Ask HN: QRCodes in your local newspaper - <AUTHOR>

Hi - Have any of you seen QRCodes used in your local newspaper for articles or ads? I'm doing some research on QRCodes usage in North American newspapers and would like to know if you've seen them. Let me know here, and Thanks....Keith Erskine <comment><USER2> I have seen only one company use QR codes in a local newspaper. It was in the Kansas City Small Business Journal, and the company advertising does print, design, and mail campaign work.

I have used QR codes on a few flyers and posters. The majority of people who talk to me about the QR codes I use don't realize their phones can read them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Tim - getting people educated is a major obstacle. It took American Idol to get people in the US to use text messaging.</comment></comment>


AMD Ryzen Official Gaming Benchmarks Performance Slide Leaked - <AUTHOR> http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-7-1700x-1700-official-gaming-benchmarks-leak/ <comment><USER2> Are there any power usage stats public yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just asked that question on the AMD forums ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> These chips both cost right at $400, and are pretty much on par. What am I missing?

<comment><USER4> the 1700X has 8 cores and 16 threads, the i7 7700k has 4 cores and 8 threads.

Most games have little to no benefit from more than 2-4 cores. These benchmarks show that the 1700X is competitive in single thread preformance with the high end i7s, while having double the amount of cores for the same price.

Add in that all AMD processors have unlocked multipliers and appear to have quite a lot of overclocking headroom, you have an insane amount of value.</comment></comment>


Facebook adds option for US users to turn off political ads - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/16/facebook-turn-off-political-ads-voting-info-center/ <comment><USER2> Will they also allow advertisers to specifically target users with disabled political ads? <wink wink>

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how or if that will effect turnout if it becomes widely used.</comment>


Princeton theoretical physicist Steven Gubser has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/08/06/princeton-theoretical-physicist-steven-gubser-outstanding-scholar-string-theory-and <comment><USER2> Same weekend as Ann Nelson, a physicist at the University of Washington. Both died in outdoor accidents; Ann stepped on a loose rock while downclimbing a gulley and that was the ball game.

I am a voracious reader of climbing accident reports and hope his family or climbing partners decide to publish what happened. All I've read is that his "rope snapped" which isn't really something that ever happens; cut yes, snapped no.

<comment><USER3> Climbing sounds like an incredibly dangerous sport. I don't understand how so many people are willing to do risky things like that.

<comment><USER4> Because it takes away all your thoughts, and connects you with instant reality. Plus, it's a fitness activity, it is insanely fun, very social and gives an intense sense of achievment.

<comment><USER3> That applies to pretty much every sport. Why choose one that puts your life at risk?

<comment><USER5> You could die at any moment... I know two people that were killed by drink drivers, during the day, through no fault of their own.

Why not enjoy the things that make feel alive, while you are alive? You might not be tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Last weekend was a terrible weekend for physics. Ann Nelson, an outstanding physicist at UW, also died in a mountaineering accident.

[https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.2019080...](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20190808a/full/)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for that - Nelson's husband's tribute, starting right after the PT piece, is touching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> True story: he lived in the same dorm room all four years, and only got 2 A s as an undergrad; the rest were A+es, which were incredibly hard to get.

Fantastic lecturer, advisor, climbing instructor, and really brilliant person. Can't believe he's gone.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is so sad. He was such a lovely and brilliant guy :(

</comment><comment><USER10> Very sad news. Took one of his graduate courses, he was great.</comment>


ArangoDB version 1.1 is out - <AUTHOR> http://www.arangodb.org/2012/12/06/arangodb-version-1-1-is-out

<comment><USER2> how/why is this better than other DB solutions?</comment>


Attempt to hack WordPress with a pull request - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wordpress/wordpress/pull/18 <comment><USER2> WP has absolutely no room to be making fun of security issues.

They caught this one because it was an obvious attempt, but their track history sucks.

Mocking evil hackers is a very stupid idea.

Oh and I believe they tried this because someone was successful in the past if I remember correctly.

<comment><USER3> > Mocking evil hackers is a very stupid idea.

So, every script kiddie is an "evil hacker" now?

> Oh and I believe they tried this because someone was successful in the past > if I remember correctly.

Source?

<comment><USER2> At least one incident here, my memory is clouded by all the issues over the years:

[http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/06/22/1241241/wordpressorg-h...](http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/06/22/1241241/wordpressorg- hacked-plugin-repository-compromised)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link, but inserting commits by hacking the infrastructure isn't quite the same as having a pull request officially merged.

Even the Linux infrastructure was hacked not too long ago. More such example here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4464303>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nothing subtle, but he was clever in the sense that he managed to stuff a complete injection attack into his single file and included a Google-call in case his script didn't recognize the operating system.

Worth a read not because it's a genius-level hack, but worth to see the breadth-first attempt that the attack takes to utilize a number of strategies. Realizing the number of attack vectors that you have to defend against is key to writing secure code.

In that sense, I wonder if there are other good examples of attack code hosted on github somewhere. Seems like there's as much to learn from "black hat" code attacks as there is from doing code reviews on your own codebase.

<comment><USER5> It's cool and all, but I get the feeling that the pull requester probably didn't write the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sweet Jesus the discussion under the request looks like MySpace. I sincerely hope that this isn't going to be the norm on GitHub in the future.

<comment><USER7> It's already pretty common on any issue or pull request that gets a lot of attention and has an aspect of community drama. The Crockford / semicolon one isn't _as_ bad straight out of the gate (<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/3057>), but still...

<comment><USER8> That thread's been modified _heavily_ since then. And I mean heavily. The first 300 posts were all memes back then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very clever but given Wordpress's security track record when it comes to code exploits I wouldn't have been surprised if this somehow made its way into the core. Good code for learning how some particular Wordpress exploits work.

<comment><USER10> Are you saying that someone who hasn't read the complete source code of all the software he uses is a moron?

<comment><USER10> Oops, meant to reply to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4464955>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are there any examples of hackers successfully inserting exploits into a popular codebase like this?

<comment><USER12> There was the famous attempt to insert a backdoor in the Linux sourcetree[1]. That wasn't quite the same as it wasn't a pull request (or equivalent), was instead done by directly modifying the CVS mirror of the BitKeeper sourcetree.

[1] [http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0311.0/0621.h...](http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0311.0/0621.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was expecting something subtle and clever.

</comment><comment><USER14> Instead of focusing on the pull request maybe we should think about better vulnerability trajectories. Next time don't make a pull request. Just fork the project, add some dumb feature someone will want or need, then leave your fork out there on Github. Morons will pull it down and use it without ever checking the code.

</comment><comment><USER15> So he just put in a remote shell and removed the actual code? I've found a couple remote shell scripts on my server over the years as they got compromised, I was always impressed with how much they could really do from 1 file to my server. Scary stuff.

</comment><comment><USER16> <https://github.com/maxymax> I'm quite intrigued by his profile. Note the '10,000 commits with 255,815 additions and 29,562 deletions'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh God how could possibly do 10,000 commits on a single file?

<comment><USER17> Not sure, but possibly by attempting to insert a malicious commit into the history and rebase everything else over it.

