US Customs wants to collect social media account names at the border - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/24/12026364/us-customs-border-patrol-online-account-twitter-facebook-instagram <comment> maze-le There was this idea floating around a few weeks ago, about a startup that curates online sockpuppets of obidient citizen personas (I think it was in response to landlords surveilling their future clients). What was sureley meant as sarcasm is looking more and more like a serious business model.

<comment><USER3> I suppose the NSA would penetrate that in a heart beat.

So you would just brand yourself as proven liar - and end up having an even higher risk of being rejected at the border.

You see where this is going. If you use social media, you will have to state the truth. And you know where that leads to.

<comment><USER4> But, people's online presence is rarely who they really are. Americans are free to create whatever online presence they want to.

<comment><USER3> > Americans are free to create whatever online presence they want to.

Which are all captured by Prism and other mass surveillance programs (google "Edward Snowden").

Nobody escapes the NSA.

<comment><USER5> Point being the NSA is collecting a lot of noise.

<comment><USER3> > a lot of noise

Which will simply be filtered out. Technology does not just evolve linearly.

<comment> maze-le > Which will simply be filtered out

These were the last words of the database admin before he went stark raving mad...

But seriously "filtering out" is a goddamnd hard problem, if the dimensionality of your problem space is high enough. You are talking about filtering out sockpuppets like if they have a tcp-flag on it. Even the best trained Neural Network can only work as good as the input-training parameters, and classifying large texts in natural language is still one of hardest problems (even for humans).

<comment><USER6> There are no time limits. The complexity may be a problem now, but later the collected data will reveal anything they want about you.

<comment><USER7> >There are no time limits.

Yes there are, eventually you need to make a decision about whether to let this person into the country

<comment><USER3> Here's how it works:

Data (even encrypted data) is being collected and stored today. It is decrypted/made sense of whenever technology has reached the required maturity. At that moment, we become 100% open books. And you may feel that at the border (or elsewhere).

<comment><USER8> You will never have the technology to decrypt aes256.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is disturbing despite it being "optional", because it's a place for border agents to push in the entry interview.

"I noticed you didn't fill out the question regarding online identity. Do you have an online identity?"

Sure, you can (and should) tell the agent that's all personal information, but that may also lead to further hassles and delays.

<comment><USER10> You also shouldn't say that you don't, if you have... as this would be "fraud to gain access to the USA" which is a good way to never gain access to the USA.

Therein lies a problem, just what _is_ a social media account?

Is it Facebook and Twitter? Or does it extend to networks like LinkedIn? Or forums like Hacker News?

Do you have a Facebook account, if you believe that it has been deleted but you also suspect that technically Facebook never deletes?

Is using a dating site a social media account given that you can converse on it, swap images, etc? No? Define how Tinder or Grindr differs from Snapchat or Yik Yak... and how you'd justify the difference to US Customs.

Basically... it looks to me like either:

1\. You refuse to answer and that is a red flag.

2\. You lie and that is a reason to refuse entry.

3\. You offer up the bare minimum and it can be construed as some combination of 1. and 2.

4\. You offer up everything, and you have totally given up far more than what is revealed by just having a Facebook or Twitter account.

The question, whilst appearing simple and clear, is incredibly vague and a minefield for anyone trying to answer it.

I'm reminded of the quote from the film War Games, "The only way to win is not to play.". If travelling to the USA is part of your life, perhaps it's time to close social media accounts and just call the people you want to talk to.

<comment><USER11> Plus: I have a MySpace account but no idea what the username is, likewise Habbo Hotel. What about any website with a forum facility? My Web browser remembers all the one off usernames I make up for sites and the Recover Password feature acts as my gatekeeper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was always very confused/amused by the questions at the border:

"Are you a terrorist or affiliate with a terrorist organization?" "Are you a secret spy"

Why would anyone say yes? What's the purpose of this. Do they just need it to avoid arguments like "we dont even ask?"

A friend of mine explained it to me:

\- let's say that they have the suspicion or evidence that you are affiliated w/ a terrorist organization. by US law they would need to prove this in front of a court before they could act on it. OR they could simply show that you lied at entry and use that to expel you from the country. Simple. Done.

I am unsure what the deeper goal behind the social media accounts is but i assume it also connects to a similar strong arm argument like that.

<comment><USER13> The border agents are looking for you to slip up or provide a tell. Asking questions like that may sound silly, but that's the point. They want to try to catch people off guard with unexpected questions and see how they react. These agents are trained to read your reaction and body language. Your body language and voice levels can help reveal some truth or at least the fact that you're uncomfortable answering the question. And why would you be uncomfortable answering a question about whether your a terrorist or not?

<comment><USER5> > Your body language and voice levels can help reveal some truth or at least > the fact that you're uncomfortable answering the question.

Maybe I'm _actually_ just uncomfortable being grilled by my own paranoid countrymen without my guaranteed Constitutional protections as though I'm some sort of enemy of the state when really I just got back from Cozumel.

<comment><USER14> If you are a US citizen returning from abroad you are likely not going to be "grilled" at the border. You'll be asked a few routine questions about where you visited, the purpose of your travel, etc.

<comment><USER15> uhh way incorrect. and I am a contractor for Customs! When I came back from the World Cup in Brasil I definitely got grilled, mainly because on my US Passport it displays the unfortunate (only when travelling) fact that I was born in Iran. Ok that and maybe because I grew a full beard that didnt match my passport photo, but still ;)

Just be respectfull as much as you can even though you just flew multiple hours and it's 1am and all you want is a clean shower and a fine meal just because Argentina lost another final... ahh sorry bad memories

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find it really problematic: when you fill the US borders paperwork, you are supposed to give objective admin/personal details while on social media you are supposed to speak up your mind. Where do you place the limit between somebody that publicly criticizes the US foreign policy and somebody that can be a threat? How are they going to handle people who posted something like "The US knew about the 9/11 attacks"?

<comment><USER17> There is already precedent for criminalizing dissent -- Turkey, for example, considers online criticism of Turkey as equivalent to damaging national security by spreading propaganda with the intent to provoke attacks towards the Turkish government.

It would be fair to assume the US would be open to such means to improve security.

