Ask HN: Idea for Next Generation of Social Networking   - <AUTHOR> Don't wish to oversell myself or my set of ideas, but I am a potential CEO with a reasonably well-developed set of ideas regarding what could be a generational advancement in online community building and a history of successful project management in the non-profit sector. I also moonlight as a web developer; these days mostly coding in Ruby on Rails.
I conceive of this as primarily a project to increase the aggregate intelligence of the world, not to maximize personal profit, and am looking for a person with similar passions and more solid technical background to serve as CTO.
One might summarize this idea as a new 'usenet' utilizing proprietary group modelling and related human-driven data filtering.
I will provide:
(1) The idea (slightly obfuscated, sorry, but I can't tell everybody everything) (2) Theoretical foundation
(3) A little bit about me
Feel free to skip anything that doesn't interest you.
Essential Idea:
(1) Model existing social behaviors, including data dissemination, retrieval and especially human layer of information filtering (also mechanical, but the human aspect tends to be neglected. See mechanical turk as an example of a hopeful trend that is not entirely capitalized).
(2) Determine inefficiencies in currently existing patterns.
(3) Create an online interface (a bit like Hacker News, but not exactly a competitor) that provides an evolving patterns and allows for maximal flexibility in group creation (recognizing also the human element in information filtration).
(1) and (2) are essentially already completed and available for review by interested parties, although I do not believe there is a single optimal pattern and will likely need new iterations. (3) is what needs to be completed.
Theoretical Foundations (grossly over-simplified) :
Modern Western philosophy is presaged on a strong idea of the individual, which is also the foundation of the Western social order (notably democracy), and influences into how we view optimal organization on the web. 'Asian' societies generally have a stronger sense of group identity. While there are serious deficiencies in the Asian model, one strength is that it recognizes the centrality of groups in forming human identity, and the necessity of some group identification for continued societal existence.
Traditionally the primary identification was some kinship group. Over time various types of culture developed, usually as groupings within a kinship group. While certain patterns of behavior can develop among any group, culture can only be developed and sustained in certain situations.
What are some pre-conditions for the development of culture? First, there must be some degree of leisure, or time for thinking not distracted by other concerns. Second, there must be some form of interaction and exchange of ideas. Thirdly, these forms of interaction must not be clogged by 'haters,' 'trolls,' or other forms of deviants, which means usually the erection of some sort of borders or moderation.
I will not summarize Shirky's helpful essays  (or book) here but he provides additional examples of web communities which illustrate the problems and potentialities stated in the above paragraph.
A little about me:
Studied computer science at local colleges when I was 13-17, then went to a prestigious college and did mostly humanities (religion and philosophy) then lived in China, worked in a bunch of different industries including government and managed the early-stage development of a non-profit and my own small consulting business. I then lived in Japan and Germany (and learned both languages).  I am now 26 and plan to come back to the States soon to work on this project. I also have various connections that could facilitate the raising of venture capital.
I've run this by technical professionals more skilled than I, some of who frequent HN and I hope will contribute to this discussion, and there seems to be nothing technically infusible. It is simply a new way of looking at old problems, taking into account the human aspect.
While I will be participating in the discussion here, persons are welcome to contact me at joel.anselm.dietz @ google's email service. <comment><USER2> Honestly, I read through this a few times and I have no idea what in the hell it does. Maybe I just missed the ball, but I have no idea what your product would do. Buzzwords galore.

<comment><USER3> Second above, plus - you are a web developer coding in RoR, you've studied comp sci, you went to a prestigious college and have numerous connections to venture capital, yet you are looking for a more solid CTO? Something just doesn't compute :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm spread a bit too thin to be a technical genius, like some others I've met here and there. Besides, I like the people side of the business and would like to spend more time on that end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your project sounds interesting, though it's difficult to see what the actual deliverable will be. It looks like you just want to model social behavior through innovative ways. I would suggest that you do some practical stuff first, and forget about "revolutionizing" the industry. Perhaps your time will be best spent doing some innovative data mining of a social network already in place. For example, you could easily do some creative things with Twitter's public feed as many people have shown recently. Second, maybe you want to build another portal like Friendfeed whereby you could incorporate social status and try to extract some meaningful data.

This sounds like a fun data mining project, but I wouldn't stray too far off course if I were you. Instead of making diagrams and presentations, just get right to work by modeling simple streams of data.

For the record, I do pattern analysis on materials, but I'm interested in applying the same techniques for other social projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> You hit at the fundamental difference between my approach and others, which may make mine better or worse (certainly worse if nothing ever comes of it, and 'revolutionary' if it does and it is a fundamentally new way of looking at things with some utility).

Here is an example of why I would start with modeling the human side (essentially sociological) instead of simply modeling the data. Suppose what we want to model and improve is an academic journal. What will our data be? Submissions to the journal? Articles published by the journal? Should corrected articles re-submitted also be included?

What we have is essentially data coming to a node (a human editor) and then sorted by viability, then sent back to the originators when a certain criteron is reached (an article that needs corrections in order to be published), the item is returned in better form, and then various items are collated and released as a journal.

The essential work here is the human side, and I know of no possible way to capture the necessary _qualitative_ aspect merely by analyzing the data stream. For instance, is there anything we can say simply from analyzing Twitter feeds without attaching labels assigning some worth? We can talk only about quantity, but not quality. And if we talk about quality (e.g. we create a point system and posts that Pg or Chad Fowler reads are worth twice as many points in our system) then we are introducing a human element, that may in some sense be arbitrary, or even if it is not arbitrary it does not follow necessarily from the our purely mathematical modeling structure.

Admittedly in my case study, the academic journal, we also haven't discussed anything about the type of journal and whether or not there is quality of content. That is because I desire to provide a platform to allow different groups of people to assign their own value to things they find important, even if I might not find it especially so myself (i.e. post-modern literary criticism).

<comment><USER4> I understand the issue you are trying to get at, but I am still unclear as to the actual deliverable.

It seems like your idea is a mashup of a human-powered element (think Amazon's Mechanical Turk, ChaCha, or Mahalo Answers) and a computer generated part (think Google or Artificial Neural Networks/Machine Learning). With the computer generated part, you can assign weights or penalties to establish some "worth" (e.g in my Twitter example, you can assign more points to Robert Scoble's tweets than mine). You can also try to simulate context. (e.g If a person said they "bought fish" did they actually buy fish or did they misspell "Phish"?)

So here is my next question. Which specific problem are you trying to address? Being as clear as possible will help you move to the next step. No one on Hacker News is looking to steal ideas...I think we all have some "revolutionary" project we are currently working on. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Clay Shirky describes that online communities have a natural life cycle in which they start off small and vibrant and then dissipate as they grow larger. The perpetual problem is to achieve a persistent high signal to noise ratio.

I suggest that a platform which allows persons to independently form communities around common interests (when then could generate their own news feed or journal) will allow new group formation and allow each group to control what is or is not an acceptable signal to noise ratio in their group.

For instance, 'Nuclear Physicist News' might not resemble 'Hacker News,' might not resemble 'Recent findings in Biotechnology.' But all of those groups should be able to exist, fail, and be formed again on a single platform.

What makes the platform part important is that my single identity carries through all of the different groups I participate in, allowing me to participate in (and read) more groups, more easily.

In some ways this might be better described as a protocol than a platform and it could theoretically exist in either form. Part of the reason I want to communicate with persons more technically gifted than I is about whether or not this would exist better distributed over many servers with only a single unified protocol (..ML) or like facebook/your-favorite-social-networking-site- here.

Here's a restatement of the problem: social networking sites do not currently facilitate high level discussion.

<comment><USER4> Ok so you want to develop some "high quality" social network then. Why not just create one on Ning? Ning allows you to create your own social network.

And so what if you create this "high quality" social network. What is the added-value that someone cannot get through personal messaging, forums, e-mail, and current social networks.

You also talked about integrating your own identity. How is this different than MyspaceID, Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, and Open ID? These services allow you to be interconnected so that your reputation and presence among other social networks is constant.

Lastly, I believe we're going to see a transformation of social networks. I agree with that part of your initial statement. But this transformation will arise from a gap in a practical need. You have not fully convinced me that there is a gap.

So just to give you some brief, unsolicited advice, I would say that you should look for problems that you encounter in your daily life, and create some tool to fix them. If its important enough, then your userbase will follow. I would also research all the different types of social networks and how they currently function, especially from a technical point of view.

You tend to throw a lot of technical jargon around. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you have to be clear about your terminology. For example, when you mention "signal-to-noise" ratio, I think gaussian noise and signal processing. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have also compiled a list of all currently existing social networks and their shortcomings, but did not include that in this post.

The problems of the academic, related to journal publication, etc., are problems I face in my everyday life.

I suspect if there is not interest here I will eventually address them from inside an academic institution.

In any case, thanks for the exchange. I'm willing to share more details privately, even if all they do is spur someone else to create an improvement in current methods for information distribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you really should create a prototype and test out some of these ideas. You know Rails; you don't need a super technical genius to test whether this'll be somewhat useful for people. And you'll find out a lot more than you would by simply thinking about the problem.