<comment><USER18> That would be this pull request he sent:

<https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/pull/19>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> the pull-request seems to be deleted. for people that want to have a look at the (partly not yet obfuscated) commit will want to search for the sha

2fa93590c7881fab043be7b8b51358894dbc1466

</comment><comment><USER20> Could someone explain this joke to me, a total programming noob?

<comment><USER5> They made a pull request - which basically means a request to change the source code - to insert a huge hacker console into wp.

<comment><USER21> Thanks. I'm with parent and very curious about what this is about. Does this console give root access to the server via a web interface?

<comment><USER22> Sort of. It gives access with whatever user the webserver is running under. Might be root, but will usually be a less privileged user eg www-data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Laugh now, but someone will pull it off one day.

</comment><comment><USER24> "An hilarious", really? Dude, spend a minute on your title. It's not Reddit here.

<comment><USER25> That's actually correct - 'an' before a sounded 'h' is a style issue in American English, and still commonly used. In nearly every other English dialect it is a strict rule.

<comment><USER26> Yeah I was just going to comment on this too-- "a" vs. "an" actually has to do with pronunciation, not strictly words that begin with vowels.

Maybe the author is Irish =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> i'm envy. smart hack</comment>


Ask HN: What do you guys use for IT asset management? - <AUTHOR> So a customer of mine is tracking racks and racks and racks of servers, switches, disks, ram, cards, and other things like their PCs, printers etc. all through spreadsheets and custom web app that someone wrote over 5 years ago which parses their excel sheet. They track this like location, status, warranty and other notes about each item. However, as you can imagine this current setup is a usability nightmare along with the obvious lack of scalability.<p>I'm curious as to how other people track assets on a large-ish scale. I know there's some good software out there but many of their websites seem to have lots of marketing fluff making it hard to determine what is actually useful. What tool(s) do you use to do this? <comment><USER2> My company operates just like NASA does.

We use a bunch of spreadsheets that periodically, maybe, get updated.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a real shit show I tell you.</comment></comment>


After c/c++ what should I learn? - <AUTHOR>

I had c and c++ in my 2nd year's CS semester. what programming languages should i learn after these.should i strengthen my skills in these languages again or should i try learning other prog languages?which ones are useful for web development? What if i wanted to develop a small website all by my own ,then which languages do i require to learn? <comment><USER2> Perl is a good language to know. Hear me out before you mod me down into oblivion! I'm not much of a Perl developer. At work I use Java. For personal projects I like to play around with the "cool" stuff like Python, Lisp or Ruby. For me, Perl is great for all the stuff in between.

For my entire development career, no matter what language I'm using, I've found myself using Perl on almost a weekly basis for little adhoc scripts. Generating test data? Text processing? Quickly automating some tedious task? Perl to the rescue. I guess if you know Ruby or Python you could do the same thing with those, but Perl is almost everywhere and you have all of CPAN at your finger tips.

Even though I'm not developing my applications in Perl I consider it one of my most crucial tools that I can't live without. I think every developer should have one of these and with its ubiquity and CPAN, a strong case can be made for Perl.

It also doesn't hurt that there are plenty of jobs out there for good Perl developers. We've all seen terrible Perl code and heard the jokes, but the fact is there are some very large Perl projects (some very high profile) being worked on by some smart people. Sure, Perl has its warts, but it's incredibly useful and a little discipline will go a long way.

There's my case for a practical language... If you want to learn something that will fundamentally change the way you think about programming then learn Lisp. I read the PG essays, the Eric Raymond stuff, etc. and decided to take a look. Eventually, things just clicked and it gave me a whole new perspective on the languages I already knew.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my mind, the three major branches of programming are imperative (C/C++), functional (LISP) and declarative (SQL, PROLOG). A lot of people will tell you to look at LISP, and they're right, but also look at PROLOG. It too will expand your mind.

</comment><comment><USER4> for me, python is still the most fun language - and it gets you into webdev via django nicely (used in <http://code.google.com/appengine/>)

</comment><comment><USER5> Scheme, using SICP. It'll stretch your brain.

</comment><comment><USER6> Learn the guts of an OS (preferably *nix). Build an OS yourself in an OS class if your school offers it. You'll be surprised how important this knowledge will be in building/scaling web services. And, this skill set will be more valuable than just learning the same paradigms you already know in a new language.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think it's a great thing you did some c and c++ as I only skimmed over c in class and mostly done all my classes in Java (writting a compiler in java - gah!). Did you like it? I have done a little c++ on my own and there is so much to learn I was overwhelmed by all the libraries you need to know if you don't want to be writing c in classes (boost , std, etc).

As for web language I love ruby (and rails as a framework) so I'm kind of bias but try learning python or ruby or if you feel like suffering (I find it too old school (I'm not trolling)) some perl (which as a huge community - CPAN).

Also, try looking at a functionnal language if you haven't in class (I learned Standard ML). It really helps to graps some concept that are harder to undertsand with `clunkier` languages.

I kinda went off track but hopefully this helps.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pick one that's generally associated with web stuff. That's pretty much Ruby, Python, Perl, Java, and PHP these days. Take a look at all of them on the surface level to see what's interesting to you, and just pick one and go.

Given that you already know C and C++, I'd learn Perl, Python, or Ruby, since they're a very natural extension of C and C++ and can be used very easily in problem domains where you wouldn't want to use C or C++. Learning more than one of these may prove useful if you want to hack on a variety of different open source codebases, so whichever one you pick first isn't so important as picking one and having it in your toolbox.

</comment><comment><USER9> Learn LISP - read SICP.

</comment><comment><USER10> Expand your mind, learn Lisp.

<comment><AUTHOR> what do u exactly mean by expand u r mind?

<comment><USER11> I need to give you a lesson that is going to be far, far more valuable to you than another programming language.

If you want to go far in life, use words like "you" and "your", instead of things like "u" and "u r".

People will never focus on your linguistic skill for being correct, and they'll always secretly question your intelligence for using the latter.

<comment><USER12> And sometimes not so secretly, too. Good advice, good advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> this is a toughie to answer. it really depends a lot upon your situation. first, its always good to become more proficient with the tools in your toolbox.

i'm assuming that, by posting here, you're looking at web development. here are some languages useful for web dev: python, php, ruby, perl

if you're looking to expand yourself as a student and coder, consider looking into these: lisp, ocaml, prolog

if you want to graduate with a decent corporate job, take a look at these: java, pl/sql, cobol

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the classification

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you are looking for a language that will expand your programming horizon try Scala (closer to C/C++), Lisp or Scheme (both very different from C/C++).

</comment><comment><USER15> In my opinion, as a student, you must concentrate on subjects like Data structures, Algorithms and Operating Systems (If you have already done a course in these then go for advanced levels). They are the foundations. Moreover a semester is way too less for C/C++ . Once you have a good grasp on C/C++, learning most of the other languages will be fairly easy.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wanted to say Lisp as well, but if you want to tackle web development...there's this web "framework" called Seaside that's written for Squeak Smalltalk and there's a one-click package meaning that you click, it loads up and starts a web server and you start messing around with it.

<http://seaside.st/>

</comment><comment><USER17> yous tudy CS and only studied programming in the 2nd year?

What languages do you know more?

