Family fun with deepfakes - <AUTHOR> http://svencharleer.com/blog/2018/02/02/family-fun-with-deepfakes-or-how-i-got-my-wife-onto-the-tonight-show/ <comment><USER2> Whatever you think about this, it's here to stay - the code is open source and cached on a million hard drives already.

If we treat the normal rate of progression, we'll see a year 2023 version for 5 bucks off the App Store, your phone will live-convert the video you're recording at your drinking party with your friends into an all celebrity event. Probably with voice swap. Your drunken roommate's scratchy voice will be ML'd into Frank Sinatra, autotuned, face swapped, and uploaded for a few laughs to facebook.

It's here to stay whether you like it or not.

<comment><USER3> This! One of the most ridiculous notions in articles about this when it first started coming out was "We should ban this technology!" and reddit started deleting threads that contained links to download the scripts and apps. Do these people still really not understand that's not how this works? Has the Streisand effect not been proven enough yet for the general populous?

<comment><USER4> By that logic why should we ban any technology? Everyone here is unanimously against child porn even though we understand that it is already out there and that there is no way to put a complete stop to it. How are deepfakes that different?

The truth is this technology is dangerous in the wrong hands. I don't know if that means there needs to be laws created regarding it, but I know that the difficulty in stopping it shouldn't be used as an excuse to not even debate that possibility.

<comment><USER5> So we ban child porn to try to curb the production of more of it. Its production is what is harmful, and we do everything we can to reduce its production, which involves trying to reduce the demand by making it illegal and arresting people who obtain it. It has no legitimate use, so there is no collateral damage when we ban it.

Banning this technology would be more like banning cameras, since they can also be used to create child porn. However, it would be even LESS effective than banning cameras, because we are talking about a software algorithm.

Also, you say this technology is 'dangerous in the wrong hands.' Why is that the case?

I think the only reason is because it has the possibility of decieving people into thinking it is real. The real way to reduce this risk is to either spread the idea that all video is suspect, and you can't assume who you see on video is who it appears to be, or to perfect technology that can instantly detect when this system has been used.

If you are able to easily distinguish between true and false video, isn't the entire danger mitigated?

<comment><USER4> >So we ban child porn to try to curb the production of more of it. Its production is what is harmful,

We also ban computer generated child porn even though there is no victim involved in the production of that. If you use this deepfake technology and stick an 18 year old's face on a porn video it is legal but if you do the same thing with a 17 year old it isn't. The production of those two videos is the same. The only difference is the potential victim if the video became public.

>The real way to reduce this risk is to either spread the idea that all video is suspect, and you can't assume who you see on video is who it appears to be, or to perfect technology that can instantly detect when this system has been used.

That sounds great in theory, but people don't work like that. We are built to believe what we see. We all know that almost every magazine cover has been mercilessly Photoshopped and yet the images on those covers have still been shown to have a strong influence on people's own body image.

<comment><USER6> > If you use this deepfake technology and stick an 18 year old's face on a > porn video it is legal but if you do the same thing with a 17 year old it > isn't. The production of those two videos is the same. The only difference > is the potential victim

For reference, artificially created child porn (e.g. in mangas, or in other ways created) is in a legal grey zone in many areas, including Japan and Germany. It is absolutely illegal in other, e.g. Sweden.

<comment><USER7> > For reference, artificially created child porn (e.g. in mangas, or in other > ways created) is in a legal grey zone in many areas,

No. The grayness only applies to non-photorealistic works.

Once you start making photorealistic deepfakes or diptychs, where the end result appears to be photographic, the color becomes much more black and white the world over.

<comment><USER6> In some jurisdictions the grayness also applies to the "victimless crime" part, because no person was harmed during creation of the video.

But yes, it's a much more complex legal case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To add a data point, a friend and I made one of these over the weekend (with Trump and Michael Scott [https://youtu.be/0Rexuh- VY6E](https://youtu.be/0Rexuh-VY6E))

It was shockingly easy to do. We're technical, but neither of us know a lick about machine learning. It took a couple hours to collect training data (we turned speeches/interviews from each of them into thousands of photos), and 20 hours to train the model.

In the future you could automate the data collection for a person even more, to the point where they just need to film a selfie of themselves for a couple of minutes in a couple of different lightnings, and boom, after you train their decoder, you could put them on any celebrity.

EDIT: This is what we used [https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap](https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap) Would be happy to walk anyone through how to do this

<comment><USER9> A question for the lawyers: If I build a model of a celebrity, do they have copyright on that? Could I sell it?

<comment> some-guy IANAL, but Crispin Glover sued the creators of Back to the Future II for using a mold his face as George McFly without permission [1]. While he starred in the first film, the second film used a mold of his face since he ended up not joining the project.

[1] [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/back-future-ii- a-l...](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/back-future-ii-a- legal-833705)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Discord banned multiple servers that r/deepfakes created and their reasoning was that it's being used for creating involuntary porn and so is against their ToS. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the legal status of deepfakes as well as the moral and ethical questions behind the usage of the tech.

A thought experiment : I run a chat room site and will be adding support for user created chat rooms (something like discord for cryptocurrency communities with real time price widgets etc). Let's say I went ahead and got them to use my chat room, what would the consequences be? And what do you think about the moral and ethical questions behind hosting such a community? Am I now enabling the creation of deepfakes? By choosing to avoid hosting such a controversial community, am I imposing my moral and ethical reasoning on others (the free speech argument)? How do think about the deepfakes project, which is mostly being used for creating celebrity porn, but the tech itself is interesting and has applications(targeted ads or in stunt doubles etc)?

To be clear, I'm not trying to host a chat room for them, this is just a thought experiment. I don't like what it's being used for and don't want to support it in any way.

<comment><USER11> Using other people's visage without their permission is gross. It's immoral and unethical.

The idea that you can have morals and ethics without sometimes acting on them is also sort of incoherent. If you claim to believe it is immoral to do something and then do business in spite of that, it directly puts the lie to your claim. This is separate from whether you believe that there should be legal consequences or other government action attached to certain acts.

<comment><USER12> > Using other people's visage without their permission is gross. It's immoral > and unethical.

This seems a bit extreme to me. In my view, the line is crossed when it's used for fraud, i.e. misrepresenting the truth (for whatever purpose).

Face-swapping Daniel Craig's face onto my body, and showing it to my friends, is neither immoral nor unethical — it's actually kind of funny.

<comment><USER11> I think publicizing a non celebrity is problematic even if there isn't any misrepresentation.

It can be fine in a news context, but there's not a lot of faked videos that would be appropriate in that context.

I even thought the faked Fred Astaire ad was in poor taste.

[http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/kellimarshall/clips/A...](http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/kellimarshall/clips/Astaire_DirtDevil2.mp4/view)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> By the time the next US election comes around it's very likely this technology, combined with Lyrebird etc. will allow anyone to make [politician] convincingly say or do anything they like.

I can't make my mind up if this will make the current fake news / filter bubble situation worse, or if it will make it so bad that people learn to distrust any kind of digital media entirely.

I'm still not sure, given that the use of these tools for political gain seems inevitable at this point how we will actually verify a video is real in the near future.

<comment><USER14> We need to start thinking about what criminal justice will look like when digital recordings are all considered hearsay. That's bound to happen.

And perhaps it should... if average people have the technology now, how long has it been in the hands of police departments, newspapers, militaries, and intelligence agencies?

We tend to focus on fakes with high-profile people like politicians and celebrities, but it can clearly be done with everyday people as well. The author was able to produce a fake video segment of a well-lit, animated conversation involving his wife. She's directly in front of the camera, speaking and making hand motions for several seconds. How much easier would it be to insert a face into grainy security camera footage, or a shaky clip of a large crowd at a political rally?

<comment><USER15> > And perhaps it should... if average people have the technology now, how long > has it been in the hands of police departments, newspapers, militaries, and > intelligence agencies?

To be honest with you, when I was younger I bought into this.

Nowadays....it kinda seems like with the open source community, consumers are getting stuff first. Not always, of course, but often enough.

And police departments are one category that I can be quite certain are lagging behind, they are _definitely_ not getting stuff before consumers have it.

<comment><USER16> You're not talking about a monolith. Sure, if you've met 20 cops, it's unlikely that you've met any cops who are technological geniuses. Most LEOs haven't had a reason compelling enough to figure out how to fake a video. Can we be sure that _no_ LEOs have? If we can be sure of that, can we also be sure that no intelligence agencies have? That seems unlikely.

<comment><USER17> Or to say it another way.

Only a few cops will have the ability to edit videos, the problem is almost all cops in his department will lie for that officer on the stand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In the realm of innocent fun with this stuff, just how much time would it take to insert myself into the entirety of a movie? I'm just imagining how fun it would be to invite friends around to watch something we're all excited about, only to convincingly insert my face into the main character's.

