A Proposal for Explainable Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://www.notion.so/Explainable-AI-Sparse-Representations-and-Signals-fedf1522aff4415d8f156e1f94bb80c5 <comment><AUTHOR> We talk a lot about neural networks and whether they can beat the latest benchmark.

Something we don't talk about as much: what are they learning? How do we decompose their predictions? Are they reasoning?

I've spent a month pulling out some stuff we've swept under the rug as a community and drafted a proposal for constructing explainable AI using ideas from sparse coding.

Would love y'all's comments.

</comment><comment><USER2> I haven't looked inside, but this page exhibits some quirky behavior that points to a janky structure. It is blank with JS disabled. When I enabled JS, the entire page was treated as a control that can accept input by my browser (clicking anywhere on the page put it into insert mode, something that usually only happens with textboxes.)</comment>


EA's new motto: please pirate our games... er, storefronts - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/06/eas-new-motto-please-pirate-our-games-er-storefronts.ars <comment><USER2> Wouldn't it be easier to give the game away for free? Lots of MMORPGs have taken that approach successfully.

<comment><USER3> "Lot's" is not the plural of "lot". The apostrophe indicates possession. The plural of "lot" would be "lots". I'm not trying to be a dick, but this is a particularly obvious mistake and one that I see here and elsewhere many times every day. I'm sure I'll get modded down because no one likes a grammar nazi and this is completely off-topic, but I'm going to justify my complaint by pointing out that elementary grammar mistakes do not look good online, in professional correspondence or in VC applications.

<comment><USER4> I think it's time to rethink "lots". If lots of people are using "lot's" as a plural of "lot", then why shouldn't that be valid? Language, after all, is not static and if enough people use a new word or a new construction, the language changes.

<comment><USER5> Wow, you got downvoted hard.

I disagree with you because in this case, it's a matter of semantic structuring. The language should be free to change, but only when it doesn't conflict with how the language functions. In this case, "lot's" would kill how parts of the language is interpreted, and changing it would offer no clear structuring for the two various "lots" usages.

There are some exceptions - I, for instance, don't mind people who use abbreviations like "u" since they make sense contextually, and while something like "lol" is overused I think you could make an argument saying "lol" has become a usable verb or even a noun in the English language ("lolled" is also very fun to say out loud).

In your case, however, I've got to disagree, though I don't know why people saw fit to downvote you that hard. Perhaps it's because you opened with a definitive-sounding statement before raising arguments in support, though that seems a bit kneejerk.

<comment><USER4> I'm tempted to say that HN is ruled by grammar nazis (or prescriptive linguists, if you prefer) who don't respond particularly well to the fact that language evolves which was what I was trying to say.

About the semantic structuring: Valid point, but people (who are ultimately responsible for language change) tend to ignore such things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> EA failed. All of the updates and add-ons (Sims 3 store additional content that costs $$ to buy) were uploaded to torrents as well. They think that pirates will still have to spend money on the game. They won't.

<comment><USER7> This doesn't mean they've failed. In fact, that happening is inevitable. The key is in the quote: "I think we've out-serviced the pirates." Finally, someone pays attention to what Steve Jobs has been saying for years.

It's all in your ways of thinking: The reality of the situation is that someone will aways be able to pirate what you're selling. Okay. Once we get over that hurdle, we can start thinking about how to move forward: you have to compete with free. See, If Company A sells something for $50, and Comapny B sells it for $5, it's pretty common wisdom that A had better have one hell of a good value proposition, as they're charging 10x the price. And if they do, they'll still have customers. Now, let's take those prices and chop off $5 on both sides: Comapny A sells for $45, and Company B sells for free. The same wisdom applies: Company A had better be adding lots of value, because they're charging infinitely more.

Even though EA's stuff _can_ be pirated, it doesn't mean that it will be. If it's easier and simpler to pull out my wallet than pull up the Pirate Bay, the company will get my business. iTMS is a great example of this. High quality audio, reasonable price, no fear of viruses, you can always find what you want without waiting for more seeders, etc. And that's the key. Yeah, it's not that hard to torrent things for us, but what about my grandparents? My parents? My non-technically minded siblings? At some point, your time is worth more than the cost of the product, and that's when you end up paying for things.

<comment><USER8> Totally agree... I know many people who pay for music but not movies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Piracy + microtransactions could be a win for both game publishers and game players. That industry is wrestling with finding new revenue models because retail box sales become less viable by the day.

A service offering microtransaction billing and payment services which can be easily integrated as middleware into new games could make a killing.

<comment><USER10> I agree, in the end, I wish more games were offered free with extensions to it available for a fee. In the end those that really like it will more then outweigh the casual gamers who would pirate the game anyway. Similar to how the majority of Americans read less than a book a year while avid readers will read more than 5.

<comment><USER11> I think most avid readers read well over 5 books in a year. When I've been to the library, I sometimes read two books in one day.</comment></comment></comment>


Super cool hack for adding infix operators in C++ - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/a/28850702/1348195

<comment><USER2> Cool, kinda. A variant is more generally useful. To call a template function who's return type depends on the LHS, return an intermediate object instance that encapsulates the fn arguments, and has a template conversion overload that makes the real underlying call, and dynamic_cast<>s the return type to the conversion type as its value.</comment>


ActionIQ is hiring its first engineers – come build the next Salesforce in NYC - <AUTHOR>

ActionIQ was recently started in NYC by Tasso Argyros, the founder of Aster Data (one of the very first software MPP databases out of Stanford and a $300M exit) and Nitay Joffe, a key open source Big Data developer at Facebook & Powerset (and committer at Apache HBase & Apache Giraph). Our vision is to marry powerful distributed systems technology with beautiful web-based interfaces and change the way enterprises user their data to win in the marketplace.  We were recently funded by Sequoia Capital and some of the best NYC VCs.
We are working on a very tall stack: we think about web-based responsive UX the one minute and minimize CPU cache misses via bytecode generation the other. We do everything in-memory. We are using a number of languages, including Scala. We love hard systems/performance & algorithmic problems.
It used to be that great engineers didn't care about  marketing, and marketing didn't care about great technology. Both these things are changing fast. Come be on the forefront of this revolution!
https://actioniq.workable.com/ email@example.com <comment><USER2> Funny you mention salesforce and your startup.name.endsWith("IQ"):

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/11/salesforce-buys-big-data- st...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/11/salesforce-buys-big-data-startup- relateiq-for-up-to-390m/)

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) This got quite a few upvotes in the hour it's been up.

2) Shouldn't this be in the September "who's hiring?" post rather than a standalone post? I'm relatively new here but that was my understanding of the etiquette.</comment>


Ask HN: If you could, how would you set up Airbnb's servers from scratch - <AUTHOR> I'm running an alternative to Airbnb for the tech and crypto community (www.cryptocribs.com). Yesterday, after being live for just two months, my servers already crashed. It turned out that with only about 500 listings, I already ran out of the 20GB storage I used for the setup. I currently run the site on a basic Digital Ocean droplet (1GB/1CPU, 20GB SSD/ 2TB Transfer). Turns out that every listing is already about 50MB and this adds up quickly. To solve the data storage problem, I now resized my droplet a bit and also bought a 100GB attached volume. I am planning to do a NGIX alias redirect for the image files to store any new files in the extra volume. But I feel like there must be a better way to do this <comment><USER2> I would move to aws, store assets in object storage (s3) instead of block storage (volumes), ensure your application is 12 factor and move it into an asg, move db to rds. Then start the process for moving from ec2 to k8s. That should give you a start.

<comment><AUTHOR> another question, when do you recommend moving from ec2 to k8s?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm also going to really recommend putting images on Amazon S3 (or Google's equivalent). If you get a good library to handle this, you can also get nicely resized thumbnails as well.

When using volumes, you are are going to constantly have to deal with mapping and rebuilding these as you grow. S3 is just set and forget.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, yes, i need to work on the resizing part as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you're doing that's making each and every listing 50MB, that seems like a lot, are they posting lots of high-resolution images or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, i've limited it to 2MB per pic, but some are putting up 30 to 40 pics</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which web stack should I learn for personal projects? - <AUTHOR> Context: I've been a mobile native developer my entire career (~6 years, primarily Android in Java) and am finally playing around with JavaScript and the web.
To build a full-stack web product (optimized for productivity and ease of implementation on my end), which tech should I learn?
Things I've looked into but have not committed to: Iris framework built on Go, React for front-end.
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> So, if you already know javascript then I would look at node.js.

Full disclaimer: I actually use golang for my personal projects because I'm attracted by its simplicity and how it really doesn't hide stuff from me using hand-wavy magic. Performance is also a factor, but not one I consider when comparing it to node.

If I'm working on something I want to roll out fairly quickly. A prototype. Then I'll probably use node and leverage npm quite a bit. Typically I'll install Express, Sequelize, and Passport. If a front-end framework is necessary then I'll use Ember.

