A Bloomberg reporter's account of trying to get back his name and credit rating - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-12/i-lost-my-identity-to-a-fraudster-and-it-took-six-years-to-clean-up-the-mess <comment><USER2> > Social Security numbers are the keys to the kingdom. In this country, people > get a unique number when they're born, and the Social Security > Administration tells them it's secret and valuable. Then we use that number > to pay taxes, to get government benefits, to apply to college, to get a > mortgage, to apply for a car loan, to open a bank account, to track our > credit. We're asked to hand over this number again and again to institutions > that have failed to guard it.

This is the problem right here.

To that sorry list, I would add medical providers' offices (doctors and dentists), all of which seem to request social security numbers for some reason on their patient intake forms, when all they should need is the patients' insurance information as printed on their insurance card.

<comment><USER3> Regarding all the Social Security number issues, it somehow reminds me the Onion title "'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" (I know USA is not literally the only one, but almost) - plenty of places have something similar to that number, but USA is pretty much unique is treating simply knowing it as some kind of identity proof. "Something you (and a bunch of others) know" doesn't cut it.

<comment><USER4> In Germany we too have a SSN. Only my employers know it, it can be changed. I've never ever had anyone but the tax office or my employer ask for it.

<comment><USER5> The German SSN is also trivial to query (if you don't have it at hand your employer can just phone the pension insurance) and is somewhat predictable. It's also only used for tax/pension purposes; if you steal mine you can basically only gift me money.

The closer equivalent in Germany is probably the Personalausweisnummer (ID card number). Basically everyone has an ID card, and sometimes the number of the ID card is used as age verification or is written down as part of identity verification at a bank or similar. Assuming you verified that the ID card is genuine it's a good unique identifier that survives name changes; however its usefulness doesn't come from secrecy but the forgery-proof piece of plastic it's printed on. Also you can change it at any time within a few weeks by just getting a new ID card, and it naturally expires every ten years or so.

I think a fundamental problem in the US is the requirement to verify identity via phone. In Germany that's just assumed to be impossible without a prearranged passphrase; when opening a bank account you verify identity by showing ID at the bank or a postal station or by waving your ID in front of a webcam during a live call.

<comment><USER6> How do securely obtain access to a remote system that wants you legal identity? Or do German companies allow access to any bot willing to pay?

<comment><USER5> I can't think of a use case where this happens here?

\- If you want to pay bills you just do a bank transfer (they are free and fast within the EU), transferring the money to a published bank account with my invoice id or similar in the subject. If somebody else wants to pay my invoice neither I nor the company will have any objections, so no need for authentication.

\- If I want to check a bank account or a credit account or something similar I have a password that was set up when the account was created

\- If I want to set up an account I can authenticate either via webcam (showing off the security features of my ID card) or via PostIdent (where I have to go to a post office)

\- When talking on the phone you have an authentication problem (unless a "phone passphrase" is prearranged, but for anything with lasting consequences you usually have to send them a written version per email or snail mail for papertrail reasons anyways, or alternatively they send you a confirmation per snail mail that you can object to in a reasonable time frame.

The new ID card has online features that in theory solve the problem completely for online systems, but few places implement that so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What does "identity theft" have to do with the person being impersonated? They have nothing to do with these transactions. It is not my fault Wells Fargo was tricked into giving someone a bank account under false pretenses. Why in the world does that have anything to do with me? And why in the world is Wells Fargo not liable for damages?

<comment><USER8> You're right of course, but I wonder if the status quo were to suddenly change so that banks are liable, would credit suddenly restrict and cause a recession or worse?

<comment><USER9> More likely, the banks would respond by being more vigilant at verifying the identity documents as valid before accepting the crooks word for it.

So it might take a day to open an account (while the bank does the verification they should have done anyway), instead of five minutes, but the financial world would continue on as normal.

And, this would shift the work onto the entity best suited to performing the work instead of forcing the work onto the victim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's[1] an early picture of a social security card where it says plainly it's not for identification purposes.

What's the better solution — the government making it so you can change your ssn? Or legislation that shifts the liability burden of identification entirely onto the lender?

1\. [https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/old-blank-social- se...](https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/old-blank-social-security- card-isolated-514414771)

<comment><USER11> Well ... the card isn't ever presented as ID AFAIK. The number on the other hand ... the number is presented all the effin' time.

<comment><USER12> Yep. I haven't had a physical SSN card for decades. (Was in a wallet that got stolen and I never replaced.)

The _only_ time it's come close to being an issue was recently when needing to renew a drivers license with a REALID compliant one. One of the requirements was proof of SSN which I only had through my previous year's W-2 form because it actually isn't printed on many things these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know how common this is in other countries but in Norway we have a common system called BankID which is pretty much the de-facto way to identify yourself when applying for government services, bank loans or basically anything else "important". It usually consists of a two-factor authenticator issued by your bank, a password and your "birth number" (basically SSN) if you have all three as far as any bank or the government is concerned you "are" the person. However since it is so robust I don't think it can be exploited unless you royally fuck up. I wonder how the per capita identity theft cases in Norway are compared to the US because of this system, I would think much lower.

<comment><USER14> It isn´t BankID that´s robust. In fact, as a federation service, it is probably one of the worst maintained ones in human history.

The thing that makes identity theft harder in Scandinavia is the fact that Person-nr (SSNs) are public information. I can look up anyone´s SSN via a quick search (using [https://upplysning.se](https://upplysning.se) for instance). Yet I can do very little with that information (compared to the US). That said however, it is possible to ruin someone´s life here as well if you really wanted to, it would just take a little bit more work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe the most ridiculous aspect of US credit reporting: federal law only mandates that you be able to obtain a free copy of your report once per year - why is this not "whenever the hell you want"? It just generates a PDF from their database!

<comment><USER16> FWIW you can get a free copy of your TransUnion and Equifax reports for free from CreditKarma. It's great and will pull a new report once a week.

They don't work with Experian, but you can create an account with them directly for free and get a copy updated monthly.

<comment><USER17> First, CreditKarma makes their money by spreading the surveillance profiles on you to other surveillance companies that wouldn't otherwise have that data.

Second, the main thing that requesting a copy of your surveillance dossiers does is make you responsible for refuting any incorrect information in it, as you have now been notified of it. This fuels the ongoing perverse incentive wherein the surveillance companies are relying on you to do their diligence for them.

If you want to push back against this offensive system, engage with these parasitic pests as little as possible. Barring some sea-change like the US adopting the GDPR wholesale, this is the only choice available to you.

<comment><USER16> First, that is not accurate. CreditKarma makes money by showing you ads for credit cards.

Second, that is also not accurate. You are no more or less legally responsible for the contents of your credit report based on whether you have recently pulled a copy.

<comment><USER17> Does CreditKarma actually run their ad targeting and delivery system entirely in house? Even if so, that is still one more surveillance company that has your dossier that otherwise wouldn't...

And you're really going to have to back up that second point, because a very basic legal principle is having to respond to notices in a timely manner. If I have a private file on my computer that says "harryh owes me $100" for years, you can't possibly be responsible for that. If I send you a notice saying you owe me $100 for some plausible reason, and you don't refute it within a few months, you've now implicitly accepted that state of affairs and my case has grown much stronger.

Knowing that the surveillance companies merely _could_ be conspiring to defame me doesn't imply that I need to investigate their activities just in case. But as soon as I have knowledge that they _actually are_ , then I am forced to either let that state of affairs stand or go after them for libel.

<comment><USER16> If you go to a bank to get a loan and they say "No, your credit sucks" telling them "I've never seen my credit report before" isn't going to change anything.

<comment><USER17> Of course, because being a passive consumer who only asks a counterparty for your options never changes anything.

What you say is "I need a copy of the exact information you're basing this decision on", and inform the bank and its sources what statements are actually not true. If the bank defers to trusting the surveillance bureaus, and the surveillance bureaus refuse to recant the false statements, then you have a strong case for libel with actual damages _on top of_ the procedural recourse in the industry-written laws.

<comment><USER18> I am not a lawyer, but I likely have had more at-bats with the credit reporting agencies and financial institutions on this and related issues than almost all lawyers and, I mean this literally, every other person on HN.

I think you will, if you consult an attorney, be advised that you are unlikely to prevail in your cause of action under a libel theory. Your lawyer is likely going to point to the pre-emption parts of FCRA, specifically 15 U.S.C. § 1681h(e) and 15 U.S.C. § 1681t(b).

The general tenor of this conversation is going to be "When Congress wanted to regulate the credit reporting industries, they and interested parties made a trade: a very consumer-friendly state machine and _freedom to operate the state machine._ Part-and-parcel to this trade was radically reducing legal risks to the financial industry and CRAs outside of the state machine. If you're going to claim that Congress didn't want to pre-empt state laws, you're going to be walking uphill against legislative history, the plain text of the statute, and every canon of statutory construction."

