A DDoS in Asia Pacific - <AUTHOR> https://telegram.org/blog/ddos <comment><USER2> China is doing a mass arrestment*1 of 100+ human right lawyers last weekend, in the same times as DDoS start and end, and there's a news from China's official news agent indicate that Telegram is the main secret contacting tool that human right lawyers used.

Some people think it's China who attack Telegram, to avoid the lawyers to warning each other for the arrestment.

1) [https://www.facebook.com/chrlcg/photos/a.1571958406350448.10...](https://www.facebook.com/chrlcg/photos/a.1571958406350448.1073741828.1571955643017391/1634700570076231/?type=1)

2) [http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2015-07/11/c_128010249.ht...](http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2015-07/11/c_128010249.htm)

<comment><USER3> Interesting.

We know from this year's GitHub attack that (a) China is willing to DDoS foreign internet services, and (b) China is able to enlist foreign traffic to carry out the actual attack.

So it wouldn't be surprising if China DDoSed Telegram and made it look like the attack came from South Korea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> According to the founder [1], Telegram was even removed from Play Store for a few hours at the request of a South Korean competitor.

For whatever reason, somebody in South Korea is seriously pissed off with Telegram.

[1] [https://twitter.com/durov/status/619486763032182784](https://twitter.com/durov/status/619486763032182784)

<comment><USER4> LINE is a Japanese company IIRC.

<comment><USER3> It is a subsidiary of Naver, the largest (and politically well-connected) portal in Korea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I _knew_ it would be S.Korea. The company I used to work for, at the time I left, was dealing with some particularly spiteful individuals from S.Korea who have been DDoSing their gaming platform and their separate video host. This was happening off and on for about 12 months. Interestingly enough, each attack was committed by completely different individual and were unrelated. In one attack where the guy was caught (I think they caught all but 2 of the attackers), he claimed he ran the DDoS because he didn't like the fact that there was a Japanese pop music video being hosted on the video site. This wasn't a young kid either, the guy was 33 and had a full time job at some advertising company.

<comment><USER6> This more or less reflects my stance on SK too. I ran a reasonably large APAC/SEA esports-related site for a while, competing sites in SK often attempted to attack it (and outright told me as such, to get out of korea). It's strange and I really have no idea why.

<comment><USER7> We had a 9Gbps attack from SK earlier in the year. I have no idea why we were targeted, but my best guess is that a user in SK got upset at some user- generated content and decided to DDoS the site rather than report it to us. Weird.

Anyway, we decided to move to OVH, and haven't had any problem since. We did get an email about an attack being mitigated a few months ago (which didn't cause any outage at all), and since then the trolls have realised that we can't be DDoSed any more :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I got hit by two of these (1/27 to Feb 4th and 6/4 to 6/22), and they were relentless. It was difficult to know where the attack originated because many proxies were involved - most inside the USA). We only managed a 62% uptime during the whole affair, many customers were upset, and it really hurt business. We ended up refunding everyone for the month and sending out a huge apology, for which many customers were understanding. Still, it hurt our business dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is most interesting...

      The garbage traffic came from about a hundred thousand
      infected servers, most noticeably, in LeaseWeb B.V.,
      Hetzner Online AG, PlusServer AG, NFOrce Entertainment
      BV, Amazon and Comcast networks. That said, the attack
      was distributed evenly across thousands of hosts and none
      contributed more than 5% of the total volume.

I used to host a lot with Hetzner, and while quite expensive, they mostly responded to these kinds of things very quickly and with a certain level of technical competence (which definitely cannot be said of every hoster). Also, I'm quite surprised to not see OVH in there, as their network has a kind of "reputation" for these things...

      Fighting back would've been a little easier, if the abuse
      departments in most of the mentioned companies didn't
      process requests 9-5, Mon-Fri only. (Hours more befitting
      a scuba-diving shop in Vatican.)

Business as usual I would say...although I don't scuba-dive...

Edit: formatting

<comment><USER10> Did you mean to say that they are quite UNexpensive? (because they are)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 200Gbps (if true) seems very high for a non reflection attack.

<comment><USER12> This tsunami TCP SYN attack uses 1000 byte SYN packets apparently. A good countermeasure for these would be rejection of all large SYN packets. Verisign DDoS protection services claim that they can withstand 2Tbps attacks of most types.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately this would break TCP Fast Open, which transmits data with the initial SYN.

<comment><USER14> I can tell you that almost no one uses TCP Fast Open. It's a draft RFC that violates other RFCs. Google has given up on it in favor of QUIC. You should give up on it, too. It's not going to happen. It's a bad idea cooked up by ivory tower researchers who have never run a network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Question: Is this possible because they are using Linux servers? The Linux kernel adopted TCP Fast Open?

[https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tcpm/current/msg08204....](https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tcpm/current/msg08204.html)

<comment><USER14> TCP Fast Open is a terrible idea, and RFC 7413 should be marked as historic so that no one actually tries to implement it. Google has given up on it in favor of QUIC and so should everyone else. QUIC allows for "zero RTT" requests that are also signed (preventing spoofing).

We started blocking these large requests over 3 years ago when we started seeing them. Interestingly enough, that was a full 6-9 months before Radware wrote an article and coined the term Tsunami SYN. We just called it "big SYN". The attack is trivially easy to stop, and anyone running a client that tries a TCP Fast Open should expect failure frequently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Simple solution: move to OVH. Although they don't have servers in SE Asia, perhaps 100% uptime is more important than shaving 100ms off the ping time. (As far as I can tell they don't have real-time audio or video anyway).

<comment><USER16> What makes you think OVH could cope with a 200 Gbps DoS attack of this nature? A quick look at their services indicates they don't mention what kind of attacks they defend against, and SYN floods are some of the hardest to defend against.

<comment><USER7> They say they have facilities to clean 480Gbps of data, and 5Tbps of mostly spare inbound bandwidth, so their DDoS mitigation capacity is somewhere in that range ([http://www.ovh.com/ca/en/a1171.protection-anti-ddos- service-...](http://www.ovh.com/ca/en/a1171.protection-anti-ddos-service- standard)).

<comment><USER14> Customer testimony on places like Webhosting Talk have cast all of those numbers into serious doubt. OVH is more likely to nullroute your IPs than it is to fight off a 300gig attack.

<comment><USER7> Do you have a ref for that? I did quite a few searches and didn't find a single person on webhostingtalk saying they had been null-routed by OVH in the past year. Only one guy who worked for a competing hosting provider.

<comment><USER14> Shut down this guy's account during an attack:

[http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1467534&highl...](http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1467534&highlight=ovh+null)

That said, I'm not a personal search engine. Here's a link to search results:

[http://www.webhostingtalk.com/search.php?searchid=1555010](http://www.webhostingtalk.com/search.php?searchid=1555010)

<comment><USER7> He said OVH didn't give a reason for shutting him down, which seems unusual. Perhaps he's breaking their ToS?

OVH themselves say they protect 24/7 against DDoS attacks, regardless of duration or size.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


64-bit ARM Kernel Development Demo on a Nexus 9 - <AUTHOR> http://osdevnotes.blogspot.com/2014/11/64-bit-arm-oskernelsystems-development.html <comment><AUTHOR> A short demo showing that your Nexus 9 is actually the cheapest and most accessible 64-bit ARM development platform for systems programming.

<comment><USER2> I got pretty sick of "Linux on xyz Android device" meaning a chroot with varying levels of usefulness. This is the first post in a while that shows some actual low-level dev work being done.

How difficult would it be to get a (mainline?) kernel booting on this, maybe even into Debian?

<comment><USER3> Nvidia hasn't submitted any platform patches, nor device tree contents, for mainline yet.

Nearly all the drivers carry over just fine between 32- and 64-bit, and they've been actively moving a bunch of the little glue code out of arch/arm lately, so there's not a _whole_ lot left to do.

I haven't seen anything posted yet so it's not looking all that promising that it'll make 3.19 either (but it's still possible).

<comment><USER4> ARM SoC support in Linux mainline is usually pretty good but support for individual mobile devices that normally run Android's version of Linux is almost non-existent. Basically we are never going to get the usual Linux distros running on Android devices without using Android's version of Linux. There isn't anyone with the available, time, skills and motivation to get new or old Android devices supported by Linux mainline. I expect the same goes for other vendor-controlled Linux based mobile distros (Tizen, Sailfish, FirefoxOS etc). Probably the closest to mainline is the very old Nokia N900 but that doesn't even support all of the hardware on the device:

[http://elinux.org/N900](http://elinux.org/N900)

<comment><USER5> Does anyone know what the differences between the mainline kernel and the Android kernel are?

This is actually surprising to me - I had expected that the only differences were in username (unit system, ipc, etc). Is it a question of one time development to make driver _format_ compatible in Linux?

<comment><USER3> (upstream arm-soc kernel maintainer here :)

It's not really about anything Android-specific that's in the "android kernel", it's about all the other code that's needed for a platform to run well.

The main problem is that besides the base kernel, most mobile platforms require a lot of code that hasn't been upstreamed. In some cases, "hasn't yet", in some cases "probably never will be" \-- it depends on the vendor involved if they have any such ambitions.

