The Myth of the Nazi War Machine - <AUTHOR> https://notesonliberty.com/2019/11/03/the-myth-of-the-nazi-war-machine/ <comment><USER2> As did the program that developed the B-29 Superfortress ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress)), the plane that dropped the Manhattan Project's atomic bombs on Japan.

Big defense projects are expensiiiiiiive.

</comment><comment><USER3> And then after the war ended the US rushed in to get access to as many of the mythical Nazi scientists powering the mythical Nazi war machine as possible.

<comment><USER4> Yes. It's known as the Operation Paperclip:

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

The Soviets had such an operation of their own:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a terrible article. Sure they manage to mention that logistically Germany was in a terrible place, but half the "facts" aren't. Made up chest thumping seems to describe it most accurately.

 _" outdated Hurricanes than they were the newer Spitfire"_ Um, no the Hurricane was _not_ outdated. It was about as new as the Spit, used the same marks of Merlin and Griffon engines as the Spit, and was in fact a more stable gun platform. Key point, Hurricanes were _far_ quicker to build than the more manoeuvrable Spit. Even after the Supermarine shadow factories were up to speed. Simply put Hurricanes and Mosquitoes were far easier to put together. All three had _far_ better visibility than equivalent German fighters that this article manages to miss entirely.

Then they _entirely_ miss the point of V2.

 _" V2 was more sophisticated, but was never mass produced: only 3,000 were launched"_ Had Hitler not overridden the use of V2, 3,000 might have been plenty. V2 was intended to be surface to air against Lancs and Forts. Not horribly overpriced very low capacity bomber replacement.

"May-June 1943 only sank two ships for every U-boat lost, ending the Battle of the Atlantic"

WHAT? OK, this section is jingoistic made-up nonsense. Battle of the Atlantic continued until May 1945. Read bloody Wikipedia or any respectable history from any participant. Enigma decrypts neutered some of the U boat impact as did mostly the Mark 5 Sunderlands and the few Liberators - that were only ever available to Coastal Command in very limited numbers.

Funny no mention of the US's reluctance to even adopt convoys, appearing almost as reluctant as they had in WW1.

Sevastopol and Stalingrad did not forget blitzkreig. Did you forget what you wrote only a dozen paragraphs earlier? The Nazis had terrible logistics, under-mechanisation and limited fuel. What were the length of supply lines around Sevastopol and Stalingrad? Bliztkreig required the spearhead be mechanised and well supplied.

Enough. I give up. :)

<comment><USER2> U-boats continued sailing right up till the end of the war, but after suffering huge losses in 1943's "Black May" ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_May_(1943)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_May_\(1943\))) they stopped challenging the North Atlantic convoys directly. Merchant tonnage sunk dropped precipitously at that point. After mid-1943 the U-boats were an annoyance to the Allies, not an existential threat.

<comment><USER5> The Battle of the Atlantic was sheer war of attrition and tonnage. The Allies were pouring far more in at the top by 43, with the expectation that some would get through. The strength of numbers of the long range Sunderland 5s - that started replacing the III in 44, Beaufighters, and Mossies meant they were far more effective, particularly out in Biscay. German effectiveness declined really only from 44 on - there was a pretty major and effective U boat campaign in late 43 going into the winter. It just wasn't as effective as the previous year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a fascinating but gruesome story behind why so many V2 rockets misfired. This kept me up at night after I first read it

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

TLDR the Nazis used slave labor to build V2s, and then the USA hired the slave masters (and ensures they didn't stand trial at Nuremberg)

<comment><USER7> That is truly morally ambiguous, but wasting his intellect would not put man on the moon.

So its the matter of valuation (quite impossible task), but then again when a plane crashes someone has to calculate how much your relatives' life were worth to pay compensation.

That's probably the logic behind what happen to nazi scientists. They were worth more alive then dead (also both sides were hunting for them not just USA).

<comment><USER6> I agree it's not cut and dry.

However, we cannot be sure we wouldn't have reached the moon or achieved other great things without Operation Paperclip. It's not like all the rocket scientists were Nazi elites. E.g. Goddard was American.

<comment><USER7> Yes I agree absolutely, but its undeniable that they accelerated current efforts both soviet and us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Germans were delusional, it's correct. They expected the British empire and the USA to join the Axis through political means and fight communism alongside them. A long war was never an option for them. How naive. In 1941 Rudolf Hess even took a plane alone to fly to the UK to try and convince the British lords to join the Axis. One of the most surrealistic thing they did. Incredible.

<comment><USER9> Except that King Edward VIII was a known Nazi Sympathizer. If he hadn't abdicated the throne things could have been much different.

<comment><USER5> Erm the monarch held no power as head of state during the war years - the few remaining symbolic powers were just that - symbolic. Victoria was the last to actually use one after she was essentially backed into a corner by Palmerston not naming a replacement PM, despite months of avoiding in parliament. That was the mid 1850s.

Now, had you mentioned that a good proportion of the pre-war Tory party were Nazi sympathisers you might be on to something. Notably including Halifax who was offered the premiership before Churchill, after Chamberlain resigned.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to save the planet - <AUTHOR>

Good day; people of the web. I cannot write code; I cannot impress you with my insight in this field. However, I respect yours. I knew I was going to be a scientist at the age of 8.Now when I have spent time in the science community I have seen gigantic issues. Easily solved, but by tradition: left alone.
 Unproductively of it leads to lot of cases of young people dropping science by simple exhaustion on the earliest of stages of education. Or worse; concentrating on the paperwork
However; science is simple. Science is practical.There are structures and principles.There are rules of nature.Everyone can do it. Those are the things from the top of my head that truly are in need of hacking: Chemical Safety Risk App.
 Used daily. We are talking about information from shops selling chem. Volume is around 2 a4 pages of text on reactants and products.
 Information is hard to find on the web  with its filters;existing systems simply lack the products. This is a  big time thief. 3D-game with bio-lego from atoms. Biochemistry, genetic and biology are really in need of such a tool. How to save the planet: Presentation webpage. Let me explain. Do you know of the lets say; ten newest realistic methods in need of funds to cure cancer? No.Well, you are not alone. It takes around 10 years until existing research; is heard,if it ever is. Problems of our planet need to be presented well. Solutions need to be presented well. Open discussion needs to exist. Why this problem is not solved has no answer. Thank you for your time. Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> The planet is doomed. Stop trying.

<comment><AUTHOR> The planet is a stone in space with a little bit of water and air. It has at least a million years left,until the Sun burns it down.Planet does not care if it is radioactiv or toxic,it went through four evolutions of life already;ex:development of oxydent being what killed pre-lifeforms,just one of the things that just kind of happen. Human race does not have that kind of time; like a spieces of butterflies overloading the curve of resources we are going to go die by choice;by need,or by accident in a couple hundred years. With how things look right now; the new black plauge is mutating in birds,rats,house cats and dogs;some of the most complex and deadly viruses are made into biochemical weapons and socially people are unable to unite. Those are the problem that needs education and solution.</comment></comment>


Show HN: April Fool's Pranks - <AUTHOR>

Instead of saturating the frontpage with April Fool's pranks, why don't we keep all the jokes under this thread?<p>It works just like a subpage for just April Fool's pranks.<p>* Submit your link with comment. <comment><AUTHOR> From Google,

* Google Nose: <https://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/nose/help.html>

* Gmail Blue: [https://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/promos/blue/index....](https://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/promos/blue/index.html)

Edit: Gmail Tap removed.

<comment><USER2> <https://www.youtube.com/theyoutubecollection>

<comment><USER3> This is also from last year, IIRC

<comment><USER4> Yup. Youtube's prank this year is pretty great: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H542nLTTbu0>

<comment><USER5> I was pretty impressed with the 12 hours of non-stop youtube readings. Dedication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote a file system that gives weather reports: <http://github.com/bhickey/cloudyfs>

<comment><USER7> If you did this for Plan 9 it wouldn't be a joke. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if Plan 9 has already got this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> April Fools on the Python bugtracker

#17587 Have all core library modules imported by default

<http://bugs.python.org/issue17587>

<comment><USER9> Even though I know its a joke, a part of me still raged inside.

        And can we put an & and a $ somewhere in Python?  I think these feel very cool to use, and are easily one of >the best things I miss from more advanced languages like C and PHP.
        Let's be honest, doesn't this:

            $item->method();

        Look a lot more professional than:

            item.method()

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> INTERCAL on Interstates <http://www.intercaloninterstates.org/>

Stackoverflow rolls out "Chat with an expert" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5470570>

<comment><USER11> INTERCAL on Interstates looked so close to real... Almost disappointed it's an April Fools :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Atlassian JIRA Jr. <http://www.atlassian.com/jirajr>

<comment><USER12> This is slightly tempting for the teenagers I wrangle -- mostly for the embarrassment factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Youtube on the selection of a winner: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H542nLTTbu0>

<comment><USER14> As always, the really good stuff is in the comments.

I'd like to think they're playing along, but...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Twitter's pretty good: <http://blog.twitter.com/2013/03/annncng-twttr.html>

<comment><USER16> This is great. I get the impression that they are mocking app.net.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you can get access to someone's iPhone for 30 seconds you can install a web app that looks just like the iPhone interface but with various surprises when anything is pressed.

<http://www.iphoneception.com>

</comment><comment><USER18> Google Analytics - Visits from The International Space Stations: [http://carlsednaoui.com/post/46805160838/google-analytics- ha...](http://carlsednaoui.com/post/46805160838/google-analytics-happy-april- fool)

<comment><USER19> Yeah i just submitted my newest startup via a Show HN and since then been watching Real Time Analytics.

