Viral Video About Body Scanners - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tsa.gov/2012/03/viral-video-about-body-scanners.html <comment><USER2> There is something chillingly unconvincing about their attempts at informality.

Big Brother jokey is a lot more frightening than Big Brother bureaucratic or Big Brother bombastic. Too bad this insight wasn't available to Orwell or he could have made _1984_ even scarier.

<comment><USER3> The spelling and grammatical errors tell you within 5 seconds that this person is not very intelligent.

      For obvious security reasons, we can't discuss our
      technology's detection capability in detail, however TSA
      conducts extensive testing of all screening technologies
      in the laboratory and at airports prior to rolling them
      out to the entire field.

This is a run-on sentence.

      Imaging technology has been extremely effective in the
      field and has found things artfully concealed on
      passengers as large as a gun or nonmetallic weapons, on
      down to a tiny pill or tiny baggies of drugs.

"on down" is faulty parallelism.

      It's one of the best tools available to detect metallic
      and non-metallic items, such as… you know… things that go
      BOOM.

Two ellipses in one sentence? Leave aside the "BOOM".

      With all that said, it is one layer of our 20 layers of
      security (Behavior Detection, Explosives Detection
      Canines, Federal Air Marshals, , etc.)

Extra comma and the capitalization feels bizarre.

      and is not a machine that has all the tools we need in one
      handy device. We've never claimed it's the end all be all.

The phrase is "the be all and end all" or "the be-all and end-all". One can go on, but almost every sentence here displays this person's low level of intelligence. Leaving aside the content, it's just poorly written.

The punchline is that the TSA's budget is double that of Facebook's $3.7 billion in revenue. $8.1 billion in tax dollars for a gang of complete morons.

<comment><USER4> Thinking that you can judge someone's intelligence by their spelling and grammar is so incredibly wrong. And I don't mean wrong in a moral "don't be that guy" way (though that too), I mean wrong as in technically inaccurate.

<comment><USER3> No.

Speaking intuitively, if you can't judge someone's intelligence by their writing ability, what possible measure could you use? Grammatical deficiencies are symptoms of conceptual deficiencies.

Speaking technically, vocabulary tests are some of the most highly g-loaded batteries around:

      Different tests in a test battery may correlate with (or
      "load onto") the g factor of the battery to different
      degrees. These correlations are known as g loadings. An
      individual test taker's g factor score can be estimated
      using the loadings. Full-scale IQ scores from a test
      battery will usually be highly correlated with g factor
      scores. For example, the correlations between g factor
      scores and full-scale IQ scores from Wechsler's tests
      have been found to be greater than .95. The g loadings of
      mental tests are always positive and range from slightly
      greater than zero to slightly less than unity. Raven's
      Progressive Matrices is among the tests with the highest
      g loadings, around .80. Tests of vocabulary and general
      information are also typically found to have high g
      loadings.[10]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_%28psychometrics%29

It's unclear to me what your underlying premises are. We will likely go in circles about whether you believe intelligence can be measured, whether it is meaningful, whether g is a measure of intelligence, whether it differs between individuals and groups, and so on. So let's agree to disagree.

Yet whatever your definition of intelligence, I believe it is hard to deny that the TSA is run by morons.

<comment><USER5> Grammatical deficiencies _can_ be symptoms of conceptual deficiencies. They can also be symptomatic of getting overly excited, or of discussing very conceptually or emotionally difficult topics. They can be symptomatic of lying. They can also signify which social group you belong to, bro.

To give a more specific critique: vocabulary tests are done in a controlled environment, and hence can not be used to judge the correlation of vocabulary with IQ (or g, etc) in any other environment (unless of course someone has studied this problem and published results).

For example, many otherwise intelligent people exhibit vocabulary deficits, working memory deficits, and many other correlates with stupidity when talking to attractive members of the opposite gender. This doesn't mean that they have a low IQ or g-factor.

In this case, since this was a blog post written at what must have been a very difficult time in this poor TSA blogger's career, I don't think we can really say that their vocabulary is highly indicative of intelligence or g-factor.

That said, I do agree that the TSA is run by morons :p

<comment><USER6> Your explanation would suggest that the writer's cognitive abilities (whatever they might be) don't carry over into chaotic or stressful situations (i.e., he falls apart under pressure).

I would submit that this in itself ought to disqualify him from an important position in an agency as putatively critical as the TSA. People working there, especially those in positions of responsibility, ought to be able to work effectively under pressure.

<comment><USER7> Why would a TSA blogger need to be able to work effectively under pressure?

<comment><USER6> I think the fact that we're all dissecting his work in order to criticize the Agency goes a long way to demonstrating that.

<comment><USER7> How? There's no pressure in the sense being discussed here. He has plenty of time to figure out what to write and how to write it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This has got to be one of the stupidest and (unintentionally) scary responses ever to a serious attempt to question security.

\- Ad-Hominem attacks on the person raising the questions

\- No direct refutatio of the specific points raised in the Video

\- Co-relation and causation confusion (we have found x hence we are effective against the things in the video)

\- Pathetic attempt at informal tone of voice

\- Appeal to Stats and big impressive numbers when none is justified

In short - Americans need to be really upset that their security is handled by these buffoons. -

<comment><USER9> the tone really got me.. it's like an alien infested corpse trying to mix with normal humans...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow. This blog post makes me WAY more afraid of the TSA than the original video did. I can't wrap my head around the language used. "Things that go BOOM" ???!?!?! Are you fucking kidding me? These are the people that are supposedly acting in the interests of our safety? Disgusted.

Whoever wrote or approved this post ought to be fired. Fast.

<comment><USER11> I hate the TSA as much as anyone, but this type of gallows humor is pretty common - in private, it's common for doctors to joke about dying patients, etc, because keeping things deathly serious all the time is emotionally impossible.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but that's the key - _in private_. There are jokes I use with my friends, that I would NEVER use in public situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If their security is as good as their blogging it's time to consider travelling by bus.

Also their "20 layers of security" chart[1] is an unintentionally hilarious masterpiece. Note the arrow they've drawn circumventing _every layer of security apart from passengers_. So really, we can't say they didn't warn us.

[1] <http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/layers/index.shtm>

<comment><USER14> When I saw the 20 layers chart, I thought it was a troll blog because the graphic looks like it has _planes crashing into towers_.

<comment><USER15> > _Each one of these layers alone is capable of stopping a terrorist attack._

Well, we were vetting crews before 911. How many attacks did that layer stop? The sentence needs a qualifier: "...through that vector."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't believe that this is the official TSA blog. I can understand trying to take steps to avoid the usual ridiculously dry press release style articles that governments and big businesses normally have, but.. this was just unprofessional.

You have "Blogger Bob" telling us to ignore the video "some guy" made and that everything's fine because this is just one of the way they protect you from "things that go BOOM".

Also, the blog never disputes the video. There is no text that tries to say that the video was faked or anything, or provides any indication that the video and the vulnerabilities contained therein aren't exactly as they appear.

Finally, just because I'm feeling particularly nitpicky tonight: they're using Blogger's favicon and are hosted on Google's servers (DNS resolves to ghs.l.GOOGLE.COM). Maybe it's just me, but that strikes me as a touch unprofessional as well.

</comment><comment><USER17> Guess how many of the people who work on the ground airside are scanned?

In any event the TSA is not taking enough credit here. Did you know their scanners have prevented meteorites? They have also prevented tiger attacks. Since installing them there has not been a single instance of meteorites hitting planes or tiger attacks on planes. I think the US government should borrow even more money so we can get them to also prevent giraffe attacks.

<comment><USER18> Also snakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 2 days ago, from a BusinessWeek article about the author of the blog post:

 _"I call it the corny dad approach. I'm basically the Bob Saget of blogging," the 41-year-old tells Bloomberg Businessweek. "This isn't really the most exciting subject, so I thought I should inject some personality into it." Three years removed from working the security lines himself—he used to train TSA officers at the Cincinnati airport—Blogger Bob has clearly gained some perspective on the experience._ [1]

Whether or not entertainment has a place in government blogging is an argument for another day, but I think we can all agree that under no circumstances should this type of blog post ever be allowed as an official government response.

[1] [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-05/why-cant- the...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-05/why-cant-the-tsa-be- as-cool-as-the-tsas-blogger-bob)

<comment><USER20> Surely he means "Danny Tanner," as Bob Saget is hardly a "corny dad." Not surprised at the mistake though.

<comment><USER21> For those that have not seen the _real_ Bob Saget: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HW4mPZmKPM>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Astonishing blog post.

 _Imaging technology has been extremely effective in the field and has found things artfully concealed on passengers as large as a gun or nonmetallic weapons, on down to a tiny pill or tiny baggies of drugs._

This reminded me of part of the recent TSA Fail post by a former FBI agent.

 _Civil libertarians on both sides of the aisle should be appalled at an unauthorized use to which TSA is putting their screening: Identifying petty criminals--using one search method to achieve a secret goal. This is strictly forbidden in other government branches. In the FBI, if I had a warrant to wiretap an individual on a terrorism matter and picked-up evidence of a non- terrorism-related crime, I could not, without FBI Headquarters and a judge's approval, use that as evidence in a criminal case. But TSA is using its screening devices to carve out a niche business. According to congress, TSA began to seek out petty criminals without congressional approval. TSA have arrested more than 1,000 people on drug charges and other non-airline security-related offenses to date._

<http://gmancasefile.blogspot.in/2012/01/tsa-fail.html>

</comment><comment><USER23> I've never felt more like I was living in a prequel to Idiocracy than I did while reading that.

