The Nightmare Scenario for Florida's Coastal Homeowners - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/the-nightmare-scenario-for-florida-s-coastal-homeowners <comment><USER3> > "Cason, the Coral Gables mayor, said Congress ought to create what he called > a "resilience fund" for homes threatened by the water—but he doesn't think > it will."

No. No no no no no. Absolutely not.

Mr. Cason made a crap ton of money, spent millions of dollars "investing" in property which would soon become worthless and now he's blaming CONGRESS?

Mr. Cason. Sea rise isn't your fault, but buying a gorgeous, lavish beach house where it will no longer exist is your responsibility.

Congress should create a resilience fund for kids at school who have no food. Congress should make a resilience fund for veterans who can't work. Congress should make a resilience fund for folks bankrupt because of medical debt. But Congress need not send a bucket to the millionaires of Miami.

Postscript: not everyone who lives in Miami is a millionaire. I've hung out with very poor folks in Miami. That said, The first homes to go are going to be the ones owned by the elites on the water.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what being rich has to do with this? If we understand the causes correctly, then this is just a negative externality. Negative externalities aren't bad only when the affected party is poor, they're bad because the affected party didn't have any choice in incurring the cost of someone else's behavior.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you in theory, but if I drive a car straight into the ocean, do I deserve a government bailout? If I land a helicopter in a marsh, and it is ruined, should I be bailed out?

This is the same thing, but just much slower. Tons of that coastal housing is new, the idea of rising sea levels is certainly not new, and we've seen this coming for a long time. This is basically choosing to drive your house into the sea, and then demanding a handout.

I _do_ think we should subsidize moving buildings farther inland, or putting them on stilts like they did in the Rockaways post Sandy, but just straight buyout? Forget about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of an answer from Bill Nye's AMA on reddit yesterday, where someone asked Nye to speculate on a worse case scenario resulting from the US not doing anything in response to climate change:

"The quality of life for people everywhere will go down. There will be less food and less clean water available in the developed and the developing world. It's reasonable that this will lead to conflict: more violence, more war. Here in the super-developed US, people will have to abandon homes in Miami, Galveston, Norfolk, and other coastal towns. It will lead to defaulted mortgages and people looking for jobs inland. Where will those jobs come from? Sooner we get to work the better." [1]

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/66ajul/i_am_bill_nye_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/66ajul/i_am_bill_nye_and_im_here_to_dare_i_say_it_save/dggw7nk/)

<comment><USER7> "William Sanford "Bill" Nye

popularly known as Bill Nye the Science Guy, is an American science educator, television presenter, and mechanical engineer. He is best known as the host of the PBS children's science show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–1998)."

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

Bill Nye is a media personality. Where he draws the line between 'presenting the facts' and 'entertaining the crowd' is hard to judge. Global warming disaster porn gets him exposure and helps his career. I would take any of his predictions with a grain of salt unless backed up by some serious research and studies. These claims by Nye and others are usually just intuitive guesses made by the presenter.

<comment><USER8> I think it's important to keep the context of the question in mind when reading his response. Someone asked him what he thought the worst case scenario would be.

Honestly I'm surprised it's not worse and it seems to fall in line with a lot of worse-case predictions I've seen made in various studies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I was shopping for a house in the Bay Area 3 years ago, my agent asked me if I was willing to consider Redwood Shores (which is built on fill and very close to the bay). One reason among several for saying "no" was the proximity to sea level.

I'm not worried that the next tsunami will swamp it, or that it will be (physically) underwater in my lifetime, or that nothing will be done to prevent slow rise from swamping the land.

I'm just simply unwilling to make a 30 year commitment to today's value, when I don't know what we'll know in 30 years. It's an absolute certainty that we'll know more in 10 years than we know now. When will that property become un-sellable? When will the value start being impacted? I'd guess sooner rather than later, and if that isn't until 2040, that's still way too soon for comfort -- particularly if I'm trying to retire then.

<comment><USER10> Oddly, sea level will probably go down this far north. Earth is spinning, drawing water to the equator. More mass, more gravity pulling water to the equator, along with less mass at the poles to offset.

But, yeah, I don't think I'd buy anything by the water either.

 _edit_

So, I'm wrong, Northern California isn't far enough north. it's a real effect. You're all underestimating the mass of 100,000 cubic miles of ice.

[1] [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/323/5915/753](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/323/5915/753)

[2] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6823/abs/4091026a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6823/abs/4091026a0.html) reply

<comment><USER11> > Oddly, sea level will probably go down this far north. Earth is spinning, > drawing water to the equator. More mass, more gravity pulling water to the > equator, along with less mass at the poles to offset.

Can you provide a reference or show some workings which demonstrate that statement to be true? I've not heard this before, and it's not obvious that it should be true.

<comment><USER10> Here's one.

[http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/05/gravity-of-glacial- melt](http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/05/gravity-of-glacial-melt)

Wikipedia eqitorial bulge has some info as well.

<comment><USER12> I'm unconvinced. I don't see anything in the harvardmagazine article that suggests sea level fall in Northern California. The wikipedia page explains that equatorial bulge has been decreasing. I'd expect ice-melt to add mass along the equator and further slow rotation which should further reduce equatorial bulge. I'm not saying you are wrong its just that your references don't explain your contention in a way that I can make sense of.

<comment><USER10> I'm wrong. edited the main comment with more references.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure how to fix this, assuming that global warming does wipe out alot of the Florida coast line.

I think he is right that its the banks who will start the decline by no longer issuing mortgages, starting with long term mortgages. We've already seen it happen in cities that don't have coastal flooding like Detroit.

People leave, property values fall, banks stop giving out as many loans, values fall further, property taxes revenue declines and the cycle repeats as the city circles the drain.

Ideally you'd have something like a forced relocation where the country/state/county would buy your property from you and you'd move, but with 100's of billions in property about to disappear, it's not really realistic let alone politically feasible for the government to buy everyone's ocean front property and put the bill on the shoulders of someone from Colorado.

I mean look at a city like New Orleans, its very easy to argue that it shouldn't have been rebuilt but it was politically impossible for someone to be the voice of reason and state that certain areas of the city be reclaimed and no longer available for residential construction.

And that's a relatively poor city, What's going to happen when billionaires island and South Beach starts to continually flood and then slowly start to disappear?

<comment><USER14> >> I think he is right that its the banks who will start the decline by no longer issuing mortgages, starting with long term mortgages. We've already seen it happen in cities that don't have coastal flooding like Detroit.

Nope. The banks don't care about the risk so long as you have insurance. They will continue to have insurance as long as we continue to subsidize them.

<comment><USER15> It sounds like the state of Florida provides insurance of last resort because larger insurance companies refused to provide coverage after _1992_ with the state created Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. Of course that doesn't meant they won't come asking for a federal bailout when things go pear shaped.

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

[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-the-city-of- mi...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-the-city-of-miami-is- doomed-to-drown-20130620)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not to downplay climate change, I believe in it no matter what and I know it's one of the biggest catastrophes our planet has ever faced.

But I see a prediction of 32 cm rise by 2050 on Wikipedia (1)

It doesn't seem like the Florida coast is going anywhere overnight. Is there a chance we're panicking?

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

<comment><USER17> I think you have to look at it in the context of home ownership. There was a NYT article [1] about Norfolk and the relationship between flood insurance, climate change and housing values.

I live in Virginia Beach, in what's officially not a flood zone, but Hurricane Matthew (which was pretty mild as things go) put our street 4 feet underwater and about a foot below our front door.

If our neighborhood gets redesignated as a flood zone, we'll lose a big chunk of our house value immediately and may not be able to sell it.

I'm definitely thinking that we need to move sooner rather than later as no matter if it's 32, 28, or 57 centimeters of sea level rise it's hard not to think we won't see more hurricanes, worse flooding, etc.

1 - [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/magazine/when-rising- seas...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/magazine/when-rising-seas- transform-risk-into-certainty.html?partner=socialflow&smid=tw- nytmag&smtyp=cur)

<comment><USER18> Like most articles about Norfolk, it is incredibly disingenuous to focus on sea level rise, and not land subsidence, which is the primary cause of the flooding there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you went to school in the last 30 years, or popped on the news during that time, I can't help but wonder how delusional you must be to buy waterfront property. I say this knowing brilliant enginners with homes they are still paying off in New Orleans. Why? You must know the return will be terrible, and it is just a temporary luxury, at a steep price, right?

Are people in general this head-in-the-sand or is it really that hard to grasp?

<comment><USER20> I can take a few guesses at how people might make these mistakes without being exceptionally delusional:

\- Estimates of climate change in the scientific literature tend to be conservative. Scientists often publish "at least" projections that lay readers might read as "up to". Especially if readers are consuming multiply digested- and-regurgitated versions of scientific reports (primary literature -> university press office -> Gizmodo).

\- Considering average effects without accounting for extremes: e.g. visualizing "X centimeters of sea level rise by 2050" for a property near water without accounting for what that higher average level means during the worst storm of a decade.

\- Thinking that you'll have enough warning before everyone else's irrational exuberance evaporates that you can go with the herd for the foreseeable future. With something as big as a home purchase, most Americans will sadly only get one chance to learn this lesson the hard way.

