The 8000th Busy Beaver number eludes ZF set theory (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2725 <comment><USER2> The limit has since been pushed lower, to 1919 states: [https://github.com/sorear/metamath-turing- machines](https://github.com/sorear/metamath-turing-machines)

</comment><comment><USER3> > You'd certainly never run across such a program by chance—not even if you > had a computer the size of the observable universe, trying one random > program after another for billions of years in a "primordial soup"!

This is a remarkable claim, given that we _did_ encounter this program by random chance, and it only took about 10 billion years (the estimated age of the universe) give or take a few billion years.

<comment><USER4> We didn't encounter it by _chance_ though; we encountered it by complex goal- directed physical processes that are known to produce extremely high distictiveness-to-kolmogorov-probability outputs.

<comment><USER5> But chance 'built' the machine that built the machine that… …that built the machine that can run such complex goal-directed processes.

<comment><USER6> > But chance 'built' the machine that built the machine that…

Or perhaps this consists of (slight) evidence that favourable conditions for the evolution of intelligence are more common than we currently suspect.

<comment><USER7> IMHO Amazing: There's a boy in his room playing with his relatively large computer. He dreams up quantum mechanics and general relativity, types in the equations, clicks on the push button Big Bang, zooms forward 12 billion years of simulated time, and sees what he gets.

This was not his first try. His other efforts all ended in "Poof".

But this effort yielded life that figured out the equations! So, the equations generated life smart enough to figure out the equations.

So, the equations were both (1) general enough to generate life and (2) simple enough that the generated life could figure out the equations.

IMHO, amazing juxtaposition!

Is this set of equations essentially the only possible set of equations with both (1) and (2)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >To preempt the inevitable question in the comments section: yes, we did run these Turing machines for a while, and no, none of them had halted after a day or so. But before you interpret that as evidence in favor of Goldbach, Riemann, and the consistency of ZFC, you should probably know that a Turing machine to test whether all perfect squares are less than 5, produced using Laconic, needed to run for more than an hour before it found the first counterexample (namely, 32=9) and halted. Laconic Turing machines are optimized only for the number of states, not for speed, to put it mildly.

Does anyone know of any speed-optimized tests of ZFC currently running? I'd expect that they're not using Turing machines. . .

<comment><USER9> That'd make for a bad-ass proof of work.

<comment><USER10> How would you create an arbitrary hard version of the problem? Or scale its hardness?

<comment><USER11> Shh, coins !

<comment><USER9> Well 1 coin. If you are lucky. Unspendable.

<comment><USER12> The coins in Bitcoin's genesis block are also unspendable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _It's a perfectly well-defined integer function, and yet once you fix the axioms of mathematics, only finitely many values of the function can ever be proved, even in principle._

Statements like this make me suspicious that one day we will redefine the axioms of mathematics so that such a function is no longer considered "perfectly well-designed". Just feels like it will lead to paradox, like the set of all sets which do not contain themselves. I am not a professional mathematician though ;-)

<comment><USER14> Well, with Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, such behavior appears to be an unavoidable property of any mathematical or computational system that can do anything of note. We may or may not be able to build systems where such properties are further removed from the 'practical' aspects... although such work would necessarily build upon the work in the linked post, which is finding just how far removed it is in the current system.

<comment><USER15> Not quite "anything of note" it has to be able to do arithmetic. There are very simple systems that are useful but not powerful enough for Gödel's trick and so we think those would be safe.

<comment><USER16> Geometry, for example.

<comment><USER17> If your axioms of Geometry allow statements about the length of line segments, it's probably possible to implement integer arithmetic.

<comment><USER18> Eudidean geometry is decidable.

[https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/90393/why- euclidean...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/90393/why-euclidean- geometry-cannot-be-proved-incomplete-by-gödels-incompleteness-the)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I implemented Busy Beaver the other day. Here's the code and nice looking graphs:

[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/busy-beaver/](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/busy- beaver/)

<comment><USER20> "The other day" in 2009? :-)

Why did you say that the 6th busy beaver number "shall never be known"? The best refinement of the formal proof by Aaronson's student puts the 1919th value absolutely out of reach (per a link from HN user panic), but that's a ways away from 6...

I know some authors, I think including Martin Gardner and maybe Donald Knuth, have said that they don't necessarily expect humanity to establish the 6th busy beaver number with current mathematical methods, but "shall never be found" seems a bit too strong to me.

<comment><USER21> Impossible to know in principle is different from impossible to know in the physical universe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dude wrote his own language which compiles to an intermediate language, then Turing machines.

He then managed to test it on a simple statement about square numbers.

Sounds unimaginably complex.

How many people could help you write unit tests for such a thing?

<comment><USER23> Sounds pretty straightforward. This is a normal way of working in functional languages: you write your business logic in a high-level representation (aka an "embedded DSL") and a succession of interpreters that interpret slightly higher-level representations into slightly lower-level representations, until you get down to one that you can implement directly. It's a nice structure for testing because you can test each interpreter separately on each of its instructions and then the composition behaviour is guaranteed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > As I stressed there, if you're in a biggest-number-naming contest, and you > write "BB(10000)," you'll destroy any opponent—however otherwise > mathematically literate they are—who's innocent of computability theory. For > BB(n) grows faster than any computable sequence of integers: indeed, if it > didn't, then one could use that fact to solve the halting problem, > contradicting Turing's theorem.

I don't get this. You write "BB(10000)" and they write "BB(10000)+1". Why don't they win?

Yes, under the hypothesis they are innocent of computability theory. That just means they have no idea what "BB(10000)" means, but all they need to know for the biggest-number-naming-contest is that (1) it is a number, and (2) adding 1 to any number produces a bigger number.

I think that even little kids figure out #2 and will use it when confronted with a number they do not understand in such a contest. You might be able to challenge them on #1 and if they are young they might not realize that if their number is disqualified for not being a number then so is your number.

Or are we assuming you had the foresight to specify in the rules that players can only use numbers that they can personally explain, thus allowing you to use BB(10000) because of your familiarity with computability theory, but forbidding them from doing so because they only know it is something that you claim represents a big number?

<comment><USER25> I think what the author is trying to get across is that BB(10000) would beat any large number generated through "conventional" means.

From the article: > BB(5) ≥ 47,176,870 > BB(23) > Graham's number[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number)

<comment><USER26> How about BB(BB(10000))? I would call that conventional means, well-defined notation, etc. And I can keep going in this direction, creating ever larger numbers. (In fact, if space permits, I could define this sequence and then take the BB(10000)th element of this sequence.)

<comment><USER27> Of course you can go up the hierarchy, but BBⁿ(10000) is not "generated through conventional means" unless you take BB(10000) as given. And the point was that you're not given that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > if you're in a biggest-number-naming contest, and you write "BB(10000)," > you'll destroy any opponent—however otherwise mathematically literate they > are—who's innocent of computability theory. For BB(n) grows faster than any > computable sequence of integers

So is BB(10000) computable or no? If not, does "greater than" still have meaning?

<comment><USER15> The Busy Beaver _function_ BB() is non-computable. Computability is a property functions have. BB(10000) is a number, although we don't and never will know which one. It doesn't mean anything to ask whether particular numbers are "computable".

<comment><USER28> Oh, I see, I think. So for the sake of argument BB(10000) could be, like, 5. But there's no way for us to know that for sure because _BB_ is non-computable above a certain N. 5 itself remains just a number. Takes a bit of the drama out of the topic.

(And while "Aha: BB(10000) is NOT 5", one could make some function BBOBB(N) := BB(N)/BB(N-1), and _maybe_ BBOBB(N) for whatever reason _is_ 5 for _some_ large N, but is not computable and thus can't be proven so. Or something like that. Which also takes some of the drama away).

<comment><USER20> > Oh, I see, I think. So for the sake of argument BB(10000) could be, like, 5. > But there's no way for us to know that for sure because BB is non-computable > above a certain N. 5 itself remains just a number. Takes a bit of the drama > out of the topic.

Sure, although BB(3) is already larger than 5 and every BB number is _much_ larger than the previous one, so the specific estimate of 5 is probably going to be more of an understatement than almost anything anyone has ever said. :-)

> (And while "Aha: BB(10000) is NOT 5", one could make some function BBOBB(N) > := BB(N)/BB(N-1), and maybe BBOBB(N) for whatever reason is 5 for some large > N, but is not computable and thus can't be proven so. Or something like > that. Which also takes some of the drama away).

BBOBB(N) also grows faster than any computable function, and for N≥4, BB(N+1)>BB(N)². So also it's not going to be 5 for any large N.

<comment><USER28> Well so BBOBBSQUARED or whatever. The point being that it's conceivable to define a simple function that is not computable yet has a simple result.

Though really that's what (computable.bb)(n) already is, in a far more interesting fashion. So really, never mind this.

<comment><USER20> I'm not quite sure where you're going with this. The BB numbers are definitely regular integers in the same way that twelve or a googol is, but the uncomputability and fast growth of the function tend to "infect" other transformations and related functions, so that it also becomes very hard to say specific things about them.