I had no idea what that dot in the middle of the ocean was with 41 visitors; joke was lost on me for a bit. Cute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some awesome CSS for messing up your colleagues' browsing experience for April Fool's day: <https://github.com/wesbos/aprilFools.css>

</comment><comment><USER21> Lambda the Ultimate is moving to Facebook: <http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/4709>

</comment><comment><USER22> stereotypical job ad for a startup

probably by 500 startups

<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sof/3715368374.html>

saw it posted on YC jobs

<comment><USER16> Are you sure this isn't real?

<comment><USER22> On second thought it could be real, but the notion of a startup needing a VP of engineering with 5 years of rails 3 experience seems absurd given how long rails 3 has been in existence.

edit: there are several articles about this company since 2011, so I guess it _is_ real...

edit2: it's hard to take seriously with this line from the ad: "Yes, we realize that the best technology leaders are highly sought after. So why should you join us over that sexy social - local - mobile - sharing start-up?"

<comment><USER23> We specifically ask for, "5+ years of experience building and managing strong engineering organizations," not "5+ years of rails 3..." lol

re: "edit2" - we're basically trying to convey that we're solving a real and serious problem (helping retailers compete with amazon). it's actually resonated with potential candidates since smart and motivated engineering leaders don't want to just be part of "the next groupon..."

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the response. You know your metrics better than I do -- the ad just stood out to me because the tone conflicted with the message.

<comment><USER23> that's a good point...thinking of some edits...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I put this one together. I tried to be pretty blatantly obvious but some people still bought it.

[http://www.cnn.com.2013.04.01.supreme.court.settles.marriage...](http://www.cnn.com.2013.04.01.supreme.court.settles.marriage.debate.ausaliwvpqqervzubufoolahahaiamwaxon.viewthesource.org/index.html)

<comment><USER25> May I say, a brilliant use of domain names.

<comment><USER24> You may good sir! Fooled several friends with my use of the subdomain. Even after I told them I wrote it, "how'd you get an article on cnn?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been keeping a list of every website that puts up an april fools' day joke since 2004. Here's the 2013 list (submit to here if you like too) <http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/2013.html>

</comment><comment><USER27> [http://itsfoss.com/linus-torvalds-to-join- microsoft/?utm_sou...](http://itsfoss.com/linus-torvalds-to-join- microsoft/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ItsFoss+%28Its+FOSS!+An+Open+Source+Blog%29)

</comment><comment><USER28> Charlie Stross goes into movie production

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/press- re...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/press-release- stross-uncloaks-.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> OkCupid Labs Date Courier (find dates via snail mail): <http://www.okcupidlabs.com/blog/2013/03/30/Date-Courier.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> Google Japan has one on character input methods: <http://googlejapan.blogspot.jp/2013/04/google-patapata.html>

And Kotaku is not late to the party either: [http://kotaku.com/tiny-nintendo- consoles-made-out-of-lego-46...](http://kotaku.com/tiny-nintendo-consoles- made-out-of-lego-464803244)

<comment><USER30> Kotakus Posting is real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> We did Goal Tracking by Mail and we're actually honoring these.

[http://blog.lift.do/post/46554731666/v0-1-goal-tracking- by-m...](http://blog.lift.do/post/46554731666/v0-1-goal-tracking-by-mail)

People seem to want an Android version of Lift, but we thought a nice, high- res paper version would do more to increase our reach.

</comment><comment><USER32> Last year I uploaded an empty package to Ubuntu titled "Free Launchpad Karma" -- the idea was that whenever an Ubuntu developer wanted more Launchpad karma points, they could easily file a bug against it, close a bug against it, upload a new version, provide a translation, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER33> Google Analytics - We were visited from International Space Station - [http://www.merocampus.com/blog/2013/04/01/merocampus- visited...](http://www.merocampus.com/blog/2013/04/01/merocampus-visited-from- international-space-station-google-april-fool-joke)

</comment><comment><USER34> Supposedly "Wearing Unerdwear can solve EVERY SINGLE problem you can imagine"

[https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.293334650798987.10...](https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.293334650798987.1073741827.212072642258522&type=3)

</comment><comment><USER35> Google Analytics: Visitors from the International Space Station - Control Room

[http://nirvanatikku.tumblr.com/post/46833558732/google- analy...](http://nirvanatikku.tumblr.com/post/46833558732/google-analytics- april-fools-day-visitors)

</comment><comment><USER36> Just found this thanks to a late night diff eq. problem set:

[http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/04/01/introducing-the- wolf...](http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/04/01/introducing-the-wolframalpha- handwritten-knowledge-engine/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Wolfram|Alpha Handwritten Knowledge Engine: [http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/04/01/introducing-the- wolf...](http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/04/01/introducing-the-wolframalpha- handwritten-knowledge-engine/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Type 'peep' at <http://www.wnyc.org/>

</comment><comment><USER35> Android Dev Portal "Add New Awesome Application"

[http://nirvanatikku.tumblr.com/post/46785199420/add-new- awes...](http://nirvanatikku.tumblr.com/post/46785199420/add-new-awesome- application)

</comment><comment><USER38> The Guardian has announced 'Guardian Goggles'.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/apr/01/guard...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/apr/01/guardian- goggles-video)

</comment><comment><USER39> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_qFFHC0eIUc)

Google's Find Treasure Mode Prank

</comment><comment><USER40> Google Play - [http://www.fortechiesonly.com/2013/04/google-android- develop...](http://www.fortechiesonly.com/2013/04/google-android-developer- april-fools.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Imgur upload via Snail Mail: <http://imgur.com/blog/2013/04/01/upload-via- snail-mail/>

</comment><comment><USER41> deviantART launches deviantHEART, a dating site for artists: <http://www.deviantart.com/deviantheart/>

</comment><comment><USER42> Everest launches a startup within a startup, code named: Project Pink Elephant <http://everest.com/about>

<comment><USER43> Hopefully they've figured out limbo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> My favorite is Craigslist's new mobile site: <http://Chicago.craigslist.org>

</comment><comment><USER45> Google Nose

<http://www.google.com/nose>

</comment><comment><USER46> GMail Blue... <http://www.gmail.com/blue>

</comment><comment><USER47> iRoll - create fake iPhone apps to rickroll others. <http://iroll.co/>

<comment><USER48> I was expecting your link to be a rickroll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Someone does this every year and the jokes still dominate the front page.

Some people get upset about this and some people let those people know that it's not a big deal because it's only one day out of the year.

This discussion is repeated on every joke submission.

<comment><USER50> <meta>Next year, I'm going to cite your comment in the 2014 version of this thread and say "And someone will comment ahead of time, explaining what will inevitably happen throughout the day"</meta>

<comment><USER51> Funniest thing is that someone said _that_ in the 2011 version.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2394349>

<comment><USER52> Not seeing it. Got a link to the specific comment?

<comment><USER51> Look again, I'm _sure_ you'll find it ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


HN NY: Come hack.a.bit at the bit.ly hackathon 9/15 from 6:00pm to midnight - <AUTHOR> http://hackabit.com/ <comment><USER2> Great things happen at hack.a.bit

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/visualizing-the- wik...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/visualizing-the-wikileaks- war-logs/)

</comment><comment><USER3> so who's going, and what are you working on?

<comment><USER4> I'm going. iPhone app I've been working on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where is this taking place? I wanted to go...

<comment><USER6> 416 West 13th St. Suite 203 New York, NY 10014

<comment><USER5> Nice, thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Protect loved ones from online scams? - <AUTHOR> In the past some of my loved ones fell into a variety of online and phone scams. Experience in development has helped me personally, but even I've been taken advantage of when my guard was down.
Most of my efforts helping others were too little or too late: educating after the fact, Ubuntu Linux (too incompatible), password managers (left unused), etc.
How does the HN community protect their loved ones from these things? <comment><USER2> What really irks me is getting an email like this:

        Shipping account suspended

        Dear XXXX,
        FedEx shipping privileges for account number ending in NNNN
        have been suspended. To access and update your credit card
        data, log in to FedEx® Billing Online.

        Log in today (Button)

This just screams "scam", especially since I haven't used the FedEx account in months. When I log into FedEx (not using the link in the email), my account shows a zero balance and no outstanding messages. So I send the email, with headers, to "email@example.com". (They never answered.)

I call FedEx Revenue Services, and they can't find anything wrong with the account. They tell me the account isn't suspended. They want the expiration date on my credit card updated before the end of the month, but it hasn't expired yet.

I look at the message source, and it looks like it's really coming from FedEx, and the link really goes to FedEx. I keep looking, and can't find anything wrong in the headers. It's a legit email. It's just stupidity at FedEx.

Sloppy work, FedEx, sending out an email like that. You're training people to click on links they should not click on.

<comment><USER3> It is very easy to spoof an email address[1], so it could be that it is someone from outside of FedEx.

[https://superuser.com/questions/505503/how-can-you-fake- an-e...](https://superuser.com/questions/505503/how-can-you-fake-an-email- address)

<comment> unkown-unknowns However you can still check the IP address of the mail server that sent the mail. Some things to look at:

1\. Check PTR for IP and verify that the A or AAAA record for that name points back to the same IP.

2\. Compare with IP address of server that sent previous mail to you.

3\. Check SPF records for the domain.

4\. Check MX records for the domain. Keep in mind that they might be using different servers for sending than for receiving though and that MX is for receiving.

<comment><USER4> These sound like good steps to determine if a sender is legitimate. Is there a plugin that already does this for existing email clients?