I've used Django a long time ago, and it was nice, but I'm not sure how much its changed since then. I also worked with Ruby on Rails in the past. I think you can be really productive with it if you put in the time to learn it, but I haven't found any great internet resources to really learn it, plus it's a little too hand-wavy for me.

<comment><USER3> How easy is it to build a full web app with Golang (I'm talking backend + views here)? I have used Go for some small projects where I only built a REST API using Go's default http library but never for something bigger.

<comment><USER2> Not bad at all honestly. Golang comes with a built-in templating engine that was easy enough to convince me not to look for a better one. Routing is simple, especially if you're using the Gorilla toolkit's mux package. Figuring out how to work with database calls were tricky when I first started out because I was used to Django abstracting that part away from me, but eventually I really got the hang of it.

I would argue that the tricky part is session's and middleware. When I first attempted to build a golang web app that required session cookies I got so discouraged that I just swore them off and went with JSON web tokens instead. It also took me a while to wrap my head around the concept of clean middleware.

I would say it was rewarding in the end though, because I learned about some low-level concepts typically abstracted away by the framework I was working with. It's fun to know about these things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can take a look at Elixir [1] (and Phoenix framework [2]).

Elixir's documentation is pretty neat and getting started with it is relatively easy.

Phoenix framework is entirely optional, Elixir comes with something called "Plug" which is all you would need to launch simple applications.

[1] [http://elixir-lang.org/](http://elixir-lang.org/)

[2] [http://www.phoenixframework.org/](http://www.phoenixframework.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Phoenix is definitely bouncing around over here and I'd heard about it before this Ask as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am a Node.js developer and practically speaking you should probably learn that.

But so far I haven't heard anyone mention the Nim programming language which can compile to JavaScript or C and has what I consider to be superior syntax and excellent performance as well as great metaprogramming capabilities. See [http://nim-lang.org](http://nim-lang.org)

<comment><USER6> +1 for Nim - being able to write both server and client side in the same (excellent) language is very nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is what worked [0] for me in the last couple of projects (and the current one):

\- Backend: Django + Django Rest Framework + Postgres

\- Frontend: React + Redux + React Router + webpack + million other small modules [1]. You may also look into Relay (esp. upcoming v2: [https://github.com/facebook/relay/issues/1369](https://github.com/facebook/relay/issues/1369)) and GraphQL, because it may simplify a lot of backend <-> frontend communication.

[0] as in: I am productive using these tools. Partially, because I already know the tooling and best practices.

[1] yes, there's a lot to learn about the tooling, but when you're just starting, you can use some boilerplate or Create React App tool.

</comment><comment><USER8> Check out Flask[0], which is a microframework for Python. Pretty easy to start with plus you will be learning Python down the road. [0] [http://flask.pocoo.org/](http://flask.pocoo.org/)

<comment><USER9> I'm working on a Flask deployment starter that makes it easy to get a production environment up and running on the likes of Digital Ocean / AWS Lightsail / OVH (i.e. cheap VPS environments). I haven't written documentation for it yet, but the code is up

[https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-live- starter](https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-live-starter)

It includes tasks to provision a full Debian box with Gunicorn and Postgres, deploy your app, provision a letsencrypt certificate, backup your database, and tail your remote logs.

<comment><USER10> looks good, thanks for posting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> == Consolidated advice ==

\- Don't use Iris because shady-thievery-mischief \- Learning is costly: If you have to learn a lot to get into fullstack dev, learning a new language will compound that cost \- Just pick whatever and f'n build something - artists build

Backend: 1\. Node.js 2\. RoR in second 3\. Spring Boot/Play 4\. Phoenix

Database: 1\. Postgres

Frontend: 1\. React 2\. Backbone

Thanks all for the advice and avoiding the temptation to completely slam me (though it's warranted).

My takeaways are:

1\. Don't forget about SSL, and LetsEncrypt provides a free option (will donate eventually) 2\. Amazon Lightsail looks promising but be wary of any service that will not automatically cap usage once you've hit your spending threshold (apparently Google CC too, but not Digital Ocean) 3\. I know there are .NET developers on here but they're a vocal minority (I work on a Windows/Ubuntu machine so it's within my reach but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯)

Thanks again, all! See you on the webbz.

P.S. I'm working on my first chrome extension (frontend only) and might follow-up asking for advice on that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Welcome to the web :)

I can recommend Yii (PHP MVC framework) which can help you get going quickly. It comes with a code generator and also takes care of things like JavaScript form validation and other front-end related things.

Personally, I like to only use JavaScript frameworks/libraries if they are really required. If you need to do a lot of stuff dynamically on the front- end, you can also look into libraries like Backbone, which give you a nice tool belt but keep things more flexible.

Have fun! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea of not remaining trapped in the frontend framework (angular really bothers me for some reason). Others recommend backbone too so I'll check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Spring Boot if you want to continue going down the Java path.

Personally, haven't found anything that has led me to be more productive than Rails + (Semantic UI or Bootstrap) + jQuery. Server side rendered templates with some light sprinkling of javascript covers 99% of my needs.

</comment><comment><USER13> Node is great if you want to utilize npm modules.

My recent projects have been built on a Node server. I like to use knexjs as an ORM, sometimes including bookshelfjs for model building. Cacheing or rather message queuing has been done with redis. Often, this backend server will feed a much smaller front end web server that leans on react and jsx to spit out HTML.

PS I started out with rails but moved to a primarily node stack last year.

</comment><comment><USER14> Any stack. Pick one and build something. Ship it. Remember, real artists ship.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, some eternal truth right here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some information you should probably be aware of when it comes to Iris: [http://www.florinpatan.ro/2016/10/why-you-should-not-use- iri...](http://www.florinpatan.ro/2016/10/why-you-should-not-use-iris-for- your-go.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this, close call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Since you're already familiar with Java, you might want to look at either Spring Boot or some of the new, smaller frameworks mentioned in my repo: [https://github.com/tedyoung/awesome- java8/blob/master/README...](https://github.com/tedyoung/awesome- java8/blob/master/README.md#web-appapi-frameworks).

Go is also a good choice, but there are better frameworks than Iris. Depending on your needs, there's [https://github.com/NYTimes/gizmo](https://github.com/NYTimes/gizmo) and Gin ([https://gin-gonic.github.io/gin/](https://gin-gonic.github.io/gin/)).

</comment><comment><USER17> Since you're fairly experienced with Java I'd stick with that for the back- end. Since you're still learning JavaScript I would recommend doing most UI rendering on the server side, and using JavaScript to add interactivity (e.g. with JQuery). For that approach you could consider Sprint Boot and Play Framework on the server side.

The other alternative would be doing all UI rendering on the browser, via a single-page JavaScript application. A popular choice for that is the React framework. In this case you could use the Dropwizard framework on the server side (although Spring Boot and Play would also work).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'm definitely going back/forth between sticking with what I'm familiar with and learning something new (because that feels more fun?) hah

<comment><USER17> I hear you, and that can be refreshing, if your only goal is learning.

If your goal is to create a small project / product, you'll have plenty to learn already about web applications without the burden of learning a new language and toolchain.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Server-side :

\- Node.js is great if you like JS. It couples really well with MongoDB (see MEAN stack).

\- Play Framework is quite nice if you want to stick to Java.

Client-side :

\- React is...well you tried it.

\- Vue.js is great.

<comment><AUTHOR> I played with Vue just now and it felt right. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would suggest you use Node. It is nice not to have to switch mental contexts when switching between backend and frontend code.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you want to stick to Java, look into servlets and JSPs. For databases, almost any will do, but I like Postgres. As for database API, use whichever JPA implementation that comes with the server you're using.

Sometimes, bare Java EE is good enough.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ease of implementation? Just grab any modern Rails and pick a frontend framework later.

<comment><AUTHOR> I worked with Rails briefly in my previous company and found a working product nearly unmanageable.

Any tips on keeping the codebase legible?

<comment><USER21> Define legible, or rather, what were your frustrations with your previous company? I have worked with _many_ Rails apps, some at very large scale, and never found them illegible in situations where the developers 1. conformed to best practices, 2. did not try to write Ruby like a C-derivative, and 3. were using rails for CRUD apps vs. trying to wing something mostly made for CRUD into doing something it probably shouldn't have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Don't use Iris:

[http://www.florinpatan.ro/2016/10/why-you-should-not-use- iri...](http://www.florinpatan.ro/2016/10/why-you-should-not-use-iris-for- your-go.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> www.learnphoenix.io is a great book on React, Phoenix and Elixir. The book covers many more modern programming concepts and are explained in a clear and coherent way. Not only is Elixir exciting as far as the future of functional programming goes, but the content that breaks down React and all of the pieces consisting of front-end architecture is detailed from the build system to CSS modules. Anyways, just a thought, but it's a nice jumpstart into a new full- stack that's going to gain a lot of traction in the coming years.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ruby on Rails for backend and Backbonejs, marionettejs for front end.