<comment><USER19> Or, once advert industry learns about it, how about replacing all the things on the table in Audrey Hepburn movie with BRAND NEW LEMONMELON FLAVOURED OREOS! :)

Ideally on the fly, with each box sold to the highest bidder, adsense-style.

<comment><USER20> I've already encountered a minor version of this with the film "Demolition Man": when I first saw it on UK TV, it mentioned Pizza Hut at one point, but more recently it was on again and that line was overdubbed _really badly_ to say "Taco Bell".

It's a weird thing to watch an film turn out differently to how you rememebered it when you're not told it's a different cut. Feels like low-grade gaslighting.

(Another example is the translation of "天下" \- Tianxia - in the film Hero, which is both critical to the film and translated differently in different versions)

<comment><USER21> The original version was Taco Bell - Pizza Hut was dubbed over in international releases (the latter has a much greater international presence).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am reminded of Ghost in the Shell : SAC where they mention that video and photographic evidence became inadmissible in court due to how easy it was to produce fakes.

I think we are perhaps 1-2 years away from this becoming a practical consideration for the judicial system.

<comment><USER23> I think the reality is that there's a burgeoning opportunity for cryptographically secure chain-of-evidence cameras. Sure, no protection is perfect, but if a manufacturer can reliably state "It will require [X] level of resources and effort to falsify data in our camera", then a lawyer can present footage and ask the jury to draw their own conclusion about whether a criminal's claims of "fake footage!" are reasonable.

<comment><USER17> So everybody is going to go out and buy new phones and cameras?

Also, using Meltdown and Specter as examples, can these companies actually build cryptographically secure devices. It's easy for a manufacture to say "Our device is secure", and it's easy for the judge to say "You go to jail for life", but it creates a big mess in the legal system when we realize 3 years later that someone extracted the private key from a device, framed somebody, and that person had been put in the electric chair between now and then.

<comment><USER23> > So everybody is going to go out and buy new phones and cameras?

Probably not. That sounds a little ridiculous. But probably so in the case of security cameras or bodycams or dashcams.

> but it creates a big mess in the legal system when we realize 3 years later > that someone extracted the private key from a device, framed somebody,

Yeah, I covered that. Did you read my second sentence, or only the first one?

Evidence can _already_ be faked. Eye-witness testimony has been faked for millenia. Photographic evidence started being faked shortly after the invention of the camera. What you do is, make sure the jury knows how hard it would be to fake, and let them make an informed decision.

Does that mean it's technically possible to frame someone? Yes! Just like it is today. Sucks to live in an imperfect world.

> and that person had been put in the electric chair between now and then

That's a valid argument against the death penalty. But that's a different subject entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is it just me or are these "deep fakes" just not even very convincing?

I felt the same way about all the Nicholas Cage ones that were viral recently. It's so obviously a very shallow 'effect' and can't compensate for very basic differences in bone structure, hair, etc.

<comment><USER25> Are you talking about the pornography being unconvincing or the GIF from this article?

Fake: [http://svencharleer.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2018/02/anne...](http://svencharleer.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2018/02/anne-1.gif)

Original: [http://svencharleer.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2018/02/elke...](http://svencharleer.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2018/02/elke-1.gif)

I could see the fake being easy to detect at high resolution, but personally I have a 0% chance of catching this gif as fake.

<comment><USER26> You have the Fake and Original mixed up.

elke-1.gif is the fake anne-1.gif is the original

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It makes the use of stunt doubles easier as well since the actor's face can be mapped to the body double. And it isn't like this point in time wasn't predicted by just about everyone in CS. Given enough computer power and the right algorithm pretty much any data is fungible, video or otherwise.

But we've just entered the most dangerous period when most people still believe what they see in a video is what was originally videoed. It is when people will use this technology for deception and get away with it like they did with Photoshop before 'shopped!' came into the more general populations consciousness.

<comment><USER28> A cool, possible solution would be to have every participant in the video to digitally sign the final file to verify that they're actually in the video, consensually. That way, if anyone finds a deep fake video, it would be easy to dispute it since it doesn't have the person's signature.

Of course, this would be exceedingly difficult in practice, since you'd need the signing to be opt-out instead of opt-in for it to be truly effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So, what's the difference between this and photoshoping someone's face to create fakes? Both are the same thing fundamentally, right? I understand the technological significance of it, but not the philosophical/legal etc differences of it.

<comment><USER30> It's a good question. Is the answer that to a lot of people video is their reality, whereas static images is some crusty technology from the decades before they were born?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> For those of us around when the optic nerve implants are available, it's going to be a wild time.

You'll be able to experience your own subjective reality, completely differently from anyone else.

Want to replace the grocery store with a Minecraft dungeon? Sure! Want to see dragons soaring in the sky above? Sure! Want to pretend your self-driving motorcycle is a speeder bike from Star Wars? Sure!

<comment><USER32> Psychedlics _kind of_ help you get there currently. Depends on where you're looking to go, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> In these discussions, its easy to think about the person harmed by a (known to be) fake video of them having sex.

I think it's odd that we purposely ignore the joy created for the other side of (thousands and millions people). In a utilitarianism view we'd weight these sides in a 1000:1 ratio because of this.

I don't think a video that I know and everyone else knows is fake is very harmful. And it's clear that many people get joy out of it. I think it should stay (though it's here to stay regardless of the law).

<comment><USER34> I'm not quite sure you can just hand wave away the harmfulness. It's very possible that a lot of people would feel highly violated by it. It basically takes away your control over your modesty and to an extent even the autonomy of your body. Yes, the videos are fake, but that doesn't change that the entire premise is for people to imagine it's real.

I'm much less decided about the legality side of this, but I think the from the moral side, this is pretty hard to defend. Obviously this is taking things a bit to the extreme, but where exactly do you draw the line from a utilitarian perspective? Is a gang rape morally permissible if the perpetrators enjoy it enough to outweigh the victim's suffering? Why should people ever be (morally) allowed to derive their pleasure from another's suffering?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can't really see much difference between the original and the faked version. It would be better if it swapped the hair too. (Yes, I do have problems recognizing faces in real life.)

<comment><USER17> Hair will be harder in the sense it requires a lot more CPU power. Making realistic hair in video games has been a challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I keep wondering about how this approach can be composed, vs just doing a single replacement. Example: replace person a head in this video with person b (current examples), make composed person more tan, swap hair on composed person with this other person c hair, add muscles, change shirt with this other shirt, etc, etc. It really seems like the same type of operation reapplied repeatedly. Could be powerful character editor type functionality.

</comment><comment><USER36> As we all (at least in europe) remember, to know the truth is not so easy. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/19/i-faked-the- ya...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/19/i-faked-the-yanis- varoufakis-middle-finger-video-says-german-tv-presenter) This fake video from Varoufakis made pretty huge waves.

</comment><comment><USER37> Is there an inplementation of a generalized face swap that doesn't require hundreds of images of both the target and subject?

<comment><USER38> Keep in mind that one video counts as hundreds of images

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Next up, put yourself and/or family members into any movie. That's really only a matter of time.

<comment><USER40> When I was a kid in the mid 80s, I got a racing game (Revs) that let you enter names in for the CPU racers. Looking back it seems ridiculous but I remember it being such a thrill to pretend I was racing against "people" I knew. Even _that_ was exciting to me, so what's happening now is absolutely mindboggling(!)

<comment><USER41> The names example calls for more imagination though. Yeah it's mind boggling, but I wonder if the effect will be about the same or that much more.

<comment><USER40> So maybe the "uncanny valley" could even ruin the effect? Some of the samples so far are really good though, so maybe we skip that stage..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I see a new business selling face data

<comment><USER43> I wonder if there are any companies aggregating some sort of book of faces.

<comment><USER44> eeerm... Yeah, like Facebook (it's the actual name)

(best to just spell out the obvious)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Within a few years there will be apps that take movies of two different people and allow you to just tell it the parts to swap. People will be able to easily make their own videos like this easily. Banning the technology is a temporary and questionable fix at best.

</comment><comment><USER46> When I see this I think of the future of human robotics interfaces. A robot with a screen for a head, will be able to express anything we do, and tailor its responses to the environment. That, in turn, will probably make them much more acceptable in society.

<comment><USER47> Behold the helper robot whose face was anonymously hacked to be goatse and whose owner can't afford to get fixed.

Buying groceries in your local supermarket ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Does this mean we can make terminator movies with Arnold for hundreds of years?

<comment><USER47> I think it means you'll be able to replace all actors in all films with Arnold if you like.

Films may come with default actors and the viewer will be able to choose alternate body types or faces.

Would be interesting to see how that affects Hollywood celebrity. Will the celebrities do the movies still or just use stand-ins and lens their visage to the final cut?

At what point will the star of live action movies be a computer generated skin?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmajJTcpNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmajJTcpNk)

</comment><comment><USER49> Is it possible to utilize deepfake tech to crack iPhone Face Id?