<comment><USER24> One imagines the Idiocracy intro showing how TSA evoled into TGB (Things Go Boom).

<comment><USER25> TTGB (things that go boom) to be precise

FTFY :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm almost impressed by the linguistic gymnastics taken here to avoid saying outright that they got caught with their pants down.

The post concludes on an entirely unrelated point to the premise of the post

| _Anybody can opt out of the body scanner for a pat-down._

Sure, I'm carrying in a gun in my shirt pocket I'd like to get on the plane. Let me just request the patdown to make sure I get caught.

<comment><USER27> That sentence was there for the benefit of people with safety questions about the scanners. For more information on the medical uncertainties, follow the link labeled "completely safe" to the Archives of Internal Medicine article and look under "Related Article".

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It seems they don't watch German television shows: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrKvweNugnQ>

<comment><USER29> OK, this is the most shocking thing I've seen in a while...

I've never seen anything so awesomely refuted. Even if you don't speak German, watch it. Basically, they do a scan of the man, who claims to be carrying a swiss army knife, and only find a mobile and the microphone transmitter on the back that's inevitable since they're on TV.

However, the man is carrying thermite (three vials), an igniter for the thermite, a vial that can contain even more explosive and a normal igniter.

They claimed that in an airport situation he'd be wearing the jacket and that they'd also have done a side view. Which is funny because these scanners can penetrate clothing while showing skin - that's the whole point of them... and a side view wouldn't have helped much considering that he was carrying something in his mouth and near his lower back.

They take the stuff (which is made from materials available in any pharmacy for a 'few cent') outside that he carried in his lower back area and set it on fire, which melts through the pan.

One of the body-scanner people calls the whole thing 'limitedly funny'. Then he says that "I don't know if we're well advised if we say 'look how stupid the terrorists are' if they'd do it like a professor advises, 'then we could bring down a 747'".

The professor moves the pan a bit and the whole thing ignites a bit more. The whole screen turns white before the camera person decides to move back a little.

<comment><USER30> If anything, the video supports the use of the TSA's active screening technologies (backscatter and millimeter wave devices). The scanner being used is neither of these, it is an entirely passive device - see: [http://www.thruvision.com/Products/TS4_Sub_Pages/TS4_Product...](http://www.thruvision.com/Products/TS4_Sub_Pages/TS4_Product_Page.htm) for a brief explanation of their technology. While ThruVision's scanner is arguably safer, it is clearly deficient in detecting threats.

And it isn't being used by the TSA. In fact, ThruVision's website does not cite a single instance of their scanner being used anywhere in the world for passenger screening.

In other words, the video has NOTHING to do with current screening technology.

<comment><USER29> No scanner on that market can detect things that are within a person other than a metal detector, a swab followed by spectographic analysis or an X-ray machine.

The igniter in his mouth wasn't found, and it's not outside the realm of imagination that a more committed person, like a terrorist, would carry the other stuff not in the lower back area but somewhere somewhat different and harder to find.

How about we take it for granted that 99.999999% of people aren't terrorists and to consider a short interview with a passenger or a metal detector sweep or random swabs for spectographic analysis good enough?

<comment><USER30> I'd add allowing qualified passengers to carry handguns.

I won't defend the TSA or Big Sister at all, but just pointing out that they weren't using these.

I didn't watch the subtitled version, so I'm not clear on exactly was going on. But the images - which didn't look at all like the screen shots that I've seen online - were a tip-off that this didn't represent current equipment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As an Indian, i am always envious & jealous of how govt agencies & systems work so much better in the US than in India. So i was really shocked to see this blog post, after the said govt agency's credibility has been seriously damaged (by the viral video)

"... things that go BOOM"

Are you f __*ing kidding me ? Is that how a govt official is supposed to communicate ? Leave alone the content, but the tone of the post is very crass, insensitive & insulting.

Unfortunately, this is becoming increasingly common, even in some of the most liberal cities in the US & the world.. San Francisco bay area.

Check out <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2890052> & <http://bit.ly/bartisevil> on the high-handedness of BART PD (Bay Area Rapid Transit)

</comment><comment><USER31> The really funny thing is that this guy is probably making between $93,00 - $142,000 (paid by us). Look at this job listing for a TSA program analyst: <http://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/311287200>

...with tasks like "You will develop and approve solutions to current and anticipated problems"

I think Blogger Bob is writing some of these job descriptions, too.

Makes me sick.

Here are the benefits Blogger Bob gets: DHS offers competitive salaries and an attractive benefits package, including: health, dental, vision, life, and long-term care insurance; retirement plan; Thrift Savings Plan [similar to a 401(k)]; Flexible Spending Account; Employee Assistance Program; personal leave days; and paid federal holidays. Other benefits may include: flexible work schedules; telework; tuition reimbursement; transportation subsidies; uniform allowance; health and wellness programs; and fitness centers. DHS is committed to employee development and offers a variety of employee training and developmental opportunities. For more information, go to www.dhs.gov/careers and select "benefits."

</comment><comment><USER32> "tiny pill or tiny baggies of drugs" go BOOM?? I can't help but notice the glossing over of the mission creep.

[quote from article] ... Imaging technology has been extremely effective in the field and has found things artfully concealed on passengers as large as a gun or nonmetallic weapons, on down to a tiny pill or tiny baggies of drugs. It's one of the best tools available to detect metallic and non-metallic items, such as… you know… things that go BOOM.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Body scanners don't work, but we do other stuff too." Jesus.

<comment><USER34> This is a succinct, hilarious and accurate summation. I salute you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Shorter TSA: We're not going to deny that this guy can bring whatever he wants through, but having screened 600m passengers in the last year, we did once find a gun and some drugs. So you're safe! And if you don't think a dose of radiation is a good trade for pretend security, you can always wait another 15 minutes for a grumpy person to grope you.

</comment><comment><USER36> If this weren't on a .gov site I'd think this was satire. As it is, it's just scary and sad.

<comment><USER37> I had the same reaction.

My eyes kept twitching from "things that go BOOM" to the URL, to the conceivably-fake logo, back to "things that go BOOM", back to the URL, back to the logo, etc. It took me a good six to seven seconds before reality sunk in.

I'm _really_ hoping that this is simply an example of an organization that neither takes its blog seriously nor provides much oversite over its content. If anyone at the TSA read this post and signed off on it—wow.

The author of this post made _no_ attempt to dispute the video, instead focusing on the fact that their are _other_ security measures. Oh, and the author inexplicably felt it would be important mentioned that you can opt-out of the scanners if you want. What did I just read?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Beyond disturbing. Equivalent of, "u mad?" Rebuttal with no refutation. Embarrassing and useless, but just enough to placate the placid and ignorant.

</comment><comment><USER39> Blogger Bob is just another part of the TSA's layered approach to bullshitology. I'm glad it's transparent to all, and thank you again for covering this issue.

<comment><USER40> You, sir, are a hero!

(tsaoutourpants is Jonathan Corbett)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "around the interwebs" "baggies of drugs" "things that go BOOM"

Seems legit.

<comment><USER41> Agreed. The TSA Out of Our Pants guy goes to the trouble of giving specific examples in a well-articulated video and they respond with some catchy, hip- sounding interwebs keywordz... I feel safer already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The flippant behavior exhibited makes me both alarmed and angry.

Here's an interview with Blogger Bob that Google returned: <http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20063825-281.html>

Apparently, being snarky on the government dime pays quite well. Dude appears to be rocking a Rolex.

</comment><comment><USER43> Their "20 layers of security" reminds me of your usual "7 proxies" and "over 9000": meaningless over-the-top numbers with no relationship with reality.

</comment><comment><USER44> " down to a tiny pill or tiny baggies of drugs. "

Is this for real? When did the TSA start doing drug searches? Can they effect arrests?

I'll be honest - I'm a little shocked that a supposedly "official" blogging site is writing like a half-tweaked 13 year old and is bragging about doing drug searches at a supposed check for weapons.

It's also pretty irresponsible to make claims about the scanning system like, " It is completely safe " - I suspect that "Blogger Bob Burns" neither has the background, nor the authority to make such claims (let alone the knowledge). About all he(?) should be doing is suggesting which certifying authority has provided a clean-bill-of-health on their scanners.

All in all the most disturbing thing I've read in a couple weeks.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is a non-serious response. I think I'm going to talk to my congressperson about this.

</comment><comment><USER46> Number of terrorist attacks detected and thwarted by TSA measures since 2001: Zero

Number of terrorist attacks attempted since 2001 over US airspace: MORE THAN ZERO

</comment><comment><USER47> Well, Bob (original author) -- as if the situation couldn't be more magnified, your post has simply added to the impression that the TSA is mostly public hand-waving in the place of real security.

"Crude" attempt? "you know… things that go BOOM"? I sincerely hope you take anyone's claim seriously, public or otherwise, that they can circumvent any security measure put in place by the TSA. The tone of your blog post smacks of disregard; if you thought it would invoke confidence on the part of the reader, you thought wrong.

The biggest defense put forth: well, we have other security detection methods so, hah!

Don't you get that the point about the body scanners is that they can be beaten? That they're superfluous to the security regimen? That if you can't defend them directly, they serve no real purpose? That's the point of the video, and it's completely lost on you (and obviously others for whom you speak.)

As is the impression among so many travelers, the TSA confuses "feeling safe" with "being safe" and it appears your post simply reinforces that view.

Visions of the SNL parody skit from years ago come to mind.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is _even worse_ than I thought the scanners were. THIS is what the operator sees? <http://www.tsa.gov/approach/tech/ait/privacy.shtm>

That means that it's a complete black-box and if you just beat the scanner's algorithms, you beat the scanner operators too.

