The future of cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin and beyond - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/the-future-of-cryptocurrencies-bitcoin-and-beyond-1.18447 <comment><USER2> This article is absurd. Bitcoin is for regulatory arbitrage, the author completely missed the boat on what this technology sets out to achieve.

Additionally, the suggestion that 'theft' is an issue demonstrates a lack of understanding on how bitcoin works as property.

<comment><USER3> >Bitcoin is for regulatory arbitrage

In it's current form, with current regulations, it may be used by some for regulatory arbitrage, but I don't think it's fair to say that's what the technology sets out to achieve. Bitcoin is decentralized, programmable money, obviating the need for traditional financial institutional intermediation, as stated in the first line of the original bitcoin whitepaper (I'm paraphrasing), and what many, many users and supporters would like to use it for.

>the suggestion that 'theft' is an issue demonstrates a lack of understanding on how bitcoin works as property

Some of the common modes of 'theft' are described in the article (i.e. boils down to compromised private keys).

Yes, the author uses simplified descriptions, more for the layman, but I think the article does a decent job at summarizing some important aspects of the technology.</comment></comment>


Pirate Party's copyright reform cannon could sink copyleft - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/pirate-partys-copyright-reform-cannon-could-sink-copyleft.ars

<comment><USER2> I would argue 5 years is most of a software useful lifetime. (for most software.) And open source software changes so fast, would you really if a company uses a 5 year old version of your code with doing copyleft stuff? They'd still have an incentive to use a newer version and follow your license.

Plus the benefits gained in other fields by a five year limit (think research papers, movies, music) would far outweigh anything lost to the software field.

<comment><USER3> Agreed.

Of what use would be a 5 year old version of Firefox? It would be covered in security holes and missing many modern features.

Of what use would be a 5 year old version of the Linux kernel? It would have root exploits all over the place and be missing support for lots of modern hardware.

Of what use would be a 5 year old version of mplayer? It wouldn't even be able to play Youtube videos.

<comment><USER4> Consumer software might upgrade rapidly, but business software would probably take a hit. At $10,000 a license per year times multiple licenses, a lot of business software vendors might find themselves losing clients after five years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I completely disagree.

While the GPL and other FOSS licenses would loose power after copyright runs out (int this case, 5 years), so would propreitary licenses.

Now, it might seem that this is an unfair situation proprietary software holds the advantage, after all they can grab our source code and we can't get theirs? Right? Wrong. Name a major piece of software for which the source isn't leaked... And the Pirate Party could add a law requiring that source code be released after copyright expires for distributed works.

This means that the field is always even for all developers open or not. (Well, not quite even, there is a five year difference...) but as long as the FOSS movement is about creating good free software (as apposed to annihilating proprietary software) this doesn't matter.

<comment><USER6> "I completely disagree."

Did you read the article? You are completely _agreeing_ with RMS, who recommends that an extra proviso should be added requiring proprietary source disclosure at 5 years.

<comment><USER5> I was disagreeing with the statement that `` Pirate Party's copyright reform cannon could sink copyleft.'' I only skimmed through the article and missed that part. (In part because I'm irritated by the fact that I've seen this idea iterated several times without ever considering this option.)

In short, my bad...

<comment><USER6> Never trust a social-news-site headline. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Misled by the headline, I thought copylefters might have foundational objections with the short copyright terms affecting copyleft. Rather, RMS just wants a tweak to ensure proprietary source, and not just binaries, become available at the end of 5 years.

I think in practice, the point is minor. If arbitrary reverse-engineering and distribution of patched copies is allowed after 5 years, disassembly tools will get really good, really fast. The meatiest bits of public-domain but source-hidden binaries will quickly get source-equivalent coverage; creating such would be a fun/easy/legal exercise for students and hobbyists.</comment>


Dissolving the Dead - <AUTHOR> http://thewalrus.ca/dissolving-the-dead/ <comment><USER2> > _After twenty minutes or so, he placed them in his bone press, turning them > to dust before wheeling in the second body._

That seems like such a waste. If it were me, I'd want my bones artificially reconnected to one another, then my skeleton donated to a comedy club or something.

No reason to stop having fun just because you're dead.

<comment><USER3> The comedian/improviser Del Close willed his skull to a theatre to be in Hamlet ([http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/as-del-lay- dying/Conten...](http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/as-del-lay- dying/Content?oid=1109931)):

> "I give my skull to the Goodman Theatre, for a production of Hamlet in which > to play Yorick, or for any other purposes the Goodman Theatre deems > appropriate." At a press conference on July 1, 1999, Charna gave Robert > Falls, the Goodman's artistic director, a skull resting on a red velvet > cushion inside a Lucite box. Falls held out the skull in his right hand and > spoke. "Alas, poor Del! I knew him, Horatio: A fellow of infinite jest..."

> But the skull wasn't Del's. Charna came clean in the October 9, 2006, issue > of the New Yorker. After Del died, hospital personnel laughed at her request > to remove the head, suggesting that she contact the Illinois Society of > Pathologists. They too ultimately refused. After two days, she reluctantly > had the body cremated in its entirety. Then she went skull shopping at the > Anatomical Chart Company in Skokie. She purchased a skull there, and to make > it resemble Del's she and her sister pulled out as many teeth as they could > manage before turning it over to the Goodman.

> The truth doesn't seem to matter to most of those who knew him. Robert Falls > still keeps the skull on his bookshelf. The attitude of most of Del's > friends is that if it wasn't originally Del's skull, it is now.

<comment><USER2> I read the full story and quite enjoyed it, thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my last startup, my primary product was a CRM of sorts for the US funeral industry. Coming from Hindu country, I was kinda puzzled on why does one need CRM and accounting systems in deathcare over a period of 30 years - think of one "lead" changing states for 30 years.

That is until I realized that the primary business of deathcare in the US revolves around real estate. People want to be buried under a tree on top of the hill with the gentle sea breeze.. And not near a place where a dig can take a dump.

Very surprising.. And IMHO wasteful for someone like me, who admittedly belongs to another belief.

Also, since a lot if people have written about this, the Parsis (a community in India who trace their descent from Iran) feed their dead to vultures. Sadly, Mumbai don't have too many vultures... So now, they are mandated by law to cremate them.

</comment><comment><USER5> How about just burying the body, no embalming fluid, no casket etc & letting it decompose. Is that harmful to the environment?

<comment><USER6> This is the norm in Arab/Muslim countries where their doctrine instructs that the (naked) dead should be covered only in a simple, white cotton shroud and buried six feet under; caskets and embalming fluids are not used. (Hence the Islamic requirement for a speedy (same day if possible) burial, no wake, etc.)

In similar vein, mausoleums, raised tombstones, and cemetery shrines are also forbidden (the overall theme is "we are all equal in death").

The net result is that cemeteries are "reusable" and some of the most-popular in Saudi Arabia ("jannatul baqee'" a là Arlington Cemetery) are reused/recycled every so many decades (or is it once a century, once the denizens are forgotten/no longer visited?).

<comment><USER7> Are you sure about that ?

[http://www.bury.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=4013&p=0](http://www.bury.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=4013&p=0)

Specifically discussing Moslem burials, offers :

Types of graves available

Timber, brick or concrete vaults

On request, graves will be lined with timber, brick or concrete breeze blocks to form an inner shell in the grave space. Please note that we require the following notice for these types of vault.

And in NY ([http://www.isnf.org/Documents/GuideToMuslimFuneralsInWestern...](http://www.isnf.org/Documents/GuideToMuslimFuneralsInWesternNewYork.pdf)) you are charged extra for not having a lining on the grave.

"A concrete or other permanent outer burial container is not required, but there is an additional charge for a burial without an outer burial container."

<comment><USER6> Absolutely positive, I've been to quite a few. You can refer to Wikipedia, a quick glance shows it to be in line with what I was saying: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_funeral#Enshrouding_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_funeral#Enshrouding_the_deceased)

The UK burial section for Muslims might be for offshoots or sects; for example, I do not know if Shiaa Muslims adhere to the same. Or it could be like here in the US: government regulations say you can't bury people sans- casket, so it could be "these (and only these) are your options."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Carrion. Just toss me out into the desert.

</comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this similar to what cartels does to dispose bodies?

<comment><USER10> Yep. El Pozolero was famous (infamous?) for this. [0]

[0] [http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2013/04/el-pozolero-legacy- of-...](http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2013/04/el-pozolero-legacy-of-death-by- tijuanas.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm starting to believe that every form of burial other than cryonics is unethical.

As in you are taking away an opportunity from that human to have another shot at life.

<comment><USER12> The big assumption you're making is that everyone would want another shot at life. I'd be surprised if that were universally true.

<comment><USER13> No, the big assumption here is that cryonics will ever work.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Those who went the venture capital route with their side project… - <AUTHOR> How did you come to that decision and how did it go? How was the transition from side business/project to pitching it to investors? How did you find investors to talk with? Do you regret anything?
Not looking for amazing success stories, just some good discussion.
Maybe your story isn't about a side project, that's fine too. I only used that as an example since that's where I'm at.
I'm in the middle of deciding if I should try to go the c-corp route and eventually raise money (vs. keeping it small for as long as possible with an LLC). I kind of want to try a c-corp just to say I've tried.
I know nothing about this topic, so any educational advice would be great. <comment><AUTHOR> Also, I would like to put an emphases on "eventually raise money", as I know that in order to do that you need profits, a user-base or _something_ to pitch investors on. I know there's no such thing as a magic bullet here. I'm also not at all implying that I will be successful, whichever route I move towards.