<comment><USER50> The two are unrelated. Face ID looks at a 3D face not a 2d video

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> There will be a hollywood version of do your own story books of course.</comment>


Ask HN: Whats the best set of tools do Structure crawled web pages? - <AUTHOR>

Hello everybody,
I have to scrape ~1k news sources (among other types of content) on the web, and extract data like title, author, date, news body, etc.
Right now we use a horrible inhouse code (And Jsoup) to parse it. The problem is that we rely on regex expressions and css colectors to do it. As you can imagine, the maintanance cost is very high, because everytime some source changes their template, we have to do it again, by hand.
We are interested in doing the whole thing from scratch, and i would like to now which tools, or set of tools, would be better to do a more inteligent approach. i've had a nice experience with antlr building a date parser, for example.
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> I use the Mechanize gem for rails

[http://mechanize.rubyforge.org/](http://mechanize.rubyforge.org/)</comment>


Free online speed reading software - <AUTHOR> http://www.spreeder.com/app.php?intro=1

<comment><USER2> pretty cool idea</comment>


Rackspace Cloud Files API Down (Chicago Region) - <AUTHOR> https://status.rackspace.com/index/viewincidents?group=15

<comment><AUTHOR> I called up Rackspace and they informed me that the containers are fine but the API is having issues connecting to them. So if you log into the control panel all of your container form the Chicago region will be missing.</comment>


Sea shanty recordings unearthed - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/wear/7683488.stm

<comment><USER2> someone alert Stan Rogers!</comment>


AWS Lambda Supports Python, Versioning, Scheduled Jobs, and 5 Minute Functions - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2015/10/aws-lambda-supports-python-versioning-scheduled-jobs-and-5-minute-functions/ <comment><USER2> Wow that's great--probably the most interesting news from AWS invent yet! I bet a lot of small little AWS instances for simple websites etc. could just turn into a handful of Lambda jobs & functions. I was playing with using the API gateway + Lambda functions to serve as little webhook receivers and am really impressed with the Lambda service.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hell yes!

Python at last.

Between Lambda, task queue tactics and scheduled workers, I am going to have a lot of fun at the next few hackathons I attend.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is great, been waiting for the scheduled feature for a while.

</comment><comment><USER5> > "You can also set up your Lambda functions to run for up to five minutes > [..]"

What was the previous limit?

<comment><USER6> 1 minute</comment></comment>


Vint Cerf: Introducing the People-Centered Internet Newsletter - <AUTHOR> http://peoplecentered.net/newsletter/june-2016/ <comment><USER2> For those who don't know what their goals are:

Desirable properties of the People-centered Internet:

1\. Complete universal Internet coverage that enables functionality that is otherwise unreachable or ineffective

2\. The Internet is affordable, open, available and accessible to all

3\. Fosters digital literacy, local content in local language to achieve widespread usage and increased value to people, families, communities and countries

4\. The system achieves a level of trust that meets the users' expectations of affordability, privacy, safety

5\. The quantity and quality of educational and information services is increasingly available to families and communities

6\. Anyone can contribute to improvement of the utility of the global Internet.

7\. Personal information in the digital environment is protected by law and controlled by the individual

[http://peoplecenteredinternet.org/](http://peoplecenteredinternet.org/)

<comment><USER3> There won't be any ads.

This may not have been explicitly listed, but a user-centric communication medium does not perpetrate psychological warfare against its users and reward distracting them, stalking and profiling them, or exploiting their naïvete. It empowers them by giving them access to information _on their terms_. This is definitional.

<comment><USER4> If users choose to advertise, a user-centric communication medium would allow them to do so. To ban advertisements outright would be censorship.

<comment><USER5> He didn't say "ban" much less "ban outright", did he? The list is "desirable properties".

I agree with his characterization of advertising, and that to be "people centric", there would be no ads _by definition_.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773)

<comment><USER4> I'm not a huge fan of advertising on the web, I think it's doomed to failure. But I disagree that it's desirable to be rid of advertising.

And I only say _that_ because I believe freedom of expression - and that includes commercial expression - is sacrosanct. In my opinion, a truly "people centric" platform allows my right to serve whatever I want (within the bounds of the law) to supercede anyone else's personal ethics.

<comment><USER5> Just because freedom allows you to say most anything doesn't mean all those things are consistent with freedom. One can protect the KKK's right to free speech while simultaneously saying that their speech is undesirable and inconsistent with freedom.

The same principle applies to "people centric".

I think you keep inserting "ban" into what you're responding to when no one is saying that. Try rereading the article and the parent comments without that bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read his introduction, and glanced over the first 3 articles.

It's written in a very heavy "government corporate" language. To be honest, who is the audience that this letter is supposed to reach?

People that can't read "government corporate" language are not going to even attempt to read it. It's a shame really because the message is a good one, but they need to change how they write if they don't want their message lost.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is he still working for Google?

<comment><USER8> Yes. Chief Internet Evangelist.

[http://research.google.com/pubs/author32412.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/author32412.html)

<comment><USER9> "4\. The system achieves a level of trust that meets the users' expectations of affordability, privacy, safety"

This is Google. I assume they anticipate low expectations.

<comment><USER10> To be honest, like all very large organisations, I suspect there are many different points of view within Google. For example, Google is slowly working on End-to-End [1].

People tend to expect that businesses run to the lowest common denominator: if it is profitable, then they will do it. This is demonstrably false, though. Most companies avoid the most egregious crimes in our society, and others actually take moral stands on various issues (Lush comes to mind [2]). But of course, no matter what, it's always going to be a nuanced issue (see the comments in the second link to see some people's negative reactions).

Somewhat like Lush, Google has potential to improve the situation and position itself as "the least bad" option. The reality of the situation is that while privacy is very important, almost nobody wants to be completely private. They _want_ to advertise things about themselves -- even to the whole world (see Facebook). Possibly they even want to lie about themselves, but this is still compatible with selling them things to help them sustain their fantasy.

From the perspective of targeting ads, it seems to me to be much more effective to target the "public persona" that people wish others to see rather than the true private person. Building better tools that allow someone to say, "This is how I wish the world to see me" is much, much better than trolling through their personal information and patching up a profile that nobody wishes to expose. And for the few people who wish to be an informational black hole? You weren't going to sell them anything anyway.

P.S. I understand that Google and others have a very long way to go to make this kind of thing a reality. It's just that I don't see it as being antithetical to their business goals.

[1] - [https://github.com/google/end-to-end](https://github.com/google/end-to- end) [2] - [https://uk.lush.com/article/lush-ethical- company](https://uk.lush.com/article/lush-ethical-company)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone have any idea what this means? He is a smart person, so I assume I am just being dense.

<comment><USER8> My take is focusing on internet related innovation that focuses on bringing them to users. Things like AI and 3D printing are typically out of the reach of normal internet users, so the goal is to make it available to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> People centered? So will we see a list of locally hosted websites available using peer-to-peer, open source, end-to-end encrypted software? Or will we see the usual global "data collection" through centralized services?

There used to be "bulletin board systems" (BBS) software that was point-to- point, ran on local systems, and was fully distributed. Anyone could customize their own BBS. Lists of available BBS were circulated. It was the ultimate people-centered architecture.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's one of the most transparent newsletters I've seen in a while.</comment>


Snowden Is The Kind of Guy I Used to Recruit–in Russia - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/snowden-is-the-kind-of-guy-i-used-to-recruitin-russia-106648.html

<comment><USER2> More obvious PR Hits for NSA shills.

Again, the "Snowden is a Russki Spy!" thing doesn't fly, on first principles. Did Hanssen, Ames and Walker go talk to a reporter, or did they secretly give small batches of stuff to a handler? Let's see... the latter! Have any of the well-known moles/spies give an ideology statement, trying to philosophically justify their spying? No.

C'mon, shills and plants and Deep Government crypto-fascists! You've got to do better than this!

<comment><USER3> In all fairness, we have no evidence to prove or disprove that Snowden didn't also (along with talking to reporters) deliver intelligence to handlers.

<comment><USER4> In all fairness, we have no evidence to prove or disprove that You are not a duck. Quack.

<comment><USER3> Parent comment is implying that they do in fact, know that I'm a duck.

<comment><USER2> OK, so prove any suspicions wrong: present some data for how the young Russians you turned during the cold war left a big (for the time) data dump for journalists of any stripe to examine. Where are those documents? Where's the statement of ideology from these young Russian loners?

That is, if Snowden is "the kind of guy" you used to recruit in Soviet Russia, where are the similarities besides a Myers-Briggs personality type evaluation?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pinebook Pro, First Impressions - <AUTHOR> https://bentsukun.ch/posts/pinebook-pro/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty much my experience as well. The trackpad is my only complaint about the machine. There is some ongoing work to reverse-engineer the trackpad firmware (which is apparently behaving badly) from this guy: [https://github.com/akirakyle/pinebook-pro-keyboard- updater/t...](https://github.com/akirakyle/pinebook-pro-keyboard- updater/tree/master/firmware/disassembly)

There's also apparently a bounty: [https://www.bountysource.com/issues/88375235-reverse- enginee...](https://www.bountysource.com/issues/88375235-reverse-engineer- touchpad-firmware)

If there _is_ a firmware solution, then I think I'll have no complaints left for the pinebook pro :)

<comment><USER3> Are you able to use bluetooth trackpads, like Apple's Magic Trackpad, with it? Asking for myself before I buy..

