Greed and corruption blew up South Korea's nuclear industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613325/how-greed-and-corruption-blew-up-south-koreas-nuclear-industry/ <comment><USER2> Nuclear power presents the perfect storm for negative public image:

\- Environmental movement went anti-nuclear in the '70s for no particular reason.

\- _Fear Sells_ in the media. Nothing strikes fear like the invisible killer of radiation. Nuclear disasters get media attention like nothing else.

\- Nuclear weapons are scary, and rightfully so. And they share a word in common with "nuclear power," so there you go.

Being tightly regulated and controlled by government makes an industry ripe for "corruption and greed" since it takes political connection and maneuvering to get things done.

It really is amazing, though, how much public image and politics can completely stall forward progress on a power source with so much promise.

<comment><USER3> In fairness, nuclear is also just incredibly expensive. Witness Vogtie. Take away all taxes and regulations, then compare the price of, say, Iowa, building a nuclear plant instead of just slapping up windmills wherever they want. (Remember, we're assuming zero regulations. So while slapping up windmills would normally be incredibly illegal, we're able to do that under the conditions that our thought experiment postulates.) There's just no way to make nuclear compete. Which is why when you drive through Iowa, all you see are windmills everywhere. It's cheap. Much cheaper than nuclear.

If people want nuclear, the government has to provide the lion's share of the assistance to make it happen. Even then, there are no guarantees you'll be in love with what that looks like. At Vogtie for instance, the government has taken the unprecedented step of prohibiting future users of Vogtie power from ever switching to cheaper wind or coal alternatives. And that's on top of the government agreeing to pay over half of the initial construction costs. So you basically have government paying the lion's share of the tab, _and_ mandating that everyone use it, and it's still over budget, late, and more expensive than wind and coal alternatives.

Too many analyses of nuclear power ignore the financial realities. Iowans choose wind, because it's cheaper than nuclear, solar, and coal. So they slap up windmills, and they have the old coal plants to fill in the gaps. Now Iowa was not _trying_ to put its nuclear plants out of business, but as a consumer if you can choose an electricity bill at 2 cents per kWh, wouldn't you? Or would you continue to pay the minimum 8x 2 cents per kWh for nuclear? That's why nuclear is on the ropes in the US, if you give people a choice, they tend to vote with their wallets.

<comment><USER4> Your first paragraph misses the mark, because, unlike a nuclear plant, a windmill or solar plant isn't a standalone power source. To have reliable baseload power with renewables, you need massive battery storage. Right now, you don't factor in the (very high) cost of building battery storage into the cost of wind power because you still have all those coal, gas, and nuclear plants providing baseload power. But the cost of all that baseload capacity that's increasingly sitting around not being used (but has to be there to ensure grid stability) can't be ignored.

<comment><USER3> > _because you still have all those coal, gas, and nuclear plants providing > baseload power..._

That's right. So why would you not decommission all of that incredibly expensive nuclear, and draw down your use of the coal plants to fill in the gaps? That's how most dispatch stacks work. It's just common sense. Consumers want to save money. Utilities want to make enough money.

There's just no way you use nuclear in any scenario you can come up with, _unless_ the government is paying for it. Then you don't care, because you're not paying the costs.

<comment><USER4> Coal can't dispatch fast enough, and most coal plants are at the end of their lifecycle and need to be replaced. So you have to build new baseload capacity, usually gas. (And really, you still need a bunch of batteries to handle short- term fluctuations in renewables output.) The problem, then, is that you have all new coal or gas plants, which are expensive capital assets, that you're basically using for standby power. (And they incur operating and maintenance costs even when not running.) You can't say that electricity from renewables is cheap without accounting for the cost of that standby capacity renewables require. A nuclear plant, by contrast, doesn't need a bunch of coal or gas plants sitting around on standby. You can shut down that old coal plant, stop paying the workers, reuse the land, etc.

<comment><USER3> > _So you have to build new baseload capacity..._

No, you don't. The coal plant in another Alliant Energy area has been around since roughly 1900? or so. It's been updated several times. Never was there a need to rebuild from scratch any coal plant. (This is Madison Wi btw.) Now we stopped using coal there in 2011, (all gas now). But the point is, all the renovations are much cheaper than building a nuclear plant. Utilities around here, (the midwest), are run by old, stodgy, conservative guys who are generally not prone to rash action. There are very few executives around here who are going to build entirely new plants because the machinery in the old one has reached its end of service life. They are going to replace the machinery, at a fraction of the cost. I don't think executives in other parts of the nation are all that different in this regard. Now all that said, even if they did completely tear down and rebuild their plants, which they wouldn't, but even if they did, it would still be cheaper than building a nuclear plant.

So the coal plants are fine. And as I mentioned elsewhere, whatever you use to fill gaps will be a transitional technology. Wind turbines will become more efficient. (Work at lower windspeeds.) Pumped hydro storage will be built in new and innovative ways. What will fill the gaps in 2069 will bear little resemblance to what is filling the gaps in 2019. Because the new methods will likely be not only more clean, but much cheaper to boot.

And incidentally,

> _You can 't say that electricity from renewables is cheap without accounting > for the cost of that standby capacity renewables require..._

the 2 cents per kWh people see on their bill does factor in every source in the dispatch stack.

<comment><USER5> Just to back up your point a bit:

[https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of- energy-...](https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and- levelized-cost-of-storage-2018/)

Running existing coal and nuclear generation appears to be cheap (2nd chart), but new generation appears to be much more expensive (1st chart). The cost of Solar + Storage is low and dropping, and already beats the cost of new nuclear plants (4th chart).

BTW, I grew up on the east side of Madison, Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Okay, I'm a South Korean citizen. That, is one aspect. Consider another aspect. Nuclear reactors are dangerous. That doesn't change. We get the Fukushima accident much more prominently because Japan is so close th Korea and everyone (literally everyone) had to worry about eating Fukushima fish. Nuclear reactors are dangerously close to so many cities, and that can't change, because our country is too small, and there are so many mountains (which take up space). It's different from saying 'Hey, it's failure rate is super small, it's gonna be safe.' and living close to the reactors and worrying about the tiny failure rate. And, I was Science High School student which studied nuclear reactors in detail. What would usual people feel?

<comment><USER7> > Nuclear reactors are dangerous.

Doesn't Korea have coal? Shows up as over a quarter of your generation. Have you been to a region that uses coal for energy generation and seen what it does to the land? Mining it causes heavy metal pollution of water that kills people, the fish pick up mercury and lead, and people consume the fish. Shouldn't you be more concerned about coal plants in China contaminating your waters?

EDIT: Korea study on mercury sources: [https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S1309104215302713](https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S1309104215302713)

<comment><USER6> > Shouldn't you be more concerned about coal plants in China contaminating > your waters? Oh course we are concerned, and for what I know our government > is keep contacting the Chinese government; however it is hard for Korea to > make changes in China's energy plans. Korea is both migrating from neuclear > reactors, coal plants, etc... to LNG plants (which are much more clean and > do not produce much dust) and renewable energy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another reason for the "country's shrinking appetite for nuclear" that I can cite is the North Korean terrorist threat.

Rationally, there is little reason for the North Korean state to cause long term damage to a soil that they claim belongs to them, and also the number of such attacks is now close to zero, but as we all know this kind of fear will not go away.

Renewables could work as a replacement, but this may only further weaken South Korea's position in the energy sector in the 21st century. They have a large petroleum and natural gas refining sector, which as we know needs to be phased out. What will be their trajectory in this context?

<comment><USER9> "Renewables could work as a replacement"

No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist. Case in point: closing nuclear plants and replacing them with renewables is what Germany has been trying to do and has failed to do so far. They essentially replaced (and will continue to replace) nuclear by renewables paired with coal and gas plants running on standby. They can't cold start these plants fast enough to catch dips in energy production from renewables.

You simply can't replace a constant energy source (nuclear) by an intermittent one (most renewables).

I'm guessing South Korea will go the same route as "good example" Germany. Push renewables. Which translates to; close nuclear plants, invest heavily in solar and wind paired with gas and coal. End result: more CO2 emissions, higher consumer energy prices, but most importantly: a clean reputation through good intentions.

Renewables at this stage are more about politically correct marketing than about clean and safe energy.

<comment><USER10> > No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist.

It does, Tesla's grid-scale Powerwall made 25% of its cost in profits in 6 months (per [https://insideevs.com/news/340702/tesla-powerpack-in- austral...](https://insideevs.com/news/340702/tesla-powerpack-in-australia- generated-17-million-in-revenue-in-6-months/)).

Aside from using Powerwalls, us Europeans have extensive experience with using hydro pump storage.

<comment><USER11> So why did Germany go with gas and coal?

<comment><USER10> Our coal infrastructure is on the way to be phased out, it won't be around for long-term any more - the Kohlekommission proposed 2035-2038 for the final shutdown, with 12.5 GW of 42.6 GW capacity going offline until 2022 (per [https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-01/kohlekommission- kohle...](https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-01/kohlekommission- kohleausstieg-bundesregierung-plan-kraftwerke-braunkohle)).

What's left will be gas and renewables.

<comment><USER9> It is planned to be phased out. Just like nuclear. That means that within 15 years Germany will have to replace roughly 70 % of its constant energy sources (nuclear and coals) by the only scalable constant energy source left: gas. Thereby becoming completely reliant on gas from Russia. Creating a massive geopolicital risk that didn't exist previously.

