University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department - <AUTHOR> http://www.change.org/petitions/dean-abernathy-college-of-engineering-university-of-florida-do-not-destroy-the-cise-department

<comment><USER3> I graduated from UF in 2007 and have in no way since kept up with departmental politics, but as of then, CISE was a bit of a Frankenstein creature. As an undergraduate, if you were looking for a computing-related degree, you had five possible majors to choose from:

* Computer Science (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; CISE Department)

* Computer Engineering with Software Emphasis (College of Engineering; CISE Department)

* Computer Engineering with Hardware Emphasis (College of Engineering; ECE Department)

* Electrical Engineering (College of Engineering; ECE Department)

* Computer Information Sciences (College of Business; CISE Department).

So basically, the CISE department was answerable to three different colleges, and some of those colleges offered very-closely-related degrees that weren't in the CISE department.

As for myself, I started out in Computer Engineering with Software Emphasis. I later switched to Computer Science. The reason for this change was that I wanted to double in Mathematics, which belongs to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Having a double major is a lot easier when both majors are in the same college, because you then don't have to worry about satisfying conflicting and redundant gen. ed. requirements.

So, as a CISE alumnus, I have a vested interest in maintaining the reputation of that department, and this reorganization sounds likely to damage it. However, the status quo (as of 2007) is a mess, and this change might overall be for the better.

<comment><USER4> I'm also a 2007 alum, and I steered clear of CS as an undergraduate because of the confusing organization you describe above. If that organization wasn't so confusing, I would have tried CS out (vs. the econ BA I hold right now and the MSCS I'm working on now).

The department may have problems, but shutting down research throws the baby out with the bathwater. Degree consolidation would go a long way to improving student enrollment.

<comment><USER3> It's not obvious that they're actually "shutting down" any research, though. They seem just to be moving it under the aegis of other departments.

<comment><AUTHOR> All faculty members that remain in CISE will have to stop their research program and focus only on teaching. About 50% of the faculty will be able to continue their research in other departments.

They will also be stopping all departmental TA support.

The proposal is here: [https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwzZsds2XcGnMWFpcnFiNEhvQkk/...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwzZsds2XcGnMWFpcnFiNEhvQkk/edit?pli=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I graduated from UF in 2009, with degrees in both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. UF was running into huge budget issues, which they mostly took out on Liberal Arts. At the time, the Computer Science department was under Liberal Arts and Sciences, not engineering.

The department chair at the time, Sartaj Sahni, responded by cutting teaching funding and letting some of the best teachers go. UF had a few teachers without PhDs, which reduces a university's ranking in US News & World Report. Of course, these teachers were the ones that REALLY cared about teaching, since they didn't have research distractions. These teachers were replaced with postdocs who lack the experience needed to teach at a major institution.

I don't know how you can have a solid program if you slash your best teachers to save research, then slash your research to save teaching. Doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER6> Letting go of your best teachers sounds like a brutally flawed decision. The _only_ reason I am now getting back into learning programming after a 8 year hiatus, is because of how great my untenured lecturer was in teaching us and inspiring us in the ways of C programming.

If not for him, there would be far fewer students from my school who would have stuck with programming. In 2004, we made a facebook group called "Everything I know about C I learned from [insert guy's name]". From what I can tell, the number of former students in this group keeps growing every year. He is beloved by all his current and former students, and I would vehemently protest to the school/department if he ever got cut prematurely for any reason.

<comment><USER7> If you're talking about Dave, he did get cut prematurely.

<comment><USER8> What the hell happened? He was the only one that cared.

<comment><USER9> Fired since he didn't have a PhD

<comment><USER10> I graduated in 2004 and did NOT like Dave. Too much ego. He cared more about people listening to him talk than learning the material. I know he was loved by others, and am sorry he lost his job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a 2004 graduate of UF (ECE, not CISE) this news worries me. Can anymore more familiar with the situation explain whether or not this more about consolidating ECE/CISE, or if this is just a simple gutting of the computer science at UF.

Many schools suffer the issue of CS being extra-engineering, and then having a "computer engineering" department within engineering, and you end up with quite a bit of duplication. I'm hoping that this is simply part of a consolidation process.

<comment><USER12> Yep. University of Calgary went the opposite route a few years back and shut down the computer engineering degree stream. I'm actually not sure what the effects of that were, I'll have to ask my coworkers (some of whom are graduates of that degree).

<comment><USER13> Are you sure that is what OP is talking about?

U of Calgary still has a software engineering program within engineering, which I think is the situation OP is talking about.

With that said I'm in the computer science program and it is still very computer sciencey so I think we've avoided the duplication.

<comment><USER12> Yes, the software eng program is still around. There is quite a bit of overlap with comp sci though - unless you're taking an honours degree there will be a number of software eng students in most of your classes (networking, operating systems, etc.)

I think the fate of computer eng was to have it split between computer science and EE. I'll have to ask coworkers at lunch.

Have we met? I'm Andrew Helwer. The guy that runs Problem Solving Club.

<comment><USER13> That likely is the case, I never do know what programs most of my classmates are in.

We haven't meet but I have heard of you. Last semester a friend in discrete mathematics from bio-info mentioned your problem solving club.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _The fertile environment for software tech companies in Gainesville and Florida as a whole will be severely damaged._

Is Gainesville really that fertile a ground for software startups? Moreover, will reducing research funding at University of Florida necessarily make the existing environment for startups worse? For example, what if the savings are invested into a greater emphasis on teaching?

<comment><USER4> _Is Gainesville really that fertile a ground for software startups? Moreover, will reducing research funding at University of Florida necessarily make the existing environment for startups worse?_

UF has a very strong entrepreneurial community. Grooveshark[0] and Hype Machine[1] were both founded by Gator alums.

I can imagine that reduced research --> lower quality RA opportunities --> reduced interest from undergrads, thus shrinking the number of undergrads interested in CS or tech startups.

[0]<http://grooveshark.com/>

[1]<http://www.hypem.com>

<comment><USER15> I sure wouldn't say fertile, but there's a growing bit of support there for tech startups. UF is generally the big engineering school in Florida, though USF (Tampa) and UCF (Orlando) have gained on it. They're big state schools grinding out undergrads, but it gets a lot harder if you lose all your grad students.

<http://innovationgainesville.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this the same University of Florida that did this: Give a 6 year 24 million contract to a coach of a so called amateur sports team ? <http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4374311> Is this the same UF that gets a cut of SEC 2.25 billion dollar contract ? [http://m.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2008/08/2008...](http://m.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2008/08/20080825/This- Weeks-News/ESPN-Pays-$225B-For-SEC-Rights.aspx)? Yes I think it is. Hmmm I wonder why they have nothing left for cs education.

<comment><USER17> Affiliated? Yes. Two separate entities though. They do not receive any funding from the University. In fact the UAA has made a profit consistently for quite a while and has returned $6-8 million/year to the University.

So, yes the UAA gives ridiculous amounts of money to coaches, but they are making a decent ROI.

<comment><USER17> Also, the $6-8 million given to the University is after the UAA pays for all of the expenses of the non revenue producing sports teams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a 2002 graduate, it pains me to see this. More so, when they are saying that they will cut the TA funding. I got through college because of my TA scholarship, and I still have fond memories of teaching the undergraduates. Some of them are still friends.

We also did some nice research in my Masters, a lot of concepts(Grid/cloud) which we are currently using in our Startup.

In any case, I just hope the department and the University come through this with their reputation intact.

<comment><USER19> Did you complete undergrad in '02, or were you a TA at that time? I completed my CISE undergrad in '02 and thought it was an excellent program, despite the convoluted organization.

As an aside, what does your degree actually say? The '98 catalog didn't actually have a "computer science" program, and the CS curriculum was offered as "Computer _and Information_ Sciences" via either the business school or CLAS. Do you ever get people confusing your undergrad degree with the equivalent of MIS? (IIRC, the MIS-equivalent was _D_ IS at that time.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems like the university is deciding to focus on Electrical and Computer Engineering and deemphasize Computer Science.

Core competence and all that.

It even has an odd name like CISE (Computer and Information Science and Engineering).