What a complete and utter joke.

</comment><comment><USER49> The blog article is extremely funny.

I keep thinking, "If this were a post by Microsoft about a security vulnerability report, I'd be in business doing Linux migrations for the rest of my life."

</comment><comment><USER50> ... and nowhere do they deny that the method presented actually works.

</comment><comment><USER51> "We're actually safe, I'm not going to give any evidence of this, just trust me".

Seems fair.

</comment><comment><USER52> OK, I will play the devil's advocate.

Yes, he does not deny or dispute whether the method works as claimed.

The otherwise hip language is not helping nor does it sound sincere, I agree.

But, if we want to stay objective:

1) He describes the demonstration in the video as a "crude attempt", which is in certain ways true. Neither is the attempt too sophisticated, nor the documentation of it, or should I say especially the documentation. The video itself is lacking in scientific argumentation, and makes up for the lack thereof with unnecessary political rhetoric that I don't need to be fed to see the simple "flaw" he claims to have discovered - more about that now...

2) The person in the video may or may not be sincere about his claims, but he definitely is not the first person to point out this "flaw". It was known publicly for a very long time, and it is reasonable to assume people who developed and approved the system were well aware of it.

3) Everyone is pointing out that there is no attempt at a "scientific" refutation in the blog post. Well, he is right in stating that their claim never was that they can catch any single concealed object with the body scanner. I don't see what it is exactly that he needs to refute. It is indeed part of a layered system, and I can't see how anyone can disagree with this concept. I'm not saying the scanner is a reasonable layer or that it should stay - but if your argument is "it has to work 100% or it has to go", it is pretty weak. He doesn't really evade any serious accusation here - he simply points out the obvious and reinstates their claim: what was shown in the video is uninteresting, because the body scanner was never about catching metal boxes sewn to the side of a shirt with 98.5% confidence.

You can argue the body scanner is an economical disaster, dispute it on the basis of privacy or bring up health concerns, but I like to stay objective. There is nothing wrong with this post, as a response to the demonstration in the video, beyond the silly language.

<comment><USER53> What you wrote is true. So is e.g. the statement that there is an infinite number of numbers. And they are almost equally relevant to the discussion here.

> You can argue the body scanner is an economical disaster, dispute it on the > basis of privacy or bring up health concerns, but I like to stay objective. > There is nothing wrong with this post, as a response to the demonstration in > the video, beyond the silly language.

The post does not address the main criticism in the video, which is that the body scanner does not actually help with security.

> It was known publicly for a very long time, and it is reasonable to assume > people who developed and approved the system were well aware of it.

That is true. And a reasonable conclusion, advocated by the video as well, is that _the people who developed and approved the system_ don't actually care if it offers any security advantage.

The TSA's post only makes sense if you live in a world where the TSA's job is to grow, expand, gain more power, influence and budgets. And so does your analysis of it.

<comment><USER52> > The post does not address the main criticism in the video, which is that the > body scanner does not actually help with security.

I think it is the majority here that fell for the causation-correlation fallacy. Just because you can cheat a security system with high confidence does not make it obsolete on that grounds alone. Imagine a hypothetical security system that keeps you from taking any kind of firearm, but lets knives pass through. Well, yes, then the "terrorists" can still arm themselves with katanas and wreak havoc, but it did stop them from doing the same with Uzis, which might decrease the impact of such an attack.

> The TSA's post only makes sense if you live in a world where the TSA's job > is to grow, expand, gain more power, influence and budgets. And so does your > analysis of it.

It is a dangerous thing to evaluate rational argumentation in a political context - sadly something we see too often - especially if you want this argumentation to hold universally, including extending it to the Congress. All I'm saying is if you base your argument against TSA on the premise presented in the video, you aren't likely to be taken seriously by the same fraction who approved of this system in the first place and continue to support it. There are many good arguments against the body scanners and the TSA in general, focusing on a hyped viral video lacking a sound rationale only weakens your cause.

<comment><USER53> > Just because you can cheat a security system with high confidence does not > make it obsolete on that grounds alone.

Actually, it does. Because the threat is not randomly selected from a pool -- it is selected specifically to bypass the security system.

It's like saying that a guard that only works 9-5 in a store that has no locked door is a reasonable security system against thieves because it will catch those that arrive 9-5. No, that's not how it works -- it means no thief will come 9-5, and all thieves will arrive when the guard is not there.

Any easy-to-bypass security system _is_ obsolete as a security system (although it may have other uses, such as extracting money from taxpayers).

> All I'm saying is if you base your argument against TSA on the premise > presented in the video, you aren't likely to be taken seriously by the same > fraction who approved of this system in the first place and continue to > support it.

You conveniently ignore the fact that these people (Chertoff et al, who are directly profiting from it) do not care about security (as has been demonstrated time and again before this video), and are therefore unlikely to care about any rational argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The post mentioned that the scanners are one of 20 layers of security and mentions Behavioral detection, Explosive Detection Canines, Federal Air Marshall etc as some of the other "layers" of security. I wanted to see what these 20 layers were, and I really didn't see anything that would "protect" against someone exploiting the scanners like the video demonstrated. In fact one of the "layers" of security was "Intelligence". How comforting. If you want to see some serious security theater, check out <http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/layers/index.shtm>.

This blog post is just feels forced, and makes me a little quesy...

</comment><comment><USER55> yeah, get all your info about the government FROM the government. No conflict of interest there.

So, why did they defer those safety studies anyway? Just a scheduling conflict? Too busy with an election?

The things that we have to be subjected to just to satisfy campaign contributors.

</comment><comment> warren-g Not that I'm condoning the machines, and perhaps I'm missing something, but...

Couldn't this "vulnerability" be fixed if they took two scans? Take one of front/back (current approach) and then ask the person to turn 90 degrees and take another scan? to see the sides?

<comment><USER56> Yes it could.

The problem with that is, that it a) doubles the amount of time needed to scan one person and b) doubles the duration of exposure to radiation.

therefore, we'd be better of with metal detectors. Aside from that, the TSA would have to explain, that body scanners are useless without scanning twice and we therefore need to expose you to the double amount of radiation...

<comment><USER57> Doesn't the current scan take 3-5 seconds, and then you have a wait upwards of 20-30 seconds to get the "all clear" from the TSA agent in front of you who was radioed from the agent viewing the body scanner image? Ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I was at the airport last week and got randomly selected for the backscatter x-ray machine. I was told to remove everything from my pockets, including things that I would normally keep for going through a metal detector (passport, papers, wallet, etc.).

The scan went fine, but on the other side, the TSA agent noticed that due to the fold of my jeans, it looked like I had something in my pocket. He said he had to pat me down to make sure I didn't have anything in there.

Which made me seriously doubt the efficacy of the backscatter machines. What's the point of the machine if something could slip through that would still necessitate a physical body search?

</comment><comment><USER59> Just astounding. As soon as I read "interwebs" I had to check to make sure this was an official communications channel of a Federal agency. Mind is blown. Is this the same level of people running the CIA/FBI? What is going on?

<comment><USER60> The TSA are clowns, but the CIA/FBI are deadly serious by all accounts I've heard. They're far more dangerous to be on the wrong side of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> The pie-chart on the delete-o-meter on that blog sidebar doesn't reflect the numbers underneath it. At present, there are 50k accepted comments and 17k deleted, but the deleted slice is much less than 25%.

</comment><comment><USER62> The most interesting thing in that post was on what they focus. One would have that it was terrorism, but no, they spread their attention by looking for drugs with those body scanners. Feeling safe now.

</comment><comment><USER63> "For obvious security reasons, we can't discuss our technology's detection capability in detail"

Security through obscurity.

Are they afraid that if they disclose information people would somehow be able to find holes? If this is the case then why is this technology used? Why have gapping holes already been pointing out by numerous people?

Thinking that "the terrorists" don't have the ability to break this system without understanding the intricate details of it is just downright stupid.

</comment><comment><USER64> Tax payers money...billions...not sure what testing they did before buying or they knew it and still bought them because they got their cut.

</comment><comment><USER65> What an ignorantly worded blog post. By the TSA?! Come on.

If anything, this post does nothing but give the impression that the flaw in the scanners IS true.

</comment><comment><USER66> If there was any doubt as to whether the original technique described in the original video worked, this blog post has just confirmed it.

</comment><comment><USER67> > For obvious security reasons, we can't discuss our technology's detection > capability in detail...

The way I read it:

For obvious _job_ security reasons, we can't discuss our technology's detection capability in detail...

Anyway, I sure feel safe knowing that the security of my life is entrusted to obscurity, and I'm thankful for the trolling TSA blog posts that remind me of this.

<comment><USER68> > For obvious security reasons, we can't discuss our technology's detection > capability in detail...

Yes, because security through obscurity is an effective policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> It would appear that Wired came to the same conclusion as the blogger - [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/qn0su/wiredcom_con...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/qn0su/wiredcom_confirms_1b_of_nude_body_scanners_made/)

</comment><comment><USER70> To me the bad thing about the TSA, and counterterrorism in general, is that every day that goes by without an attack reinforces whatever methods and expenses they might incur.

But the worse is that only a terrible event could prove them wrong and stop the nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER71> I have a feeling this response is doing them far more harm than good. It's just a simple admission that everything stated was true and I'm going to make it into a high school argument and call you some guy with some crude video that's irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER72> This definitely looks like the beginning of the end for at least the body scanners.