Most of this is drivers of various kind. Some vendors are better than others at upstreaming them and the other pieces that are needed, but nearly none of them have upstreamed sufficient amount of power management to make a real device useful and have reasonable battery life. There's also usually drivers missing for modems, etc.

And, of course, graphics is a very sore topic in this area -- no vendor today ships a phone that uses an open graphics base. Ironically enough, Nvidia is the vendor that has done best here, with work happening in the open on their DRM drivers (but no products have shipped with those drivers at this time).

The vendors that have done best are normally those who have more embedded-type platforms and not primarily mobile phone chipsets. By the time upstreaming of a mobile platform is done, the next generation is already out and nobody will build new products with the old one. It _does_ get better over time as more and more share code goes in, but most vendors have enough of a backlog that they don't see those benefits yet and as a result don't prioritize it as high as I wish they would.

Then there is of course some vendors who don't participate at all, or does very very little. The Chinese manufacturers used to be notorious here, but even some of them have started doing better as of late (Rockchip in particular, but MediaTek has started posting some patches too).

The vendor that traditionally has done best is TI, but they've gotten out of the mobile business. ST-Ericsson was making a good attempt too, and they also got out of it. Nvidia has actually been really good at working upstream on their 32-bit Tegra support, it's unfortunate that it's taken them this long to get going on the 64-bit support upstream.

<comment><USER6> When you say that there are drivers missing, does this go as far as GPL violations? Or is it not quite as toxic as that?

Also, what is the situation like with regard to figuring out what has been changed in a vendor-supplied kernel vs. a generic kernel source tree? Is it reasonably straightforward to get a clean diff so you can see what was changed? Non-upstreamed hacks and bodges seem less terrible to me if it's possible to at least see how they work.

<comment><USER3> Not necessarily GPL violations (there are cases of those too, but the bulk of it is not). It's just a matter of nobody having cleaned up the drivers enough to get them submitted for upstream inclusion. It can be quite a bit of work to do, and the next generation of product is sitting there waiting on the same people to make that work instead.

You can usually download and diff the source tarballs. Some vendors keep git repos so you can see changelogs as well. There's usually a lot of noise in there though, lots of various imported vendor drivers that duplicate things, firmware files in hexdump format, etc. It's pretty common to see diffs of millions of lines.

<comment><USER5> could you elaborate on what you mean by "cleaning the drivers" ?

I'm really curious, because it seems that Android has built an architecture where vendor supplied drivers (binary blobs?) can be dropped in without too much changes. But upstream linux needs a considerable amount of rework to "absorb" a driver.

Is this deliberate (the same reason why GCC is obfuscated) or is there a technical reason behind it ?

Because Android Linux works on thousands of different platforms with a lot of stability - I'm beginning to think that the Android driver model is superior... and perhaps mainstream Linux would do well to move to that.

<comment><USER7> I work on an embedded Linux device. Sometimes, we do whatever nasty hack we need to make _this kernel_ work on _that device_ \-- but those changes aren't portable, aren't maintainable, and don't meet the quality requirements to be in the upstream tree.

There can also be a perception it's "a waste of time" since "nobody will run another kernel on this anyways"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > It's unclear if the "oem unlock" allows reflashing custom unsigned firmware.

I don't think it does. I think you usually need "root" to install another ROM/OS on the device as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> The oem unlock allows you run a custom OS (e.g. a custom Android build) that is not signed. This is well known, and is what allows this demo to work. However, the comment I was making is whether the firmware (i.e. the bootloader, "BIOS" if you may - in particular the Secure OS) can be reflashed.

The reason the existing firmware could be desired to be replaced is that the Secure OS component specifically disallows an OS to run in hypervisor mode (i.e. no KVM or Xen), or because of terrible bugs in HBOOT that cause hangs if the boot.img exceeds a certain arbitrary size (a few tens of MB). All these limitations mean that even an OEM-unlocked device is not quite entirely available to the mercy of a developer.

Of course, the ability to reflash the low-level boot code is not very useful unless you have sources to build a better replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are there any devices that ship with Android that could be reflashed to support a Linux kernel with KVM or Xen bits? Either Intel Atom or ARM-based devices?

</comment><comment><USER10> It's weird, because according to this page: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_Snapdragon#Snapdragon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_Snapdragon#Snapdragon_410) , there are already 25+ 64bits-capable Android phones out there.</comment>


Telnet terminal built using HTML5 Canvas/WebSocket/Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://jsterm.com/

<comment><USER2> HN user paddy_m reimplemented RXVT in JS:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=852573>

<http://github.com/paddymul/rxvt-js>

HTML and not Canvas, so cut-and-paste works.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool but I'll never trust any of these things for SSH or anything else. SSH is something I want on my computer with no one able to log my key presses.

<comment><USER4> It's useful though if the network you're on blocks ssh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slightly OT, but I'd like to see a similar looking "box" where I can push a text output from a server (long polled). For example to push a tail on a log or something like that. I was kind of looking for that the other day, but to no avail - it's not a priority though, so I'll write it if I can't find one (I have little to no experience with "comet").

<comment><USER6> If you do end up playing with this, take a look at node.js and socket.io. Here is the relevant part for tailing a file over ssh:

var tail = spawn('ssh', ['firstname.lastname@example.com', 'tail', '-f', '/path/to/some.log']); tail.stdout.addListener('data', function (data) { listener.broadcast(data.toString()); });

I did a really simple version of what you're talking about with some client- side parsing of rails logs for fun. Feel free to contact me and I'll be happy to zip up the source and send it your way.

<comment><USER5> hah, wow - thanks for the effort. Actually, I haven't been very descriptive. I have some apps here and there that take a certain time to execute (often in minutes) running on server. I wanted an easy way to monitor their progress from a web interface without any (or too much) modifications to original code.

So what I did now is that basically I've made a 'forever frame' in my html which points to a URI where app resides. That app now outputs multipart/x-mixed-replace MIME which is then loaded into an iframe in my html and JS copied when onLoad happens to a styled div.

I've made a small proof of concept here:

\- here is a straight sample output (in this case a dummy php): <http://www.vga.hr/console_test/count.php>

since this is a multipart/x-mixed-replace, I can blurt out a html (as 'Start' is) and plain afterwards.

\- here is a simple client html: <http://www.vga.hr/console_test/con_out.html> \- and another one which concatenates: <http://www.vga.hr/console_test/con_out_plus.html>

so my idea was basically to output text/html <script> out when I need to issue commands to a reader (for commands like overwrite mode, concatenate mode, highlight, clear, flash... whatever - basically a state machine) and text/plain for actual messages being shown.

I wish I could get rid of 'loading' status in browser while doing a long poll as primitive as I am now (forever frame).

 _tl;dr;_ should be on a client side only with x-mixed-replace on server.

Thanks again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a live stream of BGP updates that are published by a university server.

<http://bgpmon.netsec.colostate.edu/index.php/live-data>

You can also telnet to some CISCO routers and access their routing tables. Host: route-views.routeviews.org Port: 23

Follow instructions. It looks like it doesn't work well. Either characters are scrambled, or the echoed characters are capitalised (it shouldn't be).

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone know why canvas is used for the display, instead of html?

<comment><USER3> My guess is it's easier to emulate a termnial in canvas than with straight html. Support for colors and such is probably easier in canvas.

<comment><USER9> I've actually been investigating exactly this over the last weekend for a FF4 tracker-music program. I need colored monospace characters, and Canvas is the fastest(straightforward) method I've found to do it.

I tried DOM manipulation, but I couldn't make it run quickly with a color-per- character scheme, or even after some segmentation into the specific needs of the tracker. I am not an expert at that subject, though, so I've probably overlooked a lot of the tricks.

Within Canvas I looked into caching the characters as bitmaps and drawing those, but it turned out that FF4 Canvas has a lot of fixed overhead in each API call, so my best bet was to batch each color used into a different layer, and draw them row-by-row, layer-by-layer with textFill(). If textFill() were to let me use newlines it would be even better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I bet you could play Dwarf Fortress over this. I'm not being facetious: on windows, using msys/mingw or cygwin term, the game looks terrible: not all the characters render and the font choices are limited and uniformly inadequate. If this thing's fonts are better or it's terminal emulation a better match for DF's idiocincracies... Even if not, I'd rather hack on a javascript program to make it work well for that than try to figure out xterm's code.</comment>


A Year Later, AOL Is Contemplating A Bebo Sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/27/a-year-later-aol-is-contemplating-a-bebo-sale/ <comment><USER2> I keep thinking about how and when to launch, but one thing I keep hearing in my interviews is the importance of knowing when to sell. Looks like Bebo's founders knew when to sell.

Jason Calacanis told me that he sold Weblogs Inc because he didn't sell Silicon Alley Insider at its height.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really liked the explanation in this piece about how Bebo benefited from targeting old fashioned TV advertising agencies that other social networks completely ignored.

</comment><comment><USER4> man losing 600 million in a year is pretty bad. Wonder if this means that all social networks have lost a ton of value too

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I really find this hard to believe :/

<comment><USER5> Really? You thought Bebo was going to take off, catch MySpace and Facebook, and make AOL billions? To me this was the only way it could end, although I don't think anyone expected a sale this soon.</comment></comment>


Now on Twitter: Group direct messages and mobile video camera - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/2015/now-on-twitter-group-direct-messages-and-mobile-video-capture <comment><USER2> And yet still the worst photo sharing experience of any social platform. 5mb upload limit, constant upload failures with cryptic error messages, and clicking an image only to see a smaller version aren't a great experience.