[http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120411/ARTICLES/1204198...](http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120411/ARTICLES/120419892?p=1&tc=pg)

<comment><USER15> Computer Science programs have many different roots. I think the most common is for them to grow out of Electrical Engineering departments where they end up tightly coupled with Computer Engineering, lots of hardware emphasis, etc. But they can also grow out of departments like math or information / library science. Then they may end up fairly far from the engineering departments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There are over 400 graduate students here in the CISE department at UF. With the cuts to all TA funding plus half the research faculty instantly being forced to stop research in addition to those faculty who do not wish to remain as teaching only faculty there will be 200+ of us graduate students leaving. At over $10,000 a year in tuition, the loss of these 200+ graduate students tuition is far in excess to what the college of engineering as a whole stands to save by consolidating and gutting the department. Next year instead of a $1.3M deficit to plug they will have an additional 2M+ less in tuition revenue alone. I would love to see where the dean decides to turn to next to "consolidate." This is not a sustainable approach to a budget deficit because she is greatly devaluing the degree in the eyes of the current students and we are going to transfer elsewhere to finish our degree programs. She can honestly apply the 5% budget cuts across the board to all departments and let everyone take a small hit or irrevocably damage computer engineering at UF and still have a budget issue.

</comment><comment><USER22> as a former UF student, I have to say this just seems like a terrible idea. disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER23> For those of you who have a "vested" interest in the reputation of a department you graduated from many years previous (and by many I mean more than a year ago) and are worried about its reflection on you.

Perhaps, instead, you should concern yourself with your personal professional achievements and credentials post graduation and how those reflect on you. To me that seems like a MUCH more productive use of your time.

This seems like a concern to future and current students; rather than alumni.

// Light-hearted jab at UF alumni

Leave it to a Gator grad to be worried about keeping-up appearances.

Go Knights!

<comment><USER24> I think that I've gotten jobs despite, not because of, my UF degree. But the skills that have let me get those jobs were burnished in research labs in the CS department. Research labs that will go away if the dean's plan goes through.

Some of us just don't believe in pulling up the ladder after we've climbed up it. Having an active department turning out competent graduates is good for us as alumni, good for Florida, and good for the field of computer science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I really hope that they're simply consolidating Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and CISE (Computer & Information Science Engineering) into a single department and keeping existing faculty.

As a 2010 graduate (CISE - I wanted a mix of engineering and liberal arts), this is quite troubling to me. I remember when they announced that they would be laying off a number of faculty members (mostly lecturers) -- some of whom were the best instructors in the entire department. Now they're getting rid of research in the name of teaching? What a farce.

<comment><USER7> That's not at all what is proposed.

Step 1: move graduate programs to ECE

Step 2: make faculty ask to be in other departments (with the dean's approval of course)

Step 3: make all faculty who can't get other departments to take them have a 100% teaching appointment and set TA budget of the department to $0. Effectively convincing all those cranky guys you wanted to get rid of to leave the university.

Step 4: ???

Step 5: Success!

Then add the Ph.D. program back in and wait 25 years for it to rebuild.

Sounds like a great plan to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I was planning on transferring to UF next fall to get a bachelors in Computer Science. It worries me how little the university cares about Computer Science if they're planning to make such a decision. I personally would like to thank everyone who signed this for rallying against such actions.

</comment><comment><USER27> Reddit discussion: [http://www.reddit.com/r/ufl/comments/s5jsk/uf_engineering_de...](http://www.reddit.com/r/ufl/comments/s5jsk/uf_engineering_dean_proposes_to_dismantle_cise/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Let us think - how is an engineering department taught by mostly non Engineers? Odd I know, but rumor has it CISE does it. Not so with EE/ECE. BTW, CISE instructors are welcome to join EE/ECE - most of their research is done together already anyway. But hey, who cares about figuring out all of the details, lets just make this a sensation like all the other BS news.

<comment><USER19> The department is "Computer and Information Science _and Engineering_ " - <USER2> a subset of the department consists of what would be generally regarded as "engineering", and the people teaching engineering courses have the relevant expertise in their fields.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Filed under "Flori-duh"

God I hate that state. The most idiots per capita I've ever encountered.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is absolutely ridiculous. Can't imagine university like UF doesn't have CS program.....

</comment><comment><USER31> Thank you, Rick Scott!

<comment><USER32> Easy there, the UofF doesn't need Rick Scott's help to completely blunder something.

I left Gainesville in 2010 and that entire freaking town has one of the most ANTI-progress sentiments I've ever seen.

The one shining star on the horizon will be the construction of the University's 40 acre tech hub. Let's hope they don't flub that one.

<comment><USER19> 40 acre? I thought it was just one building downtown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> no-espam They have a powerhouse college football team. That will keep America relevant in the future.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm a current UF student, and what the hell?! The presidents of UF and FSU are lobbying the government to allow the universities to increase tuition without limits (ie, without asking the Florida Legislature again), and UF comes out with this? Is this their way of sending a message to the Legislature? "Don't approve our tuition hikes and this will happen"? They're asking for a tuition hike to make UF more "competitive" nationally, but how does eliminating a research department and cutting faculty who are great teachers but not PhD's make you more competitive?

It doesn't!

<comment><USER34> I'm also a UF student, and would gladly pay more in tuition if it meant saving our department.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm in no way associated with UF, but I don't think the answer for why this is proposed is too difficult.

Take this:

      CISE, the only department at UF engaged in Computer Software research, will become
      a teaching only department, and inevitably, its ranking, reputation and enrollment
      will plummet.

and add this:

[http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120331/ARTICLES/1203399...](http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120331/ARTICLES/120339944)

Can you say "diploma mill"? Good; I knew you could.</comment>


San Fran burned-out home is selling 'below market value' at $800,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-the-burned-home-on-sale-in-sf-2017-10 <comment><USER2> Clickbait title. The home has _negative_ value; it's all about the _lot_.</comment>


Fix Chrome prioritizing search words over visited sites in address bar - <AUTHOR> https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/14/fix-chrome-prioritizing-search-words-over-visited-sites-in-address-bar/ <comment><AUTHOR> This thing was driving me crazy since the last Chrome update a few days ago. Entering "cn" into the address bar would put "Google search for CNAMEAlreadyExistsException" as the first autocomplete entry, a term I've randomly googled once, instead of cnn.com which is a site I visit every single day.

Is this a new dark pattern to drive more traffic to google.com?</comment>


Heuristics (An essay on changing the heuristic function of the A* algorithm) - <AUTHOR> http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/Heuristics.html

<comment><USER2> I love Amit's page. A LOT of online tutorials on A* and other algorithms teach wrong theory (especially on inadmissible heuristics), but Amit knows what he's talking about.</comment>


Miracles You'll See in the Next Fifty Years (1950) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.modernmechanix.com/miracles-youll-see-in-the-next-fifty-years/ <comment><USER3> They predicted us traveling by rocket much quicker across the globe. I see this mentioned now and then with disappointment that the one thing close to a rocket - the Concorde - was discontinued.

But what happened in the aerospace industry is that we instead focused on fuel efficiency and lower noise, which lead to the high bypass turbofan engine.

Instead of accelerating a small amount of air to supersonic speeds, which is both extremely noisy and fuel inefficient, we moved to a system that takes that small amount of air and uses it to drive a much larger fan which then takes a large volume of air and accelerates it to subsonic speeds. That's why 'jet engines' of the old days were much thinner and noisier than the really fat engines we have today.

This led to much cheaper and quieter air travel. This is a huge benefit - <USER2> not quite as spectacularly "space age" as the sci fi authors of the 1950s envisioned.

<comment><USER4> That might not be too far away - SpaceX does want to use their Starship to fly point-to-point across the globe. I suspect the noise, will make it infeasible for all but a few major destinations. They'd likely have to have a sea-based platform 20-30km away from the city, then use a floating tunnel with Tesla/BoringCo pods the rest of the way to actually get downtown.

Still, it would be pretty sweet. Go downtown, check in, take a 10 minute pod ride, get strapped into your seat (there's no washrooms, or moving around), blast off and 45 minutes later you're on the other side of the world, another 10 minute pod ride away from downtown.

<comment><USER5> > _I suspect the noise, will make it infeasible for all but a few major > destinations._

I think the issue will be more geopolitical than anything. Few national defense organizations will trust an ICBM heading toward "just next to (no seriously, it's fine)" one of their largest population centers, even if it is from someone they consider friendly.

Not insurmountable, but definitely an uphill battle.

<comment><USER6> And yet they are perfectly content with thousands of inbound jet planes flying into all their major cities. Which could just as easily have any payload they want.

<comment><USER5> I have a feeling that if any of those planes were going Mach 30 they would feel a little differently about it.

<comment><USER7> Would planes really need to go Mach 30 to devastate a city? 9/11 could have been about planes with nukes on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "shop by picture phone" yep

2 hours New York to San Francisco: we had planes for this in the 1970s but it was killed by regulatory hysteria.

Shaving by chemical: chemical depilatory actually already existed for over a century by 1950, not sure why they included this

A microwave oven? As the captions says, that was already on its way.

Water soluble plates: how could this possibly be a good idea?

Waterproof furniture: unclear how this actually makes cleaning easier.

Electron microscopes, yep, although again these were really invented in the 1930s.