<comment><USER4> I use a Wacom Intuos (USB) as as a trackpad which works out of the box. It is nice and big and you can always pick up the pen when it is convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Such an inexpensive machine and reviewer complains about lack of 4K... :) 1080p is pretty decent in a little laptop like this.

<comment><USER6> I mean, a $35 RaspPI does 4k...

<comment><USER7> It also doesn't include a monitor.

<comment><USER8> but it would be nice to pay a bit more and get 4k.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it makes much sense to "pay a bit more and get 4k" on a device which costs $199. If people are looking to "pay a bit more" to get 4k then they should probably look at a device which can actually handle 4k decently not expect it as an upgrade option on one of the cheapest laptops available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Since Linux can be installed on pretty much every laptop, I am not sure what is special about this one. Maybe the HN gang can enlighten me?

What fascinates me about Pine64 is that we might _finally_ see Linux on phones and tablets.

I ordered a PinePhone a few days ago. Can't wait to try it. I wonder when they will ship it. I got an email "Your order has been received and is now being processed." but no info when they will send it out. Any idea how fast they will ship?

<comment><USER11> Maybe I'm a retard but isn't Android linux?

<comment><USER12> Technically, but have you ever worked at a shell on an Android device? It feels alien, and all the interesting stuff is wrapped up in the JVM so the fact that it's wrapped in Linux doesn't gain you much.

<comment><USER13> You should give Termux a try. It's an honest to goodness "Linux environment" with a full package manager for many many popular tools and utilities, including the build essentials if you want to compile software directly on your device.

<comment><USER14> I like Termux too, but... even that stuff is going away [https://github.com/termux/termux- app/issues/1072](https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/1072)

So it makes sense to use Linux if that's what you prioritize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish they had options with more RAM. 4GB is just not enough for serious work these days.

<comment><USER16> Yes, I would expect much more from a "Pro" model, at least 8GB, preferably 16-32GB personally.. Running VMs and containers is quite necessary for high security & software development work..

<comment><USER17> The RK3399 doesn't support more than 8GB RAM CMIIW. Also RK3399 seems very underpowered for software development work, you might want to wait for snapdragon Chromebook or Google's custom Exynos Chromebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've had a PineBook Pro for a few months. I added an NVMe drive for extra storage and overall I'm happy with it as a secondary machine since I usually use my desktop.

The one thing that I think is much worse than it should be is the trackpad and my view is much more negative than in this review. For me, it's terrible and often borders on unusable for anything that doesn't have a large clickable area. It is such a contrast to the keyboard that is much better than I expected and probably the best laptop keyboard I've used in a long time.

<comment><USER19> Did you take much of a battery life hit with the addition of the NVMe drive?

<comment><USER18> I haven't done much testing, but the battery life is still very good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> type-2 > The display resolution is 1920x1080, equivalent to about 100 dpi

Maybe a typo? Should be around 157dpi for a 14 inch screen. Though I absolutely agree with the general idea, high dpi screens (over 200 dpi) do make the experience much much better.

</comment><comment><USER20> I received pinebook pro last week and initially I was really disappointed with the trackpad, double tap was only working 30% of the time, laggy movement, urgh.

After some experimentation and someone on the forums pointing me to [https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro#X-Windows_.26...](https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro#X-Windows_.26_trackpad_settings) I am getting decent performance.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wish the author expanded on how Midori is "really testing my patience" \- kind of a showstopper if you can't browse with what is a very lightweight browser

</comment><comment><USER22> > a barrel connector power supply

What's wrong with this?

<comment><USER7> Absolutely nothing.

USB-C seems superior because it comes with a data link, and negotiates higher power ratings.

The tradeoff is that this comes with complexity. The Pinebook team, sensibly, decided they didn't want to fuck with building and verifying USB-C power negotiation subsystems.

Guarantee that everyone complaining about it here has never had to implement, or be accountable for the BOM cost of, a USB-C power negotiation system.

<comment><USER23> USB-C seems superior because every desk that I ever sit at already has a USB-C charger, plus another in my backpack, and compatibility with portable power banks.

Granted I haven't ever had to implement it, but I think you're underselling its benefits.

<comment><USER24> Haha my other comment was both down voted and flagged.

Think about the chronology then reinterpret my question.

When I was 12 I was very active. To only ever have seen USB-C this person might well be a prodigy.

Again, honest question. Calm down with the hate boys and girls, try not to assume everyone is malicious

<comment><USER25> "Are you 12" is an internet insult trope. The comment clearly broke the site guidelines. If you wouldn't mind reviewing [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=wlesieutre](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=wlesieutre). To have joined HN at the age of 3 would be quite the prodigy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have one. It seems to be a pretty nice machine with a good performance for buck ratio. However, the touchpad and keyboard make it completely unusable for me. The keyboard doesn't register some key combos at all, and I've never used a touchpad this bad...

<comment><USER27> Get a bluetooth mouse?

<comment><USER26> In situations where I'd be comfortable using a Bluetooth mouse, I'd probably have my much more powerful amd64 laptop with me. But well, I don't even need a mouse to comfortably use that one :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > There are upgrade kits available, for example an adapter to add an NVMe disk > instead of the eMMC. For the original Pinebook, there has been an upgrade > kit with a better processor even.

I didn't know you could add nvme disk to the pinebook pro. The emmc storage was turning me off, but with this the machine seem to be more attractive to me. If it has upgradable cpu as well I would seriously consider using this laptop, just need to figure out shipping as international shipping is usually handled by the awful state-owned postal company here, which for some reason can't successfully deliver anything to my address.

</comment><comment><USER29> > The keyboard is an absolute joy to use.

The keyboard is a cheap no-name, far worse than a Thinkpad keyboard or an Apple keyboard. I had trouble with the button S since the beginning.

But this is fine for such a cheap laptop.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about using classes in Python? - <AUTHOR> The team I'm working with use python for backend scripts and now they want to change all the python code to use Classes. I don't think this is necessary because we'll end having a lot of unwanted boilerplate code. I think classes are suited if you want many instances of the same thing, each with its own isolated state.. otherwise it's useless. You can have a clean and concise Python code without classes. How would you handle that? What would be your arguments? <comment><AUTHOR> I loved this essay Paul Graham wrote: [http://paulgraham.com/noop.html](http://paulgraham.com/noop.html)

Quoting: "My own feeling is that object-oriented programming is a useful technique in some cases, but it isn't something that has to pervade every program you write. You should be able to define new types, but you shouldn't have to express every program as the definition of new types."

<comment><USER2> That essay is generally good, and I agree with the general point (quoting: "object-oriented programming is a useful technique in some cases, but it isn't something that has to pervade every program you write"), but the specific quote you pull out is quite bizarre, given that "defining new types" has nothing at all do with OOP. It has more to do with statically-typed programming -- idiomatic code does a lot more of it (even equating "class" with "type", which is a dubious equivalence outside of statically-typed OO languages) in a statically-typed functional programming language like Haskell than in a dynamically-typed OO language like Ruby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's easier to write bad OOP than bad procedural code.

Let me guess what's happening here. Some kid recently read the gang of four design patterns book and now thinks he can turn your battle tested scripts into reusable extensible modules?

<comment><AUTHOR> lol.. probably! The very old brainwash people suffer at college and then go out thinking OOP is a silver-bullet that will solve all of your problems :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stop writing classes - Jack Diederich - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0)

Show them this.

I'm still grateful for the moment I grew dissatisfied with OOP, or at least OOP in the Java/C# way. I was almost getting to an intermediate level in python (by myself) and had been thinking about a video game architecture problem I just couldn't solve.

I was still "indoctrinated" in the gang-of-four patterns and inheritance. When I discovered the solution, Entity Component Architectures[1], I also discovered the "composition over inheritance" philosophy. My mind was blown! Coupled with some Python's characteristics (duck-typing, everything is public, first-class functions) I was having a blast. Then I saw the video above, and all fell into place. Class based OOP have specific uses, but It's a shame how heavily enforced the paradigm is.

        "Sometimes, the elegant implementation is just a function. Not a method. Not a class. Not a framework. Just a function." – John Carmack

Now, for scripts or not-to-big programs in Python, I mainly use NamedTuples for passing data around and (mostly) pure functions.