<comment><USER25> Good for 2012 :)

<comment><AUTHOR> XD

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If only for personal projects, I would say PHP. Easy to learn and implement. XAMPP stack would be sufficient enough.

Again, if only for personal projects, since you are familiar with JS, I would go for node.js.

</comment><comment><USER27> C# + ASP.NET MVC + Typescript

<comment><AUTHOR> The first .NET recommendation! I was waiting for this one. :D</comment></comment>


Why I Live in IRC (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://aaronparecki.com/2015/08/29/8/why-i-live-in-irc <comment><USER2> I've been an IRC user since 1996 and still going strong. There have been many chat networks that have come and gone, but IRC, by virtue of being a protocol rather than a commercial venture, lives on.

These days, I use Textual on OS X which has a very clean interface and things like in-line images and videos combined with ZNC for logging messages while I'm away. I log in and they all come up, if I want older ones I use the backlog module with /bl #chan <num lines to go back>. Granted it's not as elegant as scrolling up in Slack but I don't tend to need it often. I'm even connected to my friend group's Slack via IRC so I never have to open Slack itself!

I find the idea of piping in various things into IRC intriguing and something I've been meaning to implement. It's trivial to get a Python/Perl/etc script to connect to an IRC server and spit out some information.

Long live IRC!

<comment><USER3> In case you didn't know, you can pipe A LOT of things to IRC with [https://sameroom.io/integrations/irc- integrations](https://sameroom.io/integrations/irc-integrations)

<comment><USER3> Albeit not all of IRC, just networks that resemble Freenode ([https://sameroom.io/limitations#irc](https://sameroom.io/limitations#irc))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> +1 for IRC, the interface is clunky and the protocol hasn't aged particularly well (especially for mobile devices who may not be able to hold a connection forever). But the social aspect of easily accessible chatrooms and the plethora of clients/tools surrounding IRC is really second to none.

You can put a pretty skin on it (slack,discord) but at the end of the day it's going to take years to bring up the level of tooling and at the end you wind up in a closed loop on someone elses platform.

FWIW; I dream of electric sheep so I'm completely biased. I run an IRC network if anyone is interested in joining.

host: irc.darkscience.net/6697 (SSL required)

chan: #darkscience

<comment><USER5> IRC is great for a world where people have one account on one computer that's permanently switched on, but it inherently fails to handle use from multiple devices. All "solutions" to this end up involving running your own server (or, more likely, having someone else do it) and talking to that via a probably- proprietary (or at least nonstandard) protocol at which point you no longer have the benefit you're talking about. (That protocol is often layered over an open protocol, but commands-over-ssh is very hard to interoperate with if not standardized)

Good UI is not just "pretty", it's also about having commands be discoverable. Traditional IRC clients are terrible in this regard.

There's no reason the platform has to be closed - I'm friends with the people working on [http://matrix.org/](http://matrix.org/) (though not involved in it myself) and hope they succeed.

<comment><USER6> I recommend IRCCloud.com to people.

I'm a huge fan of IRC but it's true the IRC protocol has many issues (I talked about them before on HN; can't find the link now). IRCCloud may be (slightly) proprietary but at least it still only talks to IRC, and it's a good alternative to Slack&Friends (which are 100% proprietary) and webchat (which have the same issues as desktop clients and are generally atrociously ugly).

Free IRCCloud accounts stay online 2 hours when shut off. I pay for mine, which stays online forever. It's a fairly similar experience to slack except I can still use the same open protocol as everyone else.

Matrix is extremely promising but IMO not there yet.

<comment><USER7> I run WeeChat in a tmux and connect to it with Glowing Bear. It's a similar experience, and it's all free software. It also leverages the whole power of WeeChat in a nice interface (triggers, scripts, etc), so it can do some nice tricks that IRCcloud can't.

Oh and there's also a Matrix script for WeeChat, so you can use matrix from WeeChat (and thus Glowing Bear)!

<comment><USER6> Got some examples? I never tried WeeChat. I used to use Quassel (I liked the client a lot), but after my server died I figured it wasn't worth the trouble of maintaining it.

<comment><USER7> Examples for what? There are some screenshots of Glowing Bear on the GitHub page ([https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing- bear](https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing-bear)) and in a blog post I once wrote ([https://4z2.de/2014/04/10/glowing- bear](https://4z2.de/2014/04/10/glowing-bear), probably outdated). I use it with a sans-serif font on the Desktop, too. The UI is quite hackable, you can add custom CSS rules to override things to your liking in the settings (simply changing the font doesn't require that, though).

Some useful scripts include colorize_nicks.py (colourises nicks in messages, to make them stand out over the text) and grep.py (easily and efficiently search logs). Matrix.lua ([https://github.com/torhve/weechat-matrix-protocol- script](https://github.com/torhve/weechat-matrix-protocol-script)) allows you to use the Matrix protocol with WeeChat, and by extension Glowing Bear.

Trigger-wise, I have triggers that remove colour from status messages (most of them are just noise) or replace (lenny) with ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) when I send a message, mostly because I can ;)

Getting push notifications requires a bit of setup, but there are scripts for Pushbullet/Pushover/..., or irssi-notifier (which also works with WeeChat) to do that. It's a bit complicated because we don't run any servers (Glowing Bear is just a bunch of static files, everything happens in your browser or your WeeChat), so we can't provide push notifications out of the box. Disclosure: I'm one of the Glowing Bear devs, so I may be biased :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with the author on many points, but he's wrong about mobile support. WeeChat has a relay plugin (built-in) that allows mobile clients to connect to your existing WeeChat session. There are even some options to choose from: WeeChat-Android has recently gotten some love again (I hear it works nicely), and Glowing Bear works on every device that has a modern browser and has a nice responsive UI, along with some neat features like embeds and direct imgur upload.

Both connect to your WeeChat instance directly, so there's no cloud provider you have to trust, as the relay works as a socket and websocket. This allows Glowing Bear to work in the browser (Disclosure: I'm one of the devs)

[https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing-bear](https://github.com/glowing- bear/glowing-bear)

[https://github.com/ubergeek42/weechat- android](https://github.com/ubergeek42/weechat-android)

Oh and the point about long URLs being unclickable has been addressed by bare mode, which is bound to meta-L by default. This is not a concern for the mobile clients obviously, as they don't run in a terminal.

<comment><USER8> Thanks! A few months after writing this article I actually discovered glowing- bear and have been using that now too! It's now the primary way I access weechat, both on my laptop and on my phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a long-time IRC user (back to 2004---wait, it might not qualify as "long- time") as well, but I feel that the current reputation of IRC is simply built around communities that _still_ conglomerate on IRC. IRC is a horrible protocol in the modern standard, lacking every bit of the modernism you define. I still don't like a recent trend of using something like the Slack instance for public discussion, but that trend clearly shows that the continued "success" of IRC is simply an illusion or at best depending on an external factor.

<comment><USER10> It's a fantastic protocol because of how simple it is. It doesn't try to bake- in features beyond the most fundamental of getting a message from one person to others. If you want want support for multiple clients you can have it, you just need to connect through a bouncer. I think some people see this as a cludge: if you can't use a piece of software effectively without additional software that's a sign that the original software is lacking. This is simply not true: what matters is how usable and reliable the end result is. It's not an argument to say that a setup being composed of multiple components makes it hard to set up, because there are ready-made solutions like IRCCloud around for people who aren't interested in doing it themselves. The fact that the setup is comprised of multiple pieces is only a testament to its versatility. You probably want a bouncer for your own usage so that you can use multiple devices and receive messages offline, but you don't need any of that for your bot running on your server, and because none of the multi-device functionality is baked into the protocol, your bot never has to worry about it.

IRC lacks comprehensive presence signaling, and to the extent that this makes read receipts impossible it's a good thing. It has /away which is almost good enough, but lacks good support for being set automatically by clients.

End-to-end ecnryption is becoming fashionable even on proprietary chat networks, and IRC lacks it, and that is a missing feature. The other main missing feature is federated identity, which no major network has.

But apart from that IRC's only problems are where it has the same feature twice, or whan lack of cross-network standardization prevent clients from offering higher-level interfaces. Most networks support both SASL and NickServ, which have overlapping functionality. I don't think ChanServ is standardized, so clients are stuck with showing things like flags on channels and users, rather than presenting a "channel settings" menu. If ChanServ were standardized, clients could automatically configure private channels.

For these few things that IRC (currently) lacks, it gives unparalleled customizability, compatability (I can connect to basically any other chat service like Facebook Messenger or Slack through IRC, but not the other way around), and respect for users' freedom (XMPP and others offer this too, but are smaller).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am not an IRC user, but I wonder whether Python Paradox[1] applies to IRC users.