Id say go functional, entirely different, mindexpanding and might be very important in the near future because of concurrency/parallellism.

Erlang, Clojure, Common Lisp, Scheme.

<comment><AUTHOR> no i had other subjects like comp org,data strucutres,microprocessors ,graphics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> depending on what you want to do dev wise you should strengthen your skills in these by working on actual apps in them. Get involved with a favorite open source project in on of these languages. School doesn't generally teach real world coding in my experience.

</comment><comment><USER19> pick up emacs or vim while you're learning a new language!

</comment><comment><USER20> Learn language which can be easily extended by c/c++, say python, php or ruby, so you can continue to improve your skills in c/c++ and learn new language at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER21> It is unlikely that you know C++ to a professionally useful depth from one semester. It's also fair to say C++ expertise is more employable, and in more diverse and interesting domains, than the dynamic languages.

As best I can tell Perl, Python, and Ruby are all practically equivalent. All equally suited to web development. Just pick one. I don't think it's unreasonable to claim that Perl is still the most likely to be professionally useful.

I never got the lisp propaganda. I invested some time with scheme and didn't get much out of it. Yes, I wrote macros and used call/cc. The most useful idioms are in fact already available and used in the so-called scripting languages. IMHO, your time is better spent completing good projects with rock solid libraries than futzing around with the language fetishists. Maybe there are some deep insights from Haskell I'm missing, but I seriously doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER22> That would depend on what you would want to work on in the future. In my opinion you should try getting hold of 8085 Kit and do a bit of assembly. You should also try one of the functional languages(Haskel, LISP or XSL Transforms). If you want to do web programming you should look into Python and C#(ASP.Net).

</comment><comment><USER23> Java is the language for a lot of web-based "portal" applications. You might go to a book store in the computer science section and look around for books on Java and web portals. This topic includes related technologies such as XML, and XSLT.

<comment><AUTHOR> and how is ruby

<comment><USER24> Ruby is a nice language, its known for not being the fastest language, but its still very nice...its currently my favourite web language.

Or maybe even PHP? The problem with PHP normally is people jump in without any previous programming experience and say they have mastered it in 6 months - when in fact they know barely anything. You obviously have a good programming background and would use it properly.</comment></comment></comment>


Mystery of sonic weapon attacks in Cuba deepens - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-sonic-weapon-attacks-at-us-embassy-in-cuba-deepens <comment><USER2> [https://www.justsecurity.org/44289/sonic-attacks- diplomats-c...](https://www.justsecurity.org/44289/sonic-attacks-diplomats- cuba-dont-rush-conclusions/)

<comment><USER3> Great read, gives a logical theory and really puts things into perspective.

While government sponsored surveillance is still going strong, the cold war was crazy. Imagine for a moment if the internet (correction: the web) was invented and became popular during a cold war era. that would be fun

<comment><USER4> The predecessor of the internet (ARPANet) was invented during the cold war, I wouldn't doubt if there were attempts to use it by both the US and Russia. Also I'd argue that the cold war is still very much active on the internet, "russian hackers" is a common subject in the news. Whether that's really Russian hackers or just playing the blame game is up for debate of course. Blaming things on the Russians was another common thing during the cold war.

<comment><USER5> _Whether that 's really Russian hackers or just playing the blame game is up for debate of course._

If you are implying there's any doubt about Russian involvement in hacking aimed at the US election, there really isn't any credible doubt about that.

No one argued that ATP-28 and ATP-29 weren't Russian when they hacked the IOC and drug testing labs right after the Russian athletes were banned from the Olympic games.

Nor back in 2014[1] when the FireEye assessment was first done.

Nor in 2015, when they hacked the White House[2]

Nor during 2016, _prior to the election_ when they were identified[3]

It's only after the election that people suddenly don't want to believe it.

[1] [https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat- research/2014/10/apt28-a...](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat- research/2014/10/apt28-a-window-into-russias-cyber-espionage-operations.html)

[2] [http://www.thedailybeast.com/obama-to-putin-stop-hacking- me](http://www.thedailybeast.com/obama-to-putin-stop-hacking-me)

[3] [https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion- democ...](https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic- national-committee/)

<comment><USER6> How can you be sure?

<comment><USER7> > How can you be sure?

Don't go down this route. This leads to things like questioning if we can really be 100% super double sure that we landed on the moon, seeing as none of us have any verifiable proof.

Russians were involved in a lot of hacking during the election, and a lot that has surfaced since, like intrusion into power plants, etc.

How do we know this? Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it. Do we have to trust them every time they say they're not spying on us? Or whether they have any active investigations on something? No. But there is no national security or stability reason for them to lie about this. Quite the opposite.

That GP is being downvoted for stating this is disconcerting.

<comment><USER8> It's not as certain as the moon landings.

I agree Russia is almost certainly responsible. There is a ton of publicly available _circumstantial_ evidence that points to them.

But without libpcap dumps showing what really went down, we can only take the word of various conflicted people.

It's totally possible the NSA had the hackers bugged, and even saw the order come in from their Russian handler, but we haven't seen anything like this ourselves.

<comment><USER9> The problem with 'how can you be sure' is that it is usually an attempt to cut off discussion and investigation, by implying that only irrefutable facts are admissible.

<comment><USER10> Or it's an attempt to find out and learn more.

If the claims is really something as serious as "Russians overturned the result of the election" it should come with very clear evidence. Otherwise it is conspiracy theory. Granted it is a good one and a great PR campaign. But I think it has run its course by and it's time to switch to something else.

I also heard about "17 intelligence agencies agreeing on the fact". Maybe 25th Air Force (one of the agencies) can tell us more about what they have found there.

<comment><USER5> You seem a bit stuck on this thing about there being 17 agencies.

It was a DNI statement on behalf of the 17 agencies of the intelligence community. That means none objected to it. For the purposes of that statement the most important were the NSA, the CIA and the FBI. The FBI took longer to sign off than the others because they weren't initially convinced about the part that says the aim was to get Trump elected. They didn't have any problems with the part about Russian meddling in the election though. Apparently they got some additional Intel because they signed in the end.

This is way those three agencies have this logo on the statement, along with the DNI, but the coastguard didn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > And no single, sonic gadget seems to explain such an odd, inconsistent array > of physical responses.

Is it possible the sounds heard were illusory, as a result of whatever caused the brain damage? So not a sonic weapon, but some other mechanism of action?

> The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a > Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence.

So something that can be focused at a specific point. If not a sonic weapon, then it has to be electromagnetic?

Talk about bizarre. Whole thing reads like a conspiracy theory. Presuming the reporting is accurate, it's hard not to believe people were specifically targeted with the internet to harm them (rather than the alternative explanation of an espionage technology gone wrong), if the effects were localized on their beds (i.e. a specific physical location where they would be known to be for several hours).

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect) It's definitely possible for electromagnetic radiation to cause audible sounds. The thing that's confusing me is what sort of motive one would have to do this.

<comment><USER13> those passive bugs need power to operate

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have, on occasion, inadvertently taken combinations of medication that caused extremely disorientating and apparently very loud "buzzing" in my ears as soon as I woke up, combined with a strange sense of immobility.