<comment><USER28> Yeah I don't really know either. Something like if you name a number by saying BB(10000), but it's not computable, then have you actually named a number? But really that's just a boring question of how you referee the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Vaguely related, I implemented Busy Beavers in C#. It also has some support for automated proofs (i.e. making it run exponentially faster). It's open source at [https://github.com/nerai/Nibbler](https://github.com/nerai/Nibbler)

</comment><comment><USER30> It's a minor shame that they named their new machine Z. There's already a virtual machine called Z - the one used to run Zork. Imagine if you got the two mixed up! That could make for some very confusing adventuring and/or mathematics indeed.

<comment><USER31> If you mixed those up, the probability of being eaten by a grue is very high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I find this article hard to understand since there is so much about this topic space (set theory, computational complexity, etc) that I don't know! How do I get to place there I can whiz through this kinda stuff?

Any recommendations for books or youtube videos?

</comment><comment><USER33> If you changed the question to something like "process X uses a tape no longer than all the atoms in the universe and will terminate before the heat death of the universe" then it becomes finite, so ZF set theory can handle it fine in principle, via simulation.

So it seems like this paper is about a very small Turing machine, and so seems very concrete, but it's also about very long-running behaviors that are likely to be indistinguishable from an infinite loop in practice, so it avoids any practical result?

</comment><comment><USER34> What's the smallest known busy beaver with this property?

<comment><USER35> The one described in Scott's next post [0] is the current champion, I think, coming in at 1919 states and halting iff ZFC is inconsistent.

[0] [https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2741](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2741)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> (2016) but still a great analysis.

The site is slow to load, probably from traffic, but it explicitly blocks the Internet Archive. Who does that?

      User-agent: ia_archiver
      Disallow: /

<comment><USER37> Scott has had some, shall we say, _controversial_ posts in the past. I'd guess that he's hoping that if he ever posts something and then regrets it and retracts it a minute later, he might actually be able to remove it without it staying up forever.

At least, that's the only thing I could guess :/

<comment><USER38> What were those controversial posts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The title is misleading in the sense that the particular number depends on the model of TMs (one- or two-way infinite? what alphabet? is a left-move from the 0th cell a no-op or a halt? etc.)

The author kind of acknowledges this when he says: `Theoretical computer scientists might object that this is "merely a question of constants."'. But then he brushes that aside with some irrelevant non-sequitur about the origin of life in our universe.

It's like if you found a zero-day exploit in Windows, typed up an implementation in QBasic, printed that out on size A4 paper (one-sided, double-spaced), and then held a press conference that "80 pages of code suffices to hijack Windows"

<comment><USER40> He also includes this paragraph, which gives some motivation for why should should care about this formalism in particular:

> Some people might wonder "why Turing machines," as opposed to a more > reasonable programming language like C or Python. Well, first of all, we > needed a language that could address an unlimited amount of memory. Also, > the BB function is traditionally defined in terms of Turing machines. But > the most important issue is that we wanted there to be no suspicion > whatsoever that our choice of programming language was artificially helping > to make our machine small. And hopefully everyone can agree that one-tape, > two-symbol Turing machines aren't designed for _anyone's_ convenience!

<comment><USER41> A fun fact that may appear surprising at first is somewhat implicit in this last paragraph: C is not Turing-complete!

The reason is precisely that C _cannot_ "address an unlimited amount of memory", even if an unlimited amount were available. For more information, see:

[https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/60965/is-c- actually-t...](https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/60965/is-c-actually- turing-complete)

This is in contrast to languages such as Lisp and Prolog: Conceptually, they can reason about arbitrarily large structures such as lists and terms, and can faithfully model any Turing machine.

<comment><USER42> C can allocate memory whose address isn't taken in the form of new stack frames. Local variables whose address is never taken as a pointer are not constrained to have an address which fits into a pointer.

That, by itself, though gets us only as far as Push Down Automaton (PDA), not Universal Turing Machine.

If we regard the stack as the machine's tape, the problem is that the tape gets erased when the machine rewinds (terminations of scopes obliterate local variables).

The C language also describes an I/O facility: streams. Streams have no inherent bound on their length. If the functions `fgetpos` and `fsetpos` are not used, but only relative positioning, then the _stdio_ stream gives us a tape that is infinite, in terms of language semantics.

<comment><USER41> This is all true, and a good summary of the situation. These points are also explained in more detail in the post I linked to.

If we use streams as an oracle, then we can represent an unbounded tape, and C together with such streams let us model any Turing machine. However, this is not sufficient to prove that C is Turing-complete: To show that (in this context), one has to express also the semantics of such streams _within_ C! It is at this point that the mentioned limitation manifests itself with this approach.

<comment><USER42> How is it not within C? FILE * Streams are defined by the C language. When you write a byte into a file, and there is no external meddling, you can read the same byte back. A stream is just a language-defined dynamic data structure which retains the last value that was stored into it, like a list or hash table.

C also has declarations and for loops. If you use them to build your Universal Turing Machine, why doesn't the same objection apply to those features? I mean: "but you're not expressing declarations or for loops _in_ C, you're just invoking these ready-made feature by their convenient, ready-made syntax!"

<comment><USER41> These are all good points. However, there are now assumptions that do not follow from the C standard, such that you can read the same byte back from a file after writing it. As the post I linked to mentions, you can indeed model an unbounded tape if you assume the existence of streams with such strong properties and rely on their semantics in your solution.

This assumes facilities that are not prescribed by the C standard though, such as a data structure whose semantics cannot be expressed in C in general. This is a rather striking difference to other constructs such as declarations and for loops: If pressed, we could express their semantics within C while relying exclusively on features that are prescribed by the standard.

<comment><USER42> C99, 7.19.2 Streams, ¶3: _Data read in from a binary stream shall compare equal to the data that were earlier written out to that stream, under the same implementation. Such a stream may, however, have an implementation-defined number of null characters appended to the end of the stream._

<comment><USER41> Again a very good point! The key assumption that breaks down in general, that is, unless you assume an unbounded storage system, is that the data can be written _at all_. As also the post I linked to states: C together with an unbounded storage system is definitely Turing-complete!

How to specify such a system with C remains unsolved though, unless you assume its existence and availability via streams in the first place. This is in contrast to the other languages I mentioned, where you can specify the semantics of an unbounded storage system via built-in mechanisms and data structures of these languages.

<comment><USER42> > _unless you assume its existence and availability via streams in the first > place_

That's given by a conforming, hosted implementation of ISO C (the usual kind). You seem to have been writing about freestanding implementations. We are then severely restricted; there might not be a _malloc_.

C99 4. Conformance ¶6: "The two forms of _conforming implementation_ are hosted and freestanding. A _conforming hosted implementation_ shall accept any strictly conforming program. A _conforming freestanding implementation_ shall accept any strictly conforming program that does not use complex types and in which the use of the features specified in the library clause (clause 7) is confined to the contents of the standard headers <float.h>, <iso646.h>, <limits.h>, <stdarg.h>, <stdbool.h>, <stddef.h>, and <stdint.h>."

If we are talking hosted, then <stdio.h> streams have to be present as a required feature.

> _you can specify the semantics of an unbounded storage system via built-in > mechanisms and data structures of these languages._

Which language states that programs must be successfully processed by an implementation, regardless of the resources that they require? The next _cons_ call in your Lisp image could fail. That's no different from a stream-related resource problem.

The thought experiment behind "can this programming language express Turing computation" requires us to imagine, _for all languages_ , that the resource constraints don't exist. The question is whether there are some limitations in the language semantics which cannot be thus hand-waved away. Freestanding C (without streams) has those limitations in the abstract semantics; hosted C doesn't. The abstract semantics of streams is available, and if we imagine that to be free of platform-related resource limitation, then we are in the same league as the other languages that we have imagined to be free of platform-related resource limitations.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook becoming big friend of small businesses - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-smallbiz27-2009oct27,0,7371262.story?track=rss

<comment><USER2> I get it, but I think there needs to be a more clearly defined portal in Facebook that is specifically for business and commerce. While its current state is great for connecting with the public (consumers), I think as more businesses continue to sign up for facebook, they need a portal to talk directly to one another.</comment>


15-Inch MacBook Pro Battery Recall Program - <AUTHOR> https://support.apple.com/15-inch-macbook-pro-battery-recall <comment><USER3> 1-2 weeks for the service is brutal and effectively means a lot of batteries will not be replaced.

You'd really need a loaner for that, and to spend some extra time to set it up (and later to clear it out and return it).

I think they need to figure out how to turn these things around a lot faster at least in the great majority of cases.

<comment><USER4> I had my keyboard replaced a few months ago on my MBP--it sounds like a similar process since they replaced my battery, too.

It was going to be like a week to make an Apple Store appointment. I was able to walk into a local Mac shop on Apple's list of official service centers. At that time they sent it to the same offsite shops for service and they said it would take 1-2weeks. I asked about a loaner or if Apple had any sort of program since I need something in the meantime (even with different specs). I know Apple has a 14day return policy on new hardware, but I hate to abuse that. That local Mac shop was able to work something out with me with some refurbs they had on hand, but I don't think their supervisor was happy about it.

I got my computer back 5 days later. Since then, I've heard theres been a push to do more of these kinds of repairs in store to decrease the turnaround time by a lot.

