Why Your Brain Hates Slowpokes - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/22/slow/why-your-brain-hates-slowpokes

<comment><USER2> For me it's a combo between this /and/ just people's attitude - it's fine if _you_ want to be slow, but you have to be considerate of others. I wouldn't be mad if you were walking slowly on the side of the street - probably wouldn't even notice - but I'll be mad if you're walking slowly in the middle. It often costs nothing to be considerate, and it makes life more pleasant for everyone!

<comment><USER3> Whenever I read about people considered to be inconsiderate, I wonder: did anyone bother to make this clear to the "inconsiderate" people in question?

<comment><USER4> It is a basic social obligation to be alert to the impact that one is having on others.

<comment><USER3> What does that have to do with the social obligation to point out when someone isn't?

<comment><USER4> It depends on whether the offender cares or not. If they cared, they probably would not be transgressing in the first place. If they didn't care, they would probably react aggressively to being told off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To twist it around, I don't think it's the "slowpokes", I'm annoyed by not being able to do things at my own pace. So if I can go around someone or use a different checkout, great! I suspect it's not a problem with slowpokes, it's more the loss of personal control and autonomy. (I bought a car specifically for its crazy levels of acceleration for this reason :-))

</comment><comment><USER6> I have terrible sidewalk rage, but it has nothing to do with slowpokes -- I can't stand people who walk straight down the middle and don't make room. "Oh, I'm so sorry your highness, I didn't realize this was _your_ sidewalk" [says the voice in my head that I can't vocalize because unlike being in an automobile the other person would hear me].

<comment><USER7> I've said "con permiso, abuelita" \-- roughly "excuse me, grandma" \-- to dudes half my age waddling down the street.

I should do it more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The conclusion (spoiler alert) that showing gratitude can help fight the negative emotional reaction to impatience sounds a lot like stoicism. Particularly the idea that you should think about the positive things that you have, rather than the negative thing happening to you right now (being stuck in a slow moving line).

</comment><comment><USER9> "Patience is a virtue that's been vanquished in the Twitter age."

Oh, it's one of those. Where unnamed "cognitive scientists" verify that everything was better in the good old days, and the world is just too fast now.

</comment><comment><USER10> "I started to fear that we would be so late for our reservation that we would miss it. But when we got to the restaurant, we were no more than a couple minutes behind. My sense of time had warped."

Isn't the solution in this case simply a watch or some other form of portable timepiece?

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe I'm just rationalizing it because I want to think of myself as a calm, non-ragey person, but to me it feels like something else.

I agree with others that it feels rude when someone else takes up the whole sidewalk.

But it's also that I walk a lot, and use it as a form of transportation. I go twice as fast as a lot of people on the sidewalk, and it seems like if people just sped up a bit they'd find walking more useful, which would make them drive less, which is a good thing, and it drives me crazy that this isn't obvious to them.

Like I said, I'm probably just rationalizing :)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's a dopamine thing. When things are going according to a boring routine (like getting from point A to point B at constant speed, unimpeded by any jam), you get a dopamine reward. Supposedly, this is evolutionary. Being happy while bored helps you sit on a tree branch for hours until the predator below goes away. Once you've gone agricultural, it helps you do repetitive field work from dawn to dusk.

This is not specifically just "sidewalk rage". For instance, the annoyance at being disrupted in the middle of playing a video game is a facet of the same thing.

</comment><comment> wes-k I use to be a fast walker myself. Still fall back into it from time to time. I've enjoyed slowing down my pace and taking in a bit more of the scenery. It's also fun going slowly and seeing the hectic world rush by.

And always, always, try and walk on the side so others can pass easily!

</comment><comment><USER13> Was it true that people were happy waiting 2 seconds for a webpage 10 years ago ?

The unrewarding theory is still genius nonetheless. The faster the worse ?

<comment><USER14> I was waiting much more than 2 seconds, 20 years ago. But you'd do things like disable images to speed things up.

<comment><USER4> The pages used to display an active load-bar to reassure the user that something was happening. One expected slowness back then, especially on dial- up, and you could always hit [esc] once enough of the page loaded.

There was a time, especially on older, slower Windows, that people would stab and swipe feverishly at the icon on the screen, resulting in multiple instances of the app when it finally emerged from the Stygian depths of the HD, and many copies of the icon on the desktop, since swiping served to copy the icon.

<comment><USER15> A load bar also made sense back then because pages actually loaded and then were complete. These days with async calls a page doesn't ever have to be finished, it can keep refreshing parts of its content, or be one of those never ending pages you run in to at times. Now you can never really be sure what a page is up to without looking at the code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Once upon a time writers actually took the time to investigate their "tools", like flying to Hawaii and sitting down with a psychologist in a small cafe and going over the numbers if you must.

Not everyone is in a New York state of mind. Once you Once Upon a time it speaks to narrowness.

<comment><USER17> This comment looks like a markov chain to me.

<comment><USER18> Yes.</comment></comment></comment>


Blood sugar patterns to master as a type 2 diabetic - <AUTHOR> https://diabetic.fyi/blood-sugar-patterns/ <comment><USER2> One of the most important parts of diet we fail to educate the public on is glycemic index vs glycemic load. Index is essentially the raw score for how drastically a particular food will raise blood sugar. Glycemic load looks at the totality of what one eats then predicts what the effect of one's blood sugar will be. For example eating sugar with fat will spike blood sugar less than simply eating sugar.

Further reading: [https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and- conditions/the-l...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and- conditions/the-lowdown-on-glycemic-index-and-glycemic-load)

<comment><USER3> > For example eating sugar with fat will spike blood sugar less than simply > eating sugar.

You mean chocolate bar or any dessert.

<comment><USER4> I've read one that most food that make one addicted is a good combination of sugar and fat, which is decided by our genes.

<comment><USER5> > make one addicted ...

I think you're on to something. I think the large portion of people have an addiction to certain foods.

My first inkling was when my friend, Dr. Ross, said to me, "None of my type II diabetic patients are able to control it with diet. They all need medication." (His patients are all upper-middle class, well-adjusted for the most part).

I've seen it with my dad (type II), an ex-marine (type II), a marketing executive (type II). In all cases they were eating french toast with maple syrup (the crack cocaine of type II diabetics). It was something they knew they should not be eating, and yet they were.

These are people with discipline and strength, and yet they are unable to stick to a diet. What gives? Rather than blaming them, we should ask, "Why is this so hard for them? Why can these people who can do so many things, not eat properly?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've heard that cutting out nearly all carbohydrates from the diet basically causes permanent remission of type 2 diabetes. Is this true?

<comment><USER7> If you don't eat carbohydrates, you don't need insulin, so it is no disadvantage that you cannot produce it.

Calling that a remission is far fetched though.

<comment><USER8> Anecdata and all that, but I have seen quite a few reports of people overcoming their t2 diabetes through low-carb diets.

Whether they were actually cured is harder to say.

<comment><USER9> They still couldn't eat a high-carb food item without seeing a drastic spike in blood sugar. So: not cured of t2, but in remission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Watch YouTube videos by Dr Jason Fung. He cures type 2 diabetes with diet.

<comment><USER4> I read it once and the part of what causing Type 2 Diabetes seems reasonable to me, however his advocate for extended fasting (namely, 36h+) sounds too aggressive.

<comment><USER11> More Western people should do multi day fasts. It really changes your relationship with food. Plus a million other positive things.

<comment><USER12> Yes, it changes your relationship into a disordered one.

HN, the website where willingly starving yourself for days on end is not an eating disorder

<comment><USER13> I'm no fan of fad diets, but a lot of Westerners have a real problem with simply _not knowing what hunger feels like_.

A lot of people are so habituated to large portions and frequent snacking that they're never meaningfully hungry, just somewhere on the spectrum between "reasonably sated" and "physically incapable of ingesting another morsel". Their eating habits have fundamentally broken the connection between food and sustenance. They've lost the ability to usefully distinguish between the body's natural hunger signals and other motivations for eating like habit, boredom and emotional self-soothing.

I'm not wholly persuaded by the claims made about the health benefits of intermittent fasting, but I do think it's a potentially useful psychological experience if you have a problematic relationship with food.

<comment><USER5> > not knowing what hunger feels like

True. I found that when I switched to a low-carb diet, my relationship with hunger changed.

For one thing, I was always hungry: nothing makes you feel full like a good batch of carbs. But the hunger was similar to a low-grade background noise; it was fundamentally different than the I-gotta-eat-right-now hunger of the carbolicious diet.