To soak wisdom from top-tier hackers in the field, you want to go where they hang out. IRC might just be the hacker playground.

That alone makes a convincing case for using IRC.

[1]: [http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html](http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html)

<comment><USER12> That essay seems so wildly out of date, even though it's only a decade or so old.

> And people don't learn Python because it will get them a job; they learn it > because they genuinely like to program and aren't satisfied with the > languages they already know.

These days I think Python is every bit as much a corporate language as Java is, and I'm sure huge numbers of people learn it to get jobs at the conventional tech giants like Google as well as small startups.

<comment><USER13> Python somehow became the default language for data science, which is like the new php+mysql in terms of a high labor-intensive field attracting very new, short-term opportunity, unskilled coders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know of others who forward almost everything to email, including custom scrapers/converters (and then of course there's RMS). If your info feed contains more long form resources, that seems like a better end point. But for twitter feeds and notifications, IRC seems mostly sufficient.

Now I do wonder what would be the equivalent for someone heavily into image- based communiciation/updates. Unifying your reddit, snapchat, facebook, imgur etc. Forward everything to pinterest (or a similar homebrew interface)? Maybe even rendering some text updates to images...

</comment><comment><USER15> I use IRC over XMPP almost daily, with a transport that connects me to a channel and represents it as multi-user chat, like #firstname.lastname@example.com.

The primary reason is that XMPP behaves really nice if the connection is spotty: When I am using IRC in a moving train, I almost never timeout even if the network is not reachable for minutes – and as soon as the client reconnects, I get all the messages from the chatroom.

</comment><comment><USER16> This was very informative and this "hub" is something that I want to setup for myself. When I started writing down concepts I immediately picked slack because of all the integrations but isn't it a bit 'overkill' to use a community system for me alone to get all my feeds aggregated together?

Are there solutions out there that offer something similar but without the community aspect?

</comment><comment><USER17> FWIW there's a really good Slack plugin for Weechat called wee-slack [0]. It uses the Slack API (as opposed to their IRC gateway) and so is surprisingly full featured.

[0] [https://github.com/rawdigits/wee-slack](https://github.com/rawdigits/wee- slack)

<comment><USER8> That's awesome, I'll take a look at that. Do you know if it logs to disk the same way weechat logs IRC channels? Right now I'm a little annoyed that I don't have local logs of the Slack channels I'm in.

<comment><USER18> Yes, it does - filters, logging, etc all work as they do for IRC. Huge +++ for wee-slack, has made Slack much more bearable. Supports many things Slack's own IRC protocol doesn't, like the ability to see edited messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> IRC user since 1995 and still going strong. Too bad IRCNet is declining, it has been my source of entertainment since the beginning, having these Finnish chat rooms and close circle of friends. I never really got into the english tech-related irc channels, they move too fast and are hard to follow...

</comment><comment><USER20> My main issue with IRC is channel rot. Every channels I was once a part of died. Most channels that are still "active" are in fact filled with quiet lurkers.

Otherwise IRC is still my favourite. I simply don't visit anymore...

</comment><comment><USER21> I lived in IRC from 2001 to 2006.

Back in the days it was my go to social software. People were always online there and I even started programming with mIRC. Funny thing, back in the days I built chat-bots for fun and now they are big business, haha. Well, most people there were nerds and this was okay. We also had our own small bulletin board communities.

Later I wanted to meet girls and they just didn't show up often on IRC or BBoards.

So I started using LiveJournal, MSN Messenger and MySpace. Later I switched to Facebook and WhatsApp.

</comment><comment><USER22> I never could use IRC because it's hard to sift through the noise. I have the same issue with group chats as implemented in Slack, but at least Slack can be accessed with an XMPP client, meaning I can get asynchronous delivery of messages without the need to have a client running 24/7\. Do all heavy IRC users have a bouncer and a bot or do they rely on a service like irccloud? Either way, without async messaging, it's hard to use in a distributed team.

<comment><USER23> > Do all heavy IRC users have a bouncer

As a heavy user of IRC, I would say yes. At least, I wouldn't be able to use it without irssi running inside tmux on some server, and everyone I know does the same.

For a large Free Software project, we use Mattermost (a Slack clone with unlimited history) and it works great. There are a few features missing, but it has been a huge boost for engagement. As someone who has been using IRC for 20 years, I never thought I could get used to using a web-based client, but it's worth it.

Small annoyances, such as having to educate people not to use "@channel" because it will email a notification to 300 people, but it's just a matter of time before it's fixed.

<comment><USER22> For obvious reasons I don't consider web clients a reliable solution, but it's a practical alternative when away from your desk.

<comment><USER23> Considering a lot of people use Gmail for email, I would be curious as to why you consider web clients to be unreliable.

(I don't use Gmail, but a ton of tech people do. Something like Mattermost is rather harmless, since less critical than email.)

For what it's worth, Mattermost also package native desktop applications for Linux, Mac, Windows and iOS/Android. The desktop ones are basically a wrapper around a standalone browser. Has better native desktop notifications integration.

<comment><USER22> I much prefer that I can choose my client, be it pidgin, emacs, mutt, irssi, thunderbird, you name it. Web interfaces are limited in functionality, give me little control how my client works, and I'm at the whim of a server operator. Mutt or Gnus or irssi haven't changed drastically, but a web interface can change without an option for you to restore the previous version. That's a huge problem with the deployment model of web apps, especially for power users.

Like I wrote above, I'm not a real IRC user because it doesn't support async messaging well, and I was curious if there was a viable xmpp-like async mode. I love email and xmpp because they works like git in that I can use it offline as well. Please don't argue that everything is 24/7 connected due to IoT or something like that as an explanation why offline mode has no use today.

Async messaging has other advantages, like drafting a response and pondering about the details over one or more days. That said, realtime chat has its place, but with distributed teams it's most practical to use distributed async messaging for the normal case and fall back to realtime protocols when you need a live conversation. I consider live communication to be the same as calling someone on the phone and disrupting their workflow or failing to reach them due to being unavailable at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, IRC and monitoring chat rooms works for many developers, but that doesn't mean it must work for me as well. We're not all the same after all. When I use live comms, it's on-demand, like a phone call.

<comment><USER23> I 100% agree. I wasn't sure if you meant reliable as in security, uptime, etc. So reliable as in "stable UI/experience".

I'm also a heavy mutt and irssi user. I think their UI stability is more an issue on how application authors deal with change/improvements, but I agree there's probably a technical factor where libncurses offers less flexibility than HTML/CSS does, so web apps are much more likely to change often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I started learning programming since 2012. I don't like IRC. IRC is not friendly to people like us. Hard to connect, hard to find a free and neat client, hard to talk to the people, hard to start a new thread(also hard since it's in English, but this is somehow good for others). That's why I like talking with people on Twitter and WeChat.

</comment><comment><USER25> Regarding the long URL issue, since IRC can be easily customised, wouldn't it be possible to create a filter that, for each message, would send the URLs to a URL shortener service and display the result? It could even be a self-hosted service to make sure the URLs remain private.

<comment><USER26> Of course it's easy to do that in a client. Also, on many channels there are bots doing that - every time someone posts a URL, a bot will reply with a shortened version of it.

<comment><USER7> A bot creates noise for everybody - I think it's nicer to have the client handle this (urlserver.py / bare display in WeeChat, or a non-terminal client). But that creates friction for new users so maybe it's not the holy grail either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> irc since -95. Though I use it just for work these days. I don't think irc will ever go away. It would be nice to have it working in a persistent, distributed way without servers, maybe in the future.

</comment><comment><USER28> Asl?

<comment><USER29> but irc is not aim</comment></comment>


TSA Response to XKCD "Bag Check" Cartoon - <AUTHOR> http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response-to-bag-check-cartoon.html <comment><USER3> Funny. (you probably know this but) The cartoon isn't about if batteries are more dangerous than water bottles or even a jab on the TSA policies about grading the danger of stuff, it's about how nerds will dig their own graves because it's on our nature to point flaws, to improve a system/process, and how detached from the way relationships work (specially these of power, like employer/employee) we can be. In other words, how reason and logic tramples everything else.

At least this is how the cartoon resonated with me.

But hey, we all look at our own bellies.

<comment><USER4> We may all be thanking Randall in the near future for being unable to use laptops while flying.

<comment><USER5> Our only hope is that someone uses the TSA to blow up an aeroplane - <USER2> resulting paradox should cause them all to vanish in a puff of logic :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Direct link to Randall's comment: [http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response- to-bag-check-cartoo...](http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response-to-bag-check- cartoon.html?showComment=1256333115980#c9173728821851325302)

<comment><USER7> Randall's comment is simultaneously correct and misleading on a particular point. A laptop battery may have quite a bit of energy density, but that's not entirely relevant, as he points out in the next sentence. The speed at which the energy is released is far, far more important.