A lot of this has to do with the original design. Old cars had oil filters you could take off with your hand, then you needed a special tool, then a stick thing with a strap, then you needed to take something off before you can use that tool. Apple keyboards used to lift up to expose the RAM, the batteries could be removed by sliding a tab (this was when the battery life was only a few hours and the life of the battery was like 200 cycles). Personally, I was much happier when maintenance was somewhere between that and what we have now.

<comment><USER5> I get your point but I've never seen anything to support your oil filter claim. My 2010 BMW has a cartridge style oil filter which _should_ be removable by hand. My dad's 1948 Oldsmobile also has a cartridge style oil filter but it requires a wrench to remove the bolt holding it together. Both the BMW and the Oldsmobile put the filter in an easily accessible place under the hood.

In between we had canister style filters (like on my old Toyota) which may or may not require tools to remove depending on the incompetence of your mechanic. I've never seen an oil filter that needed to be installed so tight you need a tool.

<comment><USER4> I don't think the increased difficulty in changing the oil is malicious intent. Just much less space under the hood. I'm not a big car guy, but for every car I've seen it has been recommended to hand-tighten, but you often need a tool to reach an awkwardly placed oil filter or loosen it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      The serial number you entered may be eligible for this
      program. Please choose one of the service options below.

      Choose one of the service options below to have your
      battery replaced. In all cases, your device will be
      sent to an Apple Repair Center for service. Your MacBook Pro
      will be examined prior to any service to verify that it is
      eligible for this program. Service may take 1-2 weeks.

It doesn't even tell me if my computer is actually affected, just to lose my work computer for up to two weeks, when it might not even be eligible for replacement.

<comment><USER4> I feel like that's the standard language they've used on these pages previously. I imagine that's just room for them to deny you in case you had swapped out the battery yourself or otherwise disqualified yourself. But I'd love to hear back from others. I'm sure talking to someone at Apple could also clarify.

1-2 weeks sucks even if they had an option for a loaner (which they tend not to)...especially for "pro" equipment.

Also, I tend not to trust repair shops in general. I backup and often wipe my equipment before handing it over. This also means I don't have to hand over passwords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is possibly what triggered it - MBP in flames: [https://twitter.com/whitepanda/status/1133847982317723648](https://twitter.com/whitepanda/status/1133847982317723648)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Customer safety is always Apple's top priority, and we have voluntarily > decided to replace affected batteries, free of charge.

Cool!

> Service may take 1-2 weeks.

Wait, what?

<comment><USER8> If you live in the US, Apple has a no questions asked 14 day return policy. When my computer goes in for service I just buy one, restore my machine from time machine onto it, and then return it.

Works great.

<comment><USER9> This is the sort of abusive bad behavior that kills things like LL Bean's once-awesome return policy.

<comment><USER10> There are people who have been told to do exactly this by Apple's own staff, according to a quick search on Twitter.

[https://twitter.com/arno_app/status/1056943680249061383](https://twitter.com/arno_app/status/1056943680249061383)

[https://twitter.com/dogslime/status/966026523579994114](https://twitter.com/dogslime/status/966026523579994114)

[https://twitter.com/caseyhelbling/status/1113486373191704576](https://twitter.com/caseyhelbling/status/1113486373191704576)

[https://twitter.com/FatBodyPolitics/status/95158147758154547...](https://twitter.com/FatBodyPolitics/status/951581477581545473)

<comment><USER9> With tens of thousands of retail workers involved, that's hardly surprising that some would suggest the technique.

That doesn't change the fact that these sorts of abuses of a return policy cost everyone else money, and risk getting the policy shortened/restricted for all.

<comment><USER11> Agreed, if your MacBook is critical to your job, shouldn't you have Apple Care or some sort of insurance policy to ensure you get a timely replacement? Relying on Apple's goodwill seems like risky business.

<comment><USER12> I have AppleCare+ and my keyboard replacement required the store to send it in. Makes no difference.

<comment><USER9> Being in their "Joint Venture" business program does, though.

[https://www.apple.com/retail/business/jointventure/terms.htm...](https://www.apple.com/retail/business/jointventure/terms.html)

> Equipment Loaner Service. If the issue with your Mac Computer requires us to > keep it for more than twenty‑four (24) hours, you will be provided the > option of borrowing a similar Apple product from our pool of loaner products > ("Loaner") based on availability at your local Apple Retail Store. Apple is > not obliged to provide a Loaner that is the same as, or of equivalent or > better functionality or appearance to your Mac Computer; nor does Apple make > any representation that a specific software program is or will be installed > on your Loaner. Please see below for additional terms and conditions > relating to this Equipment Loaner Service.

<comment><USER13> Joint Venture is $500/year, IIRC.

<comment><USER11> Sure beats an idle software developer.

<comment><USER13> I agree; I have it and I don't even write software full time (and have 2 other laptops). Its main advantage to me is that it lets me cut the line for getting service appointments in-store.

<comment><USER14> How did you even find out about its existence to begin with?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seriously? Nobody points out the obvious "don't fucking glue batteries into laptops it's a stupid idea?" Instead everyone complains about the long processing times? That time should have been the time it takes the clerk to reach under the counter for your new battery pack!

<comment><USER16> Even when you can swap a battery out in 5 minutes you may have a long processing time. I had to wait over 4 weeks for Dell to get me a replacement battery this year for a similar issue because battery supply itself was constrained.

<comment><USER17> At least you can still use your computer while you wait for the replacement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The UX on that site is horrible. I put in my serial number and a bunch of red text appears.

> The serial number you entered is not eligible under this program

Is that supposed to be a bad thing? Why is that red? Would it be happy green text if I needed to stop using my laptop right now and send it in?

<comment><USER19> Valid point, but you would probably get a lot of people showing up to the apple store believing they needed a replacement. Because the text was green (or just not red) and no one really reads anything.

And then they'd be really pissed off customers who would really believe that the website response changed since the first time they checked it.

At least I've had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of those kinds of interactions (not in Apple stores but in software support in an earlier life).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Related: Here's last year's 13-inch MacBook Pro (non Touch Bar) Battery Replacement Program:

[https://www.apple.com/support/13inch-macbookpro-battery- repl...](https://www.apple.com/support/13inch-macbookpro-battery-replacement/)

 _The program covers affected MacBook Pro models for 5 years after the first retail sale of the unit._

<comment><USER21> To be precise: only computers manufactured between October 2016 and October 2017 are affected. I think that apart from the now standard keyboard replacement program no MacBook made since 2018 has a replacement program yet.

<comment><USER22> And only specific serial numbers, so presumably they've identified the exact batches of batteries that were involved?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Honestly the worst thing about it is that you have to manually check to see if your battery is affected. A proactive email might be better than telling people to enter their serial on a site to check.

<comment><USER24> I can't imagine Apple, a champion of privacy, wants to keep a mapping of serial number to user emails. Even if harmless or if it already exists, it might taint Apple with a creepy vibe.

<comment><USER25> My iCloud account shows all my devices

<comment><USER26> iCloud ≠ email. I have an iCloud account with a non-functioning e-mail address.

<comment><USER27> LOL, you're one step away from writing a cautionary Medium post.

<comment><USER28> I believe you can set up an iCloud account with just a phone number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interestingly if you've had your keyboard serviced it looks like they replaced the battery already.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, it's all one piece. I had my battery replaced a few months ago and it came with a new keyboard (basically, the entire body except the removable door on the bottom.

They also threw in a new monitor section for kicks. I was pretty happy with that.

<comment><USER30> Yep, it's why they're so expensive to repair. Everything is basically a single piece, so if a $2 part goes out you replace basically the entire system. Sounds economical, and consumer friendly!

<comment><USER31> What a terrible waste. All this just so they can brag about how thin they are for a couple of minutes during a keynote while customers suffer the consequences for many years after.

I remember the time time when a key became defective on my 2013 MacBook Air. I brought it to an Apple store and they replaced the problematic key and sent me on my way in 5 minutes.

<comment><USER22> A lot of it is also the structural rigidity and cooling.

That said I suspect it is more cost effective and _fast_ for them to just pull out the known functional core and put those in a new shell, then use the old shell as all/part of a refurb system.

It makes the customer happy: They get a whole bunch of new stuff, and they get it quickly. It also means the store doesn't have to stock some arbitrary amount of each component - they just have a single heap of shells come in, and a bucket the goes out to be refurbed/recycled as appropriate.

As for replacing individual keys I'm still not sure if that can be done easily now (I've not had any problems with the butterfly keyboards, but it's clear that a couple of people might have ;) )

<comment><USER32> Except it's not fast - apparently it takes 1-2 weeks and if this thread is anything to go by, the customers seem not happy at all. Gluing batteries is just crazy, I didn't even know they do that these days (old Thinkpads for life).

Still, people keep buying useless shiny things for exorbitant prices, so Apple must be doing something right. I just don't know what it is - <USER2> or easy repairs definitely isn't it.

<comment><USER22> I assume that that's to give them leeway if anything goes wrong. I think the bigger issue that it's a mail-in repair, so you end up burning a bunch of days on that:

      * First they send you a shipping box.

      * Then you put your laptop in it, and get it to a drop off, then you have a few days shipping (I can't imagine they're doing overnight), plus weekend delay.

      * However long it takes their receiving to get the delivery to wherever they're doing the repairs/replacement

      * the repair - I suspect that's going to be measured in minutes, but you have a latency due to volume of repairs, which I assume depends on how many machines need to replacements.

