Data from man's pacemaker led to arson charges - <AUTHOR> http://www.journal-news.com/news/data-from-man-pacemaker-led-arson-charges/sDp2XXGPY1EKJkY57sureP/ <comment><USER2> Imagine that you are in a car accident (the other person hit you). The insurance company uses your sleep tracker to claim that you were negligent due to not getting enough sleep the night before, and are therefore at fault, so they won't pay.

Data is as dangerous as it is helpful. The scary thing is that you cannot control how someone else will interpret your data.

<comment><USER3> In your example I think it's right that the driver is found at fault. The effects of sleep deprivation on driving are very well documented and are comparable to drinking. If a driver is not fit to be driving a car, then they are a danger to the other road users and must take responsibility for their negligence.

The same evidence could of course be helpful to the driver. If their sleep tracking app shows they are well rested and their phone's use shows no distractions while driving, then they could use that as evidence to fight a charge of driving without due care and attention.

<comment><USER4> It's not as though we can derive some hard cutoff on how little sleep is clearly negligent. We're talking about wide ranges and tolerances for different people in different circumstances.

We're in the same situation with alcohol -- how much before you're actually impaired? -- but most states have responded to that reality with laws that prohibit driving after drinking almost _any alcohol at all_.

Are you sure you want a similar situation with respect to your sleep?

<comment><USER5> Given that I don't know of a single driver actually obeying the rules about mandatory breaks for long-distance travel, yes, I'd definitely want a similar situation with respect to sleep.

There is something weird about driving that makes most people feel they're smarter and better than everyone else, so they can ignore traffic laws at their discretion. That attitude costs quite a lot of lives every year.

<comment><USER6> Commercial truck drivers can have their log books inspected at weigh stations, if they haven't had the required rest (or don't have a logbook), they have to stop and stay off the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you have a neural mesh, the state will likely have intent to claim they have access and rights to the date in the mesh, regardless of whether it is in your body or not.

There's no way in hell I'm ever hooking a computer up to my brain in this reality.

<comment><USER8> Why not build a well regulated state that only uses such powers in narrow circumstances?

I mean, you are sort of implying that installing a neural mesh would give you greater exposure to injustice than not doing so, so why not just fight the injustice to begin with?

Not believing that such a state is achievable is one thing, but you did say "in this reality".

<comment><USER9> > Why not build a well regulated state that only uses such powers in narrow > circumstances?

Because the definition of "well regulated" is highly subjective and any state that's in power would consider its own uses to be with the confines of any circumstance no matter how narrow.

The only way to win is to not play the game.

<comment><USER8> No, the only way to win is to continually work to build a more just society.

It may be pragmatic to keep computers out of your brain in the meantime.

<comment><USER10> I would recommend the book Animal Farm.

The revolution was good in every way. It was peaceful and the animals got back control of their lives. But even from that, the pigs convinced everyone they needed leaders.

Unfortunately, the pragmatic reality is that no matter how much you try to shape a system of control to be balanced, the people who eventually get into power are the ones that crave it and often don't have much respect for the individual.

<comment><USER8> Yes, you must continually work to build a more just society. There is no sitting back and enjoying it after you have finished it because it will never be finished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I get it but this is some scary stuff that pushes the bounds of ethics. I mean, on one hand we want to prevent insurance fraud because it impacts everyone. On the other, where do we draw the line? Should we even have to consider that a pacemaker could be used to gather data about us before we consent to a pacemaker? It shouldn't. Now it is.

<comment><USER12> I don't see why this is scary. I think it's somewhat comparable to the police examining his clothes, for example, and finding no traces of sweat or smoke, which would make his story not credible. Or what about looking at how many steps a Fitbit recorded? If the pacemaker had a GPS or something embedded in it, that would be egregious, but a pacemaker collecting data on the pace it's making is expected, and the police should be able to look at it with a warrant. Police can access medical records with a warrant, and this is basically just a very recent medical record.

<comment><USER13> You don't need clothing to stay alive, nor a fitbit.

And medical history can't really be used to indict someone. Where this clearly was.

EDIT: can't be used to indict, only as addition evidence for a trial. It's an important distinction, but I'm not sure I think it's okay either.

<comment><USER12> Why isn't it ok? The whole purpose of a warrant is to reveal private information when necessary. I get that medical history is especially sensitive, but I don't see why it should be completely off limits. What if, say, someone claimed to be out of the country for an extended period of time, but their medical history showed they actually required frequent treatment at a local hospital? Should that be inadmissible?

<comment><USER13> IMO, it's not okay because the strict alternative is the patient must choose death. Pace makers are very invasive. They're not generally installed unless absolutely needed.

In this case, it's very similar to saying. "If you don't let us install this device that the government can use to know exactly what you were doing every hour of every day; you'll die."

It's not quite the fact that it's medical history, but it's very detailed, personal medical history. "He had gout some time in the last few weeks/months" vs "He was running 14 times in the last 21 days, and heres' the exact minute he started and ended"

> but their medical history showed they actually required frequent treatment > at a local hospital? Should that be inadmissible?

That they acquired treatment? Maybe. That they were treated for an STI? Yes, that should be inadmissible. Because as a medical person, I don't want you avoiding ANY treatment because you scared the information about the treatment would be used against you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At least police obtained the data through the proper channels, securing a search warrant. I can't think of an argument against this being valid and reasonable.

<comment><USER15> I'm curious how a) they determined he had a pace maker b) where they got the idea to check it for data. Pretty wild.

<comment><USER16> From the article:

> Compton, who has extensive medical problems, including an artificial heart > implant that uses an _eternal pump_

(I'm fairly certain they meant "external" there.)

<comment><USER15> Good pickup. Haha I'd an "eternal" pump would be handy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems unlikely that the heart rate data alone would allow for indictment but it was one _more_ piece of data since the suspect was not cooperating. [[http://www.networkworld.com/article/3162740/security/cops- us...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/3162740/security/cops-use- pacemaker-data-as-evidence-to-charge-homeowner-with-arson-insurance- fraud.html)]

They found gasoline on his clothing, investigation revealed the fire started at multiple locations and he told 911 that "everyone was out of the house" but was heard over the phone telling someone to get out of here. So he was an idiot and got caught...

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if he had any idea his pacemaker collected such data or that it could be used against him? Should patients be made aware of this risk when they're receiving the devices?

<comment><USER19> > Should patients be made aware of this risk when they're receiving the > devices?

What risk? The risk that the truth comes out? Give me a break.

<comment><USER20> Devil's Advocate:

Software has bugs, what if the data implicated him but was incorrect? Of course bugs in a pacemaker means bigger problems... but you get my point.

<comment><USER21> The possibility of bugs is something that the defence can argue - the court would need to find _beyond reasonable doubt_ that the defendant was guilty. It's certainly not the responsibility of manufacturer to provide perfect or imperfect certainty about the data, but it's the prerogative of the jury to decide the trustworthiness of that data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Apart from anything else, there's a delightful irony in that the device that (probably) kept him alive to be able to commit a crime was also responsible for catching him.

It _sounds_ as though the doctors' evidence was fairly powerful regardless of the data from the pacemaker.

</comment><comment><USER23> The Tell-Tale Heart

<comment><USER24> You should take a bow for that one, way to stick the landing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> One person's metadata is another's data

</comment><comment><USER26> How is this not a HIPPA violation?

<comment><USER27> HIPPA allows disclosure in response to a court order or warrant (among other things). See here: [https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/45/164.512#f](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/45/164.512#f)

<comment><USER28> IANAL nor American but this feels like another thing stepping on top of their constitution, specially the spirit of the fifth:

> nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself

I can be tried for my data? That's kind of messed up, what if the data was faked, etc.

<comment><USER29> Of course you can be tried for you data. Letters, records, etc. have always been used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There should be even more stories where data from fitness trackers is used, right?

<comment><USER31> They can't proof that you were wearing the device at the time of the incident. It's also possible to fake the data, either by letting someone else wear it or by spoofing the bluetooth device itself.</comment></comment>


Mathematical Model Reveals the Patterns of How Innovations Arise - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603366/mathematical-model-reveals-the-patterns-of-how-innovations-arise/ <comment><USER2> _> The adjacent possible is all those things—ideas, words, songs, molecules, genomes, technologies and so on—that are one step away from what actually exists._

The "adjacent possible" concept seems very related to the phenomena of _multiple independent discovery_ :

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

<comment><USER3> Damn, thank you for that link. Satisfying to see what's on my mind so much lately on the page.

The article and actual paper being discussed were both fascinating and satisfying to me. Predictably, maybe, the paper is a lot more than the summary article.