<comment><USER2> \+ What home work about VC-firm/partner was helpful before approaching VCs/Investors ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> \+ VC is expensive capital Don't second C Corp just to say you have done it. Bad idea.

If you have a business that looks like all it needs is capital or you think a large cash infusion will help if grow exponentially then and only then do VC

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I should have worded the OP better. I didn't mean start a c-corp just to say I've done it, I meant go down the VC route (I guess that includes a c-corp, but not exclusively) once in my life.

Why do so many entrepreneurs seemingly default to VC if it's such a bad idea?

<comment><USER3> aaah got it. Lets look at the numbers I hope you will agree with me that Number of businesses that get started>> Number of business in hot sector>>number of businesses that get angel investments> number of businesses that raise VC

If we are being bombarded by tech news and most of the press releases are tech startups raising capital in SV or other valley like places, then the "so many entreprenuers raise VC " idea gets traction

Also the process to get private capital and the dumb money at a high ( albeit cooling off a bit)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unless you need massive and immediate growth in order for your company to be successful, I would be weary of taking someone else's money. Your investors have one goal: make a return on their investment. They don't care about your hopes and dreams or whether you will be happy in the long run. It is business. They will pressure you to make those returns happen and it won't be enjoyable for you. Really understand what that relationship will look like before signing on with anyone. Of course, YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also we are building a co creation platform. Why not start there?

www.crowdraising.co</comment>


Ask HN: War stories on implementations of Eric Ries' MVP ? - <AUTHOR>

This post - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=891467 - really piqued my interest, because I have been thinking about running an experiment like this on a number of ideas I have floating around in my head.
But, at the risk of sounding dumb, even though I love Eric Ries' talks, it all seems too complicated. I understand what he is saying, and I understand the concepts, but I would love to hear some real live testimonials of HNers that have actually implemented any of these tests and their results.
This question is actually inspired by this comment - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=891517
So one and all, bring yee stories hither forth and shareth with thee.
Thanks :) <comment><USER2> I worked at a software company where we _should_ have run an experiment like this. There's an upgrade on user accounts that we charged a one-time $10 for, and people buy it all the time. We decided to try it as a subscription.

We spent a month getting the subscription code ready, then deployed it to some % of users, only to discover that nobody wanted it. What we _should_ have done was build the front-end only, get people to buy subscriptions, and then just grant them the one-time permanent version.</comment>


Windows Mixed Reality headsets available today - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/10/03/how-to-pre-order-your-windows-mixed-reality-headset/#Ze1Qezp9AbZYOSf3.97 <comment><USER2> So, I didn't know what it is, found these videos:

[3 min promo] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AWhsBNU1jU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AWhsBNU1jU)

[talk] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTT_3DhTMI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTT_3DhTMI8)</comment>


India's spacecraft captures stunning Martian images - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/19/tech/gallery/india-mars-orbiter-images/index.htmls

<comment><USER2> You have a stray "s" on the end of your URL. Here's the actual link:

[http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/19/tech/gallery/india-mars- or...](http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/19/tech/gallery/india-mars-orbiter- images/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> URL is wrong. Take off the trailing "s".</comment>


Portraits of Ex-Slaves (1930s) - <AUTHOR> http://www.retronaut.com/2012/03/portraits-of-ex-slaves-1930s/

<comment><USER2> The archive these come from is linked at the bottom: [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/](http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/).

</comment><comment><USER3> Accurate as the headline is, I prefer the dignity and empathy afforded by a phrase like "Portraits of Men & Women Once Enslaved in America."

Before someone reacts with a kneejerk cry of "political correctness," think about the difference between giving someone an identity ("Slave") and describing their situation ("enslaved").

The first time I heard people described as "enslaved" rather than "slaves," it made me reflect on how we can dehumanize people instead of empathizing with them, and imagining what it would be like to be in their situation.

Looking into the eyes of these men and women, I'm given to reflect on how little time most of us, certainly myself, spend outside our own experiences and social circles. As Americans, we all owe a debt of gratitude, remorse, and atonment to our ancestors that were treated with such inhumane violence and bondage.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't get the message of this. I mean it isn't surprising that somebody collects portraits of ex-slaves (somebody collects anything, after all), but as this gets enough attention to be posted on HN and even reach the top I assume there must be some deeper meaning which I don't see at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it just me or do these 90-yr-olds look really healthy for their ages?</comment>


A Guide to the Apple Newton - <AUTHOR> http://www.512pixels.net/blog/2015/8/apple-newton-guide

<comment><USER2> One of those machines I wish had survived. The prototype base language combined with a neat way to handle data made it fun to program. I still cannot find anything that has contacts and other base data used as well.

One of these days I'm going to write a soup implementation like the Newton had. SQLite is cool, but I crave something else.

<comment><USER3> A book on NewtonScript is what made OOP click for me. It was so clean.

<comment><USER2> I remember the sequence for me: "ok, create frame (?) - add variable, add methods, clone - oh cool - oh wow add variable to parent and everyone sees it, change on child and its local, wow buttons work cool - no new classes needed, wait - I just create a soup in a store to save objects?!?! just add a new variable to Contacts to associate new information to people?!!!! this is awesome"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anybody know what happened to DecisionLab from Camas, Inc.? That was the last thing I kept my Newton running for but eventually it died and I've never seen another decision analysis tool like it.

<comment><USER5> Damn, you're now the first Google hit for it. Can you tell a bit more about it, what it did etc? Very intrigued!

<comment><USER4> After a little more Binging (seriously, it returned better results than Google this time), I found out that it was a product of Bruce D'Ambrosio of Oregon State University.

I believe it was based on this: [http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~dambrosi/bayesian/frame.htm...](http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~dambrosi/bayesian/frame.html)

My memory isn't great, but you basically entered your goal, your different options, constraints and resources along with information about your confidence in each and it would suggest a course of action.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had an MP2100, way after it was obsolete (but still ten years ago.) What a neat device. Two PCMCIA slots in a handheld device was pretty cool, and I really liked the notetaking app it had. It was like onenote, but far before its time.

I wish I could get an LCD like the one it had, but made with a modern process to perhaps provide better contrast. Monochrome, electroluminescent backlit, fairly large. It would be fun to make a device in the same style but with improved parts.</comment>


Google +1 Chrome extension tracks https traffic - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/115459243651688775505/posts/CDiwzBti5G9

<comment><USER3> As noted in the comments this is hardly an oversight, the plugin page acknowledges the behavior:

 _"In addition to the practices described in the Google +1 Button Privacy Policy, by installing this extension, all of the pages and URLs you visit will be sent to Google in order to retrieve +1 information. Examples of this information include whether you've previously +1'd the page and how many people have already +1'd the page. Google's use of this information is described further in the following help center article ([http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#...). "
Tracking HTTPS traffic is really the big deal and it will probably be patched. For the rest, it is just like Google Toolbar, Internet Explorer, Bing Toolbar, etc...
Search engines need desperately this kind of data, it is not surprising that they try sneak "trackers" in any browser/extension, it is just unfortunate that they are not clear about it.

<comment><USER4> The link that you put in your post is in it's entirety about how they are _not_ tracking you and not logging these requests for each user. The quoted portion you mentioned is just pointing out that in order to get a count of the +1's on a page you have to send a request to google to see that count. There is no conceivable way for it to show information without requesting it first.

This isn't some sneaky side effect of the button, it is literally just the only functionality of the extension. They will probably still patch this to at least have a setting to not display +1's on https websites, but I don't really see where all this tracking talk came from.

<comment><USER5> Google could still uniquely identify sites while protecting your privacy by sending a hash of the URL from your browser, rather than the full URL itself, and comparing that hash to the hashes of all +1ed sites. People are talking about tracking because Google hasn't chosen to implement their extension like this.

<comment><USER4> I don't really understand how you imagine it to work. You want them to just have a huge dumb store of hash -> count mappings without them having any meaning? That would completely defeat the purpose of +1s, they couldn't put what +1s you had on your profile or use it for recommendations or whatever. Even if this was the case, it would be trivially easy for them to get the hash -> url mappings at any time since they already effectively crawl the entire internet or a daily or weekly basis, all they would have to do is add a single entry to the pipeline.

If you are saying that they should have a database where the columns are (url, hash, count) and just have the browser send the hash, that is exactly the same as just encrypting the url, and the request is being sent of https. What sort of security do you think you would have from hashing that is lacking in SSL?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've never understood why people install these types of extensions. It reminds me of the toolbar overload joke image:

[http://jimcofer.com/personal/wp- content/uploads/2009/08/tool...](http://jimcofer.com/personal/wp- content/uploads/2009/08/toolbar400gif-thumb.gif)

Aren't these kind of extensions all about tracking you anyway? If there's a page or website you think is valuable then bookmark it. If you want to share it among multiple computer systems email the link to yourself.