      * I assume some technician puts it back in a box, and it gets sent to their shipping facility

      * a couple of days for shipping.

Put that together, 2 days to ship there, 1 day processing + repair, 2 days to return. So you easily hit the weekend, so now you're at 7 days. If anything goes wrong you've exceeded one week.

Which means saying "1-2 weeks" gives them a buffer to ensure it doesn't take longer than they've stated.

If they did it in store I imagine it could be same or next day, but by doing it as a ship in/out repair makes it absurd.

(I don't think they're exorbitantly priced, yes they cost more, but it's not like the old PPC prices)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have the 2016 15" MacBook Pro model and the battery won't take a charge. I have to keep it always plugged in. Apparently I'm not in this recall.

It is a total bummer because it takes Apple 3-5 days to fix this. The batter has 476 cycles on it and Apple rates it at 1000.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a MacBook Pro Mid-2015, bought in 2015 and had (a) swollen battery (b) green pixel on screen (c) bad sectors on SSD, in early 2017 - that's just 1.5 years. Got everything replaced after under Apple Care in late 2017 as they wouldn't acknowledge all the faults so it took multiple visits and having to wait for things to get worse. The repair took ~15-16 days too, since that's how it goes in third world and I had to arrange a backup for work.

Now I have the swollen battery again, but Apple Care has expired and I have to shell out $500-750 (quotes from different authorized partners) and have to arrange a backup for another 2 weeks.

I wonder if they dump low quality hardware for the third world or is it really that bad globally. Two of my friends have also had the battery issues, though none with display or SSD.

Unfortunately, it seems like I don't qualify for this recall program (as it's from July 2015), but I am sure they have had battery issues all over. Batteries failing in 1.5 years with just 40-50 cycles is not okay.

<comment><USER34> > I have to shell out $500-750 (quotes from different authorized partners)

That's crazy. I have the same Mac and just got a swollen battery replaced, and had them also clean up the machine and replace the thermal paste ... for a grand total of €258 (taxes included), at a random third party shop in Germany. And I thought we were being ripped off vs. US prices!

<comment><USER7> I was expecting ~$250 from what I had read on internet. But I suppose it's the same in places where there's no official Apple presence - we have these 3rd party "authorized service providers". Or perhaps it's something to do with local customs/duties on imports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I miss user serviceable laptops

<comment><USER36> There are still plenty if you don't buy from Apple.

<comment><USER17> I was actually shocked to see how easy it is to repair dell XPS laptops considering they are just as thin as macbooks (I think even thinner)

The battery is secured with a few screws and a metal bracket. Also the ram was socketed.

<comment><USER37> The thinness is a red herring but people who don't know better believe that.

Apple is clearly doing these things in order to make their products unserviceable so they can upsell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> My 2015 MBP battery ballooned up about 6 months ago. I just bought a replacement battery and swapped it out myself. Looks like my serial is included in the recall, guessing they won't touch it anymore though..

<comment><USER39> > I just bought a replacement battery and swapped it out myself.

How much of a pain in the ass was separating the glued-in battery from the chassis? iFixit makes it look infuriating

<comment><USER40> I did it a couple of months ago and it was an evening's worth of work with Netflix on in the background. Not infuriating at all, but there were definitely a couple of sweaty palm-inducing moments. That said, iFixit's instructions and pictures were faultless. If Apple doesn't release a MacBook Pro refresh that addresses some of the widespread concerns (touchbar and keyboard, notably), I would have no hesitation about swapping the battery again in another few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Yeah, and what if I've already paid to have my bulging battery replaced?

Three months ago I did this, and the repair center charged me full price for the thing because Apple covered jack all.

<comment><USER42> How much did they charge you? Do you have a receipt? Can you try running your serial number through the form?

<comment><USER43> If the repair center wasn't Apple/authorized, the result is likely to be "Oh well. Sorry".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > Our records show that your device has already been serviced as part of this > Program.

Hmm... I bought a new Apple Macbook Pro via the Apple store. It was a MBP 2015 which I bought in 2017 (I didn't want the touchbar), but I find this particular message weird from Apple.

This is not a refurbished MBP, why is Apple treating why it is?

<comment><USER45> Did you have anything else serviced during that time? This was automatically flagged if you had a logic board or top-case/keyboard replacement done. In some cases, it was also done for trackpad replacements so it's possible it was already completed during another repair. If you haven't had another repair, you may want to check with Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I bought mine in early 2015, before the start of their program. I entered the serial and it said it may be eligible. Is the form wrong or their date range wrong?

<comment><USER47> FTA: Affected units were sold _primarily_ between September 2015 and February 2017 (emphasis added)

Given that, 'early 2015' still feels early to me, but it isn't necessarily impossible (certainly not if you mean April or May)

<comment><USER46> Oh, thanks, missed that. That could explain why I got the notice. Yes, it was April.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It's not been mentioned here, but there was a program to replace those batteries for a fee before, it has been transformed into a recall.

<comment><USER42> Is there any page (possibly archived if need be) that displayed this? It's completely not out of character for the company when it comes to this sort of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> My mid-2017 15" MBP battery life is atrocious if I have 10 Chrome tabs open. Doesn't last more than 3-4 hours. Huge disappointment, but thankfully it's plugged in 95% of the time. Checked my serial number and it's not part of the recall but still got major quality issues.

</comment><comment><USER50> I have that exact model, website says it's not eligible and/or already fixed. Manufacture date is listed as 8 May 2015, 84% health at 615 cycles. Still not feeling very reassured, though.

</comment><comment><USER51> I bought a refurb i7, 16GB in summer 2016 that site says the has already been serviced. Too bad because I really need a battery replacement and I'm otherwise completely happy with the computer.

<comment><USER52> Say you're having problems with the keyboard, and have them replace it. I think that they are replacing the whole top case in these instances which includes the battery.

I'm sure someone will correct me if that's not the case

<comment><USER53> If it has already been serviced, that may be due to a keyboard replacement already. Do they do unlimited keyboard replacements?

<comment><USER52> Yep

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I have this exact MBP 2015 model and my battery is in the process of dying. It has about 45 minutes of usage from full charge to zero.

Looking forward to a free replacement ;)

<comment><USER43> Looking forward about two weeks, to be precise... ;)</comment></comment>


Google+ is to Facebook/Twitter as Internet Explorer was to Netscape - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/1/115498632827470149282/posts/28Pb4Ah3Dr5

<comment><USER2> I wish there was a simple mirror process for Goole+ posts... I can't read them at work.</comment>


US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/25/us-military-uses-8-inch-floppy-disks-to-coordinate-nuclear-force-operations.html <comment><USER2> Old storage media (floppies, CDs) have a big advantage over new ones (SD cards, USB sticks, hard drives) - they _don 't have firmware_. Most people didn't notice how over the last decade or so we've moved from having a computer read out data directly from a removable medium to having two computers talking together over a low-level, high-privilege protocol. While there are many benefits to this evolution, it also opens up many serious attack vectors.

<comment><USER3> Along the same lines, you can visually inspect them. Now, perhaps there's a way to hide some sort of wafer-thin wireless reader and transmitter in a floppy disk that can somehow harvest enough electrical energy to be useful, but that's a long shot.

As for SD cards, ones that are more than just storage (e.g. with wireless technology embedded) already exist.

<comment> gene-h Even if you could hide a wireless reader and transmitter in a floppy disk, you would still be able to pick it up on X-ray. It would be very difficult to differentiate an SD card with a malicious payload even if one X-rayed it.

<comment><USER4> Would X-rays corrupt the data on the floppy disk? Honest question, I have no idea.

<comment><USER5> I think the answer is no. You have to have a magnetic field to induce changes on a floppy (don't get them near a magnet). An x-ray would require a curved flow to generate a magnetic field (think electromagnet) so the generally direct x-ray flux should be harmless. Of course the equipment and power requirements may make it difficult to avoid magnetic fields. Not an x-ray expert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It reminds me this story, which was told to me as a true story, but I wouldn't bet too much on that.

A soviet bomber gets lost and finds itself over western germany. It has to land on a military airport, which pilots jovially invite the soviet pilots for a drink. While they are drinking, intelligence officers take pictures of the plane, and are laughing at antiquated soviet technology, using bulbs while the US was well into the age of transistors. It's only back in the US that the intelligence officers realised that the soviet were using bulbs not for the lack of transistors, but because they can resist a nuclear explosion...

<comment><USER7> They still sell them today. They're called Nuclear Event Detection (NED) chips. It detects a spike in voltage from the air and drops all power to everything, acting as an instantaneous power interrupt for everything you care about.

I used to test them for Lockheed all the time on stuff that flies on stealth aircraft. There is a very specific sequence of events with very tight specs they have to pass, the whole thing is over in 250 ms, and that includes the shutdown duration.

<comment><USER8> How do you test such a thing? Small nukes?

<comment><USER9> Large radio antennas can create electromagnetic pulses like what you'd get from a nuke blast. I lived not too far from a site that tested them[1][2]. Just before it was decommissioned there were a lot of news articles written about how they did the testing. I can't find any photos now, but they're out there somewhere.

It's now a wildlife refuge..