<comment><USER21> In addition, they often talk in terms of centuries, not "in your lifetime" and definitely not "while you're still young enough for it to change the course of much of your life".

<comment><USER20> The IPCC reports typically go out to 2100. This might imply a couple of ideas to lay readers that aren't actually in the report text:

\- I only need to worry about this if I live until the year 2100.

\- After the year 2100 the trend lines will stop going up. If humans are ready for the effects of AGW in 2100, we're sorted away for the rest of history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ah, this is rather what I keep on explaining to folks about climate change - you don't have to wait for cities to be underwater, for infrastructure to be destroyed, for the worst consequences to be felt - they just have to be _anticipated_ for disaster to strike.

For instance, you might have a scenario whereby Europe somehow has no climate change (this is demonstrably not the case), but, say, the 'stans become nigh on uninhabitable, or at least, bad enough that people don't want to stay put - you end up with a refugee crisis on your doorstep. This foments political change, economic change, and again, climate change is having an affect without directly affecting the local area.

Commensurately, you might find that your home insurance premiums on the gulf coast just keep on going up, and you decide to sell - except, the best you can get is less than you bought the place for, because new buyers are either building in the cost of insurance to the purchase price or don't exist, so you either don't sell, and end up staying until disaster really does strike, at which point you have nothing, or you relocate, writing off the worth of your property - which is where a great deal of people keep most of their net worth - and again, relocate, destitute. This creates pressure elsewhere on employment and housing markets, and before you know it, Iowa is saying that they want to implement immigration controls because the locals are up in arms, and political instability ensues. Meanwhile, your property on the gulf coast is still there, still standing, still not submerged, but the town's services have been gutted by the exodus, and the place is worth nothing - <USER2> having not had any direct climate change impact.

Our society is a deeply unstable chaotic attractor - little nudges can cause massive disruption. Climate change is more of a shove, than a nudge.

<comment><USER23> Cities and municipal infrastructure are one thing. It's a necessary massive realignment of the food production system that scares the shit out of me.

<comment><USER24> Food production will have to shift, which costs money. But I would _guess_ that the cost of building agricultural infrastructure in previously too-cold- and-dry-for-food regions is small compared to the cost of moving entire cities.

In other words, suppose Iowa becomes a wasteland because of temperature changes. Other regions will become better suited for crops at the same time. Do we have reason to believe building the infrastructure for those lands to be suitable for agriculture would be more expensive than, say, moving the entire populations of Miami or Dhaka to someplace above sea level?

<comment><USER23> I can't say which one would be more expensive in raw replacement cost. One thing I'd point out is that while urban infrastructure is deep, rural infrastructure is broad. Tens of thousands of miles of highways, railways and irrigation exist largely for bringing material to where food grows and taking food from where it grows to where it is processed and then on to where it is purchased.

How many square miles of rural Iowa adds up to single square block of downtown Miami I'm not sure but the potential human toll is much more frightening. Displacing large amounts of people is of course deeply problematic. You need look no further than the situation we're in today with Syrian refugees for evidence of that. But in terms of turmoil, death and violence human displacements tend to pale in comparison to large scale disruptions of food production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Kim Stanley Robinson explores this very market force in some interesting ways in his new New York 2140, with the Intertidal Property Pricing Index (IPPI).

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/only- sci-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/only-sci-fi-can- drown-manhattan-and-make-you-want-to-live-there)

<comment><USER26> New York City will build a retaining wall and be done with it. These other predictions are written by naive people and paid for by naive people.

<comment><USER25> You haven't gotten to the chapter where the retaining wall is breached in the 2nd wave/pulse yet have you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There's probably already an indirect impact happening to property values. Holding a mortgage requires flood insurance. Inside a 100 year flood zone it can be difficult and expensive to get flood coverage. If no one will cover you, you aren't getting that mortgage.

As FEMA redraws 100 year flood zones, even a few inches of increased depth will cause many "dry" areas to be recategorized.

</comment><comment><USER27> Florida coastal homeowners have always known there are high risks. There are these things called hurricanes that can level your house in one go, and they happen every year. A few inches of rain is just one of several concerns, and yet for decades the market has been strong, even shortly after hurricanes.

Lots of South Florida floods every year, inland and coastal, and nobody sells their house just because it floods. If the boats can't make it under the bridge, they'll just put in locks; they've worked for a thousand years, so they can probably work for the Venice of America. And there are many cities throughout the world located near the ocean and under sea level.

The only risky part of South Florida real estate are giant condos in Miami, which have a habit of becoming empty. If you're a homeowner, though, your land will pretty much always have value until it is completely under water. Even then, they may just develop into Stiltsville 2.0.

<comment><USER28> +1 for Stiltsville reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is the good scenario. The mortgage and insurance industries see rising sea levels coming, reprice accordingly, and over time, people move to high ground. It's the free market in action.

Only a few areas of the US are affected. Florida has the worst problem. Florida is so flat. Look at an elevation map of Florida and the Gulf Coast.[1] The bright red areas will have to be evacuated.

The US west coast is mountainous; even where it looks flat, a few hundred feet inland is well above sea level. San Francisco and LA will build seawalls and berms as necessary.

[1] [https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3047/](https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3047/)

<comment><USER15> Technically, a one meter rise will help flood a large inhabited part of the San Francisco Bay outside SF, Sacramento and surprising parts of the Central Valley that are close to sea level. [http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/san- francisco.shtml](http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/san-francisco.shtml)

<comment><USER30> It looks like it should be pretty easy to just hire the Dutch and build a levee to prevent the central valley/Sacramento areas from flooding. All the water is entering through one very narrow channel just east of Vallejo.

And perhaps the Bay Area can also be saved with a levee at the Golden Gate bridge.

<comment><USER29> A dam at Novato, plus the Peripheral Canal to divert Sacramento River water to the California Water Project, is quite possible. A dam at the Golden Gate, though, is very tough. The bay is 360 feet deep there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Whenever I see someone say "We have to do X to prevent Y because of the great potential costs of Y", I rarely see a discussion of the costs of X in comparison. Fixing the climate is going to be expensive. It's going to decrease the cost of living for everyone in similar ways that letting Miami flood will. I'm not advocating for ignoring it but this isn't just a one way street.

There is always this urge to DO SOMETHING. Pass a new law, bring in a new process, take a new pill, whatever. But those things also have costs, costs that are almost never analyzed and compared because they are "Free costs", e.g. we are protected in many ways from the costs because they are difficult to ascertain. If I don't take Lipitor and die of a heart attack, my doctor will say "see, there was a very visible cost." But if I take it for 30 years and find out that it causes memory loss and muscle problems and less efficient exercise adoption, none of that is measured (or possibly even possibly measured).

Fixing the climate is in a similar position. We need to do something because Miami will flood and people will default and the government may have to bail them out. But if we drastically reduce our carbon footprint, people will lose jobs, prices will be higher, standard of living will go down, etc. And none of that is discussed. Because it's hard and it might involve saying "It's best not to do something in this case." Which is hard for us to accept for some reason.

<comment><USER32> It's interesting to observe the patterns of those who advocate lack of action on the climate. Twenty years ago, global warming was absurd and "weren't they just saying we were going to go through global cooling 10 years ago?" Ten years ago, it was, climate change? that's not happening and even if it were people have nothing to do with it. Now that evidence becomes less disputable, the fallback becomes, well even if humans were responsible it will cost too much/change our living conditions so much that it won't be worthwhile to do anything about.

I'm not really sure where this leads, or why it's happening, but I do think it's worth noticing.

<comment><USER33> Accepting responsibility for trashing the planet implies that you must make lifestyle changes as a result. If you take responsibility, you can't justify driving a large SUV, or buying a large house, or buying lots of stuff, or paying low taxes, or eating a hamburger guilt free, etc. etc.

People hate change, and will fight to resist it, including fighting against the idea that change is necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What pisses me off is these homeowners are going to expect the federal government to bail them out when their property gets destroyed by climate change.

I don't mind helping out areas impacted by tornados hurricanes etc but not ignorance.

<comment><USER21> While I generally agree with your gut feelings, my logic says otherwise.

* some people bought their homes 30+ years ago, when the timeline and exact impact wasn't known (and there was reporting of a potential Ice Age coming, despite that not accurately reflecting the science of the time)

* other people have bought since then, but have seen their own politicians telling them it's "in dispute", and the general media just says some people say it's in dispute and others say it isn't.

* our school systems do a terrible job of teaching fundamentals, like "what is a theory" to science.

Heck, while I believe in climate change and human-caused climate change, including the unprecedented scale, when I've tried to find good answers to skeptical questions...it's hard for the lay person to find. Things like "volcanos put out more CO2 in a year than mankind ever" are apparently false, but it's a lot easier to find that claim than the reverse (and much easier to find the refutation now than even 5 years ago). "Satellite data shows no global warming" is one I still don't quite follow - I get that they tend to pick a range from the last El Nino peak, but I don't know how to reconcile how they can say each successive year has been "the hottest on record" (including beating the previous year) but "satellite temperature measurements have been flat in recent years". If I - a reasonably well-educated person familiar with online research and with ample time on my hands - can't find decisive answers, how can I expect that everyone has?