<comment><USER7> You're ignoring the primary (marketed) purpose of these extensions - <USER2> sharing. The main value-add is that users can easily +1 (share, tweet, whatever) from whatever page they're on. A secondary feature of some (including this one) is to show how many other people +1'd (etc) it. There are other extensions that exist with just the first part and not the second (though they're usually not 'official') and I imagine those wouldn't be "tracking" your activity (except what you're sharing). But, tracking isn't really the main point anyway. Facebook and Google can do enough tracking without browser extensions simply through market saturation. As far as I see it, this extension just provides features that some users want.

Additionally, these extensions take up minimal space in Chrome. The screen real estate each one gets is the same size as the settings (wrench) icon. Sure, you could fill up your browser UI space with them, but it's much more difficult than it is with IE and there are more hoops to jump through in order to get them there. IE users were (are?) plagued by toolbars because they can be installed externally from the application. As far as I know, Chrome extensions can only be installed from within the application after several prompts and confirmations.

<comment><USER8> The tracking should ocurr when the user performs the +1.

It shouldn't track the way it does, and it certainly shouldn't track HTTPS. It is not even an issue of privacy, it is simple courtesy and common sense.

<comment><USER9> If the extension doesn't send the URL to Google anyway, then it can't know how many +1s the page already has (and from whom). That's why it triggers on every page load.

<comment><USER8> But Google already knows the +1's received by the page, regardless of the visitor's login status.

Granted, it doesn't know if the visitor has friends that shared it. It still doesn't excuse them for sending all url's.

Facebook received a lot of flack for doing this and I don't see why Google should be excused for this intentional "gaffe".

<comment><USER10> You're missing the point - Google knows how many +1s the page received. But the user's browser doesn't, so it can't display the +1 count without contacting the server (and sending the page URL) to find out.

I have to wonder if this is an unintended side effect of the recent push to have site move to HTTPS - it used to be that HTTPS requests were mostly unique to a user, but now lots of "regular" pages are being requested using HTTP and if you want to make any kind of extension that return data about pages (+1, anti-phishing, etc) you're probably going to to want to send HTTPS URLS as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is why I use ghostery (<http://www.ghostery.com/>) with Firefox to prevent these sort of things from tracking my online behaviour.

<comment><USER12> Would love to use Ghostery or something similar for Chrome. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER13> Ghostery is available for chrome, among others: <http://www.ghostery.com/download>

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the link. Has anyone tried this and the Disconnect extension and can share how they compare?

<comment><USER15> Haven't tried Disconnect, but use Ghostery and see no need for anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As far as my understanding goes and through comments here[1] Google's other toolbar(s) are also capable of sending clickstream data. The only thing new might be the introduction of UserID as now the +1 Extension has user logged in, but I am not sure how that puts additional risk/privacy concerns.

Secondly, a lot of addons/extensions are actually asking for permissions to all visited pages - it should not be hard to figure out who the current logged in person is, if you do have _malicious_ intent (Scraping opened FB/Gmail web pages) . There is inherent privacy risk in using extensions with a lot of permissions!

[1] [http://www.quora.com/Google-Bing-Controversy- February-2011/D...](http://www.quora.com/Google-Bing-Controversy- February-2011/Does-Google-Toolbar-send-clickstream-data-like-Bing-Toolbar)

</comment><comment><USER17> Hmm, it turned out that information that users send to Google gets sent to Google. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER18> wow,that is downright scary! That is why I use incognito mode.

<comment><USER19> Unless incognito mode is something much different from what I think (temporary browser session with none of the existing cookies etc) that does not prevent this kind of issue. Pages you would visit in that session/mode would still get tracked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Incognito mode blocks all extensions by default, so you'd be safe from those extensions that track your data by using tab events.</comment></comment></comment>


Sign up to offer support to Ahmed Mohamed - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ws7e8WyQvrsLfhSFvdGot3n9NWKfY3XLPBgbHaZDy3k/viewform?c=0&w=1 <comment><AUTHOR> And sign up to be notified when plans are made: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zCtwhsEh_zB4PkuwlgAVZRTFV4I...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zCtwhsEh_zB4PkuwlgAVZRTFV4IxueXZmvrBb-0VjC4/viewform)</comment>


Transfer Your Font Style with GANs - <AUTHOR> http://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2018/03/13/mcgan/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for this interesting source! I've been currently looking for beautiful and non-common web fonts for my design project. Initially I was tend to use free fonts but then discovered some premium fonts on [https://www.templatemonster.com/fonts.php](https://www.templatemonster.com/fonts.php) . Gonna use a bundle from there!</comment>


What diagnostics software do you use for Windows (7 and up)? - <AUTHOR> Looking for recommendations of hardware diagnostics utilities, that check things like processor, memory, disks (HDD/SSD/CD/DVD) and other peripherals. Used to use such utilities a lot earlier, both for work (partly when a system engineer, but mostly on Unix) and for learning/fun, and had written a rudimentary one or two, but haven't been using them lately, so not aware of current ones. Could include ones built-in to the OS or third-party, and free or paid.<p>Thanks in advance for answers. <comment><USER2> AIDA64 [https://www.aida64.com/](https://www.aida64.com/)

MemTest86 [http://www.memtest86.com/](http://www.memtest86.com/)

HDDScan [http://hddscan.com/](http://hddscan.com/)

GPU-Z [https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/](https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will check them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is this

[http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.htm...](http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html)</comment>


A grand don't come for free – a $1000 startup challenge - <AUTHOR> http://1000pound.tumblr.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'll be monitoring this submission, ask any questions you may have :)</comment>


Chrysler's Radical Space Shuttle Design - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/news/33905/chryslers-radical-space-shuttle-design-was-50-years-ahead-of-its-time <comment><USER2> > The aerospike engine isn't actually a new thing. Rocketdyne had been > experimenting with them since the 1960s, and they're much more efficient > than conventional rocket engines.

... kind of. Like they say, conventional bell-nozzle engines are optimized for a particular altitude, while aerospikes are not, and it's true that if you're going to use the same engine across a wide range of altitudes, aerospikes will be more efficient on average across that wide range than conventional engines will. At any particular altitude, though, a conventional engine optimized for that altitude will be more efficient than an aerospike -- they're "jack of all trades, master of none" engines. And it turns out, with contemporary multi- stage rockets, we can and do use different engine bells at different altitudes, which negates a lot of aerospikes' prospective benefits. Were single-stage-to-orbit vehicles ever to be a thing, aerospikes might have their moment, but it turns out SSTO configurations just aren't very good at lifting much mass to orbit, so that seems unlikely.

<comment><AUTHOR> SSTOs have the advantage of enormously simplified operation - no staging, no vehicle assembly building, no stage mating, just land, fix whatever is broken, refuel and launch. If the payload fraction is smaller than that of a multistage rocket, it can compensate with cheaper logistics on the ground and less time between launches.

<comment><USER3> Making those things easier is a lot simpler than making SSTO work.

<comment><AUTHOR> We thought that reusing the shuttle would be easy and that relanding boosters would be impossible and, yet, we were wrong both times.

Some things are impossible until they aren't.

<comment><USER4> No these are fundamentally different. SSTOs make things expensive because the rocket equation is unforgiving: every kilogram you haul into orbit needs fuel and propellant, which in turn makes the rocket bigger and heavier, which in turns requires more fuel and propellant, which in turns... So, you don't want to bring up anything unnecessary, like taking your first stage into orbit SSTO style.

Landing boosters is an incredible engineering feat. The rocket equation is just derived from the laws of physics, it's not something you can change with great engineering.

<comment><USER5> If the rocket equation is such an unforgiving bitch then why are you only using two stages to get to orbit? By your own logic you should be using four or five or even ten stages to get to orbit because otherwise you are hauling up too much unnecessary mass on each flight. What makes two such a magic number in this case? Is it perhaps possible that there are in fact real-world tradeoffs between efficiencies in the rocket equation and engineering parameters and that sometimes advances in technique or materials shifts the optimum point?

<comment><USER4> The more stages, the less favorable your ratio fuel+propellant / dry mass. When you add stages, you add engines, tanks, systems... that you then have to haul up to the next stage, making your lower stages heavier. Rocket equation again.

Sure it's possible that if you had super lightweight material for all the dry mass, 3 stages would make more sense.

You're right, there is a "real-world tradeoffs between efficiencies in the rocket equation and engineering parameters". This trade-off is unfavorable to SSTOs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The Space Shuttle was considered a reasonably conservative design using a lot of existing technology. Despite this, it had cost overruns north of a billion dollars, and it was late by several years. Chrysler 's more unconventional layout would've probably cost even more, and been delayed even longer._

This counterfactual is directly related to the mindset that led to the "conservative" option going upside down value-wise. Instead of viewing the difficulties as being opportunity, the nation chose to play it safe. It lost the attitude towards doing things ". . . not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win. . ."

[https://spacecenter.org/exhibits-and-experiences/starship- ga...](https://spacecenter.org/exhibits-and-experiences/starship- gallery/kennedy-podium/)

<comment><USER7> I'd argue the Shuttle failed because it wasn't conservative enough. What we needed was more cost effective versions of the Saturn rockets.