Of course that entailed no brain damage or loss of hearing, but it was a very compelling sensation, and it caused massive panic (the first time at least, the second time... somewhat less so, but I do get the feeling that I had an emotional response that was in some sense 'synthetic' and due to the pharmacological reaction).

Hence, a subset of these symptoms might be pharmacological, but not all of them. That leaves open the question of motive.

(Yes, I understand that a partial explanation of symptoms and no explanation of motive makes for a totally bankrupt theory, but hey, I just thought I'd throw in my anecdote - and I'd really rather not explain the particular combination of medications.)

<comment><USER15> This doesn't explain the very local nature of the "attack".

From the first paragraph:

> The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a > Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed > back into bed. Inexplicably, the agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if > he'd walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room.

<comment><USER14> As I mentioned, I am aware this does not explain everything, but I was trying to suggest that pharmacology could have some role to play in explaining this (though I could not account for all the symptoms, nor for the motive, which might be along the lines of some kind of truth serum or something like that... my experience involved benzodiazepines, which famously are supposed to relax you).

Also, I failed to mention that the intense buzzing sound continued _only until I finally managed to convince myself I was not immobilised, and willed my head to tilt_. Upon doing this, the 'sound' instantly disappeared. In my (probably unrelated experience) I was immobile because I was convinced that I could not move so I didn't "bother" trying to do so (for what felt like an eternity) not because I was unable to. These people on the other hand obviously wanted to move, and were very much able to do so... and apparently re-encountered the same local phenomenon in various static locations.

So my experience is probably unrelated, but something about this reminded me of it, so I decided to toss it out there.

<comment><USER16> Although maybe it's very unlikely you could be on to something. I used to have many experiences like this when I was younger (sounds like you're talking about sleep paralysis) and I remember loud buzzing when I also took some medication to help me relax.

When I was in this state I had vivid hallucinations and it often felt like sound was louder. I posted here about hearing my bad phone charger, and I've actually had an experience of sleep paralysis coupled with that once which made it sound louder than it really was in reality.

<comment><USER14> I tend to agree with you. It probably _is_ unrelated. But the discussion here is so focussed on sonic or microwave beams, trying to finagle the evidence to match these theories, that I felt it useful to report a fairly orthogonal experience that involved no such origins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was skeptical whether sound could be focused into a beam, but apparently inventor Woody Norris has developed a technology called Hyper Sonic Sound that accomplishes this feat. As one experiencer puts it - In the sound beam's direct line, you hear the audio signal as if through headphones, regardless of background noise. Outside the beam, you hear nothing. HSS works by generating two types of ultrasonic waves, both inaudible to the human ear. Once those waves reach an object (like your head), they crash together and re-create the original sound. Ultrasonic waves also conserve sound for 150 yards without distortion or volume loss.

Here is his TED talk demo...

[https://www.ted.com/talks/woody_norris_invents_amazing_thing...](https://www.ted.com/talks/woody_norris_invents_amazing_things/up- next)

edit: so I've been reading about this Woody Norris guy; I don't think anyone could possibly be more conceited. From his own website ([http://www.woodynorris.com/WhoIsWoodyNorris.htm](http://www.woodynorris.com/WhoIsWoodyNorris.htm)):

 _Who is Woody Norris? Quite simply, Woody Norris is a visionary, a futurist. He looks into the future, gathers insights into what will make life better, and applies them to the world of today. He sees things that the rest of us do not. And, as the future arrives, it finds his inventions and products already in place._

<comment><USER18> I did work experience in secondary school at the MIT Media Lab Europe in late 1990s and someone there had built directional speakers like this, so its really not that unique a piece of tech.

<comment><USER17> In your experience would it be possible to generate such a beam of sound powerful enough to cause brain trauma, but keep it focused enough so that it is hardly audible outside the beam?

<comment><USER19> The human brain sits in a cavity of fairly specific volume, rigidity, shape and contents (mostly salt water). One could estimate (or better and easier, test for) the resonant frequency of such a cavity (fasten a sound-wave generator to a similar cavity and test its frequency response)[anyone want to volunteer their brain for science?]. But the human head consists of of a number of cavities (cranial cavity, the sinuses, the mouth, nasal cavities, ear passageways, eyeball, etc.) various bones (jawbone, tympanum, etc.) and collections of liquid (connective tissue, tendon, cerebrospinal fluid, etc.). Each part has its own resonant frequency and sensitivity to damage.There will be at least one resonant frequency for each cavity/object.

One could use a loudspeaker or sonic device at those frequencies (and multiples thereof) to remotely create resonant oscillations inside someone's head. Since you'd be using air transmission, the source would probably have to be powerful, but if the frequencies are out of the range of human hearing then they might not be noticed by someone other than the target.

If this is a weapon, likely lots of effort has gone into finding those parts of the human body most subject to failure.

Best bet for Cuban spies: get a dog. The dog will let you know when he's affected.

<comment><USER20> If the medium is water, here are the wavelengths:

      20 Hz --- 74.2 m

      20 kHz -- 7.4 cm

Hmm, it does look like resonant frequencies for the interior of the skull might be ultrasonic; or if not then their first or second harmonics are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why wouldn't this be classified?

It is incredibly bizarre that we're reading what is ostensibly the report of a new poorly understand device (perhaps a weapon) used extremely recently against US interests from an unknown source. We classify everything under the sun and 'no-comment' anything that could in any way be remotely related to intelligence. But in this situation, that is genuinely directly related to national security and international relations, we spread this about to be headline news to the point that you may as well have the state department on Oprah?

This seems inexplicable and illogical.

<comment><USER22> That's a good question, so what do you think might be the answer?

If we work with assumption it's _not_ an accident/idiocy/etc, what is the state of relationships between US & Cuba? Does this send any kind of message and if so who is the audience: Cuban leadership, or local (US) readership, or international readership? Does it change the conversation in any upcoming meeting? Does it alter a stance in some negotiation? Alternatively, and perhaps closer to where you were going, is there a sub-government entity that benefits - a department or an organization? If intelligence community is not in good relationship with or respected by the government does this help them? "We're under a thread, we need more autonomy/financing/powers"? Alternatively does it hinder them - "we give you all this equipment and money, yet you cannot prevent this"?

etc etc. I honestly don't have an answer - but as much as I like to rant against any given gov't as much as the next person (and perhaps more), I imagine there exists one rather than being fully inexplicable and illogical...

<comment><USER23> This has Russia written all over it. They've been participating unconventional "warfare" for many years now.

Think of cyber/social media activities against the West, propaganda, invading Crimea without admitting to having troops in the area, covert assassinations of adversaries in the West, and psychological operations against Western diplomats in Russia.

NATO restricts their regular military options, so they exert influence in any way they can. I believe the only reason we haven't been told Russia is number one suspect is Trump administration's warm ties to that direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some of the sound descriptions in this article sounds very similar to an on going experience I had, although without the health problems (I hope?)

It turned out to just be a bad phone charger. I would charge my phone at night (samsung s4 at the time) and when fully charged and idle it would make a very high pitch and faint sound that sounds like "morse code" or digital noise (I believe the sound characteristics is the CPU doing stuff and drawing power?)