To your point, maybe, after skimming the paper, this comment in the Technology Review summary struck me: "Curiously, the same model accounts for both phenomenon. It seems that the pattern behind the way we discover novelties—new songs, books, etc.—is the same as the pattern behind the way innovations emerge from the adjacent possible. That raises some interesting questions, not least of which is why this should be."

It seems to me that at some level, it should be impossible to really know if something is a novelty or innovation, in that what defines an innovation is novelty exhausted over all the possible observers or something. You always have a frame of reference (in this scheme, an urn), and what you observe is novelty. You might infer innovation if an observation (in this scheme, a new color) is new over all the observers (over all the urns). If the observers are sufficient in number and sufficiently diverse, it becomes harder to determine whether the novelty is an innovation or not. Their example (as far as I can tell) assumes an urn, and the question of determining a novelty or an innovation is like having numerous urns, and estimating whether or not a new color is just new to that urn, or new to all the urns, including urns that haven't been examined.

The paper itself leads with some discussion of how this problem relates to statistical inference, which I find fascinating. They don't really get into it very much, but it leads to some interesting questions, like how to make inferences when the event/sample space/domain itself is random or unknown. Also relates to information-theory questions involving code alphabets that are unknown or indeterminate (for example, [http://www- ee.eng.hawaii.edu/~prasadsn/patterns.pdf](http://www- ee.eng.hawaii.edu/~prasadsn/patterns.pdf)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Adjacent seems like just low-hanging fruit. What about triz-type patterns or silly patterns like lateral thinking that activate dormant attributes?

</comment><comment><USER5> I fail to see how conclusions about diversity of words in text bodies would also apply to innovation at large.</comment>


What Makes Hacker News Fame? - <AUTHOR> http://goodattheinternet.com/2015/02/13/getting-to-the-hacker-news-front-page/

<comment><USER2> This seems like a dramatic illustration of cumulative advantage, as studied in the famous MusicLab experiment [1, 2]. The argument is that in cultural and social markets, random effects govern which products or artifacts get the initial few "upvotes" (or their analogs), at which point the rich-get-richer dynamic takes over. Very, very awesome.

[1] Salganik, Dodds, Watts, "Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market", 2006: [https://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full....](https://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.pdf)

[2] A popular article by one of the authors, the inestimable Duncan Watts: [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnidealab.t.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnidealab.t.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print)

<comment><USER3> At the risk of plugging my own work, I did a follow-up to the (really awesome) Watt's experiment using data from reddit and Hacker News:

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.07860](http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.07860)

The work isn't complete yet (always more to do) but the TL;DR is:

1\. Yes, randomness governs a lot of article outcomes. Whether something hits the front page or not is pretty arbitrary.

2\. However, conditioned on making the front page, popularity is actually a good reflection of "intrinsic quality". I think the ultimate relationship between popularity and quality is stronger than the MusicLab experiment suggests.

<comment><USER2> I like this a lot! If I allow myself explanation, I'd say your findings make a lot of sense, but I will instead heed the title of Duncan Watts' latest, "Everything is Obvious*: Until You Know the Answer" :)

I wonder how much engagement you'd get if you made a browser plugin or even an alternative website that showed users a random selection from the top three pages of reddit/HN, then intercepted and logged their upvotes, to get a direct measure of intrinsic quality, rather than estimating this statistically. I for one would use such an interface.

On a sidenote. Have you seen this work in predicting the growth of ongoing cascades from Facebook [1]? I'm fixing to see if their findings apply to the MusicLab data.

[1] [https://research.facebook.com/publications/680551081983090/c...](https://research.facebook.com/publications/680551081983090/can- cascades-be-predicted-/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback (and the Watts' reference). Building a plugin is definitely an interesting idea; I hadn't thought of that before. I guess the problems would be three-fold. First, I don't know how to do that :-). Second, there are probably a bunch of ethical concerns/IRB issues that would stand in the way of academic publishing (but thats not huge). Third, and the only fundamental issue, is that the self-selection into using that plug-in would bias the estimates of intrinsic quality. Still its a pretty good idea but I'm currently trying to get access to more fine-grained data in other ways, so we'll see.

In terms of creating your own site, a few researchers [1,2] have already done this and have some interesting work. But even with that, you still have the problem of accounting for position bias within the site (like HN doesn't really know if you skimmed the title of an article and decided to ignore it, or never read the title at all). But the experimental power you get with that is pretty cool.

And I have totally read that Facebook cascades paper and have more than a few thoughts about it. In fact, I have adapted their prediction-style results to the MusicLab data and you get really strong predictive accuracy (like 90-95% in terms of predicting whether a song will eventually be above the median popularity). However the accuracy you would achieve on Reddit or Hacker News data is considerably lower. I didn't really include those results in my paper because I'm not sure how they fit yet.

If I had one critique (which is not really a critique but a comment) is that the Facebook study doesn't really contradict Watts' point that popularity is hard to predict. The Facebook study shows that if you can observe the "initial conditions", then you can predict eventual outcomes pretty well but that's directly in line with the rich-get-richer effect that Watts et el demonstrate. To put it pithily, its easy to predict who gets richer if you observe who is rich.

Anyway, I could geek out about this for a long time but feel free to drop me an email at stoddardg [at] gmail.com if you're interested in chatting some more.

[1]: [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.6744.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.6744.pdf) [2]: [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0098914)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> (This post sounds a bit too negative but it's not meant to be. Sorry for my poor communication style. Thanks for the informative post.)

> People can vote stories up or down (posts get +1 for an upvote, -1 for a > downvote)

People can't downvote submissions. They can flag submissions and they can flag as well as downvote comments.

> It's not entirely clear how karma is assigned but it's safe to assume this > is a measure of status.

Each point of karma is a single upvote on a submission or a comment. My high karma is purely a result of very frequent commenting, and has nothing to do with status. (Other people's high karma combined with high average karma is probably an indicator that people respect them. Some people have a weirdly low average - I don't understand how ColinWright only has an average of 1.7 or rayiner only has an average of 2.7 for examples).

A downvoted comment will reduce your karma by one point for each downvote. Flagged comments don't reduce your karma but may have other effects. A while ago I had a comment that got 50 downvotes - all of those were taken off my karma total. There was a problem where a controversial post might be flagkilled - limiting the total loss to whatever downvotes that post gets before it's flagkilled; or a controversial post just gets heavily downvoted but not flagkilled which means unlimited downvotes for the time that downvotes are available on that post. (Not sure if this has been changed yet, or if it's by design.)

> Karma isn't meaningless. While plenty of users with low karma submitted > posts that ascended to the front page, it looks like posts submitted by > influencial users get to the front page more quickly (though the correlation > is pretty weak).

Very few of my submitted articles make the front page. I'm tempted to say something about correlation and causation here - people who submit articles that make the front page get lots of karma, rather than users with lots of karma get front pages more easily.

About points per minute: There are some anti-gaming algorithms that will penalise a submission if it gets too many votes too quickly. I have no idea what the correct rate is.

There is also, I think, some algorithm that will detect many comments by new accounts. Announcing a post on social media is a mistake that some people make. New accounts then visit and upvote the submission, which demotes rather than promotes it.

</comment><comment><USER5> The effect "High karma can give you a little boost" is not due to HN karma itself. Many contributors to HN already have a reputation for good content and thus people are more likely to read/vote new submissions from them. So the boost is earned by the contributors by having impressed HN audience, not granted by HN solely based on past karma.

<comment><USER6> Related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect)

We've been studying this in a Sociology class, and this seems like a good example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking- really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really- works.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh right, so it really is a calculation of points vs age, according to the formula, plus penalties -- which my analysis didn't catch. Thanks for the background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a nice analysis, although the causes of a high points per minute score could presumably be related to whether it gained an early vote / comment from a user with high karma (who is effectively giving it a stamp of approval).

This only had two points on 20 minutes when I voted for it though, so by their own logic is unlikely to make it to the FP!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, good point! Much to my chagrin, the theory I proposed is challenged by my own post. It looks like someone with a lot of karma can boost a post to the front page (there are some outliers in the analysis). Maybe we can get individual votes exposed via the API to know for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This post is interesting but it falls short, ultimately if you can get a few different people to upvote your submissions you can exploit HN. You can see we're being marketed at, often, by startups that are routinely on the front page with content that is irrelevant to their own customers.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting post. I would like to see those plots on a logarithmic scale.</comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone trying to hack NCAA tourney brackets? - <AUTHOR>

I would imagine there's some geeks out there that could do historical analysis to come up with best guess NCAA bracket. Any takers? <comment><USER2> There are unaccountable psychological factors that happen on a game-to-game basis (as well as, daily basis) that not even "geeks" would be able to hack.

