Ask HN: Best payment processor for marketplace webapp - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone had good success with a payment processor for a marketplace type app? Many users paying many other users, I take a percentage cut.<p>Paypal's Adaptive Payments API will work, but many people hate Paypal so this may discourage some transactions. Kickstarter uses Amazon, which actually looks promising, but I have no experience with it. <comment><USER2> An old acquaintance of mine runs a startup called BancBox (<http://www.bancbox.com/>), which I believe can do this.

I haven't used it personally so I can't vouch for its quality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoa pretty cool. They're designed exactly for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Balanced Payments (<https://balancedpayments.com/>) is pretty awesome! They saved us when PayPal shut us down! They do everything you need.

</comment><comment><USER4> The drop-off rate is going to be much higher for Amazon than Paypal. Amazon payments requires you to have an Amazon account and signin to it to make a payment, with Paypal you can just pay by credit card.

If you're VC funded I'd go direct to a friendly merchant account provider (you'll need to put down a substantial deposit as you're in a high-risk business which is why this is only really an option if you're funded), otherwise I'd just go with Paypal (which is what most smaller marketplaces use).

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you tried using Stripe? (<http://www.stripe.com>)

</comment><comment><USER6> I use 2checkout.com shoping cart, but didn't try the API, you can give it a try

You can also check this blog post

[http://karim-ouda.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-to-accept- payment...](http://karim-ouda.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-to-accept-payments- online-from-your.html)</comment>


Standard Space Habitats - <AUTHOR> https://halcanary.org/vv/2020/07/14/3017/ <comment><USER2> The subtitle of the article is a better title for the HN post.

> A refinement of O'Neill's colonies.

Basically just increasing the robustness of an O'Neill colony by removing the windows and giant mirrors. Also bolted on the power generation and cooling requirements that the original design mostly overlooked. I'm not sure the cooling requirements have been fully considered however, since it involves pumping hot coolant through 32+km of pipes. As described the colony is going to have a hot side and a cold side.

And honestly, the O'Neill cylinder is going to be covered in gold foil. I fully agree that the windows and gigantic mirrors are not a good idea. Electric lights run off of a massive solar array avoid many of the problems of the original design.

<comment><USER3> The back side of solar arrays make for good radiator placements. I dont see any reason why all the solar arrays and radiators need to be on opposite ends, why not have both on both sides?

<comment><USER4> Why bother connecting the solar arrays to the habitat? Just hook them up to microwave transmitters and beam the power to the cylinders. That way you can have the solar arrays anywhere it's convenient, maybe even in position to shade the entire colony so that the heat disposal problem is less of an issue.

<comment><USER5> Fair point but you needn't bother with microwaves when a cable and some good ol' fashion brushes will do. It's just a rotor after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the major observations in Kim Stanley Robinson's _Aurora_ [0] (which is excellent, well-informed, and worth a read) is that "99.9%" self-sufficient isn't going to cut it, at least for a multigenerational interstellar mission.

[0]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(novel)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_\(novel\))

<comment><USER7> Well of course not, but building colonies inside the solar system is much more forgiving. In fact much of the potential benefit lies precisely in trade between Earth and the colonies.

<comment><USER8> Maybe there can be some of the advantages of a system sent along. A multigenerational fleet with multiple ships, capable of trading among them, but also providing a degree of separation and differentiation. You could even try attaching some engines to asteroids and comets full of useful materials to send along side the fleet, ready to be used if the self sufficient systems fail, and for the colony when they finally arrive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Steel is a poor material for radiation protection (because of high energy scattering effects causing secondary high energy particles - but I am no Physicist). Hyrdogen rich (eg water, polyethelene, etc) make better shielding.

See also this paper on a potential location that requires little or no shielding:

[http://space.alglobus.net/papers/Easy.pdf](http://space.alglobus.net/papers/Easy.pdf)

A related paper proposes a faster rotaion (upto 4 rpm) vs. the conservative 2rpm selected in the '70s which allows for smaller (easier, cheaper) colonies to be built sooner.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was hoping for something a bit more innovative or comprehensive, this seems to be just an oneil cylinder with no windows.

<comment><USER11> Right. They justify this by radiation and impacts, but without giving any numbers. Those were certainly considered back in the 70s. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder#Atmosphere_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder#Atmosphere_and_radiation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Addendum: If you like Space art (including a possible rendition of the Kalpana 1 and 2 designs) visit

[https://spacehabs.com/](https://spacehabs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't get why "if [the diameter] is an order of magnitude larger, the structure won't hold together when it spins". The centripetal force is the same, 9.8N/kg, so it's kg / m^2 that matters. Right?

Wikipedia lists other design updates: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder#Design_upda...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder#Design_update_and_derivatives)

<comment><USER13> Imagine cutting a cylinder in half from top to bottom, then taping the halves back together. As you spin it, the tape has to stop the two halves from flying apart. If you make the cylinder bigger and keep the centripetal acceleration the same, the tape has a harder job do because it has heavier things trying to fly apart.

Every strip of the cylinder has to keep the opposing halves from flying apart. For a big enough cylinder, the material will not be strong enough. You can make the cylinder walls thicker, but now you've made the flying-apart halves heavier too.

<comment><USER12> But if you just consider equal size strips, with the larger cylinder just having more of them, then the force on each will be the same... unless you're saying the imaginary tape have to deal with forces from other strips. I don't see why

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I believe habitat with natural light and view of the stars will be much more attractive than without.

The windows could contain sandwiched several meters of clear water for radiation/meteor protection, with self-sealing chemicals/a system to continuously automatically repair leaks. The water will also provide emergency water supply and thermal stability.

<comment><USER15> Another person addressed the window material problem (the tech doesn't exist).

Given that, I think it would be more attractive to have more spacious interiors, namely higher ceilings and wider corridors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Alexis Gilliland explored similar ideas in more depth and with interesting politics alongside, in "Revolution from Rosinante" and two sequels. Recommended. (Available as an e-book.)

</comment><comment><USER17> The usual question would be: how would one build such a structure. And why should someone create the infrastructure to do so in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER18> > The frequency of revolution is about two minutes

period

<comment><USER17> Hmm, yes, I think you are right. Revolutions from standstill every two minutes might be a little uncomfortable in the long run, but certainly would be entertaining for a short while. Much like a washing machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How do you make war between habitats?

<comment><USER20> High speed rocks.

<comment><USER21> Coated in vanta black</comment></comment></comment>


B5500 Emulation Project - <AUTHOR> http://retro-b5500.blogspot.com/ <comment><USER2> This was the mainframe we used in my very first programming class ... With 15 green-screen terminals and 15 card punch machines.</comment>


This technology would spot a secret chip in seconds - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/hardware/this-tech-would-have-spotted-the-secret-chinese-chip-in-seconds <comment><USER2> The overarching theme is why isn't everyone using this tool. A few issues:

1) They might be, and it's being fooled. But...

2) ...they're likely not using it. Consider the following:

> "So why isn't this system in widespread use? After all, much of it has been > available since 2014."

With the compromised servers being purchased in 2015 it's assuming the ubiquitous implementation of the described system a year after "much of it" was available. Big companies don't move that fast to begin with (budgets, politics, entrenchment of current processes, etc.). Also, the article doesn't site anywhere this tech has been proven in the wild. Do you want to make that case to your boss that _your job can be replaced (and maybe theirs)_ with this, probably expensive to purchase and implement, _unproven_ tech? That's even if you've heard or thought of this system coming together in 2014 to prevent an attack that would've infiltrated your network by 2015.

The only defense they give for why it hasn't been used was they were waiting for a huge attack to help justify company's spend. That would help, but FICS would be better off taking on the initial capital costs and charging these big companies on a per server basis to use FICS's system (or spinning of a company to do so, idk how FICS could make this happen).

It's like saying a day after SpaceX's flight around the moon that if your company wants to get to the moon have your company purchase a BFR and send their own people up. Cool. Take a hike.

</comment><comment><USER3> > The system uses optical scans, microscopy, X-ray tomography, and artificial > intelligence to compare a printed circuit board and its chips and components > with the intended design.

Could it detect a change _within_ a chip? If not, then it makes such an attack harder to execute, but not impossible. Especially for a nation state.

<comment><USER4> I would have thought it would actually easier to subvert the supply chain than physically mount a new device on a board.

Simply supply 'alternate' devices for normal manufacture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This would still not pick up malicious surface-mount devices.

Imagine a subverted NOR FLASH device with malicious firmware booting your board-management device. Its still a SPI FLASH with the same (apparent) device id. The contents would just be different.

<comment><USER5> The technology shown here is working at a different level; is looking at the PCB, trace by trace and identifying components and connections, layer by layer and verifying it against the design.

It's purpose is to ensure that designs aren't modified in manufacture.

What you're talking about is a software problem, and should be carried out in addition to this.

The first idea that comes to mind is that I would sign the contents of the flash devices and have them verified once the board layout has been verified.

Essentially, you'd have your board schematic, and then a signature "schematic" of firmware to verify against. Of course, you'd also need a way of signing the schematic/signature list to verify those once they're updated.

<comment><USER6> Yes, in other words technology shown here is useless.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what gives you that impression.