<comment><USER18> No, it wouldn't. The US has a long, deep tradition of not criminalizing dissenting views. Exceptions like the Alien & Sedition acts or the "Red Scare" are remarkable because they're so counter to that tradition.

<comment><USER19> Subtle manipulation is worse than overt criminalization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I used to live in the US. Now I live in a country ruled by a military dictatorship. This year they started with an immigration form that asks for social media accounts, currently optional same as the US. When I left the US I never thought I would be watching the US steadily implement many of the steps of a military dictatorship. The thing is, the US gov is so much more powerful and skilled at surveillance and dirty work than the tin pot dictators I live under, which has led to the weird realization that living under a military dictatorship can actually be better than US-style "democracy".

<comment><USER21> Yeah but this was the most transparent administration in history. Hope and Change indeed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For the people who claim they'll never take action on trivial stupid tweets:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312)

> The 26-year-old bar manager wrote a message to a friend on the micro- > blogging service, saying: "Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go > and destroy America."

> Mr Bryan told the newspaper that he was questioned for five hours about his > Twitter messages.

"All" that happened to him was that he wasn't allowed in.

<comment><USER23> so crazy.

more so when "destroy" can have all kinds of completely innocent meanings.

it's bad judgment, but not something for which a five hour delay plus rejection seems appropriate. how much did we pay for that interrogation, in border security salary?

<comment><USER24> And if we were at risk, who'd have slipped through while the agents played tough-guy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I suspect it's best not to tell them you have a social media account on 'Hacker' News.

</comment><comment><USER26> Background check can be instant and automated. Terminal will just display _entry denied_ message. Israel already does something similar.

In result it will drive normal discussion underground, and we will see more surprises such as Brexit referendum results.

<comment><USER16> Indeed Israel does it, but only for Arabic or Muslim tourists that present certain characteristics - political engagement for instance. So it does exist but it's really not mainstream

<comment><USER27> Thought policing only for people of arab ethnicity? How generous of them.

Do they not see the irony, in a nation of people that used to got the short end of discrimination and thought policing, now doing it themselves?

<comment><USER28> It's easy to make this claim from afar, without personal responsibility or regards to the real dangers present. As the recent attacks prove.

<comment><USER29> Ah yes, the brand new account shows up to defend the Israeli policy of apartheid and overt ethnocentrism. In before criticising Israel is antisemitic.

<comment><USER30> Ok how's this? Every (almost every?) mass-casualty attack inside Israel borders in the last say, almost 70 years, have come from ethnically/religiously similar people. These attacks happen at an alarming rate. You would like them to, for the sake of making you feel warm and fuzzier on the inside, not profile the people most likely to carry out such attacks in the future? That would be ridiculous.

Edit: before I get downvoted into oblivion, and I'm sure I might, I'd like to add that reality is almost always uglier than anyone - especially me - <USER2> like it to be.

<comment><USER29> You and I both know they're doing a lot more than just "profiling".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Be interesting to see Facebook enforce (or modify to allow enforcement) their terms of service over this.

[https://developers.facebook.com/policy/#thingstoknow](https://developers.facebook.com/policy/#thingstoknow)

> 3.15 Don't use data obtained from Facebook to make decisions about > eligibility, including whether to approve or reject an application or how > much interest to charge on a loan.

(EDIT: I know this is the Platform Policy, and not the general TOS.)

<comment><USER31> That's just the ToS for normal developers. US Govt can get a special developer policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Of course my good sir, it's @uspatriot2015."

Now, let's all agree to not tell them we can have more than one account!

Or to be slightly more specific, I'll give them the facebook account where I dutifully like all the boring funny dog videos and ugly baby photos of relatives, and I'll keep my seditious rabble rousing anti-establishment twitter ac to myself.

<comment><USER33> "US P At Riot? Please come with us to this little room and explain for several hours what exactly you mean by US P At Riot."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> what an orwellian fucking nightmare.

no better reason to delete your facebook account than this right here, folks.

<comment><USER34> and LinkedIn, Google (G+, Gmail, Analytics), __Hacker __News, Steam...

<comment><USER35> > Steam

"It says here you've been affiliated with a "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" where you were a terrorist.."

<comment><USER34> That's more true that than you think [http://www.pcgamer.com/counter-strike- go-mapper-threatened-w...](http://www.pcgamer.com/counter-strike-go-mapper- threatened-with-legal-action-by-montreal-transit-authority/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This just shows the direction in which they aim.

It doesn't directly concern me (after Snowden's revelations and the fact that even more surveillance is being pushed down our throats, I have decided not to return to the US anymore), but we know that all the big (US) web/tech companies are part of Prism, which means the Customs will have some sort of access to our social media activity anyway (if not now already, then soon).

</comment><comment><USER36> At first I thought: giving this info might ease me from being treated as a semi-terrorist because I regularily visit Iran. Then I thought some more... my LinkedIn-Profile mentions I own a US company. Which is false, that mentioning there is only a means to get access to some groups and test waters as "if I was a local" because we consider moving there. I guess coming as a tourists and then DHS reads I have a company might lead to serious questions.Everything you do nowadays is a mean to surveil you.

<comment><USER37> Plenty of people own businesses and travel as tourists. The real issue would be travel to Iran, as Iran has been built up through propaganda to be a very different place than it actually is in the minds of many Americans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I like how they want to reduce mass shootings by limiting access based on background checks ...

</comment><comment><USER39> Time to set up some sanitized accounts for plausible deniability?

<comment><USER40> Likely unnecessary.

1\. Unless you are taking extraordinary measures to sever all connections between yourself and your online presence, odds are there are enough links for any Government to tie a person to an account. Given how much is collected at the border already along with the big-data collected passively by the various TLA Government Orgs, they simply need to pop in your Passport ID or Drivers License or State ID and they'll have the relevant data; this collection seems more or less like a convenience to the government if anything. Same goes for foreigners, given the reaches of the various NSA programs; just pop in any number from some database and you'll likely get a match.