If your prototype is interesting, you'll probably have no trouble finding talented technical people to help you. If it isn't, you've got more information to redesign it. Right now, it's really difficult to communicate just what you're getting at. Don't tell us, show us.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you can filter out trolls, sign me up.

 _I conceive of this as primarily a project to increase the aggregate intelligence of the world_

I can introduce you to a very valuable network of participants for that who have already been talking to me about forming new online communities. If you'd like to seed your project with a bunch of people who meet that goal, contact me through my HN profile.

</comment><comment><USER7> Talk to robg. I think his venture and yours might have some overlap and he might be open to your ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We had a discussion about a similar topic a year or so ago.</comment></comment>


Ashely Madison Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/ashley-madison-hackers-speak-out-nobody-was-watching

<comment><USER2> There has been a lot of talk about the "Delete All" paid option being a scam because they did not remove billing information. This Q&A, however, seems to indicate that the billing information was retrieved from a third party processing company. While the hack exposed the password, the non-deleted information was not stored on AM servers.

<comment><AUTHOR> If they couldn't deliver, they really shouldn't have charged money for it.

<comment><USER2> They did deliver. They deleted everything on their servers related to that customer that they claim to. It seems unrealistic to expect them to purge third party services as well.

The wording on the $19 service [1] is very clear to the extent of the services they are providing, specifically:

* Removal of profile from search results

* Removal of profile from site

* Removal of messages sent and received

* Removal of messages from recipients mailbox including winks and gifts

* Removal of site usage history and personally identifiable information from the site

* Removal of photos

While the second to last bullet is a bit ambiguous and you could make an argument that billing information is personally identifiable, this specific indication of "from the site" implies (to me at least) that it is referring to Ashley Madison servers and not third party credit card processors.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/YXc0RfU.png](http://i.imgur.com/YXc0RfU.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Everyone was better off trawling local places. At least then if your SO found out, it wasn't something that anyone with time a enough space and bandwidth could find out about, too.

</comment><comment><USER4>
      new leak's magnet link:magnet:?xt=urn:btih:F12FDBAB77E1253AF25A2778D0726A982ABBAC8F&dn=noel.biderman.mail.7z&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3a80&tr=udp%3a%2f%2fopen.demonii.com%3a1337&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3a6969&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3a6969

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure why you posted this? Anyway keep in mind that the 13GB email dump seems corrupted, so it won't do you any good to download it.

<comment><USER4> because the third leak was mentioned in the article

>Minutes ago, the hackers also posted a third data dump.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure it's relevant, but it seems like a bad thing to be encouraging the dissemination of private data.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Server At Peak X86 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/09/15/server-peak-x86/ <comment><USER3> This comments thread is off-track. This is not yet another article about how ARM is poised to eat Intel's lunch, and that cites (worthless) Geekbench scores to make that claim. No, this was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan, who actually knows hardware.

His basic argument, at least on my quick reading, is that right now, Intel's Xeon margins are insane -- some 50% -- and x86's market share is north of 99% in servers. Furthermore, Intel, Microsoft, and Red Hat are sucking up all of the margin in the stack, and leaving everyone else to fight for scraps. (We've seen this "Intel eats all the margin" movie before in the PC space, and I wrote about it here: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/17/how-intel-missed-the- iphon...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/17/how-intel-missed-the-iphone- revolution/))

So, these three things -- an x86 monoculture, crazy high margins, and three companies sucking up all the profits from the rest of the stack -- are both individually and collectively unsustainable. Morgan seems to be arguing that a rational market is going to take care of this arrangement one way or the other. By virtue of its margins and market dominance, Xeon has a massive target on its back, and there is a ton of ingenuity gunning for it. So at some point things will change.

So no, this isn't yet another in a near-decade long string of "ARM vs. x86 as told by Geekbench, with a side of OMG Apple" articles. He's actually pointing out that, technical considerations aside, there is a set of market conditions currently prevailing that looks unsustainable on its face, and at some point, like when pressure builds up along a fault line and then gives way, there will be a big shift.

<comment><USER4> > arguing that a rational market is going to take care of this arrangement one > way or the other

That's a silly argument. If the market would be rational and it would take care of this we wouldn't have landed in this situation in the first place.

The reality is more that we're more in a winner takes it all situation.

<comment><USER5> Drop the "rational" to avoid that baggage, and the argument is certainly valid.

It could be a winner takes all if it was a huge technical hurdle to move many x86-based systems to ARM and back. But it's likely never been easier, and a lot of software already works on x86 and ARM. Unless x86 can consistently perform better for less power consumption and price, there will be competition.

<comment><USER6> There's aren't any big architectural reasons that x86 would need to be less power efficient. Intel already had a go at that side but very few people bought the low power server chips (Avoton etc). AMD also hasn't had much luck with low power server chips (see SeaMicro etc).

One big reason is that halving the CPU power consumption doesn't nearly halve the server power consumption, but it often goes pretty close to halving the system performance. And CPUs are pretty efficient at idling so you're really only paying for the power consumption when there is work to be done - <USER2> paying for larger fleet of reserve servers. And of course scaling to more but slower servers means a lot of expensive software/admin complexity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I disagree with the article author and at the end of the super long article, so does IDC. For the big workloads, x86 systems are going to be on top for the next years. Yes ARM is making strides, but it will take time before the move into data centers at any significant rate.

The trend lines from the IDC charts show continued growth, 5-6% growth is pretty decent as you remember manufacturing costs continue to drop.

<comment><USER8> The Apple A10 is trouncing lower-end Intel kit already. We may be looking at a future of client-side computing dominated by Apple; if they can get their shit in one sock cloud-wise they'll make dents in the server space too. Think Amazon AWS, but running Mac OS X server and fully integrated with OS X. Easy peasy deployment of your Rails app straight from your MBP dev box right to the cloud, with almost zero config management required.

<comment><USER9> Why would I as a buyer trust Apple in the server space? They've already withdrawn once and they cannot even keep pace at the workstation level (Mac Pro).

<comment><AUTHOR> Twice

Before the Xserve there was the Apple Network Server [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Network_Server](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Network_Server)

<comment><USER9> I supposed we can A/UX to the list. So, its A/UX -> AIX -> OS X Server. I do admit an iOS Server would be an interesting product. I guess it would be all containers all the time.

<comment><USER10> (The chronology of Apple *nix is correct, but they are very different products. A/UX for 68k. AIX for PowerPC is an IBM OS. And OS X from NextStep.)

<comment><USER9> Yep, which I think is the point of trusting Apple in the server segment. That they are all different adds to the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google has been quoted as stating if they could get a 20 percent power/performance advantage buy switching to IBM Power they would do so, even if it were only for a single generation.

My question is, wouldn't this be possible with ARM?

<comment><USER12> I don't think so. AFAIK, ARM performs well in computation/watt on the low end of computation. But you have to get above a certain performance level to amortize the power overhead of the rest of the computer (motherboard, ram, etc).

But that's mostly a guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So why does AMD bet on Zen instead of creating their next ARM SoC? The A1100 is pretty good on paper except the CPU but they released it two years too late and the availability still isn't great.

<comment><USER14> According to the article, x86 constitutes 99.3% of the market. I think AMD would rather have a small piece of the 99.3% rather than a large piece of the 0.7%, even if that 0.7% grows dramatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> When this article talks about "Unix systems" as something seperate from X86, what does that mean? Itanium and... SPARC? (Assuming POWER comes under "IBM"?)

<comment><USER16> Power is a completely separate architecture and product line from "IBM mainframes" (i.e. System z), and "traditional" (i.e. AIX) IBM Power Systems products are generally considered "Unix systems".

(Disclaimer: I work for IBM Power Systems, opinions my own)

<comment><USER15> I'm not in the space at all, so from outside "Unix systems" seems like a very arbitrary label - since I'm assuming most of the X86 machines are running Linux or BSD which are very much Unix, I guess the "systems" part is where there is some specific definition

<comment><USER16> "Unix systems" when referred to in this space generally means _proprietary_ Unixes (which are all Open Group certified) - Solaris, AIX, etc etc.

<comment><USER15> Solaris also runs on x86 though, so a "Unix system" means what? Software licenses? Hardware sold with a software license? But that would also include x86 systems?

<comment><USER17> It's really a historical label at this point but to a first approximation it means that it didn't start on commodity PC hardware, even if decades later it now runs on x86 boxes.

The ancient history is that mainframes (mostly IBM) were so expensive (upfront + license/support) that many places jumped onto minicomputers starting in the 1960s and that process repeated itself a generation later as hardware continued to get cheaper and (later) Unix went from a curiosity to something a lot of people wanted and was generally both considerably cheaper and — especially appealing – meant you at least in theory weren't just locking yourself into yet another proprietary single-vendor platform.

For awhile, that meant companies like Sun, HP, DEC, Data General, SGI, etc. would sell you their hardware running something Unix-like and this was popular enough that even IBM started selling AIX to avoid losing customers entirely. At some point this was termed "Open Systems Unix" since the theory was that you could mix vendors fairly well, although anyone who worked in that period could tell you that the definition of "Unix" or "C" had significant variations across vendors.