In this case, the technology would have identified this additional component added out-of-spec. Once you've identified that a component that doesn't belong has been added you don't need to bother identifying any software attacks, it's already compromised.

<comment><USER6> What makes you think this component (if it existed) was visually different from component it replaced on the pcb?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> x-rays are useful to identify parts which don't belong in the original design, though it doesnt say anything about these parts. It can be manufacturing errors / design iterations not well documented or any number of things besides a malicious implant. more manual analysis will always be needed. But if you have tons of PCBs to go through it can give a quick overview what chips might be good initial targets.

some people noted that some 'hardware' attacks can't be seen because they use original parts. -> that's a silly statement, as that would make it a firmware attack, not a hardware attack (even though physical access might be needed to flash the chip, it's the firmware which is malicious, not the chip itsefl. i.e. other type of threat / use-case).

i think the problem with x-rays, apart from them being hazardous in themselves, the cost and availibility of equipment is not practical for reverse engineers and researchers apart from some highest tier companies doing this.

A question to NH about this which might be more interesting: do you think you can get similar results using ultrasound? Because ultrasound devices are fairly cheap and can be made at home fairly easily compared to x-ray technology. It's also much less hazardous to the researchers....

<comment><USER6> >some people noted that some 'hardware' attacks can't be seen because they use original parts.

You can have original looking part. Imagine a 8Mbit SOIC SPI NOR flash chip. Looks the part, belongs in its spot, you decap it and it sure does look like a flash Die with its normal Flash controller. Now consider this: [http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2012/07/emulating-usb- de...](http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2012/07/emulating-usb-devices-with- python.html) I cant find it right now, but Afair Travis (or maybe it was hak5 RubberDucky folks) noticed early on that its pretty trivial to detect what is happening on the Host side of the interface - what operating system am I plugged into and at what phase of the operation are we on (bios query, OS loading drivers).

Imagine a Flash chip that is able to tell (power sequencing, timing and order of commands) if its booting a particular controller on the board, or if its being read in a flash programmer. Flash chips have processors running their own firmware nowadays, turtles all the way own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem is that the bad guys also have access to this technology. So they can just tweak their designs until the scanner says it's ok.

</comment><comment><USER9> The thing missing from this analysis is that on data bus lines like SPI, I2c and others there are "passive" components like resistors and capacitors used for signal conditioning and line bias. If one of these components were replaced with a highly integrated IC, it would be possible to mimic the function of the passive component most of the time, but sometimes hijack existing data streams as a MITM.

This can be used to insert alternative boot code, firmware, microcode, or even FPGA structures.

Note that the component would not have to generate its own signal source, because by merely inserting a lower than normal resistance or capacitance it could alter an existing bitstream to reflect the desired payload.

It would require a high degree of integration and power management finesse, but is certainly doable to replace an existing SMT resistor or Capacitor with such a device. .

<comment><USER9> ..... Such a device would not be detectable by xray (micrographic xray maybe?) , ultrasound, visual inspection, circuit analysis, or signal analysis until it was activated by a particular bitstream, possibly as part of a firmware update released by the manufacturer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Slightly offtopic, but most easiest way for detecting tampering with hardware is weighing stuff.

<comment><USER11> Now read [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138699) .

<comment><USER12> I see comments like that every once in a while, and I always come back to something that one of my professors told me a long time ago. If it took you like five minutes of thinking about it to come up with it, it's a safe bet that a) folks who are paid to work on this stuff full-time have already thought about it and b) that someone already figured out how to work around it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > .. would spot ..

the article describe how to spot a supposed spying chip when it happens, but why they single China? Just replace it with Israel and the article would still valid.

</comment><comment><USER14> This article is shameless self-promotion... "to compare a printed circuit board and its chips and components with the intended design..." So every company now has to design its own servers, routers and every other piece of hardware from the scratch to avoid "spy chips" ? Yeah... Sounds like a good idea...

</comment><comment><USER15> That will not help you with sand grain sized plants, if they actually are such

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't but that some machine learning algorithm from 2014 actually works and isn't just snake oil.

</comment><comment><USER17> I find the denials made by the companies involved to be substantive and credible. I'm inclined to believe them. Perhaps Bloomberg's reporters fell for a conspiracy theory this time.

<comment><USER18> If true, the attack described by Bloomberg would mean the US fell victim to one of the most spectacular attack, if not the most spectacular attack, in history and at the hand of the Chinese.

It's equally credible that they would never want to acknowledge that.

<comment><USER19> _" would mean the US fell victim to one of the most spectacular attack, if not the most spectacular attack, in history"_

The general idea doesn't seem new or novel.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an- nsa...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade- factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/)

<comment><USER18> It's not the idea, which is indeed old and used. It's the execution and success (if true).

<comment><USER19> I'm assuming it's been successfully used both by, and against, the US for many years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Or just Secure Boot (on the BMCs).

<comment><USER17> How does this defend against a the type of hardware-based attack discussed in the article?

<comment><USER21> The same way secure-boot provides protection against hardware modification / evil maid type attacks in CPUs today: by verifying the integrity of the code that's about to be booted before the CPU boots it.

It would significantly raise the cost and difficulty of this sort of attack.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It would significantly raise the cost and difficulty of this sort of attack.

In my opinion, modifying the board layout with the additional chip and modifying the production process for the server boards stealthily already has a pretty high cost and difficulty.

<comment><USER21> > already has a pretty high cost and difficulty

That's true, but properly implemented secure boot could serve to increase it by an order of magnitude.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PIC vs. AVR - <AUTHOR> http://www.ladyada.net/library/picvsavr.html <comment><USER2> I've programmed both, though, not a PIC for many years now... PICs are just _weird_.

The AVR is a pretty typical Harvard RISC: 32 registers, memory load/store, direct/indirect jumps, stack pointer pointing at ram, etc. It's still 8/16 bit, so some pairs of 8 bit registers work like 16 bit registers.

The PIC has one accumulator register; ram is a set of (manually selected) register banks. Instructions operate on the accumulator and an operand in the selected bank. The stack is _totally_ _separate_ from other RAM, so it's fixed size (8 maybe?) and can only be used with call/return.

I don't want to be judgmental; there's certainly some strange virtues to PIC, like the lack of any real state to save/restore on ISR entry/exit; but they really just don't fit my mental concept of a CPU.

Exercise for the reader: Given the stack and register bank selection, which one of these has better C compilers?

(Still, if you're learning something new, gamble is right: ARM is the future.)

<comment><USER3> PIC is clearly designed for non-C assembly code, with all global variables. Its ancient.

PIC32 is actually a MIPS core (sorta, kinda, maybe). It actually uses GCC to compile (good luck on compiling your own GCC though). However, there isn't much appeal with CM3 now on the scene.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ARM.

Seriously, Cortex-M3 microcontrollers are _much_ more powerful than any AVR or PIC at the same price, with roughly the same level of complexity as a high-end PIC/AVR.

ARM already dominates high-end embedded systems, and is quickly penetrating the low end. Atmel and Microchip both see the writing on the wall; control of Atmel's ARM line was a major factor in Microchip's failed hostile takeover bid for Atmel several years ago. If you have any professional interest in embedded systems, it may be a better bet to invest time in ARM rather than an 8-bit architecture.

There are a few arguments left in favor of PIC/AVR: ultra low power consumption, pin count, and price for the low-end chips, DIL package availability, and support for hobbyists in the forums. I'm not sure a difference of $1/unit and a few uW/MHz is relevant for hobbyists, and the Arduino is probably a better solution for people who aren't comfortable working with SMD. (Which honestly isn't that hard, anyway...)

<comment><USER5> How do the low-end ARM devices compare to 16bit and 32bit AVR and PIC offerings?

Recently, I have been doing a lot of development for both the (8bit) AT90USB162 and the (16bit) PIC24HJ. The PIC24HJ range of 16bit PIC microcontrollers packs an awesome punch at 40 MIPS, has mostly 1-cycle instructions and two hardware SPI peripherals (which, for me, is important. On the other hand, the AT90USB162 only has one). I have been interested in ARM, though, so am wondering if it would be worth switching before I become to reliant on other microcontrollers.

<comment><USER3> There is no 16bit AVR.

Cortex-M3 runs circles around any 8-bit parts in most settings - single cycle instructions, hardware multiply and divide, 32bit registers, good interrupt processing support. There are even power efficient parts (Energy Micro EFM32, STM32L, etc). The other nice part about CM3 is the family support: Its one compiler toolchain and one debugger toolchain. With CMSIS (a software library standard) its "easy" (if you don't use a specific peripheral in a specific way) to move code across vendors as well.

PIC24 is a good half step, but the proprietary toolchains are a major turn off. PIC32 is at least a MIPS core (with some vague gesturing on Microchip's part for their GCC port - good luck actually building their horrible code dump though), but doesn't appear to be energy-use competitive with CM3 or CM0.

<comment><USER5> Do you have a recommendation for a specific CM based microcontroller? Preferably one that is well stocked on mouser and has USB support.

Also, any tips on getting started? How do I program them? Ideally, I'd get an in circuit programmer, rather than a development/demo board.

<comment><USER6> The LPC1768 is quite popular and you should never have problems with stock. I got started with a $30 development board from NGX (google "1768 blueboard") paired with a $30 USB jtag programmer from the same store. The older LPC2148 was also quite popular for hobbyists, but it's ARM7 not CM3.

