Eric Raymond on "Hiding the Decline, Part 1" - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1447 <comment><USER2> As The Economist points out:

"The 'hiding' concerned the decision to leave out a set of tree-ring-growth data that had stopped reflecting local temperature changes. That alteration in growth pattern is strange, and unexplained, but eliminating it is not sinister."

and:

" 'I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.' Trickery associated with Dr Mann was catnip to the sceptics. But Dr Jones has clarified that 'The word trick was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward.' "

[http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1...](http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14960149)

<comment><USER3> My concern about the tree-ring data is that, on face, it seems like tautological reasoning. Please correct me if I'm misrepresenting what's going on.

The tree ring data, after a certain point in history, is no longer a reliable indicator of local temperature changes. There is no explanation for why trees no longer reflect local temperature changes. We know that they no longer reflect local temperatures, presumably, because we have other more reliable measurements available now (measurements that are not available further back in history).

This leaves us with a conundrum: is there any period in which alternative measurements and tree-ring measurements correspond with one another? Is the divergence between our measurements and the tree-rings something we can trace? Is it sudden or gradual? If there is no period in which there is a correspondence between our measurements and the tree-rings, what does this say about our assumption that tree-rings have ever accurately captured local temperatures?

It seems that the implication is that changes in the environment have rendered tree-rings unreliable. But if we're arguing that tree-rings are unreliable because of environmental change (i.e. the chemical changes to the composition of the atmosphere and water cycle that contribute to global warming), and we're seeking to explain environmental change, we're begging the question (assuming the explanandum in the premise of our argument).

Until a causal mechanism for the divergence between tree-rings and other measured temperatures can be specified, how can they legitimately be discarded as evidence, without invoking tautological reasoning?

<comment><USER4> And this is why people who don't know science should ask questions first.

 _The tree ring data, after a certain point in history, is no longer a reliable indicator of local temperature changes. There is no explanation for why trees no longer reflect local temperature changes. We know that they no longer reflect local temperatures, presumably, because we have other more reliable measurements available now (measurements that are not available further back in history)._

There is NO SINGLE EXPLANATION for the discrepancy. This is NOT the same as there being no explanation.

What happens instead is that if you look in specific localities you can find specific explanations. Increased acidity here. Drought conditions there. Insect infestations in another. And in yet another the correlation with temperatures remains.

What happened is that after 1960 due to large scale changes in environment in many localities the correlation broke down, so the overall correlation broke down. But there is no single explanation because in different areas the specific reasons differ.

 _This leaves us with a conundrum: is there any period in which alternative measurements and tree-ring measurements correspond with one another? Is the divergence between our measurements and the tree-rings something we can trace? Is it sudden or gradual? If there is no period in which there is a correspondence between our measurements and the tree-rings, what does this say about our assumption that tree-rings have ever accurately captured local temperatures?_

Actually there is about a century of comparative data before that which shows a good correlation. That is why we are willing to project temperatures back farther using that record.

Now there is the possibility that there were previous periods which saw a similar breaking of the correlation. This question is a question of scientific debate.

 _It seems that the implication is that changes in the environment have rendered tree-rings unreliable. But if we're arguing that tree-rings are unreliable because of environmental change (i.e. the chemical changes to the composition of the atmosphere and water cycle that contribute to global warming), and we're seeking to explain environmental change, we're begging the question (assuming the explanandum in the premise of our argument)._

There is no begging the question when we are also studying the mechanisms involved.

 _Until a causal mechanism for the divergence between tree-rings and other measured temperatures can be specified, how can they legitimately be discarded as evidence, without invoking tautological reasoning?_

You are making two large assumptions here. The first is that there is a single causal mechanism. The second is the assumption that we don't actually understand the mechanisms involved. Both assumptions are wrong.

Look. Scientists aren't exactly stupid people. When they spend a lifetime studying something, you should assume that they've asked the obvious questions and try to find out the answers they have found rather than assuming that they are stupid and you're the first to notice the glaring issues.

Unfortunately climate scientists are also humans who are under constant assault from people who can't and won't be bothered to actually learn the record. People who feel they are under constant assault engage in defensive behavior. And people who are being defensive tend to circle the wagons and have difficulty in remaining open with outside groups.

When you encounter such defensive behavior I strongly recommend trying to understand what the defensive person's position is rather than immediately piling on and validating their defensiveness. If they are wrong, this approach leaves you in a better position to figure that out. But if they have a point, you'll be more likely to figure that out as well.

<comment><USER5> Do not confuse groupthink with analysis.

Simply because a heckuva lot of smart people have studied an issue for decades does not mean -- at all -- that somehow they have made more progress than some schmuck reading about all of this for the first time in Newsweek. You do not get a free pass by being smart and asking a lot of questions.

(A side note: I find among academia the meme that somehow intelligence, hard work, and admiration of peers equates to progress. These are all great traits to have, but in themselves they don't automatically translate into solid value for posterity. In fact, in some fields there may actually be an inverse relationship)

Having said that, you are absolutely correct in saying that you should ask questions first. There's no point in getting everybody on the defensive.

But if the reply is "Look -- it's all very complicated, and we've thought about it a lot and we're way ahead of you here and this is the best plausible way to settle several internal arguments... etc, etc" then you have not received an adequate answer.

I applaud your appeal to being inquisitive and polite. I find your defense of this particular case, however, sorely lacking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know what ESR's politics looked like before, but he's been in deep teabagger territory for a while now. I would take anything he says on the subject of politics with… Well, I'd just not take it. He can pretend to be objective, but the use of winger slang ("AGW" and "MSM" are right-wing dog whistles in the same way as "Democrat party" or "socialism") is a giveaway.

Here are some of his prognostications from the election last year. They're delightfully wingnutty, with a crunchy glibertarian shell:

"The Obama campaign smells of defeat": <http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=449> "Democrats' polling league in a generic contest has collapsed. Control of Congress is in play. Wow. Just wow. Considering how hard the Republicans have been fucking up and alienating their base, this is astonishing. EPIC FAIL."

"Sarah Palin, American Centrist": <http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=481> "So when I tell you that I think Sarah Palin's religious position is pretty near dead center in the American spectrum, you can be pretty sure I'm not fudging to make that position look good."

"The Obama campaign smells of defeat: II": <http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=490> "The attempt to smear, discredit and delegitimize Palin has steadily become more intense and more damaging — to the Democrats."

When it comes to politics, dude simply does not know what the fuck.

<comment><USER7> You're just attacking ESR's character. It's fallacious to discount his blog post just because you don't like his character. Please, can't we have a rational discussion on the topic?

<comment><USER8> He is certainly attacking ESR's character, but I think that the old mantra that we should always address an argument and not the person delivering it isn't entirely fair. The strongest reason for this, in my opinion, is that most complex systems can't be thoroughly analyzed with any objectivity, because it's impossible to consciously process all the available data; there's just too much going on. So whenever somebody argues about a complex system, there's a very implicit part of their argument that involves _which data they choose to present_. A bystander who's trying to follow (and validate or invalidate) a logical argument can't always tell if the choice of data is unbiased, and of course looking at _all_ available data takes the bystander as much time as it took the arguer to formulate the argument in the first place.

So USUALLY what an unbiased observer will do is proceed with caution: see what the arguer's point is, see how it fits with the observer's intuition (because this is the same as appealing to the observer's subconscious, which in most cases has processed far more data relevant to some issue than has their conscious mind), and see whether the data seems overwhelming enough that its conclusion _couldn't_ be the result of biased data selection on the part of the arguer. But this method often fails. Without formulating your own opinion by immersing yourself in data, you just can't be sure whether you're looking at a legitimate picture of an issue. That's why whenever I hear a convincing argument about something complex, I only provisionally believe whatever I've just been convinced of. And that's why an argument's author actually matters if the argument relates to a sufficiently complex system.

Now, arguments about simple (by which I really mean "completely specified") systems aren't victim to this weakness -- mathematical proof, for instance, can actually be really verified by an observer without the observer doing the same work that the discover did, as can many logical arguments in the hard sciences.

But what ESR is trying to show here is that some particular set of scientists committed scientific fraud. This is a) a value judgment and b) depends substantially on context.

So I think that it is not only reasonable but very much a _good_ thing that ieure pointed out that ESR is a nutjob. Now I know that even if I find his post compelling, he has no intellectual honesty and the data he's showing me have been carefully selected from the unimaginably vast amounts of data in the world because they happen to support his worldview. Maybe he's still right -- but ieure's post is still very much relevant.

<comment><USER9> "So I think that it is not only reasonable but very much a good thing that ieure pointed out that ESR is a nutjob."

That was a very sophisticated formulation of "I don't listen to people whose politics I disagree with."

That is exactly the problem of the entire Republican party, and you seem to be saying that the principle is sound (just as long as it is directed at "them" and not "you").

It saddens and surprises me that you and your up-voters seem to be endorsing ad hominem as sound debating practice. Of all places, I would hate to see Hacker News descend to this level.

<comment><USER8> > That was a very sophisticated formulation of "I don't listen to people whose > politics I disagree with."

It wasn't. It was an _argument for believing_ that "in many cases it matters where the arguments that I hear come from."

Let me be clear: I don't _like_ the fact that I think this policy is right. I just think it's right.

And let me also be clear that in many or most cases it makes sense to disregard the source of an argument. In most exchanges on HN, the people involved all implicitly agree on the data that's being argued from, and in those cases I tend to think that we don't ever need to think about people's biases.