If that video brought on so much heat that they had to respond like this and drop the ball so much, queue more public outrage and major back-pedalling in 3.....2.....1....

<comment><USER53> If only that were true.

Can you think of a case in history where continued government incompetence (or outright malice, depending on your point of view) that was demonstrated and gained a lot of valid criticism and public outrage, actually resulted in a change?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Stand back people, TSA Blog Team is on the case!

More seriously, these jokers let terrorists waltz on board planes (e.g. The Shoebomber) and only the passengers, treated like criminals by TSA, stop them.

Time to send the rentacops back to the mall.

<comment><USER74> The Shoe Bomber took a flight from France, which is not under TSA jurisdiction [1]. It's important to note that the TSA only operates in US airports.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid_(shoe_bomber)#Bomb...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid_\(shoe_bomber\)#Bombing_attempt_on_American_Airlines_Flight_63)

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Confidence Trickster Bob should go through a con artist scanner. It'd explode.

</comment><comment><USER29> Tagged this in delicious.

Wondering if it'll show up with my tags... <http://delicious.com/quink>

Can someone else tag it too with my tags and it might show up on their page...?

</comment><comment><USER76> Tone is baffling... only explanation is the official blog is trying to spoof their spoof?

<https://twitter.com/#!/tsagov> (TSA satire)

</comment><comment><USER77> So, this is where our tax payers' money is going? Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER78> Today, I am not proud to be an American. Thanks TSA.

<comment><USER79> Why were you ever proud of something that just happened to you having nothing what so ever to do with any actions you took yourself?

<comment><USER80> Some people say "proud of X" when they mean "refuse to feel shame about X". It bugs me a little also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> I for one feel a lot safer thanks to this blog post from the TSA.

Keep up the great work TSA and thank you for putting my worries to rest.

\-- Do I need to put sarcasm tags?

</comment><comment><USER82> What shocks me most is the abundance of anonymous comments, probably fearful of how the TSA can make life miserable for them.

</comment><comment><USER83> In any case, surely the weakest link is airports in less developed countries, which always seem to be much less secure to me.

<comment><USER84> You work for TSA? 'cause that the kind of reasoning coming from TSA.

<comment><USER83> Is it? I don't much about them since I live in the U.K. it just seems generally when I've been travelling, mostly to less developed countries, that the airports aren't really that secure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Can someone post a link to the viral video they are referring to? I can't seem to find it (I live in a cave).

<comment> johnx123-up [http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/1b-of- nude-...](http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/1b-of-nude-body- scanners-made-worthless-by-blog-how-anyone-can-get-anything-past-the-tsas- nude-body-scanners/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Methinks thou dost protest too much TSA

</comment><comment><USER87> I've never believed something less than the words in this blog post.

</comment><comment><USER88> All the comments here sucks ass

"It's one of the best tools available to detect metallic and non-metallic items, such as… you know… things that go BOOM. "

If you shat out an emotion frmo that sentence, you too much of a baby to use the internet, LEAVE.

</comment><comment><USER89> Uhh am I the only one here who isn't planning on reading too deeply into this? Seems like TSA got pwnt by lulzsec or anonymous?

</comment><comment><USER90> "things that go BOOM"

</comment><comment><USER91> That last paragraph is a doozy.

Completely addresses privacy concerns; is completely safe; oh and hey, it's completely optional, assuming you don't prefer molestation and possibly randomly missing your flight.

</comment><comment><USER92> > _It is completely safe and the vast majority use a generic image that > completely addresses privacy concerns._

Well that makes me feel great. Guess they decided they been caught blatantly lying on that point before so they decided to reiterate it, just with sufficiently vague qualifiers.

<comment><USER60> "Vast majority", eh? Yeah, I guess the "vast majority" aren't the young, attractive women you always hear about them disproportionately scanning.

<comment><USER92> Is this the case? It's not terribly surprising, I just hadn't seen stats for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> The fascinating thing about their claimed 20 layers of security, is also that a failure by any single layer can result in a terrorist attack succeeding.

They surprisingly don't point that out. (har har)</comment>


Two million calls to 311 - <AUTHOR> http://www.residentmar.io/2017/02/13/311.html <comment><USER2> 2 million calls to 311 to New York City, in 2016.

Spoiler: #1 reason is noise. #2 is heat or water.

</comment><comment><USER3> I mapped some of the 311 calls for Boston and San Francisco. Here are the Jupyter notebooks:

BOS: [https://github.com/carbocation/jupyter/blob/master/Boston%20...](https://github.com/carbocation/jupyter/blob/master/Boston%20311.ipynb)

SF: [https://github.com/carbocation/jupyter/blob/master/SF%20311....](https://github.com/carbocation/jupyter/blob/master/SF%20311.ipynb)

(The SF notebook abruptly transitions back to some BOS maps because I forgot to remove them.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Noise seems like one of those things that everyone just assumes isn't a problem and will just sort itself out.

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone up for an analysis of Philadelphia's 311 data? [https://www.opendataphilly.org/dataset/311-service-and- infor...](https://www.opendataphilly.org/dataset/311-service-and-information- requests)

</comment><comment> crooked-v I wish more cities had a simple, citywide non-emergency number like this.

<comment><USER6> Where do you live which doesn't have one? 311 is written on most public works fixtures in my town, Vancouver, for telling the city if they're broken, and I assumed it was North America-wide.

<comment><USER7> Which Vancouver?

Seattle doesn't have a 311 phone service. But they do have a Find It Fix It app. It's 2018 not 1988, why don't more cities have an app?

[http://www.seattle.gov/customer-service-bureau/find-it- fix-i...](http://www.seattle.gov/customer-service-bureau/find-it-fix-it- mobile-app)

<comment><USER6> Large Vancouver. Maybe it's Canada-wide.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PVS-Studio delved into the FreeBSD kernel - <AUTHOR> https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0377/ <comment><USER2> And Hacker News already had it at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11131532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11131532) . More currently, a article published a year later from the same source was submitted by its author at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14057568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14057568) .</comment>


European Union leaders announced a write down of Greek bonds by 50% - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/26/news/international/european_union_crisis_summit/index.htm?hpt=hp_t1

<comment><USER2> Incorrect title. This deal only cut down the debt hold by nongovernmental entities. The debt will be cut from 180% to 120%, roughly speaking.

This restriction makes this deal a nothingburger.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, the IMF, the EC or other governmental bodies will still be paid in full. In effect, the bailout loans _increased_ the private sector haircut by both delaying and also adding extra super-senior debt on top of the existing one.

<comment><USER4> I have this theory, see, about the delays.

The longer the delays have gone on, the more the Greek government has had to actually implement austerity measures - the more political capital those who want to see austerity and proper financial liberalization have had to force those through...

So by the time some breathing room has been introduced, Greek society has undergone the necessary but painful changes towards a better long-term solution.

<comment><USER3> If the bailout loans didn't come then, then Greece would have had to negotiate a debt restructuring then rather than now, gaining 1-2 years at least.

As for austerity, there is the healthy streamlining and downsizing of public expenses and there is the hobbling of the private sector with new and higher taxes. The latter solution merely sinks the Greeks further.

Public debt is not strictly meant to be paid off ever, but it should grow no faster than the overall economy for this indefinite deferral to work. It also means the productive aspect of society, namely the private sector, not be hindered by too high taxes or regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Greece has it's government bonds written down by 50% but next week the Irish government is due to pay €700m to un-guaranteed senior bondholders in Anglo Irish Bank (one of our zombie banks). It beggars belief.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but the yield on Irish 10 year government bonds is 6.09%, while Greece is paying 7.82%. After that payment takes place the coupon on Irish bonds will go down, possibly under 6%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great, so German's pay for the fiscal and political indiscretion of the Greeks. I guess they had little alternative as Greece was too big to fail -or, had they been allowed to default, The German people, via German bank investments in Greece,would have lost even more --seems they didn't learn much from our Wall Street banks and saddling die Volkes with the bag.

Or do I have this wrong? I've been trying to follow this a bit..

<comment><USER8> I'd consider this a bit of political and fiscal indiscretion of both Greeks and Germans, both relying on a similar moral hazard. German banks made stupid, risky loans, expecting that the EU wouldn't let anything go wrong, and would bail them out if it did go wrong; and Greek governments accepted the money, with the same expectations that the EU wouldn't let anything go wrong.

<comment><USER9> There's also, as I understand it, the matter of how Greece was permitted to join the Eurozone with, shall we say, _overly optimistic_ economic reports that were blindly accepted under a set of rules that would warm a sub-prime lender's heart.

Greece made quite the mess on its own, of course, but the number of ways in which the EU has further screwed the pooch are mind-blowing.

<comment><USER10>
      [..] the matter of how Greece was permitted to join the
      Eurozone with, shall we say, overly optimistic economic
      reports that were blindly accepted [..]

I think this is one of the fundamental things about this whole crisis (concerning Greece). _everybody_ knew that the Greece government _s_ were very creative with their way of presenting their financial situations back to the seventies (or even longer), and _everybody_ knew it when the decision was made to let them join the euro.

but _nobody_ checked their balances, but only trusted the numbers the Greeks were serving and which everybody knew were kind of faked.

so in the end, the most ridiculous thing is that there never was a _Plan B_ , or some kind of secret _exit strategy_. all the ones in charge of in the EU and its member states for more than a decade exactly knew that you can't trust the official numbers coming from the Greek peninsula, and nobody did a thing or thought of a plan to follow in the worst case scenario (which had to come one day)?