I'm skeptical of what they'll do with video.

edit: lack of retina support for images is also inexcusable.

<comment><USER3> > clicking an image only to see a smaller version

I feel Twitter's UI has always been pretty sensible - but I've always been baffled by this quirk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With the speed they are shipping updates for the official mac app it should be possible to use the group messaging in about 2 years.

<comment><USER5> And yet it's still one of the best Twitter clients on any platform. Thank you, Loren Britchter.

<comment><USER6> Have you used Tweetbot?

<comment><USER5> I use it on iOS and love it, but didn't feel like paying $20 for a Twitter client on the desktop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> About 4 years ago, I was chatting with a journalist via Twitter and when we had to discuss details, he told me, "I don't check my email, just DM me"...which profoundly annoyed me. Now, I have to admit, if someone DM's me, I almost always immediately respond. Part of it is because DMs, for me, still pale in quantity compared to emails, so I naturally notice them faster. I think it also works because of why Twitter works overall...the truncated message length is both an impediment to communication and a lowering-of- friction...unlike email, I don't feel like I have to come up with a well- composed or complete response...nor should the DMer expect more of me (or else they should've gone through email).

So the group DMing makes sense...it's not an innovation, but continues to keep people in the Twitter system. Their photo app functionality had been crap for awhile, but between the extra steps needed to go through Instagram (nevermind the lack of previews), the photo app is just good enough to entice the user to not leave the Twitter app.

I'm surprised they haven't tried to implement Snapchat-like functionality, frankly.

</comment><comment><USER8> This sentence grossed me out:

"The Twitter you experience today is rich and immersive, full of images, gifs, Vines, audio files and videos from some of the world's most recognizable figures and brands."

<comment><USER5> Then you'll absolutely love their "strategy statement".

"Reach the largest daily audience in the world by connecting everyone to their world via our information sharing and distribution platform products and be one of the top revenue generating Internet companies in the world."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are group DMs supported through the API for third-party clients?

The direct capture and upload has been sorely needed, should make on-the- ground reporting much easier.

<comment><USER10> There is a third-party service called GroupTweet that has been doing something similar for years... [http://www.grouptweet.com](http://www.grouptweet.com)

Curious how this will affect their service.

<comment><USER11> Group DMs are not yet available through the API. Its not clear if/when they will make Group DMs available via the API.

As for GroupTweet, only a small subset of our users use GroupTweet for Group DM type purposes. I'm optimistic that this native functionality will educate the masses on the possibilities of Twitter Group DM's which will lead "power users" to look to GroupTweet to provide a more "full featured" group DM experience.

Working on a blog post to illustrate the GroupTweet advantages, but things like:

1) A GroupTweet Group DM account is permanent compared to a more ephemeral Group DM thread. No need to figure out who to add to the conversation each time, etc.

2) Never lose your messages. Full archival capabilities & storage with a GroupTweet Group DM account. Twitter will only display your 100 most recent DM conversations.

3) No limit on number of group members vs Twitter's native Group DM limit of 20 people.

4) Full control over who is included the the Group DM. With Twitter's native functionality, any group member can invite anyone else into the conversation. With GroupTweet, the group admin(s) have full control over who is allowed in the group, who has posting privileges vs read-only, etc.

5) With a GroupTweet group DM account, you get all the advantages of a full fledged Twitter account. Things like Twitter analytics, GroupTweet contributor analytics (which members are participating & sending the best messages), downloading your Tweet history, linkable messages, etc.

6) More customizable notifications. Not all or nothing approach for regular DMs.

7) GroupTweet Group DM's will work with every Twitter client. If you try and start a Group DM with your friends that are using Tweetbot, Hootsuite, or any other third party twitter client, they won't receive the message.

Here's my post from earlier this month re: creating a GroupTweet Group DM account: [http://grouptweet.com/blog/how-to-create-private-twitter- gro...](http://grouptweet.com/blog/how-to-create-private-twitter-groups- twitter-group-dms-are-possible)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A long, long time ago, email was invented. Then soon enough, someone created email lists (groups).

No one has invented anything new in this regard, since then.

<comment><USER13> Its a pity you're getting downvoted for insight. One problem twitter has is lack of innovation. Then again they have users who are self selected to be used to it, or are even happy with that.

Kind of the AOL of the modern era, if you think of AOL culturally in the 90s, twitter is in the same spot today.

There is also a lack of purpose, lack of elevator pitch. By that I mean I don't know what twitter is for. Originally, right after I found out about it WRT SXSW, its the AOL-ified IRC on top of SMS text messages. Then it morphed into brand spam delivery for AOL users who can't figure out RSS from either the spammer or recipient side, be sure to follow our corporate PR dept because... well just because. Now its apparently going to be the AOL of photo sharing for those too confused by the complexities of facebook photo sharing and snapchat. But what is it, assuming my joke about them being the AOL of 2015 isn't just a joke (or ... is it?)

<comment><USER12> You are correct, and thank you for the support of the comment above. WRT Twitter=RSS, I cannot lament enough the fact that RSS has been treated like an abandoned child, only because there is Twitter. WRT AOL, well, there's also Facebook, which is a de facto Internet today (rightly or wrongly, that's a sad debate).

<comment><USER14> The old twitter, which offered RSS of users' Twitter timelines and searches made a lot of sense, it was a real shame to see it go.

Combining tweets about [subject of choice] inline with your favourite subreddits and websites, all filterable and searchable (with the right client) was a brilliant innovation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So are they trying to be Whatsapp, only with a character limit?

</comment><comment><USER16> Are these only on ios now? I can't see any option to do either of these things on android or the web

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't like having private conversations on twitter for some reason, I guess having it is better than not but it's hard to feel excited about it. On the bright side I think this could be very useful for networking between famous people.

<comment><USER18> > On the bright side I think this could be very useful for networking between > famous people.

Welcome to twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So now when your friend's account gets hacked it can be way more annoying? Because that's seriously all my DMs ever are.

</comment><comment><USER20> Share emoji.

</comment><comment><USER21> But who will ever again trust an US company with private group communication after they put so much effort into converting into a salafist-stalinist-stasi- like surveillance state and after such a long time of the Snowden revelations there is still no real sign of the US people, the companies and the communities are able to get rid of their mentally distorted secret dictators?

It is such a shame. A nation that was the synonym for freedom is now the world role model for how a postmodern dictatorship looks like. Please, all you freedomlovers, finally wake up and change it, I do not see any sane alternative than reverting USA back to a free country...</comment>


Ask HN: Any good resources / literature on the full web stack? - <AUTHOR>

As a web-developer it's rather easy to find good resources on programming, program-architecture, best practices and so on.
But I found it much more difficult to get good (detailed) information on the context of those technologies: How the internet infrastructure works, the internal workings of a browser, Network Protocols and their environments, etc.
Are there good resources to recommend that go into more detail on these subjects?
Thanks! Simon <comment><USER2> [http://highscalability.com/](http://highscalability.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why you don't write one ?

Take any open source projects you may like and start to look under the hood, it is slower, but you will learn way more this way than simply reading :)</comment>


Stem cell competition orchestrates skin homeostasis and ageing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1085-7 <comment><USER2> I hope you will not take this as me encouraging a conspiracy theory —

I sometimes wonder what would happen if someone stumbled upon a simple, robust and general method for halting aging using the likes of stem cells. Ordinarily this sort of discovery happens in plain sight— over many years of acedemic research, published papers, animal studies and human studies. But suppose it occurred in a private lab and was kept, basically, secret. I could imagine a government being hesitant to release this info if they thought lay people could implement t the treatment themselves and live multi thousands of years.

But I also suspect that a few rich and powerful people would want to have a go. It would be interesting to see how they conceal the fact— do they fake death multiple times? Even if a government is able to restrict interested billionaires and powerful people from participating, they may feel a need to keep a population of long span humans— as a competitive hedge against other nations' possible participation. It's possible that this is happening now, though I know of absolutely no evidence of that.

<comment><USER3> I don't believe that will happen, because that treatment would massively boost the economy. Nowadays we have to spend around 23 years until a person can be productive, then they have to learn to be more efficient, and in a few years they have children and focus less on their job. As well as they becoming older, losing efficiency until they retire and then they consume the resources of social security for twenty or more years.

Eternal youth would be so good to the economy that it would never be hidden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any word on what can stimulate production of COL17A1, or is it still too new a research area?

<comment><USER5> From the paper:

"We identified two chemicals—Y27632 and apocynin—that induced COL17A1 expression in keratinocytes. To test whether these compounds increased the self-renewing capabilities of epidermal stem cells in vitro, we performed colony-formation assays40,41; Y-27632 increased colony number, and both drugs increased colony size (Extended Data Fig. 9m–p). Application of these drugs to full-thickness skin wounds significantly promoted wound repair, similarly to the effect of overexpression of human COL17A1 in mice (Extended Data Fig. 9q–s). Collectively, these data show that COL17A1-inducing drugs promote skin wound healing through re-epithelization of the wound edge with epidermal stem cell expansion, and point towards directions for facilitating skin regeneration and reducing skin ageing."