But the fundamental belief underlying the "we can always disregard an argument's source" movement is that sufficiently logical and dispassionate people can validate or invalidate an argument very easily (compared to the work it took to formulate the argument in the first place). I really really would like this to be true. I just don't think it is, IN GENERAL.

To reiterate why: I think it's perfectly possible to follow a logical train of thought without actually re-deriving that train of thought -- and so I think that we can untangle argument and arguer when arguments are purely logical -- but if an argument is based on data from a complex system I _don't_ think it's possible to determine if that data was chosen in an unbiased manner without actually looking at all the available data and essentially re-deriving the arguer's conclusion.

Combine that with two hopefully-obvious (and hopefully-true) premises: first, that a large data set on any sufficiently complex system contains individual data points that support any given belief about that system,

and second, that most really complex systems can't be considered completely logically, because there's so much going on, and must instead be approached by looking at data, and I think it follows that _you need to think about the source of any argument about a complex system when you're deciding whether you (provisionally) believe it_.

Incidentally, I find it genuinely ironic that your post is actually a not- particularly-sophisticated example of "I don't listen to people whose politics I disagree with," since you ignored my argument based on my dissenting conclusion.

<comment><USER9> "...but if an argument is based on data from a complex system I don't think it's possible to determine if that data was chosen in an unbiased manner without actually looking at all the available data and essentially re-deriving the arguer's conclusion."

But this is _exactly_ what I come to Hacker News for. In this case, there are definitely HN readers who can understand the code ESR is talking about, and pretty quickly figure out if there are flaws in ESR's reasoning regarding the code in question.

Once we have the actual flaws in his reasoning, his tea-baggery or whatever become completely irrelevant, because we have much more solid reasons for rejecting his conclusions. If this were a different forum, with no participants well versed in technology, mathematics, and the scientific method, maybe you need to consider the motivation of the arguer when considering the validity of the argument. HN is not that forum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> opening paragraph comments on a code fragment:

From the CRU code file osborn-tree6/briffa_sep98_d.pro , used to prepare a graph purported to be of Northern Hemisphere temperatures and reconstructions.

      ;
      ; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
      ;
      yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
      valadj= [0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,$
          2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
      if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
      ;
      yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

This, people, is blatant data-cooking, with no pretense otherwise. It flattens a period of warm temperatures in the 1930s--see those negative coefficients? Then, later on, it applies a positive multiplier so you get a nice dramatic hockey stick at the end of the century.

<comment><USER10> jgrahamc mentioned in an earlier comment (and also on his blog: <http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/11/about-that-cru-hack.html>) that these variables aren't used.

<comment><USER11> Great, so now all we need is to run this in the released data and verify if the graph was produced with the code commented in or out.

If there was released data, that is.

The point being we only know how the code looks in that file, we don't know when the commented out sections were commented out.

So nothing is proven here either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How do all the "best" climate prediction models have squiggly lines after 10 years from now and not a broad range or something realistic. Their algorithims smell of BS and way too many variables go into it to make them have anywhere near their plotted accuracy for 100 year projections. From wikpedia:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Warming_Predictions...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Warming_Predictions.png)

<comment><USER13> Anyone who says they have a good computer model of the climate is either ignorant, stupid, corrupt or some combination thereof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While I'm glad people are digging through the leaked source code, I doubt they find anything so blatant as outright fraud.

</comment><comment><USER15> So maybe we haven't found a smoking gun yet, but the general gist of the documents and emails in that package is not very encouraging.

You can find reviews of IPCC's book that are full of very strident critiques. You can find emails discussing the inherent inaccuracy of their work. You can find internal dismissal of the tree ring data, stating how useless it is. You can find a scientist openly glad that he's not being held accountable so he can push his climate interests.

After spending a couple hours pouring through the repository, I haven't found much that makes this work seem stable enough to base global lifechanging legislation on.

</comment><comment><USER16> The code is pretty damning, but before I get really outraged, a bit of context is always useful.

Has anyone figured out where this graph has been used?

<comment><USER17> No. And, also, the interpolated value yearlyadj isn't used. It's only referenced in commented out code.

<http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/11/about-that-cru-hack.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can anybody tell me what, if any, published work this data has made it into?

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not necessarily attempting to justify _any_ data-cooking whatsoever, but why is it such a big deal? I mean, the climate "skeptics" do it all the time and it hardly makes the news.

We're never going to have a decent public discourse on this issue until _both_ sides are honest with the public. Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I don't see this happening any time soon.

<comment><USER20> Science that relies on cooked data isn't science. It's snake oil sales.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone awake at 4am and feel like critiquing my copywriting? - <AUTHOR>

I'm going to distribute this sales letter all over Philadelphia and Bucks County tomorrow morning, I'd love to get some feedback while I still have time. If anyone's interested, I'll upload the pdf somewhere.<p>https://www.dropbox.com/s/zk8onfzkvw6iazj/tom-hyndman-copywriting.pdf <comment><USER2> I'd avoid using italics, if I were you. It makes the text disappear rather than stand out, and it's one of your main points. I'd probably bold an important sentence in each paragraph for that kind of flyer, and put it at the front. Good job putting it out there for perusal. "They" say the best thing to do is to go for it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the responses.

I've gotten some pretty detailed criticism from some other people who have looked at it, and I'll probably be revising the letter all day.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be better if you add some visuals. IMHO, the document is very text heavy.</comment>


CBS News: Is Bitcoin the Future of Money? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504943_162-20069780-10391715.html

<comment><USER2> Personally I do not believe you could launch a successful currency (long term) based on investments. For now bitcoin early investors (obviously) make more from its success, so they have a financial interest in making the currency successful and will therefore be intending on pulling out at some point to make money. You don't help drive the price from $1/BTC to $20/BTC just because you want to help a magical internet currency.

If someone launched bitcoins _without_ this whole investing thing (where the value changes a lot and is based on how many people it involves) it would be much more stable and usable, but it wouldn't have the easy momentum thing where you can hit a point where people will flock to use it, you'd have to grow it very slowly.</comment>


Deep C and C++: How much do you really understand? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pvv.org/~oma/DeepC_slides_oct2011.pdf

<comment><USER2> A(int sz) { sz_ = sz; v = new B[sz_]; }

~A() { delete v; }

Surely if the allocation of v fails, the destructor will delete some wrong memory pointed at by an unintialised v?

The pain of not using initialiser lists?

<comment><USER3> No. If the allocation fails, it throws an exception, and the destructor isn't called.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought 'excellent' ... then saw [scribd] and thought 'meh'.</comment>


Show HN: Best practices for Python - jerry-hn https://github.com/jerry-git/learn-python3/blob/master/README.md#best-practices <comment> jerry-hn My best effort for describing a set of best practices and tooling to be used in Python development. Is there something you'd add/remove?</comment>


Linux/unix command that you wish someone had told you about earlier - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/b0rk/status/993165679833567233 <comment><USER2> For me:

tee - for some tasks I want the output saved to disk but I also want to see the output in real time.

time - obvious is to kill a process after a period of time. But you can also send other signals to suspend a task or have it behave a certain way (dd for example will output stats with SIGUSER I believe)

strace - let's face it,most programs don't communicate unexpected or unusual conditions well. So, when a program hangs,behaves poorly or crashes with a vague error I sometimes use strace to tell what syscalls are being made,what network connections or files are being opened before the trouble creeps.

python - wanted to put sed,awk or grep here but I so wish I learned python sooner. These days, I open up a python repl and solve the problem where I would have used awk,sed or grep (for anything that appears a bit complicated to solve). Best part: I find it easy and convenient to integrate whatever I prototypes in repl into a well designed script I can easily include in other scripts. I just find python extremely mallable.</comment>


AeroFS Syncs Files Between Computers without Storing Them Online - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/aerofs-syncs-files-between-computers-without-storing-th-1509941226

<comment><USER2> If only they had an android app that would sync directories!

<comment><USER3> we do, but on the hybrid cloud for now. We'll have it in the private cloud soon

<comment><USER2> Good to hear! I am looking forward to seeing it.</comment></comment></comment>


Whaddaya Mean, You Can't Find Programmers? (2000) - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/06/15/whaddaya-mean-you-cant-find-programmers/ <comment><USER2> I remember seeing recently a restaurant owner complaining that he couldn't find any waiters for a seasonal job, while the the salary that he was advertising was 1/3 of what an interim worker would get paid for an equivalent work week at the minimum wage. Such a surprise !</comment>


Shown HN: Free Hello Bar alternative for Wordpress - <AUTHOR> http://conversioninsights.net/attention-grabber/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I'm Tyler, the OP. I created the Attention Grabber plugin on a whim today because I hated the thought of spending $50/month into perpetuity to build my email list.

If you use Wordpress as a CMS and Customer.io to send your emails, it should be pretty useful.</comment>


Make Your Email Hacker Proof - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/make-your-email-hacker-proof.html <comment><USER3> While you're thinking about the security of your email in the cloud, remember this: ANY of your email older than six months can be legally obtained by any U.S. law enforcement agency without any warrant or judicial oversight of any sort, even if you enable Google's new 46-factor authentication and use passwords that take minutes to type in.

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/ecpa-turns- twenty-f...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/ecpa-turns-twenty-five/)

Do you have any passwords in your email older than six months? Any account numbers? Anything... incriminating or embarrassing?