Separate from the legal issue, I think HNers might be surprised to learn that the state machine pretty routinely achieves the objectives. A determined, literate, and well-organized person will routinely achieve the outcome they desire from it, even with the other side of process being the largest lenders in America. This is a _surprising_ result in consumer lending when reasoning from first principles ("Shouldn't Bank of America's legal team always or approximately always crush a Kansan grandmother?") but I believe, from a few hundred at-bats, it to be true.

<comment><USER17> I know of your personal experience, and thank you for your response. I actually hadn't realized that the surveillance bureaus had regulatory-captured general legal immunity so openly. So yes, I was overstating the legal situation thinking they would be better on the hook for libel. Frankly this overbearing immunity should be a talking point of every "identity theft" article, but unfortunately those articles are written from a perspective that is still wed to the primacy of this system.

> _I think HNers might be surprised to learn that the state machine pretty > routinely achieves the objectives_

None of these stories really focus on irreversible damages (besides eg SIM swapping stealing cryptocurrency), but rather the time taken dealing with that "state machine". Diligently checking your own dossier is doing the surveillance bureau's work for them - adding to this perverse incentive where they don't bother doing the diligence of verifying loan applicants hoping that consumers will be responsible for guarding use of public identifiers associated with them.

A quick reading of the FCRA still doesn't show any statutory timeline within which surveillance subjects ("consumers") are required to verify the dossiers on themselves - compared to say regulation E which requires that you verify your legitimate account ledgers at least every month and a half (please correct me if I missed something). I'm not the type to be continually applying for new credit cards for whatever incentive they're offering, so dealing with any backscatter from identity fraud is purely a cost to me. The less I involve myself with their system, the more I can handle its involuntarily burden in "batch mode".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _In this country, people get a unique number when they're born_

Fun fact, social security numbers are not unique. [1] Apparently 40 million of them have been assigned to multiple names, and there's a 1 in 7 chance that any given SSN is not unique.

[https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/odds-someone-else-has- your...](https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/odds-someone-else-has-your-ssn- one-7-6C10406347)

</comment><comment><USER20> I skimmed so apologies if this doesn't resonate or was answered, but here in OZ we have what is called "100 points" tests which demands more than one item of ID, and not just knowing the value, but a 'what you hold is who you are' receipt from a government agency.

The burden of proof for KYC is higher basically. Not that fraud and identity fraud don't happen: we have some very famous cases of land titles being swung on wafer-thin proof of identity, which lost people significant amounts of money.

I just feel the US 'social security number' thing is a problem which is in large part of US state/federal making: you drove too hard to a single weakness. Much like your voting fraud risk, you took it too far.

</comment><comment><USER21> To me the worst is that there seems no way to clean this up. Like the story when he applies for a mortgage and they tell him not to bother. At least at this point you would expect somebody to take a look and clean this up. But instead the machine keeps going.

<comment><USER18> > when my wife and I went to apply for a mortgage, our agent at the bank told > us not to even bother including my name and assets

I think there exists a difference in what the author is communicating happened here and what actually happened here.

I'm presently in the process of applying for a mortgage. I'm married. My wife will, pretty much inevitably, be told not to bother filling out her half of the application. This is not because the loan officer, a commission-seeking sales employee of the mortgage originator, believes she is unlikely to be approved for a mortgage. This is because the loan officer is accurately advising _the juice is not worth the squeeze._

The loan officer sitting down with my wife and I is going to say "Mrs. McKenzie, your situation is complicated to explain. His really isn't. Do you want to spend many hours documenting it in a fashion which will not change our decision on how much house you can afford or what your mortgage rate will be?"

I understand that this is not the way that people are socialized to think about credit, but understanding the business process here would cause one to have a very different understanding of the amount of actual damage sustained here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Two-factor authentication for bank and credit card accounts would be a > start. Banks should probably make it harder to get a new credit card than to > log in to Gmail. Creating a web of multichannel identity verification using > devices we carry around all day already—conveniently equipped with > fingerprint scanners—would likely make some types of fraud more difficult.

Would it, though?

To protect against the type of problem in the article, the second factor would need to come from some sort of official government database. Otherwise, I could just walk into any bank where my victim didn't already have an account and say "Hi, I'm so and so, and I'd like to open an account and sign up for a credit card."

Also, it's not as though iPhones actually send a copy of _your fingerprint_ to the bank. Actually doing so—and relying on it—would introduce a host of other problems.

</comment><comment><USER23> We have the CPR (Central Person Registry)-number in Denmark which is handed over to various authorities and can also be misused for fraud, to which degree I'm unsure of- but I have heard of some nasty debt issues people struggled to get out of. What's worse is that the generating algorithm is based off of your date of birth and if you have date of birth for the victim you can run the algorithm rather easily and come up with 10-20 potential CPR-numbers (I can't remember the exact num., but it's approximately in that range) whereas one is the valid for the person you wish to defraud.

EDIT: Unsure about possible CPR candidates when reversing CPR numbers.. There have been some updates to the way it's working post 2007.

<comment><USER24> Wouldn't you typically have to also use Nem-ID to log in to some new service?

Nem-ID is a central login system, where you get mailed a physical printout of keys that act as two-factor authentication across financial and other services (at least that's how it was, I think some new system is underway).

I.e the cpr number on its own is not valuable without the login info for services that use nem-Id.

The system seemed to work pretty well and I'm surprised to not see it more widespread.

<comment><USER23> You can still create phone subscriptions and order medicine and from what I can read quickly on the internet people have in recent years been frauded with smart-loans, leases and some similar stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is one of the rare highly-charged issues in our country that's also bipartisan, and it's been rapidly gaining space in the public awareness in recent years. I wouldn't be surprised if some legislation actually makes it to the floor. In an era of broad dissatisfaction with the US government, this seems like easy political points waiting to be scored.

</comment><comment><USER16> patio11 has a great writeup on how to deal with these sorts of problems should they ever happen to you. It is a _very good_ writeup.

[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft- credit-r...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit- reports/)

Short summary:

\- do everything in writing instead of over the phone so there is a paper trail

\- make sure you are writing to the right people on the other end

\- present professionalism

\- be calm and persistent. it can be a pain but you can definitely get this stuff fixed.

</comment><comment><USER25> > The good news? With so much stolen information in circulation, there's > almost certainly an oversupply of raw materials for fraud and an undersupply > of willing criminals.

This is what I've always used as cold comfort. Given the degree of anarchy on the side of the actual data, and given that society hasn't totally collapsed yet, it must be that deterrence by companies and prosecutors is good enough on its own to keep fraud from happening everywhere it could. Even though chances are high that your information is out there, chances remain relatively low that you'll actually be targeted. Of course you still want to keep yourself out of that minority by freezing your credit, etc., but it's something.

<comment><USER26> Right, it's privatized profits from having a cheaper insecure system with lower sign-up friction, and socialized losses because uninvolved third parties and law enforcement have to pick up the pieces and find the guy to make an example of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wish someone would compile a series of actions that I could take to prevent this from happening.

<comment><USER28> One way to minimize risk is to put a security freeze on one's credit report.

[https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze- faq...](https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faqs)

<comment><USER27> Just tried to implement a freeze on Equifax. They couldn't verify my identity. Now I have to send a letter. Found a sample - [https://media.dojmt.gov/wp- content/uploads/Z-Sample-Security...](https://media.dojmt.gov/wp- content/uploads/Z-Sample-Security-Freeze-Request-Letter.pdf)

Still looking for other samples but what is incredible is that they want me to send them a copy of my Social Security Card.

They have to find a better solution to verifying identities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I know it's sortof a dirty word, but this to me is one of the things that a blockchain solves.

You cannot steal an address on the blockchain.

I mean my god, imagine if somebody rewrote bitcoin, except there were no private keys, and the public keys were only 9 digits long.

<comment><USER26> I think, while there may be a technical solution, the bigger problems are with the business and legal incentives around the credit industry today. Many of the things that make our credit system a nightmare for security, also lower friction for opening new accounts and engaging with the banking system. In my view, the banks are effectively offloading the security costs to law enforcement and unrelated third party individuals, in order to reap the benefits of less friction with signup.

If you want a blockchain credit system, you need to solve that convenience problem, as well as a bunch of other kinds of support problems (what happens when you lose your key? Are you just screwed, and if not, what happens when the recovery mechanism is compromised?), and the banks currently have no incentive to do so (see chip and pin for a similar but smaller case study with the credit industry). Barring large legislation that shifts liabilities onto financial institutions from individuals and law enforcement, we won't see them invest in solving this either.

<comment><USER12> While there are better practices and worse practices, there's also just a tradeoff between convenience and how thoroughly identity is vetted.

Imagine you forgot your 15 digit randomized password to Google and their response was either a shrug or a requirement to come to an office in Mountain View with multiple forms of government ID between the hours of 9-5 weekdays. (And 2FA doesn't change the basic equation because smartphones, keys, and one- time pads can all be lost.)