<comment><USER5> Google gmail and inbox both show this information if you click the "view full message" option on any particular email

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure GP means Is there a client that runs this check in the background, and either tells you or marks it Spam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My mother is a daily user of the internet with extremely limited knowkedge and she has difficulty understanding even basic computer messages.

I designed a series of rules + practices which are stated as absolutes (i.e. no margin for interpretation) and they have worked well:

1\. All emails with claims are false, even if I send them. Not only spam but also "snopes-like" scams from her friends. This rule always has precedence over anything else. 100% Never trust an email content. If it looks like there could be really bad consequences from ignoring an email, forward it to me and I'll decide.

I told her "imagine a stranger calls you on the phone and reads you the content of an email. Would you trust it?". She understood the metaphor.

2\. She doesn't know her passwords. They are stored in the browser's keyring. Thus, she can't provide credentials to phishing websites.

3\. She can click on links from emails, unless it is from a bank, because she knows her bank credentials. The combination of (2) and (3) makes the internet very usable for her as she can browse with confidence.

4\. She only logs in to the bank website from her browser bookmark. She uses Safari's "Top sites" heavily, and she has learned to Google basic stuff.

5\. If there is a weird message on a website, treat it as an email (i.e. it is false, etc)

6\. Adblock is installed

7\. She is beginning to recognize OS prompts, like icloud messages (storage, passwords). She knows she can never click on one before sending me a picture by IM. For these prompts password managers don't auto-input them and that's a problem. I must confirm its validity and then she has permission to open a notepad where her passwords are written and transcribe it to the prompt. But she always needs to send me a pic before opening the password notebook.

8\. I have enabled Gatekeeper on the mac, thus she can't open binaries from the internet, only documents. Word macros are disabled.

9\. If something doesn't look right, call/IM me on your cellphone

She is a very simple user and her needs are limited to websites, mail, office and a few games, so this works well. YMMV.

Maybe there are more rules that I can't remember right now, but the combination of not knowing her passwords + password manager + not trusting email + unable to run unknown binaries + adblock has worked wonderfully.

Let me know if you have more suggestions

<comment><USER8> IPads work quite well for older users. They don't solve the password problem, but at least some of the other problems are avoided.

<comment><USER7> She likes the big screen of her 24" imac. But when it breaks down I'll definitely get her an ipad. She took a long time before getting into the smartphone world, but she loves her iphone, especially Siri.

<comment><USER8> Maybe a large iPad Pro?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I bought my mom an iPad (the largest one at the time) and bought her a printer that works with her iPad. In the two years since that, the only call that I've ever received was "Does this pop up that says 'OK/Cancel' that says my iPad is infected with a virus actually mean anything?" "No, Mom." "Ahh, ok. I didn't think so."

Works like a charm.

<comment><USER10> If you install an ad blocker for Safari that will get rid of most of that as well. I have found Adguard works well and is free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have locked down their OS's with Unchecky, UAC to full, non-Admin accounts, all Win10 (love the forced updates).

Installed a PiHole to clear all their devices from malicious ads / malicious url's.

Seriously, since I installed PiHole my maintanance visits / calls have dropped by 90%.

They don't use a CC. Maybe once a year for flight tickets but I tell them to check the URL / https.

And I've told them 100 times: companies do not call you. They don't. Ignore calls!

<comment><USER12> +1 for Pi-hole: [https://pi-hole.net](https://pi-hole.net)

It's better than a browser extension, as it works for mobile devices and native apps (e.g. Skype). Remember to set a backup secondary DNS server in case it goes down though.

If the router allows changes to the DHCP DNS settings then make them there. Some don't, so then you'll need to use the Pi for DHCP too.

However, keep in mind that it provides an unauthenticated web interface that exposes all domains that have been visited. This could be a privacy risk. It's pretty easy to simply use dnsmasq on its own if you don't want the extras.

You can also use this technique to make some news sites less annoying: [https://unop.uk/block-bbc-breaking-news-on-all- devices](https://unop.uk/block-bbc-breaking-news-on-all-devices)

No, BBC News still doesn't support HTTPS (it's now over 6 months later than they said it would).

<comment><USER13> >However, keep in mind that it provides an unauthenticated web interface that exposes all domains that have been visited.

No, it doesn't. At least not since version 3.x with which i started using it...

If you want more detail than just a broad overview, you need to login (though that is just a password, no username needed)...

[https://imgur.com/a/jjcYp](https://imgur.com/a/jjcYp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is how I did it: I got my mom an iPad. Has worked out well.

It's mostly immune to spyware, she's smart enough to know she shouldn't click on any random e-mails and not to use the same password of her email account anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER15> July has been made scammer / spam month for whatever reason. Saw it on a British website... so not sure if it applies to the United States, but just because I had been receiving hundreds of spam emails to my website's email account, I can imagine that other people are receiving the same amount of spam.. and some are even falling for it.

As a result of this, I wrote a series of articles to try an educate my readers on the dangers of replying and/or dealing with any spam or scam emails.

Here are the links:

[http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/avoid-phishing- sc...](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/avoid-phishing-scams/)

[http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/truth-seo- marketi...](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/truth-seo-marketing- companies/)

[http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/confessions- profe...](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/confessions-professions- spam-email/)

[http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/how-to-notice- a-s...](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/how-to-notice-a-scam- email/)

[http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/teaching- children...](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/teaching-children- about-online-privacy/)

</comment><comment><USER16> The only way is really to educate them. I've dealt with this quite a bit with my family, and telling them what to be wary of has helped a bunch.

<comment><USER17> There's always reducing the circle you consider "loved" ones, and CRISPR…

<comment><USER18> It's part of new natural selection I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Imo educating works best, you can only mitigate the problem with technology. I've only installed and configured a content blocker on grandma's computer as a passive measurement against scams and for general benefits.

Otherwise I just advised her not to give out personal information, including email, phone and credit card numbers. And don't click links in emails she does not recognize the sender or looks suspicious. Best not to even open them. In doubt, I'm usually available to doublecheck.

Pendrives caused a lot of problems in the past, luckily broadband solved most of the file transfer issues.

</comment><comment><USER20> The internet just isn't safe for some users right now. Encourage them to call you if they're doubtful, never click Ads and to never interact with people that initiate contact with them first.

<comment><USER21> Its not just ads.

SEO affects search engines like Google, putting shady businesses high in the search result (sometimes even #1).

I've seen this first hand with my mother who needed a locksmith because the lock on her front door broke. The cost of 'repairing' was well over 500 EUR, and the lock wasn't repaired at all, it had to be completely replaced afterwards by a real locksmith which was legit but due to the damage the scammer caused was expensive a well. This is a known scam trick going on in The Netherlands, but probably just one of the many examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Something I try to do is whenever forever I spot an obvious facebook scam (share to win free vouchers or holiday or something) -- I explain in the comment to that person exactly what I saw that makes me suspect it's a scam.

It's a subtle way to educate without "telling" which puts alot of people of. For more direct approaches, see some of the other comments about rules for his mother, etc. :)

I find this helpful as 90% of the time these scams are super obvious to me but not others, so I try to share that knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER23> Besides adblock + auto updates, tell them how some of the scams work. Show them some example screenshots/videos etc. from different areas. Enough to make them think twice about what they are allowing to run on their computer. Scammers are usually lazy, many times their email addresses, website address, or web design might give it away - so doing a few side by side comparisons may help.

There's also a lot of youtube videos that could be easier to send and less boring to go through. Ex:

\- [https://www.youtube.com/embed/bjYhmX_OUQQ?rel=0](https://www.youtube.com/embed/bjYhmX_OUQQ?rel=0)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/embed/DXfrfbNk7jo?rel=0](https://www.youtube.com/embed/DXfrfbNk7jo?rel=0)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/embed/poFAzDCGLrI?rel=0](https://www.youtube.com/embed/poFAzDCGLrI?rel=0)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/embed/5zlnI3Bzslo?rel=0](https://www.youtube.com/embed/5zlnI3Bzslo?rel=0)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/embed/O4KJq0XXIy8?rel=0](https://www.youtube.com/embed/O4KJq0XXIy8?rel=0)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDBC1CF5C16D5585D](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDBC1CF5C16D5585D)

</comment><comment><USER24> What's the reason Ubuntu didn't work?

That's basically the setup I have with my dad. He's using Ubuntu on desktop, which I taught him to use. There wasn't much to teach. He really just wants to use a browser. I taught him how to scan documents and print documents as well. That's pretty much all he needs to do.

And then he has his iPad as well, and I taught him how to print stuff from his iPad too.

I also got him to use 1Password, and he has unique password for each site.

These are all things I've taught my dad to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Printing, games, and slower performance for things like Netflix and boot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Most "non-tech" people have a reasonably small attack surface, so my approach has been to try and milk the Pareto principle:

Here are some things I've found which are simple enough to implement but actually offer substantial gains. Learned mainly from helping partners and parents:

1\. Move them to Gmail. Email seems to still be the primary vector for most attacks and Gmail's filters are awesome.

2\. Get them on a less permissive OS. Shifting from Windows to OSX/iOS has made a huge difference.

3\. Teach them a reasonable password-generating method (correct-horse-battery- staple or some such). They are gonna forget and reset passwords regularly, which is OK. I gave up on getting them to habitually use a password manager.

4\. Force (coerce/bribe/cajole) them to use 2FA on critical accounts (email, FB)

5\. Tell them lots of anecdotes about hacks, things I spotted in my email, etc. As someone else pointed out, you can work in a lot of useful info in a memorable way in these anecdotes.