<comment><USER4> And you think that Google actually deletes email when you tell it to? More likely they just mark it as deleted and retain it, in which case every email you ever received regardless of whether you think it has been deleted may be available. If you want better privacy, install and manage your own mail server and encrypt everything.

<comment><USER5> Do you really think your shared host drops blocks when you delete them from your virtual disk, and do you really think that requests to mlock memory with crypto keys are really honored? Maybe if you have a dedicated box, but not if you are using a virutal host. (Have you ever physically seen "your own" mail server? If not, why do you trust it?)

Also consider what happens to unencrypted email you send or receive: any upstream servers can be subpoenaed, as can the person on the other end. Encrypted mail only works when it's encrypted end-to-end and your adversary cannot seize the sending or receiving computer. I imagine that people who encrypt their received email end up in court because their sender was not so careful. Do you trust every person that will ever mail you to keep your secrets safe? Why?

Ultimately, if the government is your enemy, you need to take a lot more precautions than "don't use Gmail".

<comment><USER6> Yow! The ONLY secure server for TOTAL EMAIL SAFETY is an obsolete LAPTOP running in your mother's LIVING ROOM!

(Not kidding, I really do that.)

<comment><USER7> My mother spills too much wine for that to be totally safe...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I really want is for the second factor to kick on only in suspicious situations, e.g.:

* I'm logging in from a computer that I've never logged in from before

* I'm searching my mail history for terms like "password"

* I'm opening an email that appears to contain a password-reset link

* I'm messing with my mail-forwarding options

* I'm accessing messages in bulk

But I do _not_ want to have to do second factor just because it's been 31 days since the last time I've done it.

<comment><USER9> Typing a six digit number every 31 days is too much work to add a significant layer of security to a very important account?

<comment><USER8> Times two accounts, times four devices, multiple browsers... pretty soon it's a once-a-week frustration.

<comment><USER5> I have three accounts and five computers and I don't find the once-a-month 6-digit number to be a big deal. PayPal does annoy me with their policy of requring an OTP seemingly every time you visit a page, but it's worth it because I know that I don't have to have a super-amazing password to stay safe. Ultimately, the work required to recover from a compromised account is much higher than it is to type a 6-digit number every month, so I consider it a good trade-off.

<comment><USER8> In my case, the number always seems to expire when my token is far away. So another way of alleviating this would be to have a three day grace period where you're prompted with the option of refreshing your credentials, but you don't _have to_.

<comment><USER5> Theoretically, the printed numbers you keep in your wallet can be used until you get your phone back.

<comment><USER8> I'm thinking more like, I wake up and want to check my mail from bed, but -- surprise! -- it's expiration day, and my OTP token is downstairs. And using a single recovery code immeditalely invalidates your electronic token, logging you out everywhere and forcing you to go through the activation process all over again before you can log back in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it really that easy to hack someones gmail account?

I realize phishing and key loggers are easy ways to grab a password, but if you avoid typing your gmail password at public internet kiosks and the like, is it really that easy for someone to get at? Assuming you use a reasonably long and impossible to guess password, the captchas would prevent brute forcing.

An attack targeted specifically at you will inevitably succeed but most of us are not that special.

The article's advice seems far too easy to lock yourself out (losing my wallet with my magic paper codes and my phone could do it). The additional inconvenience does not seem worth it.

Most of us have used physical 2 factor authentication (like RSA SecurID) for banking and work related VPN access. This works well because the provider (your office, your bank) has a vested interest in getting you back into your account if you get locked out. Google, Yahoo, MS, etc. have no such obligation.

<comment><USER11> A _startlingly_ large number of people are (still) re-using passwords across multiple sites. The Gawker/Sony(/PerlMonks for me) compromises revealed a _lot_ of email addresses and passwords, some significant portion of which almost certainly allowed attackers access not only to the specific website that was attacked, but also to the email service of the exposed user.

I'm pretty sure none of Jeff's advice helps you against a government-agency level attack agains you specifically, but following it _will_ protect your email even if some other random website you once registered for exposes the login details you used there. I _hope_ that's not a problem for any HN readers (any more), but what about your partner/children/parents/coworkers? I'd bet good money that _someone_ you know and care about is reusing their email account password on random website signup forms.

<comment><USER12> My name is Alan Byrne, I work in IT and I'm a password re-user :(

On that note, does anyone know of a secure keysafe app that will sync across my various PCs, iPad and Android phone? This is what is stopping me from going the single use password route.

<comment><USER13> I use Keepass (or KeepassX, or KeepassDroid, and there's an iOS app too) and Dropbox.

<comment><USER14> Me too. Just remember to set the load-factor quite high. I've got it set to about 8 million rounds which is about one second on my beefy work computer, two on my private laptop and ~eight on my Android phone. The last bit is a bit annoying but at this point my key database is a pretty high value target - <USER2> I _can't_ revoke access to it remotely if I lose my phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "print the recovery codes and keep them with you at all times"

Wrong. Terribly wrong. Do not do that.

You'll have your phone with you AND the codes.

So, imagine that day, you get your stuff stolen from your person. Laptop, phone, codes, gone. Bad.

That day you were on a boat and you fall in the water. Phone, codes, gone. Bad.

Instead store the codes in your own safe, a secret location, or a safe deposit box.

<comment><USER16> No, it's exactly right. Having the codes with you is not a security risk because they're useless without your password. You can keep a second copy of the codes at home if you're worried about losing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "You should start thinking of security for your email as roughly equivalent to the sort of security you'd want on your bank account. It's exceedingly close to that in practice."

Actually, I want (and arguably already have) better than that. In the last 4 months I have had two unauthorized debits from my bank accounts: one a result of a mail thief stealing my rent check from my mailbox, the other an error made by a bank employee. In the 15 years I've been using email I've never knowingly had any of my email accounts hacked.

<comment><USER18> Notice he said the sort of security you'd _want_ on your bank. I assume you'd want something better than you have right now ;)

Mine does offer two-factor, using either SMS or a physical token. And now that I think of it, I think it's mandatory if you want to access it online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For now I have a really long email password, but I'm considering moving my sensitive data/email out of my general email account and into a new email address that requires 2 factor authentication.

The thing I really want is a "lockbox" folder in my general email that:

1\. Requires 2 factor authentication to access the folder but not my general inbox

2\. I can move messages I consider sensitive from my general inbox to the lockbox folder

3\. Will automatically sends emails from my banks, etc. into the folder with an email showing just the subject line in my general inbox

<comment><USER20> Wow, this would be an excellent feature. Although I've got 2 factor authentication set up for my whole account and it doesn't really bother me, I would like to see something like this. An extra measure to protect certain emails would be really helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That cell phone you use for receiving the verification codes? It better not be a smartphone you also use to access GMail, or your 2-factor just became 1-factor, at least to any malware on that phone...

<comment><USER5> Your phone should never know your password; you log into Gmail from your phone using an application-specific password. If your phone is infected with malware and you don't trust it anymore, you deauthorize it and your account is safe.

2 factor authentication is an amazingly simple solution to a large number of complex problems.

<comment><USER22>
      > If your phone is infected with malware
      > and
      > you don't trust it anymore

Those don't necessarily go hand-in-hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This worry seems a bit overblown to me. If your email is that important to you, you should follow these steps:

1\. Use a _unique_ , long, random, secure password.

2\. Don't tell it to anyone.

3\. Use an email service that stores passwords hashed with a salt and a secure hash algorithm.

And you will have nothing to worry about. If you are very paranoid or traveling a lot, you can add:

4\. Don't log in from insecure devices.

5\. Make sure nobody's filming your fingers when you type your password.

If you're actually concerned with these two, you probably have bigger issues and are already taking more precautions like 2-factor authorization or so on anyway.

<comment> DanI-S 6\. Cross your fingers and hope that you'll never use a machine afflicted with a keylogging trojan.

<comment><USER24> See #4.

<comment><USER25> If only it were that easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The thing I hate about Google Authenticator is when you use a google authenticator protected gmail account for other google services. Google has a bunch of things where they don't yet support 2fa, so sometimes you enter the wrong password.

It would be good if you had a dedicated-to-email google account, definitely. As it is, I use it for a gmail account I use with all my google services, and it's a real pain -- especially because the gmail password itself is a long random string, and sometimes I need to enter that on a mobile or other device.

I'd really like better user credential management using something like OneID (public keys, challenge-response auth), but people have tried that in the past and haven't been terribly successful getting it adopted. It might work better on a mobile OS, so maybe next-gen Apple iOS keystore could do something like this.

<comment><USER27> Facebook handles apps that don't support 2factor pretty well. Your first login will be rejected but you'll be messaged the 6 digit code to login with as your "password".

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> While I like 2 step authentication I wish Google would get rid of SMS password reset. With this enabled all a person needs is your phone to gain access to your account. Given that police can grab you phone whenever you are stopped this means they can "hack" your account at the same time. Another example could be a cleaning person at a hotel finding your phone. Just two examples off the top of my head. Basically, SMS password reset makes your phone the golden key.

[http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a...](http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=152124)

<comment><USER29> As long as you have a pin lock on your phone, the cleaning person nor the police will be able to do anything with your phone.

<comment><USER30> It's not that hard for law enforcement to get your PIN. e.g. [http://blog.agilebits.com/2012/03/30/the-abcs-of-xry-not- so-...](http://blog.agilebits.com/2012/03/30/the-abcs-of-xry-not-so-simple- passcodes/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've made a few changes to securing mine with 2 factor.