Edit: typo

<comment><USER11> Since this is so obvious to everyone, the logical conclusion seems to be that things worked out exactly as planned for somebody. I know, "never attribute to malice" etc., but the pattern of banks encouraging non-creditworthy entities to pig out on debt, leading to their devastating and unceremonious bankruptcy a few miles down the road seems very common by now.

I am not well versed enough in finance to speculate on who gains and how in these scenarios, but it seems like too much of a lock-in to be 'accident'. I know that in the past, nations and the IMF used loans and defaults to influence policies of other countries, could it be something like that going on here? Default as a way to force spending cuts and other political changes?

<comment><USER12> If there are 147 entities controlling 40% of the global financial market, this is not that far-fetched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I believe the bond market was discounting them at a much higher rate than that. But at least it's a good start, recognising the actuality of the situation rather than the fantasy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It'd be interesting to see what happens next: will investors flee from Europe? Will the banks have enough to resist the loss? Must the ECB and the stability fund support banks holding greek debt? Will fear about default spread to Italy or Spain?

<comment><USER14> Basically everyone is waiting for Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Iceland to crash. None of them have, despite all the screaming and all of them will have to implode in their own sad ways, eventually.

Thus, despite all the media talk about fear, drama and emotion people in the investment community are actually very unemotional and pragmatic and unfearful (I can not say they are courageuous now can I?)

The problem is that all of the above countries are still stuck in economic bubbles, yes the bubbles are not as rosy but they are in bubbles still — partly to keep American, British and French banks safe (who are the largest other party to all the debt that these countries have taken), partly because the populations there love to delude themselves.

Investors will get back into Europe after the crash to buy on the cheap — almost everybody is as cunning as a fox these days, nobody buys when the price is percieved to be too high, because of the abudance of information.

These types of investors are small guys like you & me, sovereign wealth funds.

However, there is an another type of investors who look for even a bigger score. Obviously, the counterweight to buying on the cheap in Europe is that a lot of banks in the U.S., British and France will be up for grabs as well.

To give you an example of how these other type of investors operate — you might not have noticed but there was a lot of noise during this late summer from the controlled alternative media, such as Zerohedge and even your trusty old charlatan Alex Jones and from rumours on the trading floor about Societe Generale being on the verge of a collapse — these rumours were magnified until the moment that S.G. turned to the Rothschilds in France for help and guardianship — then suddenly everything stopped. Heheee.... somebody is beginning to take control of the banks on the cheap.

The funny part is that the Rothschilds are not as rich as people claim or think they are — there have been a lot of people in the U.S. who are richer than them in terms of net worth, however they just manage affairs by spreading rumours and perception better than you or I can or that glamorous, over-the- top big, soverign wealth fund ever can — connections, connections.

I mention this as an example to conclude that there are two types of investors, the ones who are waiting for the big crash and the ones who are trying to manipulate through the anxiety and rumours prior to the big crash.

But nobody is particularly scared of anything as far as things go. Everybody is preparing themselves, like F1 cars for the start of the race. A game of nerves, perhaps but not of emotions if you know what I mean.

References, before you judge me:

[1] <http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110823-709045.html> [2] [http://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/banques- finance/...](http://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/banques- finance/banque/20110822trib000643686/la-societe-generale-demande-a-rothschild- de-soutenir-son-cours-de-bourse.html)

<comment><USER15> There's a thing I do not understand, nominally speaking French banks' exposure to Greek debt is not that large. I have not a easy link as reference, but I seem to remember reading in some of last week's FT editions that BNP Paribas had the highest exposure, with ~4 billion euros, followed by Societe Generale, with 2 or 3 billion. Of course that to you and me it looks like a lot of money, but the Kerviel case alone cost SG almost 5 billion euro in direct losses (not counting the losses incurred by the case on the share price), so Greece going down (or taking a 50% cut) shouldn't be that much of a tragedy, at least in theory.

Now, why then all this panic? It could because of what you said ("spread rumors, accumulate riches"), or because there's a hidden iceberg somewhere in these muddy waters: maybe countries like Italy and France are much closer to collapse than people think.

<comment><USER16> Maybe it's because other countries could follow the same path. Greece isn't that big but if the other PIIGS fail to pay, it could be much more than a few billions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As someone not wholly familiar with government bonds, let me ask- does this mean that private creditors, aka individuals like you or I, are taking a 50% loss on investments? Or is this at a corporate or governmental level?

<comment><USER6> Both. Pension funds and the like often invest in government bonds; traditionally they're a safe investment used to hedge against riskier ones like stocks. With the latter you know there's no guarantee of performance, but you expect a risk premium in the firm of a dividend or accelerated growth. 'Bond' is another word for 'promise' so you should be able to rely on it. Saying that 'people knew the risks' of investing in bonds misses the point: they're supposed to be risk-free, so bond default is a very big deal.

<comment><USER17> _'Bond' is another word for 'promise' so you should be able to rely on it... they're supposed to be risk-free_

Agreed. I'd be livid right about now if I held Greek bonds. Although I suppose anyone looking for shelter in the form of government bonds could have taken the next step and diversified across nations, further reducing their exposure.

<comment><USER8> A large number of the holders (especially the foreign holders) bought the Greek bonds precisely _because_ of the higher risk, which resulted in them having higher interest rates than, say, American or German bonds. They made a bet and lost.

<comment><USER18> Not quite true - Greek bonds did not have significantly higher interest rates than other Euro denominated bonds.

Greek bond chart: <http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GGGB1YR:IND/chart> German bond chart: <http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GDBR1:IND/chart>

Go back out 3 years, and you'll see that as late as December 2009, the yield spread was minor, and that it didn't start to really diverge until July of this year.

<comment><USER8> Hmm, that makes it somewhat puzzling that anybody bought Greek bonds at all. Was there any reason to prefer Greek bonds to German bonds, given the superior fiscal position of Germany and the greater liquidity of the German bond market?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: How to build a community online at a college? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently attending a University that has no real online community, and I think this is a "bad thing." Universities are supposed to be about sharing of ideas, and collaborating and expanding your ideas with the help of others. I am curious how you all would go about trying to build a community online for my school. Presumably something close to a wiki/forum, but with a focus on education? Or should it be more of a free-form discussion, and try and get people to come out of pure chance. This is very similar to a startup, and building a community around one, but presumably the community is already there in some form, it just needs to be brought online. Anyone have any advice on how to go about achieving this? <comment><USER2> I'm working on a project to help schools do this, although its a bit more specific. If you want me to set up a prototype board at your school or want some more information shoot me an email (email@example.com). I'd be happy to set it up for you, especially because I'm looking to expand my idea.

But... if you want to do this as a project for your self then I would suggest trying to set up a phpBB forum (<http://www.phpbb.com/>). It's open source, but sometimes a bit tricky to set up if you don't have any prior experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would use CollegeWikis.com :-).

if you have ideas for it, i would also contact joe (at) collegewikis.

</comment><comment><USER4> facebook and twitter

one thing you could do is recreate the twitterati section at alltop but with twitterers from your school and then put up flyers about it in the cs building

</comment><comment><USER3> actually - if you want to contact me to chat more about things we could build in collegewikis that you'd find useful, please do. we're always looking for suggestions. thanks!

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd bootstrap it by focusing on one dorm or class at a time.</comment>


Testing Boston Dynamics' Spot Robot [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7s1sr4JdlI <comment><USER2> Aside from when the box was first opened, I don't think I've ever seen a pristine Spot robot. To borrow an old tag, they seem to take a licking and keep on ticking.

</comment><comment><USER3> A great feat of engineering... but uh what is the actual use case for Spot?

<comment><USER4> K9minators

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> is this a marketing video?

<comment><USER6> Very likely. It's probably no coincidence that Adam Savage is among the first to get access to one.

<comment><USER2> Hopefully he puts some kind of folding quadrotor setup on it so it can fly in and out of places. Imagine something like this on its back - [https://www.best-quadcopter.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/05/m...](https://www.best-quadcopter.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/05/matrix_fold.jpg)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Any crawler experts out there? - <AUTHOR>

Hi. Wondering if there are any crawler experts on here who can help me.  We're wanting to create a crawler to visit some sites that have forms, lists of items and detail of items. They're all in the real estate market and we want to capture the properties and pull out the latest ones. I'm being told that we need to create a specific crawler for each site, but I was wondering if we could create a generic crawler that has some kind of plug-in or pattern matching file (that we build manually) for each site. Anyone who is super-skilled in this area - I'd appreciate some advice.  We're using Python also.  One caveat - I'm not the tech guy as I tried to program and failed, but I do understand what we need and have a very good understanding of technology, I'm just inept at taking my ideas and doing anything with them :) <comment><USER3> use beautiful soup (best python scraping system I know of). Maybe combine it with mechanize for navigating between the pages. Don't try to create your own pattern-matching file. Write a generic crawler class, subclass it for each site. In the end you should just need to write a couple of short site-specific functions for each site.

It doesn't take long once you get going - that is, until you run into sites that are unnavigable piles of javascript and unstructured html.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I'll look into these. I'm constantly amazed by the power of python - especially in comparison to PHP which is my background

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've developed a Twisted Python crawler that does something very similar to that. The possibility that it would work well seemed dubious at first, but I've been pleasantly surprised with the results.

Email me at email@example.com - I'd be happy to discuss the technology and progress I've made so far.

</comment><comment><USER5> You might talk to the guys at New Idea Engineering about their xpump technology <http://www.ideaeng.com/ds/xpump.html> I used it a few years ago to process all of the hardware data sheets on the Cisco website and extract 13 parameters such as height, width, depth, weight, power consumption (AC and DC), etc...Because Cisco's products come from many different acquisitions the datasheets were in many different formats, which sounds similar to your problem.