It seems like one very promising application could be in promoting wound healing in certain populations e.g. venous stasis ulcers, pressure ulcers, and many other chronic wounds that don't heal well especially in the elderly (if the treatment were safe). That would be fantastic.

But the use of the term anti-aging effects in this paper is suspect. COL17A is part of the basement membrane holding together the thin epidermis and thicker underlying dermis, whereas much aging related research that focuses on 'collagen' loss relates to the amount of collagen I in the thicker underlying dermis. Loss of dermal collagen I with aging is associated with cosmetic changes like thin skin (dermal thinning) and wrinkling.

It would be surprising if increased expression of COL17A1 at the basement membrane dramatically induced cosmetic anti-aging effects in the sense of increased level of collagen I in the dermis. Also, it may be a band-aid for one particular cellular function that is important for local tissue structure and cell functions, but the underlying causes of general aging change in cells (mutation accumulation, UV damage, oxidative damage, etc) probably are not being addressed or reversed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really doubt its just this one thing that is responsible for aging even just for skin.

I subscribe to the SENS theory of aging (sens.org).</comment>


One of the worst comments sections on the internet is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/03/one-of-the-worst-comments-sections-on-the-internet-is-shutting-down/ <comment><USER2> That's a shame, I've seen lots of nice comments about B movies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why?? they actually had some decent discussions in the comment section.</comment>


UN: Disconnecting File-Sharers Breaches Human Rights - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/un-disconnecting-file-sharers-breaches-human-rights-110603/

<comment><USER2> At least use due process of law, instead of (as HADOPI did) disconnecting users after they had been merely _accused_ of infringement 3 times. That effectively makes copyright owners into judge and jury, and forces the ISP to act as executioner.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe I missed something, but how do you disconnect a _person_ from the internet? One person may have several ways to access the internet, each of them with their own IP address and even ISP, while someone else shares a single computer with other family members or is using NAT.

I see no way to enforce such a law unless you jail the person. What were they thinking?

</comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, but when was the last time any country cared what the UN considered a breach of human rights?

</comment><comment><USER5> I suppose they also consider it a breach of human rights to disconnect users for harassing other users, spamming, DoSing, breaking into the ISP's own network, wire fraud, and so on. All is as much "free speech" and as equally illegal as warezing.

<comment><USER6> With some thought, a person might be able to come up with a rational objection to the rather subdued assertions in the UN's declaration. Your apples-to- oranges troll doesn't quite qualify.

<comment><USER5> Fuck you, asshole. You would not recognize a rational argument when you saw one, because you did see one and you called it an "apples-to-oranges troll". You can't explain how illegal activity which abuses the network is different from any other illegal activity which abuses the network. All you can do is insult me. I can insult you too. Fuck you, asshole.

<comment><USER6> Ah, a splendid retort. I'm sorry, I didn't realize who I was talking to!

      "abuses the network"

Yes, that poor network. However, observe that harassment, denial-of-service, wire fraud, etc, are not primarily illegal because they abuse the "network". Think a bit, and I bet you can figure out why they are illegal. Think a bit more, and I bet you can come up with some differences between a DDoS and a copyright infringement for non-commercial purposes, such that one might be considered an apple and the other an orange.

That aside, I call you a troll for bringing up the free-speech strawman. Tell you what; go find me someone who believes that wire fraud or network intrusion is "free speech", and I will promptly return your testicles (or whatever else it is you think I have stolen from you) by mail. Some rules: this person cannot be in prison and cannot be related to you.

One more request -- kindly stop abusing the network with your profanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm sure the Data Angels are thanking Commissioner Lal for this.</comment>


Reach: first affordable centimeter-precise RTK GPS - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/reach-first-affordable-rtk-gps-receiver/x/7174749 <comment><USER2> Why isn't it in the smartphones yet? They already have GPS and plenty of processing power..

<comment><USER3> Because receivers in smartphones do not provide phase measurements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> well, L1 RTK takes some time to get a fix, but for that price it's a very good offer.

</comment><comment><USER5> wow, that's pretty cool!</comment>


When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier? - <AUTHOR> http://digest.bps.org.uk/2014/11/when-korea-imposed-limit-on-working.html <comment><USER2> Before you draw any firm conclusions, be sure to read the details in the last couple of paragraphs: The subjects' hours were only reduced by about 10%, an average of five hours a week; many of them were still working 40-50 hours; and many of them were still expected to get the same amount of work done, forcing them to take work home with them.

The article author suggests that the Korean laws may not have gone far _enough._

<comment><USER3> "The article author suggests that the Korean laws may not have gone far enough."

That's a really scary line of logic though. "We did a thing, and there was no effect. We propose that to obtain the desired effect we should do _even more_ of the thing that had no effect."

That's undisprovable.

It's possible that doing the thing that produced no results _even harder_ could have some positive effect, but the world is probably even more full of things that produced no results but if pushed harder will have negative effects. Part of being a real scientist is acknowledging that this can only be interpreted as evidence against the idea that forcing shorter work hours will make people happier, no matter how cognitively or emotionally challenging it is. That's being a scientist.

(To forstall the two obvious replies: Consider the difference between the words "evidence" and "proof". And once again, let me underline the scientific dangers in "We tested for X->Y and found no evidence for it, but we're still going to assert that X->Y." This logic doesn't just apply to "work hour reduction", it applies to _all_ null results, of all kinds.)

<comment><USER4> _> It's possible that doing the thing that produced no results even harder could have some positive effect, but the world is probably even more full of things that produced no results but if pushed harder will have negative effects. Part of being a real scientist is acknowledging that this can only be interpreted as evidence against the idea that forcing shorter work hours will make people happier, no matter how cognitively or emotionally challenging it is. That's being a scientist._

Real science, huh? A mild change in X did nothing, so you should assume a major change in X will do nothing?

Ever looked at a reaction graph?

<comment><USER5> If you are testing A vs notA, and you exclude some scenarios in which A is true (and dont exclude anything else), that is (by definition) evidence for notA and against A. (at least by a bayesian definition)

Now, might be that the priors for A were very large, and A is still the most likely hypothesis. But the evidence just received reduced those priors

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

(I know that the case in point does not fit the rather strict requirements of the first paragraph. But I think the affirmation "the hypothesis that reducing the workload improves the life of the worker, while still very likely, is now a bit less likely" is true in this case.)

(The phrase in " " sounds odd to me. If I knew numbers, it would be much better to say P(A) was 95% and now is 90%)

</comment><comment><USER6> Happiness-wise South Korea ranks 41. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report)).

Here in Switzerland (3rd in happiness) it is not unusual that people are employed only 3-4 days / week and still make enough money to live well. I don't know of any other country where this is commonplace.

(Full disclosure: If you're from the EU and looking for a tech-job over here, I'd be happy to help out).

<comment><USER7> Same here at the number 4 on the list... I work 4 days a week, my wife works 3. My employer also works 4.

My day off is awesome, and accounts for a lot of my happiness. And the happiness of my kids, I'm sure!

US may be the leading in economy, but we (Northern and Western Europe) are way ahead of you guys when it comes to a healthy work-life balance...

<comment><USER8> Isn't it all very individual though? What if someone derives happiness and satisfaction from working? Should they be prohibited from working more than a set number of days/hours per week?

<comment><USER9> I agree. most of my long hours are self imposed. Often time it's fun to finish things, or take longer to do something in the best way possible (vs rush through during normal hours), and have a certain number of accomplishments in a year.

However I understand that other people may feel pressure to do the same even thought they value family life more. Some employers probably don't do a great job in encouraging the family life and set out goals that require extra hours to complete (over 40 hr work week), which is what such a regulation may aim to alleviate. In practice I think it will cause more harm by dabbling in company culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can speek for Greece, where is ban on sunday work. For workers it just means they have to work unpaid (and undeclared) overtimes.

If you wont to make people happy, just introduce double pay for overtimes and really enforce it!

<comment><USER11> If you cannot "really enforce" one policy why do you think you will be able to "really enforce" the other?

When enforcement doesn't work rules are guidelines.

<comment><USER10> Some rules "enforce themselfs". Unpaid overtime brings positive motivation for emplyers to broken. Paid overtime is negative motivations, and people are more likely to report it and sue due to lost money.

<comment><USER11> And they don't sue for the free hours worked on Sunday because...?

As I said, you start by creating a culture where rules are enforced, then work from there.

<comment><USER10> Nice one :-)

Sunday is free because it is 'overtime'. Workers are paid fixed pay per month. Suing for Sunday would not bring any extra money to worker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reading the abstract from the actual paper itself seems to indicate that people were not more or less satisfied with their jobs after the reduction of working hours.

"While satisfaction with working hours increased, reductions had no impact on job and life satisfaction."

It seems people did actually like the reduced number of hours, they didn't say that they liked their job more, or found more satisfaction in their life. I feel like for most people a job is something you do to fund the things you really want to do.

I would love to see what worker satisfaction would be if their income was fixed, but they could choose whichever job they wanted. (aka. you'll always get paid the same amount of money regardless of what job you do).