As x86 improved, that cycle repeated again. Unlike its predecessors the 80386 was 32-bit and had hardware memory management and permissions so it was much easier to maintain the Unix model there, and the sky-rocketing volume meant other hardware platforms found it increasingly hard to remain competitive on performance or cost. One by one they either gave up and ported to x86, left the market, or tried to specialize in some niche like SGI's various high- performance computing products with exotic interconnects, graphics hardware, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is a reasonable level of bug reports for a web application? - <AUTHOR> We are a two developer team who just release a web application to solve an issue in an existing online community. It was a rush job (we only had 3 weeks to get it done), but we pulled it off and we are fairly happy with the result. The issue starts with the fact that we expected about 300 users total, and quickly surpassed 1000 in 24 hours. This has easily become the largest application either of us have worked on (in terms of unique visitors per day).
So here is the crux of the issue. What is an acceptable ratio of bug reports to users? We are getting some weird reports that we can't reproduce (and I strongly suspect is a result of the unexpected speed of scale), so where is the line between we can write it off as "A billion proverbial monkeys at a billion proverbial typewriters will manage to find an edge case. It happens", versus "This is a chronic issue we need to prioritize".
We would love the input from someone who has experienced this before, as this is entirely new ground for the both of us. <comment><USER2> I think you are going about this incorrectly. Do not prioritize on commonality as your user count remains small. Instead prioritize on severity then carefully examine each defect as they come in. You are either willing to work the defect or you aren't. There is no harm in marking an issue as _out of scope_ or _won 't fix_. Just be clear and direct with your users that you have plans for this application and those plans only move in one direction.

<comment><USER3> This is where it can be helpful to have some folks on your team whose primary focus is user satisfaction (and/or sales). They can help guide issue prioritization in a way that code-oriented team members may not.

Sometimes it can be frustrating to ignore a bunch of easy-to-fix issues, but often those issues have the lowest impact on the perceived quality of the software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you have a centralized logging system in place e.g. Kibana to monitor bugs? This was a major turning point for my team. Without any visibility/stats it's hard to know what is even happening and thus what an "acceptable" rate of bugs might be.</comment>


QAnon looms behind nationwide rallies and viral SavetheChildren hashtags - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/qanon-looms-behind-nationwide-rallies-viral-hashtags-n1237722 <comment><USER2> Hopefully those protesters won't start throwing bricks through windows and setting fires to businesses.</comment>


Tell HN: .guru domains don't work on iOS Safari. Is the TLD system broken? - <AUTHOR> If you are using Safari on iOS then when you visit a .guru domain you will be sent to Google instead of the target domain.
Try visiting these Apple owned .guru domains from Safari on iOS:
apple.guru
iphone.guru
ipad.guru
mac.guru <comment><USER2> You might have to type [http://](http://) in front, but those domains you listed may not have been set up with a www server? Mobile safari works fine to open for example [http://nic.guru/](http://nic.guru/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't seem very practical to expect new user to have to type in [http://](http://)

Do people still type in full web addresses starting with http? I thought that ended years ago when browser started to be smarter.

<comment><USER3> If typing [http://](http://) before the url works, then obviously the TLD system isn't broken. It's unclear that anything is broken, but if it's anything, it would be the browser, not the domain system. The browser isn't treating the url as a url.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now this is the reason Mozilla built the Public Suffix List. [https://publicsuffix.org/list/](https://publicsuffix.org/list/)

</comment><comment><USER5> That's much more likely to be a specific DNS-server error. Try swapping out the DNS servers for one that's known to already work with the .guru TLD like Google's public DNS servers.

(184.108.40.206 & 220.127.116.11)

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think this is specific to iOS, I can't access "apple.guru" in opera on os x.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder what other TLDs are broken on Opera and Safari? A broken domain name system is a fairly big issue isn't it? How come Icann is taking our money for TLDs that don't work?

<comment><USER7> Nothing is broken, those don't work because the domains point nowhere. You'll notice that donuts.guru works, for example.

Edit: I was wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not in Safari in iOS it doesn't. Just put in donuts.guru on its own and it goes to Google.

<comment><USER8> Seems like it only breaks on iOS 7. Works on 6 and 8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I doubt Safari would be foolish enough to not just redirect to google based on your DNS server telling them the domain does not exist. That would mean locally configured domains wouldn't work.

Check your DNS settings please, before making these kinds of statements.

</comment><comment><USER10> Obligatory post to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

</comment><comment><USER11> test.guru worked in yosemite Safari without [http://](http://) Anyone install iOS 8 yet? Oh wait.. did I just break NDA... ooooops.

<comment><AUTHOR> There doesn't seem to be a problem in Safari OSX, even with older versions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> iOS just knows .guru is a stupid TLD and acts appropriately.

<comment><USER13> lol iOS rebelling against its maker. apple.guru</comment></comment>


MaxMind trademark trolling – they own "geoip"? - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/PdJyosv <comment><USER2> [http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=tm&qt=sno&reel...](http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=tm&qt=sno&reel=&frame=&sno=78229697)

Not trolling. That's their IP. I wouldn't fight that fight.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah I see :(

Doesn't everyone say "geoip" though? / how else would we describe such a service? I thought there was something against trademarking commonly used words that describe generic things.

No plans to fight it. But it seems brutal... considering geoip.app is free/open-source/non-commercial, links to their site for those interested in licensing more accurate data, and "geoip" seems to be in use elsewhere (e.g. geoip.com).

<comment><USER2> Everyone says "Google" to mean "do an internet search". It's still a registered trademark and you can't promote your own product using that name.

The term "IP address geolocation" is common and descriptive enough, and isn't trademarked. The mark "GeoIP" is MaxMind's trademark for their particular IP geolocation service, and isn't something you can use just because you're familiar with the term, regardless of if the application is free/open source/whatever.

While you likely mean well, MaxMind has a legal and practical obligation to defend their mark, which means issuing C&Ds for people who are using it without a license to do so.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree from an ethical point of view and will change the domain.

> Everyone says "Google" to mean "do an internet search". It's still a > registered trademark and you can't promote your own product using that name.

You're right, but there are counterexamples. [I'm not a lawyer but...] There is such a thing as a "generic trademark" where former trademarks like "Escalator", "Thermos", "Hovercraft", "Videotape", "Teleprompter", "Aspirin" etc. have been "genericized".

Apparently Google won their lawsuit because "Google" is a very distinctive word.

For me "geoip" felt/sounded generic and I see a lot of geolocation plugins and services using the term in their names, descriptions, etc.

<comment><USER3> Very selective counter examples.

The list of 'nope, still protected' is longer, including Kleenex and bubble wrap.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_generici...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks)

And contrary to Wikipedia, I think you'll find only Thermos gets away with Thermos.

The term geoip is certainly theirs. While we offered competing techniques built into our service, they were the first I heard use that. Then everyone subscribed their DB and called it that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I was MaxMind, I'd also be filing an ICANN trademark claim to takeover control of that domain from you.

<comment><USER5> It takes longer time through ICANN. Ceast and desist is the cheaper and faster way.

<comment><USER4> Cease and desist does not result in control of GEOIP.APP, but is absolutely useful as a stopgap while the ICANN paperwork goes through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They do in fact own the term GeoIP ([http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi- bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=Ge...](http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi- bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=Geoip&Search_Code=TALL&PID=4cQjd5vOeUpvKwEgAdAu6nVdwEEFD&SEQ=20190102160730&CNT=25&HIST=1)), so it looks like renaming and migrating to a new domain name is your best option.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems pretty legit to me, ie. not simply "trolling" ... (IANAL)

</comment><comment><USER8> Time for pioeg.com? This is a good idea, but I believe this service is also one of the things they charge for, and they do own the rights. Sorry mate :(

</comment><comment><USER9> Hate to say it, but I wouldn't really consider this trolling.

</comment><comment><USER10> time to register geographicIP.app</comment>


Ask HN: Help DreamCoin - <AUTHOR> Hey, my name's Aaron. I created DreamCoin to help people make money off of their ideas, blogs, or whatever else they can put into writing. You can find it here: https://dreamco.in
I'm aware that the site confuses people and could be vastly improved upon. That's where you come in. I'm looking for people who'd like to either join my team or provide contract work to improve the design. I can pay in small amounts, but I cannot offer salary or wages.
As an amateur developer / designer with no business experience, creating the platform from scratch took a long time and hasn't gone very far. Please contact me at email@example.com with any suggestions or help you can offer.
Originally, DreamCoin was for individual, anonymous ideas. Users pay the price to view an idea, and if they like it, the price goes up by 1. If they dislike it, the price goes down by 1. So, you're paying to view content based on popularity. I now see this as a potential blogging platform where users make money off of quality writing.
I've had many people explain to me why this will never work. People don't like paying for individual pieces of content. They'd rather donate via Patreon or a crowd-funded method. Preferably, they'd pay nothing, and the webmaster would use tracking / advertising to make money. That's fine. I believe people will pay for content if the platform is set up correctly and doesn't violate user privacy. Amazon requires you to purchase a book before you can read it. Why can't the same go for ideas / blogs?
I've been at this for a long time now, and I'm not interested in the arguments for why DreamCoin can't work. If you believe it can and want to join me in taking it further, please let me know.
Thanks, Aaron Hatch <comment><USER2> Here's a link to an article about a decentralized social network were posts are up voted with coins(steemit):

[https://cointelegraph.com/news/steemit-or-synereo- comparing-...](https://cointelegraph.com/news/steemit-or-synereo-comparing- decentralized-social-networks)

</comment><comment><USER2> I had a "similar" idea around a trading platform.