2\. You have no obligation to use social media, and I don't think the government is going to mandate its use (I mean, I wouldn't put it past certain politicians, but yeah). Setting up a sanitized account honestly would draw more suspicion than anything, especially if it was on the heels of an announcement or proclamation that they're suddenly requiring or requesting such information. Regular social media users have fairly regular patterns, and barring some real dedication to the sanitized account, it'd be pretty easy for TLAs to figure out if it's a front or not. Not that it would immediately warrant investigation, it's just it feels like theatre more than a practical protection.

If I wanted to get real conspiracy theorist on this, this motion is just a front that allows the government to segue into actually including this stuff as part of standard background checks, which they likely are already doing with questionable legality. That is, the inclusion of the field is just formalizing what they're already doing, so that the articles that inevitably would arise have less "oomph" behind their reaction. It's not as shocking to the public if the government is surveilling social media when the government outright asks for your info. There's no real smoking gun, just a bunch of guys in suits going "yeah, we asked you for it."

This is a symptom of the constant disrespect for privacy within the US government, not some new issue that's arisen. The same thinking that leads to the NSA led to this, and it's honestly not too unusual that they are asking for it. If anything, my initial reaction was less "How dare they!" and more "was wondering when you'd get to this point."

<comment><USER41> Last year i set up a facebook account with a fake name and then never accessed it ever. After a few weeks i started getting emails from fb asking if i knew xxxxxxx, the only way they could have known that i knew these people is by tracking my ip and comparing it with others, looking at those ips and working out who was common amongst their connections. Two people logging from the same ip, creates a bridge between two social graphs, even if they never explicitly declareds that, having, a corporate email address domain in common with sombody else creates a weak link between two branches of the overall graph. Each touch point creates associations which can be mined for knowledge about who you know and interact with. The new face tagging code is scary and can also create thise indirect associations, if yoh appear in multiple peoples photos, and eventualy one of them says thats "xxxxxxx", then you are deanomised for ever. FB is the worlds most amazingly efficient survelence machine, and we feed it willingly.

<comment><USER42> After spending 34 years without any photographs of myself landing on social media, my grandmother put up a photo of me on Facebook. I felt bad scolding her, because she really doesn't know any better. ...which is odd, because she was alive for the years when certain governments were identifying their homosexual and ethnic citizens and sending them off to gas chambers and/or internment camps.

I worry that Facebook and its ilk will be a lot more effective than IBM's punchcard system for locating, identifying, and classifying their society's undesirables.

<comment><USER43> > I worry that Facebook and its ilk will be a lot more effective than IBM's > punchcard system for locating, identifying, and classifying their society's > undesirables.

Yes, consider what's happening in Turkey [1]. A newly minted dictatorial regime could even mine your old posts for evidence against you. The only thing stopping this kind of thing in North America is the checks and balances that are slowly being undermined in the name of security.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/05/turkish- police...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/05/turkish-police- arrests-social-media-protest)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Can someone give me a list of which questions I might get at the border that are actually optional?

</comment><comment><USER45> The problem arises if someone says they have no social media account but really do.

If someone has a distinct online presence - i.e. a journalist - they will be targeted.

If someone has twitter, facebook, etc. installed on their phone, they will be discovered for having lied.

Since gmail is tied to G+, if someone has gmail - they must have a social media account. Did that person use gmail as part of the visa application process - for example to get notification of the visa status?

Can the Border Patrol, [http://www.skipease.com/search/pipl/](http://www.skipease.com/search/pipl/) to tie that person to their social media accounts?

</comment><comment><USER46> This account comes to mind: [https://twitter.com/TSAgov](https://twitter.com/TSAgov)

</comment><comment><USER47> I think there are other, better ways to protect the nation than what the U.S. Customs is proposing here. This is getting kind of ridiculous.

<comment><USER48> Or maybe there aren't. Maybe we just have to learn with a certain amount of risk and don't be giant fucking pussies. Since when did we collectively become scared 40-something housewives? I thought this was "home of brave", not "home of those afraid to leave the house because there's rapists and terrorists hiding around the corner"?

If you're a government official, you pretty much _have_ to, at this point, turn this country into a giant Orwellian nightmare, or be crucified by the media for not "doing enough to protect our children" the next time a few people inevitably lose their lives.

Our oh-so-precious children who are already growing up in a weird world where they're not allowed to ride their bikes around the damn neighborhood since mommy is convinced everyone is a rapist.

And then we sit around and wonder why little Jimmy grows up to be an asocial psychopath with rage built up that nobody can explain.

So yeah, things aren't going to get any better when we, and our officials, are basically cowards and would rather destroy everything that makes life worth living in order to "protect" us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> _" The public has 60 days to comment on the new proposal before it will be formally considered. Comments can be mailed to Customs and Border Protection at its Washington office."_

The article seems to suggest that the proposal can be challenged but there is really nothing that the public can do, right?

</comment><comment><USER50> If you consider Facebook, LinkedIn, Github, HN, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr, Google Plus (one profile for each Google-based e-mail I have), Live (one for each outlook.com e-mail I have) social networks, the field will have to be fairly large.

<comment><USER35> Considering the treasure trove of information available by data-mining each of those accounts, I'm sure they'll be happy to make room on the form for a few more of those fields.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11971774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11971774)

</comment><comment><USER52> Is having an HN or Reddit account considered social media?

<comment><USER53> No, those are anti-social.

Which also counts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> They already check your phone and messages.

</comment><comment><USER55> They will soon enforce you to give them your login password as well so they can freely login and check your data.

<comment><USER56> Canada does this when I enter with a laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Just post to their accounts stuff like "hey, so you're going to set them up the bomb like you mentioned last night?" Etc...

</comment><comment><USER58> And so the US government and US business does not want thousands of dollars for me. No problem. Thanks but no thanks. I will take my business elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER59> > "Are you a terrorist or affiliate with a terrorist organization?"

 _Sir, yes, sir! I was part of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, sir!_

<comment><USER60> Edgy. But really, your comment just cheapens the discussion.

<comment><USER61> I disagree with you that his comment cheapens the discussion. I do think that your comment cheapens it. His point that the US military, with its illegitimate wars, torture practices, and widespread murder of civilians, is reasonably considered to be a terrorist organization is a reasonable and good comment which advances the discussion intelligently and productively. The fact is that US military are in fact terrorists, as is the citizenry that supports this terrorist regime with tax money. So the honest and true response for US citizens at least would be to answer yes to that question.