Ultimately, I decide to trust in the overall body of scientists, but that's pretty subjective, and I can't fault the average person that understands science only from mass media for deciding NOT to trust the body of scientists.

<comment><USER34> Or increase the flood insurance premiums to ensure the homeowners are aware of the risks and are contributing to it. Currently Florida has one of the lowest premiums for federally supported flood insurance. Ridiculous.

See this from the article:

 __The National Flood Insurance Program is up for reauthorization this year; fiscal conservatives have said they want to use that opportunity to reduce the program's subsidies, so that people are paying something closer to the full cost of their risk. A cut in federal subsidies would particularly hurt Florida, which despite its exposure pays the lowest average flood-insurance premiums in the country, according to FEMA data. __

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The New York Times did a good article on this last fall

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/science/global-warming- co...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/science/global-warming-coastal-real- estate.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> That will be terrible but will probably happen. So my advice to myself is rent a house there, don't buy.

</comment><comment><USER37> Maybe they should vote to address the problem rather than wedge their collective heads further in the sand?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you protect your personal private keys? - <AUTHOR> Having your private keys as plaintext files is very comfortable on one hand (e.g pushing code to remote a repository or connecting to your server without typing any password) but obviously risky on the other hand.<p>how does one win this conflict? <comment><USER2> I keep mine only on my laptop/desktop. The key never leaves, and each laptop or desktop has it's own set of private keys so that if I lose it, I can just disable the keys for that machine without being disrupted

</comment><comment><USER3> Happy customer of 1password. Sync through the dev machines with Dropbox.

<comment><USER4> does 1password works with banks such as citibank and usbank,

citibank will not allow browser to store password, and usbank uses multiple screens to enter username and password causing the browser to not store username/password

thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ubuntu automatically encrypts private keys while not in use, and I store the encryption password in KeePass.

</comment><comment><USER6> Everything is stored in 1password.</comment>


The F-106A That Flew Itself – After the Pilot Ejected, Landing Gently in a Field - <AUTHOR> https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/plane-flew-pilot-ejected-f-106a-flew-miles-landing-gently-field.html <comment><USER2> What the heck? I was literally just reading about the Cornfield Bomber yesterday! I guess somebody else read the question on Aviation StackExchange [0] asking what autopilots are programmed to do upon pilot ejection.

Another very interesting case of a plane flying after the pilot ejected happened with a Soviet MiG-23 in 1989, which flew from Poland to Belgium, before crashing into a house and killing a man [1]. The map of its flightpath is interesting [2], imagine being one of the F-15 pilots that intercepted it. It would be nerve wracking having to intercept a plane heading straight into NATO airspace, and then completely bizarre when you discovered there was no pilot on it.

[0] [https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/52862/if-a- pilo...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/52862/if-a-pilot-ejects- what-is-the-autopilot-programmed-to-do)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgian_MiG-23_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgian_MiG-23_crash)

[2] [https://web.archive.org/web/20120426041634/http://images3.we...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120426041634/http://images3.webpark.ru/uploads52/080331/mig_01.jpg)

<comment><USER3> The question made it to HN [0]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17391550](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17391550)

<comment><USER4> I scan HN fairly extensively (if sometimes quickly).

There's a fair amount of OP's that pretty apparently start when someone takes a resource cited in a comment and makes a new top-level post out of it.

I don't keep track of who and what. I just see a new post and think/remember, I saw that in a comment 3 hours ago - 1 day ago. (Sometimes, quicker than that.)

The behavior doesn't seem to be overwhelming HN (maybe the moderators throttle it?), and often significant conversations seem to ensue, so, as they say, "what the hey..."

<comment><USER2> There does seem to be a tendency on HN for there to end up being a series of stories on a particular topic.

One person will post a link, then somebody who reads the linked article will do some further reading, discover something interesting, and then post a link to their interesting discovery to HN, and the cycle continues.

I rather like it. It happens at a low enough level, as you mentioned, that it provides a nice stream of information on a particular topic.

<comment><USER5> It would be nice to capture those reply chains and package up a bunch of related links at once. Kind of like a shared mapping of our unexpected deep internet dives on Wikipedia, just automated.

<comment><USER6> The data is there, it's "only for someone" to write the code to connect the dots. I'm sure that program would make HN front-page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My old Chief Flying instructor was a test pilot in the RAF back in the 50's and 60's. He has many stories about pilots who ejected from their 'out of control' jets only to hang in their parachutes a minute later watching their aircraft flying along perfectly normally.

His opinion was that most planes have a better idea how to stabilise than the pilot does, and in fact when taking us through emergency recovery manoeuvres in the air, he used to suggest in most cases the first reaction should be "hands off stick and throttle" (obviously only where altitude and time permitted) just to see if the airplane would self correct, before applying any inputs ourselves.

<comment><USER8> What the punishment/outcome for ditching a plane? Is there a mandatory court- martial held like when a ship is lost?

<comment><USER9> You get the free Martin Baker Tie and pin[0].

You probably get classed unfit to fly until medical exam.

If you were flying one of the 60s fast jets you may lose a kneecap on the way out.

Then you get the enquiry/court martial.

[0] [http://martin-baker.com/ejection-tie-club/](http://martin- baker.com/ejection-tie-club/)

<comment> King-Aaron That Bremont watch they talk about on the page is a lovely looking bit of kit!

<comment><USER10> Love the use of the OCR-B font on a flieger-style like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Am i the only one who is irritated by sentences like "In 1970, a plane got fed up with its pilot so it hatched an audacious plan. First, get rid of the pilot. Second: land. Third: enter history. The result was amazing."

Especially irritating the the last sentence "The result was amazing".

Is there a word for describing this type of writing in English?

<comment><USER12> "Tongue in cheek"?

<comment><USER11> Maybe. As an anecdote, I see it as well in some of Elon Musks tweets, i.e. "I'm starting a candy company & it's going to be amazing".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It wasn't actually that rare an occurrence; I've heard at least a dozen Cold War stories, all verified, of self-landers. Danish Hunter serial 415 was probably the most famous, it flew itself pilotless down the approach at Skrydstrup and landed beside the runway.

[http://aviadejavu.ru/Site/Arts/Art9093.htm](http://aviadejavu.ru/Site/Arts/Art9093.htm)

More morbid was the WW2 92 Sqn Spitfire that nearly made it back to its home airfield with a dead pilot at the controls. It landed in treetops near Biggin Hill after flying all the way back from France where he had been killed.

</comment><comment><USER14> Something like this happened in 1944: crew bailed out from Dornier 217 over London, plane carried on north, landing by itself in the Milton Road allotments in Cambridge: [https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Do-217/Do-217-KG2.2-(U5+DK)/page...](https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Do-217/Do-217-KG2.2-\(U5+DK\)/pages/Dornier- Do-217M1-2.KG2-\(U5+DK\)-Stemann-crew-shot-down-over- WNr-56031-Cambridge-23-24th-Feb-1944-01.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> This has happened many times in civilian aviation as well, many times with the pilots still inside but incapacitated.

I remember one famous story of a doctor in a beechcraft who passed out from hypoxia -- only to awaken hours later by the jarring of the airplane bouncing along in a cornfield. The plane's autopilot had kept the wings level until it ran out of gas. Then it slowly descended into a field.

What a story that guy had to tell! I wonder if he flew very much after that.

</comment><comment><USER16> Site has bad ads that will hijack mobile user agents.

<comment><USER17> I tried iphone, ipad, android, and windows mobile user agents in my desktop browser. ublock blocked all of the ads.

So I opened it on my actual iphone. adguard blocked all of the ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is all the anthropomorphism in the article simply artistic license? Or is the author referring to automated capabilities?

<comment><USER19> Author is just being cute. No automation at all was involved, simply a naturally stable system and a fair amount of good luck. (Before fly-by-wire and computers all aircraft had to be at least neutrally stable, or they would be literally unflyable.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> im surprised that the mission even took place seeing that one of the pilots had to ditch his jet on the runway. different times i guess, but i doubt that the sortie would continue as normal today.

</comment><comment><USER21> Somebody reads reddit.</comment>


Ask HN: Linux or BSD for a web server? - vanilla-almond Would either be fine? Or do you prefer one over the other? What are the reasons? Thanks <comment><AUTHOR> My heart says OpenBSD; but I belive it is better to use Linux in a company (not yours) usually because you can get more people to use/embrace Linux because it is commodity.

If you are building your _own_ product/service; then OpenBSD security could give you some kind of _unlawful_ advantage that Linux won't.

</comment><comment><USER2> Linux if you don't understand why you would want BSD. BSD if you do.

<comment><USER3> I don't know why this got downvoted - it hits the nail on the head IMO.

OP if you even have to ask the question ... go with Linux, seriously.

It is more popular, has more support and I'm 100% certain you likely aren't doing anything niche or special enough for any of the BSDs to give you a competitive edge.

<comment><USER4> People don't like answers thank make them think, they need easy answer, use B but not A and that's it.

Totally agree with you, the author of the comment is absolutely right. The question couldn't get better answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not enough context. The people that will maintain it, what you will be serving, in which infrastructure, workflow around it, time, the rest of the system and more could change which one would be the "best". With all those factors unknown, I would probably take Linux.