[http://www.1millioncoins.com/faq.html](http://www.1millioncoins.com/faq.html)

<comment><USER2> a small niche market where I thought might take off is interview questions.</comment></comment>


Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers - <AUTHOR> https://forrestheller.com/Apollo-11-Computer-vs-USB-C-chargers.html <comment><USER2> I'd like to also see an article examining these computing power attributes on the piece of garbage embedded computer on the front of the gas pumps where the lag between registering every keypress is like 800ms, and every screen redraw takes about 2000ms. It takes me an extra 60 seconds to get gas now thanks to how slow these things are, and it is nearly universal despite whether they appear to be 20 year old or new devices.

> Car Wash Y/N? (wait) > Loyalty (wait) > Fuel Rewards (wait) > Alt ID (wait) > > 0005550000 (wait for the numbers to appear on screen.

I bet they run Java.

<comment><USER3> You forgot: Would you like a receipt? (wait)

It makes no sense at all. As soon as you input payment it should output gas. There's really no need for buttons or a screen at all (well, maybe except for entering a zip). If they really have to show all that stuff, it can come after I have my gas.

Note: languages aren't slow, it's the programs that are slow.

<comment><USER4> As a non-US citizen: What's the deal with entering ZIP codes in some gas stations in the US? Tax reasons?

<comment><USER5> From what I understand it is for fraud protection. If you steal a credit card you likely do not know what the billing zip code is.

According to this blog[0] they also collect the data for "marketing purposes".

[0]:[https://blogs.creditcards.com/2014/05/zip-codes-gas- station-...](https://blogs.creditcards.com/2014/05/zip-codes-gas-station-pay- pump-fraud.php)

<comment><USER6> It's also extremely annoying when driving in the states as a Canadian, since our postal codes don't follow the same format. Canadian postal codes are six character alphanumeric strings with alternating letters and numbers, so you can't enter them on the keypad.

The trick, which isn't obvious, is that you're supposed to drop the letters from your postal code, leaving three digits, and then append two zeros to the end. For example: K9Z 2P7 -> 92700.

In Canada we don't have to deal with this, since pretty much all our pumps have supported EMV chip cards for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, and the firmware for the USB-C wasn't sewn by hand into the plug (core rope memory). They did this for reliability purposes. It's amazing the craftsmanship that went into much of that rocket by people of all walks of life.

[http://www.righto.com/2019/07/software-woven-into-wire- core-...](http://www.righto.com/2019/07/software-woven-into-wire-core-rope- and.html)

Here's another great article on the hand-welds on the F1. In only a short amount of time we've outsourced so much of these production tasks to other software/machines. But it's really amazing to contemplate and appreciate what a work of human hands Apollo was.

[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/f-1-moon- rocket](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/f-1-moon-rocket)

It's hard for me to grasp it, but I can't help but think it beautiful when I meditate on all the _people_ involved in the moon landing, each person playing a small part in a very complex symphony.

<comment><USER8> There is a scene in From Here to the Moon that takes place after the deaths of the Apollo 1 crew. Frank Borman is testifying before a congressional panel and, in talking about Ed White, he said "At the plant, Ed saw a group of men off to the side so he went over to talk to them, which never happens. It turned out, they were the men who made the tools that build the spacecraft that will take us to the moon". It wasn't just the scientists, engineers, and technicians. Everyone who had a role in the program felt a sense of responsibility and pride in what they did to take these astronauts to the moon and bring them back. It was an amazing time, considering all that was happening at the same time. I feel very fortunate to have been able to witness the whole thing as a kid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome! The media loves to say your pocketwatch is more powerful than X form $date. This is a fun technical rundown.

I think at some point we have to start talking about how far from optimized we are [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MenuetOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MenuetOS) comes to mind when talking about what can be done in fasm. Are we ever going to get compilers to the point where we can squash things down to that size and efficiency? Is this yet another thing that AI can promise to solve someday?

<comment><USER10> Speaking of fun technical rundowns, I've idly wondered:

\- Approximately which year's average desktop PC is equivalent to a current Raspberry Pi?

\- What year's _worldwide_ computing power is equivalent to a current Raspberry Pi?

I'm sure folks can come up with other comparisons to make. I know it's not very useful to the world, but it's fun to think of just how much astonishing compute power we have these days.

<comment><USER11> For the first question, probably somewhere in the mid-2000s. Maybe early Core microarchitecture.

<comment><USER12> I'll give you a mid-2000s Celeron, before core, except 4 of them because it's a quad core, and with a few times more RAM since you can get pis with up to 4GB now. I had a 1.8Ghz single-core celeron with 512MB of RAM in 2005, upgraded to 3.0GHz with 768MB by 2006, then leaped to a Q6600/4GB in 2007. Not sure how my Radeon 9200 and later X1600 would've compared to the Pi GPU though.

This guy puts the rpi 4's GPU at 8 GFLOPS:

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=244519](https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=244519)

Looks like the X1600 was around 6 GFLOPS:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Radeon_X1000_series)

<comment><USER13> You could do dual socket on Socket370, don't know about quads though

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I note that the Google charger has much lower specs than the others. This is what I would expect from them. I worked for a company that was excited about getting them as a customer for our data processing services. We thought (at least I assume management had high hopes) "wow, Google, they must have tons of data and they will pay us tons of money to deal with it". Nope, they optimized and filtered it to the point where they weren't sending us even 1% of what other customers were. Since they were being charged based on volume.

<comment><USER15> One is a phone charger, the second is a power bank, the third is a charger for 2 laptops, the fourth is a spacecraft navigation system.

Now, if you'll calculate clock speed per W you'll see that Google charger easly beats the Huawei and the Anker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yeah modern microcontrollers are probably less efficiently used than they could be, but the AGC essentially crashed twice during the lunar landing because it didn't have enough compute available.

<comment><USER17> The real fun with the AGC on landing happened on Apollo 14, with a flipped bit in the abort landing flag. Percussive maintenance temporarily flipped the bit back, giving enough time for ground control to develop a hack. Didn't they just ignore the warnings on Apollo 11? And I think it was non synced timing references rather than strictly resource availability that got them on 11

<comment><USER18> The docking (like find your way back to the mothership radar) was still turned on, so the CPU was receiving the data and having to process it.

The CPU was throwing an I'm overloaded signal, but dealing with it, as the process priority put docking radar as less priority than the landing sequence.

So the CPU was complaining but still doing it's job.

All this is from memory :P

<comment><USER17> Yes, just looked it up.

I was (partially) wrong about the un-synced frequency though. The synchro's for the docking radar ran from a different power circuit than the AGC, and whilst they were frequency locked they weren't in phase; resulting in timings getting thrown off and the priority issues.

Edit: Superb deep dive on AGC in Ars from last week [https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/a-deep-dive-into- the...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/a-deep-dive-into-the-apollo- guidance-computer-and-the-hack-that-saved-apollo-14/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> And despite the fact that a wall charger has more compute power than the Saturn V, we can't actually go to the moon today.

We've actually lost the ability to go. No one understands how the engines on the Saturn V work anymore. It would take years to tear them apart and analyze them, and most of the original engineers are dead.

And the guidance systems would have to be built back up from scratch.

Kind of sad if you think about it.

<comment><USER20> We could easily go to the moon. It's just a completely useless exercise to do so, unless you can find a way to taunt China into another round of the space race.

The scientific case for the moon was always weak, and most anything they could come up with has been done. Just look at the useless lets-grow-salad-in-space- oh-look-its-just-salad timesinks the ISS has been busying themselves with.

So, in a way we've become much smarter. And SpaceX, a commercial outfit with both solid financials, a good track record on safety, and rather unlimited ambition is probably the most exciting thing happening since the first moon landing.

<comment><USER21> > useless lets-grow-salad-in-space-oh-look-its-just-salad timesinks

This is called basic research. It's geared towards building greater knowledge of a study area without specific concerns towards application. That's how science works. We don't just fund the stuff that's immediately profitable (though things are shifting that way).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sure, you could fly to the moon with 4 USB-C chargers. But how would you charge your phone en route?

<comment><USER23> 5 USB-C chargers

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is brilliant and hilarious, but, as a person that cares about this I honestly have no idea what to do. Fighting software waste feels like getting in a fistfight with the ocean or something. I could write everything in C or assembly, I don't even think that notion is _crazy_ , but my client's want javascript. Not that it's even javascripts fault, or any particular languages fault, I just don't know how you convince anyone that maaayybee we could actually take advantage of the hardware in front of us instead of just adding extra waste every 18 months.

<comment><USER17> As we're in a closed energy loop we're going to have to address this, sooner rather than later.

Every starry eyed AI/ML piece has me thinking, yes but where's the power going to come from? And where's the power on top to encrypt all this?