That's a somewhat nonsensical extreme example obviously but using physical mail to addresses of record and things like that have often been used to enhance security for certain types of reactions. You're a digital nomad, are just traveling, just moved and didn't update records, or are actually homeless? Too bad.

And this is in a country where pretty much any sort of Voter ID law is controversial because they do disenfranchise many voters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [http://archive.is/K79zy](http://archive.is/K79zy)

</comment><comment> m-p-3 Mirror (and paywall bypass)

[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXf6RkeMR1xGZ2DqWJiCytrGzvkPAPgjHmRthC...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXf6RkeMR1xGZ2DqWJiCytrGzvkPAPgjHmRthC8VTjYjT/)

[https://cloudflare- ipfs.com/ipfs/QmXf6RkeMR1xGZ2DqWJiCytrGzv...](https://cloudflare- ipfs.com/ipfs/QmXf6RkeMR1xGZ2DqWJiCytrGzvkPAPgjHmRthC8VTjYjT/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Can you change your Social Security number in USA?

<comment><USER32> Yes, but it's not easy:

[https://faq.ssa.gov/en-US/Topic/article/KA-02220](https://faq.ssa.gov/en- US/Topic/article/KA-02220)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> why was he stopped at airports? Under investigation but not enough to arrest or what?

<comment><USER34> The fraudulent activity got his name put on a government watchlist, probably while the perpetrator was still actively posing as him. Once you get on these lists, it can be extremely difficult or impossible to get back off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hi there, non-paywall link, anyone?

<comment><USER36> I deleted Bloomberg cookies and the paywall went away. I think you get three articles.

<comment><USER37> Reminds me of the days I would peruse PSCode and delete cookies to reset their join-wall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> credit freeze</comment>


Show HN - Review19's Collaborative Decision Making (Very early preview) - <AUTHOR> http://review19.com

<comment><USER2> I like the simplicity of the whole thing. There are some navigational issues which would make it more intuitive. Like if I'm browsing an item within a project, clicking on the project name at the top should take me back to project root.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, the project tracking module needs some tightening up. Thoughts on the collaborative decision making module?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Factorialboy - it looks interesting although I can't get it to work on our office browser which is a bit outdated (FF6.1). It works well in Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, haven't tested in FF6 to be honest. It uses Socket.io that may have browser / firewall specific issues as well.

Anyway, tech issues aside, what do you think of the product itself?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any body likes? Eagerly waiting feedback from elite HN hackers.. :-)

Newbie entrepreneur, please be gentle.. haha</comment>


Patton Oswald: We Don't Need Gatekeepers Anymore - <AUTHOR> http://thecomicscomic.com/2012/07/27/patton-oswalts-letters-to-both-sides-his-keynote-address-at-montreals-just-for-laughs-2012?1=1

<comment><USER2> I'm going to be nitpicky for a second and just say that it's Oswalt and not Oswald.

I'm a huge fan of Oswalt's comedy, but I've grown to truly admire him for the fact that he continually seeks out brilliance, supports it, and loves it. He's been known to commission custom art work based on sketches or drawings fans send him, set aside a significant chunk of his time to help place the spotlight on brilliant comedians, and approach absolutely EVERYTHING he does with passion and care.

A true artist and an inspiration.</comment>


Why do popular sites not detect desktop browsers and redirect an m.* domain? - <AUTHOR> When browsing a "canonical" domain sites often detect a mobile browser by the User Agent header and redirect to m.*  (such as m.facebook.com).
It's a bad habit to have 2 versions instead of one fully responsive one, but this is a question for another debate which has seen lots of discussion already.
But somehow sites (and again, I include Facebook as a prominent example) don't sniff the other way around when a user comes to their m.* domain from a desktop browser and don't redirect them to the canonical domain.
That results in people browsing these sites from mobile, sharing m.* links which people then open in their desktops and see a very weird mobile-oriented display.
My question is why do they not do that detection? is it pure negligence or is there something else behind it? <comment><USER2> I would guess that, in most cases, a mobile-specific site accessed on a desktop is still going to be far more usable than a desktop-specific site accessed by mobile.

Either way, as you mentioned, its a solution to a problem where the original solution itself wasn't great in the first place.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with your first sentence, but I'm not comparing which one is worse. I'm just asking why do sites not redirect m.* addresses, when browsed from a desktop browser, to the canonical domains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One argument I could see is that the canonical url is ambiguous where the m.* url is more likely to be intentional. If I am on my mobile phone, I will probably type facebook.com into the address bar, because switching keyboard context for the url would be more difficult. If I am on a desktop I am unlikely to type in m.facebook.com, unless that is the url that I really want.

If you think about it this way maybe it would make sense to have a d.* and m.* url. The URL without a suffix will remain the ambiguous case and you will be redirected based on which platform you are on. If you would prefer a specific version of the site, you could request it explicitly.

Maybe some type of prompt to easily switch versions if it recognizes a url/platform mismatch would be helpful in the case of shares that you described.

</comment><comment><USER4> A few people might have intentionally used the mobile version because it loads faster for them or more readily presents the information they wanted. I'm not sure I can think of a site that I currently use that way, but I think I've seen people do it in the past.

<comment><USER5> mbasic.facebook.com has been suggested for this use by several HN users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very bad looking site and really unusable.

<comment><USER4> Interesting contrast in the two replies that suggestion elicited!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> good question ...it would be very easy to fix such a problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's not even a fix - just implementation of something that is not currently implemented.</comment></comment>


Special Ops vs. Segways - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2010/04/12/video-of-newest-sniper-targets-robots-on-segways/

<comment><USER2> This is a fantastic application for the Segway, especially in that it allows for live-fire exercises (well, baring use of .50 BMG and the like by longest range snipers, I'm sure). "You will perform as you train" was one of the lessons taught to me in JROTC smallbore Rifle Team (.22LR target shooting) and is something that's been drilled into me in every bit of practical firearms advice and training I've read or done.

However, what I found to be the most interesting about this is how good an example it is of how an startup needs to be flexible. You shouldn't be too obsessed with how you expect customers to use your stuff and you need to change as they figure out better or other ways to use it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This might be far fetched, but I think we could apply similar technology to cloud computing and infrastructure management.

Especially if you watch towards the end, a robot could be instructed with a high level objective. In tandem, multiple robots work together to achieve that object.

Anyways, I have been thinking about how server infrastructure could be more autonomous and self-sufficient/self-healing.

</comment><comment><USER4> How can I get a job doing that?</comment>


Ask HN: Best namecheap.com alternative? - <AUTHOR> So after having multiple issues with namecheap.com these last few months.. we are looking for a new registar. The issues invlovled are 1) Lost DNS settings ! 2) Registering of already registered domains and only reverting a few days later ! 3) No communication from them. 4) It seems if you buy additional services from them, your DNS settigs are reset/remove<p>"I am so sorry for the inconvenience. Per my check, you recently bought a private email subscription from us and there was a bug in our system and that is the reason your DNS records are gone. Please allow me a few minutes I will set up the records for your domain." <comment> em-bee i experienced that bug too. fortunately my list of entries was short so i could quickly fix it myself.

i switched to gandi.net however for an unrelated reason.

i like gandi because they are well connected with the FOSS community (they sponsor FOSS conferences for example) and because they support anonymous payments for a domain.

that means in an emergency, when you realize you forgot to renew your domain, you don't need to find your old gandi account to pay.

i find that very helpful especially for FOSS projects, where the domain is often registered by a volunteer who may not be available or have the cash to renew. instead anyone in the community can renew without hassle.

greetings, eMBee.

</comment><comment><USER2> Strange, happy customer for many years, never had an issue with them or if I found the customer service excellent, instant help using chat.

</comment><comment><USER3> Top 7 Best NameCheap Alternatives 2018 to Get Reliable Web Hosting and Domain Registration Service

1\. BlueHost Pros:

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Cons:

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2\. Domain.com Pros:

        A trusted registrar also accredited by ICANN
        More domain extensions are available than NameCheap.
        You can even pre-register new domain extensions

Cons:

        Did not offer any freebie like domain privacy

3\. GoDaddy Pros:

        The largest domain seller with ICANN accreditation
        Frequently offers bigger discounts where you can get a domain name within a dollar
        Offer discounts in order to secure the brand name with other extensions.
        They offer lots of products such as email hosting, web hosting, domains and MS office etc.
        They are managing over 71 million domain which is a sign of their excellence in domain registering.

Cons:

        Lacks of customer support channels like live chat which is not available 24/7
        Lots of upsells appears while making purchase
        Demand high renewals on most of the products

4\. NameSilo Pros:

        One of the cheapest website name/domain seller
        A certified registrar by ICANN
        Offer free Whois privacy for lifetime
        Good choice for domain investors as they offer quantity based discounts

Cons:

        As they are only specialized in domain registration services so they offer no hosting plans.