Since I was more interested in learning the micro then screwing around with toolchains, I just spent the money and got a personal license for Rowley Crossworks ($150). It took me under an hour to go from software installation to flashing an LED, so I'm pretty happy with that decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No mention of MSP430?

Some of them come in DIL packaging (at least the little ones). The architecture has a GCC port and two free-as-in-small-glasses-of-beer commercial IDEs. The assembly language is bearable. The cheapest development board (with single-stepping debugger support) is $4.30.

<comment><USER8> Have they sorted out the Mac support? I have one and haven't been able to get the toolchain to communicate with my MacPro. and no way am I booting into Linux just to push firmware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "PIC vs. AVR" means two different things depending on your context. The intelligent context is discussing which family best suits somebody new to microcontrollers (which thankfully is what this link is about). The moronic context is entrenched hobbyists arguing about why the family they chose is superior.

Anybody who reads this headline and already understands what the acronyms mean is probably going to assume it's the latter.

</comment><comment><USER9> PIC - because of its simplicity.

On the PIC, I get the feeling of being "master of all I survey." The instruction set and system architecture fit in a magazine-sized booklet.

The AVR, on the other hand, is a ball of goo, quite like the x86.

</comment><comment><USER10> good god, i wrote this nearly -five- years ago

please do not take it seriously at this point, its completely outdated

<comment><USER11> The time stamp from the webpage is "May 17, 2011 20:07"!

But if it is outdated a PIC-AVR-ARM update would be interesting. Personally I used all three, but prefer nowadays PIC because of the wide-ranging PIC24&dsPIC and Microchips great stacks offering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> for me, an architecture with a GCC port is a big selling point (between these two, that's AVR)

</comment><comment><USER13> The thing that got me into PICs was a generous sample program. You could sign up and get sent a few parts at no cost.

<comment><USER14> No cost, plus a $50 programmer. What is the PIC equivalent of the $20 USBtinyISP?

<comment><USER5> I got a PICKit 2 on ebay for about $10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article manages to mention just about every insignificant detail (who cares about the crappy IDEs they ship with?) and almost none of the actual properties of the chip!

You would expect at the very least memory comparisons, clock speeds, and power consumptions. Maybe a mention of timers, ADCs, UARTs, etc.

<comment><USER16> I think it concentrated more on the aspects of how pleasant each is to use. The analysis was light on the technical side because ladyada targets more hobbyists (like myself :D ) and prototype creation rather than people that want to create a product that will be manufactured, reproduced and distributed on a large scale.

Though I haven't used PIC personally though, I have used AVR before, and found it quite pleasant and flexible, though in all fairness I can't compare it to PIC. I will say though that there seems to be more resources and documentation on PIC than AVR (I bough a really good book on embedded devices that was based on PIC, and though the examples were helpful universally, they were targeting the PIC crowd specifically.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know that a lot of people hate Arduinos, but I like the flexibility of prototyping on an Arduino, moving the same code to a raw ATmega328, and then (for teeny projects) maybe port to an ATtiny for cost and space savings.

</comment><comment><USER18> One thing that Lady Ada forgets to mention is that Microchip is working on MPLAB-X. A cross-platform version of their MPLAB IDE. I've used it on both Windows and OS X and it works well.

It runs on Wind, OSX and Linux.

This might be their way to get back into AVR territory. At least when it comes to hobbyists/makers.</comment>


Ask HN: why is computer graphics research important? - <AUTHOR>

Many areas of CS have "practical value": algorithms help us understand asymptotic speed of algorithms; security helps us avoid getting hacked; networks teach us how to deal with distributed, unreliable machines; machine learning helps us deal with noisy, large data sets; ... however, computer graphics research these days seems to be focused mainly on entertainment ... anyone here see what uses will come from it besides computer games / holly wood? <comment><USER2> Entertainment is important.

If that's not up your alley, there's medical imaging, data visualization, novel HCI stuff (eg, Johnny Lee's work at CMU).

CG has practical value - much of what is currently displayed on your screen (windowing systems, anti-aliased font rendering) is a result of CG research.

</comment><comment><USER3> GPU research seems to be increasingly important in the search for faster processing power (in conjunction with CPUs). As we grab better, larger, higher resolution displays, graphics will become more useful for displaying data. Without great graphics to match increasing CPU power, we'd be left with a rather boring computing experience.

</comment><comment><USER4> simulations. medical simulators, flight simulators, etc..

</comment><comment><USER5> MRI stuff, but maybe that's already been done.

</comment><comment><USER6> there's a graphics group at stanford that simulates surgical procedures (scalpel to skin precision, etc.).</comment>


Show HN: libphone – Cross-platform library supports iOS/Android development in C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/huxingyi/libphone <comment><USER2> Google has a library called libphonenumber[1] that does phone number parsing, namely for Android. Just a heads up. It's got ports in a half dozen languages, and the names and platforms are similar enough I mistook this title for a C port at first glance.

[1] [https://github.com/googlei18n/libphonenumber](https://github.com/googlei18n/libphonenumber)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, cosmile, Thank you for addressing this issue, though it's a little bit later to change the repository name, because I also use the "phone" as all the apis prefix. I am not native english speaker, I just think this library is for the mobile phone app development, so I name it as libphone.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> PS. for mobile game developers: I made a RPG game render example[1] last night to verify if is this library enough for supports a MMORPG game development.

[1] [https://github.com/huxingyi/libphone/tree/master/samples/rpg...](https://github.com/huxingyi/libphone/tree/master/samples/rpggame)

</comment><comment><USER3> The description lacks one thing. What it actually does...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for point out this, I can explain more details here: It's easy to write apps in C language to support both android and ios platform if using libphone. Write once, target both. There is a similar project xamarin but it use C# and it is IDE, libphone is just a library though with also some tools for platform resources generating and layout.

<comment><USER3> so this is a GUI library for iOS/Android?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, and not just GUI, there are also other fundamental apis provided like timer, work queue.

<comment><USER3> Have you thought about integrating with [https://github.com/andlabs/libui](https://github.com/andlabs/libui)

edit: What about maybe as an optional backend? That way one could develop on a desktop easier.

<comment><USER3> I would not limit it to DEBUG. Lots of apps have separate layouts for tablets. Tablet views while not ideal, can work as desktop apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you are right, tablet views can work as desktop apps. But if I am not misunderstood, the tablet view and mobile view share the same native ui apis. Maybe there is no need to implement another backend for tablet seperatly in the library?

<comment><USER3> There is no need to implement anything for the tablet. But to make the tablet view work on the desktop you need a desktop backend, which is what libui could be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Understand, that make sense. Maybe there will be a huge work to do, because the mobile ui elements and the desktop ui elements are not matched mostly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to become a successful artist on Mastodon - <AUTHOR> https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/how-to-become-a-successful-artist-on-mastodon/ <comment><USER2> I only recently discovered Mastodon and tried it out. It works surprisingly well - and opens doors to interesting subcultures. I really wish this project well and hope it helps drive the trend to a more decentralized web again.

</comment><comment><USER3> (great article!) I feel like there's a little bit missing: the federated aspect. Depending on what type of art you make, you might find you are more findable (and able to find people in the same field) if you're on another instance. Like drawn art might fare well on mastodon.art, but photography might do better on photog.social—take the time to find the right place for yourself!

</comment><comment><USER4> The new non-Medium blog is _so_ much better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Hugo is awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is my first time hearing of mastodon. I'll have to check it out! I noticed the suggestions there are essentially the same as what people suggest for Etsy.

</comment><comment><USER6> The article is totally broken in Chrome, looks like clickbait

<comment><AUTHOR> I checked and I noticed that the pictures in the embedded toots don't show up on Chrome. Investigating.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bug found and fixed and patched!</comment></comment></comment>


Warp speed travel is theoretically possible, says astrophysicist - chris-at http://www.sciencealert.com/warp-speed-travel-is-theoretically-possible-according-to-top-astrophysicist?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencealert-latestnews+%28ScienceAlert-Latest%29 <comment><USER2> Interestingly a short while back White's lab did notice a statistically relevant effect regarding one of their candidate warping devices. However, they aren't ready to make any conclusions about the effect that they saw - <AUTHOR> far as I understand it's merely a very weak correlation right now. Something interesting, but nobody should get their hopes up.

Either way I seriously recommend some thorough Googling about this subject as that article is unbelievably out of date.

 _I play Elite: Dangerous once in a while and one thing that game really teaches you is that even 'c' is really slow in astronomical terms. You start to realize that for space colonization to become truly viable we'd have to hope for some real analog of "hyperspace," as "warp" simply won't cut it in the long run._

<comment><USER3> Well that is clearly not true. Thanks to relativity, colonization is very possible in a short time span.

<comment><USER2> > relativity

Good point. Let me rephrase that: a long time from the perspective of the people doing the colonization :)

<comment><USER3> If by those you mean people who are actually traveling in the star-ships, then it is a short time. It is only a long time for people staying stationary relative to the travelers.