[http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp- content/uploads/201...](http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/Germany-Electricity-Generation.png)

I'll believe it when I see it. Also. What problem exactly is that supposed to solve?

I thought the whole energiewende stunt was about decreasing CO2 emissions. I'm not seeing this.

<comment><USER12> >by the only scalable constant energy source left: gas.

What makes you think coal and nuclear are scalable? Gas has been the only option from the start and simply switching from coal to gas already results in a 50-60% CO2 reduction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yeah there was greed and corruption but as the article says other countries have stopped too:

>A similar reversal is beginning in China, until recently seen as nuclear energy's biggest champion. There, as in South Korea, Fukushima awakened public fears and forced the government to adopt tougher safety standards, which now threaten to push the cost of nuclear power out of reach. Of the world's other major producers of nuclear power, only Russia is still aggressively building more reactors...

I hope renewables and batteries play out.

<comment><USER9> I call BS on "a similar reversal is beginning in China" :

"China is no stranger to nuclear power. The stated PRC goal is to raise domestic nuclear energy output from 43 gigawatts (GW) to 300 GW by 2030." [https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2019/04/25/china- ent...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2019/04/25/china-enters- global-tech-race-for-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/)

<comment><USER14> [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing- its-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-taste- for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/) (China's losing its taste for nuclear power. That's bad news.)

> Officially China still sees nuclear power as a must-have. But unofficially, > the technology is on a death watch. Experts, including some with links to > the government, see China's nuclear sector succumbing to the same problems > affecting the West: the technology is too expensive, and the public doesn't > want it.

> The 2011 meltdown at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant shocked Chinese > officials and made a strong impression on many Chinese citizens. A > government survey in August 2017 found that only 40% of the public supported > nuclear power development.

> The bigger problem is financial. Reactors built with extra safety features > and more robust cooling systems to avoid a Fukushima-like disaster are > expensive, while the costs of wind and solar power continue to plummet: they > are now 20% cheaper than electricity from new nuclear plants in China, > according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Moreover, high construction costs > make nuclear a risky investment.

China's electricity consumption growth is also rapidly slowing due to faltering economic growth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Of all the words you could use to describe the nuclear industry, blew up should not be in the list

</comment><comment><USER16> "Blew up" in the context of the nuclear industry could be not the best choice of words...

</comment><comment><USER17> What they didn't explain was that this crazy APR1400 is the same design is the one of most dangerous and experimental US reactors, South Texas and Palo Verde, with vessels of double size and half the security measures. The only ones matching them in size and dangerousness were the experimental Korean 1400 ones.

<comment><USER18> South Texas is a 4 loop Westinghouse design and Palo Verde is a 2 loop System 80 Combustion Engineering design. Neither is experimental or unusually dangerous.

<comment><USER17> South Texas is a French P4 Framatime design with 1400 MW vessels, not used anywhere else in the US (rated experimental) just Korea, with the highest incident rate in the US and the biggest vessels.

Palo Verde is also overlarge and so dangerous with any external cooling possibilities (it's in the dessert), that US fighters regularly have to protect it from unknown planes flying nearby. Anti-Terror measures.

Both were labeled experimental and are extremely dangerous. South Texas just recently was very close to a meltdown during the Houston hurricane. The river nearby rose to the levels almost spilling over into their huge coolant pools. It was something like 40cm. They didn't utter a single word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> it's one industry where you must assume the worst of the companies that run it because the consequences of mistakes are so terrible

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought greed and corruption were good for industry...

</comment><comment><USER21> Scott Adams just interviewed Michael Shellenberger on his podcast. Michael explains nuclear power and how it compares to the competition.

[https://blog.dilbert.com/2019/04/30/episode-512-scott- adams-...](https://blog.dilbert.com/2019/04/30/episode-512-scott-adams- part-1-pro-nuclear-environmentalist-and-expert-michael-shellenberger/)</comment>


An intro to Reinforcement Learning (with otters) - <AUTHOR> https://meowni.ca/posts/rl-with-otters/ <comment><USER2> The figures that you have shown are sea otters, and they look quite different from other otter species.</comment>


Here's ALLLLL the signup credits for new startups in one list. $$$ - <AUTHOR> http://blog.whttl.com/2014/12/17/startup-signup-bonus-list/

<comment><USER2> That's the same as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8763936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8763936). No need to submit the same content twice in one hour. Also see the guidelines on changing titles. I'm talking about the extra '$$$' which in my opinion make the submission sound cheap [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing! 2 different posts (Medium + Native Blog), but yes, we like to abide to the rules. :)</comment></comment>


People Are Dying Younger Because America Keeps Failing the Bad-Break Test - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/12/america-is-failing-the-bad-break-test-and-people-are-dying.html <comment><USER2> Many people vote against their own self interest---universal healthcare, larger tax credits to the poor, cash welfare---because they think "if I can't afford $15000 to give to the Feds, no one can". This is partly an innumeracy problem; but, partly, I think it's the fact (naturally) those who are taxed the most can mutually align their interests with those who are taxed the least: they both say the same _words_ , but for entirely different reasons: one is because they _can 't_; the other because they _wont_.

<comment><USER3> Everyone keeps attacking poor people for voting against their interests, suggesting as you have that they are innumerate, or conned by fake news, or short-sighted, or just stupid.

Perhaps these people are voting with their conscience after careful consideration, and doing what they think is morally right, despite knowing that it will hurt them.

You wouldn't get an article about billionaires voting for left wing politics even though it could be against their short-term interests, and laughing at their innumeracy, because it's assumed that they would be doing so for moral reasons.

People don't seem to believe the poor are also capable of making self- sacrificing decisions for moral reasons.

<comment><USER4> Care to share these moral reasons?

<comment><USER3> Well you'd have to ask them, wouldn't you.

What I am saying is that you should consider that maybe these people are not innumerate - they could realise that the policies they are voting for will harm them but they believe that it is the correct thing to do.

Some people think that federal taxation in general is morally wrong and should be reduced. Whether you or I agree with that is irrelevant if what we're debating is have these people realised that it could help them but still think it's right to vote against it.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps they are doing what they consider to be correct according to the information available to them. The question then becomes what information are they being given?

<comment><USER6> What information are _you_ being _given_.

How are any of us supposed to vote in our best intetersts, individually or collectively, when all the bastard politicians are pathological liers.

<comment><USER5> Therein lies the rub. It's all very relative, all one can do is try.

View through all the lenses at your disposal (there are many), apply critical thought and compare theory to fact. If you find your answers change from absolutes to 'it depends which perspective you start from' then you are probably on the right track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is why real education is so important. The government wants gullible and apathetic citizens. They got what they wanted.

To bad it will destroy the US. We need longer school days to help 2 income families, we need year round schools as well (yes we'll have to buy air conditioning for summer school).

<comment><USER8> > We need longer school days to help 2 income families, we need year round > schools as well (yes we'll have to buy air conditioning for summer school).

What do you mean by "help 2 income families"?

<comment><USER7> Where both parents work.

<comment><USER8> I know that. I mean how do you think longer school days help them?

If you think it helps by giving their kids someplace to be when both parents are at work, wouldn't it make much more sense to have some sort of public child care program after school than to extend the school day?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The USA has already started a long-term decline. Peak was 1998/1999 if you go by peak productivity and real GDP/capita.

Unfortunately, not much can be done. We're in a situation similar to that of the British Empire prior to 1915.

<comment><USER10> That was a stock bubble. The peak was somewhere between the end of WWII and 1980, when we decided to start funding the country through a continuing trade deficit.

<comment><USER11> It was the late 1960s and early 1970s, when our trading partners got their bombed-out domestic industries back in working order after a decade or two of producing junk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Something changed in our global and economic system at the turn of the 70s. The late 70's and early 80's were really a high point for global utopianianism.

Since then the balance of power between the people and the state has shifted towards the latter at quite an incredible speed over the last 30 years.

Concentration of tremendous wealth in the hands of large corporations and a few individuals and the seeming impotence of the political system to keep them in check has always been a recipe for disaster.

The amount of money spent by the state for instance on surveillance just gets millions more 'uniforms' vested in the state. Security deparments keep getting beefed up. And money being throw around by think tanks into the academic sector, especially economics, and cultivating the mainstream press with all of them parroting a similar message and ideology all point towards a fundamental regression of democratic principles. Just the amount of double speak over the last 5 years is astounding.

Sometime arrogance presumes control but its only a shaky interlude before things completely unravel.

</comment><comment><USER13> The harsh-truth line for situations like this is that these people have been living beyond their means. Right living doesn't just mean that you can cover your expenses day to day. It also means that you have set enough aside to deal with the inevitable occasional hurdles life sets before you. If you can't deal with an illness or a job loss or a serious car repair, you only think you're doing all right, and a hard rain is gonna fall.

Looking at that paragraph, I think it is basically true. Yes, you should set something aside for contingencies. But is it the whole truth? It is well known by now that people, even clever people, tend to discount the future heavily, to the point of unreason. It seems to me this is a case where some sort of institutional intervention is called for, to fight our own worst impulses.

<comment><USER14> > The harsh-truth line for situations like this is that these people have been > living beyond their means. You (should) have set enough aside to deal with > the inevitable occasional hurdles life sets before you.