Tech does seem to be only part of the solution (and probably not even the major part). I've been doing some gig work for a company [[http://www.popcorntraining.com](http://www.popcorntraining.com)] that does story-based security awareness videos, mainly for corporates. They have pretty good results based on fairly small time investment by the participants.

Sadly, most of the players in this market seem to be focused on big companies at the moment, with a few starting to aim at SMEs. We've bounced around the idea of trying to help the consumer market, but its not yet been worthwhile for them.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you use the LogDog app, your online accounts are continously monitored for suspicious access. It sends an alert to your phone and prompts you to review the issue and change your password if necessary. We're trying to make it as understandable and as easy to operate as possible, so even technically-unsavvy people could benefit.

That being said, there's no getting around education. It's key to prevent a person from being scammed out of their passwords or oauth-access in the first place.

<comment><USER27> Never heard of LogDog, looks very interesting, thanks. Are you planning a web- only service, or must it be a native app? Some relatives of mine don't have smartphones but do use plenty of online services.

Are there other web-based services people here can recommend? Haveibeenpwned is great of course, but the horse has left the stable by that point, something that sniffs out suspicious activity before trouble occurs would be great.

<comment><USER26> Nothing immediate regarding a web-only service, sorry, but it obviously makes sense to expand the service in that direction.

HIBP is indeed great and you can actually subscribe via email to get real time alerts. It's limited to credentials exposed via dumps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> 1) Find out what their pain points are.

2) Develop or help them develop viable processes for their needs and abilities that will sidestep issues.

This involves a small amount of educating people, less than is needed for real internet literacy. The difference is it makes them literate enough to navigate the parts they actually use, without some huge burden of additional general information that they son&t really need and which will just interfere with them learning the pieces they actually need to know.

</comment><comment><USER29> When it comes to protecting login passwords from phishing emails, it is said that U2F hardware tokens are the best (yubikey etc) but it might not be the easiest solution for non-techies.

Good advice is to never click links in emails, but go manually to a given page (via Google perhaps) and log in yourself.

It's a bit easier if your family lives outside of English-speaking country when it comes to phishing. Phishing spam is either English, or a poor google translate 95% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER30> +1 for the iPad recommendations.

I'd also recommend a Chromebook, for folks who don't like our can't asked the iPad option.

</comment><comment><USER31> uBlock Origin blocks some scammer websites (just configure it). It's not a complete solution though.

</comment><comment><USER32> Gift your loved ones an iPad or Android tablet, maybe also enable some parent control to limit their exposure. 90% of end users don't need a notebook, a tablet is the safer alternative.

<comment><USER33> Not Android. The lack of updates and ease of installing a third party APK is just too high (not mentioning the occasional malware in the Play Store itself).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> i gave up when i saw they use apps to help their phone manage memory and battery. and they claimed that despite ads in the app forced lock screen, it was worth it.</comment>


The Art of Coffee Brewing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@LukeHoersten/the-art-of-coffee-brewing-488c935264e2

<comment><USER2> The major differences in my methods, which were originally based on Internet searching but I have just gone with, are:

-Brew time: I do 7 minutes, but I tend to go longer because I either forget about it or forget to check the time when I start. I have done up to 10-15 minutes and haven't really noticed a significant effect on quality.

-Stirring: I stir my grind/water relentlessly. I don't like to see a bunch of the grind sitting at the surface of the water.

-Water temperature: I've checked the temperature after boiling and it drops pretty quick. I've read recommendations that it is brewed below boiling, but still 180-200 degrees. I use my water very quickly after removing from boil and haven't had a "burnt" taste.

-Coarseness: I set my Coffee Mate grinder to the coarsest setting, as the author says because I don't like the grind slipping through and getting into my drink. I've even started fingering out the fine grind that sticks to the front of the container so as to not get it in the french press.

-Beans: I recently started thinking it might be a good idea to try some more freshly roasted beans. I went to the local coffee shop and asked for popular beans that they go through a lot, and also tried a cup brewed at the shop (I normally get espresso-based drinks there). I just feel that my Trader Joe's Bolivian beans taste even fresher for some reason, even though they are probably roasted months before I buy them. Maybe the seal they do on the cans really does keep them fresh regardless of roast date? Still willing to try out other options.</comment>


Scientists skeptical about Theranos blood test - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/science-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-2015-4#ixzz3YO784nGj <comment><USER2> So the CEO dropped out of Standford at 19, started this company, and now she's a billionaire? I can see dropping out to found Facebook, but a biotech company?

What skills did she have that allowed her to do this, and where did she get the money to hire all the needed PhDs and get through FDA testing? How would she have even gotten access to the equipment and test subjects to prove that her idea was worth investing in outside of an academic setting? The whole thing sounds crazy.

Edit:

I read Elizabeth Holmes Wikipedia page and it says that when she was a sophomore at Stanford, her Chemical Engineering professor encouraged her to found the company. But I can't find anything about about any breakthroughs she made that warrant the millions in early investments. No one seems to want to talk about what exactly it is they're doing, and they're board of directors has a former Secretary of State, a former Secretary of Defense, and a former Senator. The fact that she's also been able to maintain 51% of this company is also astounding.

<comment><USER3> The New Yorker had a good article that covers her background. [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/blood- simpler](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/blood-simpler)

<comment><USER4> > Although she can quote Jane Austen by heart, she no longer devotes time to > novels or friends, doesn't date, doesn't own a television, and hasn't taken > a vacation in ten years. Her refrigerator is all but empty, as she eats most > of her meals at the office. She is a vegan, and several times a day she > drinks a pulverized concoction of cucumber, parsley, kale, spinach, romaine > lettuce, and celery.

Every time I read about these ultra successful people, I just think they are freaking machines... and I don't mean that in a derogatory or mean way.

I am genuinely amazed people can operate like that. I know I can't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What stops the skeptics from doing their own tests by walking into a service center and having their blood analyzed for all tests possible and doing the same with their blood for conventional tests? Or an even large scale test?

If their concern is genuine (rather than a way to get a look under the hood of a competitor for the current sellers of such services) there are multiple ways in which they could get their verification without inside information on how Theranos does its thing.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. This is what I was hoping for from an investigative piece on Theranos. Even an n=1 sample where the author had his or her blood tests done with Theranos and a competitor would be worth more than all the speculation in this article.

<comment><USER5> Especially if such a test gave different results than the accepted competitors test.

<comment><USER7> But they would have to spend money on tests, wait for them to finish and there might be a possibility tests won't show what they hoped for(even if their hypothesis is true). While speculation is cheap, fast and always trueish enough to warrant an article.

<comment><USER5> You mean they to hope that the tests would work as advertised? After all we're all in it for the best of the patient and a decrease in healthcare costs or an increase in quality for the same price, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm kind of perplexed why Apple needs FDA approval for their watch to measure blood oxygen, yet Theranos can develop a completely novel blood testing technique whose results could impact major medical decisions without having to conduct a single study.

(note that I'm not saying that Theranos hasn't conducted studies, rather the FDA doesn't require any)

<comment><USER9> FDA testing regulations loophole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The composition of the board has always bothered me. It's not at all clear what business value a lot of those people bring. Maybe opening certain doors, but I would've thought in such an area, as the article suggests, you would want more medical expertise.

That should be a little bit of a red flag to anyone - since the history of scientific fraud is full of lone specialists who couldn't brook explaining the technical details to anyone else qualified to understand them.

<comment><USER11> It's also interesting there are so many foreign policy heavyweights, and many in a certain range on the political spectrum. I'm not suggesting some conspiracy, I just wonder why.

<comment><USER12> One big problem in the healthcare in africa, is the cost and complexity of blood tests. And we know lab-on-chip technology can fix that, but nobody is working on that, because of "business model" problems.

But that's one thing a successful theranos could do, and foreign policy is important at that.

<comment><USER10> This is complete misdirection though. It has no relevance to a biotech company. If the test is cheap and easy, then charities and governments will carry it into Africa. There's no fiscal reason to pay people with foreign policy experience, because it has nothing to do with foreign policy. Its miles away from being relevant to the central technology, and African charity is not how one achieves a multi-billion valuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is interesting to look at their test menu at: [https://www.theranos.com/test- menu?ref=our_solution](https://www.theranos.com/test-menu?ref=our_solution)

You can see here that they have replicated most of the routine blood tests out there. Interestingly, they have also replicated some of the archaic and pretty useless blood tests like Rheumatoid Factor. They also offer Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR). This is pertinent because ESR is actually a physical property of blood, it is performed by measuring the rate at which red blood cells fall to the bottom of a tube. Perhaps they have developed a microfluidic method to measure this, but it wouldn't be a 'chemical process'.

But at the end of the day, they are offering the same tests that are currently available. If someone said to me we can now do the same old blood tests faster and cheaper, I would say that this is going to have very little impact on people's health. None of these tests are truly useful in prevention or screening unselected patients.

It does really seem that Theranos is a case of packaging the existing blood diagnostics and trying to capture a large part of the market. Exciting for investors I guess, but for patients or healthcare workers probably not so much. I wish they were doing something like cheap, easy and reliable comprehensive circulating DNA analysis, or proteomics, or something with immune cell function profiling...

I hope with all this cash they have a program for giving this technology to places that can't afford the usual lab infrastructure, that would be a very good thing.

<comment><USER14> _> If someone said to me we can now do the same old blood tests faster and cheaper, I would say that this is going to have very little impact on people's health. None of these tests are truly useful in prevention or screening unselected patients._

Are you kidding? I'm not completely familiar here, but I'd love to see a comparison of the current SOC for time between measurements of each of these endpoints and then a clinical judgement that genuinely nothing interesting happens in these levels at timeframes shorter than SOC.