One point I would make is that a fast crawler is not always the best for this type of application: crawling at about the speed a user would click on pages is more friendly to a site and less likely to have them take steps to block your access.

</comment><comment><USER6> I work for <http://streeteasy.com> . We are experts in this area - <USER2> in real estate ;) Feel free to contact me at ch AT streeteasy.com. It is _not_ an easy task to build what you are looking for. We've been building and improving our system for two years now (ruby on rails.) Scraping the data is just one part of the problem. Validating the data is also a big issue. These sites often have incorrect or stale information. MLS's are good, but they may have restrictions on what you can do with the data, or (as in NYC) they may not even exist.

</comment><comment><USER7> You can build a generic crawler that pulls pages from sites quickly and then process the pages offline with whatever lnguage you'd like. It's better to have a distributed way of doing things. Plus, there are standards that you need to comply with when crawling someone's website., like not crawl them too fast, or to check their robots.txt file to make sure that you're crawling "allowable" pages. Then once you've pulled their data off, you process it offline and do whatever you need to do with the data. It's not a simple procedure, but it's do-able if you want to spend some time doing it properly.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been thinking that there must be an easy way to tie the emacs webbrowser, macros, and regexs together to make powerfully customizable crawlers, but I haven't really investigated. Anyone know of this being done?

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been working on this for a little while now. You can definitely write a plug-in or pattern matching file for each site. Building a specific crawler for each website doesn't make sense.

The custom bits you need are then ones that fill the form and then extract the results. For scraping results ruby's Scrubyt is best as you can write templates for each type of page.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you need to do form stepping, you need to look at something like Perl's Mechanize package. (Ruby has one too.)

Spend time reading articles related to Mechanize. Your resulting code is going to be fairly terse, so you don't really need to spend much time worrying about making a generic crawler.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you are into java then I will suggest webharvest...if you want something broader(read generic) and brave enough then you can even try nutch.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm with screen-scraper, (<http://www.screen-scraper.com/>), and we've dealt a lot with scraping real estate data. Building a generic crawler for this kind of thing is quite a bit more complicated than it might seem. You might give our software and services a look, though. Our app integrates quite nicely with Python.

</comment><comment><USER13> See this post from a couple weeks ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=96057>

Business idea? Selling smart crawlers to YCNews readers? There seems to be recurring interest :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Also, there should be some way of getting MSLP (?) data from a service via RSS or something somewhere - which is a TON nicer than crawling several peoples' webpages.

</comment><comment><USER14> If your environment supports Ruby, I have lots of experience with a great library called Scrubyt... yickster at gmail

</comment><comment><USER15> Please contact latone at gmail.com and we can discuss.

</comment><comment><USER7> MLS. :)</comment>


The Newly Discovered Tablet V of the Epic of Gilgamesh - <AUTHOR> http://etc.ancient.eu/2015/09/24/giglamesh-enkidu-humbaba-cedar-forest-newest-discovered-tablet-v-epic/ <comment><USER2> For lovers of the ancient world, this sort of thing is more news worthy than a visit from Vatican City's Holiest. Sola lingua bona mortua est...

huskyr above called out the use of ancient.eu's social buttons as being a distraction. But to be honest I've rarely seen a web or native digital library of ancient sources experience that was acceptable to non-scholastic audiences. Take a look at UCLA's CDLI - Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative:

[http://cdli.ucla.edu/](http://cdli.ucla.edu/)

A search for "Gilgamesh" yields a trip back to an ancient page layout Endukugga himself might have been more comfortable browsing. I realize these are digital humanities projects funded with scarce grant resources. But I can't help thinking they would appeal to a much wider audience, that would be enriched tremendously by the wisdom of the ancients, if only presented in a more user-friendly manner.

<comment><USER3> > Sola lingua bona mortua est...

It's hard for me not to understand this as "the only good language [ever?] has died".

<comment><USER4> "The only good language is a dead language" as a callback to "the only good indian is a dead indian"?

<comment><USER5> Sheesh, people, masklinn is just quoting old "westerns" that used to be mainstream fifty years ago.

And providing useful info. Calm down, please.

(P.S. Nowadays all that is being remade with "zombies", probably because it's much easier to beat up on the dead. So far.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Smart move to offer to buy the artifacts without fear of prosecution. They probably saved tons of items which otherwise would have been lost forever.

<comment><USER7> They would have wound up in the hands of rich collectors, where they'd probably be a lot safer than they are in Baghdad right now, a few hundred km from an army which would happily destroy all pre-Islamic artefacts.

Especially this one, which is a story with other gods in it! Can't get much more unislamic than that...

So yeah, as long as ISIS or any of its successors never takes Baghdad it's safe. I'd rather it were in some rich dude's house though.

<comment><USER8> If it stays here ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulaymaniyah_Museum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulaymaniyah_Museum)) it is probably safer from IS than basically anywhere else in the region.

Baghdad is still relatively safe, but could be better. I could see them loaning it to the National Museum at some point, but only temporarily, and not for many years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Speaking of Gilgamesh, what happened to that Kickstarter movie based on Gilgamesh? It has been over 3 years.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1331941187/the-tube- ope...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1331941187/the-tube-open-movie)

<comment><USER10> Don't know about that but the Fate Zero anime has Gilgamesh as a main character and is pretty good.

<comment><USER11> I don't know enough about the epic of Gilgamesh but the Fate series tends to take a lot of freedoms with its interpretation of mythical figures, so it might not be accurate enough for some people.

<comment><USER10> Ah yes, depends on if you are seeking accuracy or amusement

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really don't want to be 'that' guy, but this article is pretty much unreadable due to the fact that there are six social media buttons hovering _over_ the text. Madness.

[http://imgur.com/T4l8UQ4](http://imgur.com/T4l8UQ4)

<comment><USER13> And yet, running NoScript, here is how it looks:

[http://postimg.org/image/i2blngyfv/](http://postimg.org/image/i2blngyfv/)

No social media buttons hovering over the page at all.

<comment><USER12> I could do that. I'm just feeling pity for the 99.9% of internet users who _don 't_ know how to use NoScript / AdBlock / whatever.</comment></comment></comment>


A Gas Station Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2015/12/15/in_1927_frank_lloyd_wright_designed_a_gas_station_it_was_finally_built_in.html <comment><USER2> I'm partial to Bomber Gas myself:

[http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2968](http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2968) [http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.p...](http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=34371)

I used to drive miles out of my way to buy gas there.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Buffalo station was built, a few years ago...</comment>


Login.gov - <AUTHOR> https://login.gov/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is the public SSO provider for the US Government. Interestingly, it supports U2F security keys and other forms of modern 2FA, and is open-source (released under the public domain of the United States).

It's nice to see the government finally putting out a nice IT project.

Code here: [https://github.com/18F/identity- idp](https://github.com/18F/identity-idp)</comment>


Sacrificing Inheritance for Equality - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/64284924df1a <comment><USER2> I'd say that classism is the issue and not racism.

Leftists of the 1960s handed the government on a silver platter to Republicans by promoting a 1-d view of "race".

I grew up in New England where it didn't matter if you were black or white but rather what kind of black or white you were. There were blacks living in Beacon Hill in the 1950s but it all changed when the mechanization of agriculture sent southern blacks off the land and up north, and all of a sudden "homies" were colliding with refugees who were fleeing WWII and similar demographic and technological changes in Europe. (Why did Hitler think so many Europeans had to go?)

My ancestors came from Poland and French Canada and we were the people on the bottom in the mills, we wouldn't even get foreman jobs. If any of us had applied to WASP Harvard or other elite institutions we'd face the same kind of discrimination that Jews faced except we wouldn't even apply because family and social pressures pushed us into blue collar work.

If the left pushes the idea that all whites are privileged over all blacks that just means the numerical majority of whites go to the right. Big Win. To be a working class white and believe that guff you have to have your mind colonized.

I would say that the attack on explicit racism that has happened since the 1960s has made classism all the more dangerous because the current system leads people to believe that they earned what they got (i.e. are not "privileged") whereas at least an occasional WASP might look at his circumstances and realize he won the lottery.

(Oh, BTW, in economic terms there is no such thing as a majority oppressing a minority, the math doesn't work. For instance, if 90% of white people stole everything that belonged to 10% of black people, the whites only improve their standard of living by a little more than 10%.) If on the other hand, 10% of descendants of invaders of a country like Holland or England can steal 10% of what the 90% indigenous population have they can double their standard of living which is worth doing. That is, "whites" did not enslave "blacks" in the old South, it was a small class of rich white slaveowners who enslaved blacks.)

</comment><comment><USER3> If this is a riff on the US, the whole premise is flawed. Only 16% of US millionaires inherited their wealth: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire)

That means 84% of US millionaires earned it themselves. White, black or otherwise, for most of the wealthy, it still requires a lifetime of hard work to achieve it.</comment>


"I went to see Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies in 1972 and I think I am still there" - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7741457.stm

<comment><USER2> Kudos on the title-- you definitely got the best quote.</comment>


Ask HN: Payment alternatives to Paypal? - <AUTHOR>

We are expanding our payment alternatives. Previously we have used Paypal and Payson but Payson removed the possibility to use Credit Cards through us as we are a VPN service.<p>Do you have any other processors to recommend? We have looked at Plimus and Braintree. <comment><USER2> [http://stripe.com](http://stripe.com) and [http://balancedpayments.com](http://balancedpayments.com)

Braintree recently got acquired by PayPal btw.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's [http://www.wmtransfer.com/](http://www.wmtransfer.com/), besides Bitcoin/Litecoin, obviously.</comment>


Ask HN: User-friendly online "vault" web app to securely share secrets? - <AUTHOR> I need to share secrets (like API keys), privacy sensitive data, sometimes small files with customers, and they with me. Some of them aren't tech savvy so I don't want to ask them to use encryption tools. I'd really like it if there was some kind of web application I can just give them an account to and that we then have an encrypted conversation on that I can simply delete later on. For legal reasons I'd also want this app hosted in my own country (the Netherlands).
I've come across some enterprise-scale solutions that are almost Dropbox-y and have calendar-synch features and are basically bloated. Because the use case U have is actually quite simple the webapp itself can also be quite simple (I'd think), but security needs to be strong.
Are there webapps like this? What are webapps like this called?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I have an install of zerobin which I use for keys, items that I would prefer not to email but it does not support files, just text. Essentially it's a pastebin.