That would require people to _not be poor_. With exploding 200%+ rise in costs of rent / healthcare / education / childcare / etc, it's no longer feasible to expect people to be saving lots of money for rainy days -- not because they are bad people without the responsibility or fortitude to plan for the future, but because _there 's literally no money for it_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Drugs. Deaths from opioid overdoses are up by a factor of 4 in the last fifteen years. That's huge.

Is becoming a druggie a "bad break", though? Losing a job, an injury, or an illness is a true bad break. Becoming a druggie is self-inflicted. Do druggies deserve tax-funded support? With limited resources, shouldn't tax money be spent primarily on people who had a bad break that wasn't their fault? We can usually bring people back from a broken bone or a lost job. Druggies, not so much.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/08/heroi...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/08/heroin- deaths-surpass-gun-homicides-for-the-first-time-cdc-data- show/?utm_term=.ae3ae435f16b)

<comment><USER16> I don't think many people 'choose' to become so dependent on drugs that they cannot function in society and fatally overdose. A doctor prescribing opiates for an injury without a plan for cessation and withdrawal is a very common path to opiate addiction and overdose. I would absolutely classify this as a 'bad break'.

The path out of opiate dependence is so difficult and our society does very little to assist. Saying "i'm addicted to drugs and in a downward spiral" and having society respond in a manner that will actually help you out of the situation is not currently a reality.

[1] [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/veterans-face- grea...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/veterans-face-greater- risks-amid-opioid-crisis/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yes this is part of the reason, but people are also dying younger now due to obesity. We are literally digging our graves with our teeth.

</comment><comment><USER18> It would be interesting to compare and contrast how societies with strong family and extended family bonds do on the bad-break test. In the US and Western Europe a strong individualist ethos has led to societies where government is the fall back for individual and immediate family misfortune. It's not ideal.

<comment><USER19> Nothing is ideal, but having government as the fallback seems better than having family as the fallback. Falling back on family only works if some of your family has enough resources to help, and that's not always the case.

<comment><USER20> The big advantage is that family (and community) usually cares about you, whereas bureaucrats care most about following rules. Because of this, family can usually do more than just give you a few cheques.

<comment><USER21> What, condolences and sympathy? That's not better than a few checks.

<comment><USER10> Work, generally. It's a network of people that will vouch for you (with little or no evidence of your worth), or simply employ you.

<comment><USER21> Oh, it's that easy? I can just ask my poverty-stricken family to bootstrap me out of my poorness because they'll hire me to do the jobs they don't have?

I'm the highest-paid person in my family. You think I can go to my boss and say "Hire my brother, he's been a gas-station attendant for 6 years. Probably he's a great programmer."

It's easy to not be poor when you come from a family with wealth and hiring power. If you _are_ poor, it's probably because you don't have either. You'd think that would be obvious.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Americans Receive Mystery Seeds in the Mail, Mostly from China - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/agriculture-department-states-investigate-foreign-seed-packages-11595901682 <comment><USER2> I always thought this has to be cover for people sending drugs - it would be dumb to send dozens of packages all full of drugs, instead it would be wise to send many packages all over the world and have only a small handful of them with drugs.

<comment><USER3> It's actually about verified buyers and running scams on Amazon marketplace.</comment></comment>


GNU MediaGoblin 0.5.0: "Goblin Force" released - <AUTHOR> http://mediagoblin.org/news/mediagoblin-0.5.0-goblin-force <comment><USER2> Can anyone who is running this explain why and how he uses it? As far as I understand it, its not a media center solution but rater a self hosted social network focused on sharing media.

How would a typical use case look like: Set up a mediagoblin instance to share vacation photos and videos with your friends?

<comment><USER3> I set this up after my first child was born so that my wife and I, along with all of the other family members could post pictures and videos of our daughter (and our family) on a machine I control. When someone babysits her and takes pictures/videos they too can post them.

This serves us in many ways. For instance, we have all of the pictures in one place, not spread over many services depending on where family members post them -- although some family members also post to facebook :( For the grandmothers and grandfathers we just give them the url instead of trying to explain a YouTube channel to them. They know how urls work, not how YouTube works.

This also serves as a backup. The server is hosted outside our apartment so the pictures we put there can be easily fetched in case something happens to our apartment (and computers - but this can also be fixed with a backup server, this is a side effect).

Basically, family album in one place -- no matter who the photographer is (and backup).

<comment><USER4> Hey, how does the backup system work for you? I'm wondering if this would be a good thing to set up, in addition to my Flickr account.

<comment><USER3> It's not an automatic backup system... and it's not a copy of all photos/videos on our computers.

The pictures/videos we want to keep (would not want to lose in a fire) we upload to our MediaGoblin instance. MediaGoblin saves them in a folder on the server (the original media files and the processed ones). If something happens to our home, we'll be able to easily fetch the most precious images from the server.

The only thing I'd have to work around is that every media file is stored in a separate folder along with the processed files so I would have to write a script to "go into each folder and fetch the file that doesn't end with medium.[ext] and thumbnail.[ext]". Come to think of it, it might be worth it to just write a "Download all originals" plugin since MediaGoblin already knows the originals... but since our apartment hasn't been destroyed I'm not in a hurry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congrats MediaGoblin team, this is one of my favorite open source projects. Keep up the awesome work :D

If anyone else is interested, I started a side project aimed at making MediaGoblin easy to install on Heroku:

[https://github.com/frewsxcv/mediagoblin- heroku](https://github.com/frewsxcv/mediagoblin-heroku)

For the most part it works, but if any of you are Celery gurus, I could get it working the way I wanted.

<comment><USER6> Is the way MediaGoblin is imported what makes it okay to release this as MPL? I have a similar licensing situation for a GPL Python package I would like to use.

<comment><USER5> Heh. Honestly, I'm not sure. IANAL, but I think it would be okay considering MPL version 2 is a GPL compatible license

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL#Compatibility_and_multi- li...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL#Compatibility_and_multi-licensing)

That said, I tend to just pick MPL by default for my projects, but am not opposed to changing to make it compatible (not to mention there's hardly any code in the repo anyways)

<comment><USER6> IANAL either, but I believe. MPL can be imported by a GPL project, but not the other way around, as the importer would need to be licensed as GPL, too.

<comment><USER7> FSF has a rather lengthy text regarding using MPL with GPL at [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license- list.html#MPL-2.0](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#MPL-2.0)

I would agree with the above statement that MPL can be licensed as GPL, but not the other way around. However, I would follow the FSF advice in keeping MPL code MPL through dual licensing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "MediaGoblin is a free software media publishing platform that anyone can run. You can think of it as a decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc."

This information is on the front page [1], but there is no link to that page from the linked page that I could find.

(Note for people reading this who design websites: Make sure someone linked to any page on your product's site can easily find an explanation of what your product is and does.)

[1] [http://www.mediagoblin.org/](http://www.mediagoblin.org/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Please, please, please fix the cupcake photo's color temp. [http://mediagoblin.org/images/home_goblin.png](http://mediagoblin.org/images/home_goblin.png) [http://mediagoblin.org/images/tour/cupcake_discussion- scaled...](http://mediagoblin.org/images/tour/cupcake_discussion-scaled.png)

<comment><USER10> Patches welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is MediaGoblin similar to Plex ([http://www.plexapp.com/](http://www.plexapp.com/))?

If so, which one is better?

<comment> dan-bell "You can think of it as a decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc."

It's more of a personal media store than a media streaming solution like Plex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Holy hell is that nerd cartoon crap and sales patter off-putting. Get a designer, stat.

<comment><USER5> Seriously. Having fun and creating cool artwork shouldn't be allowed in this industry.</comment></comment>


How to find a good Machine Learning Engineer job? - <AUTHOR> I am an experienced machine learning engineer (focus on NLP). I am in a good, well-paid job with very nice colleagues, leading a medium-size R&D team in a start-up that was recently acquired by a large investor.
The company is becoming more and more bureaucratic though. Introducing state-of-the-art technology or research have become virtually impossible. Most of my team's work is to bug-fix legacy spaghetti code. Everything that goes beyond the scope of a two-weeks "sprint" horizon is not considered worth it. I am losing hope that things will improve in this company.
Hence, I am passively looking for a new job. I am in a European city with many tech start-ups. However, I am not going to give up my current job for some vague promises about finding the new big thing in domain X, or to throw myself into insane working hours or an otherwise toxic environment.
Instead, I want to work in ML/NLP with a nice and diverse team, ideally in an interesting domain (subjective).
I do not care too much about whether it is a genuine start-up or a corporate, as long as people and structure are somewhat sane. Same goes for specific technology/research topics, but I value a strategic approach with a vision that goes beyond selling out as soon as possible.
I am not asking for advice on where to find my next dream job. I am more interested in specific tips about how to search, and how to find certainty before signing a contract and quitting my job.
Every recruiter tells you that things are perfect in their company, and brags about their technology stack. The latter is a bit easier to verify by talking to other engineers, but in general I find it extremely difficult to foresee what you are running into with a new job.
What are your positive and negative experiences while looking for new jobs? What are red flags that you missed during the recruitment process? What did indicate a truly good work place? <comment><USER2> I think you should work to make your current employer the best match for your interests. That probably involves socializing with different teams (marketing, support, etc.) meeting with clients and users to understand what their needs are. If the company is only focused two weeks out then it sounds like they have a leadership gap. Find the person who is responsible for the longer time frame and find out what their long term concerns are.