Instead they got infected with the SSTO fantasy, which can never work well. But it boxed them in a corner with the wrong fuel, wrong engines and forced- them to add super expensive SSRBs, which required putting the Shuttle on the side, which led to two disasters and a "reusable" launch system that had to be totally rebuilt between launches.

We'd still have Skylab if they had focused on manufacturing efficiencies for Saturn rockets instead.

<comment><USER3> In an alternate universe, the Saturn IB could have been evolved to something like the Falcon 9. The H1 engines are in a similar thrust class as the Merlin, although with lower performance.

<comment><USER8> I've thought about this as I've read the book Coming Home: Reentry and Recovery from Space. The fixation on a space plane probably set back the US space program by decades whereas a more boring evolutionary tree descended from the Saturn program would have been interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> orbital-decay This design was also radically unrealistic, due to the shape in particular. Fighting your own reentry decelerator on your way up is a ridiculously ineffective way to reach space, for one. Spike engines are also suboptimal in many ways, the cost isn't exactly the reason they aren't used.

<comment><USER9> Would it even reach orbit? The drag beyond Mach 1 must be huge, so the compression forces on the "saucer" would be huge too.

<comment><AUTHOR> The path up is mostly vertical in the densest atmosphere, while the deceleration part is as horizontal as possible. It is fighting the saucer on its way up, but it's nowhere near as effective as it is when used correctly on the way down. I'm pretty sure the Boeing engineers ran the numbers on this one before proposing it to NASA.

<comment><USER7> There are plenty of paper launch systems that engineers have run numbers on showing they could work, that won't work in practice. This and VentureStar are two examples.

In this case it's not the shape as much as carrying way too much extra/dead mass, jet engines, aero spikes, and using a LH2 means much more massive tankage requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the CGI rendering of how it would have worked - I was surprised the whole thing made it into space.

I thought it would just be a booster like Falcon 9.

</comment><comment><USER11> I still wonder about another radical idea: launching payloads (not people obviously) via a long ramp with some kind of magnetic accelerator and flinging them into orbit. I forget what this idea was called.

<comment><USER12> "Mass driver".

<comment><AUTHOR> The ramp needs to be very long or we'd need to build a very rugged spacecraft - enough of its brains and propulsion would need to survive the acceleration and the aerodynamic losses on the way up in order to circularize the orbit and not cross the ground on its way back.

Which brings a very scary failure more - being hit by the payload that is mostly dead, but coming back to the ground at near orbital speeds.

<comment><USER13> I think the hardening is pretty well understood - just fill any sensitive electronics etc. with resin and it's pretty much solved. But the heat problem certainly is not, and obviously humans, not being particularly amenable to being filled with protective resin, would be completely pulped without ridiculously long ramps.

I'm interested to know whether anything ever comes of this: [https://www.wired.com/story/inside-spinlaunch-the-space- indu...](https://www.wired.com/story/inside-spinlaunch-the-space-industrys- best-kept-secret/)

I'm sure I recall reading something on a forum somewhere from an anonymous former employee that claimed Spinlaunch was a mess and would never work.

<comment><USER14> This all reminds me of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is an amazing engine design!

<comment><USER16> Everyday Astronaut has a lot of material on aerospike engines.

I would question whether NASA didn't think they were still in the game or whether politics and pork-barrelling influenced whether they were in line for funding. Shame they didn't try and self-fund developing the engine.

<comment><USER7> The added weight of every aero spike engine ever made obviated its performance benefits, even for SSTO. SpaceX has always focused on super high thrust to weight ratio engines (Merlin and Raptor) and that (along with lighter tanks) has more than offset the lower ISP of their propellants.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. There are ways to get altitude compensation in more traditional bell nozzles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The YouTube channel Hazegrayart created an incredible CGI rendering of what > Chrysler's craft would've looked like, and how it would've worked.

[https://youtu.be/___JNGJog0A](https://youtu.be/___JNGJog0A) (4min, amazing channel BTW.)

</comment><comment><USER18> Well, what about properly designing the Fiat, first?</comment>


HIV test performed on USB stick - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/7602.html <comment><USER2> That is NOT where you plug in a USB stick.</comment>


Mass amateurization - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_amateurization <comment><USER2> I have to confess, the first time I heard about Wikipedia I was skeptical that such a thing could thrive. However this article pits institutions against the idea of "mass amateurization" when in fact I think the major reason Wikipedia _has_ succeeded is because of institutions and process put in place to keep the community moderated and in check.

For more information listen to the excellent podcast episode of "how I built this" featuring jimmy wales. [0]

[0] [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public- radio/how-i...](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/how-i- built-this/e/53468668)

<comment><USER3> I don't think "mass amateurization" and "institutions" are opposed. Traditionally you needed major institutional support to set up, say, a TV channel; today you can get a YouTube channel for free. If you start a YouTube channel and it gets successful you can certainly set up institutions and processes to keep it successful, but those things aren't necessary to get started.

<comment><USER4> And of course Youtube itself is an institution. There was an article here about a library built in Minecraft by volunteers to bypass censorship, but Microsoft is an institution. As you say these are not opposed, they are just different relationships between creators and distributors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d-d Random guys on YouTube have saved me at least a dozen trips to the car repair shop; but there's all that noise I gotta sift through. Good luck and Godspeed sorting through all the quackery if you ever come down with a rare health issue. There are so many junior-whatevers that flat out shouldn't be putting out content for anyone anywhere; much less the internet.

It's a double edged sword.

<comment><USER5> Maybe some topics should simply be legislated away as incompatible with "youtubery": health and history, imho. Forbidding those would remove 90% of the problematic content (quacks, antivaxx, holocaust deniers, truthers etc).

Health has specific laws to deal with digital storage, it's not inconceivable to admit that it needs extra protection on social platforms too.

<comment><USER6> _simply be legislated away_

This is one of the most dangerous phrases I've read in a long time.

<comment><USER5> Germany and Italy have had bans on specific material since 1946 and the sky has not fallen. I understand the concern, but the ban doesn't need to cover all media, only the ones that are extremely accessible. A bit like pornography is forbidden on mainstream tv during the day, but you can still buy it freely elsewhere at all times.

<comment><USER6> It's not about the specifics about your comment. It's a concern based on using the words "simply" and "legislated" in the same sentence.

I'm of the belief that legislation is not something to be entered into lightly and should generally be considered a last resort if better solutions don't exist.

<comment><USER5> I do not disagree! My "simply" was just indicating a resigned acceptance that there isn't a technological solution, so we might as well reach for good ol' fashioned political instruments - with all the complexity those entail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting that open source software is not discussed, it seems like one of the most radically successful embodiments of this.

<comment><USER8> Lots of open source is paid for, or at least the developers have real jobs as developers, and therefore they shouldn't be called amateurs.

<comment><USER9> It arguably still counts as amateurized though not because of the participants but because it does away with the hierarchy and credibility. Nobody really cares if the software writer is a Harvard or MIT professor in full academic dress or it was written in their mom's basement by a guy not wearing pants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some activities lend themselves well to amateurization. It's hard to imagine a world where people need a professional license to write computer programs or publish articles. Not all professions are this accessible though. Perhaps amateurization is correlated with benign consequences for being wrong. We don't see amateur engineers, doctors, lawyers...

<comment><USER11> I think you got the professions backwards :) You just can't be an "amateur programmer" \- it takes a lot of effort to get to the point where you're employable in the field. Probably something like a year of sustained work. Sure, you can learn light scripting in a week, but learning curve gets a lot steeper at some point.

On the other hand, it's relatively easy to learn a slice of health care or law enough to be able to give advice. As for engineering... try combinations including the word "redneck" on youtube search and enjoy yourself.

<comment><USER12> Of course you can be an amateur programmer, amateur means you're practicing something but not in a professional manner (i.e. unpaid).

A huge number of the people who program things like their raspberry pi or open source projects are amateur programmers. Or all the students and dabblers.

Same goes for engineering in general, if you spend any amount of time in a rural area you'll stumble on some amateur engineering genius.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is my favorite thing to come from the Internet. A lot of my entertainment comes from YouTube channels or podcasts whose audiences are way too small for them to be viable on TV or radio.

</comment><comment><USER14> This kind of reminds me of Joel Spolsky's business principle "commoditize your complement."

It's a benefit to a hosting & streaming platform, like YouTube, if the content is amateur, commodity and mass produced, since they dominate the complement (the infrastructure to host, serve and administer traffic to it).

It's great for automakers if roads are cheap and ubiquitous.

<comment><USER15> It occurs to me that there is a whole supply chain of these companies for youtubers and podcasters. Firstly, the content creator uses one (or many) of a selection of traditional and web-based tools to produce content not possible three decades ago, then youtube, or a syndication service, gets your content in the right places, there it is discovered by users, the content creator is then rewarded with ad revenue, subscribers through patreon, or through sales of merch through yet another platform.