A person I'm familiar with has a severe endocrine disorder which has eliminated nearly all of his natural hormone production. Instead, he must self-administer all hormones in proper dosages. In order to survive this way he has become _vastly_ more familiar with his own blood panel than most human beings ever would dare. On insurance dime he takes far more regular blood tests than you usually can get access to and understands, even very roughly, how events in his life, diet, exercise, stress, weather, etc begin to affect his blood chemistry and, subsequently, his life. In his, of course anecdotal, experience these are things that he cannot converse with doctors about because they're not able to speak confidently so far outside of SOC. It's not necessarily surprising stuff, but there's comparatively little real-world evidence to give it a bite.

Theranos could make similar analyses achievable for far more people. It opens an entirely new branch of clinical research---blood chemistry fluctuation at the level of perhaps up to multiple times per day over months at a reasonable cost in both testing and human time (given adequate distribution---Walgreens or, even, eventually, a home edition). You can't pretend that Phizer and GSK, known partners, aren't all about that.

 _> Exciting for investors I guess, but for patients or healthcare workers probably not so much._

Only if you assume SOC doesn't change under the influence of massively more available quantitative data.

<comment><USER13> I am assuming that SOC won't change under the influence of massively more available quantitative data, or at least any gains would be both slight and only applicable to a very small number of people. I think it is probably a misconception that humans are simple enough that measuring something (on Theranos' current testing panel) which is produced in ten different ways in five different organs from millions of cells and then diluted in 7 litres of blood is going to tell you anything revolutionary.

Certainly happy to be proven wrong, but there is a risk of harming people (financially, psychologically and perhaps medically) if you convince them that relentless tracking of their serum sodium tells them something useful.

<comment><USER14> I think the difference here comes in use. I agree that misinforming people about the meaningfulness of their blood chemistry is dangerous and low value. My target users are not Quantified Selfers (although my anecdote example might have thrown that off) but instead large scale clinical research sponsors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Let us not disregard the intelligence value the NSA or another other government entity gathers by doing a low resolution DNA sequencing all of the blood that goes through these machines for future reference. This covert use wouldn't be outside the bounds of proper skepticism with the involvement of ex-DoD members on the board.

Without proper auditing and disclosure of development processes and the new implementation of the diagnostic tests on chips (rather than disposable test media) it raises the question of how can anyone be sure exactly what and what not the machines are testing and recording? Slot machines in Las Vegas have their code more closely audited and monitored than this technology.

This situation just yells out for government regulation, peer review and reverse engineering.

<comment><USER5> Let me get this straight: because you're afraid that the NSA gets the hand on their data you want government regulation?

That's _both_ the government.

When you're giving blood to some entity and you want to safeguard what happens to the result regulation won't get that for you, but independent oversight, sample anonimization at the source (insofar as this is possible with a blood sample, your DNA _is_ your identity), decentralization of test locations (preferably as close to the source as possible), proven sample destruction and no keeping of data post sample destruction would be the way to go. Government oversight pretty much guarantees government access, the opposite of what you wish to achieve.

It will be very hard to create a service like this without a loophole that can be used to sneak such data out.

The best way in which this could be done is by having the tests made so foolproof that they can be done directly in the hospitals without centralized laboratories.

As for the board, you could say something similar about DropBox but I don't see them giving three letter agencies access to your account either without proper process and a court order.

Anything less could sink the company and given the amounts of money at stake here you can bet their competitors would love to do just that.

And who is to say that their competitors are not already acting in a similar manner anyway, they are after all processing about 100x more volume today.

<comment><USER16> Microsoft, Google, Apple are all NSA PRISM program participants! And nothing happened to them. Why should that be different with Dropbox? And isn't Dropbox using Amazon to store its data. It would probably be sufficient, if Amazon participates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> After a bit of digging I found another article that discusses the skepticism a bit more. The comments are worth reading as well.

[http://pathologyblawg.com/pathology-news/new-yorker- theranos...](http://pathologyblawg.com/pathology-news/new-yorker-theranos- founders-description-chemistry-process-comically-vague/)

</comment><comment><USER17> The article seems very confused - if the process is "patented", then surely the details aren't a secret? That's kinda the exact POINT of the patent system...

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand. The article talks about how there is nearly no publicaly available proof that these tests actually work, yet they're selling them in drug stores and hospitals all over the country? And all we know is that supposedly "Theranos' labs have been evaluated and deemed acceptable by drug companies, hospitals that work with them, Walgreens, and others"? Why is this legal?

</comment><comment><USER19> A little off-topic:

The famous Forbes-List estimates her wealth to be 4.5b, because she owns half of a company that has raised 200m. If she is somehow reasonable with the finances of her company, it is likely that her actual bank-account (or real- estate etc) is well below 10m - which is a hugh difference to all the old- money people far below her in the list.

</comment><comment><USER20> many scientific revolutions have occurred after improvement of measure instruments. If we start to have a continuous measure of our blood, there may be revolutionary discoveries about health.

<comment><USER21> ADR scanning could probably do this non invasively, it can even pick up prions in blood - [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2008164/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2008164/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hey, can we test your blood? We are making blood tests more accessible. No, we won't tell you what we are doing with your blood or how we are doing it or even if it works. What do you mean how does this make blood tests more accessible? Look, don't worry, just trust us, after all we have Henry Kissinger on the board, so we must be on the level.

</comment><comment><USER22> This title seems kinda weird. Can a mod make it more about the fact that the test method is in question rather than that someone got rich because they invented it?

<comment><USER23> Now that you point it out, I agree. We changed the title to make it more neutral.

<comment><USER5> I suspect the 'billionaire' was thrown in there as clickbait regardless, for some reason large numbers attract clicks.

<comment><USER23> It's surprisingly dismayingly automatic what attracts clicks, including on HN.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


'We've bought the wrong satellites': UK tech gamble baffles experts - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/26/satellite-experts-oneweb-investment-uk-galileo-brexit <comment><USER2> So the "trick" to location satellite systems is super accurate and stable atomic clocks. Each satellite basically pings a timestamp out and you derive your location from the difference in when you receive which ping from several satellites.

So the issue would be "how much more expensive is it going to be to equip these satellites with those clocks?" There might well be enough other uses for accurate clocks on these to make upgrading whatever they do have worth it. They might not be that expensive anymore.

Apologies for any misunderstandings im suffering here.

<comment><USER3> These satellites are likely too small to support a proper positioning system. They would need the radio transmitters, power system, and clocks all redesigned at which point you have an entirely new satellite.

<comment><USER4> > power system

I see different size estimates for these satellites but none of them suggest it would be hard for them to spend 10 watts on an atomic clock and 50 watts on a constant transmission. Am I forgetting something?

> radio transmitter

You can't just slap on a significantly simpler antenna?

> clocks

I have no idea here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article also fails to mention that OneWeb will probably go bankrupt within a few years anyway when SpaceX put 100X more satellites in orbit than they could ever dream of paying for.

</comment><comment><USER6> >the very talented lobbyists at OneWeb have convinced the government that we can completely redesign some of the satellites to piggyback a navigation payload on it.

I mean it's hard not to laugh.

All the major GNSS are herculean focused efforts over decades and the UK leadership reckons a ducktape solution will do.

They would be better off just negotiating (paying) access to military encryption on GPS and Galileo and calling it a day. Redundant encrypted is probably miles better than improvised something anyway

<comment><USER7> I disagree. GNSS systems _used_ to be very complex and hard to design.

Times have changed though, and nearly all the components are off-the-shelf now. If you already have the capability to launch a satellite, adding GNSS capabilities is a small extra step of adding an atomic clock and an antenna. All the signal generation can be software defined. All the complexity can live in models on the ground.

Sure, some of the 'high power anti-jam directional antenna' bits require more hardware, but the basics do not.

<comment><USER8> What would the difficulty level be of incorporating GNSS into SpaceX's StarLink satellites?

<comment><USER9> All the active station keeping required for small satellites in low orbits makes me wonder how much precision would suffer. Perhaps doable but requiring so much constant self-calibration that quality breaks down in areas without a network of active reference base stations? It's difficult to guesstimate the impact with magnitudes so far outside human scale.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Safe Kids Are Becoming Fat Kids - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121858701285435131.html?mod=loomia&loomia_si=t0:a16:g2:r1:c0.203618 <comment><USER3> I grew up in Bulgaria. We now live in USA, and have a baby.

Well, I'm just wondering where the hell, he's going to play.

When I was a kid, we were playing soccer on the street, or in between the blocks, throwing stones at other kids, fighting with plastic/wood swords, driving self-mad woodcars, and everyday I was with a scratch, or I dunno what else.

Even earlier when I was 4, me and my cousing, just an year older than me, somehow decided that we need one of our toys that was left in the other part of the city, so we just took off (I'm not sure what's the distance - but it was in the 5km-10km range) and started walking... Everybody got scared, family, etc. But it was fun story anyway...

This all was up till 8th grade, when I started programming, once that started, I kind of lost interrest in playing outside, it was just the Apple ][, my friend's Oric, and my other's friend PC.

Well I certainly want my kid to play for free, hopefully there are some parks around, but the whole society is a bit too much afraid. Yes, I know - <USER2> predators, kidnappers, yada, yada - it's a little 1984 that we us parents create though, for our own safety (so our mind is always safe).

<comment><USER4> Live in a more rural area. Buy a place with a big yard.

Cities don't seem very conducive to families. I think once you reach a certain mass of people, the worry-warts take over and take all the fun out of everything. In my experience, for what it's worth, more rural areas usually foster more fun play for the kids. Plus more rural settings encourage kids to use their imaginations to create fun play, which is sadly lacking today.