1\. Altered the digits in my wallet so only I know how to recover the real numbers.

2\. Created a junk email with a secure password with a security-through- obscurity email with the numbers (again modified)

The use case - losing both your cellphone and wallet. There's basically not an easy way to get back to your data.

I have to remember a few things:

\--Normal password to email

\--Modification I used to numbers in wallet

\--Modification for numbers in junk email

\--Junk email username

\--Junk email password

It's definitely a burden. But it's worth the security of my email. At this point it reduces the burden of regularly changing my email password or adding complexity to the password.

<comment><USER32> The good thing about the recovery numbers is they are still no good without your password. So someone would have to both get your password and steal your wallet to gain access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> so now it is only a matter of time until the keylogging software that everyone is so terrified of is modified to also take the session cookie from your browser that authenticates you to gmail. you know, the thing that makes it okay for you to click "remember this computer for 30 days" ...

<comment><USER34> The session cookies are often tied to IP address.

<comment><USER33> are they? have you ever logged in at home, suspended, and then gone to work? or the coffee shop?

<comment><USER32> Google might compare browser/OS entropy as well as IPs.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/primer-information- the...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/primer-information-theory-and- privacy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great article on 2-factor auth. I didn't understand how easy it was, so I'm switching to it now. However, if you use a mail client and generate app- specific passwords that last forever, can't the hackers just hack via IMAP login instead which won't be 2-factor?

It seems like it would be better to use private keys on the client with 2 factor auth for authentication recovery. That way as long as you have the right private key locally that your mail client uses, you are set- otherwise you have to both provide a password and an SMS delivered code in order to use a different private key on the client.

</comment><comment><USER35> What happens when you travel abroad and your phone does not work?

I am wondering if Gmail could implement security questions to avoid cases where the 2-step verification works against the user

<comment><USER36> That's exactly what I've been wondering about enabling two factor authentication for something I use as often as email.

Apparently you can print a series of one-time use verification codes that work any time to sign into your two-factor account. Stick a few on a card in your wallet and don't forget to generate more before you're out!

[https://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](https://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1187538)

<comment><USER20> When you do run out of verification codes, but you do have a working phone the 6 digit codes can also be sent to you through text messages or even a phone call from Gmail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I access my email from _one_ app over SMPT, using a unique password. For me, this 2-factor auth would just mean having a different and slightly longer password for SMPT.

<comment><USER38> SMTP is only for sending mail to and between mail servers. Did you mean something else?

And no, 2-factor is not the same as a long password, because it is less likely that both factors will get compromised at the same time. However long your password is, a single software flaw could expose it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've been using 2-step verification and app specific passwords for a long time now, and it's just trivial once you get used to it. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's interesting that the "hacker" send out a mugged in Madrid email. A friend in Nepal had his Yahoo account hacked last week with the same email sent out. I wonder how they targeted people or gained access since his wife was using Gmail and is (most likely?) in a western country and my friend is from Nepal. It doesn't seem like they would be using any of the same websites.

<comment><USER41> Just like a lot of lead generation/spam email campaigns I've seen, I'd assume a lot of phishing and scam email "campaigns" are strictly copy and pasted from a single source (ie, a forum post somewhere), with very few scammers actually putting any effort into changing it to be somewhat unique in favor of trying to get the message to as many people as quick as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The article sounds like this requires you to sumbmit a cell number to Gmail. (In fact, I think merely registering an account nowadays requires a number, but I'm not sure about that.)

If you think that's the only way to get 2-factor authentication working, you're wrong. If you think there is nothing wrong with your email provider demanding info like cell phone numbers, you're wrong again.

<comment><USER43> I don't think there is anything wrong with an email provider asking me for my cell number to send me text messages, how else would they send them?

In addition, a cell phone number is NOT required to create a Google account. Sure they ask (and gender is apparently required, I just made an account), but if you leave it blank, they won't complain.

<comment><USER42> There is nothing wrong with providers giving you _an option_ to use your number for notifications. However, if we are required to provide phone number for security features that can be implemented without using phones, there are a few things wrong with it.

How can this be implemented without using a phone number? Well, the article actually contains one way - pre-shared secret codes that you print out beforehand. There are many others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've enabled and stayed with 2-factor auth on my Google account, but it broke my Google Talk login on Adium and I've never found anyone to talk to about it (bug report on Adium went unnoticed and Google got rid of bug reporting for Google Talk). Hopefully a burst of attention will throw up some other people with the same problem.

<comment><USER45> Did you use an application specific password for Adium login? When you enable 2 factor auth, you need to generate those password for every app you use.

<comment><USER44> Yep, done that. This approach works with my 3 copies of Reeder (work, home, phone) and Calender on my phone, but for some reason Adium refuses to log in. Bug report (along with network trace) is:

<http://trac.adium.im/ticket/15310>

I'm guessing it's because my Google account doesn't have a Gmail account associated with it, but Google Talk still works fine from the widget on iGoogle.

 _Edit: opened a superuser.com question:[http://superuser.com/questions/413859/google-talk- and-2-fact...](http://superuser.com/questions/413859/google-talk-and-2-factor- authentication) _

<comment><USER46> I think you are right about the gmail issue. I use adium on an iMac and Macbook for work and Digsby on my Windows box at home and the application specific passwords work fine for me.

<comment><USER44> Google Talk will be tested by Google employees, and how many of them don't have a Gmail account? :) I still feel that this should work though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Shameless plug for <http://duosecurity.com>

We offer a two-factor cloud service to protect any kind of service that may be remotely accessed: web, ssh, rdp, vpn, ...

Biggest difference from Google Authenticator is the smart phone user experience: one tap to approve a login instead of transcribing a six digit OTP.

</comment><comment><USER48> Would using this not solve the problem without the hassle [http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/13226/how-can- pr...](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/13226/how-can-privatesky- not-see-your-data/13289#13289) ? Seems robust enough ito safety and easy enough to use incl 2-Factor...

</comment><comment><USER49> Not that anyone should need further convincing, but just in case here's another data point drawn from my own experience:

[http://blog.binarybalance.com.au/2012/03/11/a-wakeup-call- fr...](http://blog.binarybalance.com.au/2012/03/11/a-wakeup-call-from-online- security-will-you-accept-the-charges)

</comment><comment><USER50> I have two-way enabled, but when logging in via Google Talk (windows app) it seems to bypass it. If I go straight to gmail.com and login I'm asked for the second auth, but clicking via Google Talk (already signed in) it logges me in to GMail directly. Anybody know if this is normal / expected?

<comment><USER51> It's because Google Talk is permanently authorized via it's application- specific password.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I think this is great, but it doesnt appear to be enabled for the freebie google apps for domains service.

<comment><USER52> I was wrong - the domain administrator can enable this feature in the settings. I apologize for the noise.

<comment><USER53> Not noise at all. It took me ten minutes to find this option. Turns out it's buried under "Advanced Tools" -> Authentication

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I put a copy of the single-use backup verification codes into an alternate dropbox account I have (that isn't linked to my primary email address). Figured if I'm somewhere with enough internet access to get to gmail, I'll be able to get to dropbox.com and get the codes.

<comment><USER12> I've done a similar thing but put them on my colo server. Hopefully getting SSH access in an internet cafe doesn't work out to be too hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I really, really wish I could use per-site password authorization without using two factor auth.

</comment><comment><USER15> There's a very "simple" way to steal stuff via email.

Find the relevant service. Spoof DNS. Get emails.

Alternative. MITM the SMTP (thanks anonymous SSL, no certificate errors!).

And that's scary, since 2 factor auth, nor anything, can really save you from that.

</comment><comment><USER56> What happens for IMAP accounts? e.g through Mail.app or Thunderbird?

<comment><USER57> It's in the article, but basically you just generate app-specific passwords for each one, which you can revoke at any time.

<comment><USER58> The sucky part is that nothing enforces their app-specificness. It would be neat if I could generate a password that only works from my home connection. Or only works for GChat, but not other services.

<comment><USER33> you can't use an app specific password to login to the gmail web interface and change your password.

so while you could use a compromised application specific password to do horrible things (download all your email and send e-mail as you), you could not use that app specific password to immediately log in to the administration page for your account and lock the legitimate user out...

<comment><USER58> Really? I could have sworn I tried and it worked just like a full login. I signed up for two-factor very early so perhaps that was fixed along the way. Neat!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> dropbox really needs this too. although my information on that account is not nearly as sensitive as on gmail, i'm sure it will amount to a similar sensitivity in the future.

<comment><USER20> Indeed, anytime I login a a mental note pops up saying how insecure this is considering the files stored on Dropbox. Yesterday I received a phonecall from a friend whose Gmail and Facebook were hacked, after I had advised her to use 2-factor authentication and she ignored it. So glad that I do use it but now Dropbox remains the weakest link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'm surprised that nobody has yet commented on the second website mentioned on the application specific password section... nice touch to a great article!

</comment><comment><USER61> fetchmail is very handy for this sort of problem. Regularly pull and remove your mail from your webmail account. Then you can manage it locally the same way you would all your other archives.

Not _foolproof_ , of course, but it improves matters. Also note I don't present this as a solution for John Everyman, but rather the sorts of folks who might be reading Coding Horror.

</comment><comment><USER62> >provided you own a cell phone.

Well, crap. My only "phone" is my Google Voice number...

<comment><USER63> Could always use an iPod Touch, if you have one.