</comment><comment><USER3> It feels like you might be looking for (or wanting to feel) assurances that are just not possible in this day in age. I'm in the US so your mileage may vary, but generally no jobs here offer the stability they used to. Corporations broke the contract first, and now employees no longer feel obligated to their employers either. It seems everyone needs to keep up-to- date on their skills, take their chances with a job, and be ready to move on quickly if it doesn't work or circumstances change. The good thing about this is that employees gain experience with more companies than before, and that's a good thing (IMHO). You can make it even better by developing a brand for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> > The latter is a bit easier to verify by talking to other engineers, but in > general I find it extremely difficult to foresee what you are running into > with a new job.

Ask the hiring manager what will your typical tasks be, and then try to detect if/how much is he lying I guess? Look out for usual red flags, like being ambigious or avoiding difficult subjects (such as - how bad the codebase is, how much maintenance vs greenfield work will you be doing, will you be able to influence the direction of the work, or are you just someone they need to implement their ideas).

</comment><comment><USER5> Consider applying to research institutions. ETH Zurich and LRZ come to mind as examples.</comment>


1950s U.S. Nuclear Target List Offers Chilling Insight - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-nuclear-target-list-offers-chilling-insight.html <comment><USER2> Chilling that "population" is listed as a target but I can't help imagining a scenario where all of the primary and secondary targets -- military, government, industrial, agricultural -- are taken out with strikes that limited the amount of collateral damage and maximized the number of survivors: how many of those people will wish they had not survived the attack?

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War- Nuclear...](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War-Nuclear- Target-List-Declassified-First-Ever/)

As usual, nyt adds nothing but paywalled political babble, here is the relevant link.</comment>


Reinvent the Wheel Often - <AUTHOR> http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Reinvent_the_Wheel_Often <comment><USER2> They forgot to mention that reinventing the wheel is, often, simply enjoyable.

I'm currently writing a little javascript library to do Linear Algebra operations, even though one already exists. It's helping me to gain a better understanding of what I learned in college, and it's _fun_.

<comment><USER3> Most importantly, it exposes assumptions. Yesterday there was the post about hand-crafting beating the compiler where the compiler made assumptions that weren't true. Every solution incorporates assumptions, which may prove false or simply age poorly. When you re-invent the wheel, you get to re-examine those assumptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Re-inventing the wheel is great when you have the time, money, and information support base. If not a personal project, please pick two and know it does not include as much personal growth:

Fast, Cheap, High Quality

</comment><comment><USER5> When it is critical to know exactly how your particular wheel works, it is often necessary to at least partially re-invent it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't this lend itself to analysis paralysis?

I floundered for a bit trying to figure out the next language I wanted to learn because I wanted it to be the most RIGHT language for my next experiments. I bounced from Lisp, to Python, to Java, to .NET framework, and finally gave up (no, had not even glanced at Ruby, sorry).

I grabbed a copy of web2py to have at least a framework to build my next group of apps on. I am backtracking a little at a time and learning the rudimentaries of Python, but had I not just bit the bullet, I'd probably still be wondering in a digital daze.

Once I get a few projects done, I may THEN be able to focus on reinventing the web2py wheel, but for now, I am settling for some accomplishments under my belt just to get a sense of some progress.

Am I alone in this? Or is this commonplace for a certain subgroup?

</comment><comment><USER7> Great advice.

As a tinkerer, this tends to come naturally to me.

In the commercial world I can see why reinventing the wheel is a bad thing. _Minimum viable product_ is a word that gets tossed around a lot. In order to meet that standard, one must expend the least amount of effort getting from A to B. Might as well ride on the shoulders of giants.

Sometimes it's not necessary to write the whole thing over again. You can speed through something by picking an open source project and commit a few easy patches. Then dig in deeper and look at hard ones. There's something to learn by reading what others have done as well. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> learning for learning's sake is always good for personal growth, but I'm not sure it is the best path for commercial growth.

<comment><USER9> Personal growth of employees within an organization is absolutely crucial for long term commercial success. A company that encourages personal & professional growth will cultivate productive employees and attract top talent, those who constantly seek growth and refuse to stagnate. If you can create an environment that rewards this, I wager that you will make more money.</comment></comment>


Mapv – a library of geography visualization,use canvas to show big data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/huiyan-fe/mapv#readme <comment><USER2> it looks cools, and may be it can used in google maps to visualization the data

</comment><comment><USER3> it like the carto,but it is used canvas in browser

</comment><comment><USER4> awesome~</comment>


Yves Behar: Industrial Designer in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/6/5930539/the-makers-mark-yves-behar-fuseproject-profile

<comment><USER2> Yves Behar is an enigma, in the sense that I can't think of one thing he was involved with which actually does look good or function particularly well, but his involvement in projects is promoted in such a way it's now a sort of clichéd joke, when based on their normal track record of success after his involvement it's almost like he actually has the kiss of death.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not enough pictures of his gadgets. And what is pictured doesn't seem particularly beautiful to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Clickbait title.

A lot of what he's designed aren't exactly gadgets. And personally I think Jonathan Ive is a more suitable candidate for the title of "the man" behind SV's "most beautiful gadgets"

<comment><USER5> We've changed the title in an attempt to be accurate and neutral.</comment></comment>


Shut Up and Tell Everybody - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@HanaAbaza/shut-up-tell-everybody-1190426aaa73

<comment><USER2> In the article it advises about filing for patents. I strongly agree with not filing patents on software. However, my company is currently in the fundraising process and basically the first question every investor seems to be asking is: "Do you have any patents for your technology?"

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.</comment>


Conan O'Brien on failure - <AUTHOR> http://www.february-7.com/features/conan.htm <comment><USER2> Wow. That is amazing. If you don't have time to read it all, just read the last 3 paragraphs.

Terry Semel was my high school graduation speaker (this was way before he was at Yahoo) and he was boring and uninspiring....

<comment><USER3> Here they are:

I've dwelled on my failures today because, as graduates of Harvard, your biggest liability is your need to succeed. Your need to always find yourself on the sweet side of the bell curve. Because success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you're desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it in any way.

I left the cocoon of Harvard, I left the cocoon of Saturday Night Live, I left the cocoon of The Simpsons. And each time it was bruising and tumultuous. And yet, every failure was freeing, and today I'm as nostalgic for the bad as I am for the good.

So, that's what I wish for all of you: the bad as well as the good. Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally. And remember that the story is never over. If it's all right, I'd like to read a little something from just this year: "Somehow, Conan O'Brien has transformed himself into the brightest star in the Late Night firmament. His comedy is the gold standard and Conan himself is not only the quickest and most inventive wit of his generation, but quite possible the greatest host ever."

Ladies and Gentlemen, Class of 2000, I wrote that this morning, as proof that, when all else fails, there's always delusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I loved that essay. I especially liked his jokes about what Harvard students would be doing after graduation. Although I'm sure that's not true for even the majority of students, it's still something that I can't help but chuckle at.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's terrific, good find! Yeah you definitely have to fail a few times to start dialing in on success, and most of all you can't be afraid to try things.

</comment><comment><USER6> Totally hilarious and very insightful (in a round about way) ;)</comment>


BEHEMOTH – Big Electronic Human-Energized Machine, Only Too Heavy - <AUTHOR> https://microship.com/behemoth/ <comment><USER4> I imagine a lot of people here might be too young to know about Steve K Roberts. He had an earlier bike called WINNEBIKO (II?). Imagine yourself as a kid in the 80s watching something like this on TV, it was super cool.

High-Tech Bike on Spectacular World of Guinness Records - <USER2>

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2G6DtfZFUU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2G6DtfZFUU)

Xerox PARC Winnebiko presentation by Steve Roberts - <USER3>

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU6MXakwcjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU6MXakwcjI)

It's easy to overlook how inspiring this was without knowing about the context in which we lived back in the 80/90s. No one had cell phones, few people had computers, or had ever used a computer network, let alone the internet. I'm not sure I had even used a computer at the time, and I saw this guy on TV talking about being able to: write a book while riding his bike, talk to people all over the world via computer network, work remotely, it was _poof_ mind blown. Like looking 15 years into the future.

Later on during University, after my first summer programming internship I read his book, "Computing Across America", which I highly recommend. For me at least, Steve was also kind of a lifestyle guru. Reading his book you realized you that you didn't have to be chained to a desk in an office, that technology would open up new lifestyles. It was a wake up moment where I tried to visualize my ideal life, and where the normal way of things was no longer interesting and something to avoid.

Steve Roberts has a youtube channel here:

[https://www.youtube.com/c/microship/videos](https://www.youtube.com/c/microship/videos)

</comment><comment><USER5> I love the description of the community involved in building it. It brings to mind the quote from Antoine de St-Exupery:

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

On the other hand, one has to wonder if he wouldn't have needed a 105 speed transmission had he heeded that other famous quote:

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

<comment><USER6> > "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when > there is nothing left to take away."

I think the problem is he already had the bike. If he followed this maxim he wouldn't have needed to start the project at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh, Microship and the Winnebiko!

I'm so happy to see this obscure uberhacker on HN.

Stories about this guy's exploits would be just the sort my ideal vision of HN would be exclusively populated by.

Real Hacker news.

His _" A Decade of Microship Development"_[1] is also well worth reading.