The other thing I noticed is that since I switched diets (7 years ago), I have never "bonked" (run into a wall because I was so hungry). I simply get more hungry, but again, it's more like the background noise gets louder.

That begs the question, "Why not eat more if you're hungry?" The truth is that eating gets tiresome after a while. I remember spending over and hour shoving salad into my mouth and finally saying, "I need to get stuff done; I can't sit here all day eating salad."

Yes, meat can fill me up if I eat enough of it (20 oz. prime rib), but I tire of meat after a while.

<comment><USER14> Eating more fats will cure the hunger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There was a small study giving oral carnosine (2g/d) to participants to study whether "carnosine supplementation in individuals with overweight or obesity improves diabetes and cardiovascular risk factors".

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.21434](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.21434)

The supplement has been readily available for years, has anyone here had good experiences with it?

</comment><comment><USER16> I have a question in case there are any experts here.

What is the mechanism of this:

>On the other hand, high-intensity, short-duration exercise (like weightlifting, sprinting, and rock climbing) will spike your blood sugar temporarily, but keep your blood sugar lower overall for a period of time afterward:

What exactly happens here, in as much detail as someone could reply. (For the first part, "spike your blood sugar temporarily".)

Thank you.

<comment><USER17> There are two types of exercise aerobic and anaerobic.

Aerobic is easy exercise (walking, jogging, etc...) where the body can supply enough oxygen to oxidize glucose to convert to energy.

During Anaerobic or high intensity exercise the body can not supply enough oxygen, so a bunch of things happen including: 1.) the body begins needing to rely on lactic acid for energy instead of oxygen/glucose, and 2.) while the lactic acid is being used for energy the glucose (blood sugar) builds up (lactic acid also builds up which is why intense exercise can not be sustained for long periods).

<comment><USER18> Not sure this is correct.

My understanding is that anaerobic exercise uses glucose and stored glycogen to generate energy and produces lactic acid as a by product. Oxygen is not required for this process but its presence does make glycolysis more efficient and is needed to stop the lactic acid buildup

Aerobic is certainly not easy exercise. Your body is releasing stored glycogen from the liver and burning oxygen to clear out lactic acid and starting to break down fat reserves.

Short duration high intensity exercise actually uses Creatine phosphate stores in the muscles for energy but this is quickly exhausted

<comment><USER17> It is correct, just look at the definitions of the terms.

You somehow have 3 types of exercise...aerobic, anaerobic and short duration/high intensity.

There is only aerobic and anaerobic (short duration/high intensity is anaerobic - high intensity is going to result in a build op of lactic acid which in turn will cause the burnout/short duration).

Anyway aerobic means "with oxygen" and anaerobic means "without oxygen."

<comment><USER18> Sorry, I was unclear.

High intensity exercise is generally anaerobic yes, not a third type of exercise.

I was really querying your point about high intensity exercise using lactic acid as an energy source. My understanding is that during any exercise, the muscles will first use creatine phosphate as an energy source and will then use blood glucose and stored glycogen for energy, and it is the breakdown of glucose that creates the energy - lactic acid is a by product of this reaction and is not a source of energy so I don't think this would cause blood sugar levels to increase?

Any increase in blood sugar levels following short duration exercise would be due to the body reacting to the fall in glucose levels and so releasing more from the liver to compensate.

<comment><USER17> Blood glucose would rise because youre unable to provide enough oxygen to break it down/convert it into energy (ie more unused glucose accumulates in the blood).

Lactate/Lactic acid is a byproduct of broken down glucose, but also temporarily picks up the slack in energy when the body can't supply enough oxygen to breakdown glucose for energy requirements. Lactic acid is used in the mitochondria of cells and keeps the heart pumping during these intense phases of exercise where the oxygen/glucose can't do the job...again as lactic acid is temporarily being used as fuel it would follow glucose builds up as the body can't break it down fast enough and is now using an alternate fuel source.

Creatine as I understand it isn't a fuel/energy directly, but does facilitate recycling of energy. Moreover, as ATP (energy) is produced in the mitochondria and used by the cell it is converted into ADP, but the body/muscles will use creatine to recycle ADP back into ATP. On its own though I don't think creatine is fuel/converted into ATP at any point like glucose/ketones.

<comment><USER18> Creatine Phosphate is a fuel - it is converted very quickly and the muscles only store tiny amounts (enough for a few seconds only), and creatine is used in recycling ATP as you say.

I didn't realise lactic acid was used to provide energy so thanks for mentioning this - having looked it up though, this produces tiny amounts during anaerobic respiration at which time glucose is still the main energy provider.

Blood glucose may rise because your body has released stored glucose from the liver, but this takes time - there is a delay between blood sugar levels dropping (due to the intense exercise) and the liver releasing stores and it also takes time for the full aerobic cycle to produce significant quantities of energy and convert that glucose

I am most definitely not an expert here so details may be incorrect, but I looked into this when I started running. I was focused on how to maintain energy levels over long distances so may have a different perspective from someone more interested in weight training or other high intensity/short- duration exercise.

I found [1] useful as a simple overview of the different energy producing mechanisms, and [2] goes into far more detail than I can readily understand...

[1] [https://www.acefitness.org/fitness-certifications/ace- answer...](https://www.acefitness.org/fitness-certifications/ace-answers/exam- preparation-blog/3256/the-three-primary-energy-pathways-explained)

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

I would love to see better explanations of how this all works

<comment><USER17> I'm a runner also...depends what you mean by long distances, but I'd promote becoming fat adapted and running in ketosis.

I've done a full marathon with no fuel (hydration only) in ketosis, pretty awesome and much better than my glucose/gu runs...of course I've had some amazing long runs out of ketosis but at certain distances the fueling is a real battle and a battle I've lost from time to time. I don't think there is a good answer for fueling long distances that will work for everyone it's all about personal experimentation and adaptation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is interesting, what tools are available to measure one's blood sugar and chart it throughout the day? I find it's pretty inconvenient to measure and report it accurately enough to get these trend lines with my regular meter.

<comment><USER20> You need a continuous glucose monitor, like Freestyle Libre or Dexcom. Here's a writeup of somebody that goes into detail about what's involved:

[https://medium.com/@justin_d_lawler/continuous-glucose- monit...](https://medium.com/@justin_d_lawler/continuous-glucose-monitoring- the-first-four-weeks-7a6aa5fdb06e)

The sensors aren't cheap. Last time I looked, you wore them for 1 week at a time and they were $80 a pop.

<comment><USER21> The Freestyle Libre is good for 14 days at a time, and as far as I know costs $110-120 for a 2-pack. No it's not cheap, but it's not as expensive as the Dexcom. My son wears a Dexcom (type 1 diabetic) and my dad wears a Libre (type 2 diabetic.) The Dexcom is far more expensive, but it's the only one that will integrate with my son's insulin pump.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dude looks pretty damn thin for a T2D. Yes, thin people can get T2D but it's not common. Hope he had his antibodies checked.</comment>


Turn any link into a suspicious-looking one - <AUTHOR> https://verylegit.link <comment><USER2> A similar site has been around for a long time: [http://www.shadyurl.com/](http://www.shadyurl.com/)

example: google.com -> [http://www.5z8.info/dogs-being- eaten_x2r3rq_5waystokillwitha...](http://www.5z8.info/dogs-being- eaten_x2r3rq_5waystokillwithamelon)

<comment><USER3> I made shadyurl! The subdomain feature in this is great. Also cool it has an API. Though with the amount shadyurl was abused by phishers, I'd be interested to see how long an API stays viable.

<comment><USER4> It's kind of wild that "SHADY URL" is something phishers want to use. But, in the end I guess it's all about finding a domain that isn't tied to them?

<comment><USER5> Similar to 419 scams, shady links/propositions are a good way to select the people who are easy to trick.

<comment><USER3> Yeah that's my best guess. I was shocked how much it was used for scams. Might also be possible the link is so suspicious looking it's actually more intriguing to click.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I were trying to send someone to my nefarious website, I'd definitely now wrap the link in this, so that the savvy viewer would think it's a harmless verylegit.link...

<comment><USER7> You already have that same deal with bit.ly and friends.

[http://bit.ly/2saifoB](http://bit.ly/2saifoB) [http://bit.ly/2t5xNhB](http://bit.ly/2t5xNhB)

Which is safe and wonderful and which is dangerous?

<comment><USER8> For the uninitiated: just add a + to the end of any bitly URL to expose metrics and preview the destination.

[http://bit.ly/2saifoB+](http://bit.ly/2saifoB+) [http://bit.ly/2t5xNhB+](http://bit.ly/2t5xNhB+)

<comment><USER7> This is neat, I hadn't seen it before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there any way to get SSL error messages in Firefox?