<comment><USER2> Am I severely misunderstanding something? Doesn't the warp drive move the ship at e.g. 20c according to the ship's frame of reference? Given that, at 20c it would take the inhabitants of the ship 53 days to reach Alpha Centauri (4 light years). Multiply that by 18000 for the other side of the galaxy (72000 light years): 261 years. You most likely couldn't make that in "one hop" so you'd have some crazy multiplier depending on the maximum travel distance of your drive. Even if you didn't want to travel colonize the other size of the galaxy you'd have to search some 400 billion stars for a habitable planet.

That's what I'm saying: once you move past the "local neighborhood" things become quite ridiculous.

<comment><USER3> I was referring to sub c speeds and what happens by using real confirmed physics. I didn't realize you were talking about warp drives in that case.

As far as I understand from popular science, warp drive doesn't actually move the occupants of the vehicle, it moves the space around the ship so in that case there is no time dilation. It takes the same amount of time for people, in and outside, the ship. If your warp drive is limited to 20c then yes it is a problem, but I don't see why would it have to be limited in the first place. Make it go 10^10c and the problem is solved.

<comment><USER2> > I was referring to sub c speeds and what happens by using real confirmed > physics.

That much so much more sense. In addition to the velocity there would also be time spent completely outside of a gravity well. However, the article is really talking about warp.

> Make it go 10^10c and the problem is solved.

Too much energy. From what I understand it's exponential - i.e. more energy would be used getting to Alpha Centauri at 10^10c than at 20c. We don't know _exactly_ how to get to 1c in the first place, but we do know that if we could then e.g. 100c would likely be something that would be out of reach.

Keep in mind that before White optimized the Alcubierre metric, getting to Pluto (AFAIR) with a warp drive would have required the mass of Jupiter. Getting to Alpha Centauri would have required the mass of the observable universe (which is now down to something with "the mass of Voyager 1"). That's the amount of energy we are talking about even at a pitiful 20c.

<comment><USER3> > Too much energy.

Right, you would need those rare, stable, dilithium crystals.

<comment><USER2> > Right, you would need those rare, stable, dilithium crystals.

The spice must flow.

All of this stuff is a massive longshot, whether or not we can do it it's still interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article is badly edited, speaking of both "negative density energy" and "negative energy density", when the latter is what was meant.

Even though, as I understand it, General Relativity doesn't forbid FTL explicitly, it doesn't get you out of the causality problems of FTL. At least, I've never seen an explanation of a "warp" style FTL method that doesn't allow for causality violation. I'm all ears, if someone wants to convince me that warp drives can't violate causality.

<comment><USER3> You assume that warp drive actually moves you trough space, it doesn't. Problem solved.

Here is a practical example: I decide to travel to Alpha Centauri, and I'm there. Time passed for everybody is the same. You cannot cause any problems.

Note that you are not allowed to change reference frames, by doing this. This does sound illogical, since you move to some other location, but if you assume you didn't move, like we did, then it isn't. Actually the space moved, and that might cause some other problems we don't know about.

<comment><USER5> I think the alcubierre drive still violates causality if you go ftl.

Iirc, the ftl violates causality thing isn't from going faster than light, but rather because where you end up is outside of the future light cone of where you started.

It's also, I think, outside of your past light cone, so a single ftl trip in a straight line might not have retrocausality, but because the region outside of both the past and future light comes can be considered to be either before or after the start timeplace, by choosing a different reference frame, if you have two ftl trips, that is enough for causing past events.

I think this doesn't matter what happens during the trips, just the start and end timeplaces.

<comment><USER3> The light cone only matters if you actually move. The accepted idioms from relativity don't apply here.

I think we are just not talking about the same "warp" drive. The version that doesn't violate causality works like this. You are not allowed to accelerate( using normal rockets ) to near c velocity and then warp to a stop to some distant location. This would cause problems. Instead you will end up there with all of your accumulated velocity before the warp. Then you have to come to a stop the same way you accelerated.

In other words, warp will change your location but not your velocity in spacetime.

<comment><USER5> I am aware that the ship does not accelerate in space. No, I don't think we are talking about different warp drives, but either way it doesn't matter, (unless the one you are talking about has weird additional restrictions on things like what directions you can go or you can only use it once and only in a straight line, or something like that).

What I'm saying is the "how you get there" doesn't matter.

If you pick a point in spacetime, the future light cone of that point does not depend on your reference frame, and neither does the past light cone.

And, no, I'm fairly sure that the light cone is still a thing even if you do not accelerate.

So, pick a point X in space time, and a point Y which in some inertial frame of reference is "after" that point, but not inside the future light cone of X, such that your ftl device allows point X to influence point Y.

Then there is some other frame of reference where point X is still not inside point Y's past or future light cones, but now is "after" point Y.

Then, the same ftl device would allow point Y to influence point X, or other points in X's past light cone.

(to simplify, assume that the ftl device does not have a maximum "speed" This implies that it can impact any future point. I'm pretty sure that the same line of reasoning with the two points still applies when ftl device is limited to a "speed" of twice c, but I am not well versed in relativity, so I am treating the "speed" of the ftl device as unlimited. I am putting "speed" in quotes to indicate that it isn't a literal speed, so much as a ratio of (I think) distance in some reference frame compared to time in the reference frame, within which the ftl device can reach.)

Note that I have not at any point in this talked about a path between X and Y, or anything like that.

So, you can't get around this by noting that the ftl device never actually goes faster than c in the space it is in, because none of the things deal with the ftl device moving, just influencing things outside of its light cone.

<comment><USER3> You are clinging to light cones because that is what you know about relativity, but you don't understand it intuitively. I didn't get any new information from you last comment, just what has already been said. Warp and light cones clearly don't work. Does that mean that warp couldn't work at least in theory, no.

Learn more about relativity( it is really interesting ), otherwise you will always be stuck in your frame of mind.

<comment><USER5> Ok, heres another explanation which does not refer to light cones.

Take some ftl causation (i.e. two points in spacetime such that one is a causal influence on the other, and such that the spacetime interval between them is spacelike).

Take the one which has a causal influence on the other to be first. Then, by relativity of simultaneity for things which are separated by a spacelike spacetime interval, there is another frame of reference in which the point which is causally influenced by the other point occurs before the point which causally influences the other point.

That is, A influences B, and B is before A.

Which is retrocausality.

Therefore, because any two points in mostly flat spacetime (so like, no black holes or anything) which have spacelike separation can be taken to be before or after eachother, if one has a causal influence on the other, there is a frame of reference in which that would be retrocausality.

edit:

also, do you mean that I don't intuitively understand relativity, or don't intuitively understand light cones?

I don't understand where you are getting the idea that "warp and light cones clearly don't work". Light cones are still used in general relativity (at least locally). Shifting things based on frame of reference still works in general relativity.

Do you have anything to back up your claim that light cones "don't work" with "warp"?

At the very least a good search term?

edit2:

further, consider this quote by alcubierre: ' Miguel Alcubierre briefly discusses some of these issues in a series of lecture slides posted online,[31] where he writes "beware: in relativity, any method to travel faster than light can in principle be used to travel back in time (a time machine)." '

[31] [http://ccrg.rit.edu/files/FasterThanLight.pdf](http://ccrg.rit.edu/files/FasterThanLight.pdf)

So, you can see, Alcubierre (who, iirc, first showed the negative energy density method of ftl mentioned in the article), also states that it could be used for retrocausality (though there's a caveat based on the "chronology protection conjecture").

So, I think my arguments are fairly well supported.

<comment><USER3> I read the _real_ ( peer reviewed ) paper, and it contradicts your ideas.

Your final conclusion is a strawman argument. Those quotes are referring to normal travel through space.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Live Search cashback: Big splash or little wave? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/139407.asp?from=blog_last3 <comment><USER2> "It could sort of tarnish the Live Search brand," Rosoff said. "But there's really nothing there to tarnish."</comment>


Lessons Operating a Serverless-Like Platform at Netflix, Part 2 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@NetflixTechBlog/developer-experience-lessons-operating-a-serverless-like-platform-at-netflix-part-ii-63a376c28228 <comment><USER2> "These fine grained units also meant that the composition of the final application was much more distributed. ... As long as business and client metrics remained unaffected, per unit health was ignored."

This was my big takeaway. I think this is the trajectory for monitoring in general as services become increasingly more distributed.

<comment><USER3> This isn't so much a unique feature of serverless though, any self-healing cluster based system is better monitored this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have hard time understanding "Serverless" part... It sounds cool, but there are bunch of servers there they are using.

As far as I can manage to understand that name only has to do with pricing rather then actual servers, but then why is it not called something like "cheap" or "pay as you use"?

Maybe I am missing the point here, but this is just a buzzword? (nano-services being the other one, much like micro-services, do we have pico-ones?)

<comment><USER5> The best way to look at "serverless" is that it's a deployment strategy. Instead of deploying a service you are deploying functions or files of code versus a fully functioning service.

<comment><USER4> But you spawning a bunch of worker nodes on demand to execute that code?

<comment><USER6> The concept of serverless, as I understand it, is that the application developer doesn't need to manage or think about the servers their applications run on. It's not that no one is managing the servers -- it's that the application developer doesn't need to. The developer is building on top of an interface that encapsulates those details.