5\. DreamHost Pros:

        Decades of experience, working since 1997
        Low renewals as compared to the many other registrars.
        Domain with many freebies. Also, you will get a free domain by purchasing a hosting plan.
        Offers 97 days money back guarantee on their shared and WordPress hosting plans.
        ICANN accredited

Cons:

        The way of providing the customer support seems complex. You can only open a live chat after purchasing. Instead of offering a straightforward phone support, you have to pay a nominal fee to add the callback feature.

6\. Above.com Pros:

        They got ICANN accreditation
        Low pricing as compared to the competitor registrar
        Includes a free Whois privacy
        Offers various products convenient to domain seller and buyers

Cons:

        Offers no hosting packages
        Not as famous as other companies like GoDaddy or Domain.com

7\. iPage Pros:

        Cheap domain and web hosting solution
        Offer free domain name with hosting plan
        Lots of freebies with hosting plan
        24/7 support services including live chat, email, and phone

Cons:

        High renewal on domain names.
        As per our testing, it is only suitable for smaller blogs

<comment><USER4> I'd stay with namecheap over the rest of these, personally. Having done business with many.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have stayed for too long for too many errors and bugs. There should be NO REASON a registrar should "LOSE their clients domains settings - when you buy email" shows me the quality of their back-office !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google Domains.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hover</comment>


What law books should an entrepreneur read? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Also, what computer books should attorneys read? Obviously, if an attorney had a big IT project they should hire a professional, but they could probably get a good head start if they read a few computer books for background, right?

</comment><comment><USER3> The law game is generally about solving disagreements and disputes between people, but you already have a good idea of what comes into play if you are a logical thinker.

You can mostly second guess the issues, although lawyers are there to add the experience (case law) to what you may already know. Some of it is surprising and that's what can wrong foot the amateur.

I would never advocate not having a lawyer, but as I say thinking about what could already be a point of dispute is already ahead of the issue.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Law: [http://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurs-Guide-Business- Law/dp/05...](http://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurs-Guide-Business- Law/dp/0538466464/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327284075&sr=8-1)

It's the only one you'll need - it basically covers everything required to jump into an intelligent conversation with your attorney.

</comment><comment><USER5> None. An entrepreneur should hire a lawyer for legal matters and focus on building a company.

<comment><USER6> I don't disagree with the idea of "division of labor" and specialization and all that, but I think it's short-sighted to say an entrepreneur should not read at least a little about business law. As an entrepreneur, I think it's valuable to have at least enough of an understanding to know what questions to ask, and to be able to have an informed conversation with your legal counsel.

There's quite a continuum between studying as much as a lawyer-in-training, and going and taking a "Business Law 101" course, or just reading the textbook from a "Business Law 101" course. I think most entrepreneurs would be well served by at least reading over such a textbook or taking such a class.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you though I concede that one should hire a lawyer when facing litigation or starting it. I meant more along the lines of starting a project, finding an idea to take further. I think that it is this stage where an entrepreneur when researching should read some law books and was wondering if there were any some could suggest..

<comment><USER5> Good luck on your project research, then. I don't have any law book recommendations. I still contend you may be better off talking to a lawyer about what you need to know rather than reading law books during your research phase. They can cut through all the company formation, IP, etc. jargon pretty quickly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fintech platform Synapse raises $33M to build 'the AWS of banking' - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/07/synapse-raises-33m/ <comment><USER2> Really interesting company, and I'm surprised there's not more traffic on this post. They seem to provide a large amount of the physical and closed-system banking services as-a-service, from accounts to cards to loans.

I think the biggest problem I see is that, like AWS, a lot of other companies have all the same infra in place (even more so in banking) and the margins are going to vanish.

Their pricing is also opaque and it's difficult to see how the actual model of partnering with them works.

On the bright side, I think this potentially unlocks a whole new era of fintech, especially around consumer banking.</comment>


Ask HN: How to separate business and personal accounts? - <AUTHOR>

I have a US LLC for my online businesses with a business account separate from my personal accounts. However, I'm not exactly sure how to separate them - I obviously use my business account for my business expenses, but when it comes to compensating myself through my business account I'm not sure exactly how to do it correctly.
I don't have a steady income currently so I just take out what I need from the business account into a personal account and "expense" it as salary.
Is that the correct methodology? If not, what is? Are there better ways to do this from a tax perspective? I would consult a tax attorney / accountant except I'm currently in Shanghai to take advantage of the lower cost of living and don't have access to any contacts of that variety back Stateside at the moment.
If you have any links to read up on I would also very much appreciate it! <comment><USER2> This is most definitely NOT the way to do it! If you had an S-Corp, you could do it this way, but I know for certain it isn't appropriate for a C-Corp and I suspect the same holds true for an LLC.

A payroll service like ADP is probably also not appropriate given the inconsistent income. Have you considered hiring a part-time bookkeeper/accountant to process payrolls for you on an infrequent basis?

You are not your company - you are an employee. Expensing salary is gonna get you in trouble. I think it will be classified as a loan to officer and something that needs to be paid back (unless you've contributed capital to the company already, in which case they are paying you back).

Google for accountants from your home state and reach out to them.

Transferring money from biz account to personal account, and vice-versa is a bad idea for reasons other than taxation. It destroys the validity of your company and can expose you to individual liability which is exactly what you are trying to avoid by having a company formed in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Get an accountant. You don't want to mess this up.</comment>


Russia's permafrost is melting and it could have a devastating global effect - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/melting-russian-permafrost-could-speed-up-global-warming-devastating-global-effect/ <comment><USER2> Don't think it's isolated to Russia either.

Alaska just reported their hottest June ever (It's in the 90's in a lot of places now), and the Yukon is seeing massive, massive climate changes in recent years.

The annual Redezvous festival used to be held ON the Yukon River in downtown Whitehorse. Friends tell of driving onto the river, having huge bonfires, etc. etc.

It hasn't even frozen over enough to walk on in a decade or more, and now it actually goes above freezing in January most years..... even 20 years ago it wouldn't go above -40 for all of Dec/Jan.

Things are changing very, very fast in the North.

<comment><USER3> So, winter is _not_ coming?

<comment><USER4> No. Cormac McCarthy's Road, or William Gibson's Jackpot, is coming.

<comment> blaser-waffle The Road was implied to be a comet or maybe nukes.

This will look more like Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We need coordinated, urgent political action on climate change. We already have the technology needed to solve this - we just need to deploy it. Now.

<comment><USER6> You could start calling it global warming. Climate change was brought forward as a term to make it sound less frightening to the voting population.

<comment> at-fates-hands > You could start calling it global warming.

Except that the planet has been warming and cooling for millions of years.

To put into perspective:

Age of Earth: 4.6 billion years

How long Dinosaurs lived: 400 million years

Age of humans: 200,000 years.

The human species is literally less than a blip on the earth's historical radar. I'm convinced whatever we do to the planet, it will recover, like it always has. Humans not adapting? That's the _real_ problem.

<comment><USER7> This sort of perspective, while true, doesn't seem very germane to the conversation of our current, rapid, and human caused climate change. We collectively will have to deal with that (or die out, I suppose) and understanding it and how to mitigate effects seems to be the sensible response.

Understanding that the planet, if not the current biological configuration, is likely to be around much longer that we are doesn't seem to add much; at least to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It _is_ having a devastating effect.

June was the hottest month recorded in human history: [https://weather.com/en- IN/india/news/news/2019-07-16-earth-e...](https://weather.com/en- IN/india/news/news/2019-07-16-earth-experiences-hottest-june-ever-record-2019)

It crushed the record and July is tracking to break that record.

There's not a socially acceptable way of conveying how bad it is. Running around and screaming "we're all going to die" is more accurate that saying things will be fine.

<comment><USER9> I even believe in ten years the world will be completely different.

When a country like India lacks drinking water a huge mass of people will be on the move.

In Europe food production is in trouble. This will also cause a lot of trouble and people will start to move to better places.

Maybe we will survive but that's indeed different from 'we will be fine'.

<comment><USER8> It's hard to imagine an orderly retreat to more habital climates for that number of people. I think you underestimate the synergy between war, famine, and disease.

In this case the "royal we" is hiding a lot of death. I'm sure even in a 5 deg C worst case model maybe a couple of hundred million people can survive by the poles. But that means 90-95% population die-off. That's ignoring trophic web collapses and ecological damage to the world that human beings have adapted to for hundreds of thousands of years.

<comment> temp-dude-87844 I think the previous poster is being charitably vague, so that the reader can substitute in their own interpretation whether resulting pressures on people will result in orderly migration, displacement, or warfare. If history is any indication, the answer likely to be a mix of the above.