I provided that remark just so I could repeat this awesome factoid: a stick of butter has more energy than a stick of dynamite.

<comment><USER8> _A laptop battery may have quite a bit of energy density, but that's not entirely relevant, as he points out in the next sentence. The speed at which the energy is released is far, far more important._

Remember all those news stories a few years back about Dell laptops bursting violently into flames?

<comment><USER9> Assuming you could sneak a supercap onto a plane (roughly 30Wh/kg), using the maximum of your carry-on-weight and not exceeding it (usually ~10kg), you can easily have an energy potential equivalent to ~1/2 a stick of dynamite. How much you'll get out in the form of explosive force is debatable, but is certainly to be an order of magnitude above a battery as the discharge rates are several orders of magnitude faster.

However, the expected explosive force of home made liquid explosives is only on the scale of a stick of dynamite, it's certainly less obvious though.

Both explosions randomly placed are unlikely to down a plane, and are likely to be better used breaking into the cockpit than actually downing the plane.

I believe almost a 1/3 KWh high voltage power source could be of much more use than in its explosive force for an organised terrorist attack. However, most anti-terrorism procedures aren't designed to prevent organised terrorists, they're designed to prevent the many more morons with access to explosives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good grief, could they miss the point any further?

"The batteries may be more dangerous than a bottle of water, but they are not more dangerous than a water bottle filled with liquid explosives."

The relevant question is whether the batteries are enough to cause an explosion that could bring down a plane; not whether batteries are more dangerous than water.

<comment><USER11> I feel like TSA must _know_ they're running a security theater operation, and this post was to defuse (no pun intended) any public concern about laptop batteries so they don't have to go and ban them too...

<comment><USER12> They for sure know.

What would you do if you were charged with preventing someone from smuggling a weapon onto an airplane, while at the same not not inconveniencing people, and also while being denied, as illegal, the only tool that actually works (profiling)?

They are being given an impossible job. Not hard. Impossible. They don't have a choice except to do security theater.

<comment><USER13> I would install metal detectors, x-ray luggage, randomly search people and bags as often as my resources reasonably allowed, use bomb-sniffing dogs, and use law enforcement and intelligence agencies to try to prevent terrorist groups from showing up at the airport in the first place. I would train my security personnel to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior while recognizing that most acts of terrorism in the United States have been committed by white males, and that terrorism is a statistical outlier in every demographic.

That's just me. You're right, though, institutionally mandated racism would probably be way more effective.

<comment><USER12> And I'll bring a flour bomb on board, and your detectors will never find it. Or I could replace half the batteries on my laptop with a bomb, then seal it so the dog can't smell it, and the searcher will never realize it's there.

You are far overestimating how good detectors and searching is. They are already doing all your suggestions, so I guess you are happy with them.

Profiling is effective. Israel does it. If you are a family traveling with kids, they just ask you some questions. Alone? They check more. Arab an alone? Be prepared for a full search. Arab, but with a family? Not as much of a search.

Yes it sucks for the Arabs, no question about it. But it works. And it would never fly in the US. There are many things that work, but have enough drawbacks they will never be used.

You can say profiling has too many drawbacks, and I'll agree with you. But don't say it's not effective.

<comment><USER13> _You are far overestimating how good detectors and searching is._

No, I'm not, which is why I'm doing all the other stuff, too.

 _They are already doing all your suggestions, so I guess you are happy with them._

Yeah, actually, I think a lot of what the TSA does is completely reasonable and, when executed properly, effective. The fact that some policies are stupid theater does not mean all are.

 _Profiling is effective. Israel does it._

The United States isn't Israel, we have extremists of all colors and creeds, and terrorist acts here by any one group are rare enough that particular instances can't really be taken as indicators of who will be exclusively trying to do it in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is such an easy way to get around the "well, it might be a liquid bomb" problem...

Have people drink from any water bottles they're taking on board.

If someone managed to make a liquid that's simultaneously explosive and non- toxic enough to be ingested, we have bigger problems, namely ingested bombs. Heck, I can just imagine some terrorist swallowing a condom full of explosives, then lighting the detonator wires hanging from his butt.

Maybe then they would have to ban assholes on planes.

<comment><USER15> This isn't a good option either. It would be possible to have a bottle that was lined in such a way as to have drinking water and an explosive in the same container. Or, perhaps the explosive is denser than water and non-polar... if this is the case, you could add enough water to make it drinkable, and still have the explosive available.

<comment><USER14> Hence the asshole comment. You can _always_ find a way to smuggle a bomb onto a plane. Limiting case: swallow a condom full of plastic explosives and shit it out in the restroom, the same way drug mules carry cocaine or heroin. There's no real way to stop this short of X-raying every traveler.

The questions the TSA _should_ be asking are:

1.) What is the likelihood that a potential terrorist will use this means of smuggling weapons on board?

2.) How effectively can our screening procedures catch weapons, given that they exist?

3.) How much inconvenience does this cost passengers?

People had little problem with metal detectors and X-rays, because 1.) your clothes and carry on luggage are the natural hiding places for a bomb 2.) the machines will catch most of these instances and 3.) they're not a huge hassle for travelers. But by the time you get down to chucking water bottles because there _might_ be a liquid explosive in them and it _might_ be denser than water and it _might_ be non-polar - really, what are the chances that a terrorist will use that means of smuggling? Compared to, say, overvolting a laptop battery?

For that matter, I think metal detectors may also be obsolete, now that it's fairly easy to make plastic/composite knives and guns.

<comment><USER16> "1.) What is the likelihood that a potential terrorist will use this means of smuggling weapons on board?"

Indeed, someone apparently did try just this in August of 2006 in the UK- <http://www.tsa.gov/press/happenings/311_intl_acceptance.shtm>

<comment><USER17> Actually, no, they didn't.

If we believe the official story 100%, then they merely plotted to do so, but never actually attempted it (they did, however, according to the official story, 'smuggle' non-volatile liquids on in a dummy run, without actually risking taking anything they'd be in serious trouble being caught with).

So, the best case scenario is that no-one 'did try just this'.

That's ignoring all the many holes with the case (that ended up requiring using a legal backdoor to convict them without a unanimous verdict.

<comment><USER8> "That's ignoring all the many _holes_ with the case (that ended up requiring using a legal _backdoor_ to convict them without a unanimous verdict."

Your choice of terminology here makes me a little uncomfortable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> FTA: _When you show us a bottle of liquid, we can't tell if it's a sports drink or liquid explosives without doing a time consuming test on it._

Right. Which is why all self-respecting terrorists won't bother to show you the dumb bottle in the first place. Am I the only one who has, on multiple occasions, checked my bags through the scanner to realize that I'm technically in violation of the "no liquids" rule because I'd forgotten something?

The rule is ridiculous. Just live with it.

<comment><USER19> On one occasion I accidentally passed through security with with a Swiss Army knife in my backpack.

What's funny to me is that upon discovering so after getting to the gate I was much more worried about someone finding out I accidentally brought a pocket knife with me, rather than the possibility of someone else with nefarious intentions having also gotten past security with one.

<comment><USER20> Same thing happened to me; I had the Swiss Army knife in my backpack between a whole bunch of CDs. I wonder if the edges of the CDs somehow concealed the knife, or if the security person simply wasn't paying attention.

By the way, what's the likelihood of TWO people bringing a knife/bomb on board the same plane? Pretty small, huh? Hence, you should always bring your own bomb to fly safely! ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As great as XKCD is, seeing the TSA respond to this cartoon is just as bad as CNN fact-checking the SNL sketch.

As someone with more than a casual familiarity with man-portable explosives (some R&D work on remote land mine detection), nobody with any modicum of sense would EVER confuse a bottle of drinking water with a bottle of liquid explosive. The latter have a very low vapor pressure, very different viscosity, and give off very distinctive odors. The most commonly obtained ones are also NOT transparent.

<comment><USER22> That misses the point. The rules that are set allows for quick screening without extensive training. If they were to screen based on appearance and smell they'd need to study each bottle (what if the contents are hidden?) and/or open them to smell. The _time_ the extra screening would take would cause far more of an uproar with people than having to abandon their liquids now.

I'm sure they know they _could_ allow most liquids on safely if they gave staff some extra training and put people through enough extra screening. But would the end result be convenient enough? Probably not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I believe it was Scott Adams who suggested that one woman should take one for the team and build a bomb into her bra. Once the TSA realizes that they would have to require each woman to remove her bra while passing through airport security, the whole thing would unravel pretty quickly.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, or we'll all have to arrive two hours early and get strip-searched if we want to get on a plane. Think it couldn't happen? I wouldn't bet against it.

<comment><USER25> You're already getting strip searched before you board planes; they're just using millimeter wave scans to do it. People really need to start calling these things what they are: electronic strip search machines.