<comment><USER62> That's actually my current setup. It still kind of defeats the purpose though; I have to be logged in to Google Voice in order to authenticate logging in to Gmail _with the same account_. I'll wait for them to get a little more creative before I expect it to be much safer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> _(You can check the "remember me for 30 days on this device" checkbox so you don't have to do this every time.)_

No thanks. Google remembers a lot more than "this device," more like everything I do within that device thanks Search cookies, Adsense, Analytics on millions of sites and who knows what else

<comment><USER65> I always have my gmail logged-in in a separate browser and I don't use that for any other browsing.

<comment><USER66> Could just open an incognito/private window.

<comment><USER32> You can also use profiles in Chrome: [https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...](https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2364824)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> > Hey, This Sounds Like a Pain!

Yes, because it is a pain. Try going on a vacation, you know the one where you don't use cell roaming. SMS is out, so then one must find a Wifi hotspot to use one of the smartphone time based tokens (edit: seems the token don't need a network connection, could have fooled me). And those time based tokens go out of wack if your phone didn't sync the timezone properly to match Google's setup, so every token ends up not working.

Use the print out backup verification codes on a piece of paper? No, because they are single use. So you end up using up all your backup codes depending on the length of your vacation. I've used 2 step for a long while, I liked it, but I really could not get used to whipping out my phone every time I needed to check something related to Google.

I've had other hiccups such as mobile provider down, phone died etc. Maybe my best option was to keep all the backup codes on hard plastic with checkmarks next to used backup codes and secure them the same way I do my banking cards, maybe, I'll just try this one day.

If one is going to jump through all these spy-style codes might as well just change your password on a regular basis, forcing all previous sessions to invalidate.

<comment><USER68> Assuming you were able to use half the backup codes, since you have internet access you can always generate a new batch. I've been using 2 pass since it came out and it's honestly not that bad for the sense of security. Some banks are already using this system.

<comment><USER69> Can we trust the screen the new codes are being displayed on? :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Information is free. Knowledge is not. - <AUTHOR> http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2012/03/information-is-free-knowledge-is-not.htm

<comment><USER2> This is also an interesting way to look at the build it vs. buy it approach to development. Just because you have the skills to build something, doesn't mean you should because someone else may have already done it better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. The 'build it' approach assumes that having a blueprint means you're the best person to do the job.</comment></comment>


Experiment: Recoil vs. Muzzle Velocity - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ammolytics.com/2018-12-12/experiment-recoil-vs-muzzle-velocity.html <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a long-form article about an experiment that I conducted this summer to explore the question of whether or not recoil-management techniques have an effect on muzzle velocity. It involved a bit of data science (Python, pandas, plotly), some hardware (arduino, 3d printing), and math (LaTeX). I hope that this content is high quality enough to justify the time you spend reading it, and how much time it took me to create it!

I'd love to hear your feedback and answer any questions!

<comment><USER2> That's a great article even if the results were a little inconclusive due to unanticipated uncontrolled factors (bullet length). I'm just happy to see someone showing how the worlds of firearms and hobbyist hacking can fit together.

It's unfortunate that everything related to firearms is now viewed as political. There are just so many interesting things unique to thos subject matter that inquisitive and mechanically inclined people, like those on HN, are missing out on.

<comment><USER3> I think Destin Sandlin, of the youtube channel SmarterEveryDay does a good job of having firearms related physics videos (in addition to other science, physics and space videos) that are non-political.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, fascinating article. I'm a little surprised that the bullet has left the barrel before the rifle recoils, but I guess that makes sense with the differences in mass.

It really does mean that my poor accuracy with a large caliber handgun is from flinching. I sort of thought it was from being unable to control the recoil but it sounds like that has no bearing on where the bullet is heading, and so I guess I'm just flinching in anticipation.

Btw, where do you live that you have a 300yd range? I'm jealous. Here near Chicago (well, NW Indiana) I mostly make do with small indoor ranges and a .22 rifle which is typically allowed, but would love to get into shooting larger calibers longer distances.

<comment><USER5> > Wow, fascinating article.

Indeed. Outstanding work :)

> I'm a little surprised that the bullet has left the barrel before the rifle > recoils, but I guess that makes sense with the differences in mass.

That puzzles me too. I mean, once the bullet has left the barrel, what force could be accelerating the rifle?

Two possibilities came to mind. One was ongoing gas expansion, but that seems unlikely, because the chamber pressure is small after 2.5 msec.

The other is something mechanical about the rifle. Could the barrel stretch, as the bullet is exiting? And then contract afterward? Or maybe some elasticity in the attachment of the barrel?

<comment><USER6> Based on my understanding of the physics involved, it's entirely possible that the rifle has accelerated to the recoil velocity by the time the bullet leaves the barrel, yet not actually moved measurably yet.

<comment><USER5> Well, but he says that he's measuring acceleration, not velocity. The bullet's in the barrel for just ~2 msec, and there's appreciable _acceleration_ \-- _not_ just movement -- for >50 msec. It's true that his custom accelerometer only records data at ~6 msec intervals, but I don't see how that could smear ~2 msec out to >50 msec. Unless maybe there's some design limitations of the sensors that he used.

The PRB covers the role of propellant gases in recoil, and measures effectiveness of muzzle brakes.[0] He talks about 20%-50% reduction in recoil with muzzle brakes. And that implies that gas expansion from the muzzle accounts for at least 50% of recoil.

Even so, some additional measurements might be useful. It'd be interesting to know, at sub-msec sampling rates, the velocity of gas leaving the muzzle. And if there's still appreciable unexplained recoil: 1) the length of the barrel; 2) the displacement of the barrel from the stock; and 3) the diameter of the barrel, measured at maybe 4-5 points from the chamber to the muzzle.

Because steel is, after all, notoriously elastic. And the barrel may be attached to the stock in a way that smears out recoil. Also, the rifle may have other recoil-management features that reduce recoil, and smear it out. It's bolt-action, so there's no blowback, and I don't see a muzzle brake, but ???

0) [http://precisionrifleblog.com/2015/07/01/muzzle-brakes- recoi...](http://precisionrifleblog.com/2015/07/01/muzzle-brakes-recoil- primer-test-equipment-rifles/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Does one directly affect the other?

Thought experiments:

1\. Bazooka-like barrel open on both ends with identical bullets shooting out each end. I would say that each bullet got approximately half the energy.

2\. Fixed barrel, hard mounted, no recoil movement. Bullet should get about double the energy of (1). If you imagine the expanding gas between the bullets of (1) but then change it to operate in half the volume (split down the middle), the pressure would be double but not quite since combustion rates may differ.

3\. Barrel with very long throw, very low spring force. Bullet gets most of energy, peak recoil force is low.

But always true:

      - Newton's third law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

      - Conservation of momentum: p = m v
        considering impulses: F t = m = p / v, p = F t / m

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! As I mentioned, I hope to tackle the physics portion of this topic in another article. I had originally included it when drafting, but it got way too long and off-topic.

That said, you're spot on with your equations, though there are a few others I'll cover as well!

<comment><USER7> Looking forward to the follow up article. I broadly mentioned some of the relevant bits but would be so much better to have it tied to more concrete examples. Like maybe subjective quantification of recoil or various hybrid configurations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> " _Regardless, these results strongly suggest that the bullet is long gone before the rifle moves under recoil. How long gone? In my case, the bullet was already 23 ft (7 m) down range. This makes sense because the rifle is nearly 900x heavier than the bullet, so it cannot accelerate as quickly._ "

I've heard that before, but this is the first time I've seen actual data. Nice work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'm glad you found it helpful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, this was a fascinating article and of deep interest to me as both a shooter and a geek. I'm glad to see this type of content on Hacker News.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It's my first time sharing on HN and I'm thankful that it has been well-received.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great article, shared it with some friends who are geeks and shooters.

The presentation of the information was well done, I'd say. It's very nearly a proper paper, if you ask me.

Thanks for sharing!

I especially enjoyed the pictures of the arduino and gear setup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for taking the time to read it, and for the positive feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very cool experiment and excellent writeup!

You can also do some meta-analysis with all of the high speed video on YouTube. Get something like Tracker[0] to watch the barrel displacement while the bullet is travelling down the barrel. This video from SmarterEveryDay [1] provides some good examples.

I've watched tons of these vids and my basic observation is that there is some motion while the bullet is in the barrel, but as soon as it leaves you basically are left with a rocket trying to launch into the shoulder of the shooter. Even at high frame rates there's a perceivable increase in rearward acceleration once the gases start escaping.

Looking forward to future articles! Particularly with the improved accelerometer, it feels like there's a story in the gaps. I'm sure you've got plenty of ideas when you start a blog with that name, but here are a few I've been mulling about while chasing a lawnmower around the yard (some of these may be tired stories for folks into match shooting).

\- Benefit of powder sorting for uniform and/or even distribution of grain size/weight (maybe via sieve or some kind of scattering method?)

\- Benefit of tip conditioning in terminal ballistics (e.g. precision shaping/polishing)

\- Building a press + strain gauge to push bullets through barrel to characterize impact of variations in diameter/length on energy required to make the trip.

Last bit of spam from me. I did take a quick peek at the data. It looks like the area under curve measurement more closely correlates with velocity than peak pressure, but not by much. Not sure what the data column on the left represents in the PTC file.