But their interpretation shows a more nuanced understanding than those who seem to suggest masses of people will die in situ, or driven to the fringes of the planet to seek relief from the heat. People and societies are quite adaptable, provided they have the means to modify their immediate environment. Billions of people live in states that will likely fare all right, because they can mitigate impacts with modest effort and resource cost, despite the presence of political movements that are fixated with collective guilt.

The other billions who are less fortunate will be subject to intense pressures for their survival. We've seen this before, and should know what to expect. It's just that we're uncomfortable talking about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "This could increase global warming by as much as 0.27 °C by 2100 and as much as 0.42 °C by 2300"

<comment><USER11> I understand that from a variety of factors including greenhouse gas concentration, albedo, and solar intensity you can, in principal, compute the earth's atmosphere's equilibrium mean temperature.

I understand this function to be such that any doubling of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration (while holding the other factors constant) will increase the equilibrium temperature by the same fixed number of degrees.

One thing I know nothing about is how to expect the earth's actual temperature to change over time when there is a difference between actual and equilibrium temperatures.

Suppose A(t) is the earth's actual temp at time t and E(t) is the earth's equilibrium temp at time t.

       Presumably, dA/dt = F(A,E), for some function F.

Is anyone here physics-savvy enough to know what F looks like?

<comment><USER12> Well.. it is complicated. Depending on what exactly you want to know, you could look into the concept of "Transient Climate Response" (e.g. start at [1]).

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08047](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08047)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does it really matter anymore? Not to sound too fatalistic, but are people going to change? Unless people's houses are catching fire and there are food shortages in industrialized countries, there is going to be little or no change.

<comment><USER14> probably not, but they might change their point of view enough to influence elections, or personal/community behavior, or whatever else. while it might be inevitable there could be a huge difference in outcomes, e.g. btwn 2c and 5c or whatever your worst case is.

so, while i agree to some extent, the more people that mobilize and e.g. influence the next round of policies/politicians, perhaps suffering can be reduced, however slightly you think that is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1) I'm sure climate change models took this into account but is it worse than predicted ?

2) And if it releases land and resources.. how happy will Russia to increase their economy through uses of gas/oil ? (not helping permafrost)

<comment><USER16> Permafrost melting doesn't really release land and resources; the main resources were actively mined there while it was permafrost and if it's frozen for part of the year and not frozen for a few months then it doesn't make mining significantly simpler.

if anything, it destroys the existing infrastructure there which often (especially for transport and pipeline paths) relies on the permafrost as a permanent solid foundation.

<comment><USER15> Ok, so the main issue would be potential greenhouse gas release from melting ?

<comment><USER16> Yes, it's an additional feedback loop - more warming melts more permafrost, releasing more methane that causes more warming. Due to this stopping/slowing climate change is going to be more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's also the methane hydrate just under the seabed of the continental margins of the world's oceans. A rise in water temperature may destabilise large quantities, releasing huge amounts of methane, accelerating climate change further.

[https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/ocean- chemistry/climat...](https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/ocean- chemistry/climate-change-and-methane-hydrates/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone working in the computer and software (or any high-tech) industry should be worried about global warming. Even if society collapses, you will have certain needs like food, clothing, etc. However, high technology requires a highly organized civilization to exist and develop.

Global warming is a risk to organized human life and it's possible we won't be doing anything related to computers in 20-30 years. It's not crazy to think people will collectively lose the ability to make microchips and computers. Progress and technological development cannot be taken for granted and requires the right conditions to function.

Global warming is an existential risk to our industry!

<comment><USER19> I am a farmer, was a net admin earlier in life but from what I have seen and heard myself and talking to my tribe from up north climate change is a natural event and there is nothing we can do to stop things like Earth's axis slightly changing making the sun way hotter. People that want to fight climate change should start in the cites with smog it is man made, it changes the climate in a localized area, it kills, and you can do something about it. Yet I never see these Climate change fighters completely giving up smog making devices.

<comment><USER18> You do tell them the sun isn't getting hotter right? Have you seen this? [https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the- wo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/)

<comment><USER20> I'm partial to this graphic... puts things in perspective and puts paid to the notion that what's happening now resembles natural climate fluctuations.

[https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)

<comment><USER21> > puts paid

I think you're being downvoted because of a typo.

<comment><USER22> It's not a typo, but a common English phrase.

[https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/put- pai...](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/put-paid-to)

<comment><USER21> I don't think it's exactly common - at least not when compared to the usage of other idioms using Google search.

There's also not a single match for that phrase in my entire ebook library...

Idioms like "as it stands" and "at the best of times" see like 50 times more usage. Those are common.

You learn something new every day though! Now I can use it too and add to the pile of people googling for that phrase's meaning that show up on Google Trends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have at times worried about the trapped methane that could be released with the permafrost...on some accounts I've heard the amount that could be released is massive. I know that this methane can increase global warming, but I have another fear. Although perhaps farfetched, is it possible that climate change could release a dense, rolling methane cloud that can asphyxiate whole populations?

<comment><USER24> The molecular mass of oxygen gas is 32 and the molecular mass of methane is 16. The methane will tend to rise and mix, leaving plenty of oxygen near the surface. It's unlikely to asphyxiate humans unless it happens really, really fast.

People and animals have been asphyxiated by massive CO2 releases because they can happen very quickly, and CO2 has a molecular mass of 44, making it stay near the ground for longer, displacing lighter oxygen and nitrogen gases.

<comment><USER25> Isn't density not mass the issue? Methane still floats above air using density from the internets, though I wonder about mixing

0.656 kg/m³ methane

1.98 kg/m3 carbon dioxide

1.225 kg/m3 air.

<comment><USER26> Atmospheric gases under typical conditions behave pretty much like ideal gases, which means it doesn't matter whether you talk about density or molecular mass; they're directly proportional to each other. And the molecular mass is independent of temperature and pressure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> s/could/will/g

<comment><USER28> Yes, that's exactly the skew popular media will give this (already way too sensational) reporting. And we shouldn't do this, unless we want to lose the scientific moral grounds.

<comment><USER27> Melting permafrost is releasing methane and CO2. Rising methane and CO2 levels will increase climate change. There is no "sensational" or "skew". This is like all this "may" "might" for 40 years that got us into the situation we are now. We should have said "will" 40 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sounds like Russia is going to have a _lot_ more arable land in the future.</comment>


Hack to find investors and investors at DublinWebSummit - <AUTHOR> http://summitmatch.me/

<comment><USER2> *startups and investors :) Unless you're finding investors in investors, inception style.</comment>


Amtrak.com is storing your password in plaintext - <AUTHOR>

i just forgot my amtrak.com password and tried to reset it, this is what i got
Dear <your-name>,
Thank you for contacting Amtrak. The login information you requested is listed below. Please save this information for future reference.
User ID: <youremailid@yourprovider> Password: <yourp-passwod>
If you encounter any login difficulties, contact us online at http://www.amtrak.com/contactus.html or call 1-800-USA-RAIL (1-800-872-7245).
Thank you for choosing Amtrak. <comment><USER2> I hate to be pedantic, but just because they send you your password in plain text, doesn't mean they are storing it in plain text.

Does it mean they are doing a shitty job? Yes. Is storing a password using two-way encryption more secure than plaintext? Laughably. Still...

<comment><USER3> Presumably if the passwords are hashed they have no way of telling you your password. They can only reset it.

So yes, generally if they send you the password then that means they store it in plain text. While it isn't always that hard to crack a password hash, it is unlikely that Amtrak went through that length to retrieve the password.

<comment><USER2> I think you proved my point. There's a 3rd option - they could be using a symmetric-key algorithm. This would make it trivial to decrypt for Amtrak - while difficult for anyone else to decrypt.

The problem with this, and why people don't view it as much better than plain text, is because it's a single point of failure - and if your DB has been compromised, your secret keys (in a config or in source) probably isn't too far behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just tried it and they sent me the same email. They don't necessarily store the password in plaintext as latch has explained.

They don't seem to store credit card information for future use, which is a good sign. However, they do store a lot of personally identifiable information that might make sending a password via email illegal in some states (at least Massachusetts [1]).

[1] <http://www.mass.gov/Eoca/docs/idtheft/201CMR1700reg.pdf> \- (3)Encryption of all transmitted records and files containing personal information that will travel across public networks, and encryption of all data containing personal information to be transmitted wirelessly.

</comment><comment><USER5> was that your actual password you had used or a random password they created and sent you?!

</comment><comment><USER6> I got an email like this from my domain provider the other day. I was curious if someone might be able to sniff the network for SMTP messages then go request a bunch of password resets from the website. There support staff was not too interested in the idea.</comment>


Ask HN: About time? - <AUTHOR>

Fact 1: A year is the time it takes for the Earth to fully spin around the Sun (from point A back to point A).
Fact 2: The universe is always expanding, thus Earth and Sun are being more distant.
Question: If the speed at which the the Earth moves is the same does it mean a year 1000, 2000, or 10,000 years ago was shorter than a year today and 1000 years from now? <comment><USER2> [http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=...](http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=is+the+solar+system+expanding&btnG=Google+Search)</comment>


Weeks That Changed Everything - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/how-white-house-coronavirus-response-went-wrong/613591/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've said from the beginning that the Coronavirus situation is a lot like a plane crash – early errors, yet plenty of time to wait around to watch the consequences play out, with potentially not a lot to do to change the course of things.