<comment><USER26> "People really need to start calling these things what they are: electronic strip search machines."

That will never happen. Given the choice between two methods of searches, both of which have equal safety outcomes, people prefer the strip search over the non-invasive one.

Jeffrey Rosen wrote an entire book about this phenomenon; the book is The Naked Crowd. You can read the story, which is on page 1 of the book, via the Amazon sample:

[http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Crowd-Reclaiming-Security- Freedo...](http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Crowd-Reclaiming-Security- Freedom/dp/0375759859/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256670050&sr=8-1#reader_0375759859)

<comment><USER25> Read it. Response: the same sample of people would support repealing the 4th Amendment, because "people who have nothing to hide have nothing to be afraid of" (logic used by the people the author talked to). Meanwhile, their mothers are being imaged naked when they fly out to see their grandkids. No, I don't think everyone is OK with this. I think people don't yet fully comprehend what the machines do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I did a little research and discovered that there actually has been a successful terrorist attack on a plane using mostly liquid explosives, Korean Air Flight 858:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858>

Two explosives were used: C4 and about twice as much PLX (a binary liquid explosive) as C4, totaling about 1kg of explosives. The bomb was powerful enough to take down the plane and cause the deaths of all 115 passengers. I suspect C4 was used as a component in order to ensure that the PLX was detonated, because it appears to be a tricky explosive to set off with just a blasting cap.

Regardless, the critique that is being leveled against the TSA is not that such an attack could be successful, but rather that the methods being used to thwart such an attack are wholly ineffectual, with the side effect of causing a great deal of inconvenience, wasting a massive amount of effort, and providing a distraction from more robust methods of solving the security problem.

</comment><comment><USER28> What a disingenuous defense of a policy enacted in response to a completely infeasible terrorist plan.

The funny part is that people generally _know_ security theater like this has jack-all to do with actual security or safety. We just obediently continue to take off our shoes, surrender our nail-clippers, and buy our drinks at the stores in the airport.

<comment><USER25> "Completely infeasible terrorist plan" is exactly the wrong argument to make. (a) you don't actually know it was infeasible, which costs you credibility right out of the gate, and (b) you're tacitly accepting that every "feasible" terrorist plan deserves explicit countermeasures.

Another reason why this discussing annoys me; people always insist on having it on the TSA's terms. Why? They'll win this argument every time. They have more facts and their facts are scarier than yours.

<comment><USER28> Infeasible, as in their explosives _would not have detonated_. Don't lecture me about "credibility", educate yourself about the facts of the case.

But yes, I'm sure the TSA and its supporters can devise ever-so-many _facts_ about how we have to be protected from water-bottle bombs that fortunately don't require any more special disposal than tossing in a garbage can.

<comment><USER25> No. Not going to educate myself about the facts of the case. Why? Because that would be retarded. There are millions of ways for terrorists to bring down a plane, and arguing about this specific one way is exactly what people like the TSA want you to do.

But I'm glad you've convinced yourself that they're wrong about this one way. I'm a convicted TSA skeptic, and you haven't even convinced _me_ , but I'm sure it's fun to be right.

<comment><USER28> "Not going to educate myself about the facts of the case. Why? Because that would be retarded."

Then don't bleat about what I do and do not know or ramble on about "credibility".

"I'm a convicted TSA skeptic, and you haven't even convinced me"

Yes, you've shown your deep skepticism here, but what made you think I was trying to convince _you_ of anything? I merely pointed out something perfectly true, and you appointed yourself my terribly lazy fact-checker and rhetoric editor.

I'm not going to try to "convince" someone who makes false statements or implications any more than I'm going to have a meeting of the minds with the guy quoting Republican talking points on torture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The next time you're in a security line, turn to the person behind you and say, "Here's a thought for you. Aren't you glad that the shoe bomber didn't hide the explosives in his underwear?"

Guaranteed laugh. Try it. You can say it to the screeners as well, and they'll laugh as well. And it perfectly highlights the absurdity of the security theater we suffer through. Some guy tries to blow up a plane with explosives in his shoes, FAILS, and we all have to take our shoes off now.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater> if you haven't heard the phrase security theater before. Not only does the term describe the TSA perfectly, it was actually _invented_ to describe the TSA.

<comment><USER30> I think your comment is funny, but it's probably also the fastest way to get yourself a private strip-search if you say it in earshot of a TSA employee!

<comment><USER29> You would think that, but in my experience they laugh harder than anyone else. They know the policy is stupid, they just aren't supposed to admit it.

However I'd avoid saying it to them when they are busy or distracted, because then they can't enjoy the humor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> 2 things.

Firstly; I think XKCD was just being amusing....

Secondly: bullcrap. You can make a bang big enough to kill a plane with laptop batteries - the fact you can make a _bigger_ bang with liquids is surely irrelevant. And also it's perfectly possible to change the contents of a battery - no? So put something more explosive in it....

Batteries are very easy to remove.

The _reason_ liquids were banned is because of the evidence someone came up with the suggest there were liquid bombs being planned (and I think one failed attempt) - not a bad response at all! It's the same reason a lot of airports (especially UK ones) ask you to remove your shoes and Xray them.

At the end of the day they can only respond to the perceived or suspected risks - if you _really_ put your mind too it it shouldnt actually be too hard to smuggle a bomb on a plane.

EDIT: by which I mean it is more a case of making people feel safe (by inconveniencing them, basic psycology) as well as causing more inconvenience for a small number of possible potential attacks. The actual security effect is fairly minimal - simply for practical reasons pointed out a billion times over.

<comment><USER32> But can you make a bang big enough to break into the cabin and crash the plane into, say, a large building in a major metropolitan city?

<comment><USER31> If the plane flies near said metropolitan area at the right angle then, technically, the rest is just maths and timing. :)

EDIT: damn I thought I was being genuinely amusing :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Tangentially, it strikes me that a lot of people, including the TSA flack, miss the actual point of the comic. It's _not_ that there are reasonable arguments against TSA policies. It's that trying to argue the policies _with_ the TSA is futile and probably counter-productive.

<comment><USER33> This can be further generalized. Trying to argue a policy with a bottom rung employee at _any_ organization is ultimately counter-productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Unfortunately while people are arguing about the security checks / rules, I see another danger. Looking at the length of current security queues, it's not a problem to find a place where ~200-400 people surround you (guesstimate; assuming one of the "quite large, but not enough to get a new terminal" airports). My prediction is that the next attack will not be a guy bringing down the plane, but simply a guy waiting until he gets halfway through the queue with any bomb he wants (noone will check him before, right?) I wonder how will they solve that one...

<comment><USER35> Haven't we had these sorts of attacks already in the various hotspots in the world? Both Israel and Iraq come to mind as examples of where attacks have been perpetrated against the checkpoints themselves, and the guards and people waiting there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> You can get a large amount of almost any liquid onto a plane in your carry-on so long as the label is somewhat official-looking and identifies the contents as being medical supplies. Get one of those contact lens caddies and pack it with a 12oz bottle of ReNu and see what happens at the TSA checkpoint. They'll likely just set it aside. If not, you're only out $5 or something. That ReNu bottle could be full of nitroglycerin or kerosene and they'd never know.

<comment><USER37> Actually, most of the time they do a trace chemical wipe of the container if you bring saline or other liquid meds through the security line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The response is more than a little weak. Confiscating people's shampoo and water does nothing to improve the safety of air travel. That's the point Randall Munroe is making and it's still quite valid.

It's trivially easy to smuggle enough liquids on board an airplane to bypass the TSA's "security" measures. Simply claim it is saline solution or use something like a "beer belly".

Similarly, the TSA's ban of knives on planes is equally toothless. Many fliers (myself included) can attest to having accidentally brought pocket knives on planes without security screening having noticed them. And even a moderately dedicated attacker would find it easy to acquire a ceramic knife capable of passing through a metal detector.

It's a kabuki dance, it's security theater, it increases security not one bit, but makes it more difficult to fly.

<comment><USER38> I just left this comment on the TSA blog: "To translate:

"Our policy is irrational, but we're sticking to it anyway in the interests of security theater." "

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The TSA has a blog where they reference Ars Technica and XKCD? I am forced to acknowledge that they are slightly more enlightened than I thought.

Having said that, the arguments in that post are bullshit (as evidenced by several comments before this one)

<comment><USER40> "TSA has a blog"

In this day and age that makes them about as enlightened as saying "the TSA uses electricity". They are just doing it because _everyone_ else is doing it there's no credit for original independent thought here.

<comment><USER33> That would be a harder claim to make if you had quoted the whole of ajju's sentence. I think what's interesting here is not that they have a blog, but how the blog is run. They respond to a webcomic, they enable comments, they respond to comments, they write in a human tone, etc.

Sure, most organizations have blogs, but for most they are a write-only place to put press releases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Give me a laptop battery, my belt, and some duct tape, and we'll be talking about an definition a little further down in the dictionary entry for the term "battery."