Replacing steel with aluminum in construction: never really happened although unclear why this would be a good idea.

The reference to a battery powered automatic insulin dispenser is painful. The technology to do this is trivial today but it's not really available due to onerous medical device regulations.

<comment><USER3> Wasn't regulatory hysteria. We just chose a more environmentally friendly and quieter technology to focus our energy. See my other comment about high bypass turbofan engines in this thread.

<comment><USER9> I think gok refers to the American (and others) ban on supersonic flight over land, which significant restricted the routes Concorde could fly.

<comment><USER10> Well, yes, but I don't call it regulatory hysteria to ban planes from making sonic booms over land so that wealthy people can get from one coast to the other faster.

<comment><USER8> If you want to be extremely kind to American regulators, you could argue that they banned sonic booms out of an overabundance of caution and wanted to see how bad of a problem it was. But it was clear after years of Concorde flights over Asia and Europe that it was non-issue. They kept the rules on the books as a favor to Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas.

<comment><USER11> Admittedly, I don't know much about this. But how was it clear that it was a non-issue, and not just a different cultural preference?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to read a breakdown on this - what is actually impossible, what is infeasible but will be in the future, and what is something we don't aim towards anymore.

<comment><USER13> Here are some mentioned things we don't often see:

Sun lamps on 200ft towers - definitely possible with modern lighting options, but horribly energy wasteful and likely to annoy people more than help them.

Thorium power generators - research is ongoing as you can see from the articles that often pop up on HN. The main barrier is still materials science.

Atomic "liners" (passenger vessels) - easily possible if not for general distrust and extreme regulation of nuclear power. For example, there are a number of nuclear powered ice breakers in service today.

Metal-walled houses - also possible, but so ridiculously expensive no one actually does it. Worth noting is a lot of commercial construction uses metal studs today.

Plastic modular houses - also possible (see mobile homes as an example), but the large majority of people don't want them because of the "cheap" factor. Also in many places the property costs a lot more than the house itself, so construction material savings is low priority.

Chemical hair remover for shaving - turns out this is harder than it seems. Chemicals that can break down hair have a rather annoying tendency to also be really harsh on skin.

Controlling weather - The amount of energy needed to do this is ridiculous, as are the environmental impacts of things the article suggests (covering the ocean in oil and lighting it on fire...)

Supersonic/rocket planes - The tech has been available for many decades, but the market demanded cheaper tickets rather than faster planes, so development went in that direction instead.

<comment><USER14> There are plenty of metal-walled houses mate... down under we call them sheds, fair dinkum. [https://www.google.com/search?q=metal+clad+house+australia](https://www.google.com/search?q=metal+clad+house+australia) (Thermal transfer properties are notably different from traditional building materials!)

Plastic modular houses ... not quite houses but used structurally where providing novel utility. For example they fill two-part fused thermoformed plastic containers with water for crowd control in riots. Recently half of Hong Kong was filled with these. [https://www.google.com/search?q=water+filled+barrier](https://www.google.com/search?q=water+filled+barrier)

<comment><USER15> And steel framed houses are a thing here too: [https://www.google.com/search?q=steel+house+frame+australia](https://www.google.com/search?q=steel+house+frame+australia)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "is the standardization of life to be deplored if we can have a house like Joe Dobson's, a standardized helicopter, luxurious standardized household appointments, and food that was out of the reach of any Roman emperor?"

<comment><USER17> _food that was out of the reach of any Roman emperor_

I mean, we just had a year of bountiful seedless grapes, and I'm pretty thrilled about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > One of the more remarkable electronic machines of 2000 is a development of > one on which hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent in the middle > years of the 20th century by Dr. Vladimir Zworykin and Dr. John von Neumann. > The purpose of this improved Zworykin-Von Neumann automaton is to predict > the weather with an accuracy unattainable before 1980. It is a combination > of calculating machine and forecaster. The calculator solves thousands of > separate equations in a minute; the automatic forecaster carries out the > computer's instructions and predicts the weather from hour to hour. In 1950, > meteorologists had no time to deal with the 50-odd variables that should > have been mathematically handled to predict the weather 24 hours in advance.

Made me smile.

<comment><USER19> 50-odd variables. Wow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Nobody in the year 2000 would consider building a house to last more than 25 years" seems so odd to my "modern" ears.

Is that because housing at that time was focused on industrialized pre-war / baby-boom production to meet demand and not on dwelling? Mortgages were still 30 years, right?

So interesting to read these things. A true time capsule.

<comment> ur-whale If you think about it for a while, it's actually not such a bad idea provided it could be made environmentally friendly.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that typically you buy a house attached to a piece of property. So if the house is 20 years into a 25 year life, you have an issue of trying to 1) dispose of the house at the 25 year mark, and 2) finding a place to live for several months while the house is demolished and rebuilt. The only way this would work is with manufactured homes. Even then, I haven't heard of anyone having their existing home hauled away while a new one is wheeled in place the same day (except on the lower end, with park model campers).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You'll eat food from sawdust! - Shitake mushrooms! Mass mushroom consumption started in the mid 80s has grown steadily.

Not what the 50's author meant, but strangely accurate.

<comment><USER14> Not only is it better for the environment (less land and energy use, less greenhouse emissions) but this week in Australia, interestingly as a result of COVID-19 panic buying, meat (particularly mince; also rice, pasta, cereals, toilet paper and hand sanitizer) have been sold out in most retailers whereas mushrooms remain available. Still more evidence of my personal opinion that mass psychology effects of the current scenario are far more dangerous than the disease.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how much of the perceived lack of innovation today is because we now have to divide the same resources among 7.8bn instead of 3bn.

In those days I feel like pop culture thought of innovation as 50% better everything, but we had to shift to making 50% cheaper, less resource-intensive everything instead.

examples:

\- making furniture out of sawdust not better wood furniture

\- tiny scooters and fuel-efficient cars not faster cars.

\- plastic not shiny metals/wood for most household items

\- tiny apartment high-rises not better houses

<comment><USER23> These constraints aren't, I don't think, evidence of an impoverished world, but of wealth disparity. After all, there are many people who have better wooden furniture, but market forces squeeze all innovation into cost-cutting measures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The part they got really right was the progress in material/chemical science and industrial automation (though we don't use paper media for that).

The bit about electronic communication (video conferencing and online shopping) seems particularly correct too.

<comment><USER10> One fairly subtle point the writer gets more or less correct is how people will travel more but supersonic flight will be mostly for the rich. (Obviously supersonic commercial flight doesn't exist today but, if it does get resurrected at some point, that will almost certainly be the case.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Discarded paper table "linen" and rayon underwear are bought by chemical factories to be converted into candy."

Well we do have edible undies, please don't give them to your kids as snacks though..

</comment><comment><USER26> noise pollution does not seem to have occurred to the writer

<comment><USER10> While true, ubiquitous personal air transportation was pretty much a staple of a lot of futurism. I suspect that part of it may be that this is from a time when air travel was nowhere as widespread as it is today--at least normally. As a result, people were probably not nearly as exposed to issues around noise from aircraft as they are today.

ADDED: And, yes, an implicit assumption is presumably that these personal vehicles are quiet but it's unclear what the mechanism for that would be.

<comment><USER27> A plane ticket today is 5 times less money for the same distance. Note that doesn't account for the vast amount of inflation between then and now.

<comment><USER10> Certainly. But that's not personal helicopters or whatever. We ended up without supersonic flights everywhere (expensive or otherwise) but with pretty cheap ubiquitous jet travel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "It is a crime to burn raw coal and pollute air with smoke and soot. "

Well, 70 years later we are still burning coal!

</comment><comment><USER29> It's really amazing how certain writers wax on about the future but are unable to describe the social change which is quite more fundamental.

Many social changes that have happened were basically unthinkable in the 1950's, the words literally did not exist to describe them.

<comment><USER30> I remember reading something by, I think, either Asimov or Heinlein talking about how many people think that the utility of science fiction (beyond just transitory entertainment) is to predict what technological changes are coming.

The author disagreed with that, saying that predicting future technological changes is not really important. What is important is predicting the social effects of those changes. That's what a good science fiction writer should be figuring out.

They gave an example that went something like this. Imagine someone writing a science fiction story in say 1890 (although I suppose it might not have been called science fiction yet) set 100 years in the future in the United States.

Predicting that people in 1990 would have horseless carriages instead of horses, and they would be widespread enough for nearly everyone to have one is interesting, but according to author not really insightful.

The useful and insightful prediction would be for the writer to figure out, say, what affect that mobility would have on teen dating. In 1890, most of a teen's social life would involve other teens who lived within easy walking distance plus maybe some farther away that they met at school and either only socialize at school or at activities that are close enough to be in reasonably walking distance for both.