<comment><USER13> This sounds like it might relate to the "hedonic treadmill":

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill)

 _Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman were among the first to investigate the hedonic treadmill in their 1978 study, "Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?". Lottery winners and paraplegics were compared to a control group and as predicted, comparison (with past experiences and current communities) and habituation (to new circumstances) affected levels of happiness such that after the initial impact of the extremely positive or negative events, happiness levels typically went back to the average levels._

If things like winning the lottery or losing a limb tend to have short-term effects on happiness, then it's not surprising that a ~10% change in working hours has little effect. Especially if—as another poster mentioned—you just end up taking the work home.

<comment><USER14> Wow, I wonder what effect this has on politics?

It was noted that the Arab Spring was largely _not_ the result of political discontent but the fact food prices were becoming very high [0]. It might be the case that unless the basic livelihood of people is consistently threatened - such as not being able to eat - that they will always put up with the political status quo.

As we're seeing now with the non-existent political reaction to mass surveillance.

[0] [http://necsi.edu/research/social/foodcrises.html](http://necsi.edu/research/social/foodcrises.html)

<comment><USER15> For a revolution you need a revolutionary situation in a society, Lenin described two conditions "The bottoms don't want and the tops cannot live in the old way".

It is often connected to food or another word necessity's. That was the case during the "arab spring" and was also the case in 1917 Russia, the main slogan for the Russian revolution being "bread and peace". The Russian people had nothing left to lose and the ruling class had nothing left to give(to sustain their power) thus fulfilling the two conditions.

All you need then is a catalyst. Which in the case of the "arab spring" was when Mohamed Bouazizi set him self on fire.

When it concerns America and mass-surveillance I would see that as a possible catalyst that lacked a revolutionary situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I favor something more like a Results-Only Work Environment ([http://gorowe.com/pages/rowe-standards](http://gorowe.com/pages/rowe- standards)), where the focus is on the results and not on how many hours are worked.

Too many companies (even startups) are conservatives and traditionalists in the sense of thinking that work needs to be done within certain hours and at a certain place, even when those are not drivers of the results.

I'm hired to deliver certain results, not to work a number of hours. If it takes me 10 hours or 40 hours to deliver those results, that's up to me, as long as the deadlines are hit and the deliverables are high-quality. And there's no reason to be in an office, unless the office is instrumental to achieving those results.

The focus on how many hours people _should_ work is a fetish that reinforces a still-dominant 20th century office culture.

<comment><USER17> I agree with you personally, but to play the devil's advocate a little:

> _If it takes me 10 hours or 40 hours to deliver those results, that 's up to > me, as long as the deadlines are hit and the deliverables are high-quality._

If you are able to consistently deliver the required results in only 10 hours of "work", it's clear that any organization will slowly ramp up the required results more and more until you are working 40 hours a week.

How would you agree on results that are "enough for the company" that won't grow endlessly when they see you're only working 10 hours a week?

<comment><USER16> This is a cultural change that the company has to go through.

They're paying me for the results. Not for the hours.

Thinking that they'll "ramp up the required results more and more until you are working 40 hours a week" means that you're still thinking that you're paying for hours.

Still, it's the responsibility of all employees to improve the process that they work in, just as part of the company's continuous improvement. Which means that more/better results will be delivered over time anyways.

How do you agree on results that are "enough for the company" when you hire a consultant (assuming they're an intelligent consultant and don't charge by the hour).

<comment><USER18> The queues of things to do is always extremely long.

There are 1000 tickets in your JIRA queue. They then ask you, what can you do in the 2 week (or 1 week) sprint?

What do you say? Is it the 10 hour or 40 hour timeframe? That happens all the time in development, and people do a few things. They underestimate a lot or they write code that is 90%, where when bad things happen, it's ugly to clean up.

So the results are what you say you can do in your week of work. And of course, they will put the pressure of "but that's easy." Yada yada.

As a results oriented place, some companies pack in what you think is 80 in your 40 hour work week (a lot of companies will try to do this). So what happens then? You switch jobs?

As for improving the process, most engineers don't know exactly how. They speculate and guess, hoping to hit it right. It's really up to the people driving it to affect the company culture. Doing it as an individual within an organization is quite difficult.

That's what I've experienced at certain companies anyways, generally with management with less experience, tbh.

<comment><USER16> Let's be honest. Both a Results-Only Work Environment or a "9-5 in the office" environment try to pack as much into an employee's schedule as possible. That's not unique to ROWE.

Some of the answers to your questions are: well, what do you do now, and how can that be made better? ROWE isn't magic. It's just a recognition that pretending that you're paying for hours spent in an office is nonsense, and that we should talk about the work itself rather than the things that don't have to do with the work.

The old equation (fetishistically held to, even in the face of its absurdity) of TIME + PRESENCE = RESULTS typically takes the focus of the conversation, and we end up in conversations about who can work remotely, and how many hours people should put in, etc. Instead of talking about the stuff we're actually paid to deliver.

As for not knowing how to improve processes, I don't mean that we should just say to them "hey, go improve things." It's a crucial management responsibility to make sure that people know how to do this sort of thing, to teach them how, and to provide ongoing coaching in doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think a helpful lens is to generally worry about what you are funging against. Time, as a fungible resource, can be allocated to work (generally done in fixed portions), and the remainder to other activities. In America (I have no knowledge specific to Korea), a large percentage of those other activities is "watch television". People self-assess as less happy watching television than they do while working. So giving out more time may increase access to things that make people happy (spending time with loved ones) but also increase time spent on things that make them unhappy. Obviously this is only part of the story, but looking at replacement activities would be a great next step.

</comment><comment><USER20> S Korea just a generation ago was a developing world, with a harsh dictator.

Two generations ago, it was really at the rock bottom nation on the globe in terms of any ranking you can think of (poverty/violence/dictatorship/low- education/etc). Pick any poor nation in Asia/Africa and it was probably doing better than S Korea.

Remember these: History of Korean War, there's no much natural resource to sell off, with 3 powerful nations (who all have either invaded Korea in the past and view it as a potential target) nearby, with N Korea 30 miles from Seoul, AND (get this) no escape route over land in case of a military conflict (S Korea is pretty much an island now and you canNOT walk/drive to flee S Korea),

they better really really get their house in order to survive.

Younger S Korean sociologists/commentators lament about how the intense competition is driving people to commit suicides (yes tragic) but they forget many, many more people died/suffered from poverty/basic-medical-care not that long ago.

With all these in context, no wonder they work.

Btw, it's really really said for older S Korean that are passing these days. They really suffered hard lives and just when their older kids/grandkids are enjoying abundant lives, but they can't really enjoy as much due to age.

</comment><comment><USER21> TLDR - No it didn't, they don't know why, it may have improved well-being.

<comment><USER22> It's not as if they do not have a clue why...

"Why might this be? Rudolf points out previous evidence that in the short term, capping hours often just means employees have to get the same work done in a shorter time, which is likely to be stress-inducing."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Imposed" should be in gigantic scare quotes.

Many Korean businesses, big and small, routinely make employees work overtime without payment. Maybe we should ask the question after we do have an enforced limit.

<comment><USER24> The stories I've heard from friends & family working and living in Korea reflect exactly that.

There's not just uncompensated overtime, but you're also expected to join up when it comes to company retreats. So, not only do you give away 10+ hours every day to the company, but then you'll also be incorporated over the weekend, due to some company outing.

I also doubt that any imposed limit would actually be enforced or tolerated by the employer. The unpaid hours go directly into the prices, so some businesses wouldn't be able to compete anymore if they suddenly had to pay for that overtime.

The passion my friends put into their work is admirable and nothing short of impressive, but I can't help but notice that there's not much time left for family, or anything else besides work for that matter.</comment></comment>


Events that moved Linux forward - <AUTHOR> http://opensource.com/business/14/3/three-events-that-shaped-linux <comment><USER2> On that list should be AT&T'w lawsuit trying to destroy BSD unix thus motivating Linus to clone it.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that it had much impact on Linus' motivation himself, but it certainly had a huge motivation on many of the huge number of hackers who helped turn Linux from a toy kernel into an entire world class operating system

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In more recent events, I would posit that Ubuntu's push for the desktop along with giving away free CDs (and free shipping) helped move desktop Linux into a more mainstream conversation.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if debian's systemd adoption could fit there.

<comment><USER6> the title said events that move linux _forward_

<comment><USER5> Haha, that's what I was waiting for. But sometimes seemingly aimless change is the basis of a good metamorphosis. Let's see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would vote to add Android to that list.

<comment><USER8> This article is actually about GNU/Linux.

>In the year 1991, the conducive conditions existed that would create Linux and start its spread. Linus in Helsinki had the kernel but no shell, libraries, or compiler. Stallman, in Boston had necessary programs that could be wrapped around an operating system.</comment></comment>


The Impact of Index Investing: A Follow-Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2016/05/followup/ <comment><USER2> I was at the Berkshire meeting this past weekend, and Buffett gave a nice (if simplified) explanation of investing in index funds over active investment, as it pertains to hedge funds, hiring analysts, etc.