With typical cloud hosting, I need to think about and manage a fleet of hosts from the kernel and operating system on up. I need to think about the hardware and choose a machine type, with a configuration of CPUs, RAM, and disk. I need to choose an OS, and the machine is my responsibility from the init system on upwards, including all of its daemons for SSH, NTP, etc. I need to think about how I'll distribute and install my software onto the machines, and how many machines I need. I need to think about how I'll handle machine failures and replacement.

With serverless, the interface to the developer is: specify what application to run, and it runs. I don't have to manage the execution environment that runs the application.

<comment><USER7> I'm trying to understand. This sounds kind of opposite to a description given to me for dev-ops. Is that accurate enough for a layman?

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't consider serverless to be the opposite of DevOps. I'd actually consider those concepts to be largely orthogonal.

Serverless and classic server environments are different kinds of system to manage. Classic operations vs. DevOps is about how you manage your systems, and who has responsibility for them.

In classic operations, software development and operations are separate teams with different responsibilities. DevOps combines these two functions into a single team (hence DevOps).

Serverless applications are still a system that needs to be managed; it's just less responsibility and effort than the traditional model. Consider: if newly released code contains a defect that's impacting the larger system, who has responsibility for detecting the problem and rolling it back? This concern exists with both server and serverless platforms, and DevOps vs. classic operations would have different answers.

<comment><USER7> Excellent, thanks. That sums it up wonderfully.

I'm retired and we had separate teams with a liaison between the two, pretty much since our inception. A part of me thinks it's a good idea, but I'd worry about depth of knowledge in both disciplines, but I digress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems like the extreme version of this would be a simple annotation in client code to run it on the server, like the old <script runat...> in ASP, e.g. Java pseudo code

@RunAt(Platform.SERVER) public Observable<List<Customer>> findCustomersByName(String name) { return // code to query DB and return a list of customers over the wire }

// on client public void searchByCustomer(String name) { // findCustomersByName() and bind stream to UI }

The idea being that the RPC is automatic here. The client code makes an async call, constructs an observable around deserialized result. The server code is pulled out by and spun up as a cloud function on demand. Of course this only makes sense if the code needs to run on the server (e.g. the results are big and need to run a lot of code, or need to run code that can't be trusted on the client).

<comment><USER9> > _like the old <script runat...> in ASP_

Good memories! I remember how neat I found that as a script-kid back in the pre-.NET, VBScript-based ASP 3.0 days some 17 years ago. (MS Personal Web Server for the Win! The QBasic of the early web age.) But there wasn't any code-sharing and it was always clearly server-code, not client-code. Let alone the fact that only IE could run VBScript on the client..

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would be curious to see more detail about their warmup handler practices. Did they tune the JVM for it or is there some way to deterministically invoke the right JIT'ing.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure what Netflix is doing, but Alibaba has a neat JWarmup feature[0] in their AJDK that warms up the JVM and JITs based on recorded profiling data.

0: [https://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/ec- public/materia...](https://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/ec- public/materials/2017-02-14/Java_at_Alibaba.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Very neat, thanks. I didn't know they ran a custom jvm. About to go down a rabbit hole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If anyone is interested in learning more about serverless, AWS lambda, etc. There's a webinar this Thursday: [https://read.iopipe.com/announcing-the- things-to-know-about-...](https://read.iopipe.com/announcing-the-things-to- know-about-lambda-webinar-eb8a42266301)</comment>


Waterstones to deliver by owl? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agpB5FVMkOg

<comment><USER2> Private video</comment>


GCP CloudSQL Now Supports PostgreSQL 11.1 (Beta) - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/postgres/db-versions <comment><USER2> CloudSQL overall is a great product, but not having a public roadmap or communicating at all with their customers is pretty rotten and you really can't trust them because of that. I would recommend anyone considering putting things on CloudSQL stay vigilant - this may be the last update for 3yrs (like the last release) so don't get too attached.

We tried for months to get an answer out of somebody at Google about this and could not get a solid response - no clue if they were working on it at all, if the product had anyone working on it, or if it was even going to stay around. This caused us (and I'm sure many others, based on the huge threads on their bug tracker) to move off of CloudSQL for greener pastures. These "surprise" Apple-style announcements don't make anything better for the people who actually have to plan their infrastructure out.</comment>


Rules to Keep Your Skin in Wall Street Massacre - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601010&sid=aH545r_muZkU&refer=news

<comment><USER2> Interestingly shameless.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. I have to say I was disappointed by the article though.

This wasn't "how to keep your shirt" - this was "how to keep your shirt if you have the resources to start your own fund. oh, and you'll basically be screwing your investors- so just don't tell them."

I would really like to see some _useful_ investment advice. For the time being I've dumped all my various investments into a fixed return fund (3.3%). But there's got to be _something_ else I can do...

<comment><AUTHOR> _This wasn't "how to keep your shirt" - this was "how to keep your shirt if you have the resources to start your own fund. oh, and you'll basically be screwing your investors- so just don't tell them."_

Lewis writes in a tongue-and-cheek style, but he's so deadpan, people think he's being serious.

Compare this article with "This is what happens when you lend money to poor people" ([http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a5lh...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a5lhZkEauCu8&refer=home)) , and the Hacker News reaction (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50853>).

<comment><USER3> True- so I'm not personally insulted or anything ;)

It's just somewhat... amazing? I guess would be the word. Amazing (although, truthfully, not that shocking) that there really are many wall-street types that would behave this way.

There's a grain of truth even in dedpan/satire/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This could have just as easily been titled "Machiavelli for Money Managers."

</comment><comment><USER5> Michael Lewis is great. I love reading his columns. Thanks for posting this.</comment>


Attacking discrimination with smarter machine learning - <AUTHOR> http://research.google.com/bigpicture/attacking-discrimination-in-ml/ <comment><USER2> Well. At the end of the day, the companies will pick thresholds and rates to maximize their profits, based upon the data that they have available. They don't know every detail of our personal lives -- which would also be kind of unsettling -- so they have to resort to a simplified picture. Simplifications are always prejudiced at the individual level but if the prejudice is reflected in the numbers, it's balanced. It may not feel perfectly just but at least it's more just than an imbalanced prejudice.

A real life example: In many (all?) countries, it's common to pay more for your car insurance if you are young, if you are male, or if you recently acquired your driver's license. One might frame this as a prejudice towards young, male drivers as being reckless. But statistically they are just that, so the prejudice is balanced (within a reasonable tolerance). It's unfair to the careful young, male driver, but well, life is not always fair.

<comment><USER3> The difference with machine learning is that the model isn't designed by humans, through an actuarial process we can keep our brains wrapped around. It's a black box. We are OK attributing "crash risk" to young male drivers, because we can observe both that they are as a cohort statistically likely to crash and also understand why that would be the case. On the other hand, we're not comfortable with the idea that a computer program might spot some irrelevant correlation that determines that Armenians shouldn't get car loans --- and we're _especially_ not comfortable with the idea that we might learn that this has happened only after years of unintended discrimination, because there is no straightforward way to interrogate the model for every possible bogus correlation it may have snagged on.

That's the computer science problem being worked on here.

<comment><USER4> Please don't say "we".

Not everyone shares your politics.

I'm perfectly happy with algorithms detecting that certain people are more likely to be safe drivers than average, and giving them lower rates, and concentrating premiums on the groups more likely to be in accidents, even if I don't understand why Armenians (in your example) get in more crashes.

<comment><USER5> I've run into many people who share this sentiment, and it always surprises me. I've never once met a person who was cheerful about experiencing algorithm-driven prevenge. I think it's very easy to sit back and say "I think we should let this happen!" if they've never knowingly experienced loss based on this phenomenon.

A great example is how very resentful many young white men of college age are that universities are requiring them to take sensitivity courses designed to reduce the instance of campus rape, but strictly speaking men of that age are the overwhelming majority of bad actors in that environment. Statistically and logistically speaking, it's smarter and cheaper to just require all men of college age to take courses reminding them that rape is not okay rather than dealing with the moral, legal and healthcare costs of the alternative.

In some cases, our relatively primitive algorithms pick up on correlations that should not be acted on because we're actively working to correct them. For example, it would be inappropriate to pre-reject job applications based on skin color if in a certain culture, it's less likely for that person to have a college degree.

Even if that insight is correct, it's usually part of something that society hopes to correct or that applicants should be given the benefit of the doubt about, otherwise very serious negative responses will emerge.

Acting on existing categories may reinforce. It may not. For now, it's a case- by-case basis we'll have to act on. Maybe one day, modeling techniques and data sources will become sophisticated and robust enough to make every decision for us. That day is not today.

<comment><USER4> > . I think it's very easy to sit back and say "I think we should let this > happen!" if they've never knowingly experienced loss based on this > phenomenon.

I'm sure that I've experienced increased costs based on this.

The issue is that I don't consider that the morality of forcing my will on other people depends at all on whether their current behavior is advantageous or disadvantageous to me.

<comment><USER5> > The issue is that I don't consider that the morality of forcing my will on > other people depends at all on whether their current behavior is > advantageous or disadvantageous to me.

Why on earth would I believe anyone who says this? I don't think humans are capable of such abstractness. It's not a matter of wanting to, biology itself is at odds with this mindset.