</comment><comment><USER6> Either is fine. But from a security standpoint: OpenBSD.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would use linux because my dev machine is linux. I want production env match my dev env, for easy debugging and issue reproducing.

</comment><comment><USER8> I only had Linux severs for web servers (Cent OS and Ubuntu Server) ... I didn't have a problem and I stuck with the winning team.

</comment><comment><USER9> You don't define your use case, so it's really impossible to answer.</comment>


Harvard machine learning experiment - <AUTHOR> http://ratepic.netau.net/

<comment><USER2> It's a bit abusive of the Harvard brand to throw the name in a post just so you can get some training data for model. At least include a writeup of what you're doing so people who click through get something out of it too.

<comment><USER3> then what'd be the point of having the harvard brand at all?

<comment><USER4> Exactly...isn't that what you're paying for?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, I'm running an experiment for one of my courses and need to collect some data. I would really appreciate your help.

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> happy to help, but some instructional text on the screen besides 'machine learning experiment' would be nice.

actually, upon thinking about this more, i'm somewhat skeptical that the dataset you obtain from this will be useful..

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your help! I hope to find some interesting data, it is an experiment. We'll see what the results yield.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, these pictures are really cool! What is this experiment all about?

<comment><USER6> The photos are credited to Trey Ratcliff, <http://www.stuckincustoms.com/></comment></comment>


Introducing plotly.py 3.0.0 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@plotlygraphs/introducing-plotly-py-3-0-0-7bb1333f69c6 <comment><USER2> Excellent work!

From the article:

> I've worked with a lot of data visualization libraries over the years, both > proprietary and open source, and I don't know of any that can both display a > million points this quickly, and support zooming, panning, and selection at > interactive speed. (And now that I've I said this, I look forward to > learning about some in the Hacker News discussion of this post )

FYI: [https://github.com/maartenbreddels/ipyvolume](https://github.com/maartenbreddels/ipyvolume) does this in 3d already for quite a while, and based on this I've created a PR for bqplot (2d) [https://github.com/bloomberg/bqplot/pull/661](https://github.com/bloomberg/bqplot/pull/661) That last one is not released though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Yeah, I should have clarified that I meant in 2D. ipyvolume is super impressive, and I didn't know you were working on bringing some of that webgl goodness to bqplot. Very cool!

Does ipyvolume have support some kind of points selection in 3D? Or is the idea that you'd perform selections using 2D projections in bqplot?

<comment><USER2> np, yes it does do 3d selections (projected only for now), shown here [https://twitter.com/maartenbreddels/status/96712877380723507...](https://twitter.com/maartenbreddels/status/967128773807235074) but not yet documented. Should be for the next version (0.5, to be released this year)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _3.0.0 introduces a new Jupyter widget class: plotly.graph_objs.FigureWidget_

For me, it doesn't. Every time I am tempted to use plotly I find it is either not working well with jupyter offline environments (a must for the data I am working with) or random bits an pieces from some official tutorial don't work.

Right now I have tried to follow the simple example that claims _Jupyter. plotly.offline.init_notebook_mode and plotly.offline.iplot are no longer necessary_ \-- which would be amazing. But when I try this, confirming I am indeed using plotly 3.0,

      plotly.graph_objs

has no

      FigureWidget

Maybe I am missing something obvious here. And I really would like to like this, but to me it's been a time sink more than a useful module.

Edit: hn formatting

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have ipywidgets >= 7.2 installed (See install instruction at [https://github.com/plotly/plotly.py](https://github.com/plotly/plotly.py))?

ipywidgets is an optional dependency and FigureWidget won't be available without it.

<comment><USER3> Thanks - that solved it! Works great now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

This is Jon from the release announcement. AMA!

<comment><USER4> Hi Jon, Thanks for the great release! Your post mentions support for JupyterLab, but getting Plotly working in JupyterLab is not working smoothly at the moment (see [https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyter- renderers/issues/132](https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyter- renderers/issues/132)). Is this something you guys are looking into?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't looked into this specifically. Using the FigureWidget approach in 3.0.0 doesn't actually require the current @jupyterlab/plotly-extension. It's all contained in the new plotlywidget extension.

<comment><USER4> Oh, that's a great improvement in and of itself then. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> BTW, I got a GitHub notification of a comment that you were having trouble installing it. But I can't find the comment in GitHub itself.

<comment><USER4> Ah ya, I realized afterwards from more Googling that this is a global problem in the jupyterlab extension ecosystem when using node 10. Since it's already been worked on in other issues, I deleted my comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: College List Maker - <AUTHOR> http://clm-collegelistmaker.rhcloud.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, creator here. I made this app using Express + Mongoose and the great Hackathon Starter framework ([https://github.com/sahat/hackathon- starter](https://github.com/sahat/hackathon-starter)), all hosted on OpenShift. I basically got a lot of college data from the IPEDS database and made a form so users can submit their SAT score and figure out which schools to apply to. Safety schools are those that you have a great shot of getting into, Match schools are those where you fit the median profile, and Reach schools are that you have a lower chance of getting into.

I thought it'd be useful for kids who want to explore schools to apply to for college. The app is very barebones, but I had a lot of fun dipping my toes in web dev and learning some new technologies. If people like it I'll work on adding more features like entering your zip code/GPA to get a much better admissions profile. Admission at most colleges is based on your transcript and scores, and most kids stay in-state, so both of those would be pretty useful data points.

I'd love any feedback!

</comment><comment><USER2> Refreshing the page not working, "cant get /results".

Tabbing doesn't work so I have to click on every text box to type.

You need to increase the number of colleges on the first page itself.

Keep working on this(potential of being helpful to many) and add more criteria as you mentioned.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for the feedback. For refresh, can you tell me what browser/device you're using? Refresh and tabs both work for me on Chrome on OSX, but I didn't test anything else :(

I currently use 2-4-2 for colleges, but it's arbitrary. I'm playing around with a 3 column UI with 5-6 colleges in each section. I didn't want to overwhelm the user but it seems like 8 total is too small.

<comment><USER2> I was using Firefox on OSx at the time I checked. I did another check on Opera and refresh isnt working and displaying same error. Now I can move between textboxes using tab.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think you did a good job! Nice start! As you're saying, adding more criteria would make it better.

I entered "800" for all 3 scores and only got a few schools. Are you limiting the results?

<comment><AUTHOR> For 2400 there are no Reaches since you'd be in the top for every school. There's an issue with the random selector so schools get duplicated sometimes, so I'll fix that.

Update: For the matches there's only six results in total which is why the output is so little. If you've got a perfect score, pretty much everything is a safety ;)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, if you have a perfect SAT score, I'm sure you're not hunting around for schools. :)

I'm just saying there are a lot of schools out there. If I used your site to find schools, I'd like to see all available options.

<comment><AUTHOR> I currently display 2 safeties, 4 matches, and 2 reaches. I wanted people to refresh to see other results, but I could think of giving other options to show more results. I just didn't want to dump tens or hundreds of schools at a time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rearrange your registration forms. - <AUTHOR> http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/12/30/rearrange-your-registration-forms/

<comment><USER2> If full name is not really important, i suggest to ignore it.

Username / Password / Email

<comment><USER3> One step further is to make email as the username. This removes a field from the form and also improves the chances that the email given is really used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you use our registration tool, most of your form will already be filled out for people logged into Facebook.

<http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/440>

</comment><comment><USER5> _This will definitely boost your conversion rates. Do it now._

Do you have any hard data on that claim?</comment>


Awsui.com - complete solution for managing all of your Amazon Web Services - <AUTHOR> http://www.awsui.com

<comment><USER2> Is this built on AWS? That would be very meta.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. awsui is built on aws sdk and is hosted on ec2 instance and uses simpledb.</comment></comment>


You know Ubuntu as an operating system. Mandela knew it as his life's mission - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10/you-know-ubuntu-as-an-operating-system-mandela-knew-it-as-his-lifes-mission/

<comment><USER2> This explanation was displayed fairly prominently when I received a machine with Ubuntu pre-installed for me. It always seemed very fitting.

<comment><USER3> I actually think there was a Mandela video on some of the early Live CD releases.

I figured that as soon as i saw the Prez say the word in this morning's speech Canonical's PR people were on it.</comment></comment>


Why is calling from India to US costlier than calling from US to India? - <AUTHOR>

Folks,
Can someone tell me why call rates from India to US are more than calling from US to India. This in general applies for all third world countries. I believe there is some business potential that is not exploited yet.
Thanks <comment><USER2> For the same reasons DVD's come out 6 months late in Europe and cost twice as much. For no better reason than its possible to do so. As soon as its not, it won't.

VOIP for the win.</comment>


Uber drivers say earnings are falling, and many have no other income - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-17/uber-drivers-say-earnings-fall-and-many-have-no-other-income <comment><USER2> There has to be a place for flexible/on-demand work these days along with a fair way to restrict it so an intentionally unreliable job doesn't become the one thing many people rely on for a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle.

Maybe it's something along the lines of getting "employee" protections once you do a certain amount of work which will result in it being much more difficult/competitive to get those "employee positions" and people who work less will be in higher demand / be paid more.

The real problem, I think, is how much money is being sucked away from nearly everyone for real estate which is ending up being owned by banks earning mortgage payments or investment groups earning rent. There's no particularly strong reason why this should be allowed to happen, but it is.