[1] - [https://microship.com/microship- development/](https://microship.com/microship-development/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I recently completed the initial build of a similar contraption, a 9 foot long recumbent trike with lots of cargo capacity. Picture here:

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

Shaky YouTube walkaround here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3SEndDnVXg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3SEndDnVXg)

I've been giving thought to how far I want to go with the electronics. LED lighting is a no brainer of course. I have red LED strips for the rear that will blink in patterns of my making. PWM will make it cool. But a Pi Zero W is just SO powerful as a bike computer- how far do I want to go with that? Wifi to a smart phone as a bike comuter display? Could work. Rear facing camera to check on traffic? Why not? Current gear and gear inches for three stage transmission?

A smart phone largely surpasses what Steve had available to him and what was used on his bike, and miniaturization means no need for a trailer unless you want the real estate for solar.

I don't know how far I'll go with mine. My main goal is to ride it and have fun. Maybe for the next build, I'll become a hardware developer and start writing code. Who knows?

And being an Amateur Radio operator, there are many battery operated portable QRP rigs that would be a lot of fun to operate from a bike- if you stop and set up a quick antenna, which is no big deal. There are even mobile HF antennas available, but those present a major compromise, and QRP (less than 10w power) is already a compromise.

So the real question to answer is: How geeky do I wanna be? I don't think I want to be as geeky as Steve was, but I also don't think I _need_ to be. I don't expect to ride across the nation, just around the region ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> I vaguely remember this as a kid. For those who are better readers than I, does this site describe what all the computer hardware actually does? I was expecting something like primitive turn-by-turn navigation, but there doesn't seem to be focus to this, just a whole lot of desktop hardware grafted on a bike. It doesn't make any sense even in an era before common mobile hardware.

Edit: While mobile hardware really didn't get good until 20 years later, the TRS-80 Model 100 existed in 1983 which had a real keyboard, could run third- party programs weighed under 4 pounds, had battery-backed memory and _ran 20 hours on a set of 4 AA batteries_. So a non-absurd solution for some portion of his design requirements existed.

<comment><USER10> its so he could connect to telnet, and write his book as he rode.

<comment><USER11> It's very dangerous to drive and write at the same time, I don't see how this is usable

<comment><USER12> He uses chord typing using buttons built into the handles used to steer the bike. There's a claim that it's not that hard to learn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I saw him talk in our elementary school, met him, and still have his book. He rode that thing all over the US and wrote a book while doing so. Most interesting thing about his setup was the custom keyboard mounted to the handlebars that was based on a stenographer type setup.

<comment><USER13> What? No. as I recall he had 7 switches and just chorded ASCII

<comment><USER13> Details here: [https://archive.org/details/73-magazine-1988-04/page/n43/mod...](https://archive.org/details/73-magazine-1988-04/page/n43/mode/2up)

73 Magazine, April 1988, page 43. Article says the switches are essentially ASCII, but with the bits shuffled so that lower alpha mainly falls under his strongest fingers. I'll let you read it for further details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how light you could make this with current tech. A tablet computer + raspberry pi would cover most of the features, plus electrified with today's lithium batteries would make this a beast (pun intended) range-wise.

<comment><USER15> You could pretty much replace the whole thing with off-the-shelf stuff that fits in a backpack. Laptop, smartphone, tablet, a decent Bluetooth speaker, and you're good. Maybe some solar cells on the bag. You're still on your own for the handlebar keyboards. Get a couple Twiddlers and cram the guts into some grips, I guess.

And a trailer for nothing but camping gear instead of hauling around three desktop machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remember following Steve Roberts at the time (probably on USENET). It's entertaining to think how much of the tech on BEHEMOTH could be replaced by a smart phone or tablet. There are a few things like the HAM radio, printer, and some of the head mounted stuff that you'd still need in order to duplicate all the functionality. The weight reduction and improvements to functionality would be amazing.

</comment><comment><USER17> I really miss that time, when computers where something special, floppy-disk trade in school and that one guy with a Next-Cube without games but his father said it's the most powerful machine, and endless "Death Knights of Krynn" hours with friends....ok maybe i'am a 'adult' now...that's why, but IT really lost most of it's magic.

<comment> dawg- There are still geeks doing quirky and whimsical things with computers, there always will be. They are just harder to find in all the noise.

<comment> white-flame The noise is that everybody's trying to extract money out of computing.

The whimsy is in just enjoying it and exploring within it for its own sake, which is the willingness to simply put time & money _into_ it without that noise.

<comment><USER18> This is an insightful comment and applies to other pursuits as well — and don't forget Sturgeon's Law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pretty awesome. He had a binary keyboard, one button on each handlebar, and could type at 35 WPM using it. Impressive! I wonder if there is a market for that now, so people could text while biking. Or driving?

[https://microship.com/on-the-loose-in-dataspace/](https://microship.com/on- the-loose-in-dataspace/)

<comment><USER20> At 2 seconds per word you're probably better off with speech recognition. But it wouldn't work in loud traffic.

<comment><USER15> BEHEMOTH hit the road in 1991. Speech recognition was... not a solved problem at that point in time.

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

<comment><USER21> "I wonder if there is a market for that _now_"

<comment><USER15> Ah yeah, I missed that.

I bicycle everywhere and I sure would not wanna try taking my attention off the road. Might be different if I was taking long cruises down the blue highways like Behemoth was designed for. And probably quiet enough for dictation to have a decent chance to work.

Two-finger keyboard sounds like something that goes in the bin of "weird keyboards only nerds with tons of time to learn to use them can love" though, right next to all the other chording keyboards people have made over the years...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What I am about to say is not supposed to be insulting or personal, just some observartions on relative culture. I spent a while reading the author's stories from the road, and what I found most interesting was the disdain the author expressed for "unenlightened" midwesterners, who are "intellectually torpid". This is a very interesting project, but maybe from their point of view, the author is wasting his capabilities on frivolous, selfish, and unsustainable persuits. I was also intrigued by the author's idea that only his, liberated view of public sexuality was correct. Reading between the lines, I also would be uncomfortable in a public setting if a nearby couple were being "openly sexual", and I don't think that's because I need some liberation.

It does give some interesting insight into the development of Bay Area culture and thought. Oddly enough, the modern Progressive views on liberated sexuality have come full circle, with now almost contractually-described processes.

</comment><comment><USER23> I had Tadpole (my employer at the time) donate the SPARCbook.

BEHEMOTH was a cool project in its day. Imagine what could be done now.

</comment><comment><USER24> Related, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann_(inventor)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann_\(inventor\))

[http://eyetap.org/publications/](http://eyetap.org/publications/)

</comment><comment><USER25> He stopped by where I worked [1]; The computer on a phone thing blew me away more that chorded typing on the fly.

I was still on V20/C64 without modems back then.

[1] [https://halebikes.com/pictures/index.html](https://halebikes.com/pictures/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus) springs to mind.

"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." -Albert Camus

</comment><comment><USER27> How did it know its location?

<comment><USER28> Satellite uplink and GPS

<comment><USER27> In 1991?

<comment><USER29> It's explicitly described how and which parts were used.

<comment><USER27> Oh, oops. I Cmd-F'ed a bunch of things, and I thought GPS was one of them, but clearly not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Database performance: If you're not first, you're last - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/rohland/database-performance-if-you-re-not-first-you-re-last-n4 <comment><AUTHOR> I started writing this post to introduce database indexing to new team members and thought it was a good opportunity to flesh out my own knowledge and share what I learnt with others. Hope this helps someone out there.

<comment><USER2> Indexing is something that should be in the purview of the relevant DBMS and should rarely involve you as a programmer or as a user.

There are some things that have a greater on the performance than indexes. One of these is how you have designed the database in the first place. Over a thirty year period, I saw many examples of production databases that did not utilise smart thinking about the database design.

Another area that is problematic for performance is the design of the database queries themselves, especially if there are joins (of any kind) involved and there are large numbers of rows to be examined. Early in my database delvings, I found a particularly slow query (on the order of 1/2 hour execution times) was dramatically sped up (to the order of just seconds) by an accidental change in the specification of the relevant joins used. By this I mean, we removed a couple of the joins and then added them again. This lead me a specific hunt to understand join order and how it influences execution speed. Once one understood the limits on the query engine, one could then look for optimisations of the join order.

Another area is to not trust vendor recommendations until you have actually tested them thoroughly. A certain large database vendor had specific recommendations for query design that were problematic. A problem report was submitted about the specific "feature" and even after 3 more major releases, this "feature" still existed. On a relatively small database table of about 10 million records, the database vendor recommendation took about 10 minutes or so to run. By judicious coding of an external user interface, and not using the recommended "feature", the resultant query took less than 1/10 second to run to completion.

My recommendation to new teams members would be to have a good grasp of theory (so make sure that they are adequately trained) and then get them to do a set of little problems with a variety of gotchas to get them to think and to investigate what is happening. Unfortunately, I think this kind of activity went out in the late 80's.</comment></comment>


The Life of Joseph Stalin's Daughter - <AUTHOR> http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/the-sad-strange-life-of-a-tyrants-daughter/

<comment><USER2> Not quite Stalin's daughter, but Putin's daughter has a dutch s.o. and lived in NL, I'm less than proud of how she was treated here before she moved back to Moscow, somehow people thought that she's a way to get back at Putin for MH17 (which is commonly believed to have been downed by Russian troops stationed in East-Ukraine, all the proof seems to confirm that to date even though Russia is still in full-on denial about it).

Being the daughter or son of a person like that has to be very hard, you can't really escape your heritage even if you personally have done nothing wrong.

Of course Putin (for now) doesn't hold a candle to Stalin.