But in the future, when families have more than one horseless carriage and that teen has easy access to one, their social life can involve anyone in town, or in neighboring towns.

Also that 1890 teen that has to walk everywhere might have limited opportunity to get of parental supervision long enough to be alone with their boy/girlfriend. 1990 teens with their much greater mobility can much more easily get away from prying parental eyes and get up to things that would be scandalous in 1890.

<comment><USER31> I think that also depends on city design too. A teen living in a dense city in 1920 with a working metro had a lot more options than the teen stuck in 1960s american suburbia or the 1990s teen living with helicopter parenting.

And in the end, it didn't really matter that much, since most teens only dated people in the same school, church or other social institutions they attended anyway.

<comment><USER29> "most teens only dated people in the same school, church or other social institutions"

'Ethnic group' is the primary criterion. That would correlate race, religion, language, culture all into one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Diplomacy Tips - <AUTHOR>

Dear Abby (ha ha - I'm such a comedian),
I'm a programmer, and I recognize I don't have a very good mind for business. I was recently approached by an old friend of mine about participating in a startup. He already had a business plan, had several investors that were interested, and seemed to know his stuff - so we seemed like a good match to work together. I agreed to work without pay until there was more money, but I was promised 33% equity, maybe 30% since our most promising investor at the time wanted 10%. I began doing the site, but quickly informed them that I would need more details of what they wanted before I could go further, and that I really needed my role to be on paper - I was told that they trusted my ideas, and I should do what I think is best. Within a couple of weeks I found out that there was yet another 'partner', and my share was down to 20%, and even more frustrating - I kept being told conflicting things about what they wanted in the web-app, and being told that what I had done wasn't what they wanted. As politely as I could, informed them that I was happy to work with them, but would be unable to do any further work until my role was on paper, and my compensation/ownership was satisfactorily defined. I left it for a couple of weeks, understanding that they've been busy finishing school, etc... I was told that when this semester was over, we would sit down one day, incorporate, and I could ask for all the specifications I wanted. In the mean time, I specifically told them that until we had an agreement, the code was mine, and it would be wise for them to assume they had no code until I had specifications and owned something. I even sent them a contract and said if this is what you want, sign it, if not, I need to know what you want.
I got an email last night informing me that an incubator they applied to had asked for a demo, and they had said, "Yes, we'll upload it!" It's become apparent that 2 of the other partners have done absolutely nothing, no one has put anything paper other than my constant requests to do so, and they have ignored all my messages regarding what needs to happen before we can have a decent demo.
I realize I shouldn't have even worked this long, and I plan on absolute refusal to do anything until this is resolved, but any tips? I'd really like the project to go forward, if nothing else so I have my name on a really cool project with no NDA attached. But I no longer feel comfortable doing business with this group, however they don't seem to understand that if I leave, the code goes with me, no matter how bluntly I say it. Incidentally, they have no physical access to the code - my main problem is how to resolve this diplomatically, and how to do it in a way that the business might have a chance. <comment><USER2> Actually, it seems to me that you have a very good mind for business, in that you understand enough about it to do the right things for your domain of programming. I.e. you:

Got concrete details on the proposed setup and insisted on getting them locked down on paper.

Didn't do very much work (a couple of weeks) before failure to do the above and an unnegotiated adverse revision of your position plus other warning signs prompted you to cease work.

Kept total control of the work you've done.

Anyway, at this point, it doesn't seem like the startup is viable unless and until the "founders" are pared down to a smaller set who grok reality (like the importance of what you or any technical people are doing and the fact that they have nothing without that) and who are actually willing to put work into the venture.

If there aren't any who do, then it's time to cut your losses; make your excuses and offer them the code for a suitable price (not that this will get them funded by anyone who has a clue, the latter will of course want to talk to you etc.).

</comment><comment><USER3> As already mentioned, you tried diplomacy and it failed.

Do you trust this guys? I mean, do they act like they do because of malice or stupidity?

In case it is not much additional work, give them the demo without access to the source. This way you are still in the game and they are under pressure to work _with_ you in case the investor likes your stuff.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks to me like you've already tried diplomacy, and it's failed.</comment>


Five Founders - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html <comment><USER2> Paul Buchheit at Startup School 08 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E>

Sam Altman at Startup School 08 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m43t44WL8-w>

</comment><comment><USER3> That "TJ Rogers" article is reporting itself as "not found." (EDIT: Never mind, I tried again and it loaded.)

Also - meaning absolutely no disrespect to sama - but why specifically is he on the list? I've used Loopt, and while it's very good, it's not particularly interesting in its design, and while it fills a pretty huge niche, so do quite a lot of other startups. I'm certain other sites have more users, more _addicted_ users (Facebook?), and more constant activity.

Perhaps it's a matter of knowing Sam in person? In that case, I'd be curious as to what exactly makes him such a memorable figure.

<comment><USER4> From what I've read/heard, the guy is fearless and can make anything happen.

"Sam Altman could parachute into an island full of cannibals and be king within 5 years."

When I was his age, I was boldly drinking my first beer and trying to figure out who I was. He was apparently building autonomous helicopter navigation systems, making deals with major cell phone companies, and getting prepared to be a speaker at the Apple WWDC.

I've never met him, but from what I gather he just has the "it" factor.

<comment><USER5> Lots of people are fearless and can make anything happen. I'm not sure you can really compare Loopt with Apple quite yet :/ Bizarre.

<comment><USER6> He didnt compare loopt with apple, he compared Sam with Steve Jobs, how old is sam? plenty of time for bigger things than loopt(which is still a pretty impressive achievement)

<comment><USER7> Building some mobile syndication thingy is by no mean comparable to designing the first mac.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _It felt as if someone had flipped on a light switch inside my head._

So TJ Rogers is pg's pg.

<comment><USER9> And that 1993 speech by TJ Rogers had me thinking in a roar: Yeah!

<comment><USER10> I find this speech baffling. Investors don't make companies successful, sales do! Do you want taxes to increase on the people investing in companies that may or may not succeed or do you want taxes to decrease on the people who buy your products. Cutting a companies taxes doesn't increase the amount of people a company can hire. However, cutting the taxes of the people who buy your products will likely increase sales. These increased sales mean more money to hire more people.

Let's be real. Companies will hire the minimal amount of people to get the job done. They aren't going to hire people willy nilly because they get a tax break. Companies will hire more people when their sales increase and they need more bodies. To increase sales you decrease the taxes on the consumer class.

<comment><USER9> I enjoyed a book by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, "How Capitalism Saved America," where he points out that we haven't really practiced Capitalism, but Mercantilism, instead.

Wouldn't it also depend on what type of company we are referring to? Or timing? Aren't companies that do not have a product yet beholden to investment?

It seems that it might take too much time to have individual buyers' purchases fund a company that requires a large investment in infrastructure to get going...

<comment><USER9> The first part of my post is missing.

I wrote "I guess what it means to me is the less government meddling in the market, the better. The Government is already having a hard time fulfilling their regulatory role, no need to have them waste more time skewing markets with pricing controls/subsidies."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting, I can kind of wish you talked about Sam Altman since we don't know too much about him other than Loopt.

Sounds like he's super motivated to win but I wish there was an example =)

<comment><USER12> Well he pretty much single-handedly (as I understand it from lore) talked major carriers into supporting Loopt on their phones.

Considering how carriers normally treat new technology, this shows considerable force of will. To even get them to listen to you would be impressive. The fact that they agreed, more so.

<comment><USER13> Are you sure? I thought they had a really experienced BD guy: <http://www.loopt.com/about/executives>

<comment><USER12> Hence the 'lore' comment... thanks for setting me straight!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interview w/ TJ Rodgers. Lots about his solar company:

[http://fora.tv/2008/04/07/Uncommon_Knowledge_T_J__Rodgers#ch...](http://fora.tv/2008/04/07/Uncommon_Knowledge_T_J__Rodgers#chapter_01)

Also worth noting that he has a highly technical background.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the link. Pointers to other writing by Rodgers would be useful. In terms of books, I could only find one from 1993: "No-Excuses Management" [[http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search- alias%3Dstrip...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search- alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=t.+j.+rodgers)]

Note also PG's typo ("Rogers" should be "Rodgers") which slightly hinders searching.

<comment><USER16> If I remember correctly, he's interviewed in John Stossel's "Greed":

<http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C30B787FF5E0C1DD>

</comment></comment></comment><comment> old-gregg Well, I'm glad the limit was 5. Extrapolating from this limited data set I was prepared to see Paul's next door neighbors as #9 and #10

</comment><comment><USER17> A brief Sam Altman story:

Back when I was in college, I decided to be an RA for a Freshman dorm during my Junior year. Two of my freshman in my dorm were Sam Altman and Blake Ross. We took a class together called Internet Technologies (CS191i).