<comment><USER5> > worry-warts take over and take all the fun out of everything.

What an intriguing thing to say. Many people I've spoken to claim that all the fun is in the city. I guess it's a kind of caged, packaged fun.

<comment><USER6> How old are the people claiming all the fun is in the city?

If you are in your 20s, living in a city is where all the other people your age are. Cities are where they work, and therefore where they play. That's where you can find other people your age to play softball or soccer or even dodgeball or 4-square. It's where you have a selection of quality, live entertainment any weekend you want and go out dancing afterwards. It's where you can make friends and stay active.

But the resulting traffic of adults doing things makes it difficult for children to find room to play and explore. They can still do it, but it's more dangerous and less rewarding. That's where the 'worry-warts' come in.

<comment><USER5> Ah, that's right. People I spoke to were early 20s. Nevertheless, it still seems like the "pre-packaged fun" idea holds, as in, when they talked about "fun" it meant "something pleasurable that involves minimal effort"... unless you are actually playing softball in the city. My feeling is that location makes little difference, as long as it's passive consumption.

If it's about kids, then, I would assume that the parents are actively thinking about what activities are beneficial, and to a great extent, encouraging the kids to participate actively themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's say that a township little league wants to put its foot down and take the stance that there's no way they'll ban sliding into bases, as that's not baseball, and as a result it just isn't American.

The insurance company says that for the little league to get insurance it's going to cost twice as much if they allow sliding. Hence the little league has no choice but the pass on the cost of participation to the parents of the kids in the league. Or...the kids won't ever know what it's like to slide into a base. What an unfortunate situation.

The rising costs of insurance are preventing children from getting enough exercise, and hence leading to health problems in the future costing the insurance companies more money in health related payouts. If this is the case, then they should be able to offset any short term liability payouts by the long term gains of a healthier society.

<comment><USER8> One of my friends was in a full body cast for about four months because when he was in sixth grade someone slid into him while playing baseball and broke one of his legs and his pelvis. My little brother also broke his leg when someone slid into him. Neither has any persisting problems, but a lot of kids do. I have a friend whose legs are different lengths because she stepped in a hole while playing soccer and fractured her growth plates.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the article, but also realize that their argument is a straw man. Of course playground equipment that has the potential to give one a scrape or a bruise is good, assuming your kid is one of the ones who gets a scrape or a bruise. If your kid is one of the ones who dies or develops some lifelong problem then it's a different story.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps a lifelong problem like heart disease, diabetes, or stroke?

Seriously. How far do we take it? I knew a kid once who broke his little finger playing "Speed Uno". Is that too dangerous? Maybe the kids should all walk while playing soccer. There is a point somewhere, before the absurdity of tort law forces us all into padded rooms, where it doesn't matter anyway. Our bodies are safe but _we've all ceased to live._

<comment><USER10> How far do "we" take it? Who are "we" to parent other people's kids?

Ultimately it's up to the parents of the individual kids to decide how far _they_ take it with their individual kids. Parents have different parenting philosophies. And that's good--experimentation and variety is what leads to learning and understanding what works.

<comment><USER11> _Ultimately it's up to the parents of the individual kids to decide how far _they_ take it with their individual kids._

Unfortunately a lot of busybodies disagree with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _"... Why Safe Kids Are Becoming Fat Kids ..."_

There was another thread on a similar theme that is important ...

 _"... 'Risk-taking increases the resilience of children,' said one. 'It helps them make judgments,' said another. Some of those interviewed blamed the 'cotton wool' culture for the fact that today's children were playing it too safe ..."_ ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=267048>

I'd agree with that. One of the problems with not letting people try things is they have no real gauge on what is dangerous and what is not. So they tend to over react to things that are not dangerous and underestimate the danger when it really exists. I added more here ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=268065>

My conclusions still hold ... _"There is a downside though. If you do make a mistake there is a pretty good chance you will get injured. If you don't, you will fail to build up the store of experiences that you can call on in the future"_ ~ <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/2730793708/>

<comment><USER13> Having overprotective parents growing up in the burbs sucks. You grow up not feeling real. You grow up with this instinctive sense that you're missing something vital. I didn't know I was allowed by the universe to do anything that was messy, organic, or risky. I grew up with the idea that it wasn't for me: That I'd never dance so that someone would want to dance with me, or play music so someone would listen to me for a reason other than politeness, or kiss a girl, or do anything that couldn't be explained entirely in rational terms. I had to claim all that for myself, somehow in spite of my best judgment that it wasn't meant for me. It's a good thing that hormones make teenagers crazy. If I had been sane, I would've just quietly gone through all the motions, and accepted the overwhelming evidence that fate hadn't meant for me to really live.

Oh, wait, is this Hacker News or MySpace?

<comment><USER14> Incidentally, there's not a lot of evidence that the "hormones make teenagers crazy" theory is anything but nonsense. What we do know is that modern teenagers appear to "go crazy" -- for reasons that you seem to understand perfectly well -- and that the polite way to talk about that is to claim that it's "hormones", because the alternative explanation ("many young adults would rather risk death than be isolated and imprisoned in a handful of 'safe' suburban buildings") is way, way too candid.

<comment><USER15> It's hard to explain teenage craziness on hormones when other culture's teens don't go crazy with hormones.

<comment><USER13> I always thought the craziness was just better channeled by other cultures.

<comment><USER15> That's possible, but part of the "craziness" is intentionally choosing things that are destructive and anti-social.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The premise of the article is a bit far fetched. Kids aren't fat because our culture is safety obsessed. They are fat because Grand Theft Auto is more fun than little league or hanging from monkey bars. The riskier playground equipment of yesteryear does not stand a chance against thousands of computer games designed specifically to hold kids' attentions for long periods of time.

<comment><USER17> _They are fat because Grand Theft Auto is more fun than little league_

especially when the coaches are so obsessed with winning that the best kids always play the most fun and interesting positions, and the not-so-great kids sit on the bench an unfair amount of time

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Some schools have banned tag. Broward County, Fla., banned running at recess. Little Leagues forbid sliding into base. Some towns ban sledding. High diving boards are history, and it's only a matter of time before all diving boards disappear._

Is this sarcasm or is it real?

That's the scariest part, what surely would have once been a joke is now all too real.

It looks like the inmates have won. They are now running the asylum.

<comment><USER6> Little League is structured play to begin with. There's a lot that is fun, valuable, and risky about baseball without worrying about a rule meant to protect kids from trying things they aren't ready for yet-- breaking wrists and ankles in the process. It's not stopping kids from learning to slide on their own if they want.

That other stuff seems pretty dumb, though.

<comment><USER6> Just a follow-up, the author should check his source. Little League actually _requires_ sliding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> No, it's not because of a "safety craze," and the WSJ article never really goes out of its way to prove its point. Kids are fat, unhealthy, etc. because their parents feed them pure shit and are too lazy to move them away from the TV or whatever other sedentary activity they're involved in. In moderation, these things aren't very harmful, but if it's all you know, you're in trouble.

</comment><comment><USER20> I always thought "proper-safety" was uttered with bullshitty intentions.

</comment><comment><USER21> It always pleases me when I read articles like this one. The mere fact that the problem is being talked about with any regularity means that the pendulum is likely to start swinging back toward sanity. (By the way, I grew up in Broward County and attended the elementary school that pioneered banning running during recess.)

</comment><comment><USER22> Scarier than the playground bans was this line from the article;

>There's only one solution. Someone on behalf of society >must be authorized to make these choices. Courts must >honor those decisions. Otherwise, the pious accusations >of safety fanatics, empowered by the nearly universal >fear of being sued, will guarantee a cultural spiral >downwards toward the lowest common denominator.

Someone "authorized to make these choices" that the courts can't overrule (i.e. must "honor) is a pretty good definition of a dictator.

I suppose this guy is right that if individual rights and property rights are off the table then dictatorship is the only answer. Let's start with a playground dictator to get people used to the idea.

</comment><comment><USER23> There is no such thing as being 100% safe. Gotta let them go out and do their thing.

</comment><comment><USER24> Fun police......one time I was at an amusement park and the laser tag employees would kick you out if you ran.....imagine teenagers walking after each other with laser guns. It was pretty much the most ridiculous thing ever.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hey this is an interesting article and the premise kinda sort maybe makes sense to me, but the article itself makes the assertion that increased safety is creating fatter kids without making even the lamest attempt at proving a causal relationship. Correlation != causation, and in such an audacious claim in particular, especially for an article published in WSJ, that is utterly irresponsible.

</comment><comment><USER26> Penn & Teller just did an episode of Bullshit! on a related subject, parents who are paranoid that their kids might get abducted. See

[http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/previous_episodes.do?episodeid=...](http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/previous_episodes.do?episodeid=s6/stranger)

The episode is widely available over bittorrent as well.

</comment><comment><USER27> Excellent message - the safe path is the truly dangerous one. Challenge leads to growth and growth staves off the true dangers of passivity and stagnation that bog us in the deepest of physical and intellectual mires.

</comment><comment><USER28> And thus, we have java?

(Well, and Haskell.)</comment>


Widespread Vote-by-Mail Fraud Allegations in Paterson NJ City Council Election - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/close-results-in-paterson-vote-plagued-by-fraud-claims-over-3k-ballots-seemingly-set-aside/2425813/ <comment><USER2> 800 votes were "improperly bundled" and 2390 out of about 16000 had non- matching signatures, and people who say they didn't vote are recorded as having voted.