P.S. Another funny thing: At my job I use J2EE aka "lots of hinheritance and classes and boilerplate". Sometimes I just have to go home and write some code in python or lua to "cleanse my palate". It helps me get motivated for my personal projects.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw this video and showed them.. lol. I partially agree with the game example shown in the video.. I found the final code quite hard to understand. But I think that's due to my lack of knowledge in all the native stuff Python can do. I like when he says that you don't have to plan too much ahead for the future.. I think this generate phantom requirements that doesn't contribute for the solution. Just change the code when you need it. Wow, this ECA is heaven! :)

<comment><USER4> > I think this generate phantom requirements that doesn't contribute for the > solution. Just change the code when you need it.

YAGNI -> You Aren't Gonna Need It [1]

If you want to know more about about Python I recommend Raymond Hettinger's videos [2]

About ECA (which I presume is Entity Component Architecture) I have to say two things: 1) I've seen this pattern/concept be called many different things: Entity-Component, Game-Object Game-Component, Entity-Systems, etc. And at least two major ways of implementing it. 2) Like most design patterns, they exist to help you design program using languages that use heavy class-based OOP and static typing. In Python everything is dynamic and it uses duck typing, so can "draw some inspiration" from the pattern instead of implementing it by the book.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it) [2] [http://pyvideo.org/speaker/138/raymond- hettinger](http://pyvideo.org/speaker/138/raymond-hettinger)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (I don't think this is a strictly Python-based argument, so I'll expand to all of OOP.) I agree with the sentiment that Object-Oriented Programming is only useful in certain cases. Personally, as long as there's enough encapsulation that components can be composed and utilized well, classes are not useful.

Pros: enforced encapsulation, things mix and match easily, inheritance (sometimes useful)

Cons: over-organization/God objects/anti-patterns (especially of the inheritance variety), bad garbage collection patterns, classes that are "only behavior and not state" [1])

(Also, if it ain't broke, don't rewrite it. Not unless their programming concerns have been conveniently redacted from your post.)

[1]: [http://eev.ee/blog/2013/03/03/the-controller-pattern-is- awfu...](http://eev.ee/blog/2013/03/03/the-controller-pattern-is-awful-and- other-oo-heresy/)

<comment><USER2> > I don't think this is a strictly Python-based argument, so I'll expand to > all of OOP

Expanding loses important context.

> Pros: enforced encapsulation, things mix and match easily, inheritance > (sometimes useful)

As an example of the point above about context, Python -- and this is common among dynamic OO languages as opposed to C++/Java-style static class-based OO languages -- has encapsulation by convention rather than enforcement.

> Cons: over-organization/God objects/anti-patterns (especially of the > inheritance variety), bad garbage collection patterns, classes that are > "only behavior and not state" [1])

I don't think any of these are cons of OOP. All but the last are doing OOP badly -- but any paradigm can be done badly.

The last is _not_ OOP, though its something that can be done in most OO languages. OTOH, there's no real reason to oppose it other than OO fundamentalism -- an object or class that contains only behavior and not state may not be really an example of OOP, but its not a "Con" of OOP, its just a manner in which modules as found in many procedural/functional languages can be implemented in some languages where OOP is the paradigm from which the primary syntactic structures are drawn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> if they mean "turn the currently fat, repetitive scripts into slim wrappers which call into a well-structured collection of well-composed classes of objects, which closely match the problem domain, thus promoting code reuse, and fix once, benefit everywhere behavior", then good.

difficult to comment properly without more context.

<comment><USER7> Context is the key to getting a better answer to your question. For any sufficiently large code base you would need to adopt some structure, e.g. modules and/or well designed functions, to ensure that the system is maintainable. Classes are just one to encapsulate state and behaviour so it doesn't leak all over the place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> * Python offers more encapsulation without classes than say PHP if you use importing properly, so a codebase without classes is not a big deal (I prefer OOD though).

* If your python code is organized in such a way that your classes will end up having no instance vars or methods, pragmatic advantages to using classes are limited. In other words, if you're switching to OOP, make use of that paradigm or it will indeed feel like mere boilerplate.

</comment><comment><USER9> > they want to change all the python code

Why, doesn't it work?

Always potentially a bad idea, regardless of what you're changing to.

<comment><USER7> Although I prefer class oriented programming in Python, I have worked on projects where functions were a better fit to the domain concepts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> If you have a particular reason to use classes when writing new code or updating existing code, go for it. But rewriting just to use classes without a clear purpose is pointless -- its _at least_ a waste of time, and quite possibly ends up introducing new bugs and maintenance problems.

</comment><comment><USER7> Boilerplate code for classes in Python? WTF?

Are you sure you are not adopting Java or C++ conventions?

Python supports both OO and functional paradigms. For any project you would use the combination that is optimal for the project. Forcing the use of one or the other without considering the overall impact is unwise.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have rebuilt a lot of code from scratch.

You learn a lot and hate programming...

Unless the codebase is awesome.

Ha!</comment>


Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil/bolsonaro-fires-health-minister-calls-to-reopen-economy-idUSKBN21Y338 <comment><USER2> That reminds me of another headline from last month that was right up the Monty Python alley too: "Turkmenistan Has Banned Use Of The Word 'Coronavirus'"

As a friend who's a standup comedian said in response to reading that: "Brilliant, why didn't our government think of this? We wouldn't have all these problems."

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/03/31/824611607/turkmenistan-has-banned-use-of-the-word- coronavirus)

<comment><USER3> That's literally the case with 'climate change' being banned from government discussions and reports in the federal govt in the US and in various states.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/08/trump-...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/08/trump- administration-climate-change-ban-usda)

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/03/09/florida- bans...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/03/09/florida-bans-saying- climate-change)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Brazilian supreme court already decided that state governors and city mayors can impose regional lockdowns. Most cities are already with restrictive measures and this event is not going to change that.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good luck to all Brazilians. They'll need it.

<comment><USER6> Heat is providing a lot of natural defense. Things are already going _way_ better than predicted.

<comment><USER7> One of worst Brazilian states is one of the hottest (Ceará).

<comment><USER6> You affirmation does not umake the reality of thermal sensitivity in this virus [1].

There are other factors involved in producing a higher mortality, like comorbidity and demographics.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25855727](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25855727)

<comment><USER8> Temperature might or might not help [1] and even if it does it may not be enough. Daily confirmed cases are still rising but effects of the quarantine should be visible soon since i think we are reaching the 3 weeks mark.

[1] [https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3079831/coro...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3079831/coronavirus- can-survive-long-exposure-high-temperature-threat)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is hard to predict the future, but despite the former Health minister indeed have being fired for clashing with Bolsonaro views, there is not much indication that the policy will in fact change now.

It became a ego dispute in the last days, but original rumors that the role would be occupied by someone without health expertise that would follow Bolsonaro orders to the letter were wrong. The new minister is also a doctor who hinted that lockdown is necessary before.

I believe Bolsonaro leadership is a disaster and more people will die because of his actions and speeches. I just don't think today's announcement will change much. It will not get worse.

The governors here don't have that much autonomy as in the US, but they have enough to define what will indeed happen in the streets. This won't change with the new minister.

<comment><USER9> After having undermined most of the efforts of his own health minister, Bolsonaro can't do much worse, I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bolsonaro believes that he's personally immune because he's an "athlete".

Wish I was kidding.

<comment><USER6> Isn't that recover of viral diseases which we don't have vaccines for are a function of immune system's response?

<comment><USER11> It's not that simple in cases where our immune system can also act as the villain [1][2].

We sure can act like irrational animals and play the natural selection card (and leave people to die an excruciating death), but I personally prefer to slow down the almost inevitable [3], so our health system has more time to cope with the situation as well as they can.

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2020/04/07/8280914...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2020/04/07/828091467/why-some-covid-19-patients-crash-the-bodys-immune- system-might-be-to-blame)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/11/science/how-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/11/science/how- coronavirus-hijacks-your-cells.html)

[3] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-13/coronavir...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-13/coronavirus- could-infect-two-thirds-of-globe-researcher-says)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know we're talking about people's lives, but maybe the world needs to see a country get it devastatingly wrong.

<comment><USER13> Already happening in Sweden: [https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-as- swedens-deat...](https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-as-swedens- death-toll-mounts-epidemiologists-urge-leaders-to-ignore-their-own-public- health-agency)

<comment><USER14> I don't understand the Sweden example. Their daily % increase in deaths is well below California. I don't know if there is a difference in counting deaths but Sweden seems to be doing ok relative to other countries. I have heard that they are effectively shut down voluntarily, so government action was not needed but the effect has been the same. Maybe a Swede can weigh in.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_California)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Sweden)

<comment><USER15> Sweden isn't performing a lot of tests for one:

[https://www.thelocal.se/20200414/understanding-swedens- figur...](https://www.thelocal.se/20200414/understanding-swedens-figures-on- the-coronavirus)

<comment><USER16> Why do they need to perform a lot of tests if their strategy isn't dependent on testing?

<comment><USER10> Because if there's a giant spike of currently asymptomatic carriers, you'd want to know.