Our first assignment was to build a VERY rudimentary web browser in Perl; all it did was, open a socket, accept and validate a URL as input, and print out the result of a GET request from a web server. The creator of Firefox was assigned "build a web browser" as homework!

Needless to say, both Sam and Blake dropped out of school before the end of their Sophomore year.

<comment><USER18> How is this a Sam Altman story?

<comment><USER19> There is a weird disparity between the programmers I read on the internet and the programming students I know in real life. The programmers I read on the internet are self-taught, have side projects, and are intimidating. The programming students I know in real life are college-taught, generally don't have side projects, and aren't intimidating.

I think I belong to the second group more than the first. Should I switch to a different major? Or is there a place in the world for programmers who aren't hackers?

As a third option, someone might have some magical "how to become a hacker" advice that I haven't already read.

<comment><USER3> I don't quite know what you mean by hacker - do you just mean you haven't worked on stuff on the side? As for intimidating - I don't know if I've ever met a hacker in real life that really seemed intimidating. A _lot_ of people develop a sort of persona online, either because they think they're cool or because they're so flooded with work that they simply don't have time to talk to every single person they meet. So the more that you do, the more mail you get from people, and the harder it is to respond to them, and the more it seems like you're exclusive and therefore intimidating.

Don't switch majors because of other people. Switch if you don't like what you're doing. Do you really like programming, exploring code or at the very least making that code work? If so, there's bound to be a place for you. As for "becoming" a hacker: again, try not to look at other people. The path to people having ideas and making projects is always a bit askew and twisted. If you ever _want_ a side project, go ahead and start one. Get your hands dirty. The more you do, the wiser you get. But don't feel like it's a necessity.

Also remember that lots of college students are just learning to code. The self-taught kids have a few years' advantage in a lot of situations. That doesn't necessarily make them better (though a lot more of them have an aptitude for the subject matter). It's certainly possible to get into programming late in your career and still turn it into something meaningful.

<comment><USER19> By "hacker" I mean someone who has the compulsive curiosity for programming that some of you seem to have. And by "intimidating" I mean they seem like they might be much better programmers than me. (Hence virtual experience is just as good an indicator as real-world experience.)

<comment><USER3> Not everybody here is a compulsive programmer. I'm not a particularly good programmer myself: my focus is more on designing and building things that don't exist already. That's the great thing about the industry: it's so huge that you can focus on one of any number of things and still find success at what you do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How about Richard Branson? Who has created more $1Bn companies in different marketplaces (and had fun along the way)? I count 4/5 so far Virgin Records, Atlantic (& Blue) airlines, Radio, Mobile/Media... and counting (for example Virgin Galactic & Rail are getting there).

<comment><USER21> The question specified "Within the last 30 years" - Branson started Virgin more than 40 years ago. Though I kinda wonder why Steve Jobs is on the list then, since he started Apple 33 years ago. Maybe he just squeaked in...

<comment><USER22> If you apply the filter of who has had a major part in the creation of revolutionary products, I think Steve is legendary among his peers:

Apple II

iPod

iPhone

Pixar (first successful computer animation studio - but not a product)

<comment><USER23> Macintosh.

BTW I think his main contribution to Pixar was leaving them alone (but note his talent in _selecting_ them).

<comment><USER22> It's just a photo of a Pixar company-wide function but I'd love to be good enough to work for them based on it (and what I've read).

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/teohyc/2564116426/sizes/l/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> PG or anyone else: Can you point me to any further reading on the "doctrine of the elect" ?

<comment><USER25> <http://www.google.com/search?q=doctrine+of+the+elect+puritan>

_"The Doctrine of the Elect better known as predestination or foreordination is the belief that when a person is born or at any time later in their life, they might be chosen by God to become one of the Elect, which is one of the people who would receive divine salvation."_

<comment><USER26> Doctrine of the Elect is also significant for creating voluntary association, which has been a subtle but important catalyzing principle of western civilization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Bill Gates?

MSFT Gates Foundation

</comment><comment><USER28> Steve Jobs founded Apple in 1976. (To mentions of billg, he founded MS in 1975.) That was over 30 years ago. While it is nitpicking, I'd like to see them cleared out for more novel choices.

</comment><comment><USER13> Typo: Sam instead of Sama in the last 2 para's _unless_ you meant SamA

<comment><USER29> I'm pretty sure he meant Sama, unless he meant sama:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sama>

<comment><USER13> Ah! My bad.</comment></comment></comment>


Welcome to the People's Republic of Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/12/31/facebook-instagram-libra-whatsapp-messenger-internet-access-id-money-republic-country/ <comment><USER2> To be fair, Facebook is actually becoming like a country, ruled by the Supreme Leader Emperor Zuckerberg. The population is around 2 Billion users, about 1/5 of all living people in the world which has registered so called 'citizenship'. They have their own currency, world emergency services, internet service provider, movie service and a town square with global news and editorials which is doing pretty well as a accurate balanced news source.

The country is also extremely 'safe' because everything you say is recorded and reviewed by their higher-up moderators working around the clock to defeat 'hate' and ban the illegal users who are arrested on repeated suspicions of wrongthink.

The People's Republic of Facebook sounds like a great place to live if it were a country. But reminds me of a certain remote authoritarian country somewhere around the world which monitors every citizens move... /s</comment>


Cover Pages of Time Magazine in the US and the World - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/gallery/W2Y5u

<comment><USER2> To be a fair comparison, we'd need to see all time magazine covers, not just the ones where the US edition gets a different cover.

<comment><USER3> So, your reasoning is that censorship (or "changes to say different things just to a certain public") is not really it if it gets done in many but not all the issues? So, say, if in a country some search terms are blocked you can not talk about censorship because not ALL the searches are blocked. Sorry, I disagree. Even if they change only the cover of a single issues, and they do it to block some ideas to be said in the USA, well that is censorship and is unacceptable.

<comment><USER2> It's not censorship. The covers are different. A different market being interested in different things does not equal censorship.

What is not shown is the times when the European covers are different to the other editions.

What is not shown is if there are only two editions of Time - one for US, one for elsewhere.

We need to see all covers to make a judgement about what is happening.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on 13" MBP with 2 external screens? - <AUTHOR> I'm considering getting the latest 13" MBP as my main computer. I'm mostly doing web and iOS development.
I wanted to get some feedback from people who are using 13" MBP with two external screens on daily basis.
1. Is this setup stable / reliable?
2. Does the laptop tend to overheat?
3. Is there a performance hit?
4. Apart from a dongle, do I need any additional hardware for this setup?
5. Is this going to shorten the life of the laptop?
6. Any other thoughts?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I have used my 2009 MBP with two external DVI screens, one connected via the Apple dongle connecting to the DisplayPort connector and another via a USB to HDMI adaptor. The MBP remains closed up and have Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Touch trackpad.

The USB connected screen is noticeably slower to update, but that isn't a problem if you use the DisplayPort connected screen as the "main" screen.

The battery might be affected in the long-term because you need to have power connected in order to use the MBP in closed up position. Sometimes it doesn't start up correctly for me, so I have to open the MBP up to start and then close up to go back to work. My desk is rather small and leaving the MBP open is practical in my case.

Overall this arrangement worked well for a couple of years. I have since bought a mini-tower and direct connect both screens. Of course, I now also use Linux, but that's another story about leaving OS X for Linux.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Yes.

2\. Same as all of the other Al MacBooks.

3\. No.

4\. No. You can just buy 2x HDMI adapters off eBay.

5\. No.

6\. No.</comment>


IPhone 5 – the Most Leaked iPhone Yet  - <AUTHOR> http://techpp.com/2012/09/13/iphone-5-most-leaked-iphone/

<comment><USER2> The opening line is a killer! Do you remember when Tim Cook said that they are going to "double down on secrecy"?

<comment><USER3> no</comment></comment>


British Police Duped by LulzSec Into Arresting the Wrong Guy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=22280

<comment><USER3> I read this article earlier. I don't understand the following line from the chatlog:

> Topiary: better not hit me on April fool's day

is this a joke that has gone over my head, or are the logs indeed from March?

Edit: looks like I'm a fool, the logs are indeed from March and are unrelated to this incident. I thought the article was using them as proof of _this_ incident being part of "duping" the police, but it's actually being used to show Topiary from England != Lulzsec topiary. My mistake. Will leave comment in case anyone else makes the same mistake.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it was all a little unclear. I'm still not sure whether LS's Topiary stole the name from a troll, or a troll started using Topiary's name.

Not that it matters... In the end, it looks like the real Topiary is in a different country altogether from where the arrest was made.

Absolutely hilarious.