But also, there are many markets which are _not_ effectively free markets. Insurance is a good one, and health service is an especially good one. In these cases, it's very dangerous to start agreeing that insurance agencies can start to pay "pass the puck" with human life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >[...] concept called equal opportunity. Here, the constraint is that of the people who can pay back a loan, the same fraction in each group should actually be granted a loan.

This does not seem fair to me, because if this is applied then your race (group) would determine your credit score threshold which feels discriminatory to me.

I feel that, by definition, it is not discriminatory only if none of your attributes that you could be discriminated against (gender, race, ...) are taken into account at all.

Maybe the concept of 'equal opportunity' is just some compromise between discrimination and making less informed decisions.

<comment><USER7> I think it's useful to figure out _why_ there are discrepancies between two groups.

For example, let's take blacks in the US. The data tells you that a black person is more likely to be a criminal than a white person. There are two possible reasons for this: (1) blacks are more prone to crime, or (2) blacks are more likely to live in circumstances that make them criminals. With access to only anecdotal data, I strongly believe that (2) is true, and that if you took into account enough circumstances (e.g. single parent, school district, income level, parents' wealth) you'd be able to remove race from your model and _still_ arrive to the "equal opportunity" result. That way, you wouldn't discriminate based on race, but you would still help the people most needy of help (poor, uneducated, etc.). I think the same applies to colege applications and sex wage gap, which is why I strongly oppose any kind of affirmative action.

Life expentancy sex gap might be a different case. IIRC, men die earlier because of some behavioural/social tendencies (working dangerous jobs, supressing emotions, risky behaviour (speeding, smoking)), so maybe there are some non-discriminatory (or at least less-discriminatory) ways of determining life expectancy (e.g. testosterone level, job description, ...). However, there are also biological differences that seem very strongly linked to the quality of being male (i.e. the Y chromosome). E.g. prostate cancer is less lethal than breast cancer, and women are more likely to get MS than men. These particular examples suggest that men should live longer, but I'm guessing there might be other gender-specific ilnesses that might reduce their (our) expected lifespan. If that's the case, I don't think it's too discriminatory to have different insurance fees for different sexes.

In all such scenarios, however, there could still be broader societal goals that would override specific instances of (non-)discrimination. For exapmle, AFAIK women's health is more expensive (because of pregnancy), but having more children benefits everyone in the society (in the West), so it makes sense to "discriminate" against men by letting women pay less for their health insurance.

<comment><USER8> > The data tells you that a black person is more likely to be a criminal than > a white person. There are two possible reasons for this:

I'd like to add a third possible reason for your consideration. Since "criminality" i.e. guilt of committing a crime is determined after a process engaging the law enforcement and justice systems, we have to examine whether there are inherent biases in those systems that result in skewed statistics. For instance, do police officers selectively target blacks for monitoring and investigation? Are blacks discriminated against in the courtroom as a result of procedure or human nature?

<comment><USER9> This is studiable and has been studied. A study regarding police killings, for example:

 _Do White Police Officers Unfairly Target Black Suspects?_

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2870189&...](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2870189&download=yes)

 _Using a unique data set we link the race of police officers who kill suspects with the race of those who are killed across the United States. We have data on a total of 2,699 fatal police killings for the years 2013 to 2015. This is 1,333 more killings by police than is provided by the FBI data on justifiable police homicides. When either the violent crime rate or the demographics of a city are accounted for, we find that white police officers are not significantly more likely to kill a black suspect. For the estimates where we know the race of the officer who killed the suspect, the ratio of the rate that blacks are killed by black versus white officers is large — ranging from 3 to 5 times larger. However, because the media may under report the officer's race when black offic-ers are involved, other results that account for the fact that a disproportionate number of the un-known race officers may be more reliable. They indicate no statistically significant difference be- tween killings of black suspects by black and white officers. Our panel data analysis that looks at killings at the police department level confirms this. These findings are inconsistent with taste-based racial discrimination against blacks by white police officers. Our estimates examining the killings of white and Hispanic suspects found no differences with respect to the races of police officers. If the police are engaged in discrimination, such discriminatory behavior should also be more difficult when body or other cameras are recording their actions. We find no evidence that body cameras affect either the number of police killings or the racial composition of those killings._

<comment><USER10> > This is studiable and has been studied

True, but there has been more than one paper written on the subject, which don't all agree with the one you linked vis over-representation for crimes.

 _The black /white marijuana arrest gap, in nine charts_

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the-b...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the- blackwhite-marijuana-arrest-gap-in-nine-charts/)

 _As you 're probably aware, black Americans are arrested for marijuana possession far more frequently than whites. You may also know that there's not much evidence that black people consume marijuana with greater regularity than whites do.

...And this is a uniform phenomenon. It's not that some states treat the races equally and others treat them really unequally. Only in Hawaii are the rates even close to equal, and that's biased by the fact that blacks make up only 1.6 percent of the population. In the state with the second-lowest disparity, Alaska, blacks are 1.6 times more likely to be arrested. In the state with the biggest, Iowa, blacks are 8.34 times more likely to be arrested. D.C. has the second biggest; in the District, blacks are 8.05 times more likely to be arrested._

<comment><USER11> Do the findings control for which group uses more in public? My experience living in Chicago and Waterloo, Iowa (the "blackest" city in Iowa--[http://www.iowadatacenter.org/Publications/aaprofile2016.pdf](http://www.iowadatacenter.org/Publications/aaprofile2016.pdf)) suggests that this disparity alone could explain the disparity in arrest rates. It's quite possible that there's a cultural difference in drug abuse that could skew the results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For more information about "ethics and algorithms", read: "Weapons of Math Destruction" [1] or at least listen to the EconTalk podcast between the author and host Russ Roberts [2]

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases- In...](https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases- Inequality/dp/0553418815)

[2] [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/10/cathy_oneil_on_1.ht...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/10/cathy_oneil_on_1.html)

<comment><USER13> Previous discussion on the podcast episode: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12642432](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12642432)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Restricting to equal opportunity thresholds transfers the "burden of > uncertainty" away from these groups and onto the creators of the scoring > system. Doing so provides an incentive to invest in better classifiers.

Personally, I find this as the key outcome here. The accountability is on the people/systems who make the decision and that leads to an appropriate incentive. Win-win as a start.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've played around with this concept, trying to replicate some previous work [1].

It's a sensitive topic, because sometimes we're actually tampering with the data, trying to eliminate known human or selection biases.

The first defence against discrimination is, in my honest oppinion, for everyone working with data to be aware of these problems. To know that, besides ROC, precisions and recalls, we should measure the impacts of the models in sensitive demographics (gender, race, nationality, sexuality).

And one of the things that I learned (in [1]) is that, even if you're carfull with the features you use, you might still have a negative effect.

[1] [https://github.com/sergioisidoro/aequalis](https://github.com/sergioisidoro/aequalis)

<comment><USER14> > And one of the things that I learned (in [1]) is that, even if you're > carfull with the features you use, you might still have a negative effect.

One needs to understand how these features interplay with each other. For example, you may not directly use a protected class feature (race) to make your prediction but you might end up using a secondary or tertiary variable (like location) to end up learning a protected class feature due to statistical correlations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What strikes me as interesting in this example is that it seems to assume the classifier is run once and that its decisions have no effect on future decisions.

I would imagine that if we are separating people into groups based on demographic or social factors to make decisions, then those decisions may have an impact on that entire group. (In this example, maybe granting more loans to the blue group alters the group characteristics and leads to higher profit in the long term despite higher immediate risks).

Is there an area of ML research that considers this kind of concept?

<comment><USER17> I don't think there is though it may fall under ethical considerations of AI or economics of AI. Would be hard to do a study since AI has really only been around for less than 50 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> But how can we find out if a company uses ML in a non-discriminating way? If we cannot see it, and check it, then there is no incentive for companies to use it.

My guess is that at most companies spending time on making an algorithm non- discriminating will be viewed as a waste of time and money.

<comment><USER19> I work for a big bank... As long as people freak out when banks are found to be discriminating they will do their best to _not_ discriminate.

Banks are built on trustworthiness. Having your bank's name in the headlines for discriminatory practices can have a _severe_ negative impact on trustworthiness. They have a whole teams of people devoted to this topic and every year at most banks every employee has to learn about, "reputational risk."

Having worked at big banks for over a decade now I am 90% certain that discrimination by banks at this point is primarily due to carelessness.

<comment><USER3> That is a story that banks like to believe about themselves, but it's worth considering that emergent discrimination (and the broader bucket of emergent malfeasance) is a property of all complex systems, not just machine learning. So, for instance, Wells Fargo needed to do more than just hope that its trustworthiness would survive its incentive systems.

<comment><USER19> Not taking steps to prevent emergent discrimination or malfeasance _is_ careless. Do you think the board of directors wants to find out that the CEO intentionally ignored calls to the ethics hotline? That he didn't take steps to ensure whistleblowers weren't punished?

The consequences of these things are _very_ bad for stock prices! This is doubly true for banks which take reputational risk far more seriously than most businesses.

<comment><USER20> Wells Fargo stock appears to be back up to where it was a few months ago

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b Nice to see that the debate has reached the ears of the main people working on this field.