EDIT: This is coming from a guy who used to be bad, good, and decent at betting on sports (yes, you can be all three and even in the same day! ha)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm definitely interested. Someone out there has probably done work in this area already, but still I would be interested.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yea there are some geeks out there doing this now it is called ESPN. lol</comment>


In 2008, America Stopped Believing in the American Dream - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/frank-rich-2008-financial-crisis-end-of-american-dream.html <comment><USER2> This article lies about war in a very 'Manufactured Consent' kind of way. It claims Obama took us out of war and minimized it, but that's simply not true. Obama dropped a total of 26,172 bombs across _7_ countries in 2016 alone [1].

[1] [https://www.cfr.org/blog/how-many-bombs-did-united-states- dr...](https://www.cfr.org/blog/how-many-bombs-did-united-states-drop-2016)</comment>


Wikipedia is an MMORPG - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_an_MMORPG <comment><USER3> I'd be grateful if, in this thread, anybody with an anecdote about how their perfectly fine edit was reverted by the evil career Wikipedians, could provide a link so we can judge for ourselves.

<comment><USER4> Not an edit I made, but the final straw for me was a debate about the article name of the turkey (the animal) on the German wikipedia. The only commonly used name is "Truthahn" which refers to both the female and male animal if you are not being specific. But one especially vocal Wikipedian insists that in his ornithology book, the generic term is always the female term, so "Truthuhn" (with u). That sounds like "turkeychicken" to the average German. I have never heard this outside of Wikipedia. You might use it to contrast the female from the male animal in a zoological setting, but the thing you eat or the thing that makes "gobbeldigock" is called "Truthahn". So this was a win of technically correct over useful.

I've also had many small edits on technical subjects (particle physics and supersymmetry) reversed by people who were self-professedly not experts, with comments like they could not find it in their beginners' textbook. So I just gave up. (Edit: this was over ten years ago, and I can't find it anymore - <USER2> even sure what my username was - but one dispute was about the naming convention of some exotic particles. I was quoting from the famous "review of particle physics" and respectable textbooks, but it kept being reverted to a made-up notation...)

<comment><USER5> The non-expert with a beginners' textbook having strong opinions about the subject is everything that's wrong with places like wikipedia and reddit. I just hate it.

<comment><USER6> > places like wikipedia and reddit. I just hate it.

All human products have issues, but are there any superior alternatives at scale?

Wikipedia is one of our civilization's greatest achievements, isn't it? It seems like the Library of Alexandria on steroids to me. Especially when combined with an internet archive.

It's funny to admit it, but Reddit is also quite an achievement due to the scalable _human_ moderation model and very useful hive mind.

For research, name a better duo.

<comment><USER7> > Are there any superior alternatives at scale?

Pay tens of thousands of experts to work on the encyclopedia instead. The issue isn't scale, but the cost of the labor (which, in Wikipedia's case, is free - but in many cases you get the quality you paid for).

<comment><USER8> This alternative has shown to produce inferior universal encyclopedia.

Encyclopedia Britanica was/is probably the most successful professional collection of knowledge, it's been superseded by Wikipedia over a decade ago.

Free contributor is a low expense for sure but what you get isn't necessarily lower value than paying contributors.

<comment><USER5> The problem with wikipedia is that the existing editors tend to drive away experts who are willing to edit things for free though. Like one comment here about the random editor with a beginner's textbook reverting edits with information that was not in their textbook( that were properly cited from well-known books). That's just ridiculous and I'm blown away at the level of hubris that makes you trust your own lack of knowledge more than proper citations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shameless plug: I recently wrote a Ruby gem to get/post Wikipedia articles from the command line. Then I can use my text editor to edit the articles which is faster than doing so in the browser. To install it: _gem install wikian_. To see how it works visit [https://rubygems.org/gems/wikian](https://rubygems.org/gems/wikian).

<comment><USER10> That's great! Which text editor do you use? How does wikian deal with edit conflicts?

<comment><USER9> I use Vim. Thanks for mentioning edit conflicts, I had overlooked that important feature. Will add it to the next version of Wikian by comparing timestamps of the local and most recent revisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good comparison tbh. MMOs are one of the most toxic game genre (only topped by MOBAs) and that perfectly fits to the holier than thou attitude of the majority of editors

<comment><USER12> And just as some people somehow manage to play MMOs every waking hour of the day even as ordinary people would have e.g. a job and a family, so Wikipedia has editors who somehow manage to edit all day every day. I have been active in Wikipedia since shortly after its founding and I am quite familiar with all processes and standards, but I have had edits reverted simply because my edit history struck the obsessive editors as too casual; if I wasn't editing constantly around the clock like them, then I was seen as too low-quality an editor for my edits to stand.

<comment><USER11> My main problem that a lot of times I want to do a raid and not the game but the players won't let me do it. The game doesn't say you need this class or this item level, actually anyone can and encouraged to do it. But then you are there against the boss and another player turns up and kills it before you. "Sorry you not meant to kill this boss, this _our_ boss, go farm something else". Then you are locked out from the instance and scratch your head what to do. That's especially frustrating when you know the other players use a very wrong or inefficient strategy (my strat would work 10x faster!) and even worse: you know those players don't even need the loot from the boss (they can't even equip it or they already have it). So why don't they let others join the fun?

<comment><USER13> By definition, when you are in an instance, there shouldn't be another rando there to take the boss. What games are you playing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> According to the page edit history, this humorous article was created in 2004 and has continued to evolve since then with 400+ edits (including updated stats for 2020). I often describe my Wikipedia experience as the "largest MMORPG I've played", and this article does an excellent job of fleshing out the comparison.

<comment><USER14> Hilarious stuff, great Saturday afternoon reading. thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think they should lean into this. Imagine how many contributors they could end up with if their on-boarding experience was as smooth as World of Warcraft.

<comment><USER5> Or maybe not. It's not like they are lacking contributors and using addictive systems to attract people isn't the most ethical thing, plus I seriously question the quality of the contributors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remember something more snarky along the same lines from encyclopedia dramatica (or was it uncyclopedia?) from 2003 or so.

<comment><USER17> [https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Main_Page](https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Main_Page) :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> i love how Larry Sanger's name is cheekily crossed out :p

<comment><USER19> Just saw that lil devil post this today: [https://twitter.com/lsanger/status/1304606908364578817](https://twitter.com/lsanger/status/1304606908364578817)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you wanted to actually do this see [https://parl.ai/projects/wizard_of_wikipedia/](https://parl.ai/projects/wizard_of_wikipedia/)

You would need a scoring system though.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am shocked this first version of an online encyclopedia has lasted so long.

Typically first versions of software reproduce real world limitations, which don't apply to the software. Second and third iterations tend to drop them.

Wikipedia has lots of those real world limitations. Notoriety and style of writing were determined by the limitations of shelf space and paper.

The selected editor team is something wikipedia specifically wanted to get rid of but has bumbled back into over time.

I keep expecting someone else to crate wikipedia 2.0, but so far nothing. Here's my suggestion for a better virtual encyclopedia.

\- Articles are cryptographically signed by authors.

\- Articles are not editable after publication. Edits result in new articles.

\- Articles have a unique and unchanging url.

\- Registered users can vote on articles.

\- Registered users can create collections of existing articles. And those collections can be tread as an article.

\- Articles can be filtered on popularity, and on popularity among select groups of authors, and on popularity among select groups of up-voters.

I think based on the above you end up with human repository of knowledge. Where articles and links to articles are reliably unchanged, and you never have to worry about them changing "under your feet" so to speak.

The same group of people running wikipedia now, can reproduce their own view of the world in the above setup, and their fans can use it.

Any other group can also create their view of things. There is going to be one most popular view of things. But there could also be a one armed economists' view of modern dance filter of the knowledge pool.

How to deal with spammer or trolls? In addition to voting and filtering, top notch text compression and time based moving of the least often visited articles to slower and cheaper storage.

The slowest and cheapest storage we have, combined with how well we can compress text, in my opinion, results in almost unlimited capacity to store text. And thus notoriety should not be a concern. Leave that to paper encyclopedias.

<comment><USER22> I don't think that would necessarily result in a better wiki.

> Articles are cryptographically signed by authors.

This would significantly up the hurdle for doing edits and, given the meager popularity of PGP, not really pin down a person. But fair, I'd like to see that as a feature.

> Articles are not editable after publication. Edits result in new articles.

I don't see how this is different to a version history. For the most part, people just want the newest information; if a specific revision is needed, you can already direct-link to that.

> Articles have a unique and unchanging url.

Again doable via direct links. I see why you'd want to use that, but if I link (for example) my town, I want people to get the best info about my town and not that version I saw at that moment, unless I'm talking about edits specifically - in which case I'll link a revision. Of course, this requirement satisfies the crypto nerd in us, but it's really going against the usability here for hardly any gain whatsoever.