How long before the police discover their mistake, I wonder?

<comment><USER5> Not quite so hilarious for the person who (if this story is right) has been arrested for things he didn't do.

<comment><USER6> Better he learn what the system is like while young. With media attention on his arrest he's likely to be unmolested.

There's no alternative where he was safe, just ones where the risk wasn't realized. Now he'll know what many complacent people never realize - <USER2> fragile his life is and how easily 'evidence' against him is created as necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wasn't topiary supposedly the guy who was doing the interview during which the WBC got hacked? If so, they have his voice on tape. Certainly wasn't British. At the time I thought French, but Swedish would fit.

The slightly annoying thing is that we may never know. The real topiary is not going to reappear if they've arrested the wrong guy. The police are certainly not going to give up their arrest. And presumably they've got this guy in custody on something. So I assume they can make the charges stick. I'm sure they've arrested him under his real name for something he actually did, not topiary for being a member of Lulzsec.

The public certainly don't care. It only matters that justice appears to be done.

So it looks to me like everyone is happy (except the guy who got arrested of course).

<comment><USER8> If he's really from Shetland he wouldn't sound British. He might sound Swedish though.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetlandic>

<comment><USER9> That's english with a few more words, they still sound scottish, not swedish.

From a bit of youtubing and googling the few clips I've heard are instantly recognizable as scottish, with a few words you don't understand.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney- shet...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney- shetland-11111965)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij60XUvWjZY&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij60XUvWjZY&feature=player_embedded)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVxNxnXo7-c&playnext=1...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVxNxnXo7-c&playnext=1&list=PL58FDD57CFA2CD1B6)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx5MgoL5tQ8>

The UK has a phenomenal amount of dialects, they're all British though and even a Londoner can tell the difference between a Swedish accent and a British one.

<comment><USER10> British accent != accent from the UK. I doubt anyone from Northern Ireland would asociate with being thier accent called British, from either side of the political divide; and I suspect more than a few of our Scottish bretheren would object rightly or wrongly.

But to your point - a Scottish accent and a Swedish one are distinctly different.

<comment><USER9> Scotland and Shetland are both part of the British Isles, a geographic term. Scotland itself is actually part of Great Britain, an island which contain England, Wales and Scotland. Although admittedly Shetland is not.

The term British is rather malleable but check the first entry in wikipedia:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain>

Yes, common usage of the term British includes the whole of the UK.

The usual problem people from Scotland and Ireland have are being called English, not British and Scots are British anyway and I never mentioned the Irish.

Finally riddle me this, what should I have used instead of British to refer to the people of the UK? Which is where I'm from I might add. As there exists no other term other than British.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Makes one wonder if their monikers are really tightly tied to real persons. Maybe the core group uses their names interchangeably and when one of them is ousted with a raid, some one else from the group assumes the online identity.

<comment><USER12> You would make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.

<comment><USER13> Wesley?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not all that surprising. Eventually the LulzSec people will get popped inadvertently, but they'll run law enforcement in circles for quite a while before it happens. LulzSec and Anonymous thrive on ambiguity and confusion so they can keep piling on the lies and deception. They have no need to get their story straight, just keep law enforcement in a cloud of doubt. This entire chatlog could be bullshit, a little disinfo to muddy the waters. If Swedish Topiary gets popped you release some logs revealing yourself to be Shetland Topiary trolling the Swede.

</comment><comment><USER15> The explanation in this article seems pretty tenuous and the title could at least do with being "British police might have been duped by LulzSec into arresting the wrong person".

</comment><comment><USER16> my 5 cents:

* the antilulzsec movement is missleading information created by lulzsec themselves

* chatlogs are just text. they do not prove anythinh

* i guess they raided the guys home not without reason...

<comment><USER17> If I were betting, I'd be with you on this, even though the reason to raid may have been deliberately planted misinformation from lulzsec.

<comment><USER18> It might be helpful to know what ISP this guy used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Going after people running Low Orbit Ion Cannon and expecting to get top brass is... incredible wishful thinking.

<comment><USER20> I think they just need to get someone. Doesn't really matter who. Find some random gullable 13 year old wanna-be-hacker kid that ran LOIC for a while. Parade him in front of the media and judges, send him off to juvie, handshakes and bonuses for everyone involved... Police, prosecutors, media, all get to pat theselves on the back. That is what this is really about.

<comment><USER21> Which itself achieves a positive outcome, by communicating to the next gullible 13-year-old who might be thinking about doing something stupid to someone else's computer that there might be real-world consequences to it.

<comment><USER22> Assuming gullible 13-year-olds are the sort to think about the consequences before downloading an executable and clicking "run," anyway. In my experience (so this is really just anecdotal evidence), that's rarely the case, especially when it comes to politics.

<comment><USER23> The total number of script-kiddies might go down a bit. Of course there's always going to be some gullible 13-year-olds who run scripts, but the idea is to have _less_ of them. It's more of a statistical argument than an anecdotal one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sad to watch them try to send another guy to jail for what they did. "No honor among thieves" came to mind.

<comment><USER25> I rather see it as highlighting a weakness in the system. Arresting someone on suspicion without evidence tying the human to the twitter account and to the actual crime is a sad state of affairs. People should be made aware that this kind of thing cam happen with little recourse for the mistakes of the police.

<comment><USER26> I don't know precisely how it works in Scotland, but presumably they had evidence sufficient to obtain a warrant for the arrest. Are you really saying the police should have to prove guilt before arresting suspects?

<comment><USER27> The police (here in Scotland or pretty much anywhere) can arrest someone on suspicion of something with pretty minimal evidence, you don't need a warrant but once you have arrested them you then have to either charge them or release them within a relatively short space of time (our rather draconian anti-terror laws which mean they can be held for weeks without charge wouldn't apply here).

It makes no sense for them to arrest him without evidence. The two options for who arrested him are local or national police.

If it were the local police why would local police on a sparsely populated island with little crime go and arrest someone and accuse them of being a hacker with no evidence knowing that he'd be out in a day? It makes no sense to do so and if you did do it you certainly wouldn't go public with the arrest knowing you had no evidence.

On the other hand if you're national police working in cyber crime out of London, to make the arrest you've got to convince someone to pay to fly two officers six hundred miles north and them and the suspect back. Given that UK police are being asked to make massive budget cuts and are under significant scrutiny (particularly the Met who would likely be heading this) because of the phone hacking, that trip isn't getting signed off without someone convincing a senior officer that there was something to it.

So the chances of there being no evidence is basically nil. The evidence they have may be misinformation, or they may have misinterpreted it, but they will have believed that this guy was involved.

<comment><USER27> Looking into this a bit more it was national police from the Met in London who carried out this arrest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Contrary to what the headline suggests, this is just speculation.

</comment><comment><USER29> Or maybe Topiary's friends are trying to convince the police they got the wrong guy and get some added publicity at the same time?

<comment><USER30> More than likely. The conversation seems like a movie script. Too cut and dry; everything spelled out for the audience.

> Topiary: (as you know I stole this nickname from a troll last December, > didn't work out so well)

Give me a break.</comment></comment>


Introducing Authy for your personal computer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.authy.com/authy-for-pc

<comment><USER2> Anyone else thinks this is a really really bad idea?

– Fishing attack prevention is a sham. It's going to work for as long as attackers are not aware that someone's running Authy. After that, there is nothing that stops the attacker from opening the whitelisted URL in a different tab in addition to the phishing one.

– Saying that Authy for PC is "no worse" than using a separate device because of session tokens is misleading. Many websites reject session tokens when a user is logging in from a new location/IP, which is why 2FA is there in the first place.

– Above all, 2FA enables precise audit. This is no longer possible with such automation. Malware that gets access to a computer can copy Authy installation to its servers, and then fully erase itself from being detected. It can then access user's data months after the time of the attack, completely undetected.

– Using bluetooth to automatically connect with the phone is equally bad. Part of idea behind 2FA is that the machine that the user is operating is considered compromised until (or even after) it is authenticated. Allowing bluetooth connection directly into phone from a machine like that compromises security.

</comment><comment><USER3> I read this title as introducing two-factor authentication software _for_ my home machine.

Is it straightforward to implement 2FA with Authenticator or similar on a Debian box?

<comment><USER4> It's as easy as installing a PAM module, enabling challenge-response for OpenSSH, and then generating a secret.

I set this up yesterday on a an Ubuntu 14.04 vps using this guide: [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to- prote...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-protect-ssh- with-two-factor-authentication)

It's worth noting that private ssh keys work without 2FA and all password logins are required to use 2FA. That's the security policy I was looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hell, no! Sure, 2FA was never designed to protect against device theft, but keeping the authenticator on a separate device helps a lot.