I pay far more for rent than I do for taxes, and the former group only "deserves" all of this money because they "own". They do and have done very little in the way of actual useful work.

<comment><USER3> They may have done a lot of useful work in order to have the money to purchase that asset. Most homes are paid for using the fruits of useful labor.

<comment><USER2> This is the core of the issue, doing hard work which allows you to permanently purchase the hard work of others in a way which grows and compounds.

I'm fine with it in certain contexts, moreso when the investment involves risk and uncertainty.

But being able to buy and collect rent (in various ways) from the basics of life (and scaling that rent up to market rates, or the highest anyone will pay without leaving) ... causes me, and society, problems.

<comment><USER4> >But being able to buy and collect rent (in various ways) from the basics of life (and scaling that rent up to market rates, or the highest anyone will pay without leaving)

This is how every other good in society works though and it generally works out in the consumers favour. Food is right up there with shelter in the basics of life and it's been driven way down as a percentage of labour that we have to perform in order to earn it. Same as clothing.

The problem is that housing has super high constraints on it and that's largely caused by private home ownership not landlords. It creates protectionism for land value reducing supply driving up both home prices and rent costs. Then because getting a place to rent becomes an ordeal, instability in your current living situation becomes a big deal, so theres a bunch of protection around eviction. Then because you can't boot someone easily you be more selective, vet harder, more likely to leave it vacant if you cant find someone good; which reduces supply even further.

There are no policies keeping the price of food or pants high because 99.9% of us benefit from low prices for those things which makes it harder to do politically. The same cannot be said for housing. Sure the amount of people that benefit from high rent is a tiny percentage of the population but its intrinsically linked to housing prices overall, which a lot of people do benefit from being high.

If 99.9% of people rented then abundant and cheap housing would be a priority for government at all levels. Renting isn't the cause of societal problems, it's private ownership. Specifically, politically active private ownership.

<comment><USER2> The problems com from people profiting from "owning" housing. It shouldn't be an investment, period.

<comment><USER4> Profit is the motive that gets people to build things, period.

<comment><USER2> If I build a home, I do it because I want a place to live, not profit, don't be foolish.

<comment><USER4> And what, everyone becomes a builder? Lol. Don't you be foolish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 88840-8855 I have heard that amazon is temporarily hiring 100k people. Just work there! /s

Honestly, this is not the fault of Uber or Lift or any other company. This is clearly a systematic problem. Regulate uber - then it becomes not "competitive", drivers will lose their jobs and will be forced into another dead-end, low-wage, not secure job.

It is the system.

<comment><USER5> > I have heard that amazon is temporarily hiring 100k people. Just work there! > /s

Curious, why is that sarcasm? Are you insinuating the average Uber driver is not cut out for the work of picking groceries / fulfilling orders at Amazon?

<comment><USER6> I think the sarcasm is just highlighting the 'oh just do something else' refrain is not as easy as just saying it.

It may be that easy single in your 20s and with a bit of savings (or the ability to search while still employed) but no one should really be saying it as throwaway line as it diminishes the hardship involved and how people really behave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I got a notification today (Bay Area) from the UberEats app saying that they will not charge any delivery fee for all local restaurants. That ought to help the restaurants and drivers, though I wonder how Uber can keep that up since it will eat right into their profits...

<comment><USER8> Uber has been bleeding money for awhile now. What has kept them afloat is the fact that people keep using them and their fleet of drivers. But if people stop doing that, it's going to get real hairy for Uber and Lyft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe Uber could sell credits to their customers and pass the money through to the drivers. I mean I won't be using Uber much at the moment but eventually I will. Buying ride credits at a discount would make sense.

<comment><USER10> You can pre-pay uber for a small discount - but I highly doubt that money goes to drives.

[https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/how-it-works/uber- cash/](https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/how-it-works/uber-cash/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Took a lyft today in Socal, the driver told me I'm the first person he gave a ride to in six hours. Hes worried how he will make any money at all in the next few months.

<comment><USER12> I am hoping that folks who are in industries that are shutting down can find other work in industries that are ramping up. If you are an Uber driver you obviously should _not_ be driving right now unless it is to a job interview. Don't wait. You know the outlook is grim for awhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem isn't unique to this industry, yeah. But it's still a shame considering that Uber and Lyft drivers are already not having the easiest time.

Also, am I wrong to think that the recovery won't be too swift even after the quarantine is lifted? For one, the economy will be hit hard so fewer people will take taxi rides. Plus, many people will likely keep fearing social interaction and being locked in a car with a person that drives strangers around all day could put people off. Our (modern) society hasn't dealt with this type of thing before so there's not really an easy path to recovery.

</comment><comment><USER14> Obviously this means California should intervene even more on behalf of its gig workers. If earnings are forced to 0 then they can only go up afterwards!

</comment><comment><USER15> Depending on their location Amazon is hiring 100K employees. Not sure what the positions will be but I'm pretty sure some will be for deliveries

</comment><comment><USER16> Based on the U.S. Department of Labor's release a couple days ago, it sounds like states are responsible for creating laws to pay benefits where workers aren't working due to the coronavirus [0]. Importantly, "federal law does not require an employee to quit in order to receive benefits due to the impact of COVID-19".

I wish federal laws were put in place to protect people's income during the outbreak. I wonder whether Trump is passing the buck to states to avoid backlash against himself.

[0] [https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/eta/eta20200312-0](https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/eta/eta20200312-0)

<comment><USER17> This is especially problematic becuase, unlike the federal govt, states can't run a defecit, which severly limits what they can do in a recession.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What about Uber eats?

</comment><comment><USER19> uber was supposed to be a supplementary income no ?

<comment><USER20> ??? Not only does Uber not limit the hours you can do, it explicitly encourages you to do more in the form of quotas you need to meet to get bonuses</comment></comment>


Fast Android emulator using VirtualBox - <AUTHOR> http://www.infinum.co/the-capsized-eight/articles/is-your-android-emulator-just-too-slow <comment><USER2> Genymotion is a breath of fresh air for Android development, much needed.

Recording screencasts is a big win. It was previously too slow using emulators or screen cappers. There are a few Android apps that do it directly on the device, but you have to root it to run them!

Also, it's great for co-workers who don't have an Android device. e.g. we're porting to iOS app right now, and the iOS developer can see Android features without having an Android device.

<comment><USER3> Their web page doesn't bring so much information about price? if it will cost money I hope Google will acquire it and make it free.

<comment><USER4> As I see, it's free, but you have to register in order to download Genymotion.

<comment><USER5> The core is open-source and available on GitHub [1], but seems to be scattered across a number of repositories. Not clear if it's buildable purely from the repository currently (I haven't tried).

It was previously an independent open-source project, AndroVM [2], which Genymobile acquired, but they agreed to keep the core open-source [3].

[1] [https://github.com/androvm](https://github.com/androvm)

[2] [http://androvm.org/](http://androvm.org/)

[3] [http://androvm.org/blog/blog/2013/05/16/androvm-moving- to-a-...](http://androvm.org/blog/blog/2013/05/16/androvm-moving-to-a- commercial-product/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For speed, nothing beats Genymotion. If also want to test the latest android, I found installing the latest Android-x86 image under virtualbox to be painless. If you want to run ARM code, be sure to install the Intel ARM translator. There are also several very fast Windows options too, such as Windroy[2], YouWave[3], and BlueStacks[4]. All of these solutions run faster than the official android emulator.

[1] [http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto](http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto)

[2] [http://www.socketeq.com/](http://www.socketeq.com/)

[3] [http://youwave.com/](http://youwave.com/)

[4] [http://www.bluestacks.com/](http://www.bluestacks.com/)

<comment><USER7> Is this really faster than the standard Android Emulator with an android-x86 image and QEMU-KVM + GPU acceleration?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Genymotion is absolutely amazing. Not only is it super fast but also has images with Google Apps, which are almost impossible to get on an emulator.

The downside of using Genymotion is that it's so fast it will hide a lot of performance issues that you will see when running on an actual device. So please, test early and often on actual hardware with extreme amounts of data.

<comment><USER9> +1 to your performance advice - my x86 images (both through 'emulator' and Genymotion) are actually faster than a real phone.

For performance testing I recommend using a Galaxy Ace (actually using - install some apps, fill it up with data) and testing your app on it. If it's fast on that it'll be fast on just about anything!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Shouldn't Google acquire them already? It's surprising and quite unnatural to see other companies make faster emulators than Google themselves (which may not be because Google doesn't have the technical expertise to do it, but because they're not that seriously committed to doing that, and they think the current emulator is fast _enough_ ).

<comment><USER6> Yes, I wish they would, but if they really cared about boosting Android performance, picking up Myriad for their Dalvik Turbo would be a better choice. It's 2-3x faster[1] closing the huge performance gap between Google's JIT and Oracle's.[2]

Looking over the changelog from Android 2.2-4.3, there's no mention of performance tweaks to Dalvik. They even have the father of JIT, Lars Bak, working for them. But he's focused on the V8 JS engine and doesn't provide any assistance with Android.[3]

[1] [http://androidandme.com/2010/02/news/myriad-dalvik-turbo- boo...](http://androidandme.com/2010/02/news/myriad-dalvik-turbo-boost- android-performance-2-3x/)

[2] [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2388956](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2388956)

[3] [http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/califor...](http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/california/candce/3:2010cv03561/231846/389/0.pdf?1315384001)

<comment><USER5> > They even have the father of JIT, Lars Bak, working for them. But he's > focused on the V8 JS engine and doesn't provide any assistance with Android.