> Registered users can vote on articles.

Because that works so well for Reddit and all the other vote platforms. Or in science - see the replication crisis.

In all honesty, I think adding a popularity score into this is going to make things far worse. It'll just lead to repeating whatever happens to get votes, with everything else ignored. Why bother with the article of your town? No one cares about that, those two upvotes ... Let's go start an edit war over the birthday of a person!

> Registered users can create collections of existing articles. And those > collections can be tread as an article.

Fair, but that's nothing that wouldn't be doable as of now.

> Articles can be filtered on popularity, and on popularity among select > groups of authors, and on popularity among select groups of up-voters.

That'd be actually interesting, but I don't think it be worth the drawback of votes. Also, people which were set to that group or people which self-identify as that group?

<comment><USER21> _Also, people which were set to that group or people which self-identify as that group?_

Why not both. Self-identified groups and groups curated by someone else.

And on popularity, I just think of votes as one filter. For example, who and how decides what is the best info of your town? Latest? A filter. Most popular? Another filter. The exact link you sent. Also a filter. Liked by a selected group of people. Yet another filter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Genre(s): Fantasy

</comment><comment><USER24> Same for Reddit!

</comment><comment><USER25> The things I find on this orange website haha

<comment><USER26> Hacker News is an FPS

<comment><USER27> Okay, you're going to have to expand on that one. Even if we're going for the very loosest of metaphors, I don't see it.

<comment><USER26> It was the only other game type I could think of ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Deleted. Sorry, my anxiety is playing up.

<comment><USER29> It's hard to know what to make of your comment. Consider the perspective of others reading it:

You allude to a government conspiracy but don't elaborate. You say you investigated this story, but don't describe your investigation (ie. Did you interview victims or did you read blogs online?). You mention this all happened on Wikipedia so presumably there exists some kind of paper trail, but you don't provide any supporting evidence. You describe "random objects" in your mail but don't describe them.

From the reader's perspective this story could be:

1\. An unbiased account of a (unnamed) government unfairly wielding their influence over Wikipedia

2\. The result of someone upset that their Pizzagate exposé wasn't being taken seriously on Wikipedia

3\. An exercise in creative writing

Some kind of supporting evidence would greatly improve your comment.

<comment><USER28> I investigated the story by reading newspaper articles and government documents. I'd like to forget this ever happened, but also would like to serve as a (anonymous internet) warning. Heed it or not, up to you. I don't want to link to the paper trail and wake up any dormant monsters. The "random objects" I also don't describe, in case the objects ring a bell to someone. But you can imagine a door handle or a travel bottle of shampoo.

If you want specifics, I suppose I could mail you those. I fully agree that the account sounds fantastical and psychotic, but it is what I was comfortable sharing. I also think it is a smart tactic if you wanted to discredit someone. I never told anyone close to me either and completely submitted after the article was deleted.

<comment><USER30> Can you provide a link to one of those newspaper articles or government documents? That would go a long way toward establishing your credibility.

<comment><USER28> Sure, but not publicly. Provide contact.

<comment><USER31> I'm going to bite, as well. My pubkey is in keybase from my profile, and my e-mail is on github (or you can just use keybase chat)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bioweapon Experts Aren't Buying the Tesla Model X's Bioweapon Defense Mode - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/bioweapon-experts-arent-buying-the-tesla-model-xs-biowe-1733909293 <comment><USER2> Bonus points that they seriously think it isn't another example of Musk simply being cheeky because he can.

He said the plan was to name the model 3 the model E originally, but that GM or some other car mfg has the trademark on it so that the tesla vehicle lineup would spell "SEX". He's also added Insane and Ludicrous modes, with a comment that plaid mode will eventually be added. That is directly from the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.

Finally, the two SpaceX "autonomous drone platform" ships are named "Of Course I Love You" and "Just Read the Instructions", which are Culture GSV class war ships in Ian M Banks's culture book series.

"Bioweapon defense" mode is just musk having a bit of fun. I doubt that they are seriously thinking it would be used for that, and if they were, it would look a lot more like the "Fox" nuclear biological and chemical protection vehicle the US Army uses.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1135_Nuclear,_Biological,_Che...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1135_Nuclear,_Biological,_Chemical,_Reconnaissance_Vehicle)

</comment><comment><USER3> what a strange article. It argues HEPA isn't effective enough (which is barely relevant because it isn't just a hepa filter), then the article talks about the timing of bioweapon attacks (obviously a car can't predict the future), and then it explains that the technology "is probably overkill, anyway."

Seems like they wrote the title, then tried to come up with an article to support it, even if they ended it with contradicting themselves.</comment>


Net Neutrality II: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vuuZt7wak <comment><USER2> Seems like the FCC already blocked the page mentioned in the video...

<comment><USER3> The current administration doesn't believe in facts, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were to shutdown the very thing that is going to stop them, Americans. The FCC office goes by there own agenda(Trumps) not the American people.</comment></comment>


Mexico Decriminalizes Marijuana, Cocaine, Heroin and Other Drugs - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21mexico.html <comment><USER2> How will this affect the illegal smuggling operations into the US? Probably not at all. If the US legalizes drugs that would bankrupt the drug cartels in Mexico.

<comment><USER3> I agree. The law is really just reflecting unwritten rules already adhered to there.

I disagree that legalization would bankrupt the cartels. While a good portion of their operations involve non-essential tasks like smuggling, transportation, and security (and bribes, I suppose), the cartels are in the best position to capitalize on legalization. They have the growing and refining operations down on a scale large enough to support the (supposed) increased demand due to legalization. The smuggling portion of their costs will be substituted with marketing and supply chain management costs.

<comment><USER4> The difference is that prices would be driven down. The reason the drug cartels make obscene amounts of money is that they operate a monopoly, which they defend with violence and killings. If the market became legalized other players would enter the market until the profits were driven down to normal levels. And a gram of coke would cost you $1 on the street.

<comment><USER5> There's little reason to suppose that with legalization the cartels will suddenly stop using bribes, violence and killings to maintain their monopoly.

They would be reduced, not crippled. They would move onto whatever was in demand but still illegal, harder drugs, guns, slaves.

Nobody with millions and millions of dollars at stake goes down without a fight.

<comment><USER6> > There's little reason to suppose that with legalization the cartels will > suddenly stop using bribes, violence and killings to maintain their > monopoly.

All of which are illegal, and as such mean extra costs, which would put them at disadvantage with legal competitor.

I'm not sure, but I don't think many of the mafia gangs that ran the alcohol business survived the end of prohibition very well, the alcohol industry has been run as a normal business ever since.

<comment><USER7> > I'm not sure, but I don't think many of the mafia gangs that ran the alcohol > business survived the end of prohibition very well, the alcohol industry has > been run as a normal business ever since.

That's true of large-scale criminal enterprise, but small-scale moonshine continued until the cost of raw materials started to approach the cost of the cheapest hard liquor in stores.

Post-prohibition moonshine runs is where/why NASCAR came from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article states that people will not be arrested for possession, but says nothing about sale. It sounds like this wouldn't allow Amsterdam style "coffee shops" only allow the police to ignore minor infractions as they apparently already do.

<comment><USER9> On this article:

\- [http://www.tribunalatina.com/es/notices/mexico_despenaliza_l...](http://www.tribunalatina.com/es/notices/mexico_despenaliza_la_posesion_de_drogas_para_uso_personal_18053.php)

It says:

 _Según la nueva ley, los policías estatales y federales podrán poner trampas a los vendedores mediante la compra de narcóticos y lograr la detención de los responsables de su tráfico._

Which translates to (google translator is good!):

"Under the new law, federal and state police may set traps to sellers through the purchase of drugs and to arrest those responsible for trafficking."

So you are right, no "coffee shops" or anything like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Take that, Steve Yegge ;)

Context: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever- legali...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized- marijuana.html)

<comment><USER11> "President Felipe Calderón waited months before approving the law."

:D

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> NORML has a rebuttal to this article on their blog:

[http://blog.norml.org/2009/08/21/new-york-times-mexico- legal...](http://blog.norml.org/2009/08/21/new-york-times-mexico-legalizes- drug-possession-well-not-exactly/)

<comment><USER13> They miss the point that merely the title is misleading.

The correct title should have been 'Mexico legalizes drug addictions', and I consider this a very, very good and important step for a country.

Why? Because there is a certain asymmetry in the drug scene.

On the one hand, you have those guys who are addicted. They buy small amounts of drugs to consume and, well, consume them. Usually, and especially for those harsher drugs, however, this addiction is physical, which -- at least to me -- qualifies as a sickness.

