go down that particular road with what's known about this whole sordid affair to date. It's simply the FBI using a crisis to attempt to expand their powers.

See also:

[http://www.npr.org/2016/03/14/470347719/encryption-and- priva...](http://www.npr.org/2016/03/14/470347719/encryption-and-privacy-are- larger-issues-than-fighting-terrorism-clarke-says)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SysAdmins Arena: beta testers invite list is open - <AUTHOR> http://wwww.sysadminsarena.com <comment><USER2> The link has a typo. The correct one is www.sysadminsarena.com

</comment><comment><USER3> When will start the beta testing?

<comment><AUTHOR> We hope mid December will start. Will announce all subscribers one week before.</comment></comment>