[0] [https://physlets.org/tracker/](https://physlets.org/tracker/)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pOXunRYJIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pOXunRYJIw)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there any plausible physical model in which the difference in velocity of the bullet, on account of the recoil, could be greater than the change in velocity of the barrel over the time that the bullet is traveling in it? With the bullet taking 2ms to leave the barrel, and maximum recoil acceleration of 100 ft/sec/sec, that effect would seem to be at least two orders of magnitude smaller than the 20 ft/sec claimed in the article that prompted this project.

The one extra thing I can think of so far is that the recoil reduces the effective length of the barrel by the distance it has moved by the time the bullet exits the muzzle, but again that seems too small an effect (~0.2 millifeet, four orders of magnitude less than the barrel length?)

<comment><USER13> I agree. Recoil or no recoil, the bullet moves the same in the reference frame of the rifle. Proportionally to the masses ratio, the bullet acceleration is about 500x-1000x the rifle acceleration, thus the speed of rifle reference frame in the recoil case at the moment of the bullet leaving the muzzle would be just about 3-6ft/s - an order of magnitude difference vs. claimed 20ft/s.

Edit: forgot about the powder which as hot gas is subjected to pretty much the same acceleration as the bullet. With the powder being about 2-4x bullet mass it makes the rifle only 150x-300x heavier than the [bullet+powder] and that brings us to the 20-10ft/s of the rifle recoil speed, ie the article claim pretty closely matches the theory.

<comment><USER12> A good point, but the puzzle is, though, that the author isn't recording those sort of velocities (or, rather, the acceleration that would lead to them) while the round is in the barrel.

Not all the gas reaches the bullet speed. We might guess that it averages half that, but that is assuming, I think, a uniform density and complete gasification of the charge (though with regard to the latter, is there a reason for there being a larger charge than that?)

This argument also suggests that the recoil firing blanks would be a substantial fraction of the recoil with a live round, which is not how I recall it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Extreme counterexample, Barrett M82

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhXaER53CHQ&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhXaER53CHQ&feature=youtu.be&t=400)

</comment><comment><USER14> A long running argument: does leaving your silencer on cause a repeatable velocity delta?

I suppose I could just break out the screens and find out, but it's nice to argue over beers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I shoot with it all the time and haven't noticed any variation because of it (though I admit I have not tested this directly). FWIW, I was able to earn my F-Class Mid-Range High Master classification while using it.

<comment><USER14> I've noticed not only group movement, which I think everyone sees, but group dispersion. I will mark that up to "I don't shoot rifles enough to know how to shoot them" and move on :)

<comment><AUTHOR> [shameless plug] I hope I can convince you to subscribe for when I tackle this topic in a future article! ;)

<comment><USER14> Sure thing. Shameless plug: come have fun with us in Idaho? [http://boomershoot.org](http://boomershoot.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What kind of pervert mixes imperial and metric units like that. Velocity is expressed in ft/s while peak acceleration is expressed in m\s²...

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe I provided both imperial and metric units for every equation. Maybe I missed one? I'd be happy to correct it if you can point me to the specific instance!</comment></comment>


Hiding branches in methods - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/1687031

<comment><USER2> Agreed. Early returns should function as guards.</comment>


BrickInstructions.com: Lego booklet site - <AUTHOR> http://lego.brickinstructions.com <comment><USER2> On the topic of LEGO instructions, LEGO released a surprisingly sophisticated CAD tool called LEGO Digital Designer[1] way back in 2004. It contains 3D models of basically all LEGO pieces and modeling tools for creating arbitrary assemblies out of them. Users can snap pieces together, specify joints, and pose various parts. The software can also generate assembly instructions on- the-fly for any given design.

LEGO also runs a website where designs can be shared, for instance "Computer Problems"[2].

Here are some screen shots of the software in action[3] and the source of the design file[4] - ".lxf" files are just zip archives containing a preview png image and an xml file specifying the LEGO parts and their location in the assembly.

It would be interesting to know how this assembly planner was implemented: how does the 'compiler' decide on the order of operations? It seems to have heuristics for breaking the design into a series discrete of submodules that can be assembled independently, then combined at the end, as opposed to a simple linear strategy. Presumably the shape of the assembly tree is optimized for human "execution" \- not too broad, nor too deep.

In particular, I wonder what kind of human the instructions are optimized for, if at all: children, or adults? In other words, are there some assembly strategies that adults prefer (more complex subassemblies for instance) that children are less successful at following?

\---

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

[2]: [http://ldd.us.lego.com/en- us/gallery/51887f3e-1474-4411-9dcb...](http://ldd.us.lego.com/en- us/gallery/51887f3e-1474-4411-9dcb-677d704ceb1c)

[3]: [http://imgur.com/a/hgeb7](http://imgur.com/a/hgeb7)

[4]: [https://gist.github.com/anonymous/1b333df3b864c48bfa48](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/1b333df3b864c48bfa48)

</comment><comment><USER3> LEGO's official site seems a much better source: [https://wwwsecure.us.lego.com/en- us/service/buildinginstruct...](https://wwwsecure.us.lego.com/en- us/service/buildinginstructions)

<comment><USER4> I always liked Peeron[1]. They have a great selection of the old instructions booklets scanned in, and half the time I've lost my old instructions or my nostalgia-driven Brickset order didn't come with them.

[1] [http://www.peeron.com/](http://www.peeron.com/)

<comment><USER5> Is the linked site using their scans? They seem to be about the same lowish quality

<comment><USER4> The quality for Peeron isn't always the best - it's very much still a Web 1.0 site, and so they aren't full-resolution, HD scans, just whatever was uploaded at the time.

But what I like about it is that it has pretty good coverage of what is for me "classic" Lego. The official site in the parent looks like it only goes back into the 90s, and is missing a lot of sets.

EDIT: read too fast the first time. It does kind of look like the same set of scans for the linked site, although they have coverage for newer stuff as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this a pretty significant copyright infringement?

<comment><USER7> In the same way that publishing the owners manual for the Apple II is a copyright infringement.

LEGO has zero incentive to crack down on this since the only way you can buy the book is with the set itself. Allowing fans to relive old sets is in no way hindering sales. Most likely then opposite.

<comment><USER8> All (?) of these images seem to be rendered from the PDFs that are available for free download at lego.com though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With the explosion of 3d printing I would love to see what Lego does to capture this market. I can already print lego clone pieces. My niece doesn't really know about intellectual property, she know about mashing plastic together.

They can be the leader, but the window that they can take advantage of this is closing quickly. A 300 dollar printer id not that big of an investment and once you have it you can print a big item for about a dollar in plastic.

<comment><USER10> The difference is that 3d printed piece will hold up for what, a year if that. There is a reason that Lego cost as much as they do, and it isn't because they are greedy. The tolerances on the blocks that they produce are beyond tight and their blocks are guaranteed to work basically for life. Ever try megablocks, that is what 3d printing your own pieces is going to be like...at best.

Lego is something that was passed down to me and I have passed it onto my own children and the amount of blocks we have continue to grow.

<comment><USER9> Can you give evidence to it only lasting a year? I print in PETG which is the same plastic used by Coke to create their 2 liter bottles. Even "if" it only lasts a year, the cost of the plastic is cents so I'll just print another.

I'll pass down the schematics which are more durable than even plastic.

<comment><USER11> If you print another brick, what happens to the old brick? Another piece of trash for landfill?

<comment><USER9> PLA is easy to recycle, though as I said I mostly print PET. That does seem to be recyclable though I question the cost/benefit of doing so since the recycling itself has cost and it may weaken the plastic.

Personally I have a bucket filled with the scraps till I can figure out what I want to do. But I know I've thrown away far more plastic packaging than I waste printing so I don't stress about it.

Nevertheless your point is valid and needs to be considered as 3d printing becomes mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You can buy instructions on bricklink.com, too, if you like paper. BL is a bit of an old beast of a site, but it's got (by far) the biggest collection of LEGO stuff on the planet - and I include LEGO Inc, in that.

</comment><comment><USER13> I love this site. My parents saved all my early '90s pirate sets, but they eventually got pretty beat in cardboard boxes. Now, my kids get to enjoy the Black Seas Barracuda too.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ah, phooie, no instructions for the Architecture Studio :-(

Edit: okay, they don't have a PDF, but they do have page by page scans. So that's something, at least.

</comment><comment><USER15> What, no SW UCS kits? Lame!

They have the original Technic sets though, that's pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what SEO keywords they're targeting with that Welcome copy?</comment>


Ask HN: What Chromium switches do you use? - <AUTHOR>

There is a good list here: http://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/
I am currently running: --enable-vertical-tabs
--enable-accelerated-compositing
--enable-apps
--enable-experimental-extension-apis
--enable-expose-for-tabs
--enable-fastback
--enable-gpu-plugin
--enable-gpu-rendering
--enable-preconnect
--enable-nacl
--enable-native-web-workers
--enable-webgl
--experimental-spellchecker-features
--block-nonsandboxed-plugins
--enable-accelerated-2d-canvas
--enable-aero-peek-tabs
--enable-background-mode
--enable-content-prefetch
--enable-device-motion
--enable-gview
--enable-indexed-database
--enable-login-images
--enable-new-page-info-bubble
--enable-preparsed-js-caching
--enable-video-layering
--login-manager
--nacl-broker
--prelaunch-gpu-process
--safe-plugins
--use-spdy
I'm mainly after speed (thus prefetching, leveraging GPU etc) without loosing functionality (e.g. javascript) and also cool new features like vertical tabs <comment><USER2> Any particular build? These don't seem to work right on my stable build on Ubuntu 10.10</comment>


Why I Left a $250k/yr CMO Position to Found a Startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@CygnusSEO/why-i-left-a-250k-yr-cmo-position-to-found-a-startup-fd9f617a8319#.y8qk51pfr <comment><AUTHOR> I would be curious to learn how many others in the community made similar moves and how it worked out.</comment>


Special Relativity, Time-Stamps and Financial Markets - <AUTHOR> http://www.moneyscience.com/pg/blog/Admin/read/114736/special-relativity-timestamps-and-a-potted-history-of-communication-technology-in-financial-markets <comment><USER2> Of course if the CERN Opera results pan out we can start using faster-than- light neutrinos to coordinate separate markets.</comment>


The Leading Cause of Startup Death – Part 1: The Product Development Diagram  - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2009/08/27/the-leading-cause-of-startup-death-the-product-development-diagram/ <comment><USER2> I've launched two startups, both of which have had some - minor - degree of success...and both of which have had major problems.