<comment><USER17> If they at least did testing + contact tracing (like NZ) they probably could have saved a tonne of lives even without locking down

<comment><USER16> Every developed country did testing and contact tracing, even the ones popularly seen as doing nothing. That was why leaders were saying it wouldn't be a problem in February; they didn't expect a magic cure, they expected their testing and contact tracing to handle it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Workers having to die so their masters can add another zero to their bank accounts.

</comment><comment><USER19> The parallels between the current US and Brazilian administrations are hard to ignore. That said, I really hope Trump and Fauci are able to see this crisis out together. Bolsonaro's decision today could kill thousands, no doubt.

</comment><comment><USER8> He's a total madman. Trump is a shithead but he'll read the situation or be advised by someone, jump ships and blame it on the chinese or something. This guy went 100% on this and is not turning back, to the level of taking people to the streets to force business owners to open, walking on the streets to chat with followers (while he's suspected positive covid) and calling for fasting and prayers as a solution. BTW Religious services were defined as "essential" so they can still be carried on. Much of his base is from a fanatic/fringe christian faith so maybe that's were that comes from.

What worries me is that now Brazil is in a stand off, the military that surround him, vice-president included, have cutted him off power and congress is starting to look into an impeachment. But even if they do, and do away with Bolsonaro, then the military that ran with him will have the power, will finally declare the lockdown and anything can happen next, they'll be lucky if they have elections after that. Police abuse during lockdown grew a lot in other latin countries, i expect at least the same to happen there, who knows to which level.

</comment><comment><USER20> Finally - let people go back to their lives. How's Sweden doing these days?

</comment><comment><USER21> Bolsonaro has no negotiation skills, and is (frankly) bad at mostly everything, but he's got a good finance minister who's saying that the country just can't stop creating value, but what is the right balance?

Mandetta, the previous health minister, had no flexibility in his views, he wanted to follow the WHO blindly, without weighing anything else.

Maybe the new guy has the flexibility and the brains to find a better balance of views, and to create a strategy on top of it.

<comment><USER10> It's not the job of the health minister to consider the economy. If they're thinking about that, they're being an awful health minister.

It's the job of the executive to balance between the different paths recommended by different advisors, and chart a path that has the correct balance of trade offs.

<comment><USER22> It's the job of the health minister to give his boss useful policy options to choose from and that requires some level of understanding and accommodating the other variables that the boss has to consider. That means that the health minister has to consider the economy and the economy minister has to consider public health.

I don't know much about this guy but if he was as bad at balancing the variables he had to consider as the GP suggests then I can see why he was removed.

<comment><USER11> The former health minister was considering the economy and had speaked public a few times about it. He recommendations were based in the fact that the government couldn't simply switch from a horizontal isolation to a non planned vertical isolation. He main responsibility (at least the short term one) was to not overload the hospitals and put the health professionals in risk, and at least that he has achieved.

On the other hand, the president wants a "vertical" isolation without a plan, he simply wants to "reopen the economy" (whatever it means). Remembering that he has largely underplayed the issue, calling it "just a little flu" (probably it would be better translated to: "just a cold").

Brazil doesn't have enough tests to make good decisions about which areas should be in a horizontal isolation or to be instead in a vertical one.

The former health minister was clear that all the information coming from his office should be backed by science (and this alone was bugging the president a lot for some reason). This also meant that he, as the health minister, couldn't go public and say that a specific medication was effective to treat the covid-19 just because some tests worked in vitro (any doctor or scientist knows that this alone doesn't mean that it'll work efficiently in vivo).

The president behaviour was the opposite, many times he went public to say that a drug tested in vitro was enough to have the horizontal isolation lifted out. And as a consequence or his irresponsible pronouncements, many of his followers ran to the drug stores to buy certain medications, leaving people that really need them for other diseases without medication.

So the main issue turned out to be the fact that the former health minister was becoming popular because of his common sense, and everyone knows that in the eyes of a populist, "there can be only one".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Honest question: Did we see any anormal mortality in any country caused by the covid-19? Countrywide there seems to be less death than usual on the period January-March in Europe.

Edit: And here goes my karma. I will need to do some PR to catch up with this :)

<comment><USER16> Europe's seen abnormally high mortality rates starting at the end of March. Someone sent me this graph, although unfortunately I didn't keep track of the source:

[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nq9Tcrho5QQ/XpjnH7DgeRI/A...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nq9Tcrho5QQ/XpjnH7DgeRI/AAAAAAAABUg/F0OE1eMwAQI3vZw6-_Ece_Zye4UtjTWbQCK8BGAsYHg/s0/2020-04-16.png)

<comment><USER23> We need to compare year to year, mortality is higher in January - March any year.

<comment> 2019-nCoV It still exceeds average seasonal mortality rates, see [https://www.euromomo.eu](https://www.euromomo.eu)

<comment><USER23> But, is it significant compared to 2016 ?

<comment><USER24> Why are you glossing over the fact that the numbers were DESPITE having done a global lockdown? If we didn't do a lockdown, it'd be way higher.

<comment><USER23> How are we sure about this? We cannot anymore but are we sure that the lockdown will lower the global mortality? Why are we not acting rationally anymore? Are we sure that fear did not take over and now we just do as everybody because nobody ever got fired for choosing the lockdown?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Survey: Average gamer is 35, fat and depressed - Games - msnbc.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32463904/ns/technology_and_science-games/ <comment><USER2> "the study helps illuminate the health consequences of video-game playing"

No, not really. It shows overweight depressed men like video games a lot. Perhaps some of them were overweight and depressed when they started playing video games. It's almost certain that, in the absence of video games, they wouldn't suddenly decide to change their lifestyles. They'd probably just watch TV instead. Seems like another one of these "being a mediocre artist will turn you into Hitler" type of studies. (and I'm not even a video game player. I think they're boring and a waste of time.)</comment>


Introducing Stride - <AUTHOR> https://blog.stride.com/introducing-stride-19e9f94c0629 <comment><USER2> I was wondering what this means for existing HipChat users. My highlights from the [FAQ]([https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride- documentation/upgrad...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/stride- documentation/upgrading-to-stride-937165569.html)):

> We'll send your admin an email when we're ready for you. > All of your > rooms, teammates, files, custom emoticons and message history from HipChat > Cloud will be in Stride. > In the future, all HipChat Cloud teams will be > encouraged to move to Stride. > Starting soon, we will begin to upgrade all > HipChat Cloud teams to Stride. > HipChat Cloud will remain in 'read-only' > mode.</comment>


Show HN: Test HTTP Requests without Mock Server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Vatavuk/verano-http <comment><USER2> I'm confused, so this is a client, that doesn't need a mock server. Does it just return the expected objects to a Java client? How does this relate to non-Java clients, e.g. JavaScript?

I can see this being somewhat valuable for Android testing somewhat.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is that we can replace the part of the client's functionality which is responsible for executing HTTP requests with a mocked version. Instead of sending requests to the server the mocked implementation stores requests to memory and returns predefined responses/java objects. This cannot be applied to non java clients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> you know there's something called wiremock already?

<comment><AUTHOR> Wiremock is a mock server. Verano-http provides you a tool for true unit testing without a need to start a http server.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Things I Learned From Meeting an Angel Investor - <AUTHOR>

So I had a meeting with a potential angel investor yesterday.  It didn't work out, but I learned a few things.  Here's what I learned:<p>* Know in advance of the meeting whoever your most popular competitor would be.  Be prepared with a damn good answer to answer the question "Why wouldn't I just use [most popular competitor]"?<p>* Be prepared with a damn good answer to the question "How are you going to get users?"  My experience is the best answer is to both have something on your website that can go viral and also have a good way for users to easily refer more people (like searching their address book for contacts, clicking a button to send somebody an email, etc).  Tweets and Facebook Likes are not aggressive.  You need to use email.<p>* When you're making a mock-up of your start-up, be sure to make a mock-up of however you plan to make money.  The monetization plan is the last thing on the founder's mind and the first thing on the investor's mind.  Potential investors will absolutely ask "how are you going to make money?"  "We're going to get big fast and then rely on Google/Yahoo/Facebook to buy us out" is crazy talk and your investor's won't believe it.  Seriously: Even if you have a good answer for monetization, BE PREPARED TO ACTUALLY SHOW INVESTORS AT LEAST A MOCK-UP OF A MONEY-MAKING FEATURE ON YOUR SITE - SOMETHING THAT WILL ACTUALLY ACCEPT REAL PAYMENTS WHEN ITS DONE!<p>* Many, if not basically all, start-ups these days rely on user-submitted content.  Be prepared to answer how you will deal with the legalities of that and potentially compensate the users that do the submitting.<p>It was a tough sell with this potential investor.  It didn't work out but I learned a lot.  As I meet with other investors, I will share my experiences. <comment><USER2> Thanks. _Probably_ you need to work on the idea more or this person just didn't see it. Usually there's a split second thing, they either see it or don't. The rest is dotting the i's and crossing the t's.

>> ""Why wouldn't I just use [most popular competitor]"?"