"TL;DR: ZeroBin is a minimalist, opensource online pastebin/discussion board where the server has zero knowledge of hosted data. Data is encrypted/decrypted in the browser using 256 bits AES."

[http://sebsauvage.net/wiki/doku.php?id=php:zerobin](http://sebsauvage.net/wiki/doku.php?id=php:zerobin)

test at [http://sebsauvage.net/paste/](http://sebsauvage.net/paste/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Though not a web app, I've used magic wormhole [0] with some success with clients. Your requirements for hosting might make finding something suitable difficult.

[0] [https://github.com/warner/magic- wormhole](https://github.com/warner/magic-wormhole)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://onetimesecret.com](https://onetimesecret.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> Helpspot has a really nice tool for sharing text securely.

[https://www.helpspot.com/vault](https://www.helpspot.com/vault)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you want to store files on a private blockchain: [https://storj.io/](https://storj.io/)</comment>


Living in a Startup Bubble - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/570cfe0e69ac

<comment><USER2> Hate be negative, but based on the title, I was expecting something different, and since its HN, something with depth.

It was a lovely post, but what I got from it was "startups are risky, need belief, and it's tricky as a family and here's a link to my blog".

Edit: (I wonder if Medium is going to tackle the issue of people start treat it mainly as "medium" of promoting their own blogs or companies)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, yes. Sorry - I should probably have pointed out "not that kind of bubble".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Medium blog posts are basically roulette when it comes to quality. This particular one is trash. It uses the keyword startup a lot, talks about how they're risky, and gives some paltry relationship advice. It's not written well and basically compiles the most general facts known about startup culture, consolidating all of them into a vague article that's all over the place.

This post reads like one of those keyword articles that only exists to collect hits for a website. It is utterly devoid of any depth, and lacks the substance to really portray any meaning to startup life.

In fact, reading this it's almost as though she wrote this as a book report. It's badly written and conveys nothing about "startup life" despite the fact she repeats that phrase over and over.

Here's a few sentences that should clue you into this:

1\. _" Add to this our four young children (6, 4, 2 and newborn), and you'll understand our startup life is pretty full on."_

No, I don't understand. What does having children have to do with your husband and you having a "full on" startup life? If anything, that would make it more difficult for you to commit yourselves to startups. If you tried to convey that you must be uber-committed to startups because you're doing it despite having children, it didn't work.

2\. _" Startup life is so part of our life that it is far more than just our work, it is our life."_

Badly written. And I don't mean this in a pretentious, grammatical way, I mean the word "life" is repeated enough times that this sentence doesn't capture any of the passion you're trying to portray. It's empty.

3\. _" The more I've tried to explain things to friends and family, the more I've realised that startup life is a bubble and really not like other ways of living and working."_

You didn't explore the bubble bit, which is arguable and by no means widely accepted. You also didn't justify a connection between a bubble and being different; there's no inherent correlation.

4\. _" It often feels like the startup is everything and far more important than our relationship. There have been so many times when I've felt like a startup widow. I think we are getting better at making sure that doesn't happen. Changing some of the ways we work for a start. And having great communication is key to relationships and family life working together with a startup._"

You lost track of your central point here. Are you talking about startups or your relationship? You began this blog by talking about how different startup life is, yet you have not defined it at all. You just keep reiterating the effect without tying in a relevant cause.

Furthermore, communication is important in any relationship. That's just another platitude; this is full of them. Again, meaningless.

5\. _" Startup life takes a huge amount of belief in what you are doing and belief that you have what it takes to make it happen, or the skills/sense to hire the right people to make it happen."_

The next three paragraphs go on and on, repeating the same idea: startups are hard, you need to be committed. Got it, but we all know that already. It's self-evident.

6\. _" Startup is a process"_

I don't even know what this is supposed to mean, and the consequent paragraphs in this section fail to give me any clues.

I can go on and on with these. Literally every other sentence is written like an ezine article. It's crap, and doesn't stimulate meaningful discussion.</comment>


Distimo: China Now The Second Largest iPhone App Market After The U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/21/distimo-china-now-the-second-largest-iphone-app-market-after-the-u-s/

<comment><USER2> The main problem of other markets outside the US is their propension to download only free apps.</comment>


Speedier Internet Rivals Push Past Cable - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324731304578193390432321484.html <comment><USER2> You have to Google the link to read the full article.

It seems cable companies are starting to get worried about Google Fiber, but also about other smaller companies who plan to offer gigabit fiber. I think their reports that "there's no demand for fiber right now" are misleading, either because they don't want others to think there is high demand before they do something about it themselves, or whenever they ask this question to a company or user, the offer probably comes attached with a high price tag (- "Would you like 1 Gbit fiber for $1,000 a month?" - "Umm..no"). They should ask people if they want gigabit speeds without paying anything extra, and I'm sure the response would be quite different!

<comment><USER3> Considering that cable can offer 100 and maybe even 300 Mbps, I actually don't think there's demand for fiber per se. By offering gigabit or nothing and low prices, Google is creating what you might call false demand for fiber. We don't know how many fiber customers would have chosen cheaper 100 Mbps cable instead.</comment></comment>


What It Feels Like When Your Startup Fails - <AUTHOR> https://startupsanonymous.com/story/feels-like-startup-fails/

<comment><USER2> Isn't failure the default status of a startup ?

nice share btw,

>> I've finally come to realize the obvious — if you lose your will to survive, you'll die.

>> If you don't want to fail, find your will to stay alive, everything else will follow.</comment>


Steve Jobs speaking at Microsoft PDC in 1996 (previously unseen footage) - <AUTHOR> http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/PDC/PDC-1996/PDC-1996-Keynote-with-Bob-Muglia-and-Steve-Jobs

<comment><AUTHOR> This is fascinating for many reasons. For one, I've never seen Steve do a talk on primarily developer technology.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it is pretty cool. It is amazing how much thought has gone into the concept of dynamic web pages and building that technology back in the days when the internet started getting popular. We take it for granted these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting that Steve was using the 99 designs format before 99 designs was even an idea.</comment>


Ask HN: I Used My Credit Cards to Fund My Failed Startup and Now They're Suing - <AUTHOR> About four or five years ago I applied for several credit cards to augment my freelance income, so that I could drastically cut back on the hours I spent working for others and focus mostly on my project. We're not talking huge amounts here - three cards with around 5k each.
Anyway, fast forward a couple of years and the freelance market collapsed in my region and my startup failed.
I recently received notice that a process server is trying to track me down to serve me. I'm assuming the other debt collection companies will too at some point.
Is it too late to contact the debt collection companies and try to work something out? I can probably swing a 1k down payment and the rest over monthly payments for a year to a year and a half.
There's also the additional issue that I may have exaggerated my freelance income somewhat on the applications. I'm not sure how worried I should be about that at this point. <comment><USER2> daveramsey.com is a good source of information. See for example [http://www.daveramsey.com/radio/highlights/?urlVars=2010/7/1...](http://www.daveramsey.com/radio/highlights/?urlVars=2010/7/15/Dont- Find-Yourself-In-A-Zoo)

A few particular points -

Don't use a debt consolidation company, they're a rip off.

Get a copy of your credit report so you know who has your debt and for how much.

Deal with your debts one at a time -- smallest to largest.

When you have some money, call the first debt collection company (the one with the smallest debt). Negotiate a settlement in full. Don't pay them anything until they agree _in writing_ that your payment settles the debt _in full_. (Email counts for in writing). Do not send them a personal or business check that has your checking account number on it and don't give them electronic access to your checking account -- they will clean it out. Send them a cashiers check for the settlement amount instead.

Repeat for each debt.

</comment><comment><USER3> Credit card debt is typically sold to debt buyers for about $0.06 on the dollar, and the buyer/collector is usually very happy to collect a fraction of the debt if it means they earn a profit on your account.

It is common for them to get some information from you to figure out how much you can pay. In any case, give them a call. It is very likely that they will be happy to collect the $1000 down payment and set you up to pay the rest (or some fraction of the rest) in installments.

My understanding is that you are better off working this out directly with them than going to court.

Background: I am not a lawyer. However, I worked on issues related to the debt collection industry as part of the FTC's consumer protection bureau.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some considerations:

1\. AGE OF DEBT: If the debt is over 3 years old, consider ignoring it. Bad marks remain on your credit history for 7 years after the LAST payment. By making any payment, even for $0.01 you reset the 7 year clock. If the debt is over 7 years old - definitely ignore the debt collectors.

2\. IMPACT: Is if the bad debt is impacting your life: are you having a hard time renting, or doing anything critical? From your post it sounds like you only "noticed" the debt when you started getting calls.