Sounds like the security features of vote by mail are working as designed. A very small race like this is the only scenario where someone might bother to attack it this way, and there are thousands of them, so if that's what this is, I guess it's not surprising to see it happen somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> Part of me wonders if this is an isolated incident, or some group setting the stage for something else.

Also, why is this on HN?

<comment><USER4> _> Also, why is this on HN? _

Remote voting has become a news item in the USA recently, partially because of Covid. And voting theory is pretty interesting - in this instance it seems like a classical security vs convenience trade-off.

The tradition of secret ballots goes back a long way but maybe with almost ubiquitous internet we've reached a point where it's no longer worth the cost.</comment></comment>


Develop Games for Apple TV - <AUTHOR> https://www.invasivecode.com/weblog/gameplaykit-state-machine/ <comment><USER2> the title is completely misleading. it isn't about apple tv game dev at all, its about using gameplaykit's state machine for apps (not games).</comment>


A Yahoo Employee-Ranking System Is Challenged in Court - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/technology/yahoo-employee-ranking-system-lawsuit.html <comment><USER2> They are bringing suit under the California WARN statues which really doesn't address the root of the issue: Employment at will. The US is the ONLY developed country which makes Employment at will public policy for non-union employees. All states in the US make at-will policy except Montana.

A much better system would be "Just Cause". Where causes for termination have to be defined, and can't be nebulous. The rest of the developed world implements this as public policy.

<comment><USER3> As a country, we (America) are dragging ourselves kicking and screaming to the future. Give us time.</comment></comment>


The average baby delivery now costs more than $4,500–even with insurance - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/01/how-much-does-it-cost-have-baby-us/604519 <comment><USER2> I can personally attest to this. My company has three choices for health insurance. All are HDHP. The hospital bill for the unplanned c-section was $30k before discounts and coverage, not including the doctors. I went straight to the out-of-pocket maximum for the year. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I even had an out-of-pocket maximum. The out-of-pocket cost for the birth was about $7600, not including the monthly paycheck deduction for the coverage. How many people can pay a bill like that?

I work with a lot of conservatives who insist that the treatment in Canada is a lot worse (I'm in USA) however according to unverified numbers I found on the Internet, Canada's infant mortality rate is quite a bit lower.

We shared the maternity ward with lots of people (medium sized city hospital) and I'm sure lots of them were Medicare. As far as I could tell they got the exact same treatment we did.

What the hell are we doing?</comment>


Oracle Internet Intelligence Map - <AUTHOR> https://internetintel.oracle.com/blog-single.html?id=Introducing%20the%20Internet%20Intelligence%20Map <comment><USER2> >> Notably, while both BGP routes and traceroutes completing into Syria drop to zero during these blackouts, the number of DNS queries surges. This suggests the outage may be asymmetrical —packets can egress the country but cannot enter...Visualizations such as these will now be widely available to the public.

Not a network engineer, but this isn't a rocket science, right? Linux tools like traceroute, etc. can do this since ages?</comment>


Major Downtime in Azure. Even the Status Page - <AUTHOR> http://status.azure.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a link to their status page which is down at the time of the posting. It's been down for at least 4 hours for us. Here is their support twitter feed: [https://twitter.com/AzureSupport](https://twitter.com/AzureSupport)</comment>


A Categorical Manifesto (1991) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.13.362&rep=rep1&type=pdf <comment><USER2> The paper argues that category theory is useful for computer science. Okay, which areas of computer science? I've studied quite a lot of algorithms, computational complexity, cryptography, computer graphics, machine learning - none of it seems to get any sizeable benefit from category theory.

Most CS folks who like category theory seem to be on the functional programming side of the fence, and use it to basically shovel code around, making things parameterize and plug together in just the right ways. Which is fine, but a far cry from all of CS!

<comment><USER3> Category theory is a useful tool for understanding the syntax and semantics of programming languages, and not just functional ones. The common practice of using category theory to provide abstraction within functional languages is interesting, but not _that_ interesting; unfortunately, it is what most people bring up, since it is so played-up by the Haskell community.

I would say the heart of computer science lies in type theory, computability, semantics, logic, etc., and category theory is evidently useful there. (I'm not talking about these things as limited to so-called "functional" languages, but rather in their capacity as forming a complete, coherent and unified theory for computation, functional or not.)

Certain other subfields of CS (the focuses of the so-called "American" combinatorial school, for instance) seem to get less use out of CT, I'll grant.

<comment><USER2> Does category theory lead to any interesting results in computability?

<comment><USER3> I am not aware that it does on its own, but I am not an expert in category theory, so I might be wrong.

Many (most?) applications of category theory are just that—they tend to elegantly marshall disparate theories into a more general framework.

For a very round-about answer, however—since Brouwer, we have understood that a computable function corresponds to a continuous function; continuity has a nice characterization in category theory in terms of sheaves; therefore category theory provides a basis for understanding computability. Or: the syntax of (some, but not all) computable functions is the internal language of an elementary topos. I could go on and on...

The pattern here is that we could have done all this without category theory (and in fact we did!): but it provides a unifying and enriching perspective as one of the three cornerstones of computer science: logic, type theory and category theory. (See Bob Harper's amusing post on the topic for more: [http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/the-holy- tri...](http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/the-holy-trinity/))

<comment><USER2> OK, I see. I'm a bit skeptical of anything that claims to be an enriching perspective but doesn't yield interesting results. This is similar to functional programming, which also feels beautiful and enriching to those who study it, but hard to show that it's superior in any measurable way.

I mean, I like Curry-Howard-Lambek as much as the next guy, but typed computation is mostly about constraining computation to make some things impossible, and I'd like the unifying perspective to be more about making new things possible. Somehow, the type stuff just feels boring and lifeless to me, in a way that e.g. algorithm design doesn't.

<comment><USER3> There are two lenses through which you can looked at typed computation, intrinsic and extrinsic. From the extrinsic perspective (which I actually prefer for semantical reasons), you are classifying the terms of a computation system which are already endowed with an operational semantics; in this sense, you are constraining computation. But I prefer to use the term "classify" rather than "constrain"; in systems built on this kind of theory, like Nuprl, for instance, you can give a type to any kind of computation you want, even the kinds that are typically ruled out in type theory (such as partiality).

The intrinsic perspective is where the computations and the types are inextricably linked. This is the proof-theoretic, gentzen-style way to look at it. In this case, it is harder to say that you are constraining computation; and in many systems in the intrinsic typing tradition, it is a lot more about inferring computation than constraining it.

However, do not go and think that the extrinsic perspective is "lifeless". I would say that it is the opposite, since this is the result of taking seriously the realizability-style semantics which underly the entire intuitionistic notion of Truth as understood by Brouwer and others. I consider the Curry-Howard Correspondence (the identification of program with proof) to be lifeless, in the sense that nothing is really happening there, since the programs are literally proofs of judgement in a formal system; but the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov correspondence, which is similar, is much more interesting--this is the classification of computations as _witnesses /realizers_ for propositions.

Intensional type theory is a theory of formal proof, where the terms are literally proofs of judgement: it's pretty dead in there. Type theory based on realizability, though, is more interesting, since the computations exist on their own and we categorize them as the essential computational content of propositions.

Once you go down the rabbit hole, what seems lifeless now may not then. Though based on what you have said about algorithm design, it is entirely possible that we simply have very different aesthetics for theories.

If you are interested in reading further, I wrote something here: [http://www.jonmsterling.com/posts/2014-10-29-proof-term- assi...](http://www.jonmsterling.com/posts/2014-10-29-proof-term-assignments- and-intuitionistic-truth.html). And follow the links which I give, since those are better than what I wrote!

<comment><USER2> Many thanks for writing that out! I can't parse most of it yet, but it looks like I have some nice pointers for further study :-)

<comment><USER3> Sure, no problem. Feel free to email me (jon at jonmsterling dot com) if you have any questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised and excited to see this here. Goguen's work on category theory in program design is very insightful and he generally is willing to speak at large terms as to "why CT is valueable" avoiding too much technicality when useful to do so.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Tossing Algebraic Flowers down the Great Divide":

[http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~goguen/pps/tcs97.pdf](http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~goguen/pps/tcs97.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> I know this is a real tangent from the content of this paper, but why is it that every academic PDF renders in such poor quality fonts[1]? My guess is it was done in Latex which seems to always produce results of this nature. It's really confusing why this quality keeps being quietly accepted by everyone.

[1] [http://picpaste.com/pics/c5f9cc612f213523876362234155499e.14...](http://picpaste.com/pics/c5f9cc612f213523876362234155499e.1415215368.png)

<comment><USER7> My guess is that it was turned into a PDF directly from a TeX DVI file with bitmap fonts rather than compiled directly into a PDF using outline fonts with pdflatex.

Some people are just used to using their existing document processing pipelines rather than using more modern tools like pdflatex, I guess.

Edit: the file predates pdftex. Back then, the file would've just been sent to a printer rather than rendered on screen for anything other than a preview, and it looks fine when rendered. If it was passed through pdflatex these days, it'd look much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Goguen was meant to be one of the two examiners for my doctorate (along with an external examiner from some spooky place) and was replaced late in the process by someone else.

Reading this reminds me of how cool category theory is, how I didn't use any in my thesis, and how I dodged a bullet :-)</comment>


Giant sloth vs. ancient man: fossil footprints track prehistoric hunt - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-giant-sloth/giant-sloth-vs-ancient-man-fossil-footprints-track-prehistoric-hunt-idUSKBN1HW2L0 <comment><USER2> I hate learning about all these extinct species we used to eat. I mean, they must have been super tasty. Stop tantalizing me and start Jurassic Porking these things already.