He's also one of the leads on the Dart VM [1], but that likely just leaves even less time for involvement in anything Java/Android.

[1] [http://www.dartlang.org/](http://www.dartlang.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Am I the exception here? I've always found the qemu x86 images fast enough (with kvm support in the kernel). Genymotion doesn't feel particularly faster than the standard x86 images.

Could this be a non-Linux phenomenon?

I think I'll benchmark it in the near future!

</comment><comment><USER12> My understanding is that one of the original ideas behind Android and its API levels was that anyone could implement the Android API to run Android apps.

Doing exactly this to build a simulator would seem an obvious step. No virtualisation necessary, good performance, and good enough for the majority of use cases.

</comment><comment><USER13> Genymotion looks interesting... but they only allow alphanumeric characters in your password? What the ...

<comment><USER14> And they force you to have at least one numeric.

Someone spent time and effort implementing this, thinking it must be a good idea. Why?

</comment></comment><comment> V-2 Is it free? How much does it cost if not? I can't find any info on their website

<comment><USER15> It's free, you just have to sign up to get it. I believe they are planning to offer a paid version in the future, but that will be alongside the free version. [http://androvm.org/blog/blog/2013/05/16/androvm-moving- to-a-...](http://androvm.org/blog/blog/2013/05/16/androvm-moving-to-a- commercial-product/) has more info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks, not only it's fast but easy to install and user friendly.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Genymotion really speeds up development, apps deploy on it in seconds!</comment>


Choosing a Linux Distro for Your PC in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://haydenjames.io/best-linux-distro/ <comment><USER2> To me it seems that the author has no clue about the distros at all. This is basically a bunch of "wikipedia" descriptions, some of them are even false. For example Arch Linux only supports x64 (i686 was dropped in 11.2017).

</comment><comment><USER3> I run Lubuntu on a USB stick plugged into my 2008 spec thinkpad. I haven't paid for a new laptop in 10 years and I would love to get another half decade out of it as long as webpages dont continue to bloat

<comment><USER4> X200? I'm in the process of resurrecting mine. It's a lovely machine (feels physically nicer than my X230), with 8Gb ram, an AFFS screen, and an SSD, I think it's perfectly usable.

<comment><USER3> t410!! extremely old school. I wouldn't mind it being flatter but it still aint bad :). Lubuntu fixes all logical issues that were happening even under win7

<comment><USER4> T410 - that's a 2010 model, I think. The __00 series (i.e. T400, X200) from 2008 are also perfectly usable still with Linux.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Render the Mandelbrot Set in the Joyent Cloud with Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2011/05/how-render-mandelbrot-set-joyent-cloud-nodejs

<comment><USER2> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't fractal rendering a large blocking operation? This looks cool but it seems to me that node is the wrong tool to use for things like this. Is this a 'because I can' experiment and not geared for practical use?

<comment><USER3> Rendering each pixel is one large, blocking operation, so it can be parallelized easily. But it's true that node is not the right tool because node is good for minimizing I/O waits which you don't have while rendering fractals. And (as far as I understand), node only runs in a single thread so you'd have to set up multiple node instances to fully use a machine. Which again wouldn't be geared for practical use.

<comment><USER4> Yes, this is a playful exercise for now. But the goal is to explore more of Node's features and how they can add value to the service. I'm thinking of some distributed caching, rendering, re-usal of pre-rendered pieces, etc.

Cheers, Constantin</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Take this idea: uber for dedicated colo rack units - <AUTHOR>

When is some bright startup going to create an uber for colocation hosting? <comment><USER2> Like a vps provider?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, like a marketplace for colo / dedicated hosting.</comment></comment>


Don't Just Boost Social Media Engagement, Scale It - <AUTHOR> https://dustn.tv/boost-social-engagement/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was tired of reading all the "how to boost social media engagement" articles saying the same thing and getting linear results. So I put together a list of tactics that I've used to exponentially grow the reach of my social media effort. Some of it is _very_ technical, which I think would be appreciated here on HN.</comment>


Counting hash collisions with the birthday paradox - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/counting-hash-collisions/ <comment><USER2> I've faced similar questions and the work of Michael Mitzenmacher (at Harvard) has proved very valuable (e.g. modeling table load for d-left).

</comment><comment><USER3> Some experiments suggest that if D=n^2 then the expected number of collisions is close to 0.5, and converges on 0.5 as D tends to infinity. So if D is large then collisions will be a problem when n approaches sqrt(D).

<comment><USER4> Practically, does that mean that the rate of collissions increase substantially once you have more than 65535 entries in a hash table with 32 bit hashes? To the point that it makes more sense to use a BST instead, even?

<comment><USER5> If you have a hash table of size S with N entries in it, then the probability of hitting a collision on the _next_ insertion is N/S. This is why many hash tables will resize and rehash once the load factor (which is N/S) reaches some predetermined fraction. Book-keeping using this method is cheap.

It's important to distinguish "What is the probability of the next insertion causing a collision?" and looking at a chained hash table of occupancy N and asking "What is the probability that this hash table already contains a collision?" (the birthday paradox yields 50% for 23 birthdays in answer to this), and again "How many collisions do I expect to find in this hash table?", which is what the author is writing about, and is actually the cumulative probability of there having been a collison over the lifetime of all previous insertions.

The collision _rate_ will depend on how long entries live in your hash table and the rate at which you're doing insertions.</comment></comment></comment>


A New Way to Create Open-Source Forms [Tellform] - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/whitef0x0/tellform <comment><USER2> Good work, just tested. Star rating is not working properly.</comment>


State seizes 11-year-old,arrests his mother after he defends marijuana on school - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/04/17/state-seizes-11-year-old-arrests-his-mother-after-he-defends-medical-marijuana-during-a-school-presentation/?tid=trending_strip_6

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9396004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9396004)</comment>


For the Economy, Climate Risks Are No Longer Theoretical - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-the-economy-climate-risks-are-no-longer-theoretical-11579174209 <comment><AUTHOR> I don't think climate risks justify drastic measures such as phasing out the use of fossil fuels. Quoting the article:

"[W]hile estimates of climate's economic impact are suffused with uncertainty, they don't suggest any major economy will be pushed into recession, much less depression.

Studies reviewed by David Mackie of JPMorgan Chase suggest climate change could reduce global gross domestic product by 1% to 7% by 2100, assuming "business as usual" (i.e., absent policies to mitigate emissions of carbon dioxide). Given that the impact is spread out over 80 years, in which per capita incomes probably rise 300% to 400%, even larger climate change impacts would appear small, he said.

Aggregate changes in GDP, though, can be misleading. As global temperatures climb, the probability of extreme temperatures and events and the associated economic consequences should rise more."</comment>


Facebook Asking for Some New Users' Email Passwords - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/beyond-sketchy-facebook-demanding-some-new-users-email-passwords <comment><USER2> [https://www.axios.com/facebook-will-stop-asking-new-users- fo...](https://www.axios.com/facebook-will-stop-asking-new-users-for-their- email-passwords--355c2e94-793f-47b7-a582-9ee0a4f01ae3.html)

 _Facebook told Axios that "a very small group of people have the option of entering their email password to verify their account when they sign up for Facebook," but noted that people could choose instead to confirm their account with a code or link sent to their phone or email.

"That said, we understand the password verification option isn't the best way to go about this, so we are going to stop offering it," the company said in a statement.

Those being asked for their e-mail passwords were users who listed an e-mail address that doesn't use the secure OAuth protocol, which allows users to verify their identity to a third party without sharing their passwords._

<comment><USER3> And so what if they are going to stop? Why were they offering it in the first place? It is such an obviously terrible idea

<comment><USER4> 'move fast and break things' ?

<comment><USER5> What's the phase after you've moved fast and broken the things?

<comment><USER6> Done is better than perfect.

<comment><USER7> Shurely "broken is better than slow"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Last service that I remember asking me for the signup email password was ...wait for it ... _MySpace!_

It was years ago, but it sounds a bit like a _swan song_ pattern to my ears despite the lack of any rational connection...

...they should find a new WhatsApp or a Snapchat to buy ASAP because sooner or later they'll be too uncool for people to share the interesting content in their garden, so their humongous user base's value will start asymptoting to $0.

<comment><USER9> What is a swan song pattern? Google thinks it's a quilting style.

<comment><USER10> just look up swan song

</comment></comment></comment><comment> kyle-rb I just don't understand how this gets implemented without someone speaking up and saying "hey, wait, isn't this an insane thing to do?".

I would guess it's some combination of the complainers being ignored, and people at a higher level thinking "well we're doing this in a secure way, as long as the user trusts us, and why wouldn't they trust us, we're Facebook!".

<comment><USER11> Easy.

The engineers who built it care mostly about their total compensation and getting promoted. They therefore gleefully implement the product requirements.