Unless you were asking them for $1 billion this is pretty dumb. You don't need to be #1 or #2 to make money, and features change after going live.

<comment><USER3> _> > ""Why wouldn't I just use [most popular competitor]"?"

Unless you were asking them for $1 billion this is pretty dumb. _

I wouldn't say it's necessarily _dumb_. You fail if you're pitching a search engine and you don't have a compelling answer to "Why wouldn't people just use Google?"

<comment><USER2> A search engine needs $100+ million to $xx billions to create and a very different angle to market since Google is bookmarked and people go there to search for stuff. You see Blekko trying to get some press by saying that they deleted 1 million domains from Serps? As if that makes sense

But yeah, if he wanted to create a web search engine, then he was asked the right question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing your major takeaways!

Has anybody had any experience with AngelList?</comment>


Should You Make Fitbit Your New Dating App? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mydatablog/should-you-make-fitbit-your-new-dating-app-dc33c3c2795b

<comment><USER2> > _It's pretty clear that the data does not support the conclusion that better > dates are correlated to higher heart rates._

...so the post _admits_ that correlation does not imply causation?

There are many, many reasons why a heart beat will spike. The number of spike is irrelevant. An average heartbeat for each date vs. average heartbeat for normal behavior would be a better comparison, but still flawed (e.g. coffee dates!).</comment>


Canonical Distribution of Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/01/24/canonical-distribution-of-kubernetes-release-1-5-2/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=CanonicalKubernetes <comment><USER2> _> This is a pure upstream distribution of Kubernetes, designed to be easily deployable to public clouds, on-premise (ie vsphere, openstack), bare metal, and developer laptops._

Since this is an official announcement and the author is here: the proper phrase is "on premises"\-- 'premise' is a term of speech, 'premises' is a place.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/premise](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/premise)

<comment><USER3> Language evolves, and this is a great example. From the Oxford English dictionary: (note the last sentence)

3.b. In pl. In extended use. A house or building together with its grounds, outhouses, etc., esp. a building or part of a building that houses a business. Now also occas. with sing. concord.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey HN, PM for Canonical's Kubernetes (CDK) here. Feel free to ask questions!

<comment><USER5> Non-rhetorical question: Why would I use this instead of the many other approaches to running Kubernetes? Looking through the linked pages gave me no clue what the advantage is. I love Ubuntu, I've been a heavy Ubuntu user (on servers, laptops, etc.) for over 13 years, and I have a 25-node Kubernetes cluster running as part of [https://cloud.sagemath.com](https://cloud.sagemath.com). The kubernetes nodes all run Debian images, since that's what actually worked by default on GCE (with Kubernetes 1.3) when I setup the cluster. Soon I'll be making a new Kubernetes 1.5.x based cluster, and expanding how it's used.

Anyway, I feel like the documentation I was easily able to find about CDK misses the "comparison to the competition". I will maybe consider CDK as one option, instead of just using the install scripts that come with the Kubernetes source distribution.

<comment><USER4> First off, sage math looks awesome \m/. This is a great question, I'll be making sure we update our docs and pages to highlight these differences, here's a few that might be helpful for you:

From an installation standpoint you get the same Kubernetes /everywhere/. You can run this on all the public clouds, e.g. AWS, GCE, Azure, Rackspace, etc., and on private infrastructure like OpenStack, VMWare, and bare metal. And any Ubuntu machine, like a laptop, single server, etc.

CDK as a whole is really just applying operational knowledge around Kubernetes. We are not adding any additional bits to k8s, we distribute the same binaries as upstream. If you stop using our tools, you can still manage the cluster as if you'd stood it up by hand. Since we're distilling operations, and not just installation, we cover the entire breadth of lifecycle tasks. Come 1.5.3, 1.6.0 (+ etcd3), and beyond we work to make sure tasks like upgrades work reliably and consistently.

We also present a consistent interface to common maintenance tasks, so that everyone using the solution uses the same primitives for maintenance. This helps eliminate the need to SSH and hunt around for these tasks. All the operational code we produce is open source, it lives in the upstream tree, and we love contributions!

Our roadmap for features is driven almost exclusively by our users, both community and commercial.

I could probably write pages, but I think those are probably the starting points for things we're doing as a distribution of Kubernetes. If you have any specific issues while running k8s, I'm happy to help answer how we handle those, if we do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How long do you expect CDK to lag behind upstream Kubernetes releases? So far it's been pretty tight, but I'm curious about what sort of expectation you have here.

<comment><USER4> We're still "beta" so we have been able to release within 10 after upstream.

With recent updates to our build/ci process, we're able to constantly test master. This means we can bless releases days after being cut. Expect GA for CDK around 1.6.0 release time, which we will be driving for release blessed within five business days of upstream.

<comment><USER7> > five business days of upstream

So you do not do any integration testing, or for that matter hardly any testing at all?

<comment><USER8> > we're able to constantly test master

You seemed to have missed this.

<comment><USER7> It also said "With recent updates to our build/ci process" but there is more to testing than continuous integration, especially for something as complex as Kubernetes.

In particular, continuous integration can run regression tests but how many bugs will it find due to interactions between features?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this compare to OpenShift?

Currently evaluating it for a new setup and Red Hat did a great job at it. It's basically devops tooling on top of Kubernetes.

[https://www.openshift.org/](https://www.openshift.org/)

<comment><USER4> OpenShift is an interesting product, because it's not just Kubernetes, but a PAAS on top of Kubernetes packaged as a single solution. As a result you're not using k8s, but OpenShift / Origin. This has pros and cons which mainly boild down to simplicity vs lock in.

Honestly, I'd suggest you shop around, comparing CDK to OpenShift would be kind of like comparing virtual machines to a cloud provider. In that, virtual machines are implemented in a ton of ways, but cloud providers are a platform which abstracts that whole VM layer and provides a product on top of VMs.

Much in the same way we're packaging up and distributing that underlying engine. There's a lot of flexibility with that. You can use Kuberentes directly, you can leverage Helm which is what a lot of the community seems to be moving towards for package management on k8s, and then things like Deis and others implement that PAAS layer similar to OpenShift.

Why I'd recommend this method over OpenShift is the flexibility we afford you. For starters, things like Helm and Deis don't come as a part of CDK but will work out of the box on it. Since it's just delivering Kubernetes the platform. As such, if you try Deis and don't like it, you could try Kel or any other PAAS / tool built to work against vanilla Kubernetes. With OpenShift - you use it and that's the choice you're saddled with.

At the end of the day, take some time to try both. Deis is quite polished and would give you an idea of what to expect from other PAAS solutions. It's built on Helm which is part of Kubernetes so it's less deltas from what upstream is doing.

<comment><USER9> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> ...now with (mandatory) Juju.</comment>


Retrochallenge Success – 6502 Computer - <AUTHOR> https://coronax.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/retrochallenge-success/ <comment><USER2> And on the insane side of things, there is the Vulcan 74 :

[http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3329](http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3329)

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone built a 6502 core and ported the same ehBasic to bare metal Arduino a while back[1]. I had a little play and managed to get it working on an Uno with only minor changes (ISTR it was something to do with compatibility with current arduino, nothing difficult).

[1] - [http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=193216.0](http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=193216.0)</comment>


Local police post mugshots on Pinterest, leading to a 57% boost in arrests - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/12/07/local-police-post-mugshots-on-pinterest-leading-to-a-57-boost-in-arrests/ <comment><USER2> Blog spam, inaccurate headline.

Original article on npr: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/12/07/166678...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/12/07/166678862/to- catch-a-suspect-on-pinterest)

The boost was in 57% of "warrant services" whatever that means, not arrests. No numbers given for the increase in arrests, just that they "actually got more people."

<comment><USER3> Thank you for that.

The Pinterest page is here (<http://pinterest.com/themercury/wanted-by- police/>)

I'd be interested to see if Google (or anyone) tried their face recognition on these photos and provide information to the police.

<comment><USER4> What information is face recognition going to provide? as per the pinterest page you linked, the police already know the suspect's name and information, they just can't find them. It's unlikely google or anybody else is going to get a current address for these people just by running facial recognition.

<comment><USER5> The photos which Google (or much more likely, Facebook and Twitter) have often contain embedded geolocation data which gives the police a better idea of where to start looking for the person. Of course, this is a lot more work than posting up the equivalent of virtual wanted posters and having people give information which is more likely to be recent than pictures collected by social networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to upvote this post, if I do, does it mean I support the idea behind ? because I don't, I don't think that denunciation is right way to support justice ... but I'd like the post to go to the front page, the see HN comments about it!

<comment><USER7> Denonciations are a good thing if you believe a criminal should be arrested as a consequence of his initial actions.

Denonciations are a bad thing if you believe that someone who didn't get caught in the act should be able to escape

972 - est-tu de Martinique ?

<comment><USER8> There's also a third option, people who can't (at the time) afford a lawyer to represent them.