<comment><USER3> I do hope the day comes where we can have affordable lab grown meat and ideally of animals long gone.</comment></comment>


Bringing Wide Color to Instagram - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.instagram.com/bringing-wide-color-to-instagram-5a5481802d7d#.44soiw7he <comment><USER2> Here if anyone has questions on the implementation or such.

<comment><USER3> "When we started this project, none of us at IG were deep experts in color."

This is pretty astonishing to me. I always thought applying smartly designed color filters to pictures was basically Instagram's entire value proposition. In particular, I would have thought that designing filters to emulate the look and feel of various old films would have taken some fairly involved imaging knowledge. How did Instagram get so far without color experts?

<comment><USER4> Because it isn't complicated or novel to make compressed 8-bit jpegs have color filters. There are tools for the job and they've been around for a long time.

Working in a different color space than standard requires a little bit of familiarity and finesse that modifying 8-bit jpegs for consumption on the internet did not require.

Many photographers and printers are familiar with this dilemma in a variety of circumstances, where the cameras create images in a different color space and higher bit depth that can't be perceived at all with any technology or the human eye.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure the comment you're replying to wasn't thinking of the algorithm that _applies_ a filter to a jpeg, but the process by which that filter is created in the first place. The assumption being that there's some sort of theory to colour that allows you to systematically improve the aesthetic qualities of images.

As an analogy, think of the value music theory (i. e. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_(music)#Harmonic_content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_\(music\)#Harmonic_content)) for composition.

<comment><USER4> The creative process isn't novel. There isn't even the capability of any layer masking in most mobile apps, including Instagram, compared to pre-existing more robust tools on desktop (and other mobile apps), severely limiting the 'technical interestingness' to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note that the red test image is only valid for iOS devices, since in Android you can see the Instagram logo even though it doesn't support wide color

<comment><USER7> Can't see the logo on OSX Sierra on my 2014 MacBook Pro Retina 13in.

<comment><USER8> I couldn't either on my MBP late 2013 until I changed the Display Profile to "Display P3". There are other profiles that will show the logo, too, like "Adobe RGB (1998)"

<comment><USER9> If you change your display profile like this you're going to have incorrect color rendering, so don't forget to change it back after you've had your fun looking at the (inaccurately-rendered) image.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure if this is different in the iPhone 7, but the 6S is pretty terrible at color representation in photos, specifically when dealing with neon lights. The iPhone tends to overexpose the neon light to make up for the surrounding being darker, so to get a 'decent' shot, I have to down the exposure by about 2/3 on the 'brightness' in the normal Camera app. But in general, it has a hard time showing as good of color as you would be able to capture in a better camera. For example, I've taken some photos of museum paintings during a visit, and the colors tends to be a little darker and not truly representative (yellows appear like mustard rather than a brighter yellow, for example). I'd love to be able to take more color accurate photos, and it would be more worth it to get the iPhone 7 if that's the case.

<comment><USER11> That's more a problem of the camera and ISP and not color management and display.

<comment><USER10> That's what I figured. I hope that the sensor becomes better and better, so that one day I can take great neon light photos (as well as see the correct color of red).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did not know that Instagram was using OpenGL for processing. That's pretty neat, given the capabilities of OpenGL. I'm looking forward to seeing more filters with more lifelike Polaroid effects.

But before that, could they not convert images to horribly encoded JPEGs? I get it, bandwidth and costs, but it's an image service that still drowns in its own... when it gets an image with strong reds and blues.

<comment><USER2> We started using OpenGL in 2011. Our CPU-based image filters used to take 4+ seconds with pixel-by-pixel manipulation, and now can render 30+ times per second.

If you have some sample images where the current image pipeline is going wrong let me know and we can look into improving.

<comment><USER13> Instead of fixing the horrible JPEG encoding can you please add support for webp? It's quite a bit smaller and well supported with polyfills since it's just a single vp8 frame

<comment><USER14> polyfills in general are a really awful user experience.

They are typically pushed by people who use the latest chrome, so they have an excuse not to care about other browsers.

Their preformance, and usability is almost invariably terrible.

<comment><USER15> You don't need a polyfill to deploy Webp. Chrome automatically sends webp in the Accept headers for images, so on the CDN level you could implement some logic to seamlessly swap in Webp images for the browsers that support it. Imgix does this for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Link for viewing 'canary image' in browser, without triggering download/dropbox:

[https://imgur.com/a/v82GI](https://imgur.com/a/v82GI)

(Indeed, I can see a faint Instagram logo on my iPhone7, but not my older rMBP.)

<comment><USER17> Imgur seems to be changing the profile or somesuch because I can see the logo when I downloaded the image but not on the imgur image here.

<comment><USER18> Same.

Here's the link from the article with the download flag removed:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/tgarynpj65ouafd/insta- logo.png](https://www.dropbox.com/s/tgarynpj65ouafd/insta-logo.png)

<comment><USER19> Also changes the profile, I can see the instagram logo here but not on the download

<comment> squeaky-clean Really strange! I get the same behavior. I thought it was maybe Chrome vs my image viewer, but if I open the downloaded image with Chrome, it's just pure red, but the preview in Dropbox I definitely (faintly) see the logo.

If I right click and save the dropbox preview, I get a 14kb image, but the downloaded image is 29kb. As far as I can tell they're both PNGs with the same bit depth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you have a Macbook and can't see the logo on the canary image, try changing the color profile for your display. On my mid-2014 rMBP, the default color profile was "Color LCD", but I could change it to "Display P3" and see the logo.

To make the change: System Preferences -> Displays -> Color

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the hint. On my 2015 Retina MBP, when opening the IG image in Preview, I see the IG logo. However, when dragging the image into Chrome, I do not see it.

How do I get Chrome to do proper rendering?

<comment><USER5> Chrome does something strange with colors on macOS. Colors always render visibly different than Safari.

That being said, the logo is visible in Chrome for (using a Dell display).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "What every coder should know about gamma" may be of interest here. [http://blog.johnnovak.net/2016/09/21/what-every-coder- should...](http://blog.johnnovak.net/2016/09/21/what-every-coder-should-know- about-gamma/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Are browsers generally color-correct? I was going through the Webkit wide color examples and was getting different visual results on different browsers[1]:

[https://webkit.org/blog-files/color-gamut/](https://webkit.org/blog- files/color-gamut/)

[1]: Compared Safari, Firefox and Chrome on a 2016 MacBook Pro w/ Touchbar running macOS 10.12.

<comment><USER2> Browsers are all over the place, unfortunately. It's part of why sRGB because the only reasonable color profile for Web use. I think we'll see wide color become common in apps before the Web.

<comment><USER24> All over the place in what way? Support for different color profiles? Actually handling color spaces _at all_? The fact that there's no consistency when it comes to untagged images? The mess which is plugins? The ability to specific CSS colors in a specific color space?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When on Android? I also opened a bug on Android Bugtracker: [https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=225281](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=225281) and it is marked as a small issue. On Android we are lacking color management and are only restricted to sRGB. Original Wide Gamut and P3 images look dull on Android devices. I also want good wide P3 colors and color management without buying an iPhone.

<comment><USER25> The canary image in the article displays fine on my S7

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cool article.

Another things worth mentioning is that lots of professional photo & graphics people have been using the Adobe RGB color space for almost 20 years which is "wider" than sRGB.

</comment><comment><USER27> Awesome, would be great to see in-app support for 2x optical zoom on the iPhone 7+ next

<comment><USER2> We built this in already! We don't have a "1x" or "2x" indicator, but the dual lens camera is fully used in Instagram now and will do the smart transition between 1x>2x optical and 2x+ digital zoom.

<comment><USER27> Oh no way! That's awesome, apologies for not knowing this and thanks!

<comment><USER28> They mentioned this in the post but it was fairly well hidden, can't blame you for missing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ok, so now that's done. How about the ability to zoom?

<comment><USER30> Update the app? I can zoom in Instagram, both iOS and Android. Apparently since 18 weeks ago: [https://www.instagram.com/p/BJxv5WthYas/?hl=en](https://www.instagram.com/p/BJxv5WthYas/?hl=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> So... what is "wide color"? Are we talking [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide- gamut_RGB_color_space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide- gamut_RGB_color_space) or something else that has no documentation anywhere on the internet?

Not trolling, I care an incredible amount about color spaces, and had expected support for something like the UHDTV Rec.2020 color space with D65 (cool/blue white), not an obscure Adobe standard with D50 (warm/yellow white). It's wider than Rec.2020 though, so if this is what you're talking about: awesome, please update your article so people can find out more about this color model and the rest of the world can catch up!

<comment><USER32> It was in the fourth paragraph:

> The color space that Apple chose for its devices going forward is Display > P3.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCI-P3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCI-P3)

<comment><USER31> How extremely disappointing.</comment></comment></comment>


Gallium oxide to boost field-effect transistor performance? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/electronics-news/gallium-oxide-to-boost-fet-performance/168259/ <comment><USER2> Neat thing about gallium - it has a room temperature melting point. Learned this from a book I recommend: [https://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/The- Disappearing-Spo...](https://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/The-Disappearing- Spoon-Audiobook/B003ZZK5IY)</comment>


Dark Mode for HN (By Rich_harris) - <AUTHOR> https://hn.svelte.dev/item/23197966 <comment><USER2> I've been running in dark mode for a year or so using Tampermonkey. It works pretty good except minor flashing as the CSS is swapped, which is a little annoying. A built in dark mode will be welcome.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tweet - [https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1261509296312987650](https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1261509296312987650)

<comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966)</comment></comment>