What is important to note here is that we need to tweak the mathematical model to the culture we want to achieve. In other words, the objective function of the optimization problem needs not only match the current state of the world, and provide an hindsight in one's own economic interests, it also needs to take into account the culture that we want to reflect, and influence. Otherwise, these statistics are just a giant status quo amplifier.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure that's clear. There are actually two ways to achieve the outcome we want; tweaking the model or _changing the inputs_.

What I mean, say the model identifies that a certain group has a greater risk due to systemic problems. If you change something about the group, you can change the calculated risk without changing the model. And this may very well be a better way to achieve the outcome you want.

Specifically, by preventing insurance companies from using a more accurate mode, what you're demanding is that the random people who happen to have taken the same insurance packages but are not part of the group should make an extra contribution to fix these systemic problems.

But why them? Shouldn't we all contribute instead, hopefully using a fair system for assessing how much should each pay?

Instead of tweaking the model, you can change the inputs by providing a state- backed guarantee to the underprivileged groups. Isn't it more fair overall?

<comment> d--b No I don't think I expressed myself clearly. The problem is that machine learning learns from biased data. The input data is the total US population, which has wealthier groups than others. Because of the way we train machine learning (using all the data we have), the bias that is in the original data gets transfered to the logic.

Specifically, a machine learning will produce different numbers for 2 individuals with the exact same characteristics except the race. And that is the problem that needs to be addressed.

Let's put it in another context. Let's say I'm a white athlete, and I'm very good at running the 100m race. Actually I run just as fast as a black person who is my main rival. Now if someone has to select one of us to go to the Olympics, they should toss a coin to decide who goes. If you use a ML algorithm, it would absolutely send the black person, because no white people has won a 100m race in the last 20 olympics. That's the kind of bias ML does and that needs to be addressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Presumably it means unlawful or unethical discrimination, since classification without discrimination doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER3> It's referring to the much-talked-about effect of emergent discrimination, where the model fitting process has the effect of amplifying the status quo, despite the fact that the status quo is informed in large part by structural injustices. For (oversimplified) instance: poor black people represent a cohort of loan applicants likely to default, and the model fitting process may go a step worse and attribute "default risk" to all black people.

The key thing to understand is that we're talking about discrimination that is usually unintended and unexpected by the designers of these systems.

<comment><USER4> > despite the fact that the status quo is informed in large part by structural > injustices.

This is presented as if it's an unambiguous fact, when it's largely a political stance.

<comment><USER22> It's an unambiguous fact that the status quo is shaped heavily be many generations of _de jure_ discrimination including chattel slavery and continting structural inequalities in political power that still exist that were designed to protect those other unequal institutions.

It's a subjective political view that any or all of those things are injustices, of course, since justice is a subjective thing.

<comment><USER3> This happens to be something I believe strongly, but the comment you're responding to doesn't make sense even if you strongly disagree with that, as it supposes we can snapshot American society as it is in 2016 and synthesize from it reliably just and sensible decisions. Nobody believes this, no matter what their politics (unless there's a "status-quo-ism" I'm unaware of).

The problem (or at least, one of the more important problems) being addressed in this work is the unintended amplification of the status quo --- the implicit notion that if something is a certain way now, it is best that it always be that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If membership in a discrimination-protected category is not completely binary, equal-opportunity policies incentivize people who could identify with multiple categories to choose the one with the lowest discrimination -adjusted threshold.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it possible to make the equal opportunity and the max profit thresholds the same? maybe with a special tax system (the closer your threshold is to the "equal opportunity" the less tax you pay)? edit: i forgot its illegal to discriminate

</comment><comment><USER25> sorry, just checking - young _black_ men are statisically less likely to rape than equivalent white (young men)

That is surprising. And given this discussion about only wanting stats that have a valid explanation as well as fitting the facts, is interesting.

<comment><USER26> We would ask that you please don't introduce this into the discussion out of nowhere, it's just off-topic. See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13007847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13007847).

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13006361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13006361).

<comment><USER25> I did not introduce it out of nowhere it was a reference to the parent comment, which did seem relevant to the thread

It is a sensitive subject I suspect

And I cannot find the original parent comment in the discussion and I look like a total dick with my comment coming out of nowhere.

I will try and understand what moved where and get back to you

Aha:

"""A great example is how very resentful many young white men of college age are that universities are requiring them to take sensitivity courses designed to reduce the instance of campus rape, but strictly speaking men of that age are the overwhelming majority of bad actors in that environment. Statist"""

It is only my memory but I am fairly sure that the above comment said "strictly speaking young white men ..." which what prompted my comment. Maybe I transposed the white in the first part of the paragraph to the final part. Not sure. Please do check, let me know if I was being a fool or not.

Darn I need to md5 hash parent comments I reply to now :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree that this should be a possibility, while I think the odds that millions of law enforcement officers and criminal justice faculty would spontaneously conspire against a particular race, I also think it's more likely than some genetic predisposition toward crime (i.e., the first option).

<comment><USER27> Now, this is his first offence, but a young man is found high on PCB walking down the street hitting cars with a baseball bat. It takes five cops and a significant struggle to arrest him.

Having read that, what would you assume is race and economic background is?

After criminal proceedings he was sentenced to community service.

Now, what would you assume is race and economic background is?

PS: Bias is insidious and really hard to control for.

<comment><USER28> I'd assume he's a poor white man, from the very beginning.

White, because most people in the US are white.

<comment><USER27> Interesting you said poor, at the time he had over 6 million in a trust fund and stood to inherent vastly more. Some people change their minds because of the community service vs. prison but some don't.

PS: PCP has a reputation as a rural poor white persons drug. I wonder if you would have had a different impression if I started by saying he got community service.

<comment><USER28> Look, if we're talking about assumptions, we're talking about probability. I have no idea who you're talking about. I'll happen upon some statistics once in a while, but otherwise will avoid making assumptions because I simply _don 't know._ You asked me for what I'd say was most statistically probable, you got it.

I assume you mean "PCP" and not what circuit boards are printed on, yeah. You're right, I've never heard of a rich person taking PCP (cocaine, fancy liquor, etc. for them, right?) although I'm absolutely unsure of how PCP use breaks down racially. (If you have any source for those statistics, you've piqued my interest in them and I'd love a link)

Again, my guess of "white" was based on the fact that most people are white, and thus most cases of violence (without further stratification) are probably by whites. And what, do African-Americans not get community service? That probably wouldn't have changed my mind, and actually sounds a little bit racist.

<comment><USER27> No, people assume poor people are less likely to get community service after assaulting police officers.

Further, you pulled poor from thin air so you did make an assumption without evidence.

<comment><USER28> Poor people are more likely to commit street crime.

> Findings on social class differences in crime are less clear than they are > for gender or age differences. Arrests statistics and much research indicate > that poor people are much more likely than wealthier people to commit street > crime.

> [...] most criminologists would probably agree that social class differences > in criminal offending are "unmistakable" (Harris & Shaw, 2000, p. 138).

[http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/3064?e=...](http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/3064?e=barkansoc_1.0-ch08_s03)

And again, as you admitted, PCP has the connotation of being used by poor people. I can't find stats on it right now, having just run out of time, but you even admitted it directly.

I didn't pull it out of thin air.

<comment><USER27> As to connotation's, that's faulty reasoning. The only correct response to any of my questions was, _not enough information._ Yet, you where more than happy to try and both pick a response and then justify it. Even when I directly said _you were wrong._

Now, the same identical reasoning happens all over the place in the criminal justice system. Making the link between crime statistics and crimes almost meaningless. Arrest statistics are just that arrest statistics and they don't tell you about who was actually committing crimes.

PS: I suspect you feel very confidante about his race, except I never confirmed or denied your assumption.

Edit: TLDR; Making a judgement with limited evidence is a really bad habit. People soon forget they chose something because it was slightly better odds and reinforce the judgement so something that may have been even odds to start with often feels much more likely over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is how it should be: "Max Profit. The most profitable, since there are no constraints. But the two groups have different thresholds, meaning they are held to different standards."

Here's the big fallacy: "the two groups have different thresholds, meaning they are held to different standards." _They are not held to different standards because they 're different groups, but because of other reasons that indicate different loan default rates._ So you cannot call this "discrimination". This is how things should be.

<comment><USER29> Any SJW care to explain why I'm wrong instead of downvoting? thanks! this is a lot of fun :D

<comment><USER30> Since you've ignored our repeated requests to stop breaking the HN guidelines, we've banned your account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email firstname.lastname@example.com. We're happy to unban people if they give us reason to believe they'll only post civil, substantive comments in the future.</comment></comment></comment>


Zerodium has too many iOS RCE's, no longer accepting submissions - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/zerodium/status/1260541578747064326 <comment><USER2> I'm guessing this links to one because my Twitter crashes when I open this on iOS.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone tell me what Zerodium is? White hat I assume.

<comment><USER4> It's a company that buys zero day and even publishes how much they are willing to pay for them on their website (software security exploits that have not been released yet)</comment></comment>


Making a picture website from Picurls.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/making-of-picurls-popurls-for-pictures-part-two/ PHP + Smarty + SQLite, including source code <comment><USER2> Thanks for submitting my article!