And quantum computing? Super-cooling at scale? Aye right pal.

The elegance of the AGC and it's approach to computing could provide a good starting point to a solution out of our mess.

to quote from a 2004 paper by Don Eyles, one of the AGC programmers:

"When Hal Laning designed the Executive and Waitlist system in the mid 1960's, he made it up from whole cloth with no examples to guide him. The design is still valid today. The allocation of functions among a sensible number of asynchronous processes, under control of a rate- and priority-driven preemptive executive, still represents the state of the art in real-time GN&C computers for spacecraft."

[https://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html](https://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> One of the most important things that is left out of most computing narratives is that the early space programs had a tremendous amount of stuff pre- computed, i.e. cached and memoized through the hard work of mathematicians and physicists back on Earth. It is not like these days we don't have to run those numbers, just that our computers taken over most of what used to be done by hand. Noting the amount of human computing manpower taken in conjunction with the guidance system would give a much clearer picture.

<comment><USER26> Interesting... I wonder what part of those pre-computed numbers is actually now safer because instead of relying on dynamic inputs from sensors(which we have seen, can break, iceover , installed the wrong way around etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It would be interesting to also compare the power consumption of the embedded ARM processor in USB-C chargers with the power consumption of AGC (Apollo 11 guidance computer).

</comment><comment><USER28> Wow. I'm a vintage computer enthusiast, specifically Atari, and my beloved Atari 800xl computers only have a 1.79MHz clock speed.

I'll never cease to be amazed by technology. I was born in 1985 and our first computer in the house (aside from an Atari 260 and NES) was a machine in 1995 although my computer usage began in 1990 with Apple II variants. My first portable (Game Boy aside) ran Windows CE around 1998ish and my first remotely 'smart' phone was a Treo 650 about 14 years ago. I still get plenty of value out of 8-bit Atari computers yet the USB charger sitting on my desk I'll discard without a thought if it breaks and it has a clock speed 5.5x that of my beloved Atari 800xl computers but the 800xl did come with 64k of memory from the factory so at least there is that, ha.

Just looking at how far the technology has come from 1979 (800xl release date) to 2002 is mind boggling. Had you described an Android or iOS phone to me in 1995 I'd have asked "are you writing a science fiction novel?" and now I have 5 of them I use on a daily basis (multiple accounts on a freemium game) and 2 that I carry on my person. It's crazy and wonderful and terrifying and even a little unbelievable.

<comment><USER28> *to 2020 is mind boggling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I find it a bit a bit scary that a microcontroller controls charger voltage. There might be a risk of power glitches or bugs causing output voltages which destroy devices.

<comment><USER30> I remember there being a guy who reviewed a lot of usb-c cables for compliance (NathanK) having a video on how non-compliant cables can wreck devices:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjeZB12985c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjeZB12985c)

Maybe that's an example of what you mean?

<comment><USER31> The spreadsheet by NathanK is here:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vnpEXfo2HCGADdd9G2x9...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vnpEXfo2HCGADdd9G2x9dMDWqENiY2kgBJUu29f_TX8/pubhtml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> And that's nothing. Wait for AI in power sockets! For now, they only have simple processors in USB-C charger, but soon there will be more intelligence in there, than you can imagine! :-)

<comment><USER33> I think this is the thing we'll be looking back on like this.

AI in EVERYTHING. because it'll be so cheap in 20 years.

Like maybe those useless automatic taps or hand dryers will finally actually know if hands are under them properly because they'll have the equivalent of a modern day supercomputer of AI power trying to figure it out.

<comment><USER34> Maybe. 20 years ago Moore's Law was in effect. We've become accustomed to "it'll be so cheap in 20 years" because, from 1947 to 2010, transistors dropped in price by a factor of two every 2 years, while getting faster starting in 1975 due to Dennard scaling. Roughly, for ten thousand transistors or so, the prices (in inflation-adjusted US dollars) and response times varied very roughly as follows:

1950: $1'048'576 (1 μs)

1960: $32'768 (100 ns)

1970: $1024 (100 ns)

1980: $32 (20 ns)

1990: $1 (3 ns)

2000: $0.033 (0.5 ns)

2010: $0.001 (0.2 ns)

2020: $0.0005 (0.1 ns)

This is pretty inaccurate, but close enough to explain my point, which is that most of the humans have lived their entire lives and their parents' entire lives in this Moore's-Law regime, and it's coming to an end. But their cultural expectations, formed by three human generations of Moore's Law, have not yet adjusted; that will take another generation.

But who knows? Maybe some other similar exponential economic trend will come along and make AI cheap. But it isn't going to happen just by virtue of Moore's Law the way it would have in the 1980s or 1990s.

<comment><USER33> 20 years is a long time to work some stuff out though.

I think it's a bill gates quote (badly paraphrased probably) - "people overestimate what can be achieved in a year and underestimate why can be done in a decade."

So 2 decades ought to be something well outside our current expectations.

I hope it will be at least!

<comment><USER34> Imagine being in 1925 and predicting what the future would be like in 1945, now that the Great War was over so that nobody would even think of starting another major war. You might predict cities built almost entirely underground with kilometer-high skyscrapers [http://www.popsci.com/archive- viewer?id=YScDAAAAMBAJ&pg=40](http://www.popsci.com/archive- viewer?id=YScDAAAAMBAJ&pg=40) [https://futurelapse.blogspot.com/2015/05/underground- living-...](https://futurelapse.blogspot.com/2015/05/underground-living-in- city-of-tomorrow.html) since skyscrapers had been rising dramatically in height. Pneumatic tube systems would probably make most deliveries [https://www.fastcompany.com/3049647/what-the-city-of-the- fut...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3049647/what-the-city-of-the-future- looked-like-in-1925) since they were already in service in large cities, and it was clear that cities would get denser and denser. Since Television was already being demonstrated, you might imagine doctors diagnosing patients over the radio waves [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/telemedicine- predicte...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/telemedicine-predicted- in-1925-124140942/) using Vidicon tubes that made the house calls for them, along with a Teledactyl that transmitted haptic information to allow doctors to feel the patients; moreover, you could watch theatrical performances from far away. Maybe you'd predict that in 20 years abstract art would be even more influential than it was in 1925, and that the US might institute some kind of social security scheme, and perhaps many more cities would have subways, and maybe more utilities would be publicly owned rather than operated for profit. Given the growth of Communist movements in the 1920s, you might predict they would expand further. Maybe you'd predict that future musical instruments would be electric.

Some of that sort of happened, though mostly later (the electric guitar dates from 1932). But think about what you'd be missing: atomic energy (the Cockcroft–Walton generator wouldn't split the lithium atom until 1932(?)). Manchukuo and the rest of World War II. Alcoholics Anonymous. Mechanical refrigerators. Widespread washing machines and consequently women's liberation. _The Little Prince_. The jake walk. The Long March and Communist China. Looney Tunes. Airlines. Mass nonviolent civil disobedience. Independent India. The end of the British Empire. Comic books (outside Japan). Neoprene and nylon. The end of dirigibles. Vaginoplasty. The Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Bugs Bunny. Computers and the theory of computable functions, and the death of Hilbert's decidability program. Universal censorship of mass-market films in the US under the Hays Code. Liquid-fueled rockets and ballistic and cruise missiles. The discovery of the Lascaux cave paintings. The discovery that the universe was less than 20 billion years old. The Moonies. The Great Depression. Perón. Merchandising agreements for children's characters such as Pooh. Radar. Antibiotics. Nineteen Eighty-Four. The end of the gold standard after 2500 years. Pluto. Maybe even talkies — you might have predicted in 1925 that talkies would become a mass phenomenon, but it might have been unimaginable that they would entirely displace silent film.

Maybe you would have predicted one or two of these. But nobody imagined very many of them.

So, what are the major developments you're missing over the next 20 years, which will change the world into which AI-powered hand dryers could potentially be born?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Forget AGC: Cypress CYPD4225's clock rate is higher than that of Playstation 1 (48 MHz vs 33). However, I don't see graphics specs here so there's room for growth.

<comment><USER36> Might be hard to compare since the PS1 had a custom cpu arch designed specifically for 3D graphics. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_technical_specif...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_technical_specifications)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > The CYPD4225 is definitely not rated for space. I have no idea if it would > work in space.

There lays the rub. Even today computers rated for space are relatively underpowered compared to consumer hardware. Comparing the microcontrollers used in USB-C wall warts to the AGC is like saying your car has a higher top speed than a tank. You wouldn't be wrong but you'd also be purposely ignoring some key differences in design goals.

</comment><comment><USER38> This just made me realise that these chargers are probably not running on Free Software.

Is it possible to update their firmware? I.e., is there an equivalent of an "update firmware" button anywhere? If so, Richard Stallman would not approve of using these non-free chargers. We should not even mention them, lest anyone would think it's acceptable to use them for anything.

<comment><USER39> Neither do pacemakers. God forbid RMS ever needs an arrhythmia corrected...

<comment><USER38> But is updating the firmware a normal function of pacemakers?