The sound was only be audible in some places of my appartment and it would depend on how my head was turned. I remember hearing this sound even in my dreams.

I've heard this sound outside as well depending on how I turn my head. But lately I haven't heard or maybe noticed anything. I'm also getting older though so maybe I've lost the abiltiy to hear high pitched sounds like that.

Googling "keep hearing morse code" and similar terms reveals that many people have had similar experiences but many wild conclusions.

There might be something shady going on in Cuba but it wouldn't suprise me if bad adapters and sockets would get lumped together with it.

<comment><USER24> That's just a coil or capacitor vibrating at high frequency. The switch mode power supply changes frequency depending on the load, and when your phone is fully charged the load is low so the normally-ultrasound drops into the audible range.

Nearly all chargers get like that eventually, I guess as the glue or capacitors start to fail.

The reason you can only hear it in some places is because it causes standing waves, and you move your head in and out of the nodes. Basically constructive and destructive interference.

Anyway it is almost certainly totally unrelated. It's always very quiet and doesn't cause any brain damage or any other symptoms.

<comment><USER25> The more likely explanation for why you hear it in some locations and head orientations, is that the volume is right on the threshold of your ability to hear it. By turning you head, or obstructing the direct path, it drops below your sensitivity threshold. I have a ticking wristwatch that demonstrates this effect very well.

<comment><USER24> That could be the case sometimes but not usually for high frequency whines. They're can be pretty loud and annoying, and they fade in and out simply by moving - not turning - your head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Santeria spells, or too many mojitos.

Joking aside, mostly likely overpowered microwave espionage equipment they got from Russians a long time ago, and that is still in use.

Google "US Embassy microwave moscow" to find out what happened back in the 70s.

<comment><USER27> Did you bother to read the article? This is exactly what it talks about.

<comment><USER28> I failed to notice the word microwave in the article. I even searched the text and "micro" was not to be found.

<comment><USER29> Edit: nevermind, not from the Guardian article.

It actually does directly mention microwaves:

> The Russian security services were also known to flood the U.S. embassy in > Moscow with electromagnetic radiation. They would beam concentrated > microwaves and electronic pulses at the Embassy in an attempt to eavesdrop > on U.S. typewriters and conversations.

<comment><USER28> You're not talking about TFA are you?

<comment><USER29> Ah my mistake, that was from badcede's article at the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm puzzled by the motivations behind these attacks. It makes no sense. Who is going it and why?

Is it Cuba's version of deep state? Do they feel threatened they would lose control because there is no longer a western enemy? Is it people within our own government (our deep state) that feels we need to have this enemy or somehow they're benefiting from it? Is it the Russians that want to creat this division to have the option of having a place close to US? Is it factions within our own government wanting to blame this on Russia and take us back to the Cold War and find an excuse for expansion of intrusion, etc?

<comment><USER31> While the "deep state" idea is only a conspiracy prupoted by right-wing pundits to explain how the Republicans fail to get anything done even though they control all branches of the government, I think there's some credibility to the idea of Rogue faction in the Cuban government or failed surveilance attempts. At least this seems to be the only credible explanation for the fact that Canadians were also attacked

<comment><USER32> In fact the deep state isn't widely being used on the right to explain the incompetent GOP. The deep state _was_ being accused of trying to sabotage Trump in general, not the GOP in general (was, because most of that early hysteria has died down). The premise was that the deep state disliked the political idea of Trump ushering in greater isolationism, involving pulling back from policing the world and the military industrial complex with its perpetual war machine.

The modern deep state concept has been widely discussed on both sides of the aisle and has been credible for decades, going back to shortly after the founding of some of the very large and powerful US Government institutions, such as the CIA, FBI and NSA among others - all of which have their own gravity in the politics of the US. It's not a conspiracy, it's the inherent nature of government, politics and power. Nearly every government on the planet will have its own active version of the US deep state, only varying in the specifics and size not the concept.

There's absolutely nothing right-wing about it, either in believing it exists (there's nothing to debate there), or being concerned about it (the left and right were both extremely concerned about its use and power during the Nixon era for example).

<comment><USER33> So, the US version of Yes Minister / Yes Prime Minister? ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The mistake is assuming that sound waves are being used here. You can make the human brain hear sound by transmitting electronic frequencies at it. If someone is transmitting to a satellite using a narrow-band beam that intersects someone's brain, they'll be lucky to survive without brain damage from the microwaves alone. At the very least, I would hope that diplomats are being advised by the government to try and record the effect with their phones, to see if it is truly sound-based or if it is actually EM-based transmissions affecting the brain.

I microwaved my skull once with a 0.5 degree beamwidth 15-inch yagi antenna at 1 watt of 2.4 gigahertz once by accident. It was a directional sensation that lasted less than a clock second, as I reflexively snapped around and ripped every wire out of the assembly to kill it with my reptile brain before it killed me. I remember exactly what it felt like, but I can't say if it triggers hearing or not because it was too brief. The migraine that resulted lasted for hours and I still get sympathetic twinges remembering it.

I've also heard stories of a datacenter having a daily failure in a specific rack on weekdays only, that was resolved by moving the satellite dish transmitter next door to point elsewhere than directly through a building.

Combine those two stories and you have a lot more interesting options than just 'sound' alone. I hope they're being investigated.

<comment><USER34> See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15332122](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15332122)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I was talking about this with a friend last night, and I'm very surprised that no one in the media has even mentioned a technology like ultrawideband through-wall imaging ([https://ll.mit.edu/mission/space/Real-time%20Through- wall%20...](https://ll.mit.edu/mission/space/Real-time%20Through- wall%20Imaging.pdf)). I suspect that this or something similar is what was being attempted.

</comment><comment><USER36> Could it be the attacks are at night because that's when the diplomats' cell phone rests on their nightstand? Maybe their electronic devices are the target and it just so happens that the diplomats are close by and become collateral damage.

Edit: I assume an electromagnetic attack. The sounds the victims hear could be caused by that, see Wikipedia links in this thread.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is something that would have sounded like a conspiracy theory if not reported in a mainstream publication. Amazing what just a little corporate cachet can do for a story.

<comment><USER38> I think the main difference is not the media, but the fact that the US government acknowledges that the incidents really happened, and that they are investigating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Sounds most likely a microwave attack, you dont damage the brain that way with audio

<comment><USER40> am I the only one that feels slight discomfort when a microwave oven is on? it's probably psychosomatic (for me) tho

<comment><USER41> Unless the microwave oven is severely damaged, the shielding should prevent any "leakage" so it's probably just psychological. If you somehow manage to remove the door and still keep it running, though, things get fun.

<comment><USER42> "fun"? :-0

<comment><USER41> Using the Dwarf Fortress definition of "fun" there. [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Fun](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Fun)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> At one time the USA discovered that the Soviets were bombarding their Moscow embassy with radio waves. Decades later it was learned that a genius names Theremin had built a device that acted as both microphone and transmitter, when bombarded with a specific frequency of radio waves.

There has been some writing on how it used wave guide effects to transmit, but not so much on the microphone part. Some of you may know that many speakers can be wired up as microphones. One wonders whether a device intended to be a microphone, might in some circumstances act as a speaker as well.