<comment><USER51> > _The fact is that US military are in fact terrorists, as is the citizenry > that supports this terrorist regime with tax money._

Please don't post shrill ideological denunciations to HN. It's not what this site is for, there's no substantive argument that requires it, and one needn't be a militarist to know that.

<comment><USER61> dang/mod account, you host many political threads and then frequently censor viewpoints contrary to yours. Deleting off topic comments, spam and abuse is appropriate. Attacking and censoring all who are reasonably critical of the american military's torture and surveillance state, its illegitimate wars, and its harm to civilians, in the context of related discussion, is not appropriate.

To maintain the credibility of HN and ycombinator, I suggest you review your censorship and control issues associated with your moderators. Thank you.

<comment><USER60> I am very critical of America's torture, surveillance apparatus, wars and all the things you list. However, it cheapens the discussion you and I have against it. Terrorism is fundamentally very different from an invading and occupying force. The nature of the soldiers, their funding, purpose, propaganda used to send them off, as well as their very mission and goals all differ to such an extent. Calling this terrorism cheapens the word (terrorism), and makes it easy to ignore your somewhat valid points. I think there is a place for discussing the merits, drawbacks, and issues associated with America's unreasonable middle east adventures, but this is not it. It is also unreasonable to cry 'Censorship!' Whenever one strays and veers far off the OP topic. Please, do put up a thread, a blog, a news article and we can discuss, debate, and learn together about which is which, and why. But not here, and not in a way that cheapens the wonderful site that this is. Let us do all we can to not become reddit.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A Private Place to Vent - <AUTHOR> https://burakkanber.com/~/shitbox.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is a toy I built a few years back. No special tech, no machine learning, no server, just a little JS app that you can complain to or curse at and get an affirming response from.</comment>


Arizona man is first to take artificial heart home - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18969-arizona-man-is-first-to-take-artificial-heart-home.html <comment><USER2> Random macabre tip. If you live in the USA and need an organ transplant, you may want to consider moving to Florida.

The reason is that Florida allows motorcyclists to ride without helmets. This results in a supply of fresh corpses with no history of health problems that most other states cannot match. Furthermore the Mayo Clinic is there where world-class medical staff can perform the operation at reasonable (for the US) rates.

(I learned this from a dental assistant whose fiance had needed a transplant. On the advice of his doctor they moved to Florida, and a few months later were able to move back to California after a successful organ transplant.)

<comment><USER3> New Hampshire also does not have helmet laws, and the several world-class hospitals in Boston are on the order of an hour away. It's probably not as good a choice as Florida if all other things are equal, but it's a similar situation.

<comment><USER4> Florida has the advantage of a huge population of senile drivers with poor vision.</comment></comment></comment>


Simple Bank and Why You Shouldn't Bank in Beta - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/117457048271408990845/posts/SgxC8kDX4qY

<comment><USER2> Google won't let me read this unless I login or view it in an Incognito window, and that's not good enough.

 _Simple Bank and Why You Shouldn't Bank in Beta

The Story Bad day for #SimpleBank .

They sent out a message to all their account holders. Presumably the collective "WTF is wrong with my account?!" caused all account holders to try logging in, and accidentally DDoSed their login page. The result is that logins are rejected.

I try getting a password reset (because, hey, maybe the message is my account was compromised), and the email doesn't come. Try again, no email. Now I'm getting worried that something is properly wrong. I head over to the Simple bank status page and Twitter feed, and find out that their login servers toppled over and they're trying to fix it.

Once everything was ironed out, it turned out the secure message was about Simple launching their "Goals" feature.

As @nerded on Twitter[1] posted: "you emailed me a notification to log in to see a msg about a public announcement? This feels very "old bank" : ("

The Simple Bank rep responded with "Actually, I agree with you. We'll consider better ways of doing it in the future. ^RG", which is a fine mea culpa, but does not engender confidence.

Banks are people's money, they aren't just web sites During the login troubles, the Twitter account contained a tweet from Simple to an angry customer who accused them of incompetence, with Simple replying that it is "just a web site" (I can't get a citation right now due to Twitter overload). This is a really bad way of framing the discussion. Simple acts as a bank from the consumer's perspective, and when critical pieces of infrastructure go down, your response should be an immediate apology.

What makes this worse is that Simple markets itself as a company that understands the Internet, but if you know your login page is down, and have no way to push that information to users (after you asked every single one to log in) without resorting to a blog post on your status page, you are acting very much like a company that doesn't get the Internet at all. You're playing in the old bank space, and competition there is getting fiercer (Ally, for example, refunds bank fees from anywhere, which Simple doesn't [2]).

Simple seems to be running with the argument that everyone in their is beta, that betas don't go smoothly, and early adopters should be used to this. To some extent, I get that. But this is people's money, and that's important. When you're building a company on having excellent Internet know-how, being trustworthy and generally just doing better, people remember this stuff. What I find particularly galling is that Simple does not have a means of electronically moving money away from it, only to their account. It's like data lock in, where the only export means (withdrawing it all back in cash from an ATM, writing yourself a check) really sucks. I'd argue that Simple are trying to launch without their MVP (money goes in, money goes out).

Put on a suit, if only in your mind A long time ago, when Simple were first appearing, there was a team photo, and they were in the standard hacker clothing: t-shirts, hoodies, jeans. Not one of them was wearing a suit, and I found that strange and somewhat disconcerting. I want my bank to wear suits. I want them to be diligent, conservative and fearful of screwing up with my money; the loss of such fear being arguably the thing that has changed about consumer banking in the last decade.

Simple give off the impression of a company that is very much a start-up, moving fast and breaking things, and that's not what I, or I suspect, many people, want from their bank. I want you to move slow and keep things working right. Put the suit on in your mind, if not your body.

[1] <http://twitter.com/nerded/status/237984492323753984> [2] <https://www.simple.com/faq/#usingsimple*>

</comment><comment><USER3> Eh, don't bank with them yet if that's what you think. This industry needs pioneers and anything with the scale and complexity of a bank is going to have some bugs no matter how much testing is done in a private beta.