[https://irc.verylegit.link/0x8c*download()194mobiads(windows...](https://irc.verylegit.link/0x8c*download\(\)194mobiads\(windows8!downloader.sh.exe) is supposed to redirect to Facebook, and it does if you use HTTP. However, over HTTPS Firefox just gives me a very generic "Secure Connection Failed" message. (Chrome is rather more helpful, giving me "ERR_CONNECTION_CLOSED".)

<comment><USER10> Where did you get that link? Was it one of the sample links? I don't think those are real links. But if you type in [https://facebook.com](https://facebook.com) and click "Make it look dodgy" it will give you a real link.

[http://hey.look.a.verylegit.link/malware-425iphone)ip- steale...](http://hey.look.a.verylegit.link/malware-425iphone\)ip- stealer)(.docx.html.rar

Edit: Although it appears Hacker News decided to mangle this link that I posted. Apparently it's not happy about mismatched parenthesis in links. Why HN wants to try to match parenthesis in links... that's a good question.

<comment><USER11> Markdown uses parenthesis? HN software parses markdown in comments to format them?

<comment><USER12> HN doesn't use Markdown, it has its own eccentric and much more limited markup system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The suffixes should be exe, com, js, hta, vbs, and so on, for extra evilness.

<comment><USER14> pdf and dmg are already pretty scary.

<comment><USER15> Considering most people in the world use Windows, dmg is pretty much irrelevant. They can only be opened/unpacked on Macs, so even if it contains a evil payload you won't ever got to it on Windows or Linux.

Exe-files has much bigger impact and can be run through emulation on non- Windows systems.

I'd say exe is a much better choice.

<comment><USER16> My mental pronunciation mechanism cannot stop reading "dmg" as "damage"

<comment><USER17> Same for me. I guess that's what decades of playing with and reading about video games do to your brain ^^

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18>
      How does it work?

      Due to rapid advancement in dark ritual technology,
      the programming community has streamlined the
      Development and deployment of unspeakable
      eldritch horrors.

      Using robust open-source libraries like a sack of
      live geese, websites like this one can be
      developed with far more efficient sacrificial
      rituals than ever before.

      We're still stuck on the version with
      really inefficient sacrifical rituals
      though, due to comp͆aͭatib̊i̼͕l̈̿i̮̜t̚y̅ ͊i͋s̾s̢͈͠u̶e̛̊s̼̃.

Not that I'm in need for an URL shortener, but I really like the style it's "advertised" in :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> This could potentially be useful to scammers, to pre-filter out the kind of people who click on shady links.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is neat. I'll make sure to use it whenever I post something here or on Reddit. Great work

</comment><comment><USER21> redirect to about:config -> [http://hey.look.a.verylegit.link/765ip- stealer_.json.zip](http://hey.look.a.verylegit.link/765ip-stealer_.json.zip)

and get a Corrupted Content Error (edit: under Firefox)

</comment><comment> rkuykendall-com I built this years ago when I made it up during an IM conversation with a friend and we realized it wasn't taken: [http://shadydownloads.com/](http://shadydownloads.com/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I get "Secure Connection Failed"in Firefox Nightly when clicking on the demo link.

<comment><USER23> That's a feature!

<comment><USER24> That "feature" does not appear to work for me. It probably should be a feature though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd like a way to get some statistics, e.g. how many people clicked the link, etc.

That might even be useful when posting links to HN.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've DNS blackholed the entire .link TLD, along with .science, .country, .click, and .rocks.

So, there's that.

(DNSMasq, router-based blocklist.)

<comment><USER27> Do you care to share the reasons you've taken this decision?

<comment><USER26> Direct personal realisation, an increasingly take-no-prisoners approach to online abuse, and a considerable amount of evidence from elsewhere that such TLDs are almost entirely void of value.

My router doesn't have sufficient resources to list individual hosts, particularly where widespread abuse is found. Plus it's just too much fucking work.

BlueCoat Security (now part of Symantec) have been publishing a "Shady TLD series".

[https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/floating-down- stream-...](https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/floating-down-stream-shady- tld-research-part-17)

Basically: to 2-3 nines, these TLDs are nothing but trouble. If they can't clean up their own acts, fuck 'em.

And let that be warning to other TLD registrars.

<comment><USER28> These lists, it should be pointed out, are quickly becoming outdated as more folks sign up for new domain names. For example, there's this on .xyz [https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/exploring-xyz- another...](https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/exploring-xyz-another- shady-tld-report) and then there's actual usage of it: [https://abc.xyz](https://abc.xyz) (completely not mentioned...) If you want to know the most popular/relevant sites on a TLD, search google for `site:xyz` to see a small list... E.g. .link often is used by websites with very long domains looki for a shorter one, like [http://gcr.link/](http://gcr.link/) Amazon has [http://aws.science/](http://aws.science/) .country is mostly crap, but there is [http://cma.country/](http://cma.country/) .click is indeed only slightly less spammy, but does have [http://bbc.click/](http://bbc.click/) And .rocks doesn't deserve the ban. It's used by fan sites, people promoting tech or events, and fun stuff like kqed.rocks for kqed.org ... I'll admit though, it can be hard to tell with all the third party domains which sites are legitimate and which aren't...

<comment><USER26> Given the risk/reward of, oh, say, finding my systems hosed or users scammed and/or bank accounts drained, vs. missing out on someone's link shortener, I think I'll err on the side of caution.

This being an assessment based on local awareness of circumstances.

<comment><USER29> In what way are you more secure then when someone uses a .com domain? In both cases it is easy to register a url and turn into a malicious site. It really seems you are blackholing parts of the web for no good reason except to exempt yourself from actually performing a security check on the sites on the assumption all other tld's are safe.

<comment><USER26> Wrong question.

Risk. Reward. Administrative cost.

The first of these I blocked when I looked at the domain and realised that the TLD were registering any old line noise. I'm not going to bother sorting that. Search for other experience turned up Blue Coat.

I subscribe to blocklists, and they update periodically. There are other levels of protection.

When a TLD is 99.9% malware or scams, it's far easier to block it outright. Registrars should take responsibility for what they're registering. Not my problem.

<comment><USER29> My experiance with symantec web protection (which I assume will use the same blocklists they are talking about) is that it has a ridiculous false positive rate and when I was still in High School they had blue-coat installed and it had a worse false positive rate. I would be very careful about running blacklists from those companies aside from anti-ad blocklists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hi, would you please consider paramaterising the input in the URL so that I can use it with Chrome's Omnibar?

</comment><comment><USER31> But what for? So that people don't click it?

</comment><comment><USER32> Woz would love this, I hope he gets to see it

</comment><comment><USER33> Doesn't work for any HTTPS site.

</comment><comment><USER34> Unable to open in Edge: [http://imgur.com/a/nBAne](http://imgur.com/a/nBAne)

</comment><comment><USER35> How is this top of hacker news???

<comment><USER36> People have a sense of humor, and this is a fantastic meta joke. Why so serious?

<comment><USER37> This site doesn't like jokey comments, so how are pointless jokey links tolerated? It's not like the linked to site is making a serious point in a light hearted way.

<comment><USER38> Because the joke is actually a utility, and I for one plan to share links to others with it to continue the fun (can't be done with a witty/funny comment).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Mods, thanks for changing the title. It was screwing with the layout on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER40> This:

       secure.verylegit.link/warez737speedupurpc.gif.pdf

(example from site) doesn't look dodgy to me at all.

I'd have no qualms clicking on it, because my browser and I can handle suspicious websites. (Especially ones ending pdf.)

Something that would give pause would be:

[https://tinyurl.com/2ea2mu4?command=127.0.0.1/activate](https://tinyurl.com/2ea2mu4?command=127.0.0.1/activate)

I would think...wait a minute... I probably wouldn't click this example.

<comment><USER41> Good for you. But this is a scary looking link for the average internet browser.

<comment><USER40> I disagree, because it literally says "secure.verylegit.link". Those are not negative words.

If this seemed suspicious to the people you're talking about, nobody would start a letter to them with the words, " Please permit me to make your acquaintance in so informal a manner. This is necessitated by my urgent need to reach a dependable and trust wordy foreign partner. This request may seem strange and unsolicited but I will crave your indulgence and pray that you view it seriously. " (I found this example online.)

So, I simply disagree that the example produced looks suspicious. It looks fine.

Further, I wouldn't even think twice before clicking it. The example I quoted simply doesn't look suspicious. (Because pdf is a 'safe' filetype.) I don't think it would give the average Internet user pause, either.