Even as someone who mostly consumes this kind of content rather than creating it, I feel I benefit massively from this complex of buisnesses and tools. The web is a vibrant and encouraging place so long as you look past some of its worst festering piles of madness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wouldn't an amateur by definition be unpaid meaning that an Airbnb host really has nothing to do on this list.

People seem to misstake being an amateur with being subpar which would be far from the truth.

Famous tennis player Björn Borg won 5 Wimbledon as an amateur for example since being paid at that time would've been forbidden.

<comment><USER17> In common use, the way 'professional' is used seems to vary heavily.

Is someone who makes a hundred bucks a month streaming on Twitch a professional gamer? What about someone starting their own architecture business, which is currently unprofitable? Is the shop assistant who does all the cake decoration a professional cake decorator, despite having many other duties? Do state regulation and professional bodies come into it, and if so what happens in jobs without professional bodies? Is an accountant who works 2 days a week and is a stay-at-home parent 3 days a week different from a dancer who works 4 months a year as a dancer, and 8 months a year as a shop assistant?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if Mass Amateurization (Swype fail, tap tap tap) has furthered the obsolescence of terms like "citizen science," (the term may no longer be as special as it once was, since it happens all the time thanks to Amateurization) or made those terms more relevant (can we somehow improve on Amateurization with an eye to the strengths of existing citizen science community institutions?). Either way, one of its strengths seems to be helping science & tech when institutions may otherwise lack resources:

> There is no institutional hierarchy in mass amateurization. There is only an > informal group of collaborators working to solve a problem. Due to mass > amateurization, amateurs are able to collaborate without the interference > from the inherent obstacles associated with institutions. These obstacles > include the costs that an institution incurs while educating, training, > directing, coaching, advising, and organizing its members.

</comment><comment><USER19> When everybody can do the thing, the thing becomes less valuable...Case in point: We watch RV content on Youtube. There's a half dozen publishers with truly compelling content, and 100 more with polished video, trying to self- support their RV hobby through Youtube.

Likewise, the amount of music on Youtube is boundless, because everyone with a Mac has a sound studio, for free. makeing the amount of revenue each person is potentially worth...less.

This isn't good or bad, it just is. There's 10,000 people making Hundreds instead of 10 or 100 people making millions.

</comment><comment><USER20> This term is new to me, and I find it funny that basically the same phenomenon was called "crowd wisdom" ten years ago.

<comment><USER9> I thought crowd wisdom had more of an "exploratory value" to it in that the discovered obviously knew about it first but the discoverer was the one who got credited.</comment></comment>


Optimus Maximus: at long last, we bring one home to test - Engadget - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/22/optimus-maximus-at-long-last-we-bring-one-home-to-test/ <comment><USER2> Most important take away:

"Typing on it, well, sucks."</comment>


Ask HN: What is the source of Evil? - <AUTHOR> What are the main causes of all the evil (suffering) we see around?<p>Some ideas floating my head:<p>- we have not been smart enough to engineer a functional social system yet<p>- a few people are exceptionally cruel<p>- lots poorly educated || unthinking people doing dumb &  harmful things as a result of their worldview<p>- ... <comment><USER2> I'd say it's people being selfish and having a narrower scope of mind. Nobody admits to being evil. Whenever someone acts evil, they justify it with things like "I gotta eat," or "Everyone else does the same thing; it's normal."

Saddam Hussein was a family man. He abused his kids to give them a way to survive in the harsh world. They may have ruled with an iron fist, but it's arguable that it was effective - the region has gone chaotic since the iron fist was removed.

I don't think Saddam and family were simply "exceptionally cruel". A big part of it is nature, but there has to be an environment that rewards that kind of cruelty, or punishes kindness. If someone like Saddam was born into a rich American family, he'd probably be just another manipulative capitalist, but not a straight out mass murderer.

So a big part of it is also an environment that brings out the worst in people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Suffering isn't evil.

Wide spread misconception of fools, to think morality is a designation of personal appeal.

Evil is the corruption of innocence, the perversion of Truth and integrity. That which is good is not what makes you feel great about yourself, but the resilient thread that capacitates life and living systems. That which devastates and mutilates this ephemeral line is "Evil."

Human carelessness on the scale of mass extinction is evil.

When you say "we", you mean you and yours. You and yours ignore what has been excellent of humanity in the last thousands of years, focusing instead on what passes for your modernity. It is a lie to your self that you represent the forefront of human understanding.

The few who are exceptionally cruel devastate and hold in check those who would prevail in any acceptable sense of good. You are poorly educated, your thoughts are hobbled, ignorance is a substantial root of evil, yet human malevolence for out paces.

</comment><comment><USER4> Read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.

<comment><USER2> A synopsis would be nice.</comment></comment>


Dispatch Simplifies Teamwork with Evernote - <AUTHOR> http://blog.evernote.com/2012/12/10/trunk-spotlight-dispatch-simplifies-teamwork-with-evernote/

<comment><USER2> Java null pointer exception when trying to access Evernote account.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the heads up. We'll take a look.

EDIT: would you mind emailing me at jesse (at) dispatch.io with your account details so I can take a closer look?</comment></comment>


The app that was fixed by a crash - <AUTHOR> http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/archives/2011/09/15/The-app-that-was-fixed-by-a-crash/index.html <comment><USER2> Swallowing signals :)

Back in college, all of the computer science lab machines used shared NFS home directories. It wasn't unusual to see "NFS server not responding" on your console when the network was experiencing a hiccough.

There was a running joke about how crafty students would swallow SEGFAULT in their assignments and just endlessly print out "NFS server not responding" in a delay loop. "Crash? No, it's just the network. Look!"

<comment><USER3> [edit] I just realized that he was debugging a _third-party_ application. The narrative is a bit hard to follow.

I can't quite figure out why someone so smart was doing something so stupid.

The way to solve crashes is not to crash, unless you're erlang and functional and build the software to recover fully -- but that's not something remotely feasible to do for an application written in a standard imperative language.

Otherwise trying to continue on blindly results in a hang like the one he experienced _at best_ , and a data corruption at worst.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My takeaway from this is that next time I encounter a really challenging problem, I will close my eyes and imagine having a conversation with House, M.D.

That's actually a really good takeaway.

<comment><USER5> That wouldn't work for me I'd always wind up trying to debug Amyloidosis.

<comment><USER6> Or Lupus... It is always Lupus first and then everything else!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Man I'd be pissed if I wasted two days on getting my finger behind some idiot's stupid 'hey let's mask errors and hope they go away' tricks.

Also, while the story itself was sort of interesting, the format (with the chords and the House and whatnot) made it hard to follow - why not just describe the issue rather than making up schizophrenic discussions?

<comment><USER8> Well, there could have been some irascible bug in a previous version of the OS that the app kept running into, and this was the programmer's method for getting around that. Or, it could have been some really sneaky bug in the program itself, something that was beyond the programmer's ability to figure out, so they did this instead and followed the industry standard advice to "just ship it". Or, maybe it's part of some framework somewhere, because somebody thought it was a good idea.

It's a bit of a stretch to jump to "some idiot"; most of us are "some idiot" often enough.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but all of that still doesn't make it OK. I've shipped things with non- optimal solutions - and if somebody ever had to waste two days like this on those things, they'd have every right to be pissed. And yes some of these things does make people idiots - if it was beyond the programmer's ability to figure out, or if a 'framework' thought it was a good idea, that makes them idiots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It turns out that Microsoft isn't the only OS vendor that bends over backwards to keep track of compatibility with third-party applications.

<comment><USER9> Why do you say that here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because the author of the article works for Apple, and it sounds like they discovered a compatibility regression in a particular piece of third-party software and assigned him (or her) the task of figuring out exactly why it was broken.

Microsoft is famous for hacking up their OS in order to keep quirky or poorly- written third-party software running on newer releases. I don't know if Apple would go quite that far, but it sounds like they care enough to spend expensive developer time investigating these problems.

<comment><USER10> By way of example, the Mac OS X 10.4.9 update contained the following improvement (among others):

        * Improves the reliability of OpenGL-accelerated graphics
          in Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1525></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I lost my dad to Fox News: How a generation was captured by thrashing hysteria - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2014/02/27/i_lost_my_dad_to_fox_news_how_a_generation_was_captured_by_thrashing_hysteria/ <comment><USER2> Fox News is a reasonable focal point for this piece, but it's only one small contributing factor. The sad thing is that purveyors of fear and distrust are all over the internet. I lost my dad to some combination of Glen Beck, Fox News, and the "Gold, Guns, and God" crowd.

I caught glimpses of it via his emails from time to time. The first major one being links to radiation pills after Fukushima. Then the obsession with silver hit -- no one in my family knows how much or where he has buried his stashes in our two acre yard, but we know there are at least 4. Then the fear of drones hit, evidenced by my dad saying he was mowing the lawn as a "dog and pony show" for the eyes in the sky. Then the internet had to be disconnected because neighbors might be hacking him. Then the telephone was unplugged because it was bugged. Then he started making my mom write messages to him on paper in the house since the house was bugged. Then he had a restraining order put on him by a preacher who was so unnerved by his ranting. During this whole process he was convinced he was being led by the Holy Spirit and threatened my mom if she told anyone about it.