An excerpt from the transcript [0] follows:

What I'd like you to do is for a moment, imagine that in this room, you people own all of America. All the stocks in America are owned by this group. You are the Berkshire 18,000 (or whatever it is) that have somehow managed to accumulate all the wealth in the country. Let's assume we just divide it down the middle. On one side, we put half the people…half of all the investment capital in the world, and that capital is what a certain presidential candidate might call 'low energy'. In fact, they have no energy at all. They buy half of everything that exists in the investment world – 50 percent – everyone on this side. Now half of it is owned by these 'low energy' people. They don't look at stock prices. They don't turn on business channels. They don't read the Wall Street Journal. They don't do anything. They are a slovenly group that just sits for year after year, owning half of America's business. What's the result going to be? The result is going to be exactly average as all American business does because they own half of all of it. They have no expenses – nothing.

What's going to happen with the other half? The other half are what we call the 'hyperactives'. The hyperactives' gross result is also going to be half, right? The whole has to be the sum of the parts. This group, by definition, can't change from its half of the ultimate investment results. This half is going to have the same gross results. They're going to have the same results as the 'no energy' people but they're also going to have terrific expenses because they're all going to be moving around, hiring hedge funds, hiring consultants, and paying lots of commissions, et cetera. As a group, that half has to do worse than this half does. The people who don't do anything have to do better than the people that are trying to do better. It's simple.

[0] [https://www.biznews.com/global- investing/2016/05/02/berkshir...](https://www.biznews.com/global- investing/2016/05/02/berkshire-agm-transcribed-buffett-rips-into-active-fund- managers/)

<comment><USER3> This can cause an interesting dilemma if you assume that what people invest in makes a difference to the output.

It may make more sense selfishly to be in the low-energy group, but the overall returns might be lower the more people go that route.

A flawed car analogy: A driver and passenger will both travel the same distance, but the driver spends a lot more effort per mile.

So it might both be better for each individual to be low-energy yet better for everyone if people were more active.

It's an interestingly complex problem.

<comment><USER4> Interestingly, the more bad (under average) investors move to passive investment, the better the average outcome will get. And the more good (above average) investors move there, the worse it'll become.

All counted, isn't it great when incentives align almost perfectly with the global optimum?

<comment><USER3> Ah but then we come to something I'm going to coin as "Zeno's Investors".

Passive investors achieve the average return. Active investors receive some distribution of return but obviously it must range from some above to some below average. 1/x investors get a worse than average return, despite their efforts. For simplicity, let's say that 1/2 of the investors 'win' and half 'lose'.

That losing half would do better if they moved to passive investments, allowing the top half to make the real gains. Now, we're back in the same situation. Does this not continue on until it's selfishly best for everyone to be a passive investor, even though overall that might be worse?

Ways I think I might be wrong:

\- The maths doesn't really work quite that way once the balance shifts away from 50% each side. It may be possible that some proportion of active investors will always make more profit than the passive investors. I don't think this is right but if it is then it'd entirely break the reasoning.

\- Changes that happen from one step to the next. The winners now own more capital and therefore we don't see the same converging series. I don't think that matters other than prolonging the outcome, but I'd not be surprised if I'm wrong on this count, I've not thought it through fully.

(I'm trying to be more cautious about making overly bold claims and so am trying to point to things I know might invalidate what I'm saying, if it seems annoying then let me know)

<comment><USER4> The rational optimum with no transaction costs[1] would be finding the best investor, and letting him make all the decisions. Everybody else should invest on the index.

Put transaction costs there, and you get an adversarial system. Now the top investors will try to convince the others of their own incompetence. Didn't do the math, but the outcome is probably bad.

Now, fill the market with real humans and irrationality will make sure enough incompetent investors will be active to let a big enough amount of competent ones make a win. Stable again.

I'm really unconcerned about index funds.

[1] A spherical cow in vacuum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's what I haven't found a good answer to yet...

What is the risk when a large percentage of the middle class and others are all in low fee index funds?

This seems on the surface to be ripe for exploitation in some way, or like we'd be all exposed to the same black swan event and thus potentially trigger another major market event simply because everyone is in the same funds.

I am not a super educated investor so if this is impossible due to the nature of indexes please correct me, but I can't help but feel that this push towards the Bogleheads approach may have the unintended side effect of proverbially putting "all of our investors in one basket."

What are the risks if main street investors truly do shift to this style of investing en masse? It seems that the investments of our middle class and upper middle class would all take big hits at the same time which could cripple the nation moreso than if people were in other investments.

Again, I'm probably missing something here so would appreciate being educated on why my fears are invalid. I haven't been able to find any info on this from googling.

<comment><USER2> Index funds expose you to essentially the entire market; it's the sum of thousands of tiny pieces of businesses all across America. We're not putting all our eggs in one basket, rather, we're all distributing them across many.

If you can pick an investment that will weather an economic downturn, and still provide a decent return — let me know, because I want to get in on it ;)

<comment><USER6> But when everyone invests in everything equally, we all end up investing in nothing!

<comment><USER2> The previous post on the same blog debunks this. [http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2016/05/passive/](http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2016/05/passive/)

<comment><USER6> [http://www.ironbridgellc.net/PDF/hidden_risks_of_passive_inv...](http://www.ironbridgellc.net/PDF/hidden_risks_of_passive_investing.pdf) is an interesting countervailing read

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love passive investing (vanguard admiral shares anyone??) but there are several things that I find lacking:

1\. It's really boring. There's no earnings to follow, no products to watch, etc

2\. You can't get rich from most indexes. The risk and reward is too low. It's unlikely to invest in a index that gives you a 10x return, though it does happen.

In the end I keep the bulk in a low fee composite index but I like to speculate with a little, even if I invariably lose money on the spec part. It's more fun.

<comment><USER8> If you want "fun investing", go to Vegas. I personally don't think of investing as a source of entertainment.

<comment><USER9> Investing in specific companies rather than indexes (which I assume is what everyone means by "fun investing"?) isn't very much like gambling in Vegas. With gambling in vegas you have a negative expected return with a high variance. With stock picking you have a positive expected return with a high variance (where do index funds fit in? positive expected return with low-ish variance).

Although picking stocks is still not rational if your only concern is your long run wealth, it's not irrational for the same reason as gambling. It's bad because you have the same expected return as low cost index funds, and you exert effort or pay fees for the privilege. That doesn't mean I look down on everyone who actively invests though-- they may have good reason to think they are special and can pick stocks better than average or they may just enjoy it, as the person to whom you responded said he did. And then it would be rational to actively invest at least some of the time.

<comment><USER10> I disagree that you have +EV with stock picking in general. Most companies go out of business, most stocks go to $0.

Index funds, however, do have +EV.

<comment><USER11> If you want to be sure of positive expected value, just pick randomly, with probability proportional to market cap. That gives the same expected value as an index fund, with much higher variance.

<comment><USER10> if you rebalance / repick, yes. If it's just buy and hold, I don't agree. The benefit of index funds is the failing companies are dropped before they hit $0.

<comment><USER11> That seems like a strange perspective to me. All of the theoretical justification for passive investing (you get the average return without the fees, maximum diversification, etc.) implies that you'll get the best result from holding every possible security in some proportion. You're saying that index funds work not because of any of that, but because they've observed a market inefficiency (low market-cap or recently-fallen stocks underperform the market), and make an active decision to deviate from the market portfolio in order to exploit it. Why believe that there's exactly one easily-exploitable market inefficiency, but no others?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _"Yes, you need to diversify... mix your more established growth names–e.g., your Microsofts, your Intels, your Ciscos, your Yahoos, basically, the reliable blue chip stuff–with higher-risk bets–something like an Astroturf.com, or an Iomega, or a JDS Uniphase, that will offer high-powered upside if things work out for those companies. That will give your portfolio balance, without sacrificing growth. "_

It's really a joke for this portfolio from some TV gurus from that time around '99, as every "blue chip" companies on the list mostly worth significant lower in '16 from their '99-00 heights: >-50%+ INTC, CSCO, YHOO (not to mentions it's on the selling block). Maybe MSFT is an exception. Those high-risk bets? more like busts: astroturf (?, never heard of it), IOM (from $100 to $3.56 when acq'd by EMC), JDSU (from ~$300 to $6 as VIAV and $25 as LITE). I really do not see what growth in such portfolio.

This just reminds me the moment that Jim Cramer and other pundits on TV urging investors to buy and hold Lehman Brothers stocks before its fall in '08 "because it's too big to fail".

</comment><comment><USER13> The main problem I have with index funds is the otherwise financially savyy people who tell me that index funds will get you on average x% a year. No! Index funds, in the past, gave x% a year. However past performance is not a predictor of future performance.

There is no law of physics/economics that says the S&P500 has to rise at x% a year on average.

<comment><USER14> Past performance should be a predictor of future performance if the forces driving the market remain similar to the forces driving it in the past.

If they are not the same, then past performance may be a very bad predictor. But even in that case it is hard to imagine I'd do better by picking individual stocks unless I start researching companies as a full-time job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Impact is nothing.

Whole point of indexed funds is match the market. If you feel that as an investor you're able to beat the market, which includes indexed funds, good luck.

"Fool and their money are soon parted."

</comment><comment><USER16> The distinction between passive and active management is kind of a misnomer anyway, right?

There's no reason an "active" manager can't just select x00 companies by some criteria, publish that list and then just invest in that basket with modest adjustments?

At this point, the primary advantage that "passive" management has is extraordinary marketing, mainly through the selection of S&P 500 components.