This article by James Fallows (author and pilot) looks at the crisis similarly, and pieces the 'what went wrong' narrative along the metaphor of a crash investigation.

Without getting into a political food fight, I think what's relevant for HN is looking at this like a systems failure; understanding preparedness, risk, making hard decisions.</comment>


The beginner's guide to SEO - <AUTHOR> http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

<comment><USER2> Moz (SEOmoz earlier name) is one of the best resource out there on Search Engine Marketing. I have been using them since its earlier days. Rand Fishkin (Founder) is well-known personality in SEO market. I also highly recommend watching Moz's "Whiteboard Friday" video series published every week. It's how I keep myself up-to-date on SEO changes. Here is the direct link to it: [http://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard- friday](http://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's also the Google SEO Stater Guide [https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35291?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35291?hl=en)</comment>


The Man Who Made the UK Say "I'm Sorry for What We Did to Turing" (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/the-man-who-made-the-uk-say-im-sorry-for-what-we-did-to-turing-8fc468dcea6b <comment><AUTHOR> I realize that this is an old story, but I posted it because Steven Levy is the best interviewer to have ever spoken to me about the Turing apology and this article the most accurate, and because someone reminded me of it today.

<comment><USER2> I'm sure there are those who would shout cries of 'self-aggrandizement!' about you submitting this, but instead I'd like to offer my sincere thanks for doing so, and even deeper thanks for taking this on as a cause years ago. Bravo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't thank me. I think the takeaway is go do something amazing because it's possible to do so!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Regardless of who was the true father of computing, Von Neumann or Turing, or any of that: what the UK government did to a patriot who was instrumental in helping win the war was atrocious in its own right gay or not. And I honestly believe the government got off easy in only issuing an apology. I don't know what a commensurate action would have been but an apology just seems fleeting and a lot like a cop-out.

<comment><USER4> I mean, it is likely that no one in the UK government in 2009 even knew Turing or had anything to do with his persecution. The UK decriminalized homosexual acts between men in 1967 and added further legislation in 1994 and 2000. More likely some of the people in government in 2009 had helped draft the most recent legislation and had no problem with Turing being a homosexual...

<comment> vertex-four On the other hand, the Government as an organisational entity is a direct continuation from past Governments which did terrible things. Organisations are not just the people who currently make them up - they're long-living entities in their own right with sometimes vast history that resulted in what they are today. The organisation - and the people in it - shouldn't get to reap the benefits of its history while simultaneously ignoring anything harmful it might've done.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good books on machine learning? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to learn about methods of machine learning. Do you guys have any suggestions for books or sources I should use? <comment><USER2> A very readable _introduction_ to machine learning and recommendation systems is Programming Collective Intelligence, by Toby Seagram (O'Reilly). Worth looking at if you're just getting your feet wet.

</comment><comment><USER3> There really isn't very much available on the practical side. So if you are looking to implement algorithms I suggest that you make use of the machine learning at ocw.mit.edu

Alternatively, if you want a good dose of a theoretical explanation of algorithms currently in use I highly recommend "Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning" by Christopher Bishop. It is definitely the best machine learning (and statistics) textbook that I have ever come across.

<comment><USER4> I second the nomination of Bishop. It is the standard text. It is only two years old, and Bishop will teach you machine learning the way that the field practices it nowadays. In my lab of fourteen people, we must have six or so copies of Bishop.

I don't understand what is impractical about Bishop. If you are looking blindly to use an off-the-shelf machine learning implementation, that's one thing. Machine Learning has been described as the study of bias. If you want to understand when to pick certain techniques, and develop appropriate biases, then read Bishop.

"The Elements of Statistical Learning" by Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman gives more of a statistician's approach. The treatment is simply less broad, and also more dated.

You can also look at Andrew Ng's video lectures: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzxYlbK2c7E> He is very well-respected in the field. For certain students, watching a lecture may be preferable to reading a book.

<comment><USER5> A few other things (sorry, not to snipe too much! :) )

-I'm skeptical of the idea of a single "standard text" in such a fast-moving field. New machine learning techniques appear constantly and are often documented online years before they appear in books. Some computer scientists say they prefer conference proceedings over academic journals because the latter take so long.

-Further, I'm not sure that the goal of any text should be to cover topics X, Y and Z in any case, which doesn't seem possible for a book to do. What does seem feasible is to set up a framework for analyzing the performance of different techniques. So I'd like to hear a comparison of how Bishop does that vs. HTF.

-You're of course correct that HTF takes a statistician's POV on the field - the authors are all professors of statistics at Stanford. They are also accomplished - Friedman was a co-author on CART, for example. I would instead ask the question: what can you get out of the book and the framework it offers?

-I think that part of the framework in machine learning is to think about bias AND variance, and how to trade them off successfully. This is an important part of model selection, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Try "The Elements of Statistical Learning" by Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman. Lots of math but an outstanding introduction.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here are a set of links:

<http://www.vetta.org/recommended-reading/>

I'd second the recommendation of Bishop if you can hack the math, and also Elements of Statistical Learning, though I wouldn't attempt to learn techniques from the latter so much as look at a very interesting mathematical take on them.

gl</comment>


OpenSSL Releases Bugfixes, Advance Notice To Some Vendors But Not OpenBSD - <AUTHOR> http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140605202211

<comment><USER2> OpenBSD did not want to be on the list of distros to be notified[0].

It's no conspiracy due to LibreSSL, but maybe rather Theo's ignorance.

[0] [http://marc.info/?l=oss- security&m=139906348230995&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=oss- security&m=139906348230995&w=2)

<comment><USER3> There is a process in place. Even though OpenBSD was not engaged with the process, the people that knew they should notify OpenBSD didn't because: bureaucracy.

And people say Theo is the one that's hard to work with? (Yeah, he is, but you get the point right?)

I too can link to marc.info [0] to reframe the decision.

[0] [http://marc.info/?l=openbsd- misc&m=140200815827477&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=openbsd- misc&m=140200815827477&w=2)</comment></comment>


Technology and Courage [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/vacuum?url=http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.803/pdf/courage.pdf

<comment><USER2> The most important idea in the article for me: a failure of courage doesn't feel like a failure of courage. We rationalize away: this will never work, I have other urgent tasks to do... I will try to use this realization to make my life better.

</comment><comment><USER3> We just lack the courage to acknowledge our own lack of courage. Ironic.</comment>


Protolol Jokes - <AUTHOR> http://protolol.com

<comment><USER2> I once told an Objective-C joke, but nobody got the message.

The thing about NTP jokes is you have to get the timing right.

I broke up with Java last week, and I still couldn't get any closure.

(I could go on, but I'll spare you - yes, I just thought of these, is it that obvious?)

<comment><USER3> Please go on. These are awesome.

<comment><USER2> Alright...

Java is write once, run anywhere. Perl is write once, turn and run.

OO is like real life: you inherit properties, you cheat a little, then you get divorced, and you're left with an old, broken model

Bash is named after the monkey who successfully typed out Hamlet.

Korn shell was named after the band, and even though America won the cold war, UTF-8 was a notable casualty, so we couldn't use the backward R

The whole class was confused after Jimmy sang 10 little endians and stopped at the second one.

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

<comment><USER2> I realized this morning that Jimmy should have stopped at the first little endian.

<comment><USER4> Nah. he should stop after the tenth (second). iterate over (0,1) , but sing (1,10) or i+1. excellent jokes.

EDIT: Oh crap. Was that a joke about stopping on the first endian? If so, I just committed a classic geek fail...

<comment><USER2> I was referring to "little endianness", where the least significant bit is on the left, which makes 10 = 1, whereas in big endian it would be 2 :)

<comment><USER5> Not quite right. In a little endian system, the least significant _byte_ is the leftmost one (ie, lowest address). The order of bits within a byte is the same regardless of endianness.

So 10 is always 2.

<comment><USER2> Ah, well I stand corrected, Mr. Hamming :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What was wrong with the plain text version? <http://attrition.org/misc/ee/protolol.txt>

Much easier to skim through quickly.

<comment><USER7> <http://protolol.com/archive>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since I get all the protolol jokes and I am sure there are very limited number of people on this earth who gets them, I feel like I am part of some technology brotherhood and that makes me feel good :)

<comment><USER9> Oh, so you have SCTP and DCCP support too ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some of those are suprisingly funny. I would really like to see some kind of voting / sorting option, so the better ones can float to the top (although that would break the ...fragmentation... jokes)

<comment><USER11> Would it? Part of the joke is that it may never get there ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Too many jokes from yoshicool. One of these puns is funny. One about every TCP protocol from 1 to 1024 is ... unfunny.