<comment><USER42> _The example I quoted simply doesn 't look suspicious. (Because pdf is a 'safe' filetype.)_

Safe?

[https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-53/p...](https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-53/product_id-497/Adobe-Acrobat-Reader.html)

<comment><USER40> Yes, safe. I open it safely in Chrome (I just click, Chrome opens it natively in the same view) and the chance someone is going to burn a PDF zero-day for chrome on a random link I come across is vanishingly small.

You can open PDF files in Chrome. Even malicious ones. It's okay.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Archive.org is down due to an unexpected outage - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/internetarchive/status/1143378990826004480 <comment><AUTHOR> "The Internet Archive website has been down overnight due to a cut of our dark fiber. Our vendor is rolling a splice team to the cut site and we'll be back online just as soon as we can. Data is safe; the library is briefly closed for maintenance."

<comment><AUTHOR> It's back now!</comment></comment>


Is nature a low-complexity sampler? - <AUTHOR> http://emanueleviola.wordpress.com/2014/11/09/is-nature-a-low-complexity-sampler/

<comment><USER2> Any vaguely mathematical publications that don't use TeX set off my crank alert[0], so I did some quick research on the author: he is an associate professor of computer science at Northeastern University, currently on sabbatical.[1] So it is unlikely for this to be crank-work.

[0] [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304) [1] [http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/viola/](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/viola/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Emanuele Viola is relatively famous in theoretical computer science, so he's definitely not a crank.

As far as TeX goes, Wordpress has a long way to go in terms of offering good native support for any TeX variant, so it's understandable that one might try to avoid it in that context.

<comment><USER2> W/r/t/ TeX: Is it not possible to use the MathJax plugin on WP?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not if it's hosted by wordpress (.wordpress.com)

Source: I've been using Wordpress to blog about math for over three years and have had a small amount of (indirect) contact with the Wordpress devs. Apparently they are considering alternatives to their current setup which renders tex formulas to images.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Warning: philosophical comment.

Lots of theories of everything these days. However, IMHO they all fail to address one fundamental point. And that is the issue of experiental consciousness, or, in other words, the fact that we experience that we are part of the universe.

Why is this fundamental to any theory of physics? One could argue that it can be addressed as something which is outside the universe, like an external observer watching in. But the important point is: this cannot be true, for I, and a lot of other people, are discussing experiential consciousness: it "loops" back on physics, so to speak. It interacts with it.

So, to me, it would seem that any "mechanic" theory of physics just can't be true, or rather, it can't be complete.

The only ways out of this, that I can think of, would be: 1\. Experiential consciousness to be only an illusion. But then the question is: why is this illusion necessary? Why would physics plug the idea into my memory of consciousness? (possible answer: because in the worlds in which physics does not do this, I would not be conscious, but this is a circular argument). And thus this would go against Occam's razor. 2\. There is choice is the universe (the universe is tree-like or DAG-like, and an observer could take a preferred route). Not really a satisfying explanation either, imho.

<comment><AUTHOR> Physicists have been trying, and their attempts have basically failed. One example: [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799)

I don't agree with your claim that a theory of consciousness is fundamental to any theory of physics. In mathematics we have to deal with the possibility that the theorems we're trying to prove are "independent" of the system of proofs we're working in (such statements are known to exist and are neither provable nor disprovable, for example, the existence of certain numbers). As a consequence, any physicist working in a mathematical framework must consider the possibility that a theory of consciousness is independent of any theory of physics consistent with what we observe. In other words, it may be the case that physics, just like mathematics, cannot be both complete and consistent.

<comment><USER3> > In other words, it may be the case that physics, just like mathematics, > cannot be both complete and consistent.

Interesting line of thought. So if that premise (let's call it A) is true, then any theory that is both complete and consistent is ruled out.

Therefore, we better found out if A is true (!) That's perhaps a more specific version of what I was saying before.

<comment><USER4> That premise is definitely true. It is a result of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. 'Physics' certainly satisfies the constraint: 'of sufficient complexity to encode the natural numbers'.

See: [http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/Godel/implic.html](http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/Godel/implic.html) [particularly "reality outruns knowledge"]

<comment><USER3> I wonder how you come to that conclusion, because physics is not proven to be of "infinite complexity" (loose statement).

Some things that we are used to from mathematics might not be true in physics. Take for example the fact that in mathematics the real numbers are uncountable. Now in reality (physics), the whole set of real numbers may not exist. It is only an abstract concept from mathematics. And while it may be possible to reproduce any real number in physics as some quantity, you are reproducing them as you go, making the "real" (physical) real numbers countable.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't take 'infinite complexity' [your term] to encode the natural numbers. Rather it is only a handful of axioms. See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_recursive_arithmetic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_recursive_arithmetic)

Pretty much any system of logic worth looking at (including any which the sciences may be based on and the one running inside each human brain) is going to at least be as complex as this set of axioms.

Also, you really should read the JR Lucas material-- it explains this. And, I'd suggest Nagel & Newman's _Godel's Proof_ for a great introductory explanation of the Incompleteness Theorems.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't know that the physical world has infinite precision. In particular, time doesn't even seem to be continuous as far as we can tell (cf. Planck constant). And we think there's a finite amount of mass in the universe, so how could we encode arbitrarily large natural numbers (as is required to model Peano arithmetic)?

<comment><USER4> We don't have to encode arbitrarily large natural numbers. Rather we have to encode the rules that allow us to _construct_ them (which is quite simple actually). And, I think 'digital physics' is _more_ compatible with Incompleteness implications than the alternatives; not _less_.

<comment><AUTHOR> How can you construct something which is larger than the amount of mass in the universe?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: New HTML5 document viewer based on PDF.js for DOC, ODT, PDF - <AUTHOR> https://my.doctape.com/s/8KL4bF

<comment><USER2> It's pretty slick, but the I couldn't find a way to go full-screen? Something like 15-20% of the reading space is with headers and footers that serve no purpose while actually viewing documents.

Compare Google Docs native PDF reader to yours [Screen shots here: <http://imgur.com/a/mfVJx>]. If I'm using a service to view documents, I feel like more real estate for the actual content would be more useful than social sharing or download links or whatever else.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right, we'll fix that soon! To get a better impression, you can open the widget link for now: <https://my.doctape.com/s/8KL4bF?w=1>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this using LibreOffice on the server to convert DOC to PDF or SVG or flash?

Is the source code available?

<comment><AUTHOR> The viewer mostly based on PDF.js (<http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/>) with a customized UI. On server side, we leverage several components (incl. LibreOffice) to convert different document types to PDF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> wow nice!</comment>


What's the history behind 192.168.1.1? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-history-behind-192-168-1-1-Why-not-192-169-1-1-or-any-other-IP-address-When-did-it-start-being-used-Who-started-it-Why-Why-not-1-1-1-1-What-is-the-relation-to-127-0-0-1-What-about-10-0-0-1-Apple?share=1 <comment><USER3> This explains the reason private ranges were designated but not why 192.168.0.0 in particular within the Class C range was designated to be private. Does anyone know why that number in particular was chosen?

<comment><USER4> Found this link in one of the responses on that page:

[https://superuser.com/questions/784978/why-did-the-ietf- spec...](https://superuser.com/questions/784978/why-did-the-ietf-specifically- choose-192-168-16-to-be-a-private-ip-address-class)

        Similarly, I expect Postel picked 192.168 because, at the time he made the
        choice, it was the next available, or nearly the next available, network to be
        assigned from the former Class C space. This probably can't be proved one way
        or the other, but the pace of address assignments shown in the RFCs strongly
        suggests that they would have been in this general vicinity around 1993-1994
        when the assignments were made. (Addresses in 192.159 were being assigned in
        1992. No dates are available for assignments in 192.160-192.167 as these were
        at some point reallocated to RIPE.)

<comment><USER5> To be clear, the 192 part is the lowest "Class C" network prefix. The 168 part was the arbitrary time-dependent part from the allocation database.

<comment><USER4> Correct, thanks for making that explicit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What the given article does not address is when to choose 10.x.x.x, 172.x.x.x and 192.168.x.x and why it's important to choose the right one.

Here is the prescribed solution:

\- Use 10.x.x.x for office/enterprise LANs

\- Use 192.168.x.x for home LANs

\- Use 172.x.x.x for supplementary services like guest networks, DMZ etc

Why so? The reason is VPN.

When you connect to office VPN from home, you connect from 192.168.x.x to 10.x.x.x. This makes it very easy for routers to avoid address range clashes.