</comment><comment><USER17> Dealing with retirement investment policicies offered in Ireland, I see two sides:

1\. Actively managed funds diversified across equitieis, bonds, cash, etc

2\. Index funds for specific indices, such as "top 4,000 US companies"

The danger with 2, they say, is you're not diversified. That'll be up to me I suppose to try to diversity into other areas.

<comment><USER18> Most popular index funds are very diversified. 4000 companies not diversified enough for you? There is research that suggests any 50 companies picked at random will give you quite a bit of diversification.

The real lack of diversity is that it's weighted towards US companies which some people have decided they want and others don't, and apparently it's weighted towards stocks as an asset class as well.

I don't think weighting is the same as lacking diversification, although certainly you are lacking one kind of diversification.

<comment><USER19> I would think that generally one means different things. Specifically, a diversified portfolio would hold stocks and bonds.

Or, if one is of the "stocks don't go up over the long term" persuasion, it means stocks + shorts (for a net market neutral portfolio) and bonds.

So no, popular index funds are not diversified. There are exceptions, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Gold gave better returns in last 10 years [http://www.nsegold.com/why-invest- in-gold.php](http://www.nsegold.com/why-invest-in-gold.php)

</comment><comment><USER21> Passive investing is popular when markets are good. And there wasn't any significant crisis since 2008-2009.

When markets make a downturn, passive investing is not a great idea.

<comment><USER22> When the market takes a dive is the _best_ time to invest in index funds. The problem comes when people panic and pull out their money in a recession, realizing the loss. If the market rebounds you come out ahead and if it doesn't, you've got much bigger problems.

The best policy is to put money in the market every month, through the best and worst of it, especially if you're young.

<comment><USER23> > The problem comes when people panic and pull out their money in a recession,

This doesn't happen only because of panic.

In a recession, by definition, bad things happen: people lose cushy jobs, they end up uninsured just before an illness happens, very close relatives (parents, kids) fall on hard times them-selves and you have to bail them out etc etc. All these new problems require liquidity, which can be very easily obtained by selling your stocks, even if at a loss. Multiply this across the whole middle-class and the end-result won't be pretty.

<comment><USER22> Fair point; this stuff certainly doesn't happen in a vacuum.

I should have mentioned that investing comes with the caveat that one should also have a plan for major life events like a job loss. Having 6+ months of living expenses on hand _in cash_ is a must. I firmly believe that 70%+ of the stress and anxiety of losing one's job is the pressing need for cash flow. I can't imagine the kind of stress that produces for someone who lives paycheck to paycheck.

That brings me to a larger (slightly off-topic) point: people don't save enough money. 10% is the absolutely _minimum_ one should be saving, despite that being the common advice which no one follows. Most people, _even high- earners_ , spend nearly _all_ of their money. There are _tons_ of people out there making $75k+ per year who are a couple paychecks from being on the street. Those people are simply doing it wrong and will absolutely get bit in a down market.

For those still reading, do this: Get an emergency fund that you can live on for 6+ months. Pay off your debts. Contribute to your IRA, 401k, or whatever else, putting all of that money into a boring index fund that tracks the market (I like VTSAX because Vanguard's fees are incredibly low). Make sure at least 20% of your money is invested. The only people who this _might_ not work for are those earning at or near minimum wage with dependents. If you're not in that group, just do it. You do not need that 20% of your money right now. You may think you do, but you don't. You're spending money on stuff you don't need.

My apologies for getting so far off topic. This is just something I feel very passionately about.

<comment><USER24> I don't see the difference between having cash on hand and having stocks. You can sell on the market five days a week. Add multiple credit cards with a very high credit line on them you effectively have about 30 days to sell stock from the emergency point.

Why keep stocks over cash? Even if they don't appreciate, or even if it is a down year, they still pay dividends which can be reinvested.

<comment><USER22> Consider this scenario (which is not out of the realm of possibility):

You stick $10k in the market when shares are $10 each. This means you get 1000 shares. Then the market crashes and now those 1000 shares are worth $5k. Normally this would be fine; you know the market will rebound eventually. _Then_ you lose your job and have no cash on hand.

You're out of the job for a few months, and you slowly sell your shares until you find a new job. Say it takes $4k to keep you afloat for a few months. You now have $1k left in the market, 200 shares. That $4k of spending actually cost you $8k. Though the market rebounds eventually and your remaining 200 shares are worth the $2k they originally were, you're still $8k short and you always will be. That money is gone. It would've taken more than 20 years for inflation to turn $8k in cash into $4k.

In short, cash is a cheap hedge against some bad luck eating up your investments. The inflation that slowly devalues your cash is a _much_ more acceptable risk than the one I describe. Markets can be rough in the short term. It's easy to hedge against them. Do it.

<comment><USER24> To that I say you can have an even cheaper way to hedge against risk by having put options on the stock you own.

Also your example assumes that all the shares were bought at the same time and declined 50%. If you've been investing for years, the value of your gains/losses wouldn't simply be a "market crash" it would include the price at which you bought the stock at plus any dividends you reinvested. So a 50% downturn from a certain high point could be much less from how much capital you initially committed. Add to that you can take capital losses as a way to reduce tax liability in a given year.

There's enough ways to hedge without having too high of a cash drag.

<comment><USER22> The cost of inflation (at, say, 3%) is $30 for every $1k you have in your emergency account. That's $150 per year if your emergency fund is $5k, or $300 if it's $10k.

I'd be surprised if the combination of the effort it takes and the fees that are charged are less than that for your method.

That being said, it's sounds like you have a firm grasp on your system and it works for you. That's much more than can be said for a vast majority of people.

<comment><USER24> Cash is a great thing, it's something you don't have to worry about and usually is FDIC insured. Personally, I'm holding onto quite a bit right now because I think much of the market might be overvalued. I think I was just trying to see if I could think out a case where you could in theory not worry about not having too much of it on hand.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should the idea-person behind a startup be compensated? - <AUTHOR>

A while back my sister-in-law approached me with an idea she had - or better said, she was asking why there wasn't a service that did X. After some investigating, and looking in to the feasibility of it, and figuring out possible routes of monetization, and finally building out a business plan I now have been working on the technical side of things and want to launch shortly. I am pretty sure this concept will be successful, it provides a great service to people - it's not just something I think they want, but at this point know users want.
The big question is, I don't know how to split equity on something like this. How should the idea person be involved? Does she get a founder status even though (and I don't mean this in a bad way) she can't contribute in any other way? I want her to get something out of this if it's successful, and it's not about greed or anything like that - but what is fair, and what won't scare potential investors away if they were for example seeing a non-founder with shares?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I'd write her a personal and conditional IOU that she gets 10% of whatever you get from the exit. That's frankly more than fair but will surely be enough to preserve family relationships.

And it could be a nice chunk of change for doing little more than asking you a question. In the world of business, execution is valuable, but idle ideas are a dime a dozen.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could get her to 'evangelize' with talks and maybe some cold calling/email, if she's up to it. You'll know she'll be passionate about it, since it's her idea and she can explain many bits of it in an intuitive way. On the other hand, she'll be the de-facto marketing person, which should make it easier for you to think of an equity split. She'll then get to contribute actively to the business and you'll both be happier down the road.</comment>


The maths that made Voyager possible - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20033940 <comment><USER2> A quote: "Undeterred by the fact that some of the finest minds in history, including Isaac Newton hadn't solved the three-body problem, Minovitch became focused on cracking it."

This is misleading. The three-body problem is known to be insoluble in closed form, but anyone cam model it numerically. The person being describes was one of the first to do this, but the comparison with Newton is misleading.

Many kinds of problems are soluble through numerical modeling that aren't remotely soluble in closed form, and it is important to distinguish between the two kinds of solution.

On reading the article, it occurs to me that the author simply doesn't understand the math well enough to grasp the difference between an analytical and a numerical solution.

<comment><USER3> Moreover, "three body problem" is generally meant to mean the three bodies with comparable mass, so they influence each others trajectory. But in this case, Mass_sun >> Mass_planet >> Mass_probe, which greatly simplifies the problem.

Nonetheless, kudos to the guy to understand that a gravitational slingshot is possible, and proving it.

<comment><USER4> Theoretically, that doesn't simplify the problem at all. Practically, we can say that Mass_probe=0, in which case we have a 2-body problem. We need to do that even if we do find a closed form solution to the n-body problem (which might be provably impossible), becuase in reality there is an infinite number of bodys in the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My biggest take away was that, and I can't believe I didn't know this already, the Voyager probes relied on once-in-a-couple-centuries planetary alignments. I wonder how long until propulsion technologies make that irrelevant.

<comment> T-hawk Well, specifically only Voyager 2 did to reach Neptune. Voyager 1 slingshot only Jupiter-to-Saturn, which is available much more often in a much larger set of planetary positions. Pioneer 11 was essentially rerouted on the fly to do that, and Cassini also flew a planned Jupiter-Saturn trajectory.

There's also a bit of a multiple endpoints situation in singling out the 4-out-of-4 giant planets scenario. That is indeed infrequent, but say a 3-out- of-4 lineup with either Uranus or Neptune, or 4-out-of-5 with Uranus and Pluto as the final two [dwarf] planets, also would have made for a fine and successful mission.