[1]: [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/woodbridge.h...](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/woodbridge.htm) [2]: [http://eservice.pwcgov.org/library/digitallibrary/hsdw/A_Fol...](http://eservice.pwcgov.org/library/digitallibrary/hsdw/A_Folder/ArmyEMPSimulatorOp76-392/pdfs/armyEMPsimulatoropPropHistA76-0392.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The linked report is worth a scan:

[http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/677454.pdf](http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/677454.pdf)

Pages 15 to 19 are what the CNBC article picked up on:

 _This system coordinates the operational functions of the nation's nuclear forces. This system is running on an IBM Series /1 Computer—a 1970s computing system—and uses 8-inch floppy disks_ \- from page 19

The IBM Series/1 isn't _that_ ancient (well for me anyway) and was comparable to 16 bit Data General (I trained on Data General Nova 3's, 4's and Eclipse S/130's back in the mid-80's) and DEC mini's of the day:

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

As long as you keep up with the usual preventative maintenance (filter changing etc), these old boxes just keep on working. Sometime in the early 2000's a buddy of mine still had a preventative maintenance contract on a DG Nova 3 [0] attached some astronomy kit. John asked if I fancied a day out to see this machine and go along with him on his PM visit. I hadn't seen an old Nova or Eclipse machine since the early 90's, so why the hell not? When I asked why such an old machine (probably manufactured in '75 or '76) hadn't been replaced with a faster smaller box (e.g. top end PC server type of thing), the reason was at the time nothing could come close to the data channel speeds this old box could sustain when collecting data from their astronomy thing.

If anyone from St Andrews astronomy department knows about this old machine I'd love to know what happened to it.

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

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd rather use outdated technology then use new technology that could introduce bugs.

<comment><USER12> There is something to be said about using proven technologies. But there is also something to be said about using _still supported_ technologies.

Really, are there producers of 8" floppy media anymore? Are we relying on "new-but-old" stock for occasional replacement needs for these systems? Sounds like that wrench that had to be FedEx'ed between silo bases for Minuteman maintenance:

[http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-wrench-nuclear- bases/story...](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-wrench-nuclear- bases/story?id=26916107)

<comment><USER13> > are there producers of 8" floppy media anymore?

It would appear so, and in the US, yet: [http://www.athana.com/html/diskette.html#8](http://www.athana.com/html/diskette.html#8)

<comment><USER14> I seem to remember someone telling me how there are a couple of cottage industries that center around the fact that the US Government has to buy goods that are US-made.

I think ceiling fans are one example. (i.e. There's relatively few US-based ceiling fan manufacturers. For one of them, I think the large chunk of their business is the US Government.)

I have a feeling this may be an example of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's wrong with 8" floppy disks? They seem easy to manufacture (same as a VHS tape but cut differently), are pretty reliable if you keep them away from magnets (Which is common sense), and don't really have a shelf life problem until the plastic gets brittle. Hell, if they degrade, you can even retrieve the undamaged parts with no fuss.

Who wins by moving to SD?

<comment><USER16> Meanwhile, lots of present-day sites use a diskette icon to represent a "save" function. A _diskette_? Seriously?

<comment><USER17> Language and symbols evolve. When that icon was first used it was a disk. Now it means save. Users know what it means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At one time, government engineers were in equal standing with contractor engineers. As defense spending dwindled down after the Vietnam war, defense contractors began to lobby for more control of defense workloads. On a contract, the government engineers would maintain the product and defense contractors did the development. Money set aside for documentation was devoured by the contractors so that only the contractors had the knowledge base of the product. Future weapon system development is the money maker for contractors, so to have them bid on upgrading a weapon system such as this, the cost would be very inflated. So you have this situation where the government cannot organically do the job either because of loss of expertise or documentation of the system. Or it is cost prohibitive using a defense contractor. The expertise for government oversight for contracting is a major problem. As an example, the DMV database system for the state of California. When you look at all the companies today using the cloud and creating huge databases practically overnight, how can projects like this fail. Another example, the Obama Care website. The government at every level, just does not have the expertise to insure that contractors perform to the letter of the contract. And then you have all this lobbying crap by the contractors to contend with. It really comes down to ETHICS. Contractors are not out to give you the most bang for your buck, they want the most bucks for smallest bang. After spending 28 years working with defense contractor engineers, I was not impressed. Unfortunately, I was not impressed with the ethics or the adherence to security concerns of my coworkers either, so I walked away. I would not be so concern with the 8 inch floppies, but more concern with the electronics that use them.

<comment><USER19> > The government at every level, just does not have the expertise to insure > that contractors perform to the letter of the contract.

Ideally, they would have even more expertise to make judgement calls, so that they could rely (in some sense) on the spirit of the contract and not just the letter.

I guess comparisons to public sector and military procurement in other countries (and times) might be instructive.

<comment><USER20> I think they have just as much experience and technical know-how as their contractors, but have neither the funds or the go-ahead to implement this stuff themselves.

For example, Obama signed an executive order requiring the DoD to use electronic records management systems to store all of their classified data.

The tricky part is that the way it is written, they have to buy this, they're not allowed to write the system that holds their own data.

(See JITC 5015.2.)

<comment><USER18> This is what I observed at McClellan AFB during my time there. No matter how hard I fought to do the work as a government engineer, management continuously turned the work over to contractors. As to why? I was taken aside and given the most ridiculous reason. If the project fails or overruns, the manager just gets more money to give to the contractor. Being screwed by the contractor was acceptable. But if done organically and there were problems, the manager gets a ton of grief. But this is the government, what terrible fate will come down on the manager? I also noticed that a lot of these managers retired from government service ended up working for the contractors, and the process recycles itself. This came back to bite McClellan AFB in the arse later. Come BRAC time, the contractors made it an easy choice to close the base by taking the work back their sites at a much reduced cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll just put this here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya- yF35g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g)

<comment><USER21> This blows me away. I think ignorance comes to those people who refer to comedian shows when talking about seriousness.

This shows me ignorance, not John Oliver, but the person who chooses to use it to satisfy some valid and real point.

<comment><USER7> <cough>relevant username.</cough>

I take the government's actions very seriously. I left the country, wife and kids and all, because I got tired of it.

I respect Jon Oliver's work. I think he makes discussions about things like this more approachable to more people than any article cnbc will every publish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In the words of Joel Spolsky, "code doesn't rust."

Who cares how old the code or the medium is? If it's tested and working, and it's used for nuclear effing weapons, I'm happy to leave it in my pile of tech debt.

</comment><comment><USER23> Everyone needs to shut the hell up about nuclear obsolescence.

If we can just keep the politicians from noticing the need to "modernize" these terrible weapons, then in a few short decades we will have achieved a de facto global disarmament. Everyone can continue manning their silos filled with stale dud warheads, fingers hovering over buttons that no longer work. We'll have all the stratigic stabilizing influences of mutually-assured- destruction, with none of the actual threat-of-destruction.

But engineers and journalists need to shut up and not point out that the emperor's got no nukes.

<comment><USER24> It's too late. The Obama administration has proposed a one trillion dollar budget to modernize the nuclear arsenal. The inclusion of low-yield nuclear devices is considered especially unnerving as it is believed their use would be easier to justify and could lean to a full nuclear exchange. [http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/science/as-us- modernize...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/science/as-us-modernizes- nuclear-weapons-smaller-leaves-some-uneasy.html)

<comment><USER25> To be fair, Obama requesting the money is one of the best ways to ensure Congress does not appropriate it.

<comment><USER26> While true in general, with regard to military applications, Obama requesting money _can_ be a way to get Congress to appropriate _more_.

<comment><USER25> Obama also unfortunately tends to act in good faith and with intent, so snark aside if he requested the funding for them he is probably OK with tactical nukes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd rather have floppy disks and air-gapped systems for our nuclear arsenal than have them all connected to an insecure network (which is pretty much any network these days).

</comment><comment><USER28> There is more to this than "out dated" technology. There is tremendous espionage and malicious activity protection by using outdated technology. The schematics of these systems were never online, making and introducing malware is also prohibitively difficult due to the lack of domain knowledge and expertise on the technology.

There are huge upsides to using outdated technology when it comes to nuclear warheards.

<comment><USER29> what's the difference between outdated technology which has never been documented online, and new technology which has never been documented online?

<comment><USER30> If you're using Windows 10 or MacOS, people know how to find their way around in the absence of documentation. How many people could figure out the command line interface to a 1970s era IBM Series/1 without docs?

<comment><USER31> If you want documentation on old computers, check out bitsavers; piles of information on the IBM Series/1 is at [http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/series1](http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/series1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Would you rather they used USB sticks?

</comment><comment><USER33> 60 Minutes covered this in 2014: [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/tour-a-nuclear- launch-control-ce...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/tour-a-nuclear-launch- control-center/)

They were surprised to see things like "an antique computer without a monitor."

</comment><comment><USER34> Hey, if it ain't broke...

</comment><comment><USER35> In the mean time, this thing will do Mach 20 (~ 7 km/s), and its already concidered as old-tech with a newer version being worked on -

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTVgJ8Sb34E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTVgJ8Sb34E)

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder what the cost is to maintain uber legacy systems like that? Like at what point does it teeter over to being the most expensive thing like it? (while remaining less capable)

</comment><comment><USER37> Well, does it work? If so then what's the problem?