If you break that rule then you may end up with a weird situation when you connect from a home network 10.0.1.1/24 to an office network 10.0.1.1/24\. Good luck trying to connect to that specific 10.0.1.12 machine: there is no easy way to determine where the packet should be routed.

<comment><USER7> what if I have two homes?

<comment><USER8> Or if you are visiting someone else, you're in a cafe, a hotel ...

<comment><USER9> Or your home is in a hotel but you walk down to the cafe ... should you renumber ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Something I never understood is why people choose 192.168.1.1 for private networks.

Being all the other factors equal, isn't 10.1.1.1 easier to type and more "aesthetically pleasant"?

<comment><USER8> > Something I never understood is why people choose 192.168.1.1 for private > networks

While interviewing someone for an entry-level job, I told the interviewee that there was a network using 10.0/16 (a 16-bit subnet mask, or more popularly 10.0.x.x). He corrected me and said that 10.0.0.0 networks should have an 8 bit subnet mask (10.x.x.x). On one hand, I definitely liked that he was willing to challenge me, even during an interview, and that he knew the spec (RFC 1918 does assign an 8-bit mask to the 10. private network). On the other hand, I wasn't sure he was technically correct that a 16-bit mask was wrong, even if 8-bits was 'correct', and I couldn't see what negative consequence the 16-bit subnet had - his thinking seemed a bit rigid. Anyway, maybe there are other purists who believe smaller networks should use 192.168/16, or maybe they instinctively use it because the RFC gives it the smaller network allocation. Or maybe they know something that I don't.

> isn't 10.1.1.1 easier to type and more "aesthetically pleasant"?

And it's much easier for non-technical people to understand and to remember without error. In fact, I recommend something even easier, such as 10.9.8.x. For people supporting the non-technical, those little details can save hours, even a day. I've seen cases where after hours of frustration, the support tech discovers that the user typed in something like 129.168, or 192.16.8. Great support reps are great humanitarians, able to handle those situations with grace, without humiliating the poor user, and without heavy drinking.

EDIT: clarifying edit

<comment><USER11> 10/8 is a class A range (high order bit = 0), but CIDR says that you can separately describe which bits are for the network. Unless this interview was conducted more than 20 years ago I'd say your interviewer was mistaken.

<comment><USER8> > I'd say your interviewer was mistaken

Is that what you meant to say? The interviewer (me) thought that 10.0/16 was fine, which I think agrees with your analysis. The interviewee said only 10/8 was correct.

(Re-reading my GP comment I realize that my role might have been ambiguous, so I've clarified it.)

<comment><USER12> If you said 10/24, I'd immediately think 10.0.0.0/24\. 10/8 would certainly be valid. 10.0/16 is too.

I remember when CIDR came around back in the 90's. Man people were pissed off when you would call out a 'Class A/B/C/D/E' block. I prefer to always be specific when writing my CIDR. I understand when people don't do it.

Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send.

<comment><USER8> Yes, Postel's advice applies to many things.

I think there is some misunderstanding. The question wasn't the notation but the subnetting. See the story in the GGP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Up until 4 years ago, I used to always allocate addresses specifically on bit boundaries. I did this mainly for one reason - aligning the bytes and trying not to waste CPU cycles.

For example, in a /24 network: 0-15 - network equipment 16-31 - some special gear 32-63 - mail servers or something like that 64-127 - split it up and align more things 128-191... you get the point.

... The ultimate goal was to hit everything on a bit boundary so the CPU wouldn't work so hard

These days, CPU power is so prominent, it doesn't matter. DHCP is probably the way to go.

IPv6 is here. We have the opportunity to really make CPU's fast again with IPv6!

<comment><USER13> What's a "bit boundary" in this context? And how does you subclassing scheme prevent wasted CPU cycles. at all?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish there was a netblock reserved for packets that never leave a physical (or virtual) host, that could be used for the default internal network for things like Docker. In my case, Docker defaulted to 172.17.0.0/16, which happened to conflict with one of the IP ranges for my wing of the building at work.

I've resorted to using RFC 5737 (test-net-1 through 3) IP ranges for this purpose, even though that isn't what they are designed for.

<comment><USER15> Uuh, 127.0.0.1 never leaves the physical machine. It's also a full subnet, so 127.0.0.254 would work as well.

Dockers main usecase just isn't purely internal, do using that ip range wouldn't make any sense

<comment><USER15> Too late to edit my message, so I'll use a response instead. Docker rebinds the 127 network to each container, so you cant - by default - <USER2> through these IP Addresses.

An easy fix could be to just let the container use the hosts network stack (so, not network type: bridge). After that, you can bind the daemons to specific IP Addresses in the subnet - i.e. 127.0.0.2:3306 DB1 127.0.0.3:3306 DB2 and they'll be able to communicate directly.

But as mentioned before: this is not the primary usecase for docker, so its cumbersome to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I still learned about net classes, subnetting and supernetting in 2003, to me it was how networks worked till a few yeara ago :D

<comment><USER8> What changed a few years ago? IPv6?

<comment><USER16> I read about classless internet domain routing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I gotta try out the 127.0.0.x thing at the end of the article. I never knew the range was so large!

<comment><USER18> It's actually 127.x.x.x, a whole class A.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ugh, not another site that blocks pinch to zoom gestures on mobile. It doesn't make sense to me why so many (quite popular) sites care so little about enabling their users to comfortably read their content. The solution, for now, is to use Safari since it started ignoring that setting, but unfortunately Chrome still allows it for some reason.</comment>


9/11 conspiracy gets support from physicists study - <AUTHOR> http://www.wnd.com/2016/08/911-conspiracy-gets-support-from-physicists-study/ <comment><USER2> 3 of the 4 engineers who worked on this are well known 9/11 truthers, I assume the 4th is just less well known.

If this was studied and written by people unaffiliated with the 9/11 truthers it may be worth a read but essentially all that has happened is these guys have managed to get their conspiracy theory printed in a respected(?) journal. There is certainly no new information being provided.</comment>


Making an open source, privacy-conscious alternative to Google Analytics - <AUTHOR> https://www.sourcesort.com/interview/making-an-open-source-privacy-conscious-alternative-to-google-analytics <comment><USER2> I recently switched to [https://www.goatcounter.com/](https://www.goatcounter.com/), which is also open source and privacy-conscious, and I've been very happy with it. Even though I'm on the free tier, the developer has been incredibly responsive to all the issues I've raised.</comment>


Media blog Techdirt fights for its life in frivolous lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/12/media-blog-techdirt-fights-for-its-life-in-frivolous-lawsuit/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Did Ayyadurai really invent email? He claims to have created the idea — literally calling his product EMAIL — as a teenager in New Jersey in 1980. However, as this detailed site explains, there have been a number of versions of email since the early days of the internet and ARPANET. Queen Elizabeth II of England sent her first email in 1976 and Jimmy Carter used email that same year for internal communications. In short, the claim is ridiculous."</comment>


Using a Custom Domain with Firebase Hosting - <AUTHOR> http://jsdiaries.com/2018/01/07/how-to-use-firebase-to-host-your-web-application-using-a-custom-domain/ <comment><USER2> I thought this would be an interesting article then about 5 seconds after loading the page a giant advertisement took over the page. So I closed the tab. Oh well.</comment>


Ask HN: Good Resources on Voice Encryption? - <AUTHOR> Any textbooks, very technical stuff is recommended. Both, VoIP and Cellular networks. <comment><USER2> GSM is this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A5/1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A5/1) (over the AMR codec). The 3GPP docs are generally available if you want to get _very, very_ technical about the mobile network.

Generally any combination of a constant-bitrate low-latency voice codec with a cipher in XOR stream mode should work. If the codec does "comfort noise" you should disable that to keep the bitrate constant during silence.

<comment><USER3> Is it wise to recommend GSM's encryption today, given that it has been completely and definitively broken?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The mumble protocol is a nicely documented example for using encrypted Opus (OCB-AES128) over UDP: [http://mumble- protocol.readthedocs.io/en/latest/voice_data.h...](http://mumble- protocol.readthedocs.io/en/latest/voice_data.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Look at some of the narrow band radio standards. P25 standards are not freely available, but DMR standards can be freely downloaded from ETSI [1]. P25 with 56-bit DES is well and truly broken, but I gather 256-bit AES is still okay. Also look at the signal protocol?

[1] [https://www.etsi.org/technologies/mobile- radio](https://www.etsi.org/technologies/mobile-radio)

</comment><comment><USER6> What exactly are the challenges of voice encryption over say text encryption? Just the bandwidth of data, or establishing trust?