If the Cubans are following an evolutionary path from the device concealed in the Great Seal in the 50's then one could easily imagine something built into the structure of the building itself that is accidentally generating sound energy.

As a thought experiment, imagine that you could build a window frame that would pick up sound from inside a room, shift it to an inaudible frequency and then emit that sound. Furthermore, what if a double pane window intended to block sound from leaving the room, had a pickup attached to the inner glass pane and emitted the high frequency sound from the outer pane so that an external laser could pick it up. Then further imagine that the window was installed wrong way around so that the constant street noise was broadcasting high frequency sounds into the building.

I expect that the Russians don't do this stuff anymore because they get better results from HUMINT, especially deep cover agents.

<comment><USER44>
      If the Cubans are following
      an evolutionary path from
      the device concealed in the
      Great Seal in the 50's then...

That is the furthest idea from my conceptual model of what this all might be. I don't think any of this is accidental. I think deliberate harm is being done, and that willful animosity has permitted the rationale that U.S. officials represent a population of human test subjects, as expendable resources, for a weapon with unknown neurological effects to be used against aggressive enemy combatants.

I think it's a directed energy weapon.

I think kinetic energy is being applied in a novel way, such that patterns of constructive interference are created by alligning harmonic waveforms so that their intersection creates high-signal regions with deleterious effects for biological tissue within said region.

Much in the way _electromagnetic_ directed-energy-weapons can be combined and focused to achieve greater effect, either ultrasound or infra-sound is being used as a kinetic analog with similar results. This is not " _The Brown Sound_ " but something worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> My first thought was that it is JavaScript fatigue.

</comment><comment><USER46> Could it be a chemical agent combined with RF or micowave field that activates it?

Seems like pure microwave would cause a range of random hallucinations and sensations. And also accidentally target people who were not spies / employees.

I think biological agent that's activated by EMF is more likely.

<comment><USER47> I think microwave. Heating of the ear could cause perceptions of sound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I wonder at this point if the data isn't being polluted by psychosomatic "symptoms" from the diplomats that are now aware of the mysterious events in Cuba.

<comment><USER49> Yep. Made me think of MPI. Such a paranoid community as overseas embassy staff might be particularly vulnerable,

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

 _MPI can be difficult to differentiate from bioterrorism, rapidly spreading infection or acute toxic exposure_

We might need to add "sonic weapons" to that list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Sounds like directional microwaves that heated up the brain.

<comment><USER50> Or some sort of proton or neutron beam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Beyond sonic a conclusive list of options could also include: attacks with gas form, liquid form, radioactive form, solid form - could be through the meals they ate, the booze they drank, a drug they took, a sea or other animal.

I'm curious if there are any links to independent explanations or investigations maybe from local sources? [1] this from another thread.

[1] [https://www.justsecurity.org/44289/sonic-attacks- diplomats-c...](https://www.justsecurity.org/44289/sonic-attacks-diplomats- cuba-dont-rush-conclusions/)

</comment><comment><USER52> Directional audio has been possible for about a decade now. Holosonics.com is one manufacturer but there are others.

<comment><USER53> The Joseph Pompei quoted in the article is Holosonics' founder. He's been working on this a long time; twenty years ago his demos knocked my socks off (1) at the Media Lab

(1) metaphorical sock-knocking only, no diplomats were harmed by his demos

<comment><USER54> Do you have any thoughts on why this hasn't seen mass-market adoption? Any major downsides? I have never ever heard of this technology or seen it integrated into the speakers of the big companies in this space. But looking at it just makes me go WOW.

<comment><USER52> Perhaps it's the lack of bass? For string music and spoken word ultrasound directional audio is fine, but for most music it's not really appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Why are they so focused on sound? Couldn't there be some other transmitted phenomena (RF?) that affected the bodily functions at high strengths. At least that seems like a more plausible turn of events.. orient a huge RF dish at the embassy to listen on comms with high sensitivity, oops - someone flipped on the xmit gear and intermittently baked the surveillance targets...

<comment><USER56> > Why are they so focused on sound?

The _reporting_ and _public statements_ are focused on sound.

As to what the investigators are focused on, I doubt we are getting the full picture since it probably involves lots of things which are restricted info..

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Could it be a powerful sonic transmission of data? I mean, EM waves are hugely monitored, so if somebody had to send data secretly, an ultrasonic way may be used. And there may have been a side effect due to too much power and the diplomats being in the middle of the beam.

<comment><USER14> Depends whether you are aiming to conceal the fact that a signal is being transmitted or whether you "merely" wish to conceal the contents of those signals. The latter is (as I am sure any NH reader knows all too well) achieved my means of encryption, at least some of which, paranoia aside, is widely regarded to be pretty solidly robust to just about anything known (even most of the NSA-quantum-computer speculation is focussed on public key cryptography being attacked by factorisation attacks... lattice algorithms and lots of stream ciphers are not directly attackable by this means if the session key is not exchanged by "potentially vulnerable" public key cryptographic means).

<comment><USER57> Yeah I was thinking more about concealing the fact there was a signal at all. More like stegano, then. Moreover, that could be in an environment of intense EM jamming: ultrasonic signals would pass but not EM signals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> So, who has close ties to Cuba and has capability to design such weapon and would test it on US diplomats and would win if there was some confusion between US and Cuba relations?

Always look at who has to gain from it and who is capable of

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm reminded of the Sonic Tank from the old Dune 2 RTS. I wonder if sound is finally being weaponized or if it's actually microwaves as others have suggested? But just as curiously, what is the motivation for this, what could someone achieve by doing this? Is it a form of gaslighting? Or someone trying to sour the relationship between Cuba and US/Canada? (either dissidents or another state) In some ways this has a similar "shooting pigeons with cannons" high-tech overkill smell to it as the polonium poisoning of that Russian in the UK a decade ago.

<comment><USER60> > I wonder if sound is finally being weaponized or if it's actually microwaves > as others have suggested?

Yes, sound has been weaponized.

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

<comment><USER61> > Yes, sound has been weaponized.

Of course it has. Ever tried listening to dubstep?

<comment><USER56> I see your dubstep and raise you gabber.

that stuff is literally dangerous I think.

<comment><USER62> South Korea trolls the North by blaring K-pop over the border.

I _like_ K-pop, and I find that hilarious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Oddly enough it would have been super awesome if dolphin scientists were using sonar to attack humans. Ah well that one stays in the realm of fiction.

<comment><USER64> I would definitely read that as a scifi novel

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Very localized sound could that be some resonance effect related to the building? The building looks like it consists of a very regular structure.

</comment><comment><USER66> There were some studies converting audio to inaudible audio when sent over over pulsed microwaves. This would resolve the size and distance issues for the alleged device and the fact that this was at night and in bed could play into the original studies for using this tech.

</comment><comment><USER67> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System)

a lot of moonshot movie weapons don't get mentioned too often, mostly because they suck (and were incredibly expensive to develop). there was another one in the 80s that could beam images to your brain or something, it's on youtube as a cnn report: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgJ6SpHZir8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgJ6SpHZir8)

of course youtube has a whole sub-culture of people who are 'targeted individuals' and post from inside their makeshift faraday cages as their are bombarded by beams from their CIA agent neighbours, torturing them remotely.

it's probably just interference of some kind.