Yeah, it's scary to think that your money is being managed by beta software, but it was also scary for Chuck Yeager to break the sound barrier.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is disappointing they are not launching with everything they have promised so far. As itsmequinn suggests, I am not banking with them yet, but have established my account. I think their early motto was to "not suck," or something like that. Right now, they kind of suck. I would be horrified if I'd decided to put all of my money there now, especially when my current bank (State Farm Bank) does pretty much everything Simple has promised, and they do it pretty well. Simple is just a prettier interface with a few nice technology elements. As the author says, there is a certain level of expectation for professionalism from a bank. I want a hacker feel and certain edge to the website and technology, but I don't want a hacker managing my money or a lack of certain fundamental banking tools (like withdrawing/transfering all of MY money at one time).

</comment><comment><USER5> I've known the Simple folk for a long time. The complexity and inherent safety designed into their product makes every other bank look like a joke. They still have to rely on banking partners to store the money, but they've gone to great pains to make sure that things work in a consistent and fail-safe way, if not with 100% availability during their beta. The other thing to note is that, although it's perceived as a bank, it isn't one; it's a front-end. They realized that everything a bank is defined by when you remove the vault comes down to customer interaction. I'm willing to accept when things break (especially during a beta) in exchange for some making some headway in my banking experience. Without avoiding the pun: it's a very simple proposition.</comment>


Obesity Pill Passes First Human Trial - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2010/04/22/obesity-capsule-from-gelesis-made-to-swell-up-in-the-stomach-passes-first-human-trial/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if this really works long term, how people's leptin resistance confounds its efficacy, etc.

I still remained shocked at how effective carb restriction is, assuming you swap in lots of protein and fat from non-processsed food sources. The hassle is that it takes more time to construct meals, etc., but if you eat less than 40g of carbs a day, you can eat to satiety and lose weight with relative ease (at least, I did, as did many other people I know, so sample size of n=~8, obviously, not conclusive).

<comment><USER3> Add +1 to your sample size. I cut out all grains at the beginning of this year and effortlessly lost about 30 lbs.

<comment><USER4> I weighed 320 pounds when I cut out carbs. I lost approximately 5 pounds a week until I got down to 275 at which point I couldn't stand it any more and pigged out on donuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The pill works by expanding to make you feel full (100-to-1 ratio claimed).

Here is a link to a 4min animation and a 1 minute live video (pill in glass of water):

<http://www.gelesis.com/content/technology/>

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the link to the video. I had imagined it acting like expanding polyurethane foam. I see it looks more like mush, which doesn't seem as dangerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What happens if you swallow a dozen of these?

<comment><USER7> The same thing that happens when you eat an overly large volume of something else, I would imagine: you throw up.

<comment><USER8> If the pill genuinely expands 100-fold in your stomach then I can see it being worse than throwing up. Either it might suck all the fluid out of your stomach, in which case you won't be able to throw up, or it might fill your stomach so rapidly that you can't bring them all up in time.

Of course I'm sure that the consequences of overdose are something the researchers have thought about carefully and probably tested on animals by now.

<comment><USER9> You should be able to throw up even if it sucks the fluid out of your stomach. The muscles would still work, and the stuff should be slimy enough that it's not going to scratch up your esophagus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Artificial roughage. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Obesity Pill Passes First Human Trial

Comes out alright.

(Go ahead, shoot me - but first flag this also.)

<comment><USER7> Why do you feel this story should be flagged? It's technology-related, involves a (biotech) start-up, and could impact a significant percentage of HN readers' personal lives. Seems like the ideal HN story...

<comment><USER11> Looks like one of those general interest stories you can find in any newspaper, put out by PR to prop up the company. No technical details, secret sauce, seems similar to just filling up with gelatin, except in expensive pills. Not really 'hard biotech', not worth the attention, in short.

P.S. Yesterday, for instance, I voted up that 'paid comments' site link, not because I think it's a good idea, but because it might generate some interesting comments. I don't think it's the case with this, or economics/etc discussions which quickly degenerate into pointless squabbling. Been around that block with Usenet, and the experience hasn't improved - nowadays there's not even killfiles, and the reading is slower. Not looking good.</comment></comment></comment>


Tootsuite/mastodon Issue#1847: Media content caching strategy - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/1847 <comment><AUTHOR> People are currently discussing about the legal implications of storing images coming from federated Mastodon instances. A lot of this stems from an influx of users at pawoo.net, a Mastodon instance set up by Pixiv, posting CP and CP- like content. While Pixiv explains that these images are legal in Japan where the servers are hosted, a lot of the instances federated with pawoo have jurisdictions setting such images as illegal, or at least immoral. As response, a lot of instances have defederated from pawoo.</comment>


Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution - <AUTHOR> https://www.starterstory.com/blog/building-apps-for-shopify-fall-in-love-with-the-problem-not-the-solution <comment><USER2> "It seemed like a tough proposition. I would need thousands of merchants paying at least $20/month to create a successful business. I didn't think it would be possible, until I came across the Bold Commerce story. This four person team in Winnipeg, Manitoba, had almost the same story as us. "Merchants first, identified gaps in the app store, and deciding to build apps on Shopify. Bold Commerce now employs almost 300 people, with no outside funding to date, and with their growth solely on the Shopify platform. This case study was enough to convince us to take the leap, I wanted us to be like Bold."

Online Payments space is big. A company built on Shopify platform just for Shopify users with 300 employees!

Even in my company (JotForm - a form builder) payment integrations is just one of our minor features and we process over 500M/year on payment forms people create.

<comment><USER3> Oh man, JotForm is O.G. SAAS for me. I used to use it all the time back around 2011. Thanks for making my work back then so much less tedious!

<comment><USER4> Yes, I remember comparing JotForm vs WuFoo back in 2008, back when the norm for forms on small websites was custom server-side code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Keep your features close and your problems closer.

<comment><USER6> I like this spin - im stealing it like the dirty thief i am

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Time is better spent trying to find a solution to a problem than a problem for a solution.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not sure that the 'Identify, Test, Build, Measure framework' is yours to take credit for, but other than that, it's a good read!