<comment><USER3> Slightly OT: By chance I read the news about MH17 in the very first minutes of its disappearance from the radar and minutes later I saw news about Strelkov's tweeter account publishing several tweets about a downed "Ukrainian plane" and pictures with smoke in Torez area, tweets which later disappeared completely. I translated with translate.google the tweets just to make sure they matched what the news said and I even saved a screen capture somewhere because I knew the things will get muddled later. This made me have very little doubt that MH17 was shot down by the rebels.

<comment><USER4> Mind sharing the screenshot?

<comment><USER5> It's easily found by Googling for images with the keyword "птичкопад".

<comment><USER4> That's not a tweet though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tangential, but one of his granddaughters lives in Portland OR. [1] Living an interesting life. Looks like she has adapted pretty well to local life.

[1][http://www.parismatch.com/Actu/International/La-petite- fille...](http://www.parismatch.com/Actu/International/La-petite-fille-de- Staline-est-une-femme-libre-160318)

<comment><USER7> She's mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also tangentially related - both his sons fought in the front lines of WW2.

One of them, Yakov, was captured by Germans and later they offered for to trade him for Paulus, who was a German field marshal and one of the principle commanders in the Battle of Stalingrad. Stalin refused the trade.

<comment><USER9> It is a question if soviets would treat him better than nazis. All 'deserters' were automatically traitors and his wife went to jail because he was captured.

<comment><USER10> It's not like there was a reason:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburgers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburgers)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Math from square one, after ~11 years of programming - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, no throwaway account - embarrassing or not, I'll ask for your advice on the matter.
27 years old, ~11 years professional programming and design experience, no formal education, poking w/ systems since my parents brought me my first computer at age of 9 - a soviet clone of the Apple II.
I've recently came to the realisation that when you remove the noise, there's room for the signal; increasing the throughput via negativa.
Probably, somewhere in the past have I've internalised the assumption that math is "dry", or that I don't have "natural aptitude" towards it and all of the common cliches regarding the subject. I can trace it back to specific time, place and persons, but this is not relevant.
The thing is that I've always have been drawn to specific disciplines and generally abstract concepts, seeking the intersections between programming, design, philosophy, economy, all disciplines forming cognitive science and etc.
Now I have this strong craving, a irresistible urge like a compulsion, to learn math vigorously from the ground up, because I feel it'll help me read formally the commonalities between these distinct on first sight systems.
Does someone relate to this? Have you been through something similar? Either way, what advice would you give? Does it sound naive and am I late? What blind spots I might have regarding this?
The resources in terms of finances are not an issue, i.e. everything I've learned up to this moment was via deliberate practice and internal self-drive, but I'm open for any suggestions regarding the possible learning processes.
Thanks for taking time reading this.
Happy hacking,
V. <comment><USER2> [Premise One] I'm a fan of John Dewey. One of his insights into education is that there is no such thing as starting from square one when we are thinking pragmatically. Each person starts learning from where that person is and it is unique for each individual.

[Premise Two] Nobody can know everything about mathematics.

[Premise Three] No problem requires knowing everything about mathematics.

Thus my random advice from the internet:

1\. Start following the bits of mathematics that interest you. It can be a mix of formal study such as university level classes [free or paid] and just reading wikipedia or blogs.

2\. I think Peter Norvig's abstraction is sound: Be patient. [http://norvig.com/21-days.html](http://norvig.com/21-days.html) Remember _The Art of Computer Programming_ [relevant mathematics clearly presented] wasn't written in a day, a year, or five decades.

3\. Accept that mathematics knowledge has a power law distribution: No matter how much you know, to the right there are a lot of people with at least twice your knowledge. That to the right there are even more with half never changes this.

Good luck

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the insights and taking the time.

Yes, definitely Peter Norvig's thinking resonates with me.

Do you have any blogs or resources you can recommend?

V.

<comment><USER2> Knuth's _Art of Computer Programming_. Seriously. On the one hand, it will teach a lot and require stretching. On the other hand, there will be much of the mathematics that is simply beyond ability so there are a lifetime's of challenges.

Placing it all in the context of computer science may make it more fun if that's your interest. Volumes I and IVa in particular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you tried Khan Academy?

[https://www.khanacademy.org/math](https://www.khanacademy.org/math)

How ground up? Home schooling your new kid?

Counting?</comment>


Sony Ericsson promotes Android bootloader unlocking - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2011/04/14/sony-ericsson-android-bootloader-unlockin/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hackaday%2FLgoM+%28Hack+a+Day%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher <comment><USER2> What I don't understand is why would unlocking the boot loader immediately void the warranty. I get why Sony/HTC/Motorola/etc would act this way: they don't want people messing with their phones, screwing them up and then blaming the manufacturer.

However, the bootloader on my PC is not locked. I can get a PC with Windows from Dell, install Ubuntu on it and go on my merry way until the hard drive crashes. Then I can call up Dell and ask them for a replacement. I have actually done this and they did not care what OS I had on my computer (other than the first level support asking me to run a defragger). In either case, if something else broke, I could always get the stock Windows back on there.

Why can't this apply to phones? Give me a tool (for all OS's, not just Windows), that can reflash my phone back to stock (I realize these exist, but I gather they are leaked and not official binaries, no source). Then give me the ability to unlock the bootloader through whatever means (e.g.: a text message, etc). Then allow me to _work on my own damn device_. If I break it I have a way to flash back. The warranty should only cover the hardware and the software should be re-flashable at any point. Of course backups are going to be necessary, but that is a solved problem: sync your entire phone in an encrypted fashion to Dropbox continuously.

First manufacturer that sees this truth and sells subsidized phones, gets my money (Nexus S does not count as you have to get it at full price and now that T-Mobile is going away so is the "bring your own phone" discount).

<comment><USER3> The bootloader on a phone is comparable to the BIOS on a PC. If you reflash your BIOS with unsupported code (Openboot?) and brick it, you shouldn't expect the warranty to cover you for this. It's the same principle. Now, whether they can legally void the warranty if you don't actually break something is another issue entirely, but they should not be held responsible if you do do something stupid that bricks the phone.

<comment><USER2> I was under the impression that an unlocked bootloader would mean simply that you can install unsigned kernels. I am sure the manufacturers can find a way to do that without letting me screw up the bootloader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't have an SE phone, but I still read through the pages and clicked through the assistant. At one point, you have to get an unlock code and to get that, you have to give them your phone's IMEI.

This probably means that they will immediately void your warranty, so unlocking and later re-flashing to lock again won't do you any good.

Now, I can kind of understand SE there, but is it really possible that installing a new OS can destroy the hardware? I thought these days are long gone.

<comment><USER5> Would someone who can afford it try to do this and then find out if "they will immediately void your warranty"--- lots of possible FUD here with no proof that I've seen. Just to be clear, I lean in the direction of 'void', after all we are talking about Sony here...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is actually a reason to reconsider getting a se-phone, some of their hardware have been good for several years, but crippled with bad software(even the android versions) its useless.

I will definitly check their latest hardware more carefully thanks to this.

<comment><USER7> Just remember the PlayStation3.

<comment><USER8> Why? That's an analogy that doesn't make any sense. It's not like Sony was publicly telling people how to modify their hardware.

<comment><USER9> Sony is a company that happily plays bait and switch, especially with geek- appeal features. If you like the way a sony phone looks, then by all means buy it for its appearance. If you like any features of the phone (especially geek- appeal features), don't expect them to last. Sony has disabled features in the past, and will probably do so in the future.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Review of 'The Rails 3 Way' by Obie Fernandez - <AUTHOR> http://www.rubyinside.com/review-of-the-rails-3-way-obie-fernandez-4080.html <comment><USER2> A review that goes out of its way to keep saying how nice the author is and where the reviewer isn't sure they should say what they are going to because of said niceness leads me to wonder how unbiased the review actually is.

<comment><USER3> I can only find one reference to how "nice" Obie is. (Edit: Just found a second one - "great guy" instead of nice. But _both_ the "nice guy" and the "great guy" come right as Cooper is criticizing.) Also, on the whole, the review seems to be (very politely and carefully) negative to me. Not scathing, but definitely not a glowing review where I would worry about bias.

<comment><USER2> And if he wasn't tiptoeing around? How might the criticism have been? This to me is a review that shouldn't have been written as Cooper seems to have some issues sep. the person from the book when it comes to this one.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you're right. I haven't read other reviews by Cooper, so I can't really judge how harsh is is normally or in other cases. But I do know that as I read the review, it was clear that Cooper didn't love it and _why_ he didn't love it. As a potential buyer, the review gave me plenty of reasons not to buy the book (and also some reasons to buy it). I don't feel that there was so much tiptoeing is all I'm saying.

<comment><USER2> I agree partially, this review just really left me cold and wondering, what was left out. Its really rare that I feel like a reviewer is holding back.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My Opinionated Guide To Go - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hackingthought.com/2014/05/my-opinionated-guide-to-go-golang.html <comment><USER2> Why does this article only compare Go with interpreted languages at the top? Go is a compiled language; wouldn't it be more fair to compare it with other languages that can be compiled, like C++, Rust, Haskell, or Lisp/Scheme?

I mention this because the article acts as if getting rid of abstraction layers between the OS and the code is a new idea. No, that's how all compiled languages are... that's the point of compiled languages. I suppose Go's most common _use case_ lines it up against a bunch of slow interpreted languages, but really there's no reason except good libraries that you can't use the other compiled languages I mentioned for web apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I was comparing things that I have developed software in. It would seem unfair to compare things that I have not actively contributed production code and deploy. I mainly write web applications (services) of which C++, Rust, Haskell or Lisp/Scheme are not languages I find compelling to write web applications with. Would love to hear if you find this otherwise.