<comment><USER68> Ah the internet. Where descriptions of outlandish bizarre groups of people must be prepended with "of course".

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I wonder how one would go about detecting that such a sonic attack is in progress. What would the equipment to detect such an attack even look like?

</comment><comment><USER70> To me, it sounds like a new kind of weapon somebody is testing. We better quickly get to the bottom of it before they scale it.

</comment><comment><USER71> Have they thought about cuban rum and spirits? It looks like a far more plausible explanation for these night attacks

<comment><USER72> I'm going to assume you're joking, but after spending a couple months in Cuba and drinking far too much Cuban rum and spirits (while smoking cigars made by the farmer out in Viñales overlooking the most amazing countryside I've ever seen), the only brain damage I got was the hangover the next day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> This kind of news makes me think that wars are not deadly like they were in world wars. Weapons are being so accurate, I don't think world war 3 (if it happens) will result in so many casualties.

So in a way technological weaponry will save civilians. Militarily and strategically, there will no point in using nuclear weapons against civilians too, like it was done in japan.

This kind of news reassures me that conflict is getting "cleaner".

<comment><USER74> > _Militarily and strategically, there will no point in using nuclear weapons > against civilians too, like it was done in Japan._

You underestimate the potential of a people for desiring and inflicting misery, suffering, humiliation and "vengeance" upon a perceived enemy.

Just the other day I was reading about the Rwandan Genocide from barely 20 years ago [1]:

> _over the course of 100 days, up to half a million women were raped, > sexually mutilated, or murdered. There was extensive use of propaganda > through both print and radio to incite violence against women, with both > mediums being used to portray Tutsi women as untrustworthy._

> _During the conflict Hutu extremists released hundreds of patients from > hospitals, who were suffering from AIDS, and formed them into "rape squads". > The intent was to infect and cause a "slow, inexorable death."_

There are depressingly large groups of people in Pakistan who would rejoice a nuclear attack on India, and the other way around as well. Same with people in Korea and China against Japan. I don't know about now, but not long ago in South Korea even children were indoctrinated in hate campaigns [2], something you'd expect from Jihadi religious extremists.

\----

If technology really could prevent wars, then we would just have remotely- controlled miniature robots directly assassinating enemy leaders and generals, and there would be no need to maintain militaries and weapons of mass destruction.

But the only thing that would truly prevent wars is not allowing people to sow the seeds of hatred, generation after generation.

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

[2] [http://peterpayne.com/post/61389588306/writing-about- issues-...](http://peterpayne.com/post/61389588306/writing-about-issues- between-japan-and-south)

<comment><USER75> It seems like a lot of war these days is for profit. Afghanistan, Iraq and now finally Syria have all been proven to be primarily about that.

From not long ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15238683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15238683)

And see here: [https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is- worried-...](https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried- defense-contractors-will-lose-jobs-if-u-s-stops-arming-saudi-arabia/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Sounds like some experimental device broadcasts signals that don't behave well with bed springs.

</comment><comment><USER77> I dont think it is audio frequency, it must be microwave or just plain old chemical poisoning.

</comment><comment><USER78> I think it was the X-37B [http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/09/06/us-air- forces-x-37b-s...](http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/09/06/us-air- forces-x-37b-space-plane-to-launch-on-secret-mission-sept-7.html)

</comment><comment><USER79> Why has LRAD never come up?

</comment><comment><USER80> Ultrasonic power delivery gone wrong?

</comment><comment><USER81> Whales and Dolphins are finally getting their revenge on humankind.

</comment><comment><USER82> Collective hallucination [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria#Tanganyika_laugh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria#Tanganyika_laughter_epidemic_.281962.29)

<comment><USER83> How does it explain mild traumatic brain injury?

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Lacking from all reporting so far: What is the purpose of these purported attacks? Who benefits from such attacks and how?

</comment><comment><USER85> My first thought: Look, this is Cuba. Home of con artistry. They will stage a UFO landing to get more tourists spend convertible pesos. For me P(heard-in- havana-and-true) is around 0.1, max.

</comment><comment><USER86> > ...baffling US officials who say the facts and the physics don't add up

This is a long shot, but Cuba is pretty close to the Bermuda Triangle -- a place with a history of strange incidents supposedly involving physical anomalies. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bermuda_Triangle_incid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bermuda_Triangle_incidents)

<comment><USER87> So is Florida.

<comment><USER28> That's why Florida has its own tag on fark.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> _> >The State Department detected high levels of radiation in the embassy staff, and provided hazard pay to personnel who worked in Moscow._

While this is harsh, these guys are soldiers, working night and day to essentially destroy that country. (we can argue till the cows come home about what system is the "right one") Live by the sword, die by the sword.</comment>


What is it with Flash? - <AUTHOR>

So, as almost everyone has heard, and if you haven't heard Adobe's Flash is now going to be integrated into Google Chrome.
Don't get me wrong, I respect Google, but I think that Flash is about the dumbest thing in the world. It is unnecessary and slow, especially for older machines. I could get into more depth of why Flash is dumb and HTML5 is very capable of handling videos in Youtube. Yes, you won't be able to play Adventure Quest (the best flash game), but that game is terrible. The iPad won't have Flash, because Apple is smart.
My whole point of this post is because I respect Linux based companies a lot more than Apple, and I came across this. http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.30/#rnusers.epiphany
It looks like an almost unknown browser is going to become my new main browser. <comment><USER2> To my understanding Google supports Flash because we believe the browser should be an open platform. So we'll support all applicable standards where possible and let the market decide which ones matter.

I believe that Apple doesn't support Flash because Steve Jobs was not in charge of Apple when Flash was invented, and so had no way to try to invent Flash himself. He has a severe case of NIH syndrome, and Flash is but one example.

</comment><comment><USER3> A key idea behind Chrome is improving Web security. Long term this means replacing Flash. Short-term this means making sure it's up to date.

Mozilla also Recently added code that warns you if Flash (and other plugins) need updated.</comment>


WaveSandbox.com: Federate This - <AUTHOR> http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2009/11/wavesandboxcom-federate-this.html Since Google Wave Federation Day, there have been a number of developments:

    * The Google Wave Conversation Model Spec (draft) was published to provide more clarity to implementors of the spec
    * The FedOne client was updated to the new model spec and now displays character by character updates
    * Echoey the agent was built to help you experiment with developing your own wave provider
 <comment><USER2> Does Wave allow for the same separation between protocol and client as e-mail?

E.g., could Mozilla/Apple/Microsoft/GNOME each write a Wave client that can use Google's Wave server (or any Wave server for that matter)?

(Apologies if this is a basic question, I haven't dug through all the developer documentation as of yet...)

<comment><USER3> Yes. That's the idea. What Google has open sourced so far has been a federation backend and a text client. As far as I'm aware there is only one other graphical client interface at this time called PyGoWave I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How long does Google expect us all to keep working with them to turn Wave into what it is some day supposed to become? They've already burned through _a ton_ of hype. Now this:

> _Please keep in mind that things are early, and there will still be many > changes, so your feedback is important._

That's a lot to ask of people _after_ a hugely hyped launch. I'm starting to feel like Google will still be asking me to try out buggy previews/betas of Wave 3 years from now. I can already sense that even many in the HN crowd have stopped caring.