I got Steve's book a few months ago and have been reading it ... and re- reading it ... and re-reading it.

I slap myself in the forehead about every other page.

The point that he makes in this blog post is key.

Go, read it.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my recent experience with startups, or at the very least ideas for startups, I'm beginning to find that not acting upon your ideas quickly can also be detrimental to your startup. Being stuck in the "Product Development Diagram," particularly in the "Concept/Bus. Plan" phase can allow others with similar ideas to get a head start, and possibly even get to launch before you've even started.

Personally, I think that by getting into the development of your idea as soon as possible will help you. As an added bonus, there are always ideas, features, or a different method of implementation that get brought up while you are developing that you cannot anticipate during the planning/conceptualizing phase.

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought the leading cause of Startup Death was lack of persistance or innovation

</comment><comment><USER5> I was on the edge of my seat (well not really) until I got to "Coming next Part 2: What's Wrong with Product Development as a Model?"

I sure hope someone posts Part 2 here at hn before I forget why I was so interested. A serialized blog is an interesting idea until it has a cliffhanger.

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing the ultimate punchline is going to be Customer Development: [http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/customer-development-at- sta...](http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/customer-development-at- startup2startup)

<comment><USER7> That is an excellent slide show.</comment></comment></comment>


Configuration in a .NET core console application – My notes - <AUTHOR> https://pradeeploganathan.com/dotnet/configuration-in-a-net-core-console-application/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have used the .net core console application template a couple of times to create production apps. It requires us to wire up configuration, logging, Di and a bunch of other features manually.</comment>


Using Deep Learning at Scale in Twitter's Timelines - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/2017/using-deep-learning-at-scale-in-twitter-s-timelines <comment><USER3> It does not work for my timeline at all. Maybe the idea of algorithmic newsfeed is ok, I dreamed of it in the times of RSS and Livejournal. But last few days twitter became almost unusable. It shows "You might like" almost every time I open it, and it is filled with content that I hate. Shady political posts, glamour chicks posting cans of cosmetics. It shows tweets liked by someone as if it's retweeted instead of liked.

Maybe it's optimised for rage which drives more page refreshes? Twitter started to look like it's really dying, desperately trying to squeeze last ad juices from its userbase.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is a disappointment that this article merely scratches the surface and didn't give even slightest details. It is more like PR than a tech blog because it merely shares anything substantial.

<comment><USER5> "We have really cleverly done a thing that no one actually wanted" is the summary

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> But noone actually wants a "relevant timeline". They want all the posts by their friends most recent first, and that's it. Twitter's contributions to the creation and reinforcement of echo chambers has done the entire world an enormous disservice.

<comment><USER6> This is such a backwards-looking point of view.

0\. The fact is, _I_ want a algo timeline. There are far too many posts in a day for me to read everything.

1\. People made the same complaints about Facebook's algorithmic feed. Very few users complain about that anymore (outside of HN, I guess). If anything, without FB's algo feed, users would be overwhelmed with a flood of posts. FB will surface very granular posts like a friend liking something, so we are talking about multiple thousands of potential news feed posts per day. And if FB were to take out that granularity, that means potentially missing tens of highly relevant posts a day.

2\. Obviously I don't have any inside info, but I guarantee you Twitter split tested the algorithmic timelines and is also measuring user engagement and they wouldn't have kept this highly complex feature (with probably a whole engineering team dedicated to it) unless there was a big boost.

3\. Q1 of 2017, the first quarter they rolled out the algo timeline, user growth accelerated.

4\. I don't know a single person with experience growing/measuring consumer web products who thought the algo timeline was a bad idea. It is such an obvious piece of low-hanging fruit.

<comment><USER7> My first thought when I saw what twitter was doing with my timeline was, "oh man, now they've gone ahead and ruined my twitter feed just like they ruined my Facebook feed."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why isn't a working method of disabling these sorts of sorting 'features' ever provided?

Seems like they could please the "I want to see relevant" and the "I want to see most recent" camps.

<comment><USER9> Settings > Timeline > uncheck "Show me the best tweets first"

Does that not work?

<comment><USER10> I do not see that option anywhere.

<comment><USER9> On web it's under Account > Content (the bottom section).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > We measure a model's quality in two ways. First, we evaluate the model using > a well-defined accuracy metric we compute during model training. This > measure tells us how well the model performs its task – specifically, giving > engaging Tweets a high score.

Very curious to know what this metric would be. Maybe some combination of likes, retweets, and viewing time? Or maybe including a general liking term (i.e. liking a person's tweet gives a small boost to all their tweets).

<comment><USER12> Anecdotal experience with twitter's timeline suggests it's viewing time - <USER2> that they haven't considered that people are just spending more time finding the tweets they're looking for...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's amazing how many bright minds are paid to sort lists in a particular way.

<comment><USER14> s/sort lists in a particular way/find the particular way to sort lists//.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Please don't do this, Twitter. This is a step away from growth. There are so many problems you should fix. A ranked feed will ruin the quality of content and it will become another mindless Facebook/Instagram clone. I don't want this and I love Twitter.

<comment><USER16> Ironically, with people using its new tool to make Big Text On A Gradient Background built into the post box, Facebook is now looking more and more like Playskool Twitter.</comment></comment>


On Disliking Poetry - <AUTHOR> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n12/ben-lerner/diary <comment><USER2> This analysis of poetry is like declaring that the purpose of physics is to build perpetual motion machines and then saying we all dislike physics because it fails in this transcendent purpose.

The author trots out uncritically the entire corpus of Romantic twaddle, swathed in sufficient technical language that most poeple will feel too intimidated to challenge it. But twaddle it is.

The failure of poetry in the modern world is a result of the rejection of concrete experience as the foundational matter of poems. This has been accompanied by the abandonment of the physical rhythmicities of speech (including rhyme) as the basis of poetic structure.

There's nothing transcendent about good poetry. People are made out of meat, and we communicate by flapping peices of meat: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ)

Poetry reflects our meat-based lives, the physicality of our meat. When we abandon that, when we abandon concrete, sensual experience for floating abstraction, as the Romantics did, or for purely internal emotional states as modern confessional free verse does, we abandon the very thing that makes poetry possible and necessary: meat.

Poetry is speech, specifically speech where the rhythmical structure dominates the gramatical structure. The rhythmical structure can be strong and overt (rap, Kipling, etc) or subtle (even the best confessional free verse manages this at times, or the L A N G U A G E poets at their most surreal, although I don't have any use for their political programme.) The rhythmical structure of speech comes from the way we form sounds with meat, and nothing else.

Nor does poetry have to be about anything out of the ordinary, although it certainly can be. Poetry is, amongst other things, the literature of moments. It's a way to capture and communicate a fleeting experience. Consider:

        young girls in blue shorts
        street corner in summer rain
        light changes, they run

Way more memorable and evocative than "I saw some girls wearing blue shorts on the corner waiting for the light to change and they ran when it did 'cause there was a hard summer rain falling."

Poetry makes the mind work in useful ways, focusing on structure and meaning and meat. We are physical beings capable of abstract appreciation of the world. Poetry exists at the intersection, grounded in one, guided by the other.

What's to dislike?

<comment><USER3> > But twaddle it is.

That's a bit harsh, don't you think?

> The failure of poetry in the modern world is a result of the rejection of > concrete experience as the foundational matter of poems. This has been > accompanied by the abandonment of the physical rhythmicities of speech > (including rhyme) as the basis of poetic structure.

In "Ranking Contemporary American Poems"[1] Michael Dalvean uses natural language processing and rudimentary machine learning to prise apart the language poets use. What he finds is that professional poets tend to (among other techniques) use more concrete language than amateur poets. This is because imagery relies on concrete imagery to effectively evoke emotion. And it the emotive force that moves us. So, no, poets (proper ones) haven't, as you say, rejected concrete experience. In fact, it is one of the things that distinguishes them from rank amateurs. Secondly, what has been abandoned is not "the physical rhythmicities of speech" (metric verse?) but rigid form. That is the achievement of contemporary verse -- free-form verse or projective verse[2] or whatever you want to call it. Consider, in the same light, the flight from representation in the visual arts that swung through impressionism and rattled past abstract expressionism. Poetry followed suit, at a slower pace. It is not twaddle, it is experimentation (pardon the clumsy word) with form and it has its own "bitter logic" in its progression as Mr. Lerner explains.

Really, where poetry intersects computation is the current frontier -- Lerner does not even allude to this. There you'll find, perhaps, your meat.