</comment><comment><USER9> The only thing worse than not fully solving the problem is fully solving the problem (because then you have no where to go, as competitors catch up).

</comment><comment><USER10> Terrible advice.

You shouldn't "fall in love" with anything

Everything is always changing. Consumer "problems", their goals, their constraints.. its all changing, all the time.

Instead, commit yourself to delivering progress to consumers, and adapting to what that entails

<comment><USER11> It sounds like you read the headline, and not the article. In fact, it seems like you didn't even scroll down, to look at the images. This one [0] in particular caught my eye.

[0] [https://scontent- yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/72c07367b0d95187...](https://scontent- yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/72c07367b0d95187ae7179d015fd9cf9/5C4BF698/t51.2885-15/e35/38910947_520325111744903_3452700131667738624_n.jpg)

<comment><USER10> I read the article.

It's bad advice.

Here's a famous paper on why:

[http://www.sympoetic.net/Managing_Complexity/complexity_file...](http://www.sympoetic.net/Managing_Complexity/complexity_files/1973%20Rittel%20and%20Webber%20Wicked%20Problems.pdf)

<comment> em-bee i fail to see how the difficulty of problems and in particular how "commit yourself to delivering progress to consumers, and adapting to what that entails" make "not falling in love with the solution" bad advice.

you are absolutely right that the real focus should be to improve the lives of people. but that is tangential to focusing on problems vs solutions.

when someone is in love with their solution, the first step is to realize that they need to focus on the problem, and then the next is that they need to focus on the people whose problems they are trying to solve.

so the advice in the article is ok, it could probably be better...

greetings, eMBee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> hmm... but we can parrying the problem in our life</comment>


Tiger-Stone: Automatic Paving Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.core.form-ula.com/2010/11/15/tiger-stone-paving-machine/ <comment><USER2> It seems a bit of a stretch to describe that as 'printing' a pavement. I mean, asphalt-laying machines have worked in largely the same way. This is just laying an aggregate with far larger maximum granularity.

It is neat, though. That said, I'm more partial to the giant scraping machines that tear up old pavements.</comment>


Have you launched a non-unique business? Tell us about your experience - <AUTHOR>

Lately I've been thinking about launching businesses that aren't anything special in their own right and that don't require some kind of eureka moment to discover the concept. Clearly that's nothing new: people have been running bars, restaurants, movie theaters, and mattress stores for decades and each iteration doesn't typically bring any major new improvement along with it.
Do any of you have experience starting and running a business that isn't necessarily the next big thing? Software based or not, I'm interested to learn about your experience. What was the business? What was good and bad about it? Why and how did you succeed or fail?
I'm personally more interested in software startups, but I believe you can learn something from anything, so please share away! <comment><USER2> I don't know that this is the right way to frame the question, at least in my experience.

98% of making serious money in any business still has to do with good execution and process - it's ultimately about creating reusable business processes that can be replicated at decreasing marginal cost. That's going to be true whether you're a mattress store or a "next big thing" software concept startup. So, they have at least that in common.

Otherwise, more generally, there's the kind of banality you ascribe to bars, restaurants, movie theaters, etc. in every business, even a technology startup --and lots of it. If you're doing something you genuinely enjoy, that just means you're lucky enough that your drudgery/fun mix is something like 90%/10%, instead of the 98%/2% that applies to people who claim to outright to hate their work.

At the same time, there's both room and ample incentive for differentiation through aggressive innovation and novel concepts in these types of everyday businesses, too. So, just because they aren't hot Silicon Valley startups doesn't mean they neither benefit from nor require the same kinds of marketing, branding, advertising, sales cycle and operational challenges.</comment>


Search Competition Among Travel Sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/search-competition-travel-sites/ We launched our new Django webapp this week at http://www.concentrateme.com (with a free version if your site has google analytics). One of the features involves pattern mining within search query data which allows you to perform some interesting competitive analysis.  The post goes through a basic case study for a few Travel websites which HN people trying to find a niche might find interesting. <comment><AUTHOR> We launched our new Django webapp this week at <http://www.concentrateme.com> (with a free version if your site has google analytics). One of the features involves pattern mining within search query data which allows you to perform some interesting competitive analysis. The post goes through a basic case study for a few Travel websites which HN people trying to find a niche might find interesting.</comment>


Larry Page Wants Google to Build a Super-Efficient Airport - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/now-googles-larry-page-wants-to-reinvent-airports-2014-9

<comment><USER2> "Efficient Airport" is an oxymoron, unless it's meant to mean "let's find quicker ways to get people to burn even more jet fuel".</comment>


I am CDO, bitch - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelonomics.com/chief-design-officer-pepsi-cdo/

<comment><USER3> I'm a CDO and occasionally feel the sting from it being such a new term. When the press covered Referly's big new features last week (an API, shopping experience and design overhaul) the ones that mentioned me put my title in dick quotes - "Chief Design Officer" instead of Chief Design Officer. And it sounds too similar to CTO to just say CDO when you first meet people, so I just say I'm a cofounder.

It's ok though and stuff like that's rare. Overall I feel a growing responsibility to represent design founders and it's what most accurately represents my role anyway. CDO is more fad-proof and less limiting than other titles like Chief UX Officer (too much focus on function, plus UX is industry jargon) or Chief Creative Officer (too much focus on visuals and marketing, plus it makes you sound like a Don Draper wannabe).

</comment><comment><USER4> "As a matter of fact, yes I _have_ decided that the purpose of my life is to sell sugar water, bitch!"

</comment><comment><USER5> _We live in an era when most companies are competing neck to neck on technology._

This is a key insight. Design isn't any more or less "important" today - <USER2> has simply become a more critical place of battle. If two products are even in terms of features, design can be the tiebreaker.

<comment><USER3> _If two products are even in terms of features, design can be the tiebreaker._

Design can be even more critical than that and more valuable than feature parity. Facebook had way less features than Myspace - you could do all kinds of stuff on Myspace like listen to music, customize your page, have photo slideshows - but Facebook's design was a welcome relief from the haphazard Geocities-like mess that Myspace devolved into.