On the other hand, you have the professional drug dealers. They buy large amounts of drugs (much more than one could consume and not die) and sell drugs to other people. I consider this to be a nasty abuse of sick people (one might go as far and sort of compare it with stealing purses from people in wheelchairs, even though that might be a bit harsh).

Thus, mexico legalized a disease, while keeping abuse and organized criminality illegal, which seems like a good, correct step to me.

<comment><USER12> NORML seems to only be concerned with marijuana law reform. From a marijuana standpoint, addiction is irrelevant. You can't get physically addicted to marijuana, and recreational users of cannabis are not sick; no more so than recreational non abusers of alcohol.

<comment><USER14> While this is true, gambling and video games aren't physically addictive and I know several people who suffer from addictions to one or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sometimes nytimes.com forces me to login to read articles. Only if it's interesting enough (the title at least) I'll bite. For these cases I recommend BugMeNot: <http://www.bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com>

<comment><USER15> Google the article title and follow that link. You won't get the paywall.

<comment><USER16> It is interesting I noticed that the NY Times seems to be doing some A/B testing around this. I Followed a link and was surprised to be able to read when I clicked on the second page link it told me to login. When my co worker went to this page he had to click past one of those big skip this advertisement pages but the article was all on one page and he didn't have to login.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Article in NYT has yesterday's date, but I cannot find any similar note on Mexican news sites.

An immediate consequence could be harder, longer times crossing the border from Mexico back into the U.S. For labor day weekend coming up, it's traditionally a 3 or 4-hr affair to get accross by car, it can only get worse with these news.

<comment><USER9> This law was vetoed by the president of Mexico in 2006 and sent back to congress for review:

\- <http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/137975.html>

Then it was finally approved on April of this year:

\- [http://www.tribunalatina.com/es/notices/mexico_despenaliza_l...](http://www.tribunalatina.com/es/notices/mexico_despenaliza_la_posesion_de_drogas_para_uso_personal_18053.php)

Edit: corrected description of links. Thanks PieSquared for noting the veto.

<comment><USER18> While I'm not fluent in spanish, the gist I get from the article is that it was vetoed and sent back to Congress in 2006; perhaps it has only been passed recently?

<comment><USER9> You are absolutely right, in the first article it says the president vetoed the law the first time in 2006. Nevertheless the law was approved by congress in April of this year, so it appears like the NYTimes article is a few months late.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If 5 grams is 4 joints, I'm either a lightweight, or I've been doing it wrong. I think I'd be able to roll 4 joints in "1" gram.

</comment><comment><USER20> They should legalize it all. Then Microsoft go in and drive the drug dealers out of business.

</comment><comment><USER21> _0.015 milligrams of LSD._

I'm not an expert, but I believe that's enough to intoxicate the entire world's population of elephants.

<comment><USER22> 0.015 mg = 15 μg. According to erowid.org, the threshold dosage for LSD averages around 20 μg. It sounds like this isn't enough to significantly effect a human, let alone elephants. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER21> _Am I missing something?_

You are missing 0.015 mg of a sense of humor.

<comment><USER22> A reference, perhaps?

<comment><USER21> ???

Clue #1: My comment was a joke.

Clue #2: Jokes aren't necessarily funny.

Clue #3: Even if a joke isn't funny, it is still a joke.

Clue #4: Jokes, whatever the degree of funnyness, are not appropriately responded-to by "How did you come about such-and-such a miscalculation? I demand citations." My calculations were deliberately fallacious; see Clue #1.

This website is sometimes like a frickin' Aspergers asylum.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, damn those Aspergers fuckers, trying to assume you were being intelligent instead of a moron who thinks the site is Reddit! I hate people like that, always being nice and using their brains.....

<comment><USER21> I've never seen such an asshole comment get upmodded so much. It'll all fade anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How my pride almost killed me - <AUTHOR> http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/09/how-my-pride-almost-killed-me/ <comment><USER2> > My dive buddy took a minute to realize what I meant _and then another minute > to fumble for his spare regulator_

(emphasis mine)

Yikes! Why didn't he let him share his main regulator while he was looking for the spare?? What if he couldn't find the spare?... (they often become entangled in the tubes in the back and are hard to get)

This is really bizarre.

<comment><USER3> So many questions (and so many places this could have been fixed). a) As soon your dive buddy saw your air gauge was that low he should have gone into the share air procedure. Parent's idea of letting him have your main reg while fumbling for the spare is also a good idea (although I don't believe most training includes that step). b) The divemaster should have been proactive about asking you how much air you had. It is really easy to suck down a lot of air quickly (especially your first few dives) and asking the group how much air they are using early on can indicate if someone is being aggressive with their air. c) i can't believe you guys were spread 60-70 (in total) away from each other. That's pretty far. d) If you were that low under where you ran out after 10 feet, the DM should have taken you up. Remember you also need to inflate your BCD on the surface, you don't know if the boat is going to be there, lots of things can still go wrong.

I've been in a really similar situation. 100 feet down, my dive buddy was someone who hadn't dove in 5 years. It was a drift dive and he was trying to take a lot of pictures. 20 minutes into the dive (the DM queried, he didn't volunteer) he revealed he had roughly 500 PSI left (some believe that's the level you should be at when you get _out_ of the water). Our DM sent us up together, we shared air ... but it was still touch and go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Forgot that air supply runs out faster the deeper you are."

I ran into this one on my certification dive; we were diving on the Madera in Lake Superior in December, I was having trouble keeping my bouyancy which I chalked up to inexperience but later discovered was a leaky BCD. When we went to move to the stern which is in 60 feet of water we all checked our air and I had a quarter of a tank left! Everyone else had at least three quarters of a tank. None the less, the rest of the dive was called off and we had to swim back to shore. I asked why we didn't at least try the deeper dive and he reminded me that you consume much more air in deeper water, pretty much double every 30 feet, that we wouldn't have even made it to the stern before I ran out.

</comment><comment><USER5> The divemaster should have rejigged the buddy pairs so each newbie was with an experienced diver.

A lot of new divemasters are overconfident too, it's possible to go straight from scratch to DM in a summer, but it's like that SCRUM master certificate doesn't make you an expert methodologist by itself, you need experience too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, my dive buddy was pretty experienced, and I think that was part of the problem...he was just complacent. You see the same thing with a lot of pilots who have several hundred hours under their belt. They have enough experience to be overconfident because they haven't had the shit scared out of them, and not enough to know what they don't know.

<comment><USER5> An amusing story from my last dive trip, where the DM had done his training a closed fist meant 0 whereas we'd all been trained that it meant 50. So for the first couple of dives before we'd asked why we were coming up early, he'd thought everyone had 50bar (a quarter-tank, for the non-divers) less than they had...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, you hadn't dived in a year, since your cert. You planned to be in over the cert'd depth, on your first post cert dive. In a group with one dive master, over a wall, which is tricky. And then there was peer pressure to not suck down air too fast. That's not really a recipe for success.</comment>


Why Samsung Knox Isn't Really a Fort Knox - <AUTHOR> http://mobilesecurityares.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-samsung-knox-isnt-really-fort-knox.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> It's the reason why, like many here, I have never bought a Samsung Android device (with the exception of the old Galaxy Nexus which was clear from Samsung total software crap).

They tend to provide good hardware features (waterproof, camera, etc.) but they kill it with bad software. Had a few meetings with them a few years ago, and got the impression that they thought software is cheap and not worth improving.

<comment><USER3> The software on my Galaxy Note 2 was pretty fine though (this was just over a year ago). It broke down and I had the motherboard replaced (under warranty), when it got back it was wiped anyway so I figured I might as well try cyanogenmod. Expected a culture shock like when switching from a windows to a linux desktop, but it's really just the same. They ship pretty much stock android with a load of crap that you can disable. First boot you just disable their ChatOn and various Note pen features and you're good to go, it won't ever bother you and you have a nice Android system. Cyanogenmod sucks more power than the stock Samsung software did...

Re-reading this, my first sentence is "the software [...] was pretty fine", well, I meant that they didn't mess up Android too badly. Their own software, I don't know, I'd totally ignore Knox simply because it's closed source and tries to do security. Now we've seen it fails, but even without that knowledge I wouldn't have wanted to use it.

<comment><USER4> > Their own software, I don't know,

I've ranted about this more than enough on HN, so I'll summarize: Samsung's software is consistently complete shit. I would be truly surprised if during a security audit Knox turned out to be secure using even the most liberal definition of "secure".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "The fact that they are persisting the key just for the password hint > functionality is compromising the security of that product completely."

Ugh. How this gets through the hands of so many talented engineers boggles my mind. It's easy to just blame the project managers, but at some point don't we have a responsibility to say no, this is a terrible idea and completely compromises the premise of the product?