Even in minor court cases, to plead not guilty and take a case to trial costs thousands of dollars. In jail-able offenses, some municipal courts don't have public defenders. And if you are innocent and unwilling to take a plea deal, your only option can be spending $3000+ to defend yourself against a minor misdemeanor charge.

(I realize these people are mostly charged with felonies it seems.)

<comment><USER9> > (I realize these people are mostly charged with felonies it seems.)

That doesn't necessarily make them more guilty.

It shouldn't cost any money at all to defend in a criminal case unless you wish to bring your own lawyer, and court provided lawyers should do better than they usually do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The police department in my home town (Utica, NY) has been posting arrest photos on Facebook for a couple of years now. I wish there were data to determine whether or not it was having an impact, and what kinds of impacts it's having.

Most people I know are pretty disgusted by it. They feel that publicizing arrests is fueling an already ripe negative PR image against the city and that posting arrest photos in a very public place leads people to assume that the arrested are guilty before they are convicted.

At the same time however, think of the deterrent it is to "young punk" type criminals to have their mugshot posted in a public forum for all of their friends/family to see and for their neighbor's comments.

I wonder if those who made arrest records (not conviction) public record would have done so in light of these kinds of developments.

[https://www.facebook.com/pages/City-of-Utica-NY-Police- Depar...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/City-of-Utica-NY-Police- Department/175041395841678)

<comment><USER11> In the US, businesses can legally reject employment based on an arrest record. In France it's illegal to post arrest records where there's no conviction; probably wanted posters are an exception though.

<comment><USER12> Well, in the US as a whole, businesses can generally reject employment for _any_ reason, no matter how petty. There's a small, finite list of reasons that are illegal -- race, sex, and the like -- but these have to be specifically enshrined in the law.

Local governments can add their own laws on top of this, of course. Discrimination against sexual orientation has become illegal in many places within the US.

<comment><USER13> The letter of the law is one thing - the recommendations of HR lawyers to employers wanting to stay out of trouble are far more conservative. The advice I've heard is basically "don't do anything to create or discriminate against a 'protected class'". So even if it's not strictly against the law to decline to hire or promote people who wear blue shoes on Tuesdays, it's probably a bad idea to make such a policy without a strong, well-documented, objective basis for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The tip line has been ringing off the hook. In fact, Drumheller says some people even called in to say they had seen their own mugshot online and have asked to turn themselves in to authorities."

What the fuck?

<comment><USER15> Some people may not realize there's a warrant out for them.

<comment><USER16> I've had a couple normally law abiding friends get arrested on warrants that they've had for years without knowing. It would be a traffic ticket from long ago that they either forgot about or their was a mix up in payment. Given time that ticket slowly turns into a warrant and eventually an embarrassing arrest.

<comment><USER17> A friend from Texas discovered this whilst on a road trip, when he arrived at the Canadian border. He had to turn around and drive home, because of an bounced cheque from ~a year beforehand - that he'd never heard anything about since paying it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Something tells me that this will not be accompanied by a 57% decrease in crime rates, but will absolutely be accompanied by a 57% increase in imprisonment and legal expenditures to detain and prosecute these people. An argument can be made that, except in the case of dangerous fugitives, using a more efficient means of finding wanted people may cause more harm than good.

<comment><USER19> So you are suggesting that some laws aren't worth upholding because they aren't financially viable?

<comment><USER18> I'm suggesting that historical warrant service rates are used in calculating budgets, and making staffing and other decisions that will be hard to address in such a compressed period of time. One would assume this will result in a 57% increase in caseloads, which means 57% more time that cases take to make their way through court since more judges can't just magically appear. Most jails operate at or above capacity; a sudden 57% increase in inmates will result in all kinds of lawsuits and other expenses both for the inmates and for the counties that operate them.

Finally, yes, seeing minor crimes all the way through the court system is of questionable social value relative to the economic expense.

<comment><USER20> All of what you say may be true, but you're not actually advocating that a good solution here is to prevent certain parts of the system from working efficiently? There are probably better and more equitable ways to reduce case loads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder what the privacy-law impact of this will be. While all of us will probably agree with a system like this to help locate convicted felons, what about people who simply miss Jury Duty, forget about a court date, and so on.

In an era where every HR professional worth her salt Googles every applicant with a serious shot at the job, this could prevent some people from getting much-needed employment.

Worse yet, in instances where this causes people to be weeded out before even a phone interview, there is no effective way (outside of Google and the NSA) to track this type of behavior and the possible labor law violations that could result.

<comment><USER22> To the extent that employers want to screen candidates who skip out on jury duty, it's hard to argue that there's a "privacy" issue in outing them. Skipping jury duty should be a matter of public record. You are obligated to serve as a juror when required. Willfully avoiding a jury summons is in fact a misdemeanor crime.

Don't skip jury duty.

The bigger problem with posting wanted signs on social networks is that they can't be expunged. This is a real issue, but very few people ever expunge their arrest records anyways.

The even bigger problem has nothing at all to do with social networks; it's that it's unfair (and probably unlawful) to screen employees by arrest record to begin with.

<comment><USER21> That is, at it's core, my point. What happens if the case is thrown out? Even if removed from Social Network X, your fugitive status will live forever in the Wayback machine, on scraping sites, and so on.

<comment><USER22> Ultimately this has more to do with employers than police departments, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The craziest thing about looking through the warrants is the amount of charges that are either about property or drugs.

The media focuses so much on violence and sexual assault that I thought there would be more violent offenders in the mugshots.

<comment><USER24> If the media is focusing on it, it's rare. If the media _stops_ running stories about violence (or runs fewer), then violence may be getting out of hand. If a single story about violence runs for a week, then it's rare, so violence is going down.

Media is weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Doing the same thing for missing children could help a lot of parents find their kids.

<comment><USER26> How well did putting pictures of missing children on milk cartons work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Pintarrest

</comment><comment><USER28> funny you can also see who re-pins your mugshot. if I were a criminal on there, time to drive up to their house and rape their kids

</comment><comment><USER29> Did anyone else notice from the screenshot that this one is kinda cute? <http://pinterest.com/pin/74239093829161560/></comment>


Mathe Carlo - <AUTHOR> https://observablehq.com/@jajoosam/mathe-carlo/2 <comment><USER2> Thank you for this. I've been curious about Monte Carlo techniques ever since I was strongly influenced by Taleb's ideas. He uses Monte Carlo techniques via Mathematica* to produce curves for very complex probability functions. He prefers using Monte Carlo (practice) over using math theory. (He calls it "tinkering" not "Pinkering", a reference to Steve Pinker, whom Taleb criticizes because Taleb argues that Pinker relies excessively on theory, not enough on practice).

My request to experienced Monte Carlo tinkerers on HN: please share "open source + free" tools and resources that you'd recommend to learn Monte Carlo.

*Mathematica is very expensive software, without a free tier.

<comment><USER3> Separating Monte Carlo methods from math theory is an odd distinction to make. There's a lot of sophisticated theory underlying Monte Carlo methods as well. MC also is more of a loose term referring to a class of techniques, rather than any specific algorithm. In that sense, there aren't really any [specific] tools or software you would use.

A textbook on MC applications to your area of interest is probably the best place to start, there are a ton in practically every field. If theory-heavy presentations aren't your flavor then you can likely find a text or blog series to match.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does any one know something similar as a primer on Markov Chains? I get the idea of simulating the pattern of behaviors or states with the Markov chain, and how the Monte Carlo is useful for that, but how to actually make a Markov chain and then test it mathematically with the Monte Carlo is something that I don't know how to do.

<comment><USER5> Hey, author of the Mathe Carlo essay here.

Markov Chains is on my list of things to write these kind of explorable essays for, good to know there's some interest for it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny coincidence! Literally just made my own write up about Monte Carlo methods! [https://www.towardssoftware.com/blog](https://www.towardssoftware.com/blog)

It's not as long and detailed, but it's still very interesting to see how you can derive pi with random data!

</comment><comment><USER7> Well done!</comment>


Go 1.5 "To Do" List - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nWAlZSXGMGdIh8iKovGpx9L1dHiQZlEmq4xDrfxPcBA/edit

<comment><USER2> Good to see more of the arm64 port on there. Hopefully it is fully developed this time. I was excited last year seeing arm64 in the 1.4 notes, only to be disappointed after looking into it more.

[https://twitter.com/maver/status/496376555237806080](https://twitter.com/maver/status/496376555237806080)

Docker on arm64 is a thing of beauty, and the hack I have in place now to run Docker/Go on our arm64 carts is extremely buggy.</comment>


Skydivers in plane collision caught on camera: We'll jump again  - <AUTHOR> http://www.today.com/news/skydivers-planes-collide-mid-air-helmet-cams-capture-fall-8C11531939

<comment><USER2> They were very lucky. Recently, others in a similar situation weren't:

[http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKBRE99I07T20131019?i...](http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKBRE99I07T20131019?irpc=932)</comment>