<comment><USER7> Voice compression interacts unfavourably with general-purpose encryption because one can still infer periods of silence and distinguish low-complexity sounds from high-compexity ones. A rolling "r" compresses badly, a long featureless vowel compresses well. That way you can infer all kinds of information about whats being said, who is saying it, language, reaction, pauses, etc.

So for voice encryption, you need to obscure all that through artificial jitter and noise, and lack of compression in strategic places. It is a complex topic and I'm not sure the science is settled beyond "skipping compression helps".

<comment> t-writescode With good encryption, a file full of zeros should be indistinguishable from a file full of data.

There is something to be said about the volume of data being sent during silence; but, uncompressed audio shouldn't have that problem; and, for audio that does, there could be filler data to maintain a given bitrate across the line.

<comment><USER7> But the point of compression is, you wouldn't transmit a bunch of zeroes. You would transmit "here go 285 zeroes" or "here go 403ms silence". Which is far less data than the equivalent time in non-silence.

Really transmitting the zeroes as they are is just transmitting uncompressed PCM, which is the trivial solution. Adding filler is undoing most of the compression. The hard part is to add just enough filler, jitter and confusion for an attacker to be sufficiently blinded while maintaining an acceptable compression ratio.

<comment><USER8> Basically all audio codecs meant for real time communication are built to maintain constant but rate — because even though it is nice to save a few bits occasionally when you can, you can't use present silence to encode future speech (you haven't heard it yet...);

So, no. The filler is part of the protocol and is not undoing any of the PCM compression; silence would let you compress the stream more than the plain voice codec would - and THAT would interact with encryption. But that's quite unusual for real time systems.

<comment><USER7> Not really. Silence is encoded with silence frames containing just a length of silence marker in most VoIP protocols. On the receiving end, silence frames are then filled with "comfort noise". If you pay attention and have a crappy phone you can hear this, because the comfort noise generator will produce noticably different "silence".

Yes, one often does CBR, but even there, variable difficulty of compression often produces variable jitter, which can then be used to infer information about the plaintext stream. There are constant runtime CBR codecs, but one has to take care to use them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.gstatic.com/duo/papers/duo_e2ee.pdf](https://www.gstatic.com/duo/papers/duo_e2ee.pdf) is a paper on video encryption by duo. It is pretty good. I assume the audio encryption problem is only a subset of this problem.

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember being on the old Sprint CDMA network, you could dial ##VPON# and it would encrypt your connection to the tower[1] but was disabled by default. Dunno if that still works (I no longer live in the US, and EVDO isn't a thing anymore).

I'm fairly certain Cell networks are not encrypted at all, by default. Or at least it's disabled completely by the towers in Afghanistan. :whistling:

[1] [https://bestcellular.com/dial-codes/](https://bestcellular.com/dial- codes/)

<comment><USER11> > I'm fairly certain Cell networks are not encrypted at all, by default. Or at > least it's disabled completely by the towers in Afghanistan. :whistling:

This is patently false, while some networks did allow no encryption (A0 on GSM for example), pretty much everything on UMTS/LTE is encrypted at least to the tower.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, not sure how we flew around and listened to cell conversations in realtime. Dunno if we just had the keys, encryption was disabled or the device was operating as a MITM tower.

<comment><USER12> Not to be a jerk, but this seems like a really inappropriate venue to discuss operational details like this. Especially capabilities/vulnerabilities that, if they do exist, would be classified and concerning a location where the US still conducts military operations.

<comment><USER13> The techniques are not classified, although LE fought tooth and nails to keep details out of court cases for years. IMO, the state doesn't have the right to even keep it non-public.

<comment><USER12> I recommend looking up Executive Order 13526 and the differences between a state's ability to classify information vs. the Federal government's. Also recommend taking a look at the elements for doing so. Lastly, I would also take a look at SF-312 and the commitment those with access to classified information make. Outside of that, I'm not going to go into this further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't have anything specific.

You could look for resources that cover digital HAM radio operation. They should have some stuff about the basics of voice encryption. Most of it is not secure until you get to high-end stuff like Motorola AES 256. Some of this 'encryption' is just privacy codes (cell networks are not encrypted but use digital privacy codes I think).

Once you digitize the voice, then it should be pretty much regular encryption.

<comment><USER15> This is the opposite of what they should do. Encryption is verboten on amateur radio.

<comment><USER14> Like I said, most of it is not true encryption but privacy codes or digital talk group settings. Encryption does happen on amatuer radio even though it's supposed to be illegal. I'm not recommending they use encryption in this fashion, but that there are some resources out there which describes how it works.

[https://www.amateurradio.com/encryption-is-already-legal- its...](https://www.amateurradio.com/encryption-is-already-legal-its-the- intention-thats-not/)

<comment><USER16> The author of this article does not know what encryption is. He's mad that proprietary audio codecs can be used on amateur radio bands, but the codecs are documented in the patent applications (since expired) so no encryption is occurring. It's like not knowing that you need an MP3 player to listen to MP3s. That's not encryption, that's not having an MP3 player.

<comment><USER17> In the context of HAM radio transmissions, encryption includes voice scrambling methods that we wouldn't nowadays consider secure encryption. There used to be a lot of analogue voice scramblers and voice inversion tools. I think you can still buy them. Generally, there is a prohibition against obscuring transmissions on HAM radio. (Or at least I think so, I'm not a HAM operator myself.)

<comment><USER14> Yep. There are some manufacturers that offer AES 256 encryption capable encryption too. I think that's still generally secure.

<comment><USER14> Why is this downvoted? Kenwood is one of the manufactures that has AES 256 radios capable of transmitting in the ham bands. NIST still considers AES 256 secure.

<comment><USER18> Not sure why it was being downvoted, but saying "AES 256" is secure is both true and meaningless. It's a low level building block of cryptosystems, and there are countless examples of AES based systems being compromised because the system built around it had flaws.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I guess the algorithm is secure but how it's implemented may not be. I think the NSA was involved with at least some radio manufacturers implementation, so there could be a backdoor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would suggest a basic how-to on setting up SRTP/SIPS for e.g. an Asterisk setup - it's not overly complicated, based on my own experience running a community PBX many years ago.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you want to start at the very beginning, look into SIGSALY.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGSALY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGSALY)</comment>


Why Emacs keys are painful (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html <comment><USER2> The first thing i do on any new system is to rebind Caps_Lock to be a duplicate L_Ctrl.

this solves 90% of my ergo issues/pinkie pain, and not just for emacs use.

<comment><USER3> After using a Mac for a while, I realize how easy the cmd key combinations are to press. They are easier than the ctrl key combinations.

I think it would be useful for Emacs to swap cmd and ctrl.

<comment><USER4> Cmd key combinations are one of the things that keep me coming back to macOS. Far more ergonomic than ctrl and just requires you to move your thumb (which typically would hover over cmd key anyway). It's one of those things Apple did right back in the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you love emacs's functionality and prefer vim's key bindings, you may find [http://spacemacs.org/](http://spacemacs.org/) useful. Its org-mode support is amazing.

<comment><USER6> Performance issues of emacs (made much worse by many layers of plugins), combined with vim's counterintuitive bimodality, originally meant to compensate for slow terminals? Thanks but no thanks; for me, Spacemacs took the worst from two editors. I love the eye candy, though (when it works); however, it's not enough to compensate said curious choice.

<comment><USER7> I rarely see any performance issues, even when running spacemacs over ssh. The only issue I have is start-up time and there are ways to speed that up.

<comment><USER8> I run it as a daemon that is managed by systemd. The startup time is the time it takes for my window manager to create a new window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Emacs actually comes with a builting Emacs Aptitude Test. Do you remap your keyboard or the Emacs keybindings before the chords and sequences it comes with by default have wreaked havoc with your hands? If you do not do anything to make Emacs more convenient for yourself, you may not have the prerequisite aptitude to use it productive."

Thus spoke Erik Naggum, who, IIRC, didn't always agree otherwise with Xah Lee back in the glory days of comp.emacs.

</comment><comment><USER10> I used to think the term "emacs pinky" was a joke, until I had the opportunity to use it full-time. Within a few weeks, my pinky started to hurt, and pressing the Ctrl-key was especially painful. Not unbearable, but still, pretty annoying.

Then I found out how to turn CAPS LOCK into an additional Ctrl, and ever since it has been one of the first things I do on a new computer. I only ever used CAPS LOCK by accident, anyway, so it's a double win.

</comment><comment><USER11> In addition to the recommended CapsLock ⇒ LCtrl rebinding done on the OS level, there are also several things you can do within Emacs to edit and navigate comfortably.