</comment><comment><USER42> Does anyone other than me wonder why TSA is using Blogger for their official blog rather than WordPress?

Anyway....

</comment><comment><USER43> _The lady doth protest too much, methinks._

</comment><comment><USER25> Jesus. Can we move on, yet? George Carlin nailed this topic over 10 years ago. xkcdsucks (nb: usually funnier than the comic!) nailed this cartoon: jokes about airport security are so overdone that there's actually signs at the airport warning you not to make jokes about airport security.

Yes, the "3-1-1 restrictions" are completely retarded. Yes, people are mostly liquid. Yes, batteries are dangerous. Hollering about that here isn't going to help you, because the TSA people live in an entirely different universe than you do. To them, the 3-1-1 rule is perfectly rational. It's a reaction to an actual threat they had. To abandon the restriction, they have to accept responsibility for the next time liquid explosives are used to destroy a plane. They are never. going. to. do. that. It would be irrational --- from their perspective --- for them to do so.

This TSA response isn't disingenuous. It's exactly what any thinking person expects them to say. So what are we discussing here?

<comment><USER44> You know that recently a terrorist tried to use a bomb in his intestine to assassinate a Saudi-Arabian prince ([http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/qaeda_ass_assin_h...](http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/qaeda_ass_assin_hKiF3TDJkgYItnBQkJXmTN)). (I know, not the greatest source).

As soon as one of those is discovered at an airport, according to your reasoning about the TSA's rationales, they would have to and should cavity search every passenger.

The real questions underlying a topic like this are:

Why do the people have so little say in their own security?

Why do people accept being separated, rudely interrogated, strip-searched, subjected to (unconstitutionally) secret laws and regulations, etc.?

Why are expert opinions completely ignored?

Just because it's "rational" for the TSA/US Government to cover their asses doesn't mean people shouldn't make a fuss about it. Democracy and liberty vitally depend on people making a (meaningful) fuss.

<comment><USER25> You seriously think that reasonable arguments like this are going to get the TSA to stop supporting policies that cost them nothing but mitigate massive possible career risks for themselves? Because I think it would be irrational for this administration to step back even an inch from where security is now. They'd simply get blamed for anything that happened within the next 10 years.

<comment><USER28> "They'd simply get blamed for anything that happened within the next 10 years."

The administration would get blamed anyway by virtue of being in charge. They've been willing to _announce stopping the use of torture_ (with many in their opposition howling that this will cost American lives), so it's clearly not impossible for them to change policy just because security is the claimed justification for it.

Nobody cares about what the TSA itself supports. The TSA does what it's told to do. The idea is to get enough people annoyed about what the FAA has the TSA do to encourage change in policy. This may or may not be doable, but that's politics for you.

EDIT: emphasis added for the benefit of some poor readers.

<comment><USER45> _They've been willing to announce stopping the use of torture_

Good grief.

3 people were waterboarded. The former administration refused to rule in or out any sort of interrogation technique.

They hardly "stopped the use of torture". Made a political statement, sure. Announced what the limits were, sure. But they didn't stop anything of the sort.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Matasano's Crypto Challenge Bankruptcy Announcement - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8232922

<comment><AUTHOR> No condemnation meant here. I just think it's a great (and humorous) example of how yak shaving can do us all in.

Big thanks to the Matasano team for a really cool project to work on.</comment>


University of Virginia website hacking play-by-play - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/veT3zZGQ Looks like the guys who hacked the UVa website earlier this year published the details on how they did. <comment><USER2> Well 8K+ social security numbers have been leaked.</comment>


Proposals Toward the End of Writing - <AUTHOR> http://logger.believermag.com/post/138988654268/proposals-toward-the-end-of-writing <comment><USER2> That was a long way to go to get to a _Ficciones_ reference. The Pierre Menard's Don Quixote and the Library of Babel are probably my favorite Borges stories, and I do think they're applicable to the author's point. I just can't help but feel that it was a painful process to get there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me a little of Roald Dahl's short story "The Great Automatic Grammatizator", which is an excellent read (not quite as dark as some of his fiction, but getting there).

<comment><USER4> It reminds me of Gnoetry, the algorithmicly generated poetry:

[https://gnoetrydaily.wordpress.com](https://gnoetrydaily.wordpress.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The outcome is certainly more unique [...]

"Unique" admits no qualification. A thing cannot be "more unique," "less unique," "very unique," and so forth. A thing is either unique, or it is not.

<comment><USER6> "Stuart: Oooh Sheldon, I'm afraid you couldn't be more wrong.

Sheldon: More wrong? Wrong is an absolute state and not subject to gradation.

Stuart: Of course it is. It is a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable, it is very wrong to say it is a suspension bridge."

<comment><USER7> Wrong is a binary state, you're wrong or not, both statements are equally wrong. What you're looking for is the term "Farther from the truth" Saying a tomato is a vegetable is closer to the truth (or closer to correct) than to say it is a suspension bridge. However both are completely and unequivocally wrong as wrong is a binary state.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, you're wrong. "Wrong" is a binary state only in abstract Logic.

When it comes to human languages the use of such words in a comparative manner is a common and accepted occurrence, from ancient times even. It's also a phenomenon (along with numerous others mistakenly thought as "wrong") that has been heavily studied by linguists and considered an example of a valid use of language as it evolves (as opposed to a syntactical or spelling error that comes from ignorance or from a lapse of concentration).

<comment><USER7> Do you have any references or studies that you could point me to? I'd love to read about the studies that have been done. Logic vs language is a really interesting topic since it basically means the integration of your expert skill set (how much you use logic and logical constructs) will inform your understanding of language. I wonder if that definition of wrong that linguists have found will change if our society shifts more towards a logic based outlook, or more jobs that work with binary state.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linear Hash Functions (1999) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.tau.ac.il/~nogaa/PDFS/linhash13.pdf

<comment><USER2> Translation to English please so I can implement the algorithm...</comment>


Show HN: The most-relevant GitHub repos per region - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lorey/top-regional-repositories <comment><USER2> Nice! I made it available over dat too [https://top-regional-repositories- millette.hashbase.io/](https://top-regional-repositories- millette.hashbase.io/)

See [https://hashbase.io/millette/top-regional- repositories](https://hashbase.io/millette/top-regional-repositories) for details.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, cool. Will it update automatically or point to the same version forever?

<comment><USER2> Contrary to a torrent, a dat can be updated. I just pulled your latest changes and the dat's content updated simultaneously.</comment></comment></comment>


EFF, ACLU Sue Over Warrantless Phone, Laptop Searches at U.S. Border - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-aclu-media-conference-call-today-announce-lawsuit-over-warrantless-phone-and <comment><USER3> The distinction I would suggest is that CBP should have the power to search the effects of entering travelers looking for _physical_ contraband; so, for instance, to examine a laptop and cell phone to make sure they're not fakes full of cocaine or fentanyl or something. They should have no jurisdiction over _information_. They don't get to examine all the bits coming into the country over the Internet, and we certainly don't want to give them that power!

The idea that the CBP can make a meaningful difference to the security of this country by searching the informational effects of .1% of incoming travelers, when there's I-don't-know-how-many gigabits/sec of connectivity to other countries that anyone in the US can use by firing up their smartphone, is ludicrous on its face. The idea that they can accurately select the .1% of travelers that might be carrying evidence of a crime just by looking at them is equally ludicrous.

<comment><USER4> The proposed "Protecting Data at the Border Act" makes the distinction between physical vs. digital examination that you mention.

[https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/s823/BILLS-115s823is.pdf](https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/s823/BILLS-115s823is.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Aha, so it does! The corresponding House bill is HR 1899.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Airport searches should be limited to what might cause a _transportation security_ issue. Nothing on a mobile device qualifies, especially since in- flight wifi provides a way to download anything to the device in flight that is not present when checked at Security.

Regular border searches should have no right to look at devices at all, since there is no plane or train to endanger and there are _even more_ ways to beam over data after you cross the physical border.

The entire thing just stinks of intimidation tactics, subjecting people to personal invasions with, yet again, no measurable improvement to actual security.

<comment><USER6> For general TSA searches, you are correct, but border security is not about ensuring the safe transportation of the person crossing the border, so I am not sure how your framework makes sense.

<comment><USER7> Surely the passport is a sufficient signal. Chances are if you have a fake one, you aren't likely to keep incriminating data on your phne, like your actual facebook profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> outofatacos wrote:

> I haven't traveled abroad in a couple years, so I'm not sure exactly how > this works, but I would be unable to contain my laughter if some CBP cop > asked me to unlock my phone or laptop. Is this something that actually > happens nowadays? Why on earth would anyone ever consent to this nonsense?

For some reason this comment is dead and it is a valid question IMO.

For people who don't know, if you don't have a citizenship they actually might deny your entry if you won't cooperate.