<comment><USER6> Saying a definite 'no' in Korean culture is often hard (as is saying a definite 'yes'). Saying a firm 'no' to your boss, which would make him say a firm 'no' to _his_ boss, is harder still.

/* Include a typical "that's why such things should be open-source" essay here. */

<comment><USER7> I attended a session at Simon Fraser University once earlier this year, hosted by Samsung. Those guys, including a product guy, made it pretty clear that the development work happened in their Greater Vancouver R&D lab, not in Korea. So....

<comment><USER8> Korean culture could be heavily embedded in their Vancouver office.

<comment><USER9> it certainly is in their san jose "research and development center"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe I am missing something here, but I didn't even know Samsung Knox did storage encryption. As far as I understand, the use case for this technology was isolating enterprise apps from user-installed/general apps. Given that, is there any scenario in which non-Knox apps could read the password from disk and use that to mess with apps inside the Knox container? If so, then this is a serious threat to Knox as a technology, if not, it still sounds like a silly way to implement passwords, but not a deal-breaker (kinda like having a plain- text /etc/shadow in mode 600 is silly - or a sign of negligence, depending on your standards regarding defense-in-depth - but not a full attack vector in and of itself).

I always assumed Knox was something you used in addition to Android's whole- system encryption, not instead of, but I could be wrong.

<comment><USER11> Apparently the pin was used with KNOX Personal not that standard KNOX enterprise suite: [https://twitter.com/xuf_/status/525745093064785921](https://twitter.com/xuf_/status/525745093064785921)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's 2014. How are people still rolling their own, terrible, encryption schemes?

<comment><USER13> It's Samsung, they have been adding crap on top of Android for years...

<comment><USER14> It's interesting as they are contributing knox to core android (I think, see [http://android-developers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/knox- contri...](http://android-developers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/knox-contribution- to-android.html))

<comment><USER15> The API has been "adapted", and the new data separation will be "analogous", but it appears that it's an adaptation of the current AOSP/Google cryptography to fit a similar need, _not_ a direct contribution from Samsung.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Slight correction, Android used to use PBKDF2. They've moved to scrypt recently. Cool article and good read. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hi, I'm the author of the Knox article. I responded to the press release from Samsung and updated my blog article:

As Samsung responded with an official press release regarding my blog article ([https://www.samsungknox.com/en/blog/response-blog-post- samsu...](https://www.samsungknox.com/en/blog/response-blog-post-samsung- knox)) I also want to response to their press release:

First of all as I mentioned in the paragraph below, I analysed the pre- installed Knox Container App which is known as Knox Personal and shipped with the Samsung S4 I bought and not Knox EMM. " Knox EMM is a enterprise cloud- based management solution for mobile devices which was not part of this analysis."

I investigated the following version (mentioned in the name of the apk files on the device): KNOX_com.sec.knox.app.container_2.0_2.apk, KNOX_com.sec.knox.containeragent_3.0_30.apk

A lot of comments and posts claimed that I have just investigated an early developer version. I don't think that version 2.0_2 seems to be an early developer version?!? Also Samsung why are you shipping early developer versions of a product on customer devices?

I did the analysis about one month ago with a new Samsung S4 and all updates installed. That doesn't seem to be an early developer version, right? Or did I bought a fake one ;)?

Samsung mentioned the following in their press release: "Concerning the second issue, KNOX does save the encryption key required to auto-mount the container's file system in TrustZone. However, unlike what is implied in the blog, the access to this key is strongly controlled. Only trusted system processes can retrieve it, and KNOX Trusted Boot will lock down the container key store in the event of a system compromise."

I think Samsung speaks here about their Knox Agent. At the beginning of my analysis I used geohots towelroot to gain root access on the Samsung device. During the analysis the phone wanted to update some "Samsung Security Policies". After the update the Agent blocked the root access to the phone. So this agent seems to be working like a usual Anti-Virus tool. It can only detect attacks if it knows the attack. And as we all know, Anti-Viruses are useless against unknown attacks :). This is the same for their so called "TrustZone".

All other points the press release mentioned were just about a Knox 1.0 software, which now was replaced by MyKnox. I don't know what Knox 1.0 is and how to get it or on which devices this is installed. All I know is, the version of Knox Container 2.0_2, which was installed on my Samsung S4 is heavily unsecure.

</comment><comment><USER18> There is a reason why the companies/.gov agencies that need it still go with Blackberry for security purposes.

<comment><USER19> LOL, as if RIM does shit correctly.

<comment><USER20> Nice, great addition to the discussion. Care to share examples of how you know this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When I first read "Samsung Knox" in an article merely talking about device features, I rolled my eyes and thought "there's no way Samsung wrote a solid piece of security software".

</comment><comment><USER22> Knox is difficult to implement in an enterprise environment anyway -- when we evaluated MDMs, two vendors flat out said that they were aware of zero customers actually using it

The problem is, of course the security model for Android is a real mess, especially in BYOD scenarios. These garbage 3rd party solutions are there because the platform doesn't provide it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Samsung has a response at [https://www.samsungknox.com/en/blog/response-blog- post-samsu...](https://www.samsungknox.com/en/blog/response-blog-post-samsung- knox).

I was surprised that so many people didn't have patience to think through the logic in that original post. Since there is a function used to derive the key from password, this must be the way Samsung handles the password. This logic doesn't fly.

</comment><comment><USER24> The PIN issue is only in the deprecated KNOX personal. The managed KNOX (enterprise) doesn't use a PIN.

KNOX Personal was a failed intention to promote KNOX through the end users and only available in the early KNOX dev.

[https://twitter.com/xuf_/status/525745093064785921](https://twitter.com/xuf_/status/525745093064785921)

</comment><comment><USER20> > Yes, guess what is written in the pin.xml file? The pin we had to set during > the setup of Knox in cleartext!

Good lord. That's brutal..

<comment><USER25> Not really brutal. It's a PIN code, not a passphrase. Unless those are used with HSMs (like with bank or SIM cards), their only use is to prevent immediate access by non-technical adversary, so there's little point in securing those beyond typical UNIX filesystem permissions (given you're not supposed to have root access or access raw block device, huh).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Knox is a marketing initiative as much as a technical one.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you are expecting truly secure phones, you are kidding yourself in the first place.

Phones are inherently insecure.

[http://boingboing.net/2014/09/01/fake-phone-attacking- cell-t...](http://boingboing.net/2014/09/01/fake-phone-attacking-cell- tow.html)

[http://boingboing.net/2013/11/13/your-smartphones-hidden- rad...](http://boingboing.net/2013/11/13/your-smartphones-hidden-rad.html)

etc.

When you can't even trust the f'n processor running your machine, you are hosed no matter what you do.

<comment><USER25> It's another kind of security Knox is about.

It's security of your device from yourself. The same kind of security idea that doesn't provide you with root access. The idea is that your company could be able to provide you with an app, but you won't be able to tinker with it. The whole point is, if the thing would work as advertised, the company can consider your device as "secure" and be not afraid of it leaking their data, while still letting you use it.

Well, the article shows it failed, anyway.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to encourage entrepreneurship at a company? - <AUTHOR>

Hi. I am working at a small and great company doing mostly consulting. During my spare time I've developed a small web application that might get successful. (I actually have some evidence ;-)
I would like to continue my endeavor and I am looking for ways to do this in cooperation with my current employer. Our company is open to approaches. Any best practices/patterns? Examples of spin-offs? <comment><USER2> You might try googling the concept of "intrapreneurship". <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrapreneurship>

Best I can do.

Good luck.</comment>


California under counted Covid-19 cases after TLS certificate expired - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmagazine.com/certificates/california-under-counted-covid-19-cases-after-certificate-expired/ <comment><USER2> TLS and DNS, screwing people over since…</comment>


Reddit turns 15: The dramatic moments that shaped the internet's front page - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/reddit-history-15th-anniversary/ <comment><USER2> Reddit was really cool then. Lots of audience came from the Usenet (c.l.l) and /. u/paulgraham was active and feisty getting into shitty arguments just like everybody else.

Do I remember it correctly? Did Paul Graham get caught having sock puppet in discussion? I tried to google it but I can't get find the discussion.</comment>


Toronto Advisor Resigns Over Data Concerns with Google's Smart City Project - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3km74w/google-smart-city-in-toronto-advisor-resigns-data-privacy <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how GDPR compliant are the many "smart city" projects across the European Union, anyone has info on that?</comment>


Ask HN: What are available Google contacts alternatives? - <AUTHOR> Google contacts does a good job synchronizing my contacts across devices and email. I am trying to degoogle myself and looking for stable alternatives <comment><USER2> I definitely prefer to host my contacts with my email, so they moved to Fastmail when my email did. What email service are you using? Most email services use CardDAV-compatible contact sync of some flavor, nothing Google is doing there is particularly innovative.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been a very happy user of [https://fruux.com/](https://fruux.com/) for years now.