The PMs behind the idea also care about the above, except they are held to account by business objectives. By narrowly optimizing for a particular objective (reducing account fraud) in an unprincipled manner, they come up with an insane feature idea like this.

The lowly L3 engineer fresh out of college understands how crazy this is and speaks up, but is hammered down by the culture. The decision is quite literally above their pay grade. They begrudgingly fall in line as they have the most to lose in this situation.

Finally a story like this breaks and upper management realizes the contradiction with the narrative that they're trying to create - that Facebook really does care about your privacy. The whole project gets scrapped, and by the time it's all said and done, over $1M is wasted.

Welcome to life at a big tech company.

<comment><USER12> I find it fascinating how big tech companies are intent on spending enormous sums of money seeking out the top tech talent in the world. Then rather than listen to them when they voice concerns they try to beat them down into submission. I get that if you worked at a company whose core mission is evil that you just have to accept that when you sign up, but there's no reason facebook _needs_ to be make these active moral choices to pursue things in the worst possible way and yet they consistently do.

<comment><USER13> That's exactly why they spend that much money. They know you can be submitted. They want tech talent. Not revolutionists. It's a rough world out there and it's better to get in line than lose your pot of gold.

Doesn't make it right at all. But if you were that engineer, it's easier to say to yourself that you'll work your way up and change things the day you are in charge.

<comment><USER14> It is kinda funny when you tell their headhunters you will never work for them because they don't meet your ethical standards. I highly recommend the experience.

<comment><USER15> We're they confused, angry or both?

<comment><USER14> Confused at first, and then eager to get off the phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think Facebook is _very_ desperate and they don't seem to have a choice.

You see, Facebook has Facebook.com, Instagram and Whatsapp.

Facebook.com has already reached it's peak and is not going to grow.

Instagram is likely to have the same trajectory as Facebook.com and Whatsapp is not making them money anyways.

They failed to get into _any_ new market or come up with _any_ decent product.

And they are supposed to compete with Google, which is competing on all fronts with extremely competitive offerings.

* Google Search

* Gmail

* Android

* Youtube

* Chrome

* Chrome OS

* Google Drive

* Google Analytics

* Google Docs

* Google Cloud

* Google Apps

* Google Maps

And they seem to be constantly trying new things (Stadia seems to have a really good chance to compete with PS and Xbox and get them a holding in gaming)

And Facebook keeps pushing out pathetic moves like this and all their acquisitions that were supposed to help them get into new markets and sectors (Oculus, Parse, etc) seem like failures.

Acquisition of Instagram bought them another 10-15 years and they should be just very lucky to keep making the right call and buy the next Instagram)

<comment><USER17> > extremely competitive offerings

Chrome OS

Have you followed news recently? It's dead.

<comment><USER18> Genuine question as I don't: what news?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> All of these types of "hey, give us your password to this other system" are just training users to get phished.

IMO the worst offender in this is Plaid, which has created a service where millions of people are giving their _banking credentials_ so some random startup can mine your transaction data. And people think FB has privacy implications...

<comment><USER20> Swedish payment processor Klarna does something similar to this as well. If bying something through the platform by direct bank transfer you are asked to sign to your bank to accept the payment using BankID [0], which is normal.

What is not normal is that they grab your personal identification number and send a login request using BankID before you open your app. When authenticating the login you authorize one of Klarnas third parties to log into your bank account as you, allowing them to pull records of all your financial transactions, account statements etc. Most users just authenticate the login without reading where the request is coming from on the login prompt.

I don't understand how that can be legal, but they are relying on recent court cases where scammers would call old people asking them to log on to check their retirement accounts. The scammers would then send a login request before the user sent theirs, log on to the accounts and change what funds received the victims pension payments. The scammers were ruled in the wrong, but the logins themselves were ruled to be an ok way of doing business.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_identification#Swed...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_identification#Sweden)

<comment><USER21> POLi in Australia also asks for your bank username and password, logs into your bank's online portal, and performs a bank transfer on your behalf; which is of course in violation of the bank's policies.

It's truly insane, if I see any company accepting payment via POLi it's instant verification the company in question is clueless and that I should avoid using their services whenever possible, because they have _zero_ idea about security.

According to POLi[1][2], the list includes:

Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin Australia, Microsoft (?), Sportsbet, Emirates, BetEasy, CoinSpot, Australia Post, TigerAir, Facebook (?)

The list goes on. It's pure madness.

I really wish there was more awareness of this, I can't believe these massive companies can't comprehend how they're being implicated when they encourage users to hand over their _banking_ password to a third party.

[1] [https://www.polipayments.com/](https://www.polipayments.com/) [2] [https://www.polipayments.com/Buy#matrix](https://www.polipayments.com/Buy#matrix)

<comment><USER22> Trustly does this, too.

<comment><USER20> Not sure about that. I used trustly last week and only had one authentication that was for the actual payment. No login to my bank.

But I might be misremembering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hey, this is like 10 years ago, when both facebook and linkedin were pestering you to give them your e-mail password, so they could import all your contacts.

We really haven't moved forward at all!

</comment><comment><USER24> In the old days didn't lots of people give their email passwords to Facebook, so that it can scan their contact and invite everyone to Facebook?

<comment><USER25> Not sure about them previously asking for email passwords, but there are many email APIs that can give permissions access to your contacts [0]. I don't doubt that in the older days of Facebook they were probably achieving this using some shadier methods.

But worse than this, just by installing the Facebook App it liberally takes contact details from your device [1].

I personally use mbasic.facebook.com as it can run without JS and only updates when you refresh the browser. facebook.com refuses to run without JS and causes my browser to use tonnes of resources when JS is enabled.

(P.S. Like many, I can't completely abandon Facebook just yet as lots of older friends and family are "unable" to migrate to other platforms.)

[0] [https://developers.google.com/contacts/v3/](https://developers.google.com/contacts/v3/)

[1] [http://www.androidbeat.com/2018/03/facebooks-android- stealin...](http://www.androidbeat.com/2018/03/facebooks-android-stealing- contacts-call-logs-sms-data-years/)

<comment><USER26> I didn't know about mbasic facebook, it is awesome! Thank you. It even works the chat without needing to put the phone in desktop mode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Doesn't this ask the user to violate the terms of service of their own email platforms, assuming most email providers prohibit you from sharing passwords?

<comment><USER28> Almost certainly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Some habits are hard to get over I guess. Remember when Mark Zuckerberg (allegedly) used FB data to hack into the email accounts of journalists reporting on him? [0]

Why trust him now?

[0] [https://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg- hacked-i...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-hacked-into- the-harvard-crimson-2010-3?r=US&IR=T)

</comment><comment><USER30> I recently learned that when you connect your Paypal account to your checking account, there's two verification methods you can choose between: 1) the good old fashioned, we'll make two small deposits into your account, tell us what they are; and 2) just give us the login info for your bank's web site.

But Mint works the same way, doesn't it?

<comment><USER31> I believe most if not all legitimate companies that ask for your banking credentials (besides your bank, obviously) are just passing them straight to [https://plaid.com/](https://plaid.com/). It's still questionable whether you should trust Plaid with your banking credentials, but at least you probably don't need to trust that Paypal and Mint are both going to store your credentials securely.

<comment><USER32> > but at least you probably don't need to trust that Paypal and Mint are both > going to store your credentials securely.

Sure you do. They have it in plaintext on their servers. It can end up in logs. It's also not just Plaid - Mint uses Intuit, Yodlee is an option. There's a whole lot of people you need to trust to use these services

For many banks, it also means you need to disable 2fa on your banking account, so using these services directly weakens your security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder what Facebook would do if I created a site that "verifies your identity" by having the user type in their Facebook password.

It just seems like an unwritten rule that sites are not to ask users for other sites' passwords. It's basically phishing.

<comment><USER34> I think there are many services for social media that ask for your account password so they can post in your name on Instagram or Twitter when you post a Youtube video or whatnot. Not to mention the shadier services that do the follow-unfollow dance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What hypocrites.

They certainly don't like it when you do it to them. [https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/08/facebook-wanted-us-to- kil...](https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/08/facebook-wanted-us-to-kill-this- investigative-tool/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Facebook has never faced significant financial consequences for its misdeeds. You can be assured it will continue to hold its users privacy and security as distant second place priorities to how much money it can make off them. If you want a company not to be evil you have to make being evil more expensive than being good. Nobody is willing to do that so the shit-show will continue for the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER37> Oh, did they stop asking for nudes yet?

[https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44223809](https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44223809)

<comment><USER38> I'm starting to miss MySpace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The sad story of people is that they give their email password to everyone who are asking, I keep telling my friends that please don't tell me your password and just type it but they keep laughing at me i.e: stop it! you and your crazy tin hat. it's the sad reality really.

</comment><comment><USER40> Could someone please set up a honeypot IMAP server to detect illegal Facebook logins?

</comment><comment><USER41> I noticed that when I was dating around it was extremely important that they could find my Facebook profile if I said I don't use Facebook much they would immediately respond with scepticism.

For that purpose alone I kept it.

And they have a point, it's easy to find out if someone is single or not via Facebook, and you are bound by your friends to be truthful.

I'm not single anymore, but I'm still curious, in those countries where everyone is not sleeping around with everyone what would replace Facebook?