And similarly, Facebook's current crowded interface leaves room open for even better designed networks like Path, Instagram, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Crappy article but I enjoy the sentiment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Crappy writing, opinion or are you calling the whole design movement crappy? Coz its easy to call something crappy. A little harder to be a constructive critic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wait, I thought I was the only one who realized how important design was!</comment>


How 1,600 People Went Missing from U.S. Public Lands - <AUTHOR> https://www.outsideonline.com/2164446/leave-no-trace <comment><USER2> "he lists such recurring characteristics as dogs unable to track scents, the time (late afternoon is a popular window to vanish), and that many victims are found with clothing and footwear removed. Bodies are also discovered in previously searched areas with odd frequency, sometimes right along the trail. Children—and remains—are occasionally found improbable distances from the point last seen, in improbable terrain."

I've been hunting for 7 years and my first thoughts are that:

-Found without clothing and footwear can indicate hypothermia

-Improbable distances and terrain is not a surprise. I've felt mild panic set in when I wasn't where I was suppose to be in terms of meetup spots and felt the need to rush uphill or avoid using common sense in the moment. I've also scaled some scary terrain (I'm no rock climber or mountain goat) and I've heard stories from guys I hunt with who have done some stupid scary stuff when it comes to terrain

-The other comments read like a bad movie that tries to scare us into believing the forest is the most dangerous place in the world other than your own sidewalk, where a stranger will kidnap your kids at the most opportune moment. Most of my coworkers throughout the years all think I'm crazy when I tell them I go hiking and hunting in the forest, as they believe I'll be eaten by bears. By the way, I saw a baby black bear about 15 yards from me last season, cutest thing in the world, and so was his mother as I was walking away :)

<comment><USER3> About a year and a half ago, I was out hunting and stopped to listen. I closed my eyes and absorbed all of the sounds around me. I got into the moment and when I opened my eyes, I had lost my bearings. I knew the area well enough that within a minute or so I deduced what was where but I didn't have that instinctive feeling of where things were. In that moment, I understood how people can get lost in unfamiliar woods.

People who live their entire lives in urban or suburban areas have no concept of just how far two miles through dense woods really is when you're on foot.

Don't ever take nature lightly, it's been killing us for a long time.

<comment><USER4> I've personally experience that same feeling after closing my eyes for some time and losing my bearing. I didn't realize how important visual cues were to maintaining my internal dead reckoning, while I wasn't even moving!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I live out west. It isn't that hard to start going in a direction and not see anyone for days.

My brother volunteers for Search and Rescue (Search and Recover most of the time). If someone dies in the desert, because of the sage brush and other grasses, you can easily walk right past a body and not know it (assuming there is no smell)

<comment><USER6> I concur. I play a lot of disc golf, and it's amazing how hard it can be to find something that is in brush and grass.

I've put down my bag while looking for discs before, walked 20 feet, turned around to go back to my bag and not been able to find it. I've seen where discs have fallen, immediately run over to the spot, and not been able to find them despite looking for nearly an hour.

You can be standing with someone, point out something on the ground to them, and they won't be able to see it until to are basically touching it.

I've done Search and Rescue training as well. What I've taken from both is that you do not want to be lost, and if you are lost you do not want to be far from where people are expecting you to be. This is in part because you want to narrow the search area, but also because people have an incredible ability to overlook things that aren't expecting.

One thing I didn't realize before I did all of this was how useless looking for a given shape is. Unless it is extremely flat, you are probably just looking for splashes of color. You would not believe the amount of color there is in the middle of a forest, or a field, etc, until you start looking for a particular color. Flowers, garbage, mottled sun, you can basically get any color you imagine out there.

I think we like to imagine we've reached a point where we can know everything we want to about our planet, and the only limiting factor is what we can focus our attention on. That's not true though. Even with effectively limitless resources, it took over a year to find Steve Fossett's body. The world is an incredibly vast place, and we are incredibly small.

<comment><USER7> > _I 've done Search and Rescue training as well. What I've taken from both is > that you do not want to be lost, and if you are lost you do not want to be > far from where people are expecting you to be. This is in part because you > want to narrow the search area, but also because people have an incredible > ability to overlook things that aren't expecting._

> _One thing I didn 't realize before I did all of this was how useless > looking for a given shape is. Unless it is extremely flat, you are probably > just looking for splashes of color. You would not believe the amount of > color there is in the middle of a forest, or a field, etc, until you start > looking for a particular color. Flowers, garbage, mottled sun, you can > basically get any color you imagine out there._

Very true. This is the same sort of basic issue that a lot of optical illusions and magic tricks are based on. Human brains (and to some extent probably many animals in general) tend to out of necessity be a lot more sensitive to change vs static imagery and use a lot of processing shortcuts. There is so much data constantly coming in that processing all of it would be paralyzing, so a lot of the work really is throwing most of it out.

That's also why active signaling is so valuable in emergency situations. Even without touching on any sort of networked devices, tools like colored smoke flares, LED lamps/torches with a strobe feature, highly reflective metallized boPET (aka Mylar and other brands) flags or streamers light enough to have significant motion even in very minimal breeze, alarms, etc are all quite valuable because their dynamic and artificial nature makes them stand out more clearly from farther away. The problem comes with them needing at least some level of consciousness and ability to take action to deploy.

I do think there's more room still for innovation in safety equipment when it comes to automated emergency signal systems that can be linked to biomonitoring and thus respond automatically to signs of distress if the user doesn't cancel it after a given timeout. There are some products on the market right now, but the ones I'm aware of are purely electronic and depend on S&R having a receiver of the right type and/or on availability of network coverage. Satellite-based emergency signals don't seem to be practical or economic enough yet for ubiquitous usage. They both can still be incredibly valuable, but in addition it might be nice in some situations if automated deployment could be linked to non-electronic signals. For example, a compact self-contained system attachable to the top of a backpack with mylar balloon (possibly with a small strobing LED lamp), enough helium for auto-inflation, and a 100-200 ft tether that could be triggered automatically or manually. Standard mylar balloons can remain taut for a good 5 days and float for a couple weeks before losing too much lift, and the weight and cost of the basic components should be reasonable. While of limited use in certain environments like dense forest, in many areas it'd have no trouble reaching full extension. A floating bobbing reflective object (or at night lit by even a minimal LED) should be visible from a significant distance vs something on the ground but be safer and easier to deploy then trying to climb something to achieve vertical. Effective signal lifetime vs other consumables seems like it might be favorable as well. Or maybe there is something like this already?