</comment><comment><USER4> CalendarServer [1] is good.

[1] [https://www.calendarserver.org/](https://www.calendarserver.org/)</comment>


The Right Size - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/03/the-right-size.html

<comment><USER2> "One day soon there will be car companies that have 200 employees."

And they will all be filling out forms to assure the government that their cars have automatic restraint systems, automatic braking, automatic collision avoidance, automatic position reporting, automatic speed reporting, and police-operated remote shutdown.

<comment><USER3> Or they will subcontract that to a firm that specializes in dealing with government bureaucracy. Two hundred might be a bit small, but I don't think the sub-1000 range is untenable.</comment></comment>


Mark E. Zuckerberg, and the early team of facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=505938

<comment><USER2> Interesting transition he has made, from this: "If you're gonna be a good businessman, really what it's about, is finding situations where people win. It's not about tricking people into doing stuff, it's not about being a hardass. It's about being comfortable and working in your pajamas, because that's gonna end up being what's best for everyone."

To this: "Really we try to embrace communication between people so they can communicate and communicate between each other. It's a social utility for communication." (at SXSWi)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was wondering where I had seen Adam D'Angelo's face before. I just realized he used to be competitor on topcoder. He was pretty good, too.

Also; it's funny -- I had this image of Zuckerberg being quite devious and calculating. Now it feels like he's a lot like us.

</comment><comment><USER4> Am i the only one that's sick of this guy?

<comment><USER5> You're sick of the PR creation. This is an old article, and seems pretty authentic. Lots of interesting stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good read. Demystifies the Facebook mythology a little. Pre-Brandee Barker vintage Zuckerberg quotes in last two paragraphs.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good read. I don't think I could have passed up that many offers.

</comment><comment><USER8> Off topic: Why does "The Crimson" have google ads? With its 600 billion dollar endowment, couldn't Harvard do without?

<comment><USER9> most college papers are independent and don't receive much (if any) funding from the University they are affiliated with.

helps them remain a bit more objective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A good article, but it's only half of the story.</comment>


Why Basic is Still Relevant - <AUTHOR> http://kidbasic.sourceforge.net/en/why.html

<comment><USER2> In the 1970s, a team of pioneering computer scientists at Xerox PARC known as the Learning Research Group investigated this very problem--that of creating a programming language suitable for children as young as five to write programs in. As part of their study, they took their computers and their language into Palo Alto schools and attempted, successfully, to teach children from different age groups how to program. The language, named Smalltalk, underwent continuous revision throughout the '70s and was finally released to the world in 1980 as Smalltalk-80.

Smalltalk is a tiny language, with the entire syntax famously fitting on an index card. It is pure in theory: everything is an object and every operation, even "1 + 2," a message sent to an object. It is also pure in implementation: except for a handful of primitive messages, Smalltalks are written almost entirely in themselves, like Lisps.

That a developer could, in 2009, be completely ignorant of the advances made in his field a quarter century earlier is simply inexcusable. To see people, in 2009, touting BASIC as a fine pedagogical tool (and not a modern incarnation, but classic line-oriented, GOTO-ridden BASIC--the very BASIC upon which Dijkstra unleashed his rancour), and to see others seriously suggesting Ruby, Python or some other overly-complex bastard child of C instead, is to observe first-hand the tribute that ignorance exacts from the ignorant. And that ignorance is not only the cause of BASIC being inflicted on yet another generation of hapless youth, but is also the reason why C#'s classes aren't real objects, why Java's "new" is a special primitive, and the source of countless over incongruities between Smalltalk and nearly every other language advertised as "object-oriented."

<comment><USER3> The thing is, Smalltalk (and Forth, and to a certain extent Lisp) do what they do by pretending that everything outside the language runtime doesn't really exist. I wonder how much it's possible for young children to really care about manipulating symbols in such a closed world. Now consider LOGO which is all about moving the turtle around the the floor (and is quite Lisp-like). Even now, decades later, when I'm typing the commands that will make the tape robots in a distant datacentre spin into motion, I'm remembering LOGO at primary school...

<comment><USER2> Smalltalks usually come with some sort of graphical environment that facilitates the building of GUIs. Those environments usually also provide simpler graphical primitives you can draw with. In fact, if all you want is LOGO, you can use the Pen class (a standard ST-80 class) in Squeak or Pharo as a LOGO turtle:

p := Pen new.

360 timesRepeat: [p go: 1; turn: 1].

that will draw a circle.

4 timesRepeat: [p go: 100; turn: 90].

and that, a square.

More complicated stuff can be done with Morphic and eToys.

<comment><USER3> Yep, but the important part of a LOGO teaching system is the real actual turtle moving around a giant piece of paper. It makes it "real".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whenever this topic comes up, there are a huge number of replies to the effect of, "I learned on BASIC, and I found it satisfying. I don't think kids can deal with more complexity."

This is a valid point, but there is a huge change that here that we seem to be missing. When a lot of us started out, computers were not ubiquitous. Getting a computer to print out "trjordan is the BEST!!!!" in a loop was insanely cool, because that's what computers did. The reason BASIC seemed so great was because you could make computers do what you thought was their primary use (text-based input/output, and decisions based on your input).

Today, kids have a totally different relationship with computers. I can't claim to understand it, but the sheer pervasiveness of graphics, color, and mouse-based interfaces changes how kids work with computers. When you think of it this way, BASIC, Python, and every other programming language falls short, because you basically can't create things that ape real programs (interface, no logic) in a few short lines. Sure, Python is great for some kids, but it's not hooking anybody whose mind isn't already "wired for programming", in some sense.

So what's the answer? I'm not sure. I do think that we need to provide something to get GUIs and graphics in front of them in a fast, easy, and intuitive way. LOGO's turtle is OK, but ultimately too limited. I remember _why's Shoes seemed like a step in the right direction. Kids love building things, and programming are only endeavor where you are only limited by your imagination. With the right set of tools, they could get start on a lifetime of building, but they need to be shown how powerful that keyboard and monitor are.

<comment><USER5> > "When you think of it this way, BASIC, Python, and every other programming > language falls short, because you basically can't create things that ape > real programs (interface, no logic) in a few short lines."

Sure you can, c.f. STOS/AMOS, GFABasic, BlitzBasic/BlitzMax, GameMaker, AGS and all the other BASIC-like systems that make it a breeze to program games and GUIs.

With BlitzMax (which is relatively modern), you can get GPU-accelerated sprites flying around on screen in three or four lines. Easier than Flash by a long way.

When starting out in programming it's important for it to be as least abstract as possible. It's basic usability. You want to do something and see the result immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, everyone here (including myself in my earlier post) seems to be ignoring one of the OPs primary points: BASIC, with its ugly GOTOs, is a lot more like assembly language than anything else mentioned here (as far as I know. I don't know smalltalk or LOGO). Does anyone think that point is meaningful or BS? I, for one, see two sides:

1) I agree that this can give kids a good understanding of how a computer works... but at least with QBasic there are functions so some teachers will be tempted to not teach GOTOs.

2) Kids don't care. As @trordan mentioned, anything command line will seem boring to kids nowadays.

However, I don't see any reason why you can't have a programming language which is, in some sense, a "high level low level language" and still can produce neat graphics. I don't know if it exists though...

<comment><USER7> I first learned programming in language called CoolBasic. It's simple basic like language meant for making simple 2d games. It doesn't have any command line functionality at all, and a program always has exactly one window where everything happens. It had built-in commands for loading and showing images, playing sounds, making game objects and moving them, collisions between them, tilemaps, etc. It has it's own IDE with integrated manual (with tutorials, explanations and examples of all commands).

While it was impossible to do anything advanced in it (without using dll- files), it was really easy to make a simple game with it.

The current version of the language is outdated (uses directx 7 for graphics, no hardware acceleration, etc.), but a new version is in development. The language is made by a finn and does not currently have official english manual, but the next version is supposed to have (there are some translations made by the community).

<http://www.coolbasic.com/index.php?lang=en>

<comment><USER8> Nice link. Instant gratification is central for any environment targeted at kids. That said, Logo's motive was to have a low threshold and no ceiling, whereas CoolBasic's motive seems to be a low threshold, but a fairly low ceiling as well. So .. not a solved problem yet :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As much as I dislike Basic in all of its forms, I have to agree with the author on this: it's a good way for Kids to learn programming. My agreement is partially based on my own experience: When I was 13, I wanted to learn how to program my 386 computer. I tried, and failed, to teach myself C++. I then bought a book on QBasic, and learned it. Afterwards I went back to C++ (well, mostly the C subset of C++ actually). I eventually had to come back to Basic in the form of Visual Basic, but by the time that happened, I was an adult and already familiar with several different languages.