<comment><USER38> Did the article say there was a problem? If so, what did they say the problem was?

<comment><USER39> The article describes the IT systems as "creaky" and referred to the "jaw dropping" GAO report that inspired this article was described as "sobering". So, it would appear that the problem the article referred to is the obsolete systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> LOAD "ENDOFTIMES", 8, 1

</comment><comment><USER41> It is interesting to learn just how much "technical" debt USA has 911 that is falling apart Nuclear weapons debacle (and a lot of other systems too) The 7 trillion infrastructure problem

</comment><comment><USER42> Treasury's master business file, which contains all tax data on individual business income taxpayers, likewise is written in that same assembly language code, which was first used in the 1950s, and maintained on the old-school IBM mainframe.

[https://callenq.com](https://callenq.com) is the free market bringing 2016 technology to the IRS to receive prompt customer service.</comment>


Show HN: Morfist – A Multi-target Random Forest capable of mixed learning - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/systemallica/morfist <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone!

Here's morfist, a Multi-target Random Forest implementation that can mix both classification and regression tasks.

Morfist implements the Random Forest algorithm (Breiman, 2001) with support for mixed-task multi-task learning, i.e., it is possible to train the model on any number of classification tasks and regression tasks, simultaneously.

Morfist's mixed multi-task learning implementation follows that proposed by Linusson (2013).

Although it's initially not my code, I've been working on refining the implementation for a while now, and it reached a point where I feel it's worth to show it to the world.

<comment><USER2> What are use cases for such models?</comment></comment>


Launching First Ever DIY Video Personalization Platfrom - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/personalized-video-by-hippo-video <comment><AUTHOR> Hippo Video is the first cloud-based DIY video personalization platform to send personalized video campaigns, manage sales workflows and track them to close sales effectively.</comment>


Show HN: San Francisco MUNI Transit Delays, Visualized - <AUTHOR> http://bdon.org/transit/

<comment><USER2> Trying to compare against the published schedule isn't all that useful. As a resident of SF, I long ago gave up the idea that you could look up the scheduled arrival of a bus and plan around that. However, if a bus is supposed to be running every 12 minutes, that's the number you can plan around (or use to benchmark the performance of a bus line). So instead of trying to show how the times compare with the theoretical schedule I think this would be more useful to show how the buses deviate from the planned interval. If I know it's a 12 minute bus that means I should never have to wait at any given stop for > 12 minutes. If I'm standing there for 30 minutes, then the bus service is failing me.

It would also be useful to color code the historic tracks based on which trips ended up taking something like >10% or 20% longer than the planned time. Again not worrying about if it was late compared to the scheduled route, but just whether it was late relative to its own departure time and expected pace.

<comment><USER3> It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule, but MUNI can't seem to manage. I've ridden buses all over the world, and MUNI is absolutely the worst at scheduling or latency. It's almost like they aren't even trying.

And even if you drop the requirement of "stick to the schedule", they still suck: you can have two lines running the same route up a major thoroughfare (e.g. 47/49 on Van Ness), and you'll still routinely get three busses back-to- back, followed by 45 minutes of delay. The only reasonable scheduling mechanism I've found for MUNI is to know _exactly_ how far away the next bus is from your stop. Without real-time position information it's an unusable system, because arrivals are essentially a poisson process.

<comment><USER2> I don't know if you rode Muni before they had GPS tracking vs after, but you're right in that it's the only thing that makes the system at all usable. I used to use Muni for my daily commute back before they added GPS to the vehicles and it was an absolute nightmare. At the end of my work day the bus line I took was supposed to run every 15 minutes. It was fairly common for me to have to wait 45 minutes for that "15 minute" bus (and watch 3-4 buses on the same line going the other way pass by). The worst thing is just simply not knowing how long your wait is. Now at least you can check how far away the next bus is and know that you're going to be waiting a ridiculously long time (and call a cab or go to a coffee shop or do _something_ ). Even if the delays haven't improved (I don't really know), just the ability to track the buses makes the whole system incredibly more usable.

<comment><USER4> Agree 100%. I used to work at UCSF Medical Center (Parnassus) and take N Judah from Outer Sunset.

Typical case was I would start walking towards work (or, towards home in the evening) when I didn't see a train. Although the N-Judah schedule was "every 15 minutes", there were often ~45min-1hour delays ,which was enough time to quickly walk from Parnassus to Outer Sunset. Of course, it didn't help that many trains stopped at 19th or Sunset and turned around rather than going the whole way (which meant you'd have to wait another 15-45 minutes for the next train, if it didn't turn around).

Another problem was at the turnaround at La Playa- drivers would disappear into the Muni bathroom there for half an hour, and block all the subsequent trains. Eventually (this was ~2000) Muni put a full time supervisor on site who "watched" the drivers and knocked on the door to get them to go back to their trains. Eventually they started using the switching in the track to skip a few trains in front of slow ones, as well.

More recently I've gone back and the psychological advantage of knowing how long I have to wait has improved the experience a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looking at some of the bus routes confirms something I've suspected about MUNI for a long time: most of the "delays" happen at the beginning of the route. I've watched bus drivers sit there for 10+ minutes past the departure time on many occasions, and there appears to be no penalty for the behavior.

I don't know if the drivers are taking a mandated minimum break, waiting in response to orders from dispatch, or just being lazy, but when I see lots of long delays at the top/bottom of every single line on these graphs, it really drives home the source of the problem. I find it difficult to believe that buses leaving at 5AM are encountering enough traffic to cause 15 minute delays immediately upon departure.

<comment><USER5> Are you sure that's not "the bus driver is waiting for his clock to read the scheduled departure time" or "the bus driver is waiting for people to pay their fare and board the bus" or "the bus driver turned the bus on early to warm it up"?

Every bus I've ridden in has signs plastered all over the front saying how you need to idle it when starting up / shutting down the bus to avoid destroying the innards, so I would expect there to be long horizontal lines at the start/end of runs but I wouldn't expect that to be indicative of drivers being "lazy".

<comment><USER6> Hang out around Embarcadero Station during evening rush or 4th & King sometime. It's a real mess. I've seen 4 busses running back to back, and some mornings I'll see 5 or more trains backed up. Not to mention the entire system already runs at a snail's pace. I generally bike, and I will usually get there in about 1/2 the time. Compare to Chicago where there's no way I could outrun a CTA bus, let alone the trains.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's fine. I expect delays at rush hour. I don't expect to see nearly every departure for nearly every line delayed by ten minutes or more. That's what these plots seem to be suggesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This graphical schedule visualization is often called Marey's Trains.

[https://mbostock.github.io/protovis/ex/caltrain.html](https://mbostock.github.io/protovis/ex/caltrain.html)

Another project that uses Marey's Trains is an interactive exploration of the MBTA system.

[http://mbtaviz.github.io/](http://mbtaviz.github.io/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks interesting.

One minor thing is that if the sorting of the bus lines was numeric rater than lexical I think it would be easier to find a specific bus line. Also the limited lines should be right after the regular lines (like 5L should be right after 5, 9L right after 9), though with a numeric sort this would just be fixed for free.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well done. This would be extremely useful in one of the mobile muni apps. I look at Transporter in the morning to know when to leave for the N, but if it had an indicator of delays, I'd know that it's time to walk/bike/uber instead.

</comment><comment><USER10> Buses esp 38 Geary and Mission don't look as jacked as I remember them from ~15 years ago. Regularly use to see 3 mission buses bumper to bumper every 30min rather than 1 every 9min.

</comment><comment><USER11> Could you swap the vertical axis for N Judah? It's a bit confusing to have King & 4th at the top and Judah at the bottom.

<comment><AUTHOR> This bothers me as well- I'm trying to figure out a consistent way to determine which direction is "Inbound" and which is Outbound - turns out this is quite difficult!

In the case of the N, the 4th and King terminus is closer to some abstract "downtown" point than the other end at Ocean Beach, however this heuristic doesn't generalize to genuinely "crosstown" routes like the 22.

So this depends on when/if I find a method I'm satisfied with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Go home 6 MUNI, you're drunk: [http://imgur.com/q4FDcWC](http://imgur.com/q4FDcWC)

</comment><comment><USER13> What do the short black lines represent? I see some lines start, then abruptly end. Is that a train changing route assignments?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's likely vehicles that change their assigned route or are moving between depots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This would be a lot more interesting with data about private bus locations interlaced with coordinated time.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is awesome. Nice work.

Accurately shows the N-Judah ridiculousness I experienced this morning.

</comment><comment><USER16> You can actually see the delay the switch toward Embarcadero station causes outbound on KT/N.</comment>


California opens driverless car competition with testing regulations - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/california-opens-driverless-car-competition-testing-regulations

<comment><AUTHOR> These vehicles offer great promise, such as freeing the driver's attention for productivity or leisure, better safety and less congestion. It will be a while, though, before we see these vehicles on the road. Autonomous vehicles will move the Zip Car car-as-a-service concept forward when deployed, because a subscribers would simply summon cars using an app.</comment>


Google open sources the code that powers its domain registry - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/18/google-open-sources-the-code-that-powers-its-domain-registry <comment><USER2> Github link for the lazy: [https://github.com/google/nomulus/](https://github.com/google/nomulus/)</comment>


Brian Krebs' Blog Hit by 665 Gbps DDoS Attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/brian-krebs-blog-hit-665-gbps-ddos-attack <comment><USER2> Visualizing 665 GB fully loaded Ethernet cables bundled together - wow.