</comment><comment><USER6> that stuff only protects from server side secrets compromise. i dont know but if im using something inconvenient like 2FA, i want it to protect my credentials client-side too.</comment>


Google Introduces API Console - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/11/01/google-introduces-api-console/ <comment><USER2> I thought it would be an interactive console, like <http://tryruby.org>. Imagine being able to play with an API like that, with nothing to sign-up for or download and set-up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Listing the APIs before having to sign up would have been useful though. Here's the current set:

      * Buzz
      * Custom Search
      * Diacritize
      * Feed
      * Latitude
      * Moderator
      * Prediction
      * Translate

It's nice to have a dashboard, but I'd have preferred support for the traditionally painful (quota-wise) APIs like Google Maps Geocoding and YouTube Uploads. Just knowing that you are about 5 months away from needing a Google Maps API Premier account can be quite useful.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very awesome.

The prediction API looks really cool, which could hopefully make its way into a mashup. The feed push API seems genuinely useful, although it'd be nice to see a demo of its power/flexibility.

I wonder how much Buzz data we can get our hands on, and how easily?

</comment><comment><USER5> Official announcement: [http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/11/introducing- google-ap...](http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/11/introducing-google-apis- console-and-our.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> That's a name that might cause some confusion. When I see the word "API console" I think of this: <http://www.apiaudio.com/1608.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> This is only a subset of Google APIs. I am looking for the maps API. I hope they add more APIs later. It seems to be a great way to monitor and control API usage.

<comment><USER8> Well, unless you're an enterprise user, a key is not necessary to use the Maps API.

If you're referring specifically to the v2 JS API, it's deprecated, so I don't see much value in us adding it to the console.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Link: <https://code.google.com/apis/console/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the biggest news here (which I think Google tried to hide under all the announcements of "new" stuff) is that the web search ajax api was deprecated. There is no no official way to search the entire web with a Google api. I imagine this will be painful to many many sites and applications out there.</comment>


Should you post your content on Medium? No. - <AUTHOR> https://www.newfangled.com/should-you-post-your-content-on-medium/ <comment><USER2> Anyone have recommendations for what to use instead with similar ease of use? Our company is about to start a blog and we want non-techies to be able to write articles. We don't to host it ourselves (ideally) though we'd like to use our own domain.

<comment><USER3> I'm actually working on a decentralized alternative right now! I didn't expect custom domain support to be so in-demand. Would love to know any other "must- have" features on your list?

<comment><USER4> Can you explain more about what your working on?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Author misses one key point. Google does now use nofollow links as an input.

So the whole medium keeps the domain authority isn't entirely true

</comment><comment><USER6> dev.to</comment>


The 00's: A Decade from Hell - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1942834-5,00.html <comment><USER2> Link to first page: [http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1942834-1,00....](http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1942834-1,00.html)</comment>


Show HN: PDFShift – An API to Convert HTML Documents to PDF - <AUTHOR> https://pdfshift.io/?ref=hn <comment><USER2> This looks great! I love the demo, right into the front page! What stack are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

I'm using Python (Flask)/MySQL/Beanstalk on the backend, and VueJS for the website :)</comment></comment>


Linux Smartphone PinePhone Will Be Available to Pre-Order Next Week - <AUTHOR> https://itsfoss.com/pinephone/ <comment><USER2> >Headphone jack

Nice!</comment>


Ask HN: Why most of the HR Departments suck? - <AUTHOR>

Although I have worked only in IT industry, I have seen and experienced this over many years. Most of the HR departments for function very badly. I wonder why! <comment><USER2> HR doesn't attract great talent. I know, because I almost ended up in a career in HR (I hope it's not too presumptuous to consider myself great talent).

I was genuinely interested in learning about how organizations can improve performance through a focus on people. That's why I went to Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations (which is regarded by many as the best HR program in the world though most students don't end up going into HR). I also interned in HR for two summers at a medium sized company.

After a lot of HR classes and two summers in a 5-person HR office, I was certain that HR was not for me. It's a field that has the potential to be interesting and have a major effect on businesses, but in practice HR is boring (except for the fact that you hear all of the company gossip first) and generally ineffective.

The truth is that most of the important stuff that could fall under HR is taken on by managers and executive leadership. The HR department gets the administrative stuff.

When I started thinking about my future, I realized that HR couldn't take me anywhere else. My best possible outcome would be a role as VP of HR or doing some sort of HR consulting. It wasn't for me—I wanted to be closer to the business.

The odd thing is that I really enjoyed my classes and internships. I got to work on exciting stuff. But I knew that it wouldn't get any better. There was nothing to look forward to.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a senior manager type, I hire people for Human Resources to prevent disgruntled employees and intentionally bad outcomes to my decisions with people and local governments from taking everything we've built in some over inflated complaint or class action. You'll see how easy it can happen after a few mistakes are made.

Lawyers and HR aren't required to be nice, just act nice. Finding a creative and caring HR professionals that can help your organization grow in a positive way, in full compliance with thousands of little things (and with as few impacts to the employee, manager and investors lives) is actually a great investment for any company, especially one growing up with a strong financial reality.

On hiring: I haven't used an HR department to hire since 1995. I've typically worked with outside parties to gather pools of resources and my best method of hiring has been through self-directed job advertisements that I handled from first to last contact. When I can't handle it, or I don't have really the right skill set to evaluate deeper understanding in the candidate, I delegate the hiring decision and help the hiring employee complete the process properly.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think, like almost every other problem, it's a matter of [not] getting the right people for the job. The HR employees I've interacted with have, almost to a T, been completely process-bound and extremely hesitant to take any kind of initiative or show independent thought. They aren't problem solvers, they're process followers. Even when the process is causing unnecessary problems, they follow it unless directed otherwise. The result is the suck you're describing.

I think the reason is fairly simple, although the solution might not be. Folks who have strong soft skills but lack critical thinking ability aren't going to flock to engineering or finance, for example. Even if they made it in the door, they wouldn't last. These people might work in sales, but sales seems to select for a certain ambition and ruthlessness that many people just don't have. If you look at the pool that's left, there just aren't a lot of qualities left that would add value apart from following a process, and in that case, those employees will only be as valuable as the process lets them. So what you get is sucky process (because the company doesn't want to expose itself to lawsuits or get taken advantage of) and sucky employees who don't know when or how to circumvent the process when it becomes counterproductive. Add those together, and you get an HR department that functions very badly and, at best, adds a kind of cynical WTF entertainment value to the employees it's supposed to help.

</comment><comment><USER5> Because most employees are not the 'customers' of the HR department. They are the 'product'. (The same way as viewers of a TV channel are not the customers of that channel, they are the product, and the advertisers are the customers, except that it is much easier to switch TV channels, than to switch companies.)

This means that the average HR department cares suprisingly little about pleasing the average employee. They will worry much more about pleasing management, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think, I found an answer here. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think a lot of it comes from trying to protect/justify their jobs by introducing process etc. See also "why do most IT departments suck"?

</comment><comment><USER7> Because they're a cost centre not a profit centre. Hiring talented people to work in cost centres is always hard.

</comment><comment><USER8> You don't say what "bad" means.

My experience at larger companies is that, beyond providing the basics, (payroll, benefits), an HR department exists to protect the company from being sued by current and former employees.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, here are few examples of being bad:

1) No communication, whatsoever, when somebody is expecting an answer - especially, during recruitment process. All I meant is just a confirmation - "We have received all the documents we needed to prepare the offer; kindly allow us till Monday evening to get back to you."

2) Mistakes (Name/Joining Date/Designation) in official correspondence. Larger companies might be getting this correct by having a central database driving everything; but those with less than 500 employees act really bad here.

3) Not intimating enough in advance about events. E.g. I received a mail about a next morning's get-together just the evening before; and that day I had left office 15 minutes early and obviously didn't check the office mail that night (I never do) - thereby completely missing the get-together; many people in the office did. This happens often. I know, it might not be very common across many companies; but I am just giving specific examples of 'bad functions'.

4) Last minute preparations. Some time ago I had to travel abroad. After reminding almost every day during the final week before traveling, I was handed over all the document just a couple of hours in advance. The tickets, too, were booked with unnecessary delay; leaving me with very little scope for advanced planning. The hotel bill wasn't settled so I had to use my credit card on arrival and then claim reimbursement. Again, just giving an example of what happened with me - I am sure, other people might be experiencing similar things.

5) Attitude. I understand, HR is an important function in any organization. But one needs to understand that, especially in IT industry (or any manufacturing industry), non-technical departments are just support staff. They are there to facilitate the technical guys to make the production happen. The HR people should be highly accessible and easily approachable; very hard to find.

I can give few more examples, but I hope you might have got an idea of what I wanted to say.