He makes a distinction on the update-firmware level — if the microwave has no such functionality, then he does not consider it a computer. Look for "microwave" at [http://stallman.org/stallman- computing.html](http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html):

> As for microwave ovens and other appliances, if updating software is not a > normal part of use of the device, then it is not a computer. In that case, I > think the user need not take cognizance of whether the device contains a > processor and software, or is built some other way. However, if it has an > "update firmware" button, that means installing different software is a > normal part of use, so it is a computer.

<comment><USER40> I think so. A relative has a similar device with remote monitoring, and it had to be re-swizzled when they switched services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Whenever one of my developers tells me that my phone is too slow when their app lags on my Android 4.1 phone, I tell them the specs of Apollo 11 computer and scold them for being unable to deliver a smoothly scrolling list of messages on a freaking supercomputer in my palm.

<comment><USER42> Yes because the AGC was well known for its smoothly scrolling message lists on its large high-density display.

<comment><USER43> Are you actually trying to argue that smooth scrolling is hard, and specifically because of the display size?

On the CPU side, you can figure out how to position a line of text in less than 100 instructions if you store it right. But even if you use 10 million instructions to lay out a handful of lines, you'll never have to hitch.

On the GPU side, the pre-retina A5 had a fill rate of 2 billion pixels per second, and a brand new high-DPI phone has 100-200 million pixels per second to draw at 60fps. Let alone comparing like to like. A high-end qualcomm chip from 2013-2014 would match that, and a low end phone would have half the power and half the pixels.

We are in a wonderful age of overpowered GPUs for 2D work. There are no excuses for dropped frames.

<comment><USER42> > Are you actually trying to argue that smooth scrolling is hard, and > specifically because of the display size?

What I'm arguing is that the problems have little to do with one another, and I'm guessing so do the means. That's like saying building a viaduct is easy because the pyramids exist.

<comment><USER43> It's all about quickly responding to input.

Because it's the CPU stuff that's the problem here, and that's not _fundamentally_ different. The display differences are a very separate thing and not the cause of the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> But, on its way to the Moon, how would that Cortex M0 fare against cosmic radiation? One bad bit stops the show.

The smaller are your transistors, the more they are susceptible to impact from a particle.

<comment><USER43> That particular chip, probably badly. But you can buy a rad-hardened M0 with similar specs: [https://www.voragotech.com/products/va10820](https://www.voragotech.com/products/va10820) The price is under a thousand dollars, too.

NASA's also working on a hardened A53 at ~800MHz, and you can get hardened POWER chips at similar frequencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Working a bit now on fpga I wonder whether many even light switch using fpga can be computer for open source coverage.

</comment><comment><USER46> I admit I didn't understand much of that but enjoyed reading it none the less.

I wonder about the hardware selected for say a charger, is it maybe just that the power (CPU, memory) are just a factor of that being the most cost effective choice and the power (cpu, memory) are far more than a USB charger needs?

<comment><USER38> I'd guess at one point you simply can't buy anything cheaper than 10MHz?

I'm updating my laptop; it'd probably be fully sufficient to have just 16GB DDR4 (I have just 4GB right now, and it ain't that bad), but I can get a 32GB stick for only like 110 USD, so, I might as well go for 32GB to max out the slot and not have to worry about it later on. If the price for 32GB sticks was more like $500, I'd probably not bother (although it'd arguably still be a good investment in our profession here, it's just a little more hard to justify when you know the price will come down relatively soon, and you don't quite need that much RAM in the immediate future anyways).

<comment><USER46> That's kinda what I'm assuming. As a chip maker one chip that covers like X use cases might be more powerful than a lot of them need, but it covers all those use cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> A row that compares the manufacturing cost per unit would make this table complete

</comment><comment><USER48> I seem to remember that are additional computers and a whole group of engineers and scientists on the ground to support the smaller AGS in flight. Kind of like cloud computing.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is agc more a microcontroller than a computer. Do they have programmer with idea of circuit (paralkel, device control etc) than "computing"

</comment><comment><USER49> Reading this was a lot of fun. Great effort!

</comment><comment><USER50> The ARM M0 thumb software divide takes 45 cycles or less. It is still faster than the AGC in terms of clock cycles.

</comment><comment><USER51> I cannot wait, the day my charger comes with cuda cores or tensor core and my on charger AI modulates my power.

</comment><comment><USER52> It's wild to see how far our technology has come, I enjoyed the retrospective offered here.

</comment><comment><USER53> TIL there are cpus in USB chargers. Ain't it crazy ?

</comment><comment><USER54> Super interesting article!

</comment><comment><USER55> > Program Storage Space

Solar System</comment>


Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered 'Deleted' Emails in Drugs Case - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/judge-orders-yahoo-to-explain-how-it-recovered-deleted-emails-in-drugs-case <comment><USER3> Relevant and coincidental personal anecdote: 10 years ago I caught my x-wife in an affair as she was using this same method the communicate with her lover. Her choice of email address for the shared account raised alarms on my firewall, so it was a simple matter to track to her machine. While she had gone to the similar trouble to delete all records on Yahoo (coincidentally), she had been browsing with IE which, due to some off-line setting, was cacheing locally all of the pages she had written. It was simply a matter of laying hands on her laptop and downloading all of that cache to expose the ruse.

I cannot find the article, but I believe this method of sharing access to one e-mail account to many parties was one of the comms methods employed by the 9/11 terrorists, pioneered by Columbian drug lords.

<comment><USER4> > Her choice of email address for the shared account raised alarms on my > firewall

What does that even mean?

<comment><USER5> I would assume he means it wasn't one of the big players such as Gmail or Outlook so when he saw traffic to mail.ru or whatever service it was it looked suspicious to his normal traffic profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a thought: what if 'Yahoo gives FBI snapshots' is actually parallel construction, but Yahoo are not allowed (under PATRIOT or whatever) to admit the extent of their cooperation with three letter agencies (for instance, that they hand over everything they see without requests being made). Do they have to refuse to comply with the court?

<comment><USER7> There is likely leeway for them, or the government, to address the judge in private and get this all dismissed.

Or perhaps some immunity to any results.

<comment><USER8> In that case I'm surprised the judges are permitted to ask this sort of question in public, it creates a warrant canary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The idea that Yahoo is covering for a government surveillance program is entertaining, but it hardly seems difficult to believe that they aren't actually deleting what they say they are deleting. Of course, keeping copies of everything forever in violation of their own policy is not exactly going to make law enforcement unhappy.

I suspect that yahoo and other companies haven't yet taken the issue of failing to delete data that should be deleted as seriously as that of losing data that shouldn't be deleted, but this has the potential to become a significant privacy issue.

</comment><comment><USER10> Data retention is negotiated and spelled out in detail in NDAs for contract research organizations. It's easy to delete data from servers once a project is done, but the backup tapes also have copies. You can't throw the tapes out, because the company needs them, hence there are agreements what happens to the data and tapes, and nowadays these are standard practice.

This is a solved problem in the real world, but some companies would have us think it's the Wild West, when in fact it isn't.

<comment><USER11> But an NDA can't prevent a company from turning over their backup data to the authorities when presented with a legitimate warrant from a court.

<comment><USER10> At least you know what documents are retained, and in what form, and for how long, and you can plan around that. With all these free services you can only assume the worst.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious if there will be blowback on Internet email companies if it turns out the emails were not deleted, just archived away from user's access.

<comment><USER13> If you ever see an auto-complete feature on a website, it's probable that that website is logging every keystroke. If you type "thermal detonators" into Google, but never actually click the button, it's still flagged up aboard the Imperial Command Ship.

<comment><USER14> I once read an article about facebook even reporting back to the mothership messages that you typed out but did not actually send because you changed your mind. Never forget: The website owns the window you're operating in (if there's JavaScript), not just requests you send by clicking <a> links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Aren't backups basically a guarantee that you can never ever delete anything from anyone's server? Even if you hit delete on an email/post/photo/etc. if they made a backup before then, your data will now forever live on in some vault or maybe just Amazon Glacier. I can't imagine that Yahoo would go and retroactively remove your email from their backup tapes/optical discs/offline hard drives/clay tablets that they use.

<comment><USER16> The nearest thing to a "standard" for retention of operational backups is 30-60 days. For organisations retaining backups as part of some ill-conceived archive, 7 years is typical; for organisations retaining backups under legal hold, or whose backup process is out of control, indefinite retention is not unheard of.

So while it's possible that backups mean you can never be entirely certain your deleted data will stay deleted, it's most certainly not guaranteed.

In Europe, the recently enacted General Data Protection Regulations "GDPR" which will come into force in 2018 will in theory require organisations to ensure that personal information is removed in an appropriate timeframe - <USER2> would include disposing of backups, or where data is comingled, ensuring at a granular level that data is blacklisted for restore.

It remains to be seen how practical that will be, so moving to retentions appropriate for operational restore may be the more sensible solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I could imagine drafts have much less diligent deletion policies vs sent emails. Auto-save mechanisms typically keep a long history of diffs, or whole versions.

</comment><comment><USER18> UPDATE email SET deleted = 1 WHERE uuid = '3b431dc020cc404b8bbea290e91b9865';

</comment><comment><USER19> Farm model replicated across regions backed by filers taking snapshots of the entire farm.

* my speculation _

</comment><comment><USER20> Is anything ever deleted?