<comment><USER42> > countries where everyone is sleeping around with everyone I want to know > where these are

<comment><USER43> France obviously:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Just when you think these idiots couldn't come up with any more dumb shit.

</comment><comment><USER45> Verifying a user's email by collecting their password is ineffective for users with 2FA enabled and reckless/malicious for those (the majority) without it.

Accidentally log that data somewhere, and you've opened a way for attackers to take over your users bank accounts, social media, and pretty much every other online account, as they all rely on email verification.

If we had privacy laws with teeth, somebody at FB would be calculating how many millions in liability each piece of data collected represents. This one would be astronomical and an automatic "no" by those calculations.

</comment><comment><USER46> If this is really for the purpose of email verification, I can't even begin to fathom what they were thinking. Asking for users' email credentials is terrible, but even requiring that they log in using OAuth is ridiculous!

Verifying email addresses is a solved problem that doesn't require _any_ of that... you just send a time-sensitive, signed link containing a unique identifier to that email address, and users click it to verify their address.

I really can't understand why they would choose to go a different way -- and particularly _this_ one.

</comment><comment><USER47> Hey, this is great news. This is like linkedin. Who does not appreciate this never ending stream and connection invites to non Linkedin users?

</comment><comment><USER48> NEVER force people to use an E-mail address as a user ID. Doing so is amateur- hour and straight-up STUPID: [https://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2012/06/forcing- people-to-us...](https://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2012/06/forcing-people-to- use-e-mail-address-as.html)

<comment><USER49> Credential stuffing is a huge problem.

I am not sure if allowing users to use non-email addresses as a user-name helps solve that problem, though. I would be interested in reading research on the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's interesting to note, that in order for a feature or capability to be implemented, it has to provide value to the end user. So at the planing phase of this feature, didn't anyone in their right mind thought that this was a bad idea. Given the current situation that Facebook (Fakebook) is in with security missteps why even invest time and money just to hope that users (at least the ones that are concerned) won't complain. Hope it's not a strategy.

</comment><comment><USER51> >Facebook is demanding some users fork over the password for their outside email account as the price of admission to the social network

What a dishonest article. Facebook is not demanding users to give them the password to their email to be able to use the network. Instead, it looks like they are giving the option of doing so to verify the email address, but you can still go the traditional route of verifying your email by clicking a link.

<comment><USER52> Interesting take. The article says what happens it doesn't hide the process. The user is presented with a dialog box asking for their external email password and the article states that the user by clicking the small "need help?" Link in the corner can ask for other traditional methods. Nothing dishonest in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The question here rather than why are you asking for mail passwords is what is facebook doing with the passwords? All possible answers seem creepy as hell.

</comment><comment><USER54> All corporations are fundamentally feudal systems. At a big enough scale they all become some twisted form of the Franz Kafka novel The Castle.

</comment><comment><USER55> On a somewhat related note, I recently added an external bank account to my E-trade account. They gave me two options for verifying it. The first was to make a small deposit into the external account (which they said would take several days to complete). The second option was to provide my bank account's credentials and they could verify it immediately. I chose the first option.

</comment><comment><USER56> Doesn't a lot of the social networks do this? Linkedin used to ask for email password all the time at one point, don't know if they still do. Mint and others want passwords to bank accounts. I know we are a bit more sensitive I e about privacy but the general population is still not. I can understand Facebook needs to be extra cautious now but I guess they don't care.

</comment><comment><USER57> I don't get the outrage. No comment mentions this, but most non-tech people already give Facebook their e-mail password. All Facebook needs to do is try to use it.

Lookup the password re-use rates among users of the Internet.

People may have weak and strong password for less and more important services. Guess how would they rate the Facebook...

</comment><comment><USER58> How did they make it work? Even given the passwords, how would they check robustly without tripping the email "unusual connection from IP x.x.x.x". Even if they have a few IP to make the checks, the mail server may notice that one IP is connecting to thousands of accounts.

</comment><comment><USER59> I don't understand how they can login for you on any of the popular email providers.

Gmail, for example, detects a new computer by cookie and "fingerprint" (ip address, browser, UA, etc). You then get 2fa'd or at least "robot checked".

How did they make this a smooth experience?

<comment><USER60> According to the article it was only offered to a subset of providers that don't have OAuth APIs.

Presumably google and other high security email providers got the OAuth option and this more insecure option was offered to users with ESPs that don't have the gmail security features you mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> This must be part of Zuckerberg's new pro-privacy makeover.

Maybe they can also scan users' e-mails for "suicidal ideation" and have their swatting algorithm send in the police to "protect" them.

<comment><USER62> It is perhaps the way you've presented the argument that is generating downvotes, but I fail to see how this is outside the realm of Facebook's pursuits given past behaviour and current activity.

Or is it that people would support this use because of a 'noble intention?' (ends justify means)

<comment><USER63> Would Facebook then start making calls to the police for welfare checks when a user stops using Facebook without closing their account? Surely, something must have happened to the user if they stopped logging in frequently. After all, users don't just stop using the service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> The answer is simple. They don't care about moral side of their actions and government doesn't want to take any serious action about that. I would be surprised if they stopped doing so.

</comment><comment><USER65> > "...so we are going to stop _offering_ it," Facebook wrote.

Stop patronizing us. Seriously, you look foolish and ignorant. Drop the marketing speak and own your screw-up.

</comment><comment><USER66> They did it before and to be fair Facebook knows better what they are doing. People are generally "ignorant" and don't care so why not?

</comment><comment><USER67> It remains true that no one should ever ask for your password.

Simply asking for my password is enough to make me distrust you forever.

</comment><comment><USER68> Jesus fucking christ facebook, read the goddamned room.

</comment><comment><USER69> What am I missing here? I have to type my password when I log in to Facebook. They are probably storing a hash of each of the users passwords (after changes) and then comparing against index[0]?

<comment><USER70> They're asking for the password to your _email_ account, not your Facebook account.

<comment><USER69> So what are they doing with that? How can they verify it? Are they actually logging into your email account with that? Surely (BigCompany) measures would prevent that?

<comment><USER71> > So what are they doing with that? How can they verify it? Are they actually > logging into your email account with that?

Well, of course.

> Surely (BigCompany) measures would prevent that?

What do you mean?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Title seems misleading. Per the article it seems they demand email confirmation, but merely offer to access your email for you in order to accomplish that.

(This is not a defense of Facebook's actions here)

<comment><USER73> > Per the article it seems they demand email confirmation, but merely offer to > access your email for you in order to accomplish that.

It's definitely a dark pattern though. And Facebook rarely seems content to only use data for the purpose they advertise when asking for it. For instance, there was an article recently that proved they were using phone numbers collected for 2FA to do ad-targeting as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Facebook is cancer

</comment><comment><USER75> Linkedin asks you to do the same at every page.

<comment><USER71> I never gave mine, and haven't seen that in years. Not that I think they're a decent company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Late april fools?

</comment><comment><USER77> WTF

</comment><comment><USER78> "They trust me — dumb fucks" ~ Mark Zuckerberg

</comment><comment><USER79> why

</comment><comment><USER80> Honest question - is it the time for a new social network already??

<comment><USER81> There already are new social networks. Why aren't you using them?

<comment><USER82> Network effects keep people in place. Switching social networks would need a bit of a movement, which OP maybe wanted to low-key initiate?

The next social network would also have to provide the simplicity, performance and features people expect, while showing real, understandable improvements in terms of privacy or the economic model (e.g. no risk being bought by Facebook like WhatsApp).

In general, 'new social networks' seem rarely discussed, here in HN or elsewhere; can you maybe name a few of the options you have in mind?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Congratulations, Zuckerberg just beat Gates in complete lack of Ethical behaviour

<comment><USER84> Just?

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> How is this even implemented safely?

The passwords have to be forwarded over to the email provider, so they are flying around log files, unsafe in the database. There's actually a programmer somewhere who can read all of them and put them in a text file and take them home.

<comment><USER71> In theory, the password doesn't have to be stored at all. I bet it's kept in some sort of job queue, so it might be stored in disk (e.g. Redis AOF), but even that could be avoided.

Still, one has to wonder why do it at all, considering the simple alternative of sending a verification email, which was already implemented.

<comment><USER85> Isn't the motive to get the user's contact lists?

If there's an error isn't there a chance that the password leaks out into an error log somewhere?

<comment><USER71> > Isn't the motive to get the user's contact lists?

Probably, yeah.

> If there's an error isn't there a chance that the password leaks out into an > error log somewhere?

Sure; there are ways of avoiding that, but who knows what they did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> I had someone create a Facebook account with my email once. I let it persist for a year until I got tired of the friend request notices. Did a password reset and deleted the account.

<comment><USER87> Did you verify the email for them?

<comment><USER88> I'm not sure how rigorous email verification workflows are in general. I had someone manage to transfer their Apple account to one of my emails a few years ago.</comment></comment></comment>


Color Codes [Resistors] - <AUTHOR> http://dev.emcelettronica.com/color-codes-resistors <comment><AUTHOR> Georg Simon Ohm, a German physicist, demonstrated proportionality between current and voltage, thus defining resistance (this rule was named after him as Ohm's law).</comment>