"Release early, release often" works for startups, but it doesn't work well for big companies who are in the spotlight. Wave is incredibly ambitious and a monumental effort. With all of these early launches, I don't think users will stick with it long enough to get it past the beta stage.

<comment><USER5> You're looking at it wrong. Think of the Google Wave group as being a startup _within_ google.

And also remember that only a small fraction of Google users have heard of Google Wave. It only looms large in the geekosphere, where the plugged in people who look at every new thing and have an opinion about it, live. In the rest of the world it's about as interesting as Knol.

My own take is that the wave protocol is very interesting from a technical standpoint, but that it has yet to find it's audience from business/UX standpoint. And I'm glad that Google wants to fund work in this area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm on Wave and it's really slow. There's this weird artificial scrollbar tab and it's 10x slower than a normal scrollbar. I hope it gets sped up a bit. Also, a native client makes more sense than chucking a ton of crap in a browser window.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Introductory docs for diving right in: <http://code.google.com/p/wave- protocol/wiki/Installation></comment>


GDELT 2.0: new release of open Global Event Database updated every 15 min - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gdeltproject.org/gdelt-2-0-our-global-world-in-realtime/ <comment><AUTHOR> new features:

15 Minute Updates. Access the world's breaking events and reaction in near- realtime as both the GDELT Event and Global Knowledge Graph now update every 15 minutes.

Realtime Translation of 65 Languages. GDELT 2.0 brings with it the public debut of GDELT Translingual, representing what we believe is the largest realtime streaming news machine translation deployment in the world: all global news that GDELT monitors in 65 languages, representing 98.4% of its daily non-English monitoring volume, is translated in realtime into English for processing through the entire GDELT Event and GKG/GCAM pipelines. GDELT Translingual is designed to allow GDELT to monitor the entire planet at full volume, creating the very first glimpses of a world without language barriers. A special emphasis on locations and names makes GDELT 2.0 likely the largest multilingual geocoding system in the world.

Realtime Measurement of 2,300 Emotions and Themes. GDELT 2.0 also brings with it the debut of GDELT Global Content Analysis Measures (GCAM), representing what we believe is the largest deployment of sentiment analysis in the world: bringing together 24 emotional measurement packages that together assess more than 2,300 emotions and themes from every article in realtime, multilingual dimensions natively assessing the emotions of 15 languages (Arabic, Basque, Catalan, Chinese, French, Galician, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Pashto, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Urdu). GCAM is designed to enable unparalleled assessment of the emotional undercurrents and reaction at a planetary scale by bringing together an incredible array of dimensions, from LIWC's "Anxiety" to Lexicoder's "Positivity" to WordNet Affect's "Smugness" to RID's "Passivity".

High Resolution View of the Non-Western World. Over the last few months we've embarked upon an ambitious initiative to vastly expand GDELT's knowledge of the media systems of the non-Western world. Working closely with governments, think tanks, academics, NGO's, and citizens on the ground throughout the world we have been working country-by-country to try to build the highest resolution inventory possible of the media systems of the non-Western world. While we still have a long way to go and the fluidity of the world's media ensures that this will be a perpetual task, we are incredibly excited by the ability of this high resolution inventory, coupled with GDELT Translingual's ability to translate 98.4% of this material in realtime, to give voice to the most remote corners of the world in near-realtime.

Relevant Imagery, Videos, and Social Embeds. A large fraction of the world's news outlets now specify a hand-selected image for each article to appear when it is shared via social media that represents the core focus of the article. GDELT identifies this imagery in a wide array of formats including Open Graph, Twitter Cards, Google+, IMAGE_SRC, and SailThru formats, among others. In addition, GDELT also uses a set of highly specialized algorithms to analyze the article content itself to identify inline imagery of high likely relevance to the story, along with videos and embedded social media posts (such as embedded Tweets or YouTube or Vine videos), a list of which is compiled. This makes it possible to gain a unique ground-level view into emerging situations anywhere in the world, even in those areas with very little social media penetration, and to act as a kind of curated list of social posts in those areas with strong social use. Quotes, Names, and Amounts. The world's news contains a wealth of information on food prices, aid promises, numbers of troops, tanks, and protesters, and nearly any other countable item. GDELT 2.0 now attempts to compile a list of all "amounts" expressed in each article to offer numeric context to global events. In parallel, a new Names engine augments the existing Person and Organization names engines by identifying an array of other kinds of proper names, such as named events (Orange Revolution / Umbrella Movement), occurrences like the World Cup, named dates like Holocaust Remembrance Day, on through named legislation like Iran Nuclear Weapon Free Act, Affordable Care Act and Rouge National Urban Park Initiative. Finally, GDELT also identifies attributable quotes from each article, making it possible to see the evolving language used by political leadership across the world.

Tracking Event Discussion Progression. Under the previous version of GDELT, only the first URL mentioning a given event was recorded, even if the event was mentioned in a hundred separate articles. GDELT 2.0 adds a new "Mentions" table that records every mention of an event over time, along with the timestamp the article was published. This allows the progression of an event through the global media to be tracked, identifying outlets that tend to break certain kinds of events the earliest or which may break stories later but are more accurate in their reporting on those events. Combined with the 15 minute update resolution and GCAM, this also allows the emotional reaction and resonance of an event to be assessed as it sweeps through the world's media.

Over 100 New GKG Themes. There are more than 100 new themes in the GDELT Global Knowledge Graph, ranging from economic indicators like price gouging and the price of heating oil to infrastructure topics like the construction of new power generation capacity to social issues like marginalization and burning in effigy. The list of recognized infectious diseases, ethnic groups, and terrorism organizations has been considerably expanded, and more than 600 global humanitarian and development aid organizations have been added, along with global currencies and massive new taxonomies capturing global animals and plants to aid with tracking species migration and poaching.

Source Geographic Background Knowledge. GDELT now assesses the geography of every outlet it monitors over time and estimates its physical location on earth, incorporating that information back into the geocoding process to maximize its ability to recognize the geography of local media (a small rural radio station likely assumes its listeners know what country it is based in and thus does not clarify every mention of a local location with the corresponding country name).

Global Knowledge Graph Now in BigQuery. The GDELT Global Knowledge Graph is now available in Google BigQuery, allowing you to query and explore the GKG in realtime and to integrate it into queries of the Event dataset. In fact, the Event, Mentions, and GKG tables are now all in BigQuery and updated every 15 minutes, allowing you to leverage BigQuery's enormous power to perform mass- scale analytics in near-realtime on our changing planet.</comment>


Load Testing Caddy Web Server on a GCP F1-Micro Instance Using K6 (K6.io) - <AUTHOR> https://devopsdirective.com/posts/2020/03/load-testing-f1-micro/ <comment><AUTHOR> The setup survived 2x HN front page surges recently so I was curious what the limits of such a small VM would be!</comment>


J.K. Rowling wrote first 2 Potters by hand, typed them on a 10 yr old typewriter - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/768040812924002304 <comment><USER2> Did she reveal that the typewriter actually identified as a satsuma?</comment>