<comment><USER5> If it is on a third-parties servers then _hell no_.</comment></comment>


SICP - summary of 10 months working through the entire book - <AUTHOR> http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2008/04/18/sicp-conclusion/ <comment><USER2> Great job! I'm planning on going through my entire algebra textbook this summer (Dummit and Foote; 2000+ exercises!) to finally master group, ring, field, and homology theory! So far, I've done well in the courses but still feel unprepared for the prelim exams. Wish me luck! I'll post my solutions for all to see after the marathon.

<comment><USER3> Best to post during the marathon, not after, for three reasons. One, because you're going to have downtime, and writing is a good way to make productive, yet relaxing, use of that downtime. Two, because the evidence of mastery is the ability to explain, not simply to perform. Three, because I want to read about your experiences.

<comment><USER4> "Two, because the evidence of mastery is the ability to explain, not simply to perform."

So true. I learn more by writing about things than by reading about them (of course, the former includes a lot of the latter, but it's so much more productive when you're reading towards a specific goal...and if the goal is explaining the subject clearly and entertainingly you really have to have a firm grasp of the subject). It just seems to activate my brain in ways that merely reading never quite does. Doing the exercises overcomes the passivity of reading to some degree, but writing down what you learned takes it up another notch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> By the way, this would be a good time to share your (yes, you, dear reader of this comment) experiences trekking through every exercise in a book. I assume this will be a more common experience for graduate students, but has anyone else participated in the beautiful endeavor that is simply devouring an entire text?

<comment><USER5> One of the things I would so dearly love to do - especially something in Maths. I am waiting for my startup to succeed :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know offhand why he switched from CL to Scheme? He doesn't really mention why, and I wasn't sure if it was because the book was Scheme based or because of some other issue he had with CL.

<comment><USER7> He switched back and forth between them on different sections but wrote about the initial motivation for that decision here: [http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2007/08/23/giving-plt- scheme-a-...](http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2007/08/23/giving-plt-scheme-a- try/)

<comment><USER6> Ah that explains it pretty well, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been planning to do the same with several of the courses from AdUni.org (mainly the areas where I'm weakest--math and algorithms, in particular, but more Scheme/Lisp doesn't hurt and systems knowledge is always useful). I ordered the DVDs a couple of years ago and acquired all of the recommended texts (the ones that aren't available for free online, anyway), but only got through a few of the early SICP classes before getting sidetracked by other projects. This has inspired me to dig back in. I'll copy a few of them over to my lappy and head out to the park or a coffee shop--I'll enjoy the gorgeous weather and get some studying done.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've actually just started reading this today with about the same set of goals, and so it's nice to see someone finish the thing up. I wasn't thinking about going through this as part of a long-running blog, but now that I've found this, it might not be a bad idea to do so with some other my other undergraduate review...

Speaking of which, does anyone have some good recommendations for a discrete mathematics textbook, specifically one that includes both theory (proofs) and application?

<comment><USER8> It's probably too idiosyncratic to meet your needs, but I really like Knuth's "Concrete Mathematics"

<comment><USER9> Great book, though it covers a somewhat different subset of topics than those typically considered "discrete mathematics"...

<http://www.mhhe.com/math/advmath/rosen/> ..is what we used in college; I found it hard to read in spots, but haven't really found anything overall better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Slightly off-topic, but still related to Lisp: what do you guys think of ML (as compared to Lisp, for example). I learned this in my first year at college and I like it better and better the more I work with it. It seems that Lisp is much more common, though. Any ideas why that's the case?

</comment><comment><USER11> Ha! I was going to do the exact same thing. Maybe I'll do it for TAOCP instead if I ever get around to it.

<comment><USER12> Doing every exercise in TAOCP would be....quite some achievement, to put it mildly

<comment><USER11> I meant just blogging my experience working through it.

<comment><USER8> I'd certainly read a blog that shares the experience of working through TAOCP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> very cool. makes me want to do the same.</comment>


The 'Airbnb Effect' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/oct/06/the-airbnb-effect-amsterdam-fairbnb-property-prices-communities <comment><USER2> I was recently living in Amsterdam and it's so busy with tourists I left, it's madness.

One of the biggest issues for me was foreigners talking loudly in the street all most every night at all hours, pretty much all of summer and it was still happening in September.

I don't know if this has to do with AirBNB because I only lived there for about seven months, maybe it's normal, but I suspect it may have something to do with it as we lived quite far from any hotels and in a very residential street with no late night bars.

I think Airbnb is also not handling growth well, issues with people abusing it just to get extra income and breaking what AirBNB once stood for. A lot of places I've stayed in lately have great reviews but just feel like poorly run hostels packed with other travellers and very little host interaction. This is definitely going to start to annoy neighbours and travellers.

There also seems to be a strange review culture on AirBNB, where honest reviews are becoming harder to come by and I've been guilty to easily give away five stars, I think we often review individuals and not properties leaving guilt to provide feedback over honesty, but after some of my recent experiences I'm going to make more of an effort with honest reviews and feedback.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please replace the link to the AMP version. Just change www to amp. Loads fast.

[https://amp.theguardian.com/cities/2016/oct/06/the-airbnb- ef...](https://amp.theguardian.com/cities/2016/oct/06/the-airbnb-effect- amsterdam-fairbnb-property-prices-communities)

<comment><USER4> But then you only get the mobile version...</comment></comment>


The Death of Due Process - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cr.yp.to/20160607-dueprocess.html <comment><USER2> see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11851774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11851774)</comment>


Ask HN: Best service to find a therapist? - <AUTHOR> Is there a service where you can easily find therapists that are covered by your insurance and schedule an appointment?<p>A friend needs help finding a therapist and I would love to know what would be the best way to help her. Zocdoc? <comment><USER2> [https://www.twochairs.com/](https://www.twochairs.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Unfortunately we're based in NYC.</comment></comment>


Cancer Cured? Granulocytes Treatment Worked 100 Percent In Mice - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/cancer_cured_granulocytes_treatment_worked_100_percent_in_mice_work_but_will_it_work_in_humans

<comment><USER2> I can't find the exact quote or attribution, but someone once said, as a scientist, if you can't cure cancer in mice, you may as well hang up your hat.

<comment><USER3> The quip that I heard, back in my cancer research days, was "if you have cancer, and you are a mouse, we can help you".

There was a positively awesome paper a few years back which put the problem in perspective: According to currently accepted theory, cancer is a disease which is caused by random mutations. The more cells with mutations, the greater the chance that you'll get cancer. So your cancer risk is proportional to the number of cells in your body (more candidates for mutation), to the age of those cells (more opportunities for mutagenic factors to strike the right genes in one cell or another -- this is why cancer incidence increases with age), and to the number of mutation-causing factors in your life. (Do not smoke. Seriously, quit smoking right now.)

Mice are very tiny creatures relative to humans, and they live a very short time (a three year old mouse is an old mouse). If mice had the same anti- cancer mechanisms as humans, a mouse with cancer would be vanishingly rare. As it is, it's still pretty hard to find a mouse with cancer, but it does happen -- but only because mice, who have no need for an infrastructure that will protect their cells for 70-plus years, haven't bothered to evolve the same anti-cancer mechanisms that humans have.

The upshot is that "cancer in mice" is a very different disease from "cancer in humans", so while curing cancer in mice is _suggestive_ it is never conclusive.

One way to change the nature of this problem is to transplant human cancer cells into mice. Unfortunately, this technique only solves half the problem -- the cancer cells only make up a portion of a tumor, and their environment is very important. Worse, the mice have to be immunodeficient to make a human- cancer transplant take. That makes studies like the one cited here -- which involve the cancer-fighting activity of a mouse's own immune cells -- difficult to do with human xenografts. (I actually think that such a study is _impossible_ , but I'm not a biologist so maybe there's a loophole I can't see.)

<comment><USER4> Off Topic But Important:

Could you point me to the most medically-reputable ways to quit smoking?

<comment><USER5> Read the book "the easy way to quit smoking" by Alan Carr.

The reason people don't quit (explained in the book) is that they are afraid of what will happen when they quit. There are all sorts of imagined withdrawal symptoms. The first thing to realize is that smoking isn't merely a bad habit, it is a legitimate drug addiction. Smokers are addicted to nicotine. Now, even though nicotine addiction is real, the withdrawal symptoms are ridiculously mild when compared to other drugs. When a heroin addict quits, they get the shakes, fevers, cold sweats, diarrhea, barf all over the place, can't eat anything, and even get physical goose bumps. When a smoker quits, the only thing that happens is that you want another cigarette. Nicotine actually leaves your body completely in 3 days, so the actual physical withdrawal symptoms (which are just craving cigarettes) only last a long weekend. After that, you have to deal with the behavioral issues, which is easier to do if you have some sort of cognitive framework to deal with them, which is what the book I mentioned provides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who are interested, you can sign up to be a white cell donor for this study here:

<https://www1.wfubmc.edu/LIFT/blooddonor.htm>

</comment><comment><USER7> jeez... If I had a dollar for every headline which reads "cancer cured"...</comment>


Plain-Text Offenders Hits 1000 - <AUTHOR> http://plaintextoffenders.com/post/39913712222/1000-posts

<comment><USER2> The pedantry in some of the comments have me practically smashing my head into my desk. The semantic arguments about whether the actual password storage mechanism is encrypted, encoded, etc, are wholly irrelevant.