3\. LAWS: The process servers are in many cases doing the minimum necessary. Their ideal case is that you do not show up to court and then they get a default judgment against you. Simply by showing up to court to object, you raise the cost of them pursuing your case.

4\. DO THEY OWN THE DEBT? Just because some company says they own your debt does not mean that they really do. For example, do they have clear documentation about how much you owe, including interest calculations, and complete documentation about your account. The banks have gotten very, very sloppy about following the law when it comes to documenting payments, interest calculations, and transferring of debt.

A starter website to look at is : <http://4closurefraud.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I am in much deeper doodoo than you are. I wrote at length a couple of days ago but couldn't manage to post it and now I cannot find it. I haven't experienced any of the malicious sounding tactics that other posts here describe. If you can pay it, do so. Be polite. Be honest. Make a good faith effort. It is a business like any other. They just want the money they are lawfully due and they deal every day with people being assholes to them and lying, hiding assets, etc. Don't be an asshole about it and they will probably not be assholes back.

At least that has been my firsthand experience doing this. Feel free to believe in the boogiemen posited by these folks who are probably generally well off and have never been through something like this.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Is it too late to contact the debt collection companies and try to work something out?_

No. If they're debt collection companies and the debts are 4 to 5 years old, your $5k debt cost them less than $200 to acquire. I would say something like "Look, I'm unemployed and looking at several different companies who all want more money than I have. I'm making this same offer to three credit card companies this week: $1k paid immediately in return for full satisfaction of this debt. I will understand if you feel the need to reject that offer and sue me, but I have no assets. This represents the best deal you're going to get."

Do this negotiation entirely on paper, delivered in the postal mail, with return receipt requested. Don't talk to anyone on the phone for longer than it takes to say "What is your postal address?" Your first letter to each company should include language similar to "It is inconvenient for me to receive debt collection communications via telephone or any other means but postal mail. This letter constitutes written notice under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act that you are not to contact me about this matter via any method other than the postal mail."

Our overarching strategy here is avoiding having folks sue you (n.b. the process server is in play because someone is _already_ suing you, and merely ducking him will not make that impossible -- they'll just put a notice in the newspaper and the judge will certify "service accomplished by public notice"), because you'll probably not go to court in time to contest and if you do contest you'll likely lose (you do, after all, owe this money). You will then have a default judgment entered against you, for the entire sum you borrowed plus interest plus collection costs and legal fees. This will likely be more than double the amount you _think_ you owe. The debt collection agency will then begin contacting every bank/etc in the area to see if you have an account and then seize the contents to satisfy the judgement. If they don't recover 100%, they will petition -- and receive -- a court order to garnish your wages for the next several years until that amount is satisfied.

This process will be stressful and costly for you. It is highly in your advantage to avoid it. Ignoring it will NOT make it go away.

 _I can probably swing a 1k down payment and the rest over monthly payments for a year to a year and a half._

I would suggest that you be Very Darn Sure (TM) that you can actually handle this this time, because if you get to month 7 on one of those agreements and then miss a payment _by even a day_ , you're in a situation which will be in every possible way worse than the situation you are in today. You should strongly prefer paying part of your debt today in full satisfaction versus a payment plan. They will suggest payment plans, because that gets them some money and because probabalisticly _you like virtually all other debtors will default on that payment plan_ , after which point collection costs will inflate the debt to a number at least as large as the number they are claiming now.

 _There's also the additional issue that I may have exaggerated my freelance income somewhat on the applications._

I am not a lawyer, but to the extent that you trust me: you have nothing to worry about with regards to this.

<comment><USER7> How long after your last payment to the credit card company does it take until they pursue a lawsuit? Do most (all?) wait 4-5 years before they file a lawsuit? Is there a table that shows roughly what percent is paid for debt by collectors over time? For example, you say they probably paid less than $200 to acquire debt 4-5 years old. What about debt that is 2-3 years old or 3-4 years old?

<comment><USER8> The credit card company pretty much never sues (I worked for capital one) but they will sell the debit to collecors who will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well if your credit is ruined, you have seven years before it is taken off your credit history.

If you don't contact the debt company the debt you owe will be written off and the IRS will send you a 1099 form of the debt as income. So you will have $5000 added to your 1040 and taxed on it.

If you do contact the debt company and make arrangements to pay you will be contacted by other debt companies as well. So that 1K down payment and $X month, the other debt companies will want a settlement as well.

What you might want to do is contact a debt settlement company that can consolidate your debts into one monthly payment. Your credit rating is already ruined by owing debt and being sued. Contact a debt lawyer or debt consolidation company to reduce or consolidate the debt and make payments if you want to go that route.

Owing debt and taxes is all too common in the software consultant area. Sometimes software consultants are stiffed by contracting companies, clients, brokers, etc and still have to pay taxes on income they earned but were not paid for. If they ask about your income changing, just tell them it was higher when you had more work and it adjusts to the market. Most credit card or debt companies don't care what you earn, as long as you make payments. They will eventually see your tax form and then make adjustments to your credit based on that. Debt collection companies, by the way, get your contact info from the IRS from what you put on your 1040 form. So whatever contact phone or contact postal address you list, they will contact you with that. Some people skip debt collection agencies by putting a PO box listed as an apartment or a phone number that is always busy or rings and rings and never is answered as their contact phone to keep debt collectors away. But you didn't hear that from me. :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much everybody. This has been _incredibly_ helpful to me.

<comment><USER10> Congrats on taking the risk and using your personal credit cards to start doing what you wanted to do. Not a lot will do this and accept the stress it brings.

There is a lot of good advice in this thread.

You will be fine.

Keep pursuing your dream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You should certainly contact your creditors, preferably in writing. I have no idea where you are or what the laws in your state are, but the FTC has a bunch of good advice and resources: <http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0150-coping-debt>

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not sure if you're still reading this thread, but in case you are, there's a YC startup that aims to help people get out of debt: <https://www.readyforzero.com/>. You may find it useful.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you have funds available save up and try to settle with them when they contact you. You might be able to pay 1/3 or 1/2 of what you owe. I would offer 1/3 and have 1/2 saved up. Keep in mind that you'll most likely have to pay income taxes on the portion you don't pay back. They would also file a claim against you in small claims court trying to get a judgement against you for the amount you owe. So when you do get served contact them and try to work out a settlement or payment arrangement. And make sure to attend any court dates. I don't expect they are worried about your estimated income at the time the cards were issued.

</comment><comment><USER14> You should take that $1k and consult a lawyer. I always find it funny that the Hacker News view is that startup failure is a learning experience that has no consequences.

</comment><comment><USER8> Debit Collection companies sue people all the time, and almost always they have nothing to support the debit if they get into court. A spreadsheet with a line and a balance is all they have so winning a collections lawsuit is almost impossible for them to do, IF you show up in court. Almost everyone doesn't show up in court.</comment>


Software bugs on Mars - <AUTHOR>

You know, I feel like writing an article entitled something like "C++ Bugs Visiting Space / Mars." Further in this post, I will explain what I mean and why I am writing it here in the hope to get some help or useful tips from the community. <comment><USER2> Well, this is not specific to C++, but there _was_ the failure of the Mars Climate Orbiter due to failure to convert between pound-seconds and newton- seconds: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I work at a company developing a static code analyzer to detect bugs in C/C++ software. As a means of popularizing the static analysis technology, we check various open-source projects for bugs and write articles about any issues we manage to find. Developers enjoy reading them very much as it's always interesting to find out what mistakes have been made in this or that project by its authors.

Of course, we never mean to mock at project authors. We just show that no one is safe from making a typo and it won't hurt if one takes some precautions against it. By means of real-life examples, we show how useful the static analysis methodology is. The list of our articles can be found here: [http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0084/](http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0084/)

People often suggest various projects for analysis. In particular, some of our readers have suggested trying to analyze the source codes of the James Webb Space Telescope or, even better, Mars rover autonomous driving system.

Indeed, let's take a look at the list of cool C++ projects composed by Bjarne Stroustrup: [http://www.stroustrup.com/applications.html](http://www.stroustrup.com/applications.html)

It turns out that C++ has already travelled to Mars (search through the list for the NASA keyword). And there is also a lecture CppCon 2014: Mark Maimone "C++ on Mars: Incorporating C++ into Mars Rover Flight Software" available on this topic: [https://youtu.be/3SdSKZFoUa8](https://youtu.be/3SdSKZFoUa8)

So we have grown highly enthusiastic about the idea of analyzing such interesting and safe software system as Mars rover flight software and probably finding at least a couple of bugs there. Well, the telescope is as interesting, too.

The hardest thing is how and where to get these source files, or at least their analogues. I guess no one will give us the source codes for the working spacecraft. But what if we could get the source codes of the older software versions or for spacecraft no longer in use?

This is why I am addressing the community. If anyone happens to know, please tell us whom we can contact to discuss this question. It won't make any sense simply writing an email to NASA, will it? And there may be someone in this community who is directly involved in this area or knows someone who is. I will appreciate any information, contacts, and help you can offer. I'm sure it could bring us some interesting materials if it worked out. You can leave your comments right here or contact us at the following link: [http://www.viva64.com/en/about-feedback/](http://www.viva64.com/en/about- feedback/)

P.S. I know about github.com/nasa. But there is nothing interesting in C/C++.

<comment><USER3> Well, Bjarne Stroustrup might have some smart pointers. No seriously, get in touch. Also, if you can find out who wrote the compiler NASA is using (probably Intel or IBM), then you can chase it through the development team. I know the primary XLC team is in Toronto, I believe ICC is in Santa Clara.</comment></comment>