If you do, they can't refuse you entering the US, but they can confiscate your electronics.

Doesn't seem right, that's why EFF and ACLU is suing.

<comment><USER9> > confiscate

Steal. Confiscation without a warrant is theft. With a warrant they may be able to search, but failing to return within 48 hours is also theft.

Alas, the government steals so much in so many different ways, and runs schools indoctrinating children in "patriotism" that its hard for people to see these things anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> But only for people who are US citizens, or at least permanent residents. It's not making visiting the US any more appealing to the rest of the world.

<comment><USER11> If they can't establish a better situation for US citizens, there's no way they could ever generalize it. Seems like a sound tactic on the ACLU/EFFs part to me.

<comment><USER12> Indeed. But he's right to point that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone offer a simple explanation of why the EFF and ACLU might succeed?

I remember seeing big signs at US border crossings that said YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS in big allcaps, and I think the law is mostly on their side. Those signs are probably still there.

<comment><USER14> What law says they have no rights? That seems to supercede the constitution, which can't be done. Constitution needs to be interpreted in this case.

<comment><USER13> The argument I've heard is that the constitution only applies to people who are in the US and her citizens. At a border crossing you're not in the US, and if you're not a US citizen, then I think you literally have no rights.

<comment><USER15> That argument is wrong, the constitution not only applies to US citizens while they are out of the US, but it also applies to people who aren't US citizens.

"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive ANY PERSON of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to ANY PERSON within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"

<comment><USER16> I agree that your statement is morally and logically correct.

But from a legal perspective, it's quite false. SCOTUS has said that the government's need to ensure security at the border leads to a different balance of rights versus authority when you're near the border. (you should also ignore the fact that these rules put 2/3 of the US population "near the border" and thus having weakened protection over their rights)

We can yell all we want about the clear meaning of the Constitution, but that doesn't stop the government from confiscating our stuff and throwing us in jail.

For what it's worth.... There's a statement attributed to Abraham Lincoln, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact", which is taken to mean that we shouldn't be so dogmatic about the Constitution as to let it destroy us. I think the words of this statement are correct, but everyone interprets them backwards. It's not a warning, it's an affirmation. As Americans, we should be confident that our Constitution is not something that can harm us if taken too literally. It's not a pretty idea, a luxury that becomes dangerous if indulged in too much. Rather, the Constitution is, indeed, our strength.

We should have confidence that things like the free market of ideas that our freedom of speech creates, or that ready militia made up of all able adults who exercise the right to bear arms can defend us from invaders or errant government. I believe that our freedoms are not luxuries that we should forgo when the government decides there's sufficient danger: it's holding fast to them that will deliver us from danger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I happened to catch a few minutes of one of those border/customs reality shows a couple of weeks ago. A young German couple were trying to enter the US from Canada as tourists. They had very little in the way of funds and claimed that they planned on sleeping in their van while travelling.

The official at the border asked them if they planned on working. They both said "no". He asked them again but warned them that their computers and phones had been searched. Again they said "no". The official then showed them correspondence that showed they were expected at a farm were they were expected to work as wwoofers.

They were denied entry.

Personally I don't agree that their correspondence should have been checked in the first case but I can see that this is an example of how this type of privacy invasion might be argued for by government.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone know of a case where a search of electronic material beyond physical inspection actually resulted in any illegal materials?

I don't doubt that our current body of legislation and judicial precedents make this practice legal, but I honestly can't see this policy actually doing anything.

The classic case of illegal electronic information would be child pornography - but who would be stupid enough to bring it with them to the border for consumption or for trafficking, when the Internet exists? If they were to bring it to the border, what's to stop them from encrypting it not divulging the key?

Beyond C.P., I can imagine certain trade secrets being illegal, like Samuel Slater back in the day. But that was to the benefit of America, and the British were right to suspect him due to his position giving him the capability to leak information that was held secret by state laws. American analogues obviously enforce the unwanted disclosure of state secrets and such based on identities and institutions prior to crossing the border - <USER2> makes what the CBP are doing redundant at best.

Terrorists do not need anything outside of this country to operate. We've seen domestic and foreign terrorists alike build their bombs with legal sources of information and material.

IMO, what happened was a power hungry busy body official in the CBP spearheaded this policy. Just another case of crappy people in crappy politics, making crappy solutions to nonexistent problems. It is fortunate that the rest of humanity will be reasonable enough to revert such egregious and useless wastes of resources.

<comment><USER19> Top link, quite recent, thousands of results:

[http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/17/handful-of-refugees- caught...](http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/17/handful-of-refugees-caught- bringing-child-porn-across-ny-quebec-border/)

<comment><USER18> Thank you for the reply, but these are refugees crossing into Canada. Not American citizens entering the United States. I don't see thousands of results either.

A quick google search revealed absolutely nothing fruitful - 3 articles about the refugees seeking asylum in Canada being deported after CP discovery, 1 American citizen charged with CP found in his residence, 1 American citizen charged by a Saskatchewan provincial court, and 1 former Border Patrol agent caught as part of a Texan initiative that counters crimes against children.

Not a single example comes to mind of an American citizen entering or leaving with illegal electronic information. If these searches were actually doing anything useful, I'm sure an organized effort to promote its success would've been underway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Donate to the eff! They will send you an awesome hoodie

</comment><comment><USER21> It would seem to me that the Federal Government is in charge of the border, and that until you are actually in the United States, you have no reasonable expectation of the Bill of Rights. There are many things that need to get checked at the border. Maybe they could just have a judge there to stamp each request as it goes through.

<comment><USER22> I have my whole life on my phone and laptop. Most of the details and particularly _papers_ , as stated in the 4th, of my life are contained there. I also need my devices to function and keep up like a normal person in 2017, and to keep a job.

So if I need to leave the country and come back, and must bring them, I just forfeited my expectation of privacy guaranteed by the bill of rights?

<comment><USER23> _I should no longer have any expectation of privacy_

The above poster suggests even worse.

"until you are actually in the United States, you have no reasonable expectation of the Bill of Rights.". They suggest you have _no_ constitutional rights outside of the US border. Forget your cell phone, this would imply that black bag operations are completely legal as long as the US citizen is outside of US borders at the time.

<comment><USER24> No, it implies that they are not illegal, and I would agree. That doesn't necessarily mean they are legal - they are alegal since US law does not apply outside its borders. Just like there doesn't need to be a US law making it legal for you to hire a prostitute in the Netherlands or gamble in an Indian reservation.

Admittedly, that argument is not very convincing for the US in particular so pretend we are talking about some other country that is not the self-appointed world police.

<comment><USER25> > US law does not apply outside its borders.

Except for laws which expressly include territorial limits (the phrase, "within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States" occurs as a limitation in several US criminal laws, for example) US laws absolutely do apply outisde of US borders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I only make around 20k and I donate $5 monthly to both the EFF and ACLU. I never notice it missing out of my account. Does anyone now of a third organization worthy of support. Not to brag, but I could probably swing $15 a month.

<comment><USER19> With ACLU, you can also donate to your local chapter.

I'm also rather fond of Heifer International.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I haven't traveled abroad in a couple years, so I'm not sure exactly how this works, but I would be unable to contain my laughter if some CBP cop asked me to unlock my phone or laptop. Is this something that actually happens nowadays? Why on earth would anyone ever consent to this nonsense?

<comment><USER28> I, and almost anyone else, would consent to it for the sake of getting on the flight. Yeah, I don't like it either. It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does I imagine these outcomes:

1) Handover unlocked device, let CBP knuckle-dragger browse through it, in front of me, until they're bored and they hand it back. Get on flight. This is the best case scenario.

2) Handover unlocked device, CPB knucke-dragger takes it to back room where he may or may not download all contents and store it, enabling NSA to play seven- degrees-of-keven-bacon, Osama-edition, forever. That's the worst scenario, but very unlikely that anything comes of that.

3) Laugh at CBP knuckle-dragger, keep phone locked, miss flight, go to airport detention for an indeterminate amount of time until I give in and handover unlocked phone, be subject to scrutiny and "commentary" from CBP official, and maybe, get put on a list somewhere which will cause this to happen every time I fly.

<comment><USER29> If you are a US citizen entering the US (don't try this if you're a green card holder or a visitor), then in the case of (3), they can't hold you indefinitely, although they can hold your phone indefinitely.

This has never happened to me, and it probably never will, but if it does my plan is to refuse to unlock the phone and wait it out.

<comment><USER28> I used the term "indefinitely" too loosely. I should have said "far longer than most people are willing tolerate for the sake of making a point."

But OK, staying locked is a fine thing to do but most people would want to get on with their lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Url changed from [https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/09/electronic- frontier-...](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/09/electronic-frontier- foundation-aclu-sue-warrantless-phone-laptop-searches-us-border.html), which points to this.</comment>