If a web site can sent you a "I forgot my password" reminder email which includes your plaintext password then the site operator is storing the password in a plaintext-equivalent format. If the password is stored as a plaintext-equivalent then attackers can steal your plaintext password when they "own" the site.

To address the encryption pedantry: If a site is using encryption to store the password but the key to decrypt the password is available in the site's servers then, arguably, the encryption just amounts to an encoding. Symmetric encryption requires that the key be kept secret. Keeping the key on the servers means that it's not secret and means that it's not really encryption.

Edit:

I see that the discussion is heading this way so I'll head it off at the pass: I would argue that there is no reason that any site operator ever needs the plaintext of a user's password to be stored persistently for any reason. There is no valid reason passwords should be stored in a reversible manner.

(Somebody is going to bring up storing credit card numbers with symmetric encryption, too. That's a broken system and, arguably, needs to be replaced with something based on asymmetric encryption instead of "secret numbers" that we have to transmit between quasi-trusted parties.)

<comment><USER3> Granted, a lot of this discussion is pedantic.

Devil's advocate: why is it pedantry to ask for security alarms to be precise? We ask for e.g. the TSA to be precise about what it needs, should not computer security professionals be held to the same bar? Making bogus claims about a system's vulnerability (be it shoes at airports or passwords) damages the credibility of the next security alarm.

Note: I'm not defending the practice of sending passwords in the clear. But I don't think it's too much to ask for security professionals to make precise claims, when doing so is a 5-second op.

<comment><USER2> The pedantry that's irritating me is this argument about there somehow being a "safe" way to store the plaintext-equivalent version of a password (there isn't) or even that there is somehow a need to do so (there isn't).

I agree that the Plain-Text Offenders site should state this plainly.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are. <http://plaintextoffenders.com/about>

<comment><USER4> That's a nice little write-up, I think it would be great on the main page.

I didn't look for it under "About" because I'm used to that being for personal details about the project's people rather than intro or summary info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Omer here, one of the two guys behind this website. I'd like to thank the Hacker News community, who are in part the reason for our site's popularity. Thanks, everyone. Please keep spreading the word! :)

<comment><USER4> Since we have an interesting discussion going on, would you care to share a bit about the methodology?

How do you determine by external observation that a site's password handling is sufficiently bad to merit the Plain Text Offender title?

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends on the evidence the submitters send us. If it's a Forgot Password or Password Reminder (or sometimes being told what your password is by a CS rep), that's evidence enough. We also allow for Here Are Your Details emails after registration as evidence, though the probability is small that passwords are stored in plaintext/reversible encryption (but we still believe it's an offense since the password is both sent over an insecure medium and is stored on the email server).

<comment><USER5> Isn't there also the chance that they only send plain text at the time of storage? Would you still consider that a plain text offender?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. We have talked about this in the past and all of the links are in the about page: <http://plaintextoffenders.com/about>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how they can be sure that a website stores their website in plain text? Just because a website sends an email confirmation with the password doesn't mean they _store_ it in plain text. The developer could just send the email before hashing the password.

Not saying it's a good practice to send the password by email but it seems the website stretches the truth a bit.

<comment><USER7> The majority of the items on the website are password reminder emails. This is after the initial sign up, which means the do indeed store it in plain text.

<comment><USER3> Either that, or they store it in encrypted format. Encryption typically implies that _de_ cryption is possible. Encrypted text is not plain text. These terms do have real meanings.

You mean to say "the sites do not store the text in non-reversible format."

<comment><USER4> Encrypted text is equivalent to plain text to anyone who has the ability to decrypt it.

What passwords need is a secure password hashing method. It's a very special purpose sort of thing, different from ordinary hashing, encrypting, and key derivation. It's unfortunate that it doesn't have a proper name.

Neither "PBKDF2", B-"crypt", nor S-"crypt" are helping much with this terminology.

<comment><USER3> >> "Encrypted text is equivalent to plain text to anyone who has the ability to decrypt it."

This is a vastly different claim than "these websites store passwords as plaintext." There are a lot of differences in assumptions and attack vectors, etc.

It usually pays for security alarms to be precise, and this site almost goes out of its way to be imprecise (and likely inaccurate). In this case, your verbiage would work great for the site in question. Why not say these are sites that don't use "secure password hashing methods" instead of making bogus unverifiable claims?

<comment><USER8> This is an objection without much substance. The main thing that you're worried about with a plain text password is that it will be obtained by a third party.

These are sites which are sending emails with passwords in the clear. They are also storing your password near the decryption key (if any), so a single security breach can compromise many passwords. That is to say: even if the rest of their infrastructure is NSA-level paranoid, whichever server(s) are sending out these password reminder emails are prime targets.

Please do not defend this behavior.

<comment><USER3> Please read my comments: I'm not defending the sending of plaintext passwords.

But please do not defend sloppy claims of security vulnerabilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams I like the idea of this site, but found it very frustrating trying to look at the list of offending web sites.

<comment><USER9> With a little help of Python and the Tumblr API, here's a (dirty) list of the domains: <http://paste.debian.net/222440/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Mind sharing the code? :)

<comment><USER9> It's ugly because it was hacked on the (ipython) REPL, but here it is:

      import requests, re, json
      get_captions = lambda content: [post['caption'] for post in content['response']['posts'] if 'caption' in post]
      get_domains = lambda captions: map(lambda caption: re.sub('<.*?>', '', caption.split('</p>')[0]), captions)

      def process(url):
        offset = 0
        domains = []
        while True:
          resp = requests.get(url.format(offset))
          if resp.status_code == 404:
            return domains
          domains.extend(get_domains(get_captions(json.loads(resp.content))))
          offset += 20

      domains = process('http://api.tumblr.com/v2/blog/plaintextoffenders.com/posts?notes_info=true&api_key=<mykey>&offset={0}')
      with open('/tmp/domains', 'w') as dfile:
        dfile.write('\n'.join(domains))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apparently, George Mason University is still on the list... two years after I sent them multiple emails and phone calls complaining about such a big security issue. It's kind of sad that you can't even depend on educational institutions to follow the security guidelines they probably teach to hundreds of students (even if that part of their website was done by a contractor).

</comment><comment><USER11> My site would fall under this and I use two layer sha-2 512 keys with unique salts... just because I send you one email does not mean I know your password (and for that matter somehow you have to be given an initial password in a lot of systems)

<comment><USER4> Does that mean that if/when an attacker uses a SQL injection vulnerability to obtain the contents of your database, will he then have a password equivalent that allows him to login as the users?

Will it enable him to mount brute-force attacks against the users' plaintext passwords?

<comment><USER12> > Does that mean that if/when an attacker uses a SQL injection vulnerability > to obtain the contents of your database,

More pedantry: if you have a decent RDBMS like Postgres and connect to the DB always as some user A (using a Pg function with SECURITY DEFINER defined by a superuser to compare passwords with a delay, hashed or not) and use column- level permissions that disallow access to the password (or hash) column to non-superusers, they can sql inject all they want (any attempt to dump/select the password column will fail, unless they also manage to reconnect to the database as superuser).

<comment><USER2> I like RDBMS security (and I think it needs to be employed more frequently), but there's still no valid reason to ever store a plaintext (or plaintext- equivalent) password. Storing something toxic in a "safe" way doesn't make what's being stored any less toxic. The effort to create and maintain a "secure" one-off credential storage system seems like a waste given the availability of well-tested, accepted methods of credential hashing and storage.

<comment><USER12> > The effort to create and maintain a "secure" one-off credential storage > system seems like a waste given the availability of well-tested, accepted > methods of credential hashing and storage.

I disagree, because what seems safe today might be unsafe tomorrow or in 10 years. Does anyone still remember Unix versions without a shadow passwd file? I do ... But why do we use that even today when modern Linux installations use SHA variants by default?

<comment><USER4> Because 50% of typical users will choose one of the top 10,000 most-common passwords and no practical amount of work factor will save them if the hashes become known.

<comment><USER12> Consequently, DB column permissions are also worth it because they hide the hashes, while such people are not protected at all by current hashing schemes.

The Postgres function written to compare passwords/hashes can also limit the number of checks per time unit to prevent brute-forcing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How the UAE Is Succeeding in Generating Cheap Solar Energy - <AUTHOR> https://www.scienceandtechnologyresearchnews.com/how-the-uae-is-succeeding-in-generating-cheap-solar-energy/ <comment><AUTHOR> Seems like the discussed article was published in October 2018:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-018-0256-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-018-0256-3)</comment>


The tiny town behind a heartwarming 9/11 tale - <AUTHOR> https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-america/the-tiny-town-behind-a-heartwarming-9-11-tale-20190326-p517pe.html <comment><USER2> Indeed, an example of hospitality and individual kindness to bring a smile to the face of even hardened skeptics. I've been to the airport a few times, and believe it is the typical good nature of people there.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to share this great piece of writing - a story of human kindness in face of tragedy.</comment>