<comment><USER2> No, I honestly know next to nothing about web apps programming. I do know there exists decent-looking support for web apps for Rust, Haskell, and Scheme (Racket, but Racket isn't compiled to a binary), but I don't have the knowledge base to assess how good web programming is in these languages, if it's even good at all. I know this website is written in Arc (a Lisp). [https://github.com/wting/hackernews](https://github.com/wting/hackernews)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just wish Go would let me compile and run with a flag -allowing- unused imports. I find myself wasting a lot of time hunting down unused imports or variables and commenting them out.

Maybe that'll be a non-issue the more I use Go, but so far it's a bit of a time waster.

<comment><USER4> [https://github.com/bradfitz/goimports](https://github.com/bradfitz/goimports)

<comment><USER5> To explain to those who may not know what's going on here:

Go forbids importing modules that you then don't use in the source code. This is particularly annoying with the "fmt" module, which contains things like Printf that are useful for debugging, but you may only be using fmt.Printf for one debugging statement in the code. Consequently, if you're developing, and you're adding and removing it over and over you also have to add and remove it to and from your import list over and over, which is very annoying since it's likely to be relatively distant from your use location, and it's mandatory that all imports are listed at the top of the file. (So, you can't do what you can do in perl and say "use Data::Dumper; print Dumper($debugging_stuff);" all on one line, without even being concerned about whether Dumper may already be imported.)

goimports is a source filter that cleans out any unused modules, and tries its best to add modules that you only reference. It's pretty good. You can confuse it if you have two modules with the same last bit of the name, but the standard library doesn't have that anyhow, and for the most part you can deal with that. Since it also runs gofmt for you on save, it's also a drop-in replacement for gofmt, which you should configure your editor to run on every save even if you for some reason don't want the goimports functionality. (Seriously. Just do it. There's no excuse not to. There's no excuse to ever commit code that was not gofmt'ed.)

If you do that, the problem goes away. Typing "fmt.Printf" pulls fmt in automatically, removing the one line removes it automatically, the import list is always accurate, and it's smart enough that if it isn't the only usage it doesn't remove it.

That said, I also strongly recommend setting up automatic syntax checking by compilation (flymake in emacs, don't know what in vim, etc), so that you also avoid the "Save -> switch windows to terminal -> compile -> get smacked in face with an error that feels stupidly persnickety" psychological torture. If the errors highlight in your editor on save or something, you go through that much less. Those who lived in the C#/Java etc world have long had this... a lot of people coming from the scripting side would be advised to pick up a bit more of the helpful tools the static side has to offer.

<comment><USER6> > flymake in emacs, don't know what in vim

[https://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic](https://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic) for vim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Go: Code -> Operating System -> Hardware"

Is there any reason to use RVM, PVM on production while Go does not required one?

I believe should be install one and only one Ruby/Python version on production.

Why Ruby/Python does not required application server like unicorn/wcgi, etc?

The article clearly try to make other deployment more _complicated_.

<comment><USER8> A lot of python shops I've come across don't use the system installed python or ruby. In python land at least it's exceedingly common to deploy a virtualenv with a separate python runtime and isolated 3rd party libs. This makes pinning your version deps easier and doesn't matter if the underlying server is ubuntu or centos or whatever.

<comment><USER7> That is true, what if in future ubuntu/centos include Go by default (which might not the version you use)? I believe then will have some GVM or similar tool to solve the problem.

Edit: As others pointed out, Go is compiled binary and does not required runtime (like JVM) so versionning is not issue. Thanks for clearing up.

<comment><USER9> There won't be a need for a GVM as Go is not a stand-alone runtime. Once compiled for a specific platform it will just run. You don't even need it installed on the server. You can cross-compile on your DEV machine and move the binary LIVE. Then it just runs. It doesn't need any libraries on the server.

<comment><USER10> Does Go not have the concept of linking? If you are deploying several Go applications on the same server that each use libraries, does it include duplication of libraries in every binary?

<comment><USER9> There is no linking. Each Go binary has all of the libraries it needs baked into it.

So if you have multiple different Go applications on one server, and they use some of the same libraries, then each application's binary will contain a copy of that library.

It makes things a little redundant, but also simplifies the deployment process.

edit: The only exception is if you are using cgo and liking to existing C libraries. In pure Go there is no linking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not entirely on-topic, but the mention of the various language "stacks" at the beginning of the article reminded me of something I've been wondering.

Why does the de facto standard for web apps in Go-land seem to be using the built-in HTTP server provided by net/http, or otherwise having the program server as its own HTTP server?

Most other languages seem to have converged on FastCGI or some similar model ({W,P}SGI, Rack, etc.).

It irks me a bit because I don't understand why you'd want to do it this way; it seems preferable to have a dedicated HTTP server in pretty much every way I can think of.

Does anyone have any insight there?

<comment><USER12> For Go, you probably don't want to use their net/http server if you will also have it doing SSL/TLS. Go's TLS implementation doesn't support a lot of older cipher suites which could be a problem for some clients. As well, it is not as hardened as OpenSSL and others (such as possibly being vulnerable to timing attacks[0]).

[0] [https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=2445](https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=2445)

<comment><USER13> OTH there was no Heartbleed bug in the SSL implementation of Go's net/http. So much for hardened implementation. Secondly you can use go behind a http proxy, or even in an FCGI etc environment with minimal change to the code.

<comment><USER14> It's to be expected that different implementations will have different bugs; that doesn't mean the Go's is better.

That said, it's an advantage of heterogeneity; you get some security by being a small target in a sea of OpenSSL servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Docker - > Operating System_

This makes no sense. The runtime of Docker _is_ the Operating System. There's no extra layer, as it's being implied.

And there's no difference between Go and the other languages that makes Docker more or less useful. You can have separate Python processes without Docker, just like you'd have separate Go processes.

I like Go, but this article just sets up strawmen to bring down.

<comment><USER15> The question he's addressing isn't what you _can_ do, but what is commonly being done. You don't _need_ RVM, you don't _need_ Docker. Hell, you don't _need_ Rails. But those are the idiomatic layers of the stack, for a non- trivial part of the Ruby development community.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the confusion JVM = Java Virtual Machine, RVM = Ruby Virtual Machine, PVM = Python Virtual Machine. What I was trying to point out the layers of vitalization just to run an application. Docker is yet another layer on top of the operating system (a virtual machine running inside an operating system inside an operating system possible ect).

<comment><USER15> Ah, ok. I can see where you're coming from, but I don't really think of Docker as being an extra layer on top. It's more a way of rearranging the OS layer itself along a certain axis. The cognitive overhead is similar to a virtualisation layer though, so that point stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Have noted this 'opinionated' trend going for quite a while, so this comment isn't about this article in particular, but can someone break down why an opinionated guide to something technical would be preferable to an impartial one? The only thing it seems to imply is that bias adds value in its own right.

<comment><USER17> It's a pre-emptive disclaimer "I know this isn't objective, don't complain about that". And it tells you that the guide isn't going to offer you confusing choices, it's going to tell you one way to do things. For some people that's an advantage.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for your reply lmm. I can see what you mean. However, I do think it has a high risk of building new dogmas without the understanding of when these dogmas should be broken.</comment></comment></comment>


The Deathbed Fallacy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rikardhjort/the-deathbed-fallacy-5e54d9639167 <comment><USER2> As with many things in life, I think the takeaway is that it's all about balance and moderation. The classic "deathbed" list is illustrative of one type of lifestyle "out of balance", but the author makes a very good hypothesis that these themes could very well be correlated with generational differences or circumstance.

> _I've met quite a few people who are very concerned about living an > authentic, carefree life without having a lot of other things figured out > first._

This is a pretty accurate description of how I was in my late teens and most of my twenties. What's interesting is that looking back now, if I think about my "regrets" regarding that period of my life, some are actually polar opposites of the items on the classic Deathbed List:

1) I wish I had worked harder and challenged myself more instead of coasting / resting on my laurels. I was so worried about being one of those people who works too much that I overcompensated and missed out on a lot of opportunities for personal growth.

2) I wish I had relied a little less on my established group of high school & college friends as I got older, and instead was more open to forming new relationships as well. Keeping in touch is important, but clinging to the past and refusing to move forward isn't healthy either.

</comment><comment><USER3> What a stupid article. People should really cut down on trying to turn every single thing (silly ones at times, such as this) into a fallacy and getting a dopamine hit out of it...

</comment><comment><USER4> Hell, I don't even respect tomorrow-me, much less have any good advice to give decades-ago me.

So not limited to deathbed sentiments. Any melancholic thoughts about the past are pretty useless.</comment>


Dave Goldberg Died After Falling from Treadmill - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/05/04/dave-goldberg-died-while-exercising-on-mexico-vacation-source-says/

<comment><USER2> Treadmills are dangerous. Mike Tyson's daughter was strangled to death by a cord attached to one, and now this. This is one reason I prefer an elliptical (it also drastically reduces wear and tear on your body vs. a treadmill and gives you a better workout).