OTOH, we could even argue that we were _un_ lucky that the giant planet alignment occured for that 1977 launch window. If it occurred this decade instead, we could send a much better spacecraft with the capabilities of Cassini or Messenger or New Horizons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is more information on Michael Minovitch's website:

<http://www.gravityassist.com/>

He sounds rather bitter that his story has not made him more famous, and comes off as something of a crank at that ("How Did Minovitch Discover (Create) His New Theory Of Space Travel?"). I think Minovitch is basically an engineer at heart, and is resentful that all of the attention seems to go to the scientists, i.e. people who come up with the actual physical theories about mass and energy and so forth.

Our culture does value scientists more than engineers. You could argue that this is good because theories are universally applicable and represent fundamental understanding, or that this is bad because many theories have absolutely no applications and that it's the engineers who deliver value to society. You could also argue that the amount of prestige that we heap on scientists tends to go to their heads and they stop doing good work. But whatever. Stay sharp, do what you're best at, and don't pay attention to other people's benefits packages.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for that link. Minovitch seems to still live in LA.

He also mentions his solution as addressing the three-body problem, so maybe that's where the writer of the linked article got misled on that point. Too bad the writer of TFA didn't check this out with an independent expert.

The group at JPL that Minovitch mentions is still intact (<http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/>). They provide the highest-quality ephemeris available anywhere (AFAIK) to all NASA missions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had no idea before reading this article that it was hard to escape from the attraction of the sun! It makes me wonder if we now have the capabilities to build a rocket that can do it without the help of the attraction of the outer planets.

Does somebody here who's knowledgeable on the subject have some reference?

<comment><USER9> I watched the Dawn spacecraft[1] launch, it uses an ion propulsion drive which Wikipedia says can perform a velocity change of over 10 km/s over the mission.

My understanding is that if they left the ion drive on long enough, the craft would continue to accelerate.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_%28spacecraft%29#Propulsio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_%28spacecraft%29#Propulsion_system)

<comment><USER10> It can be much better than that. The ion thrusters in Dawn have a specific impulse of 3,100 seconds (30 km/s exhaust velocity). Later thrusters designed for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter achieved 9,600 seconds in a lab (94 km/s e.v.) JIMO itself is designed for a delta-v of 40 km/s.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Power_Electric_Propulsion>

<https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/jimo2003/hartman.pdf>

delta-v is proportional to the specific impulse (or exhaust velocity), and logarithmic in the propellant ratio. For instance, with a propellant ratio of e = 2.7, you can get a delta-v equal to the exhaust velocity. For a delta-v twice that, you need a propellant ratio of e^2 = 7.4. Obviously it's not practical to go much faster the exhaust velocity; the propellant demand grows exponentially.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I always wondered why would you send a probe around a planet... It seemed dumb. But it seems that the probe would steal some energy from the planet's speed <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist>

</comment><comment><USER12> I was expecting something more like this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_Golay_code>

</comment><comment><USER13> unrelated to the article, sorry for hijacking but I'm very curios why people like SparrowOS post things like that?

What do they have to gain from it?

<comment><USER14> You are asking about a top-level comment that many users will not see (because it is autokilled on submission, presumably because the author has been hellbanned for previous off-topic comments like that). Usually, I read HN with "showdead" turned off in my user profile. Once in a while, I turn showdead back on, only to be reminded why many comments and stories are killed on submission.</comment></comment>


What Rare Earths Are Locked in Your Cell Phone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physics/rare-earth-elements-in-cell-phones/ <comment><USER2> "Despite their name, rare earth elements (with the exception of the radioactive promethium) are relatively plentiful in the Earth's crust.." \-- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element)

<comment><USER3> Even if REEs are more common than their name suggests, with current consumption trends we're going to face massive resource depletion shocks within two decades as crucial industrial elements run out. New Scientist covered this several years ago, and they made a great infographic summarizing the issue.

[http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/1...](http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/minerals-running-out-lol.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Things that glimmers like gold in phones and computers and wires, _are_ gold plated. It's likely worth the time to pluck out the shiniest parts and save them in a pile. A pile that grows in value over time. And increases in value the larger it gets.

Also, it's fun to take things apart.

<comment><USER5> Gold plating uses _incredibly_ small amounts of gold. You would have to have a _huge_ pile, and spend a _huge_ amount of time creating that pile, to come up with any noticeable value. Unless you're doing it automated, on an industrial scale, I very much doubt you can even get within an order of magnitude of minimum wage.

<comment><USER6> I remember a few years ago seeing a book of gold leaf on sale at an art store. Normally it was something like $80, but on sale, it was $30. I was wondering how they could be making money on that. I did the research and found out that a typical book of gold leaf only had about $10 worth of gold in it (at the time).

Gold leaf is _incredibly_ thin.

<comment><USER7> one of the most known italian chefs, Gualtiero Marchesi, is known for preparing gold leaf risotto, which while appearing as something only the fabled edonists of the 1% can obtain, is actually something anyone can make at home (and edible).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > it takes up to 12 years to make a new mine operational

Why?

<comment><USER9> Lots of digging?

More seriously: permitting and infrastructure. Once you've spent a couple of years convincing people that you're not going to fill the water table with arsenic and you should be allowed to start building, you then realise that the mine is in the middle of nowhere and roads, railways, worker housing, electricity and water supplies all need to be provided.</comment></comment>


Why trains suck in America - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> AFAIK, freight companies are currently supposed to give Amtrak trains priority. I've taken the Southwest Chief (westbound) twice, and both times the worst of the delay came around ABQ where we were blocked on _commuter_ traffic. Presumably there is no such priority vs other passenger traffic, and Amtrak had missed its time slot.

It's not so much that cities are unwalkable (he shows maps of Boston and NYC, two of the rare cities that one doesn't actually need a car). It's that most travelers aren't going to the city proper, and are going to want an automobile at the destination. It would be lunacy to tie yourself to the train's schedule, only to then have to rent a car at your destination.

<comment><USER3> The last mile is a huge problem. Every city I've lived in use to have trams (street cars). There were tons of them. Then GM convinced everyone they should have their own personal cars. US cities ditches trams. Hell Australian cities ditched trams (except for Melbourne who had city planners who weren't short sighted morons -- now they have the largest trams network in the world).

The use needs really good city rail. If you had that, intercity rail would be a non-brainer.

In Germany, the city of Jena has ~100k people. It has three intercity trains stations (one that has an ICE - high speed line), and .. I think three of four trams lines. That's for 100k people.

America is spread out, but that's hardly an excuse. The auto industry has a lot of blame in this.

<comment><USER2> Calling it the "last mile" is a bit of a mischaracterization though. It isn't a need to just reach a single endpoint, but the ongoing transportation requirements in the visited destination.

Similarly, light rail is personally advantageous not because the trip itself is better than driving (likely it's not), but because it allows one to not be burdened with a car at their destination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a really incredible explanation. It'd be amazing if the United States had truly great rail options.</comment>


Easy FlipBook: Demo. 3D - <AUTHOR> https://fb.inogst.com/example_pdf_tag <comment><AUTHOR> What do you think about this plugin?!</comment>


Carole Cadwalladr blasts tech titans at TED: Your technology is "a crime scene" - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90335514/carole-cadwalladr-condemns-facebook-google-twitter-execs-technology-crime-scene-ted-talk <comment><USER2> One reality is companies are amoral, all we require of them is that they follow laws while pursuing more wealth accumulation for their owners. They are not obligated to defend democracy. But their very existence does come from law, without law, they don't exist.

Another reality is that all western democracies, at least ideologically and a few do so on paper, put democracy before capitalism. In the U.S. the constitution describes rights and powers of people, states and federal government, yet it says absolutely nothing about economic system.

Are company's motives in conflict with government and by extension people? Yes. Is that bad? Nope. The conflict should exist. I think it's worse when companies and governments get along well, historically they end up conspiring against the people.

There is such a thing as market failure and governments unquestionably will legislate alternative outcomes to markets when the market outcome makes enough people angry. It's just how it works. When there's market and government exploitation of people, it's a recipe for a bad economy at best and violence at worst.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why does anyone listen to crazy political idealogues like this?</comment>


Picasso: An open-source visualizer for Convolutional Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/merantix/picasso-a-free-open-source-visualizer-for-cnns-d8ed3a35cfc5 <comment><USER2> _" The neural network had learned to distinguish cloudy days from sunny days, instead of distinguishing camouflaged tanks from empty forest."_

Reminds me of a story and ex-colleague once told me. He'd been working on a project to use neural nets to detect overcrowding on subway platforms using CCTV feeds. The NN worked with the training images but failed when run on live images. After a while they realised that training images showing crowding had been taken in a different season to those showing uncrowded platforms, and the NN was actually detecting the different type of clothes worn by the waiting passengers.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exactly the kind of thing we designed this tool to prevent =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting! I am wondering if it is easy to incorporate the visualizations of the models during training? If not, is this something on the roadmap?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, in fact that's one of our main use-cases. The behavior right now is very simple: it just looks in the target directory for the latest checkpoint. So if you're checkpointing regularly, you should be fine. We may implement a checkpoint selector or something more sophisticated in the future if it turns out lots of people are using it that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks useful for image problems. My personal interest is using CNNs for natural language processing. The same sort of tool that allowed viewing parts of the network as the sliding window on input text moves, etc. might be useful.

</comment><comment><USER5> looks quite usefull and simple to use!</comment>