At some point, my dislike for Basic brought me to the question: "What language is appropriate to use for introducing kids to programming?" Of all of the other languages I know, none seem appropriate. (And yes, people have suggested Python, but I'm not convinced.) Languages designed for children are dumbed down. Languages designed to meet the rigor of modern programming requirements have complexities that should be hidden for relatively simple operations. Sigh. I'm sure there is a better way out there, but to find it within the haystack that is the collection of modern programming languages is a formidable task.

<comment><USER10> I am curious as to what you think basic does easier than python. Is it the significant whitespace? I just don't see how python is harder than basic in terms of what a beginning programmer is likely to do with it. They both have for loops and if statements which make up the lions share of the easy programs.

I would think it is easier to program in python because of the for each syntax in python since it maps so closely to human language. For element in list: do something with that element. To open up a file it's just myopenfile = open("/path/to/file") etc....

<comment><USER11> Line numbers. My father was a computer science teacher, and when I was very young (5, or 6), I used to look at the example programs that his students had written, and that he was grading at home. The exercises were were written in Pascal, and I just really had trouble grokking how the computer knew in which order to execute things. Even just the simple question of being able to identify where execution was going to start was a non-trivial exercise.

Line number based BASIC is much easier for a child to understand. You start at the top, and start reading. I remember that in my head I had an image of me writing 'stories' for the computer to read.

A (very) few years later, the question of order of execution was obvious to me, but I clearly remember those times in the lounge room looking at print outs of Pascal, and not being able to figure out what the program was going to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a bad example?

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

That said, I think we may be confusing two things: teaching computer science and teaching about computers. To the compsi approach, you would want something that can express the rich, high-level concepts

OTOH, if you want to teach how a computer works deep inside, BASIC, with GOTOs and one-line IFs, primitive types and so on teaches a lot about how the processor inside the computer thinks, without the fuss other languages bring. Creating your own recursion (building your own stack - or stacks - out of arrays of primitives) is a worthy exercise.

I learned how to program with an Apple II. It didn't kill me.

</comment><comment><USER13> I first cut my teeth on GW-BASIC on my Tandy 1000, and I wrote some pretty crazy stuff on that. The author is totally right... demystifying what was going on was key to getting my feet wet. I soon learned that BASIC was an interpreted language (which is why I couldn't just run it at the command line), and that I needed a "compiler" to make machine code, or learn assembly, so then I wanted a compiler, and I learned C, etc. etc. etc.

Twenty something years later, I don't think the experience left me with any scars or bad habits, but I might not be a programmer today if I hadn't started with BASIC.

<comment><USER14> _I soon learned that BASIC was an interpreted language (which is why I couldn't just run it at the command line)_

Maybe the BASIC you used couldn't be entered from the command line, but you could type BASIC commands into the Commodore 64 directly, without having to write a program first, and they would be executed. This has nothing to do with it being interpreted or compiled.

<comment><USER15> Same with the apple ii. I was looking for an emulator to prove my point and found this pretty nice one:

<http://www.virtualapple.org/dungeonmasterdisk.html> [fun game]

run this program, hit ctrl-c and type

      print "hello world";

<http://www.virtualapple.org/overrundisk.html>

<comment><USER10> Ah the first computer I learned how to program on at the ripe age of 3. The apple iie of course. I still miss the days of millionare, karakteka, conan, and autoduel(we had this computer for years and years)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you want to learn how a computer works, I'd agree that BASIC is a great way to go about it. A processor pulls instructions out of memory and executes them. The instructions mutate the state of the machine to produce a result. BASIC models this imperative process in very plain, easily understood text.

However, if I was going to teach something about programming to a novice I'd try to get them to start thinking functionally from the beginning. All this imperative crap is how you implement the abstract model of what you are trying to compute on the hardware. Why get bogged down in the details? Show them a recursive data structure or algorithm and get them to understand it. Have them run it on paper not by thinking about what registers or variables you are modifying, but rather what the expression tree looks like when the recursive algorithm is evaluated.

I think if my first language had been SML or a LISP I'd have had an easier time later on in my programming career.

<comment><USER17> "Lisp programmers know the value of everything but the cost of nothing"

Functional programming is a good paradigm but not a panacea, and imperative programming isn't crap. It has its uses. I like FP, but sometimes I'm embarrassed by how some people put it on a pedestal, like for OOP before...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Interesting to note is that the computer language they use to teach it (scheme) has its roots in Lisp (which is over 40 years old) and will probably never change."

It should be noted that MIT switched the language they teach their undergrads this year to Python. It should also be noted that Python also has roots in Lisp.

<comment><USER19> Curious how Python has roots in lisp?

<comment><USER20> Yeah, it doesn't really. Python was already at version 1.2 before, Guido says, "... in April 1995. CNRI's director, Bob Kahn, was the first to point out to me how much Python has in common with Lisp, despite being completely different at a superficial (syntactic) level."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The best way to teach a young'n how to code in this day and age is a two pronged attack.

From one direction, come at them with microcontroller assembly language. Get them making Arduino-powered blinky LEDs and robots. That will learn 'em the fundamentals and should be a blast from the beginning.

From the other direction, use HTML+JS to teach high-level dynamic languages and GUIs. Plenty of fun to be had here as well. They can code up their own social sites. You might want to grab some equity.

These two courses together would be intense but they are so different that they can use one as a refreshing break from the other. They are both so dense with gratification that if you've got a real future hacker on your hands, you'll be the one who has a hard time keeping up.

<comment><USER8> A very interesting angle indeed. MIT recently switched their SICP based course to a robot-centric course for teaching computer "science". It is certainly more fun to infuse some hardware work into the curriculum. It is much more fun these days with all kinds of controllers being much more easily available - think Lego Mindstorms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> People really think 7 year olds should learn java/c/c++/etc... ? Thats absurd. All the great stuff these languages provide is only useful after you can deal with some abstraction. Till then, the most critical thing for kids is getting them to think in "small steps."

<comment><USER22> Agreed, but I think this article is railing against a strawman. The choices aren't between basic and C++. Python, for example, can be used with simplicity rivaling most dialects of basic, but it is also a fairly powerful and expressive language once they get used to it.

Then there are things like squeak or Alice that are aimed at providing a gentle and fun introduction to programming.

Learning basic is certainly preferable to learning nothing, and like a great many people here I also was introduced to programming through it. But as far as I can see there is little to no reason to consider it a preferable introductory language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been wondering lately whether MIT's approach of starting with Scheme has any lasting impact on students. After almost a decade of coding, I'm finally grasping the power of Lisp, but I wonder if I'd started with a Lisp would I have gotten here sooner? Does it help or hinder students to learn something as alien as Lisp for their first language in college?

</comment><comment><USER24> Basic still is relevant, sort of.

<http://www.parallax.com/tabid/407/Default.aspx>

The Parallax Propeller is an 8-core microcontroller (with each core named a "cog") with very small amounts of memory on each core. The Propeller can fairly easily interface with PS/2 keyboards and mice, VGA monitors, and RCA Composite screens. You can code on it with ASM, a language with an onboard- interpreter called SPIN, some free but proprietary-and-slightly-limited C compilers, a tiny implementation of Basic that works, or a very robust Forth.

Give it to the kids in your life, and they too will be able to write "Ian Rules!" :)

</comment><comment><USER8> The answer to the problem of introducing computational thinking to kids surely doesn't lie in a straightforward return to the past. For some notable efforts, see <http://scratch.mit.edu/>, <http://www.agentsheets.com/>, or the older <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)> which has some modern variants such as StarLogo.

<comment><USER25> My soon to be 8 year old is enjoying Scratch immensely. (As am I.)

Without any instruction, apart from two tutorials from YouTube, he has made a number of exploratory programs.

I cannot recommend it more highly then seeing him dancing in delight as he showed his mother how the flying bit of doodle (made with the in-skin paint widget) that shoots from the mouth of the cat makes the stick men 'ghost'.

He set up broadcasts, loops, events, and keyboard control, all on his own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [http://danweinreb.org/blog/why-did-mit-switch-from-scheme- to...](http://danweinreb.org/blog/why-did-mit-switch-from-scheme-to-python)

</comment><comment><USER27> I've used BASIC quite a bit on the C64 as a prototype tool. Everything ran so slowly that even the slightest performance gain in my algorithms where noticeable with the naked eye. So when my demos where coded in assembly I knew which algorithms where the fastest. Ahh the memories :-)

I'm not sure BASIC captures the imagination of kids these days. _why's Shoes does a much better job.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why not learn COBOL and FORTRAN at 9 years old? I did it, since we had no C and Pascal yet.</comment>