Did you hear the one about HTTP? Transfer-encoding: chunked.

(See? Not funny.)

<comment><USER9> For the HTTP joke to be funny, you would need to sniff the content-type first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting to see a seemingly premium domain devoted to geeky jokes, with no ads or solicitation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was amused by #protolol jokes on twitter. Wanted to collect them in one place. Wrote a simple GAE python application that would search for a particular hash tag and post the selected tweets to your tumblr blog. Fixing some usability issues. Will post the link soon :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem with HackerNews jokes is that you get labelled as Redditer and get downvotted

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd tell you an X11 joke, but you don't have the PROTOCOL_JOKE extension.

etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> The problem with Java Reference jokes is that you have to continually reference them. Otherwise they just become garbage.

</comment><comment><USER17> There might actually be some educational value to this.

<comment><USER18> I just linked a bunch of them into one of my networking modules for my highschool kids. Little evaluation exercise on whether they understand the concepts or not :)

<comment><USER19> Wait, your highschool kids don't have tumblr yet?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to share my SCSI joke, but I already told it 7 times.

</comment><comment><USER21> You must add a voting function! I want to upvote/downvote!

<comment><USER22> Now there are at least two redditors in this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My favorite is from a friend at work @Dispensa:

There... There is... There is nothing... There is nothing funny about path MTU detection.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why would anyone make an instance of abstract art?

</comment><comment><USER25> Don't quit() the daily job.

</comment><comment><USER26> I scanned a dozen or so of the jokes and didn't find any of it funny.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why did the two lisp atoms lose all their money?

They got consed

</comment><comment><USER28> Oh man,it would be great if all the jokes come with doodles

</comment><comment><USER29> These are awesome! Why have I not seen this before?!

</comment><comment><USER30> Without loss of generality, let us assume that all mathematical jokes are funny.

</comment><comment><USER31> I thought this would be about social protocols. Do you have some of these?</comment>


How LinkedIn penalizes its users - <AUTHOR> http://mattinouye.com/post/53551719761/how-linkedin-penalizes-its-users

<comment><USER2> I've seen that the people worth connecting with, you just have to google their name, and some random bits of information that LinkedIn gives "for free" and voila, no need for linked in.</comment>


Massacring C Pointers (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://wozniak.ca/blog/2018/06/25/1/index.html <comment><USER2> Fortunately, 18 years ago, I began learning C from the book The C Programming Language, 2nd ed. written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.

The subject of pointers was generally believed to be scary among fellow students and many of them bought pretty fat books that were dedicated solely to the topic of pointers.

However, when I reached Chapter 5 of the The C Programming Language (K&R), I found that it did a wonderful job at teaching pointers in merely 31 pages. The chapter opens with this sentence:

> A pointer is a variable that contains the address of a variable.

The exact point at which the whole topic of pointers became crystal clear was when I encountered this sentence in § 5.3 Pointers and Arrays:

> Rather more surprising, at first sight, is the fact that a reference to a[i] > can also be written as * (a+i).

Indeed, it was easy to confirm that by compiling and running the following program:

      #include <stdio.h>

      int main() {
          int a[] = {2, 3, 5, 7, 11};
          printf("%d\n", *(a + 2));
          printf("%d\n", a[2]);
          printf("%d\n", 2[a]);
          return 0;
      }

The output is:

      5
      5
      5

C was the first serious programming language I was learning back then and at that time, I don't think I could have come across a better book than K&R to learn this subject. Like many others, I too feel that this book is a model for technical writing. I wish more technical books were written like this with clear presentation and concise treatment.

<comment><USER3> > A pointer is a variable that contains the address of a variable.

Doesn't it technically also contain its own address? So it contains the address of another variable and the address of itself. Pointers are hard...

<comment><USER4> > Doesn't it technically also contain its own address

Huh? Then you probably don't understand the meaning of "contains" here. Or what variables are in general. Variables are hard...

<comment><USER3> Well, the way I see it is this: you, as a person, contain your thoughts and possessions and so on - call it your value. But you also exist in space and time, you have a defined location. You don't carry it in your pocket, it's something you implicitly contain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a while I had a gig writing HR software, and I read a bunch of books on conducting technical interviews. One particular gem of a book -- the title escapes me -- had example interview questions for some popular programming languages. I don't know about the COBOL, XML and SQL chapters, but the C and Java chapters were _terrible_ :

Q: "How do you get the size of a file?"

A: "Call open, and then sizeof."

... is the only one I recall, but they all ranged from "awful" to "not even wrong".

Over my years of job hunting I'm slightly disappointed that I've never been given a question from it. :-)

This is all fun and games until you run into this kind of code in production. I once had to do an emergency rewrite of some firmware by someone who did not appreciate the benefit of functions. That one was so bad that I stopped looking at the original code for any reason because I was afraid I'd accidentally adopt one of the author's many, many misinterpretations of the hardware, or of base reality.

<comment><USER6> I've met programmers who didn't understand functions. Pretty well everything was one giant code block. He also didn't understand the need for compiler warnings and switched them all off.

Come to think of it, I refactored some code from a guy who didn't understand procs. He just cut & pasted code 'snippets' (a snippet being about a screenful) a couple of hundred times.

I find it difficult to understand such people.

<comment><USER7> I suspect some of these programming habits might have come from working on MATLAB. I think experience with MATLAB could be considered positively harmfull:- and it fosters a mentality of quickly thrashing out a piece of code with hardly any thought of structuring it into a systematic organized manner.

Hopefully adoption of python based tooling in many fields could help alleviate this in coming years..

<comment><USER8> In Matlab's defense, it has become a much better language over the years.

They even introduced first class functions more than a decade ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the detailed notes:

> "A pointer to a function serves to hide the name and source code of that > function. Muddying the waters is not normally a purposeful routine in C > programming, but with the security placed on software these days, there is > an element of misdirection that seems to be growing." (p. 109)

It's like a book by Calvin's dad.

<comment><USER10> So why is it that an editor would let these statements pass.

If, say, the publisher was Addison-Wesley or Prentice Hall, would they make it into print.

I am sure that this is not the only programming book that made it to publication with a lack of meaningful editorial oversight.

<comment><USER11> The worst part is the forward of the second edition says that the publisher hired a C programmer to review the book. That reviewer said "this book should not be published". They published it anyway!

<comment><USER12> I just downloaded a free sample of the Kindle edition. Here's an excerpt from the preface:

"Prior to publication of the first edition, the manuscript was reviewed by a professional C programmer hired by the publisher. This individual expressed a firm opinion that the book should not be published because "it offers nothing new -- nothing the C programmer cannot obtain from the documentation provided with C compilers by the software companies.""

The author's claim is that there was a pressing need for a book that _just_ explains C pointers rather than covering the whole language. (It would be interesting to see the rest of what the reviewer wrote.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's not a bad interpretation. People forget that there were other programming models floating around at that time. In my youth I constructed a whole system of indirect referencing with register variables on an HP-41C calculator; when I got to C a few years later I found it doing many of the same things. If I had been more invested in the calculator programming I might have ended up like this author, but I quickly moved to the C programming model.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Another sticking point in this interpretation is Traister's incomprehensible > approach to writing functions that take a variable number of arguments. He > does this by passing an arbitrary number of arguments to a function (the > first being the number of arguments) and accessing them using offsets from > the address of the first argument.

This is one of those things that works by accident for some compilers for some platforms, but because it works for the developer, they think it's a brilliant idea.

From what I remember, and I'm taxing my memory here, some of the early Turbo compilers did lay out arguments in this fashion, for DOS, when all optimisations were disabled. Most of the time.

I do recall seeing similar layouts in some of the programs I played around with at the time, and thinking it was a genius idea. For context, I was about seven or eight years old.

<comment><USER15> By "some" you mean "every stack-based right-to-left calling convention", which happens to be the norm for 16 and 32-bit x86. In contrast, varargs on 64-bit x86 is a mess: [https://blog.nelhage.com/2010/10/amd64-and- va_arg/](https://blog.nelhage.com/2010/10/amd64-and-va_arg/)

<comment><USER16> That convention is nowhere near as common as you present it to be. I was working on systems 30 years ago where the first few arguments were passed in registers. Many such systems. "Everything on the stack" was the rule for register-poor x86, which is why people weaned on DOS/Windows remain attached to it, but even back then it was far from a universal standard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's for sale on Amazon. 48% of reviewers have given it 5 stars: [https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Pointers-Tools- Programming-...](https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Pointers-Tools-Programming- Power/dp/012697408X/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&qid=1599273504&refinements=p_27%3ARobert+J.+Traister&s=books&sr=1-8)

<comment><USER18> 48% of 7 reviews....