<comment><USER9> A paraphrased email exchange I had last week:

HR recruiter: When are you available for a phone interview?

Me: I am available Tuesday mornings and Thursdays before 4pm.

HR recruiter auto-message: you have been scheduled for a phone interview with Scott (no-reference to who Scott is) on Tuesday at 4pm.

Me: WTF?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had a startup idea last night that was hoping to address this very problem, though it was more focused on call-centers than other things.</comment>


Ask HN: I just bought my first car. What tech should I check out? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN. I am not so young anymore but I just bought my first car. It is a used Hyundai i30 from 2012. I wasn't into cars before but now a whole new area of tech opened up for me. As I was starting to read about OBD interfaces I was wondering what you guys can tell me about cars seen as software developer. What products and websites should I definitively check out? <comment><USER2> YouTube is where mechanics are. A lot of people mod that car, you can find them there as.well.

OBD tools will run you lots of money $2500+ for the good one. Don't buy a cheapo one.

Cars are less about tech, more about mech. I lost interest very quick because the setup cost is in the $10K+, and they always get worse over time. This is the opposite of software. Fun if you like being a detective or debugging software

<comment><USER2> Building an AR tool could be interesting, I've pondered this idea</comment></comment>


Show HN: I learned Ruby to make a fundraiser for my non-profit - <AUTHOR> http://christmas.goattrips.org/

<comment><USER2> I think this is a smart way of raising funds, well done! I do think there is to much text, which makes it harder to find your goal.... Namely: Fundraising a summer camp (outdoor adventure) for under-resourced kids or kids at risk (although i'm not sure what "at risk" means)...

GOAT means : Great Outdoor Adventure Trips

Sidenote: I wanted to know how much he currently earned, it's 661 €.

And i used this in Chrome

var sum = 0;$.each($(".complete"),function(i,elem){var text = $(elem).text().trim().replace("Amount: $","").replace("Complete!","");sum = sum + parseInt(text)});console.log(sum);

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks NicoJuicy!

It's primarily directed at people from the local area who would (hopefully) be more familiar with the organization.

"At-risk" typically describes teens who are considered (statistically) vulnerable to abuse or delinquency. Similar to underprivileged or under- resourced.

You can also see the total raised at [https://christmas.goattrips.org/goal](https://christmas.goattrips.org/goal)</comment></comment>


Typed: A Better Blogging Platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/typed-a-better-blogging-platform

<comment><USER3> From what I see, they're a closed-source web service (like Medium, but not free) that's designed like a simpler version of WordPress (themeable / somewhat-configurable).

However, they're missing the key social/community aspects that make Medium so addictive. Instead, they seem to be trying to compete based on design - <USER2> is something that Medium is already superb at. Plus, I don't think many people will be willing to pay 120USD/year when they can get something at least as good, from Medium, for free.

And being closed-source & non-self hosted will mean they can't even compete with WordPress, Ghost, & the rest of the CMS space. Which will mean they won't be so much of a "platform" (upon which you can build more advanced sites) as a "service".

As for their "built to last forever" claim, the FAQ says this:

> Forever is a long time, can you really host my content forever?

> As long as we have paying customers, we'll keep the servers running and the > lights on. [...]

... I would _expect_ them to continue hosting content as long as they can. Storage is as cheap as ever, and there is no reason to take old content down. If they're not offering some guaranteed permanence - letting my content survive past the death of their company - then this isn't different from any other blogging service.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I really don't see the appeal.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree with @slang800. Plus, when you see how fast they shutdown a service or an app, it's not very reassuring (LittleSnapper, Ember iOS, Analog, Courier...)

</comment><comment><USER4> How is this different from Ghost? Is it because of Typed being a Python implementation</comment>


Show HN: Deploy Scikit and Keras Models with a Simple Drag and Drop - <AUTHOR> https://inferrd.com <comment><USER2> Is this able to support more than 50 requests per second? Are there any benchmarks on performance overhead of the underlying web server/routing that is handling the requests?

<comment><AUTHOR> Theoretically we can support up to thousands of request per second under the entreprise plan.

We stopped at 50 request/s in the pricing table because that seemed like a reasonable number for most use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It seems very interesting! What about support for pytorch models or .onnx? I usually use the pytorch->onnx->tensorrt to deploy models.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! We do not currently have PyTorch model but it's one of the next items in our roadmap.

If you have a more custom pipeline, we have a custom environment where you can deploy any custom code with specific package versions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks interesting! How about models that require dictionaries - e.g. tf-idf to convert text into a feature vector? Does it allow for some preprocessing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! If don't need any pre processing we have built in support for all the major librairies.

In addition we support custom pre and post processor via custom environments! Simply write your inference code into a predict.py and we take care of the rest.

(Btw I am really into CML.dev, great idea)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see that you accept models up to 1 GB. It seems the inference time might be high for models of this size on CPUs. Do you use GPUs to speed up inference for deep learning models ?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't offer GPU accelerated inference for now. However it's on our roadmap, sign up for inferrd to get updates!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You might want to change 100 Mb --> 100 MB

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for spotting that, it's 100MB.</comment></comment>


United Nations Hacked by TeampOisoN - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/FEcE9WzJ TeampOisoN has released a 1000+ list of usernames/passwords from the UN. Is this helping anyone? <comment><USER2> Ouch. These guys are idiots.

> 1000+ UN Emails, Usernames & Passwords leaked

Most of these from undp.org. The _United Nations Development Programme._ They are harming aid to Third World Countries.

> A Senate for Global Corruption, the United Nations sits to facilitate the > introduction of a New World Order and a One World Government as outlined by > Brock Chisolm the former Director of UNWHO when he said: > 'To achieve a One > World Government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their > individualism, their loyalty to family traditions and national > identification'

Completely out-of-context quote. Paranoid conspiracy theorists right here.

> How far you have come from the first address by Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson had __nothing __to do with the UN. Whatsoever.

> The UN is a fraud! The bureaucratic head of NATO used to legitimise the > Barbarism of Capitalist elite!

The UN and NATO are completely separate institutions... The pathetic ignorance baffles me. To think these people might've got their hands on sensitive data of global significance frightens me.</comment>


Wired: Why 5G Makes Me Reconsider the Health Effects of Cellphones - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/why-5g-makes-reconsider-health-effects-cellphones/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious of the HN crowd's views on this topic. Personally, I have concerns. I don't know any damage would be caused by 5G, but I also don't know it would be damage free.

And with something as potentially big as nationwide 5G deployment, it seems to me that more scientifically-rigorous answers should be in order.

<comment><USER2> As I said somewhere else, for decades we told us asbestos and lead in paint were ok. Big economical incentive + no study on health effect + lots of experts raising their voices = red flag imho.

That being said we're all mostly ok with living in city centers and breathing constant exhaust fumes, I suspect most people just don't care that much about their health.

<comment><USER3> I agree with the above asbestos and lead stuff. Even tobacco had the same thing going on when they knew well in advance it was bad.

Most people only care when it affects someone they love.

When I see big cell towers next to or on top of places where people live/work it scares me. I know we need towers but why take the risk of exposing yourself to radiation (even if studies show it is okay).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Read this before commenting: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_hea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health)

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't care. People with turn into angry mobs about anything these days.</comment>


The Programmer's Dream Job - <AUTHOR> http://notes.jerzygangi.com/the-programmers-dream-job/ <comment><USER2> Speaking as an atheist, god help whomever hires that ego. Albeit 120 interviews (~30 per week?) and interaction with 1000 recruiters in one month is quite an accomplishment. It sounds like what you've really been doing for the last month is writing that article.</comment>


Calm Down Internet: Google Drive's Terms Are The Standard For Countless Websites - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120424/17562518637/calm-down-internet-google-drives-terms-are-standard-countless-websites-including-gmail.shtml

<comment><USER2> The terms are standard, but that doesn't make them appropriate for this type of service.

This is not the first time people have squawked, other companies have received blowback for using similar terms of service. Google really should have known better.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those terms may be standard for "countless websites" but Google has lost all credibility IMO as of recently for things like this, which is why people are freaking out about this. Otherwise people would give Google the benefit of the doubt.

We don't trust Google anymore... they are evil. THAT'S what this furor is all about.

<comment><USER4> The article is spot-on. This language is not just common, it is necessary. E.g. You want Google Docs to be able to save your documents to PDF? Well, you need to give them permission to create derivative works.

<comment><USER3> You really think that's what the derivative works thing relates to? I highly doubt that... changing the file format of a document and saving it for your use is not a derivative work.

A derivative work is taking your data and adding to it, tweaking it, mashing it up with some other data and releasing it to the public...sort of like what google does with the SERPS already...hey wait... :-p</comment></comment></comment>