Things went down hill so fast that I'm still shaken by it. I had to work with my family to get him committed on Christmas Eve.

Maybe this is TMI, but hopefully some will see it as a warning. If you see someone you love going down that slippery slope of paranoia, don't hesitate to talk to them about it at first, and get advice from a trained psychologists if things get worse. Love the person, ignore the content of their ideas... maybe you can help prevent a breakdown.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if that is common knowledge (or how old your father is), but there is a specific kind of paranoia which is quite common after a specific age. In Germany it's called Altersparanoia, informally (which translates to _paranoia of the old_ ). What you describes doesn't sound like the radicalization caused by manipulating (and fascist?) propaganda, but more like that (maybe triggered or fortified by that thought environment, might be possible. We still don't know enough about stuff like that). Though the holy spirit should make it a different thing, a schizophrenic attack.

I'm sorry, good luck to you and your family.

<comment><USER4> Interesting that it is being attributed to the old and conservative. From 2002 to 2006 this kind of hysteria strongly affected the youth in the US beyond what I would consider reasonable measure. In 2004 I couldn't have a political discussion without someone talking about the inevitability of the draft, and in 2006 it was about how one party was obviously more corrupt than the other. From a foreign perspective, these views were obviously false, but were held by some with hysterical strength.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I highly recommend anyone in a similar situation read Jonathan Haidt's book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion."

Haidt is a psychologist who studies moral development, and while I don't believe everything he puts forth in the book to be gospel, he makes many good points about how people come to moral conclusions (which may not be logical conclusions, but nonetheless are based on what the person uses their senses to believe is true).

You can hear a summary of Haidt's theory or moral matrices, as well as an example of how the theory has been employed to talk to people across the "political divide": [http://media.uoregon.edu/channel/2013/06/04/what-on- earth-is...](http://media.uoregon.edu/channel/2013/06/04/what-on-earth-is- happening-to-us-polarization-demonization-and-paralysis-in-american-politics/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I lost my brother to this also, but he's only 40 and it started much longer ago and with talk radio (Limbaugh, Hannity, etc). I'm in the process of losing my 72 year old mother to it too.

I remember as a family we listened to Bob Grant and he seems tame by comparison to the hosts of today. What a slippery slope... Thankfully, I saved myself from this sort of thinking, but it's sad to not really be able to talk to my family.

</comment><comment><USER7> I lost my dad to the weather channel.

<comment><USER8> Too right. The next person to refer to a winter storm by name in my presence is likely to be uninvited from all future family gatherings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the perspective of the rest of the world, your Democrats and your Republicans seem so similar that it is bizarre these two had enough differences to argue over.

</comment><comment><USER10> Might this just be an example of someone who is getting old and cranky?

As you get older things start to change and it's harder to move with the times and the world doesn't seem to make so much sense; so it's comforting to consume media that tells you that it isn't your fault but the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER11> Addiction really is the operating word here. It's what keeps you in front of the TV in the same way it keeps people in front of slot machines. The worst part is the thesis of conservative media; that while you do everything right, some nebulous liberal agenda is taking away everything that you hold dear, and are entitled to as a working person (ignoring all information regarding demographics and welfare recipients). Fox News makes good money off of convincing people who feel they are victims of the world at large that they are in fact autonomous conservatives/libertarians.

<comment><USER12> "The worst part is the thesis of [...] media; that while you do everything right, some nebulous [...] agenda is taking away everything that you hold dear, and are entitled to as a working person"

That's not particular to conservative media; it's the same tactic used to convince whole swaths of the population that the rich, the white, sexists, racists, jingoists, big corporations, government, etc. are keeping you down.

Leveling it at only one side of a debate is falling into the trap polemicists set up. They _all_ do this, from every angle and via all means possible. It's just propaganda, and one insidious aspect of it is that they convince people only the other side engages in it.

<comment><USER11> True, but Fox News is the best at it, so they get the flak. I'll give the other channels for convincing people Obama was going to change things, but those people already mostly wanted change (especially after the financial crisis). Fox News did more than that. They convinced people who had been Republicans for 30 years that they have been libertarians fo 30 years. That's just really scary.

<comment><USER8> Meanwhile, people who have been actually libertarian for 30 years have to find another word to use for themselves. Again.

If you want to be truly libertarian, guys, you also have to embrace open borders, support non-interventionist foreign policy, and desire that drug prohibitions cease. Defending gun rights and complaining about taxes and welfare is just a tiny part of the package. You can still oppose state- sanctioned gay marriage if you want, but only to the extent that you oppose government involvement in _any_ kind of marriage.

As I am a long-time libertard, the people who talk about freedom after watching Fox News make me laugh. They fill their heads with mass-media talking points all day, meet with like-minded people to create an echo chamber for the ideas they were force-fed, then worry about having adequate self- determination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From my perspective, the faulty programming being pumped into the older white guys (my dad included) is not the content of the message, but the methods of how to manipulate ideas to transform them into other ideas, and transform those into actions.

For example, in my dad it started out around age 67 as the "bird people", the "green weenies", or the "save the whales" people. How they were ruining everything, stopping the corporations (of which he has no part in), stopping some business or something, and how it was such a travesty that someone could be so bold as to place the convenience of humans over the lives of critters we eat for lunch and dinner every day.

So far so good, but the disturbing part I found was in how he responds to a rebuttal or a devils advocate. Even if I were to go out of my way and say several times: "I am not opposing your conclusion that your conclusion is absolutely right, I am simply offering the opposing view as a way to zoom in on the issue". Even if I ought right tell him that he can't get angry when I tell him that I'm about to disagree with him for purpose of having a debate. It's like those words don't have any meaning anymore. The opposition to his view causes anger like pushing down on a lever causes the other end to go up. He was not always like this.

The faulty programmed response is one where the fox viewer should immediately sabotage, attack and oppose anyone taking up the alternate view. If I offer up an argument that tries to track in toward when animal protection is bad, and when it is good, immediately the anger kicks in. How can you be in bed with _Them_? How have you given up your soul to the enemies? It's THEM vs US and we have to protect what little we have. He's set in his ways, he's found the answer to everything in life, and the only thing left undone in the universe is to conform the universe to those structures.

I would bring in hypotheticals, like what if mankind grows to 200 billion people, should we focus more on stopping corporations? It doesn't matter, the argument is not one that sparks discussion, it's one that reveals the position of the enemy. Things may be offered up to resist the opposing view. But I'm not opposing, I'm trying to clarify.

I think its the Anterior cingulate gyrus that is responsible for causing pain when you hold two contradictory ideas in mind at once. As we age, this ability to juggle opposing views is reduced to nothing. And brains become like hashmaps, all we can do is map our universe onto predefined outputs. It's a descent from there down to other serious psychological and neurological problems, and when the damage spreads to necessary system functions, the person dies.

<comment><USER8> I love playing Devil's Advocate. Perhaps I have been participating on the Internet for too long, but I tend to think that anyone who cannot maintain composure in the face of dissent needs to be trolled hard and often.

A lot of the rhetorical arsenal that works well in person, like the array of ad hominem attacks used to emotionally undermine the opponent's credibility in the eyes of a specific audience, just don't fly when all that you know about the guy behind the ideas is maybe his IP address and whatever else he chooses to tell you about himself, such as the shape of his cutie mark, the number of medals of honor he has been awarded, or the number of blood rubies in his eyepatch.

Appeals to authority come crashing to a halt with a flippant [citation needed]. Bottled talking points can be countered with the bottled rebuttals. Physical bullying is, of course, a practical impossibility. It's like being on the Internet forces you to actually have a cogent argument and defend it instead of relying on all the rhetorical crutches.

<comment><USER13> Trolling someone who suffers great pain when holding two opposing positions in mind, and blames the pain on the person bringing the opposing position is counter productive.

It feels like trying to paint a 3d rotating gif onto a canvas with a large brush. You may be able to paint one frame fairly well, but it will not rotate. The spirit of the gif cannot be hosted on this canvas. You can host subsets of it, but not the entire spirit of the duality of ideas.

The "dance around the issues like a butterfly" is not something you teach. And trying to teach it, you just make the other person angry or depressed they can't do what you do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why was Fox News so able to induce such hysteria in these people, though? (Admittedly, that's less comfortable to think about than just complaining about what Fox does.)

<comment><USER15> There's a human 'set point' for fear. If there aren't enough real things of which to be afraid, the mind will latch onto the next-most-credible things, even if relatively farfetched.

With current long lives, lower crime, domestic peace, reasonable prosperity, and social insurance, there's a lot less to genuinely fear, in the US, than ever before. Without the challenges and stresses of full-time, market work, the retired are especially lacking in 'common project' or 'tribal team' fears (as opposed to say personal-health or relationship fears).

Politics, among other industries, competes to answer this craving for objects- of-fear. The cable-news/permanent-political-campaign/crusading-government- busybodies nexus is an extremely efficient, low-cost, high-emotional-salience provider. Small staffs, recurring themes, and grandiose good-vs-evil narratives can be constantly redeployed, as a neverending modern fairy-tale with the added sheens of 'reality' and 'import'.