For example, you can add this to your ~/.emacs:

        (global-set-key [f8] 'view-mode)

This lets you quickly enable and disable view-mode, using F8. In view-mode, you can use SPACE and BACKSPACE for scrolling, which is useful for reading longer documents and files.

With a Dvorak keyboard, navigation is also more convenient, since for example C-n and C-p are at the respective locations of C-l and C-r on US keyboards, so that both hands are regularly used and not used.

Other than that, I recommend to also use search for navigation, and to occasionally read and re-read the first chapters of the Emacs manual: There are many useful commands that can help a lot if you know them and their prefix arguments.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the suggestion to use view-mode. I bound a quick double-tap of vv.

        (use-package key-chord
          :init
          (key-chord-mode 1)
          ;; (key-chord-define-global "jj" #'avy-goto-word-or-subword-1)
          (key-chord-define-global "vv" #'view-mode)
          :custom (key-chord-one-key-delay 0.3))

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The point about central Alt vs corner Ctrl is important, and it's unbelievable how Windows and Linux have messed this up.

A primary modifier right beside the space bar is incredible because the thumb is the strongest digit, whereas the pinky is the weakest (on the hands)―and shares a tendon with the ring finger.

It's doubly great with a big bottom row like on MS Natural keyboards: you just mash these big blobs which are right under your thumbs, instead of aiming for minuscule keys in the corners with your most pathetic fingers.

Macs have Cmd as the primary modifier, located on both sides right beside the space bar. Apps use Cmd for shortcuts―while Alt and Win keys aren't free to remap for most programs. So Mac users had this experience for decades now, and in the meantime afaik Windows and Linux haven't even attempted to correct the mistake.

(A bit ironic how MS keyboards' layout works best on a Mac.)

</comment><comment><USER14> For Ctrl, I recommend pressing it with the knuckle of your little finger. There's a photo of the technique here, about halfway down: [http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_pinky.html](http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_pinky.html)

The main advantage of this over rebinding Caps Lock: it keeps the meta keys symmetrical, so you don't have to faff about rebinding Enter, or wonder about how you're going to solve the issue of hitting Ctrl with your right hand.

(Lee recommends not doing this, citing unspecified issues with the little finger. For whatever it's worth, probably not much in the face of that kind of argument, I've been doing this for about ten years now and haven't noticed any problems. I'm afraid you're just going to have to make your own decision here.)

<comment><USER15> On some desktop keyboards (like mine) it's also possible to press each control key with the metacarpal phalangeal joint on the respective hand- that's the bit of bone and sinew at the base of the pinky finger [1]. Or, you can always move your palm to the side and hit CTRL with your thumb, but that means your fingers must leavet he home row.

I often use my thumb to press Ctrl+E/D to scroll up/down in vim.

_____________

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacarpal_bones#/media/File:M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacarpal_bones#/media/File:Metacarpus_\(left_hand\)_dorsal_view.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has anyone seen any interesting keyboard-plus-multitouch hybridization? For illustration, say left hand on kbd and right on a graphics tablet? Or laptop touchpad thumb-based modifier keys? Or, less likely, interesting things to do when keycaps are touchpads?

Last year I was working on optical finger tracking to get 3D positions and entire keyboard as a multitouch surface. It's not clear I want to continue banging on it this year. So I'm fishing for an "oh, _that 's_ a neat idea... ok, yes, I _do_ want _that_ " motivating instance.

</comment><comment><USER17> I got two different issues with my hand (RSI and Wrist pain) after coding for 7 years and that was when I switched to VIM keybinding pretty much everywhere even in my web browser (Vimium). I'm also using Kinesis keyboard with a lot of mappings to have all modifier keys under my thumbs.

It is one of those things like smoking! You always hear it is bad for you and you always think it only happens to others and never happens to you.

That is my advice to everyone now. Either don't do touch typing, or you should use a better keyboard layout and VIM keybinding to avoid stretching too much.

</comment><comment><USER18> Tagged as 2007 but the article date says "Last updated: 2018-12-18."</comment>


Justice.js – A performance metric bar with a streaming FPS graph - <AUTHOR> http://okor.github.io/justice/

<comment><USER2> Wow looks pretty slick. It'd be cool if you put some sample pages together so one can actually see the graph working. It's pretty steady for the simple usage page right now.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there sites where you can partner with others on ideas? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone know of sites out there that allow anyone to bounce ideas around and partner with others interested in pursuing the concept as a startup?  How can a non-hacker find a hacker? <comment><USER2> <http://www.cofoundr.com/user/login>

Cofoundr was started a few years ago by a Google engineer.

My personal experience is that I've met the people I've partnered with on start-ups/projects in three places:

      1. Local Entrepreneurs' Club (MIT e-club)
      2. IRC/Mailing list/Other online community (like lj/fb)
      3. Through personal recommendations from mutual friends

If you're not already attending meetings of a local Entrepreneurs' Club, I strongly recommend it. It's a great place to learn the model of how a start-up works - how do you make money, how do you build a brand, how do you improve your pitch, how does funding work, etc. It's like a real time HN. The MIT e-club lets people pitch their start-up ideas at weekly meetings where the rest of the club gives feedback.

Then, I would suggest you think about what technology will drive your start-up and what community it will focus on serving. By hanging out in the relevant places on line associated with the technology and community you're targeting you'll quickly be able to identify local experts. You can approach them to partner with you or to recommend someone who might want to. Those experts will be in a good position to help you evaluate potential partners.

If you are technical enough to build a demo and a good pitch for your start-up and plan to take angel funding, you can ask the investor to hook you up with someone. Investors tend to be locally well connected and know technical people with start-up experience who have had past successes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would also like a similar service.

If anyone wants to bounce ideas off me, I'm game :)

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://collabfinder.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> partnerup.com</comment>


The Wellness Warrior, Jess Ainscough, Has Passed Away - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/02/27/the-wellness-warrior-jess-ainscough-has-passed-away/

<comment><USER2> Just read the Wikipedia entry for Gerson therapy. It is one of the most idiotic things I have ever read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Snake oil sells almost as much as sex does, unfortunately.</comment></comment>


Why There Are So Few Women in Tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2010/tc2010119_348456.htm

<comment><USER2> Why Are There So Many Articles on Why There Are So Few Women in Tech?

Okay, I'm being facetious. But as a female entrepreneur and founder of a growing tech startup, I would much rather read about the women who ARE building tech companies than endless articles on the women who aren't (i.e. articles about why so many women don't work in tech or start tech companies, etc).

That's not to say such articles don't make some relevant points. But are they really helping or hindering the situation? Which kind of article would inspire more women to get into tech... another article lamenting the lack of women... or an inspiring article profiling some of the women who have, or are, building wonderful tech companies?

I know which kind fires me up (and of course I get inspired by ALL entrepreneurs - men and women).

</comment><comment><USER3> The better question is, why do tech writers not read each other's work to realize this subject with this angle is done to death? I mean, this writer seemingly has some personal insight, but still doesn't really say anything that hasn't been said before. Not only that, but a lot of this stuff doesn't appear to apply to women in particular anyway. Like, needing confidence to succeed in business isn't exactly a problem that's soaked in estrogen.

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps because a lower percentage of women are inherently interested in technology than men? Why is this never considered??

Is it because the author is often biased since they are usually female? It almost seems like she assumes that because SHE is interested in technology that there MUST be women that are also interested in technology at an equal rate as men are.</comment>


Building a Startup Is Still Hard - <AUTHOR> http://jeffreylu.tumblr.com/post/13483930630/building-a-startup-is-still-hard <comment><USER2> I accidentally tweeted it. I didn't notice that the tweet button was checked as I published it. No one follows that blog except for a few close friends.

</comment><comment><USER3> He's honest, I give you that. I wouldn't have written about something like that so candidly - I tried, and deleted many a drafts</comment>


Melancholy of obsolete futures: on Soviet Brutalism - <AUTHOR> https://thecritic.co.uk/melancholy-of-obsolete-futures/ <comment><USER2> My issue with Brutalism is that it seems to evoke a sense of helplessness of the individual against the sheer size of the State. No wonder it was so popular in totalitarian regimes.

I often think of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. A city literally built in the middle of nowhere and with virtually no sidewalks, making it incredibly costly for individuals to reach it and organize themselves to protest against the government. Its streets _literally have no name_ ⁰. Imagine living on SHS W2 or SEN L1!

I was raised to love Oscar Niemeyer, but nowadays I can't help wishing he chose to lend his beautiful creativity to something other than architecture.