This is very sad regardless of how he died. It just goes to show that you always need to have your affairs in order. They were an extraordinarily wealthy family and will be just fine financially, but most people aren't and need to be prepared at all times. You just never know what will happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish to go out like this. I would rather meet my end in a quick instant while on vacation in Mexico than over 10 years with dementia in a old folks home. He got all the perks of a good life without having to experience the downsides of becoming old and frail.

<comment><USER4> It wasn't necessarily the quickest way to go from the sounds of things. When they found him he was still alive. [http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/obituaries/20150504/reports...](http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/obituaries/20150504/reports- dave-goldberg-husband-of-facebooks-sheryl-sandberg-died-after-hitting-head-on- treadmill)

<comment><USER2> Alive but undoubtedly unconscious and unaware (if he were conscious he would have reached for his phone).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article seems irrelevant in the context of Hacker News. His death was tragic, and the details of his death are morbid and off topic.

<comment><USER6> And yet it made it to the front page. Hacker News wants what Hacker News wants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Such a bummer. The only people who deserve to die like this are the writers of web hijackers and viruses, multiple times.

This guy was someone who promoted time at home to be part of the kids growing up, something most dads miss out on, still.

</comment><comment><USER8> man, what a freak accident... I wonder if there were any cameras lodged that caught it..

<comment><USER9> One would hope there weren't any.</comment></comment>


End-to-End Encryption for Credit Card Payments - <AUTHOR> http://www.braintreepayments.com/devblog/end-to-end-encryption

<comment><USER2> I would like to know what Nate Lawson thinks about this, as he wrote a really long post explaining why (his words¹) "client-side JS crypto is a bad idea"².

¹ [http://rdist.root.org/2011/05/09/encrypted-google-docs- done-...](http://rdist.root.org/2011/05/09/encrypted-google-docs-done-well/)

² [http://rdist.root.org/2010/11/29/final-post-on-javascript- cr...](http://rdist.root.org/2010/11/29/final-post-on-javascript-crypto/)

<comment><AUTHOR> From link 2:

"I have only heard of one application of JS crypto that made sense, but it wasn't from a security perspective. A web firm processes credit card numbers. For cost reasons, they wanted to avoid PCI audits of their webservers, but PCI required any server that handled plaintext credit card numbers to be audited. So, their webservers send a JS crypto app to the browser client to encrypt the credit card number with an RSA public key. The corresponding private key is accessible only to the backend database. So based on the wording of PCI, only the database server requires an audit."

<comment><USER3> For completeness, the next two paragraphs in Lawson's post:

"Of course, this is a ludicrous argument from a security perspective. The webserver is a critical part of the chain of trust in protecting the credit card numbers. There are many subtle ways to trojan RSA encryption code to disclose the plaintext. To detect trojans, the web firm has a client machine that repeatedly downloads and checksums the JS code from each webserver. But an attacker can serve the original JS to that machine while sending trojaned code to other users.

While I agree this is a clever way to avoid PCI audits, it does not increase actual security in any way. It is still subject to the above drawbacks of JS crypto."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does the PCI standard make any tangible differentiation between having unencrypted versus encrypted credit information pass through my system?

The major advantage of the transparent redirect and similar implementations at other providers is that the data doesn't pass through my server at all. To me this always seemed like a bit of a loophole in PCI compliance. My server that serves up the form which, if hacked, could easily be modified to send credit card details to an attacker is out of scope because it doesn't technically, "accept, transmit or receive" as worded in the PCI docs. Does receiving the data in encrypted format still afford me use of the loophole or are the PCI requirements more stringent than when using transparent redirect?

<comment><AUTHOR> The PCI DSS does differentiate between handling encrypted data and handling unencrypted data -- some requirements are only in scope if handling unencrypted data. It's important to note that Transparent Redirect doesn't remove the need for a merchant to become PCI compliant, it only reduces the scope of what's necessary to achieve compliance.

It's true that if your form is hacked it could be modified to send credit card details to an attacker. But that's also true even if you're redirecting the user to a third party page like Paypal to complete the payment. If hacked, somebody could change the Paypal button to redirect to a malicious page.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. Any page in the process served without SSL introduces a vulnerability. None of that is explicitly within the scope of PCI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't quite grok it on this post, but where they describe "end-to-end", how exactly are keys generated and distributed? Are key fingerprints verified out of channel? How are they not susceptible to MITM attacks? Which, admittedly may be difficult, but still possible. How is this any better than sending CC data from browser to server via SSL, which at least has a CA system (as shitty as the whole CA thing is)???

<comment><USER7> From the sounds of it:

You generate (on Braintree's site), a RSA keypair and you use the public key and JS library they provide. You call a JS method on the fields you want to encrypt like credit card number and CVV, and it encrypts it using the public key. When an user submits a form, you send the encrypted values to your server, and then you pass them off to Braintree's API as you normally would.

Braintree then decrypts it on their end using the private key. If you set it up properly, you are never aware of the users credit card number, CVV, etc.

It prevents your servers (if it's setup properly) from ever knowing the credit card details. SSL only prevents somebody from seeing the data as its sent, your server will still know the plaintext details.

It doesn't fix the fact that if your JS or the forms itself are compromised, credit card details can be leaked, but the transparent redirect setup has the same issue anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really could have used this three years ago when I posted this question to Stack Overflow:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/205468/how-to-encrypt- a-v...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/205468/how-to-encrypt-a-value-on- the-client-and-pass-it-through-a-web-server-without-dec)

I don't really need the answer now, but I bet my old boss would be interested in this development...

<comment><USER9> The top answer there outlines exactly what's being done in this post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Never thought of doing public key cryptography in JavaScript. A quick Google brings up this RSA implementation: <http://www.ohdave.com/rsa/>

</comment><comment><USER11> What stops the site owner from tracking keystrokes?

<comment><USER5> What stops the site owner from just stealing your credit card number in the first place?

These schemes are not about protecting against malicious site owners, they are about protecting data that legitimate site owners collect from being intercepted by third parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why has someone not mashed up oAuth with online payments? I think it'd be a fun idea.</comment>


Pulling The Plug on Bad Customers - <AUTHOR> http://adiirockstar.com/2010/02/pulling-the-plug-on-bad-customers/ <comment><USER2> I occasionally run into the (really) bad customers myself. Here's one:

* Doesn't know how to place an order through the website, so I write out a step-by-step tutorial of what to click to do so. It's rather short, as checkout is a one-form process with about 5 fields.

* E-mails me back that it doesn't work and I'm clearly discriminating against him for some reason.

* I reply with apologies and a screencast showing how to place an order.

* E-mails me back that his credit card was declined and I must be doing it on purpose. The mail to me is carbon copied to the White House and to the FBI.

* I e-mail him back that this is completely untrue, and his card was declined because the billing address provided wasn't correct according to his bank.

* He e-mails me back a week later telling me that he is going to "bring suit under Federal child custody interference laws" as my not accepting his order is harming his "ability to provide for his son". This mail is carbon copied to the White House and to Senator John McCain. I decide at this point to ignore the mail entirely.

* He forwards the same mail to me 6 times from multiple e-mail addresses, each time carbon copied to another government agency and random senators. I continue to ignore these mails.

* Two months later he sends a fresh set of e-mails, reiterating that he will have to sue me under some federal acts for failing to help his business, saying that "this is a hate crime" because it is "only hate" that I would not accept his order, and carbon copying the mail to USA TODAY's editor e-mail and some address I don't recognize @whitehouse.gov

<comment><USER3> I love his CC's, I can't imagine people expect this to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have found that the absolute best way to handle this is to make sure the customers are good customers before you acquire them. Here are some tips:

1) Charge for your services. If you don't charge, you get people who undervalue your work and treat you like you are their servants and will whip you every chance they get. Don't work for free.

2) Treat customers with respect. Try to understand why they are upset or angry or not being a good customer. If you empathize, you'll probably find that you have behaved like they are with some other company or service provider. Why were you acting that way? What could have pulled you out of it?

3) Under promise and over deliver. If you don't deliver, they feel cheated, misled, and abused. If you say you will do something, do it. If you don't, you're a liar and people don't like liars. They will treat you bad out of spite. When you over deliver, customers are shocked and amazed and will sing your praises to the world!

4) Take a break. If you are getting abused, simply stop responding to the person for a week or two. Let them contact you again in a nicer tone. When you let them sit on their bad behavior without responding, they usually try another approach.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a freelancer web developer who recently had to cut loose a client of mine. It was fantastically awesome and I recommend it to any one who has a particular client or customer who creates more hassle than the revenue they generate is worth.

I wasn't a total jackass when I did it. I was very polite and suggested they find someone else to meet their needs but I was clear in stressing that I was no longer interested in going forward with them.

There weren't any hard feelings on their end and I got a lot of peace of mind when it was over and done with. I wish I had done it, quite literally, years ago.</comment>


FriendFeedFeed - <AUTHOR> http://friendfeedfeed.com/ <comment><USER2> I swear to god, this actually made me laugh out loud.

:)

</comment><comment><USER3> I still think Zombo is better. It has a brighter future... www.zombo.com

hehe...

</comment><comment><USER4> Ha nice joke and viral marketing trick! I've never heard of many of those services before until now!

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll wait for a few more of these to come out and I'll make friendfeedfeedfeed.com.

</comment><comment><USER6> wow I did this a month ago, cool to see it make it into top 10 of HN...

</comment><comment><USER7> When's the API coming out so we can build FriendFeedCube?

</comment><comment><USER8> I love the pre-beta badge.

</comment><comment><USER9> Repost?</comment>