Compare also: the hygiene hypothesis, for how an immune system unchallenged by real threats may tend towards misguided allergic or autoimmune overreactions.

<comment><USER16> I would just add that being overly afraid of Fox News, the Tea Party, and/or the Koch brothers is part of the exact same phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I lost my Mom to Fox News for a while but after talking with her, she has come back. I didn't actually expect her to return but it is so easy to point out the holes in the Fox News arguments. I'm atheist but I know the bible well enough to use it to refute any argument she has heard on Fox. The _wonderful_ thing about the bible is that you can quote it to defend or defeat just about any point of view.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think this article is writing about symptoms, not underlying causes. The vast majority of people do not fall prey to sensationalist media.

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't tell if the title is ironic or just overly dramatic.

</comment><comment><USER20> I find the father _and_ the writer to be insufferable. The father for, as portrayed, his clutching ignorance, the writer for being a born-again snob.

<comment><USER21> What's important is you found a way to be superior to both of them [1]

[1] [https://xkcd.com/774/](https://xkcd.com/774/)

<comment><USER22> And you (and I, in turn) to be superior to him.

<comment><USER23> It's only good for one conversation. Read the hover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Some of us are terrified of an ever-more invasive government, welfare progams that only ever seem to be welfare for corporations, and the destruction of the important american myth of hard work == success. Some of us keep listening to lies and dreams from an increasingly despotic asshole while american prosperity drifts away. You've lost yourself in fantasyland, not the other way around.

<comment><USER8> And some are also terrified of increasingly consolidated broadcasters that choose to have an obvious political bias.

Fox News is part of the problem, as part of News Corp. As is ABC/ESPN/Disney/Touchstone/Pixar, and CBS/Viacom/Columbia/Tristar/Paramount, and NBC/Comcast/USA/Universal, and Time Warner/CNN/HBO/AOL/Castle Rock/New Line, and Clear Channel/Bain. And those same companies own newspapers, magazines, and book publishers, too.

On top of that, investigative journalism has been in a death spiral ever since CNN debuted and inaugurated the 24 hour news-entertainment cycle. You're more likely to find something interesting in niche blogs and foreign media than on television.</comment></comment>


Programmers Don't know how to Test - <AUTHOR> https://ideqa.blogspot.com/2016/10/programmers-dont-know-anything-about.html <comment><USER2> > If you ask developers about equivalence class or boundary testing, I bet you > you half of the programmers have absolutely no clue what those are and the > half that have heard of it cannot use it to save their lives.

On the other hand, if I asked a random tester about AST or vector clock, he wouldn't google his way out of a paper bag. Why would one expect people to understand something from only barely related field?

<comment><USER3> > _Why would one expect people to understand something from only barely > related field?_

Because a lot of mediocre programmers think it's fine to badmouth the testing profession yet are unable to produce high quality and well tested code by themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is it always the bad programmers that badmouth testing and the good programmers actually praise their testers?</comment>


What a one line change did to the Chrome sandbox - <AUTHOR> https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2020/04/you-wont-believe-what-this-one-line.html <comment><USER2> > The Chromium sandbox on Windows has stood the test of time. It's considered > one of the better sandboxing mechanisms deployed at scale without requiring > elevated privileges to function.

For anyone who is interested in the history, this type of Restricted Token & Job Object sandbox was, as far as I know, first used in MOICE (Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment). This was created by Microsoft's Office Trustworthy Computing group to isolate the conversion of `.doc` to `.docx`. David LeBlanc blogged about it in 2007, with his "Practical Windows Sandboxing" series[0][1][2]. Of course a third party may have independently discovered the same techniques but kept it to themselves.

The state of the art has improved since then but the general principles are the same.

[0]: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/archive/blogs/david_leblanc...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/archive/blogs/david_leblanc/practical-windows-sandboxing-part-1)

[1]: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/archive/blogs/david_leblanc...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/archive/blogs/david_leblanc/practical-windows-sandboxing-part-2)

[2]: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/archive/blogs/david_leblanc...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/archive/blogs/david_leblanc/practical-windows-sandboxing-part-3)

<comment><USER3> I believe some chromium sandbox logic came from GreenBorder ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GreenBorder](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GreenBorder)) but I don't know the timeline of that or how GreenBorder sandboxing was implemented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish so much there were good cross-operating system sandboxing techniques. So mamy problems in things like video decoders (which are hard to write fast and safe) would be cured if I could easily pop them in a box with an input and output stream.

This type of stuff is of course in browsers, and they are doing great work in this area, it is just a shame it is hard for the rest of us to use.

<comment><USER5> Webassembly looks like an upcoming standard for sandboxing efficient code on the server side as well. As it's well supported and it doesn't have a big startup runtime cost, it looks like it has a real chance of success right now (after many failed ones in the last 25 years).

<comment><USER6> Webassembly has a substantial performance hit for code containing hand-written vector loops using specialized instructions.

Things like video encoders and decoders are _much_ slower in webassembly.

<comment><USER5> SIMD support is being worked on as far as I know, and this is a problem where there is room for a lot of improvement in the future. Generally interfacing between programming languages and systems efficiently, without too much data conversion/memory management is a harder problem than adding more low level programming support.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it looks like WASM SIMD has already shipped in V8. There are some impressive demos on this page: [https://v8.dev/features/simd](https://v8.dev/features/simd)

<comment><USER6> It's kinda lame that none of those demos even run at 60fps, let alone 120fps on mobile for a real smooth experience, with lots of performance headroom for more than a single feature at once...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one reason I much prefer Linux's seccomp over Microsoft's sandbox. Microsoft's depends on everything having just the right access control so you can't escape. Linux's blocks the dangerous primitives entirely.

A seccomp-like mechanism on top of restricted tokens could be quite strong. The GPU process could be denied the ability to query or modify processes entirely. Similarly, it could be denied the ability to call CreateProcessAsUser at all.

<comment><USER9> I think an analogy is trying to get a complicated IAM permissions setup just right, where you have some resource policies with NotPrincipal, some usage policies with NotResource/NotAction, etc. It becomes really hard to think about and you often rely on assumptions about the shape/structure of IAM principals.

Or, you can slap a Service Control Policy on the whole account and then boom, nobody can do Whichever Bad Thing that you're worried about Today.

The former approach requires me to reload the entire graph of dependencies and assumptions into my head whenever I want to make a change or ask my mental model of it a question. The latter approach allows nearly-reflexive answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is very closely related to how seL4 [0] allows delegating (subsets of) a processes own capabilities. The difference would be that this Windows kernel code isn't formally verified to uphold it's security model to a level where send-only capabilities are proven data-diodes (i.e., the sel4_Send() syscall blocks (potentially indefinitely), and it's sel4_NBSend() silently drops the message if the receiver isn't already waiting) a success/failure indication), whereas seL4 comes with extensive proofs.

</comment><comment><USER11> Excuse my ignorance but does this makes Chrome the safest browser on Windows? Or do all Chromium-based browsers benefit from this sandboxed environment and google's security measures?

Thx

<comment><USER12> Edge would both have all the security work of Chrome (as it's a fairly close fork) but all of the security improvements that Google refuses to add, such as blocking third party tracking scripts and cookies. The latter part is where you're most likely to find malware, so a browser that refuses to act on it is not a secure browser. Firefox, Safari, Edge, and basically everyone but Chrome have implemented significant blocking on third party scripting that Google refuses to build into their browser.

Bear in mind, browser security comes from many levels. A sandbox escape first requires that someone has gotten malicious code to execute in your browser. And the first line of defense is blocking a lot of extraneous and harmful code from running in the first place.

<comment><USER13> Can you talk abou wha kind of malware comes from JS scripts?

<comment><USER14> here is a detailed look at one particular example:

[https://securelist.com/chrome-0-day-exploit- cve-2019-13720-u...](https://securelist.com/chrome-0-day-exploit- cve-2019-13720-used-in-operation-wizardopium/94866/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Using the cloned UI Access token to automate the Run dialog at the end of the exploit chain is hilarious.

I really enjoyed reading this - thank you.

</comment><comment><USER16> Could someone tell me in Simple terms please?

<comment><USER17> My understanding:

There are these security token objects that are used to keep track of what a process can and can't do. (Think of them as collections of capabilities.)

The design of the system is that you can create a less powerful child copy of your security token (dropping capabilities), and assign this token to a child process when you create that child. A process is free to change its security token to be any child of its current token or any sibling of its current token (plus a few other restrictions).

Someone screwed up a change to the Windows 10 kernel such that when the browser creates a restricted child of its token, the less powerful token is actually marked as a sibling of the browser's token, which is itself a sibling of many other tokens in the system. This means that the token the browser uses to create its child sandbox process has many unrestricted sibling tokens.

The rest of the exploit involves figuring out how to get a handle to a security tokens that a few other processes make publicly available (sounds very strange to me) and which aren't as restrictive as the security token used to create the sandbox process.

If the sandbox's token were (correctly) a child of the main browser process's token, then these other tokens found wouldn't be siblings of the sandbox's token, and the sandbox process couldn't switch to using these security tokens. However, because of the screwed up family tree of these tokens, the sandbox is free to switch to these other security tokens.