Whether they would have succeeded or as it looks failed. This was a 665Gbps publicity stunt by his opponents only catapulting Krebs to #1 spot. #fail in more than one way.</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my webapp http://cineight.com - <AUTHOR>

I developed this app so that my friends and I can recommend movies to each other. I have also added movie list management, so one can maintain a list of movies watched, to watch, and filtered. There is a Feedback section in the app too. I would really appreciate if you guys could leave your reviews there also. <comment><USER2> I found the some of the terms confusing... "My Recommendations" I thought would mean movies that were recommended FOR me not BY me. Also Movies To Watch is ambiguous and same for Movies filtered. The tooltip popups when you mouseover help but the button names should be self-explanatory. Also, as far as the UI/UX is concerned, maybe color-coding them would make the buttons more 'intuitive'.

Also, while I understand the primary aim of your site is to let users manage their lists/recommendations, this feels a lot like 'expert-mode'. I myself would love an 'easy-mode' wehre I could get my automatic recommendations from other sources (implementing your own may recommender is probably not worth it at this point and would suffer from a cold-start) but ALSO be able to manage them at the same time (recommend to friends/filter/etc).

Also, maybe this may work well with a Facebook/Twitter integration (like tweet that I just watched such and such movie).

Also, as much as game mechanics have been played out, I think it would definitely be useful to have a system for ranking/rating people who make recommendations. You could create experts (if you want to rip off 4sq et. al, you could make people experts by awarding badges for things like watching 10 horror movies or making 100 successful recommendations that people watched).

All in all, I think it has the beginnings of a good product.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will change the titles of each tab. Just need to come up with better names. Facebook/Twitter integration is on the card. I am still thinking about their possible use. Thanks zoudini.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm an avid movie watcher. I like the idea of getting specialized suggestions in a way that is more familiar/easily tailored than my current methods: blockbuster & netflix ratings. However, for new releases, my best bet is fan buzz through Fandango. My question: Is there a way to smartly aggregate some of these sources and tie in with a facebook API? Or maybe to link up with fandango or groupon to facilitate a commercial revenue model? Or API with facebook and foursquare so that when people check in it automatically allows them to rate movies and let their friends know. A further step would be allowing the most active users to be 'followed' by those interested in movie reviews by a group with similar tastes but is not interested in maintaining their own group. - Random Ideas. I hope you find some of this constructive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I made this app cause I always feel a need of knowing which movie to watch next. So instead of asking my friends every time I meet them about the movies they have recently watched, I thought this would be a better idea.

One of the things that I realized was that I value recommendations of only a small group of people. Someone may have liked a movie that I also do, but that does not mean I can trust their recos. Hence, a model which lets me actively add people to my list of recommenders.

I would certainly keep improving the app and integrate it with other useful services.

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Other than a short sentence on the homepage, there's no information about the site that you can access before signing up. The fact that you have to register before knowing anything will, I imagine, put off many potential users. They (and I) wanna know what they're agreeing to!

Edit: I think you should add some more info (maybe some screenshots, a lengthier description and some privacy stuff?), basically!

<comment><AUTHOR> I will get working on this. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.cineight.com> Clickable link.

I agree with lzw though, you need a better landing page.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have added some more info to the landing page, plus I plan to add screenshots etc to help the user understand what the app is about. However, I wish to keep it plain and simple. That is till I start getting more complaints.

<comment><USER6> In my opinion on the landing page you should have two sentences saying what the app does - what problem it solves. Your registration form is short so keep that in a box to the right - login can go in a popup or on another page though right? Screenshots are good if it's obvious what is happening. The UI isn't loading properly for me at the moment but it looks fairly small and complex. I couldn't tell what was going on anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think how you find people needs a lot of work. Every time I add a movie, I should be able to see who else watched it or added it, and be able to see the other movies they've added or watched. At this time , its impossible to find users without first knowing who they are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. It wasn't in my original plan, but as this thing shaped up, I realize it must be added. So, just wait for a small while, and I will surely add better user discovery. Of course, any and all suggestions will be much appreciated

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You have the Movies Watched / Movies to Watch labels mixed up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out.

<comment><USER9> Also I think you need to swap these labels when you click "How does this work?":

Movies To Watch - Movies that you have watched...

Movies Watched - Movies that you want to watch

<comment><AUTHOR> :) Thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No insult meant, but you lsot me at the home screen. The first thing you do is ask for sign up or login.... I have no idea how your app works whether ill want to visit it again or whether I even trust you, so I'm not going to start my experience by giving you info.

I see a lot of sites make this mistake. If you can't put people right into the functionality of the app so that they can play with it themselves, then give them a search box or at least tour of the app, epmhasising that it is free, to entice them to create an account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point. I will add some more info.

<comment><USER11> More info doesn't matter. Add a "try it now" box or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have added a demo account now. Visit cineight.com again. You will find the credentials of demo user there.

Thanks for pointing that out.

<comment><USER12> That's still likely to deter a lot of people. It should be one-click; there should be no need for any copy and paste.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok. I will implement that then. Today</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook charged from my credit card without my awareness - <AUTHOR> http://www.beyondlinux.com/blog/2011/07/24/facebook-charged-from-my-credit-card-without-my-awareness/ <comment><USER2> If the charge was $1.00 (the charge formatting was a little unclear), this is likely a typical verification charge used to verify that your credit card information is correct. Most services void these charges as soon as they get a success/decline message from payment gateway processing the transaction, and you should see this charge removed from your statement in about 24 hours.

This charge is vaguely referred to in their payment TOS: <http://www.facebook.com/payments_terms/> "If you pay by credit or debit card we may obtain a pre-approval from the issuer of the card for an amount up to the amount of the purchase...", although not clear that this also happens when there is no actual purchase, when the card is just being used as a verification method. Definitely an opportunity for Facebook to clarify the behavior when adding credit card information for different reasons.</comment>


Doing business without "doing a startup" (Suster/Ingram followup) - <AUTHOR> http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/Doing_business_without_doing_a_startup

<comment><USER2> Well said. Frankly I can't figure out why anybody would want to jump onto the 80-hour week insanity mill that is the Silicon Vally definition of "Startup". It just doesn't seem like a good use of your time. Either you burn yourself out with nothing to show, or you oversucceed to the point where you have to figure out how to work your life around owning a private jet. There's got to be some middle ground.

How about instead I work 20 hour weeks building something that will pay my rent initially, pay for my winter house on that nice point break in Oz after 5 years, then spoil my kids rotten in 20. That's a payoff more in line with my lifestyle, and I get to keep living my life in the meantime.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Don't get lured in by the bright lights of VC-Vegas - instead focus on building a profitable business where you get money because people buy what you have to sell._

I think a lot of tech startups tend to miss this point and go straight for funding. They think that they'll just get big first and worry about "monetization" later. That's a crap-shoot! Such high risk is a tax for fools.

If you're really thinking about being in business for yourself, just start an honest business. Start with the nuts and bolts. Collect some invoices and sell some product. If your demand begins to out-pace your ability to deliver, then you have a good indication that you should go get funding.

It's just a perspective. The "funding first, revenue later" idea has worked. It's just not for everyone. You don't have to quit your job out-right to start a business. I know people who work at a part-time job while they work on their business. One day they hope to quit that too and let their business take them where ever it may. It's a viable alternative to the nerve-wracking pain of selling out to the VC merry-go-round.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Because anyone who says they want to "become an entrepreneur" is completely misguided."

Thank you! Being an entrepreneur is not an end, it's a means. I've seen so many articles lately about how you should quit your job and do a startup, even if you don't have a good idea or business sense.

I feel really bad for any customers those businesses draw in, because they are in for some trouble. Even if the business survives (and it's not likely to) then the customers will have to deal with the fact that the business isn't focused on them, it's about 'being an entrepreneur.' Totally wrong.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sometimes we need to put some perspective on our little online world. There is a whole world of entrepreneurs out there that are starting businesses that are not yet another social network or even an online business.

Getting a bit tired of the narrow mindesness of the community about how heroic they are ,what great opninions they have, how cool they are. But they actually are just a big bag of hot air.

Think the whole Quora discussion is a bit more of the same: Look at me I have an opinion. I'm changing the world, I'm blah blah.

There are still children dying of hunger, even in America a lot of people are hungry, unemployed or don't receive decent medical care. So maybe in your little eco-sphere you are changing the world. But are you changing it for the better?

What's your opinion about this?

</comment><comment><USER6> As far as founders go I don't see much psychological difference between "doing a startup" in the VC/Angel sense and "doing a startup" in the "I am a business owner" sense. The personal and financial risks are similar, worries about money, long hours, the fear of failure, etc. Yes, a startup in the Silicon Valley sense is structurally organized in a more ambitious way, but three guys in an office trying to figure out how not to run out of money is going to produce the same stresses whether they are programmers or plumbers.

Hiring and firing suck just the same for both groups. Borrowing money offers the same temptations and one's family doesn't stop whispering,"when will he get a real job," just because it's a startup.