One of which only seems to praise the delivery time and condition of the book.

<comment><USER19> I looked at the vote breakdown, since 48% seems an impossible figure for 7 reviews. 29%, 43%, 57% – 2/7, 3/7, 4/7 – yes, but not 48%. It says "we don't use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My contribution to the genre of reviews of terrible books on C: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/reviews/B00NYBRH30/ref=cm_cr_un...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/reviews/B00NYBRH30/ref=cm_cr_unknown?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&pageNumber=1)

("This is a terrible book ...")

<comment><USER21> Wow, the part about hash tables is quite shocking. I've just thrown my copy of the book (which I've never read) into the trash bin. Thanks for writing your review!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > His terminology is all over the map and typically inaccurate, if not plainly > wrong.

> Expressions "return a value."

> "A pointer is a special variable that returns the address of a memory > location."

I don't see how these are clearly wrong? I guess the 'returning' is problematic?

Somehow I feel this was written with an air of superiority, the author doesn't expand on anything. I get that feeling a lot with articles about c.

<comment><USER23> I've been writing C since the 1980s. Sorry, this book is not just bad but astonishingly bad.

Your examples are just wrong. "Returning" has a very specific meaning in programming. An expression does not "return a value". A pointer very very much does not "return the address of a memory location".

The code example given was utterly awful. If you cannot see why that code example is almost guaranteed to cause problems, you might not want to continue in this discussion...

<comment><USER24> What's the verb in this case then? "An expression ___ a value."

<comment><USER25> Evaluates to?

<comment><USER24> Ah, yes, that's the one. Thanks. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As someone who's not very well versed in C, can someone please explain how I should interpret this function signature?

        char *combine(s, t)
        char *s, *t;
        {

<comment><USER27> This is an old way of writing the type of parameters to a function. I believe the modern equivalent is

      char* combine(char* s, char* t) { ... }

which means combine takes in two pointers-to-char and returns a pointer-to- char.

Opinions differ on whether the * should be next to the type or next to the identifier. I prefer putting it next to the type.

<comment> inspector-g When I was learning C a couple decades ago, pointer syntax never made any sense to me until something suddenly clicked with "put it directly next to the type name and not next to the variable name". Ever since then I have not been able to figure out why it is commonly taught next to the variable name.

I mean, short of enabling declarations like:

        char *a, *b;

But I have long since found the tradeoff to be worth the syntactic clarity.

<comment><USER28> The best argument against this, and for leaving the * by the variable name, is this declaration:

      char* a, b;

Now a has type char * but b is just char. It's probably not what the author meant and it's definitely ambiguous even if it was intentional. Better to write:

      char b, *a;

Or, if you meant it this way:

      char *a, *b;

"Well, don't declare multiple variables on the same line," you respond. Sure, that's good advice too. But in mixed, undisciplined, or just old code, it's an easy trap to fall into.

<comment><USER29> The question is, why doesn't C make

        char* a, b;

apply the char* type to both? (That is, why didn't they design it that way?)

I assume there was some reason originally, but it's made everything a bit more confusing ever since for a lot of people. :/

Edit: Apparently it's so declaration mirrors use. Not a good enough reason IMO. But plenty of languages have warts and bad choices that get brought forth. I'm a Perl dev, so I speak from experience (even if I think it's not nearly as bad as most people make out).

<comment> moth-fuzz In the olden days of C, pointers were not considered types on their own (you cannot have just a pointer, a pointer must point 'to' something, grammatically speaking). The type of the object of that declaration is a char. So it's not really read as 'I'm declaring a char-pointer called a', it's more along the lines of 'I'm declaring an unnamed char, which will be accessed when one dereferences a'. Hence the * for dereferencing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> In the same vein we have "The Annotated Annotated C Standard": [https://www.davros.org/c/schildt.html](https://www.davros.org/c/schildt.html)

A blast from the comp.lang.c past.

<comment><USER31> Schildt is one author who triggers deep revulsion in me. Some time around 1988 I bought one of his books on C, and found it was mostly generic padding about programming in general. Later I somehow managed to buy another book by Schildt and found it contained 80% the same text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > If you browse search results for other books by Traister you'll find a lot > of questionable sounding titles ... [snip] ... Cave Exploring (1983)

 _Yikes_ , that could kill somebody if he takes the same approach... otoh it looks like he was a scuba instructor?

[https://trackbill.com/bill/virginia-house- resolution-92-comm...](https://trackbill.com/bill/virginia-house- resolution-92-commending-robert-j-traister-sr/535889/)

<comment><USER33> The single Amazon review of Cave Exploring has a familiar echo: "Recommends that female cavers don't wear bras. So bad it is good. I bought it only because the National Speleological Society had it withdrawn from sale because it encouraged cavers to mark their route with a ball of string."

Bob actually sounds like a guy who had many talents. Writing books perhaps wasn't one of them. [https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/29007415/robert- joseph-t...](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/29007415/robert-joseph- traister)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Apparently he also wrote a book about hand loading ammunition,[0] and I wonder if that's full of dangerous advice too.

[0] [https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/complete-reloading- guide_john-...](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/complete-reloading-guide_john-e- traister_robert-j-traister/492668/#isbn=0883171945)

</comment><comment><USER35> In stead of worshiping "The C Programming Language", why don't we appreciate how Kernighan only uses the bad code example but didn't single out the book and author?

Honestly, I feel like I am witnessing a class room teasing act with all the comments just resonating. Do we really feel such an urge that if we don't tease this old author (not just the book or code) loud, it will lead a new generations of young programmers astray?

</comment><comment><USER36> Previous discussion from a couple years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17397823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17397823)

</comment><comment><USER37> > In the preface of the second edition it says that the first edition was > reviewed "by a professional C programmer hired by the publisher." That > programmer said it should not be published. That programmer was right, but > the publisher went ahead and published it anyway.

Reminds me of [https://m.xkcd.com/1096/](https://m.xkcd.com/1096/)

</comment><comment><USER38> These books are available on libgen if you want to see them for yourself:

[https://b-ok.xyz/book/2368114/60fa20](https://b-ok.xyz/book/2368114/60fa20) [https://b-ok.xyz/book/2368115/f2ecc8](https://b-ok.xyz/book/2368115/f2ecc8)

</comment><comment><USER39> Is Robert Traister an actual human being? Or just a pen name that the publisher puts on quickie books? Or a name, like Alan Smithee, applied to books that have gone wrong?

</comment><comment><USER40> I'd love to write a version of this book for Rust with the examples translated as close as possible within the constraints of the two languages.

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder if the author should feel honored or dejected that Woz took the time to read the book and write a detailed article explaining why it's a terrible book.

That's the question of how the author _should_ feel. I'm sure that if he found out about Woz' review, he would dismiss it by saying "who is this Wozniak guy anyways, he probably knows nothing"

<comment><USER42> It's not _that_ Wozniak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Hmmm...

> With BASIC, the key thing to know about most implementations at the time is > that there were no functions and no scope aside from the global scope.[2]

Take a look at DEF FN in the Applesoft Basic Manual:

[https://www.landsnail.com/a2ref.htm](https://www.landsnail.com/a2ref.htm)

(To be fair, it wasn't used that much, but it was there.)

<comment><USER43> I don't understand; you quote the reference to the footnote but haven't read it?

<comment><USER40> I think you do understand.

<comment><USER43> No. Apparently you want me to spell it out; okay. Your comment is entirely unnecessary because what you write is already in the footnote. Why are you including the "[2]" in your quote, indicating that you have seen that there is a footnote, but haven't read it? Or have you read it and are posting it anyway? That's even harder to understand why you would do that.

Also, making suggestive remarks is not very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is the author still alive? These books were published in the early 90s, which wasn't _that_ long ago. I'm not advocating a lynch mob on an old man, of course, but his story/rebuttal/repentance might be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER45> "At the bottom of the heap in a pointer stack is the ultimate object."

<comment><USER46> Hah, when I read this, I envisioned a movie poster of a B-class "cyber" action movie and this line under a picture of people holding keyboards and pistols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Damn. Those code examples are complete insanity. Half won't even compile. It's like if I tried to write a textbook on how to do neurosurgery.

<comment><USER36> I mean, how hard can it be? You just cut open their head, mess around it a bit…

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> C beginner here. C abstractions don't make sense if you don't grok what the stack and the heap are and how they work.

</comment><comment><USER45> This stuff is just amazing. Was this guy, like an adult when he wrote this book? I knew more C when I was 12.

</comment><comment><USER49> this book is a travistery</comment>


Would you put a QR code to your online profile on a business card? #Quora - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Business-Cards/Would-you-put-a-QR-code-to-your-online-profile-on-a-business-card

<comment><USER2> no. it's still very much a solution searching for a problem and outside of specific events like SXSWi I'd say it shows a fundamental lack of general tech understanding that could be slightly damaging.</comment>