It describes how I created picurls.com from scratch and I released the full source code of picurls.com! (Perl and PHP)

</comment><comment><USER3> heh ... I posted in an share-your-ideas last week about making a site that agragates the agregation sites and it seems that's just what picurls.com is all about. Taking the pictures from other sites like digg, readdit, del.icio.us and puting it all toghether. I think this can be done not only for pictures but for other things like videos, news, other-niches-categories.</comment>


Deep Shot: Google, MIT Sync PCs and Smartphones with Snap of Camera [w/ video] - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/06/17/deep-shot-google-mit-sync-pcs-and-smartphones-with-snap-of-camera-video/

<comment><USER2> Amazing. This would be so useful in the morning - read stuff on your computer, take it on your phone on the bus/subway to continue reading, and then throw it up on your screen at work. They should call it "torch" or something like that - feels like you're passing the olympic flame between devices.

</comment><comment><USER3> i am too lazy to hold up my phone to monitor several times a day.Hold up, open camera app, take photo, wait for process, get results. IMHO, this is right problem with wrong solution. We need an different interface. May be like the Apple's Airdrop and somekind of easy interface to push data from screen.

Lets not forget the argument that Apple made with not doing touchscreen on laptops and pc's etc.

<comment><USER4> The chrome2phone plugin works quite nicely for these cases

<comment><USER5> jw - is there a iPad/iPhone equivalent for chrome2phone?

<comment><USER6> Handoff -> <http://www.handoffapp.com/>

Works well. I'm not sure how many of the other solutions do this as well, but it treats maps, websites, and phone numbers (and maybe more?) differently, launching the appropriate apps in response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The method of sending data _back_ to the computer shown in the video is almost more impressive.

I've often found that it's easier to take a photo of event information on a computer screen rather than try to enter the information in my phone some other way--which always struck me as "wrong". The method demonstrated seems like a useful way of extending that action.

Another article on the same work: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/06/deep-shot- uses-c...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/06/deep-shot-uses-camera- to-move-application-states-between-pc-phone.ars) (via <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2665639>)

</comment><comment><USER8> Just a heads-up for folks who can't/don't want to watch a video right now:

This is a link to a blog post with a video in it, not a direct link to a video. (I was mislead by the [video] tag; it's from the original blog post.)

<comment><USER9> OP or admin: Please change the link desc; i purposely don't click on links with [video] when I don't want to accidentially load an auto-play video (or just don't feel like watching video) but this was a good read. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article seems to imply that you need a desktop app installed to extract fully-qualified URLs from the open application. I wonder why a better alternative wouldn't be to embed an encoded URL as part of the webpage itself, have the phone extract the URL from the image? Essentially a steganography- meets-QR code approach.

</comment><comment><USER11> That makes my experiments with QR codes look a bit feeble!</comment>


Dark Clouds Over the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/opinion/dark-clouds-over-the-internet.html?ribbon-ad-idx=12&rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article <comment><USER2> Does anyone else think this is all just a little too contrived? I mean governments don't require us to all have cameras installed in our houses just in case it might be useful to solve a crime. So why do they think they have a right to spy our on-line "homes"? Obviously, being able to spy one everyone everywhere all the time is going to make solving crimes easier, but such as system is also far too prone to abuse.

<comment><USER3> In the U.S., the argument is that, since you are handing your data to a third party, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Your analogy breaks down under that interpretation.

(I think that argument/precedent is a load of bullshit, but that's a different matter...)

<comment><USER4> Well... The major reason that that argument can be made is because of the terms of service/use/agreement and privacy policies. Pretty much every one agrees without thinking, which is where I believe Apple got into some trouble a few years back IIRC.

<comment><USER5> It has less to do with ToS than it does with legal precedent, though I don't doubt that without legal precedent, it might fall back onto the ToS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cntrl+f warrant. 1 hit.

"American technology companies should be free to comply directly with foreign government requests for data, as long as that access is warranted and meets international standards of due process and human rights."

The NYT really has gone downhill in the last decade or so. I understand this is just an Op-Ed, but for the life of me I don't understand why it is so hard for people to grasp the core issue regarding surveillance and the internet.

The Constitution. The fourth amendment to be precise, is very specific about this: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

So while I do agree there should be some discussion about the details of the fourth, and what it applies to (does data on your ISP rented cable modem deserve the same level of fourth amendment protection as your actual computer, for example), but in general I think we can say that data is a "paper" and/or "effects", and generally deserves such protections at the very least on equipment we own. (I know some will dispute this and I look forward to such discussion.)

That being said, when I see things like the following, I understand that what is being said is that other countries don't want to follow our process of law, which I think is absurd!

"So if a British cop is investigating a murder in London, and he has good reason to believe that Google or Facebook has evidence about the crime, he must satisfy an American judge using an American constitutional standard to obtain the evidence. This cross-border process is notoriously slow. Requests take an average of 10 months — an eon in a criminal investigation — and many languish for years."

"Making it harder for the police to get criminal evidence lawfully may actually incentivize them to seek that data by snooping."

All I have to say is... _Get a warrant!!!_

It's possible the warrant system for electronic data is too slow, and if that's the case work on changing that system, but that doesn't mean you get to throw out basic law because it's inconvenient. Hell, if we let this kind of logic apply to other areas, what good would the law be in the first place?

Look, the bottom line is that national sovereignty is still important, because when it comes down to it, people from a country operate under that countries laws, and we need to stop pretending otherwise.

"If America fails to allow such access, it will happen anyway in a brute and extralegal manner — and the result will be a less secure, less efficient Internet."

And I fully hope that any police officers or other LEAs/LEOs who participate wilfully in and with full knowledge in violations of their oaths should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and this includes the NSA. I'm getting tired of allowing UK/European style disdain for the rule of law to seep into the American way of doing things. We fought a bloody revolution to form our government, and we shouldn't piss it away so easily with international agreements of a questionable nature.

The SCOTUS has repeatedly ruled that even so called "illegal aliens" are protected by the Constitution under the equal protection clause. So I understand that this article focuses on the UK/European citizens data the resides in America, the bottom line is that any passage of laws contrary to this should be challenge-able on Constitutional grounds in higher-courts.

Of course the real danger is not that police will illegally spy... it's that they will find some loophole to legally spy by pushing the rule of law system out of the way and will try to interface directly with corporations and companies. So it would be Company A just giving any international police access to whatever they want pretty much, probably through some EULA/TOS legalese claims that don't really stand up to scrutiny. Which is exactly what I expect from any country other than my own (America).

This is an _extremely_ dangerous and slippery slope, and the American people need to understand these dangers and confront them head on before we wake up having lost our country through treaty and agreement attrition.

tldr - It's about the constitution and the rule of law. We silently acquiesce at not just our peril, but at the peril of all the people of the world. Beware the calls for global governance models and increased centralization! The internet of all things has proven that decentralization is a strength and centralization is not!</comment>


Mark Twain playing with electricity in Nikola Tesla's lab in 1894 (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/mark-twain-plays-with-electricity-in-nikola-teslas-lab-photo-1894.html <comment><USER2> Please read the century article it comes from! It is so beautifully written and really gives a sense of the future vision of the times: [http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1895-04-00.htm](http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1895-04-00.htm)

<comment><USER3> Articles and books like this are so detailed and descriptive, they're like the 4K Youtube of the 19th century...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mark Twain invested in all sorts of crazy startups. If he was alive today, he'd probably be a billionaire, but he was way ahead of his time.

[https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-mark- twain-t...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-mark-twain-tried- to-get-rich-quick-again-and-again/)

<comment><USER5> He also talked a struggling U.S. Grant into writing an autobiography which Twain then published. This basically saved Grant's family economically. (Grant's autobiography is a great book, btw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1894 was just 125 years ago.

just in 125 years how far we've come technologically...it's crazy.

Makes one wonder how drastic the technology landscape might be 125 years from today.

<comment><USER7> is it still the same trend?

<comment><USER8> Isn't the claim that the rate of change is increasing? That same amount of change in the past 125 years should occur in half or quarter of the time, for example.

Where do we stand on the singularity these days?

<comment><USER9> rate of change may actually be decreasing, as the low hanging fruit isn't there anymore.

it may be that big breakthroughs like the last century will be fewer and further apart, especially with lots of energy (physical and intelectual) spent on bitcoin, social media and consuming in general

<comment><USER10> Is there a way to use the Bitcoin hash rate to solve more meaningful problems than SHA-256 while still being cryptographically secure? Imagine if we could send math problems to the Bitcoin network, is this possible?

<comment><USER11> The closest anyone has found is PrimeCoin, which might have a slight usability to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mark Twain demonstrates the difference between "the lightning and the lightning bug".

</comment><comment><USER13> Aw man, this doesn't include the time Nikola Tesla literally made Mark Twain shit himself!

[https://thoughtcatalog.com/zaron-burnett-iii/2014/02/how- nik...](https://thoughtcatalog.com/zaron-burnett-iii/2014/02/how-nikola-tesla- made-mark-twain-crap-his-white-suit-and-how-we-can-avoid-the-same-fate/)

<comment><USER14> That was amusing, but is there a primary source[1] for that? I think it'd be far more interesting to read an account of it in 19th century English.

[1] Electrical pun not intended.

<comment><USER13> I originally read it in a biography I read many years ago. I assume that biography was well cited and that a primary source exists, but I do not know where it is (I have spent literally zero seconds searching though).</comment></comment></comment>