</comment><comment><USER7> These faux rebuttals seem to intentionally miss the point Mark was making:

Doing a startup, the kind that Mark means, the kind that he sees -- specifically those with a story about how they're going to become billion dollar company -- works best with some specific personality traits. Is that really that hard to swallow?

Does it mean people without those can't start businesses? Heavens no.

These arguments are effectively a straw-man -- the point of contention is on the definition of a startup, not on who's fit to do one. They seem to redefine "startup" as "business doing something with the internet" and then proceed to debunk Mark's argument about who's well suited for those. But again, that's completely (intentionally?) missing the point.

Also the "lottery" hooky from DHH is dumb. Nobody compares getting to the top of other fields as pure chance -- why would it be different with startups? Did Michael Jordan and Zuck have a string of lucky breaks along the way? No doubt. But do you really think hard work had no more to do with it than it did for the person scratching the foil off of a lotto scratch-card? Do you really think there aren't recognizable personality patterns in top athletes? Really?

<comment><USER6> > _"These faux rebuttals seem to intentionally miss the point Mark was > making"_

I think much of it is a reaction to the way in which Suster has appropriated the term "entrepreneur." All entrepreneurs are not in startups and all entrepreneurs do not swing for the fences every time (just as Tiger Woods doesn't fire every shot at the pin). Most serial entrepreneurs do their deals with a _pro forma_ not a prototype. Ted Turner built his media empire on sure things not with lottery tickets.

The startup model creates a somewhat false impression of a radical division between entrepreneurs and investors. The damping effect for VC's in Suster's graphs is more a function of wealth than role. The short stack will always have more highs and lows at the final table than the chip leader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Designers aren't programmers - but who owns the client relationships? There's nothing to stop a programmer from offering design services but more often than not it's the designer who owns the client relationship and shops out work to programmers._

Is this part of the dynamic behind restaurant websites so often sucking badly? (Because the requirements are mainly hashed out between people who mainly relate to how a site looks.)

<comment><USER9> Let me venture an explanation as to why this might be so: for any project a designer spends a week on, a programmer must then spend 2+ weeks on.

This leads to an interesting mechanic where designers have a much greater project throughput than programmers and subsequently have more time to nurture the all important client relationships.

It also means it takes more than one programmer to service one designer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All this startup world is funny anyway. If i tell my friends i regularly work 50-60 hour weeks they call me crazy, tell me i have no life and whatsoever. Then you come here to hear that under 80hours of working you cant get anything done until the people working 100 hours/week share their stories... I bet you can even find people claiming 120 hours/week, hell why not, after all the week has 168hours so theres plenty left!

</comment><comment><USER11> i wonder, how many people would confess that they want to be someone (i.e., businessmen, or a vc) to have a boatload of money, a home on tropical island and fly business class / private jet?

if i were a vc, i probably would not like this confession. i'd better encourage young people to value the startup life itself.

<comment><USER12> You're right, and that's because VC is a hits-driven business and none of the founders of major companies (MS/Google/Facebook/Oracle sized companies) have ever been in it for the money. If they had, they would have sold their companies when they were worth $100M and sailed off into the sunset.

However, on Wall Street, this type of attitude is highly valued -- you want to find the young kid with massive insecurities who wants to have $1 billion and when he gets it will want $10 billion. You give him a desk and tax his earnings.</comment></comment>


Hillary Clinton and Electoral Fraud - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@spencergundert/hillary-clinton-and-electoral-fraud-992ad9e080f6 <comment><USER2> Republicans shut down the polling sites in Arizona to save money, and also this was decided well before anyone knew Bernie would be a contender. Same with all the voter registry purges. Bernie is right that he attracted a lot of people who don't regularly vote... which explains why they weren't registered to vote. Another of his main supporter groups are college students, who have been being purged from voter rolls for years due to frequent mailing address changes (this happened to me in Pennsylvania in 2008). There are more logical explanations for this than can be mentioned here, Occam's Razor.

Same for exit polls. The author notes that Clinton voters were more likely to vote early, which would logically cause them to be under-represented in exit polls. Also the "enthusiasm gap". Also lots of people have written about how poor exit polls are at predicting outcomes ([http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ten-reasons-why-you- shou...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ten-reasons-why-you-should- ignore-exit/)). Exit polls are notoriously bad, which is why they're basically only fodder for the cable news industry.

<comment><USER3> The "saving money" argument is always used to explain the reduction of the number of polling sites but it is not a credible one when considering that only very specific locations are being impacted. Also, the volume of purged voters is inexplicably high ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORoXanoqXwQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORoXanoqXwQ) ) and many troubling irregularities have been reported such as cases of forged signatures: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k6YAEU- eDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k6YAEU-eDE)

<comment><USER2> YouTube isn't a very reputable source. That being said, universal voter registration is the real answer, which sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

<comment><USER3> I don't see why YouTube (the medium) is the problem here. Both reputable or non-reputable sources can post content on YouTube.

The first video is an interview of two poll workers expressing their concerns regarding the unusually high number of voters that were removed from the voter roll. There aren't any apparent reason why their testimony should not be considered as credible.

The second video shows a voter being shown a document she allegedly signed and that had for effect to switch her party affiliation from Democrate to Republican. However, it seems the signature on this document has been forged. There have been multiple reports of allegedly forged signatures during this election, most of them reported by voters on social media. Here is another example: [https://www.facebook.com/groups/518955314959236/permalink/51...](https://www.facebook.com/groups/518955314959236/permalink/519676198220481/)

Sure the validity of these reports need to be verified but I don't see why they should be dismissed beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lots of very strong claims made without any evidence.

The fact that voting machines are insecure does not mean that fraud occurred.

> When an exit poll or two is outside the margin of error, it denotes failure > in the polling; when eight defy it — egregiously so — that indicates > systemic electoral fraud.

Or it indicates systemic problems in the methodology used to conduct exit polls, such as incorrect assumptions in sampling. The author suggests that the fact that exit polls of the Republican primaries were accurate means that exit polls of the Democratic primaries must also have been accurate. Given that Republican and Democratic voters tend to have very different demographics, I would question that assumption.

The author is holding up exit polling as a gold standard, but it took me about about five seconds of googling to find a long history of bad exit polls. [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/06/outrage...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/06/outraged- wisconsin-exit-polls-so-wrong)

<comment><USER3> Voting machines are black boxes which by nature are incompatible with one fundamental principle of democracy: transparency.

This is a major issue because even if the fraud is unproven, voters can legitimately be concerned about the accuracy of how votes are being counted.

That said, some statistical analysis research have shown a strong probability of votes being flipped by electronic machines in past elections. Here is the original research paper: [http://madisonvoices.com/pdffiles/2008_2012_ElectionsResults...](http://madisonvoices.com/pdffiles/2008_2012_ElectionsResultsAnomaliesAndAnalysis_V1.5.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author of this article acknowledges the possibility that the polls could just be wrong, but gets tripped up when the Republican polls seem to be more accurate than the Democratic polls -- and then concludes that the only explanation must be fraud.

I think what's really going on is that older voters and younger voters behave differently, affecting the accuracy of the polls for one set of voters more than the other.

</comment><comment><USER6> Fivethirtyeight has explained away the exit poll issue very easily. Due to the way they are collected, they have an inherent bias toward young voters. Young voters are overwhelmingly pro Sanders. This results in the exit polls being biased towards Sanders. If this is the case, the margin of errors are worthless because they assume a representative sample.

The voter suppression thing is certainly a problem, but it is a big leap to say it is only a problem for Sanders or proves anything nefarious.

<comment><USER3> There are many distinctions to be made when it comes to voter suppression. The first category we are seeing during most elections is the legal voter suppression where voters cannot vote because of stringent requirements. However, we've seen numerous cases of unexplained voter suppression during these elections where voters purely disappeared from the voter roll without any explanations.

I am not saying this is favoring Clinton over Sanders but it certainly undermines the trust anyone can have regarding the final results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why would Hillary need to rig anything? It's been pretty obvious that she's going to win the election since the start.

Regarding the author's points, he doesn't mention anything I find particularly compelling. Most of it seems to be built on shaky logic or draws weak connections between points. If the exit polls were really that big of an issue, we'd see political analysis (aka the experts) reporting on this.

<comment><USER8> It's really not that obvious... Sanders' support has been stronger than Hillary's in most areas. Of course Hillary's Super Delegate support is significant. That said, it doesn't seem so obvious to me.

I'm not a D or R, so have to horse in this part of either race.

<comment><USER2> The idea that "Sanders' support has been stronger than Hillary's in most areas." must not be true, though, right? Otherwise he would have more votes. I think "more vocal" is accurate, but not actually larger in number.</comment></comment></comment>


NASA funded pseudo-science - <AUTHOR> http://m.digitalspy.com/odd/news/a336218/aliens-may-destroy-earth-over-environment.html

<comment><USER2> Looks to me less like pseudo-science and more like open speculation. Nothing wrong with that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing wrong with open speculation at taxpayer's expense? This reminded me of an excellent essay by Michael Crichton on the rampant increase of pseudo science in our society.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122603134258207975.html>

I particularly appreciate his debunking of the Drake equation as "science".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The prime directive prevents federation members from interfering with our natural development.</comment>