<comment><USER18> This was very clearly written, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've briefly professionally interacted with James and he's the real deal. Super smart.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good article but James just sounds salty throughout the post

<comment><USER20> You can bet I'm salty. I do Windows research and I am a owner of the Chromium Windows sandbox code so I have a vested interest in this.

The problem with dealing with Windows and by extension Microsoft is there's no way of inspecting what they've changed from version to version other than by RE or having test cases. However, we try and avoid writing unit tests for behaviors Microsoft's responsible for, but of course in many cases MS don't have those tests either so these things fall through the cracks.

<comment><USER21> > However, we try and avoid writing unit tests for behaviors Microsoft's > responsible for,...

When you say "unit tests", this makes sense. But wouldn't it be wise to have _integration_ tests in place that would guard against such regressions, either in your code or Microsoft's?

<comment><USER20> In Chromium we do have integration tests for the sandbox functionality as a whole and unit testing but it doesn't cover things like this as we're testing Chromium's ability to sandbox not whether the OS's primitives have broken. We might notice if all of a sudden our sandbox stopped working, but for something which only exhibits a problem when it's being actively circumvented we won't.

I can't speak to what MS do testing wise, considering the age of some of this code it seems likely there's no test for this specific functionality otherwise you'd assume it would have been noticed. Testing for security defects is inherently difficult anyway, especially logical flaws where you don't get a nice crash. This case is different but in general you usually need some specific setup process to get the system into a vulnerable state which is hard to achieve without knowing ahead of time the bug you were trying to detect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone else feel like if Windows was still a classic OS instead of "as a service" then these types of changes would have a chance to get more scrutiny during development and hopefully get caught?

<comment><USER23> Are you saying that these sort of changes were never part of a patch or service-pack before Win10?

<comment><USER22> Do you think it's sensible for me to make such a claim?

<comment><USER23> No, but that's what it sounded like you were doing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: LetterSnap OCR, iOS App Powered by Google Cloud Vision - <AUTHOR> http://lettersnap.com <comment><AUTHOR> With LetterSnap, take pictures of text and extract the actual text. The app is powered by Google Cloud Vision, which lets it tackle weird fonts, Chinese + Japanese, colored backgrounds, text at an angle, most anything you can throw at it. I also wrote the simplest, fastest workflow I could conceptualise -- one or two taps to get the text, that's it!</comment>


Mind-Body Problems: Science, Subjectivity and Who We Really Are [online book] - <AUTHOR> https://mindbodyproblems.com/ <comment><USER2> Not accessible, is there an archive?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, as Google cache [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://mindbodyproblems.com/)

The site was more interactive, which doesn't work in cached version, and also there is a big picture in the top in each chapter, which is not loading.</comment></comment>


Performance Culture - <AUTHOR> http://joeduffyblog.com/2016/04/10/performance-culture/ <comment><USER3> This seems generic. Here are a few phrases from the article. For X, substitute "security", "quality", "user satisfaction", or "revenue".

\- The cultural transformation must start from the top

\- X often regresses and team members either don't know, don't care, or find out too late to act.

\- Blame is one of the most common responses to X problems

\- Performance tests swing wildly, cannot be trusted, and are generally ignored by most of the team.

\- X is something one, or a few, individuals are meant to keep an eye on, instead of the whole team.

\- X issues in production are common, and require ugly scrambles to address (and/or cannot be reproduced).

Unexpected performance problems typically are not that hard a problem to deal with once you can measure and find the bottlenecks. This tends to be local, rather than global. The other kind of performance problem is scaling - <USER2> is up, things are slow, and the architecture needs to be scaled. That can be hard.

</comment><comment><USER4> As someone who has worked on HFT systems for a decade, if there is one piece of advice I can give on the matter, it is this: test with production-like data. Having processes, 'performance-culture' and unit-wise perf testing is all good and fine, but unless you test your features with production-like loads, you can never be sure.

I've seen features that were regression/unit tested and code-reviewed to death fail in production because all that testing was done at < 10 transactions/sec with a dataset of about 100, when typical production values were in the neighborhood of 1000/tx/sec with a dataset of perhaps 10,000.

At the very beginning of the design process, someone needs to ask, "How frequently will this feature get invoked? What kind of latency can the user tolerate?"

<comment><USER5> But what if testing with production-like data takes 1000x the time of testing with faked-test-data?

<comment><USER4> Then one makes the judgement call:

        cost of testing w/ production-like data > cost of potential production issues

and decide whether it's prudent to omit or scale down the tests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We've started to do this at our company, and it has really improved the morale. We've also been giving talks at local meetups about our findings and it had created a bit of a buzz in the community which reflects positively back on the company.

I'm starting to tell people "go beyond TDD with PTSD (performance testing stipulated development)". It will give your machine trauma, but it helps gamify development in an area that is otherwise dry and boring. Even worse, our company, GUN, does JavaScript development (we're an Open Source Firebase), and JS engines are sadly slow, but it is critical to our engineering team. In the process, I've collected a humorous sample of some very basic JS operations that you can run yourself, starting with nothing all the way up to loops and closures - [http://db.marknadal.com/ptsd/ptsd.html](http://db.marknadal.com/ptsd/ptsd.html) . Hope you enjoy it and don't get too depressed.

<comment><USER7> Naming your project after an illness is a strange choice. What was the thinking behind that?

Particularly as you mention trying to create positive buzz for your team.

<comment><USER8> I think it's pretty humorous actually.

<comment><USER9> You probably don't have PTSD then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >"I was thinking of hacking the networking stack this weekend to use it – care to join in?"

I love a weekend hack as much as anyone, but I'm assuming this is unpaid and uncompensated... for FOSS that might be fine but for a multi-million dollar project? No way.

<comment><USER11> Then you'll just be labeled as "not passionate enough." BTW, even if you worked all weekend, you're still expected to stick around at work late on Thursday for some whiskey tasting or some other bullshit, because if not, you're not a team player or not a good cultural fit :/

<comment><USER9> Is this a real problem you're seeing today? There are lots of jobs out there. Go find one with a good manager.

<comment><USER11> This has been a problem in all four jobs I've had, and almost all jobs for which I've ever interviewed (which has been a lot lately).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The reason 90% of everything is crap is that these things like performance and quality are almost directly opposed to business interests/needs. That seems unlikely to change. And it is a good reason to bet on free and open source software.

Manager B would most likely be politicked out of his/her job.

<comment><USER11> Performance and quality are rarely at odds with legitimate business interests or needs. In fact, if you sleight performance or quality it is exactly equal to sleighting future business needs or interests.

The trouble is when _illegitimate_ (generally political) business concerns are allowed to be trumpeted as more important than legitimate business concerns, or when illegitimate views about how to discount the future value of quality are permitted to dominate the comparison with extreme short-term opportunities.

<comment><USER13> Performance and quality always take time and money. It's pretty hard to convince management to actively invest in something that doesn't add features to the sales pitch. The argument that long term it makes it easier to build more features somehow doesn't seem to work.

<comment><USER14> If you're doing anything on the web, Performance should be an easy sell to the business/management. There's a ton of solid data showing faster websites = more conversions which = more revenue. Then factor in hardware and licensing cost reductions by handling more capacity on less infrastructure, and you have another clear financial win. Honestly performance work is one of the easiest places to show a clear ROI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai When developing on Windows, one thing that would make it easier to have the kind of tests mentioned in this article, is to make it easier to access CPU performance counters.

I tried it a little while ago and I had to put Windows into test mode or something like that, and write lots of code On linux it seems to be much easier (for example just run 'perf').

Edit: Joe - If you read this, please ask the Microsoft kernel team to expose the CPU hardware performance counters to userspace. Thanks!

<comment><USER15> Curious: Is this not what is exposed by the ETW CPU counters?

<comment> Ono-Sendai Possibly. I want easy access though, through some nice C/C++ API. Maybe intrinsics exposed by the compiler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Should have written more about tools

</comment><comment><USER17> Premature optimisation counterculture.

Also, when is M# / Midori going to ship?

<comment><USER18> Midori isn't going to ship: [http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging- about-midori/](http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/).

<comment><USER19> Although parts of it have contributed to the .NET AOT native compilers in Windows Phone 8.x (MDIL) and the .NET CoreCLR.

Also some of the M# features are coming in C# 7 and later versions.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How is IBM after it called its employees to their regional offices? - <AUTHOR> I wonder what the consequences really are for now. If people are more or less happy, and how they coped integrating the 40% task-force into their buildings. <comment><USER2> It's really a layoff in disguise. Its designed to get employees to voluntarily quit.</comment>


Graph Algorithms with MapReduce (presentation) - <AUTHOR> http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~jimmylin/cloud-2008-Fall/Session5.ppt

<comment><USER2> Wow, Google Docs now has 'Google Groups Disease'. If you're _not logged into Google_ , you can view this document. But if you _are logged in_ , they require you to login _again_ to view.

Direct link to the presentation: [http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~jimmylin/cloud-2008-Fall/Session5...](http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~jimmylin/cloud-2008-Fall/Session5.ppt)

Maybe Slideshare is better?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Weird - it worked fine for me and I was logged in.</comment></comment>