__________

0\. [https://www.quora.com/How-do-people-living-in-Brasilia- refer...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-people-living-in-Brasilia-refer-to- their-city-streets)

<comment><USER3> > My issue with Brutalism is that it seems to evoke a sense of helplessness of > the individual against the sheer size of the State. No wonder it was so > popular in totalitarian regimes.

You have this backwards. Brutalism was popular in the Soviet Union because it is austere, symbolizing equality and utilitarianism. Back in the early days, brutalism was actually seen as progressive. It's association with totalitarianism is a result of western propaganda and the failures of the soviet bureaucracy.

> I often think of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. A city literally built in > the middle of nowhere and with virtually no sidewalks, making it incredibly > costly for individuals to reach it and organize themselves to protest > against the government. Its streets literally have no name⁰. Imagine living > on SHS W2 or SEN L1!

Basically none of this is related to brutalism. What you are describing is a failed attempt at new urbansim. Brasilia is divided into "superblocks", which are essentially self-contained communities with all required services in the center. This design was similar to soviet urban planning at the time, though the superblocks were much bigger (and less successful) in Brasilia. This design ultimately resulted in large boulevards and car centric transportation, defeating its initial goals

<comment><USER2> > ou have this backwards. Brutalism was popular in the Soviet Union because it > is austere, symbolizing equality and utilitarianism.

I don't disagree it's purported to be egalitarian, but to me that's just a codeword for suppressing individual expression as I've said elsewhere.

And utilitarianism at the expense of beauty makes for terribly sad creations.

I'm on Roger Scruton's side on this one. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc)

<comment><USER4> Beauty is in the eye of the beholder though.

Some people might say that various religious monuments remind them of how that religion suppresses individual expression. On the other hand, the same might be said about certain architecture in say Japan, that it evokes a sense of collectivism. Yet some people will find that beautiful while others might find it stifling.

I would guess that the vast majority of people have never heard of "Brutalism", and if you were to show them examples there would be a wide range of responses. How many people could say whether something was influenced more by Brutalism vs Modernism vs Minimalism?

Take the Guggenheim. It was not well received when first revealed, but is now considered a prime example of Modernism, and even Brutalism, though I expect many everyday people would be still divided on whether it's beautiful or not.

Beauty is subjective and multidimensional, so when you say " utilitarianism at the expense of beauty", what I hear is "utilitarianism at the expense of a particular aesthetic of my preference."

An example that many people would be familiar with is IKEA. Yes, some people do find the Modernism of IKEA to be sad or lifeless, but others find pleasure in the simplicity and clever functionality.

I haven't even discussed how cultural and historical contexts influence these perceptions, and how that will differ depending on the audience. I think this plays a significant role in coloring our judgments of Brutalism.

Anyway, my point is just that it's not so simple, people define and find beauty in many different ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always hated brutalism, but one look at green brutalism, which intersperses brutalist architecture with trees, foliage, plants and overgrowth and I fell in love.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=green+brutalism](https://www.google.com/search?q=green+brutalism)

The greenery makes it look more like a mountain and less like a building. It tempers the coldness and abstraction of brutalism with the beauty of the natural environment.

<comment><USER6> I can't help but think long term it is a ton of added maintenance costs as pretty as it may look in the moment. Ivy clinging to your stucco walls is not a good thing iconic as the look may be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It can make sense to remove art from its context, but romanticizing Soviet underground stations should always involve some humility to the sacrifice involved. Those stations cost phenomenal amounts at a time when much of the population was starving. The laborers that built them were pushed mercilessly, suffered terribly, and many died. To anyone who understands how those structures came to be they must be seen as monuments to human folly and misery.

<comment><USER8> This is equivalent to saying "We need to always mention that americans abused and raped black slaves when US constitution was written, so we should never talk about it without talking about slavery."

It's trite, humiliating and shows your lack of knowlege beyond what is, essentially, western propaganda tropes. Most of those weren't built by starving people and it's humiliating to the amazing architects and builders of these buildings to nullify their achievements like this. Please don't post these insulting messages unless your knowledge of history and sorrounding context of the achievements actually goes beyond single page textbook of a UK/US.

<comment><USER9> > This is equivalent to saying "We need to always mention that americans > abused and raped black slaves when US constitution was written, so we should > never talk about it without talking about slavery."

So... you think you don't have too?

<comment><USER10> We shouldn't have to, no. Ask yourself why you think it should be _necessary_ to always explicitly talk about slavery whenever we discuss the US constitution.

Think about it this way: you don't rehash the rules of football (or "soccer", if you're from the US) every time you talk about a match. You don't go into the history of how those rules came to be what they are now. It's all part of the context and you only revisit that context when there's a reason to do so.

The relationship of slavery and the US constitution _should_ be part of the context _everyone_ is aware of. That means it should be part of education everyone receives. Thinking that it needs explicit mention in every discussion of the constitution implies a belief that most people aren't aware of the context, and that is a problem that needs a proper solution.

<comment><USER11> > The relationship of slavery and the US constitution should be part of the > context everyone is aware of. That means it should be part of education > everyone receives.

Why should someone in for instance Brazil know of these details of the USA history? The context for the Brazilian constitutions is part of the education everyone receives here in Brazil, but I don't recall learning anything about the USA constitution in school. Don't forget that HN has an international audience.

<comment><USER10> That's a very interesting question! I think it shifts the goalposts a bit from what I've originally replied to, but I say that as a good thing, because it makes the discussion even more interesting and it allows me to better explain what I believe.

I believe that we should live in a society with much better education. An essential ingredient of that education -- _much_ more important than the mere learning of facts -- is the understanding of how to approach a discussion, how to think logically, how to question things, etc. A crucial element of that "essential ingredient" is the understanding of the importance of context and of being informed.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that someone in Brazil should be taught, as part of their standard education, about the US constitution. But that puts the onus on them to get informed about the topic of the discussion before jumping into a discussion of it. And when participating in such a discussion, they should also probably indicate that they might not have the same understanding of the context that everyone else might have.

In short, I believe that we should all receive the education that teaches us not only the relevant context of the things we are expected to be dealing with in the future, but also that it's our responsibility to be informed when participating in discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently learned that the word brutalism comes not from the imposing stature of the structures but from the French term for raw concrete: béton brut.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ton_brut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ton_brut)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's an odd title; most of the article talks about books that are not focused on Brutalism, but on a range of styles of which brutalism appears to make up a limited part.

E.g. it references "Imagine Moscow", but Stalin forcefully rejected Le Corbusier twice, and Moscow was never re-imagined in a brutalist manner in Moscow, but possibly in Brasilia (Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse[1] was inspired by his plans for Moscow, and Brasilia was designed to incorporate aspects of Ville Radieuse). I'm sure there are interesting examples of brutalism in Moscow (though most of the brutalism in Russia are down to Khrushchyovka [2]), but they postdates the era the book is about, and the most prominent design ideas for Moscow at the time were not brutalist.

"Consumer Culture Landscapes in Socialist Yugoslavia" seems to focus on the work of Zivorad Jankovic, much of which isn't brutalist either.

Lastly it references "Soviet Metro Stations", but most of them are not brutalist at all - certainly not the most famous examples.

If it wasn't for numerous references to brutalism in the text, I'd have assumed this was an editor messing around, but I'm not convinced the author of this piece knows what brutalism is. The books might well be interesting, though, but when the article tries to shoehorn them into a box they don't appear to fit in, it makes it hard to tell. It'd be nice if the author tried harder to describe the books in more detail rather than try to invent his own narrative around it.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER14> Article has a weird claim about Kyiv metro and decommunisation. Kyiv metro stations are full of advertising eysores, that's true, but that predated decomunnisation laws by few decades. Actual decommunisation mostly affected station names (one can't have anything named after Lenin or his boys in Kyiv), removal of occasional scicle-and-hammer here and there and few major replacements. In some places communism-related imagenary was replaced with something more neutral and matching the style of the station, in others removed completely [0].

[0] [http://www.berlogos.ru/article/dekommunizatsiya-kievskogo- me...](http://www.berlogos.ru/article/dekommunizatsiya-kievskogo- metropolitena/)

</comment><comment><USER15> For a sneak peek into some of the most unexpectedly fascinating architecture in the Soviet Union (some brutalist, some very much not so), don't miss Soviet Bus Stops: [http://herwigphoto.com/soviet-bus- stops/](http://herwigphoto.com/soviet-bus-stops/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Best description I've come across of architecture like this is 'ego driven utopia'...

</comment><comment><USER17> Hardest thread to read without the article in HN history</comment>