[1] [http://dsh.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/1/6](http://dsh.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/1/6)

[2] [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/robert- creeley](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/robert-creeley) ("Olson and Creeley together developed the concept of "projective verse," a kind of poetry that abandoned traditional forms in favor of a freely constructed verse that took shape as the process of composing it was underway.")

<comment><USER2> I said "Romantic twaddle", not "modernist experimentation". As indicated in what I wrote, I find a number of aspects of modernism interesting and worthwhile, for much the reasons you cite.

Also, I wrote about concrete experience and you've replied by talking about concrete language. Weird.

Good modern poetry has much to recommend it, but there is also a vast amount of unstructured garbage. Unfortunately anyone who complains about the latter is assumed to hate the former even if he explicilty states--as I did--that there is much value in it. For example, someone chimed in agreeing with me and then dissed Seamus Heaney. Err...

But the Romantic theory of poetry is twaddle, and it does represent a detour that has taken almost 200 years to recover from. We're slowly getting there.

The relative value of "rigid form" (I'm not sure why "rigid" is required... it certainly isn't a characteristic of any good formal poetry at any time) is something that non-technical people have trouble understanding (you see, I'm doing the same thing you did: assuming I know something about you, and then condescending to explain things to you on the basis of that baseless assumption... irritating, isn't it?) There is a proverb that every engineer knows: "Form is liberating."

We've actually got more in common in our views than you're apparently willing to acknowledge, and have instead chosen to project onto me some fairly weird ideas rather than engaging the words I've actually written. "O no! Someone is misunderstanding me on the 'Net!" is about as useful a call to action as "someone is wrong on the 'Net" but you're clearly not an idiot, so I couldn't help but be tempted to put things right. Now all I need to do is figure out how to buy you a virtual beer with bitcoin... this sort of argument is always much better with beer.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough.

Thank you for giving me the benefit that I failed to give you.

Part of what poetry tries to do is capture experience. It does this with language. The more concrete the language the better. A perhaps unwarranted value judgement but... I stand by it... I think that contemporary poetry still does this. I really must disagree with you if you see otherwise. We may be talking at cross-purposes here.

Of course you use the word "transcendent". And "romantic". These words Lerner studiously avoids but, as you've noted, this is his thesis. I think that this central argument/position holds though. Without using poncey language -- "Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all." \-- Lerner is stating that the (primary?) aim of poetry is to put into words that which cannot be put into words. That is why to be silent is to succeed. Notice that a similar idea runs through philosophy. Apparently Wittgenstein was happiest when a student _gave up_ philosophy. Also, isn't this the same chap who said, "the limits of my language […] mean the limits of my world"? Same with the Joycean epiphany. Poetry (and poetic prose) really sings, really lifts off, when it gets us to connect in whatever way with what the words are pointing towards. But all the words can do is point! They can never be a substitute for the thing-in-itself, how can they be! Other forms of writing don't have this aim because they don't have the concision that poetry strives for. By definition almost they don't have the concision. Do you not agree?

Regarding form. I had not come across this, "Form is liberating." I agree 100%. And, I will steal it. The thing is: poetry had not even properly begun to explore the combinatorial space of forms. (Including formlessness.) What has happened is an enlarging of the space (of forms). This is why Lerner points out the irony of those who push against becoming in time part of that which they push against. I am not criticising form. I embrace and celebrate the bigger house. My nature means that I do privilege the new and that is a failing of mine. I do not reject the old, do not misunderstand me here.

Besides, I felt the piece was really well written. Written with a poet's ear.

[hashing this out over a bevvy would be most agreeable :)]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm seeing some parallels to writing software here:

"you're moved to write a poem because of some transcendent impulse... but as soon as you move from that impulse to the actual poem, the song of the infinite is compromised by the finitude of its terms. So the poem is always a record of failure. There's an 'undecidable conflict' between the poet's desire to make an alternative world and, as Grossman puts it, 'resistance to alternative making inherent in the materials of which any world must be composed'"

Or, for that matter, the desire to transcend/reshape a current market we sometimes name as the entrepreneurial impulse. Though I think poetry is a much purer form.

</comment><comment><USER5> Poetry is pretty popular. Most of it is called hip hop now, though.

<comment><USER6> Two examples that come to mind...

Grandmaster Flash's "The Message": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqky4dSGJnE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqky4dSGJnE) [http://genius.com/Grandmaster-flash-and-the-furious-five- the...](http://genius.com/Grandmaster-flash-and-the-furious-five-the-message- lyrics)

Kanye's "Jesus Walks": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYF7H_fpc-g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYF7H_fpc-g) [http://genius.com/Kanye-west-jesus-walks-lyrics](http://genius.com/Kanye- west-jesus-walks-lyrics)

Both are lyrically dense and poetic enough that the only thing really making them "music" rather than "spoken word poetry" is having a backing track.

<comment><USER7> You might also like Milo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwGwD-0OYuM&list=PL_KFGCl1le...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwGwD-0OYuM&list=PL_KFGCl1leB8YOEz9ZEvKMiRV76MvnOl-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think a poet is like a sculptor that is always forced to sculpt using Lego.

Words are a coarse medium for expressing art as their look, sound and interaction with surrounding words defines their meaning. Stray too far outside of convention and people reading your poem won't understand it. I can understand this being frustrating.

<comment><USER9> So much is possible within that convention, though. So much. The best poets (different for each of us) somehow surpass the impossibility of using language to express true humanity, and do it anyway.

<comment><USER8> Yes. I think that this makes their achievement all the more amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Never have I read more love between the lines of such an intelligent, thorough, and obtuse criticism. Nowhere will you find more humanity than the impossibility of perfection, and what is poetry but the shared search for that humanity? Imperfect as it must be.

</comment><comment><USER10> The worst aspect of most arts are critics. Programming included. All these pseudo-intellectual categories, analysis of sizes (forms) and styles, anthologies stuff like that.

BTW, for those who can read Russian, Nabokov's the Gift (Dar) is the best reading about poetry - how it is not a a mere classification of rhythms (I imagine hipster idiots, advocating well-typed pairs of words and type-checkers for poets) but an inner sudden insight from a pre-linguistic, non-verbal mind (which people call "heart") verbalized on the spot.

This is what programming is also (read On Lisp) - one express his own sudden insights by giving it a structure in terms of a programming language (and trying it till it is hot), which means it should be restricted as less as possible (this is fucking why Lisps or Smalltalk or Erlang feels so special).

Poetry is not the a mere form with some vague meaning, it is these sudden insights and some structure a poet gives to it. That is why we could enjoy Rumi without being able to read Persian.

We are excited when we found an unexpected, rare gem, a verbalization (an expression!) of what we felt ourselves, but still been unable to express (same experience with reading source code of the best (Norvig, rtm+PG, Sysoev, etc.)) The rate of gems to stuff is 20/80, so do not expect to much. Read arc.arc to understand what I mean.

Like it is with everything (at least with literature, music and programming), 95% of poetry is narcissistic or graphomanic crap, like blogs. That's why, perhaps, most of people are convinced that poetry is something which has a rithm in it.

Read Nabokov or Pamuk.

<comment><USER7> Not sure what you mean by hipster idiots in this context, although I agree with your overall point. I can explain at least one reason to write a rhythym- based poem generator [0] – the problem lends itself to some interesting code :) I'd never claim that it's a valuable tool for creating "art", but it was fun to write and because of it I've thought a lot more about what "art" is and isn't. And, Sussman liked it!

> We are excited when we found an unexpected, rare gem, a verbalization (an > expression!) of what we felt ourselves, but still been unable to express > (same experience with reading source code of the best (Norvig, rtm+PG, > Sysoev, etc.))

Really well written; the frisson of recognizing one's own experience described by someone else is both validating and comforting.

[0]: [https://github.com/peterldowns/bard](https://github.com/peterldowns/bard)

<comment><USER10> I am working with tourists in Himalaya, so I am biased against hipsters (role- playing governed behavior).

For a poet it is a process of verbalization of non-verbal insights (side- effects of conditioning), for a reader it is recognition of ones own insights from someone else's verbalizations. Types are irrelevant here.)</comment></comment></comment>


Why Wedding Photographers Prices are "Wack" - <AUTHOR> http://www.petapixel.com/2012/01/26/why-wedding-photographers-prices-are-wack/

<comment><AUTHOR> If she wants something cheap, then I might as well offer her to take picture with my phone. EIGHT FULL MEGAPIXELS.

</comment><comment><USER2> That's great that she can get that much, and that's neat that she can explain her expenses.

Her expenses mean absolutely nothing to her customers. This amounts to a negotiating tactic, nothing more.

There are two options for the industry - add a lot of value, or race to the lowest price.

Some photographers are not adding a lot of value, and they're also not racing to the lowest price.

I can buy an $800 car. We all know what kind of car I'm getting.

Finding an $800 photographer for an 8 hour day - that's $100 an hour - shouldn't be so hard. And we all know what kind of photos they'll be taking.

That you provide an excellent service is great. That you have customers who love you is great. I don't begrudge you that. We spent a similar amount for our photographer, and it was worth it. I don't question your value.

You are not McDonalds. This bride clearly wants McDonalds. Your explanation of what a sous chef is, why a sommelier costs so much, and how you are insulted, is clueless at best, and condescending at worst.

I'm extremely insulted by your petapixel post and hope this sheds a little light on why we find the lack of competition in the photography market to be appalling. And I'd like fries with that.</comment>