<comment><USER8> > Satellite-based emergency signals don't seem to be practical or economic > enough yet for ubiquitous usage.

It's not as much a tech or time problem as it is a physics problem. Getting a signal from many Earth transmitters to a satellite receiver takes a lot of power on the transmitter side. More power by a lot than for one satellite transmitter to a bunch of Earth receivers!

<comment><USER9> Physics isn't really an issue. Locator beacons are a thing. But they're standalone GPS size (i.e. not watches) and have subscription fees in the $100+ per year category so they're really more for people like solo hikers in remote areas etc. as opposed to the average consumer.

<comment><USER10> Speaking of watches, the Breitling Emergency has a built in locator beacon. Not exactly cheap though.

<comment><USER9> Interesting! It also does seem to be a little bit of an operation to activate. I suspect that for most situations where you might have a realistic need for such a device, carrying a small Garmin or SPOT isn't a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's easy for even a big search to miss someone, even when that person is alive. Geraldine Largay got lost on the Appalachian Trail in Maine, survived for 26 days, and died less than 2 miles from the trail, yet a large search didn't find her, and her remains weren't found for more than two years after her disappearance:

[http://www.pressherald.com/2016/01/29/maine-hiker- missing-2-...](http://www.pressherald.com/2016/01/29/maine-hiker- missing-2-years-died-in-sleeping-bag-inside-tent/)

<comment><USER12> I have read multiple sources over the years that her remains were found at a place that was searched numerous times. The strange thing is that a lot of these missing people cases mention the same thing - body found in a heavily searched area to the amazement of the search party. However, none of this stuff gets any press because it all sounds hokey pokey. The guy who investigates these things, David Paulides, is an ex-cop/detective. He publicly states that he has no clue how these people are disappearing and never throws out opinions in fear of ridicule and dismissal. I encourage to listen to some of his interviews on this. It's all truly fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe phones should all have an emergency distress mode--a separate mode like airplane mode that conserves power and sends out an intelligently designed sequence of pings using a standard protocol, some of which encode GPS data, some try to reach a cell tower, others just try to just broadcast a ping as far as possible to get attention, maybe even an attempt to ping a satellite.

Also, make every phone a _receiver /decoder_ of this peer-to-peer protocol (no cell tower required), so that searchers would become a swarm antenna using only the personal phones everyone already had.

You would have to have your phone, but lots of hikers and runners do, and you would have to be conscious and able to turn on the distress mode if you got in trouble, but in most cases people are, at least part of the time. There would also have to be a cost to using the system, so people wouldn't constantly do it as a prank.

This upgrade to the tech we already have could prove useful in so many ways.

<comment><USER14> There is actually a standard [0] and devices that meet this standard you can buy from places like REI [1]. That will send alerts/help and get you found. They require no monthly fees, etc. You can also buy "fancy" ones like the spot [2], that don't generally meet the standard but allow you to send messages besides "EMERGENCY".

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cospas- Sarsat_Pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cospas-Sarsat_Pr..).

[1] [https://www.rei.com/c/personal-locator- beacons?r=c&ir=catego...](https://www.rei.com/c/personal-locator- beacons?r=c&ir=catego..).

[2] [http://www.findmespot.com/en/](http://www.findmespot.com/en/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _...Interior tried to build its own database to track law-enforcement actions.... The result, the Incident Management Analysis and Reporting System, is a $50 million Database to Nowhere — last year, only 14 percent of the several hundred reportable incidents were entered into it. The system is so flawed that Fish and Wildlife has said no thanks and refuses to use it._

I know, this is normal, and one shouldn't get upset. It just feels like $50M is enough resources to accomplish quite a lot, if it were properly allocated. It feels like people should be in prison for this.

<comment><USER16> The technology is only a tiny part of this. The much more expensive part is getting everyone that should be using the system to actually use it.

<comment><USER15> They're civil servants, not outlaw bikers. If they're told to use a new system, they'll try. If USF&WS says a system is unusable, while BLM NPS and BIA enter only 14% of what should be entered, I'm willing to believe that the system isn't usable by the users who are supposed to use it. Besides we're not talking about that many people. The whole department is only 70k employees, and less than half of those would be in the field. Let's grossly overestimate and say it cost $800 per user to print out some manual binders and tutorial DVDs. That leaves $22M left over for actually building a very-low-volume (TFA says "several hundred reportable incidents" per _year_ ) CRUD app and tying it to other relevant systems. Only, after spending that $50M, we got nothing.

<comment><USER16> Spoken like someone who has never actually done something like this.

The general problem is the people building the system don't have authority to force others to use it. Think herding cats at night.

<comment><USER15> Somebody signed off on spending $50M. If they didn't have buy-in from someone who reports to SecInt, that's _another_ monumental screw-up.

I _have_ built and deployed systems that lots of users used for their jobs, which were quite a bit more involved than a simple reporting CRUD, and which handled far more than a few hundred transactions a year.

<comment><USER16> System complexity is not what I am talking about. As soon as your talking several agency's it becomes a ridiculous mess. If you get buy in and it's a priory then everything can go really smoothly, but thinking in terms of just technical problems is a tiny park of cross agency systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you enjoyed this article, there's a rather deep rabbit-hole documenting the search for a German family that went missing in Death Valley about 20 years ago.

[http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the- hun...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the- death-valley-germans/)

<comment><USER18> HN discussion about that particular story:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12019567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12019567)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> All that searching and his body found only 1.7 miles from the ranch defies belief. Also the fact that he was found in the direction in which he had set out. It really sounds like the search wasn't systematically done at all.

<comment><USER20> Suppose that, on average, it takes you one second to ascertain that there definitely is no body on 10m² of ground.

Then it would take 100,000 seconds to search a km². Rounding down by 15% or so, that's a full 24 hours.

A 1.7 mile radius circle has an area of 20 km² (again rounding down). So, by this extremely simple model, searching that circle would take two man-months at eight hours of searching a day, seven days a week. At ten times that speed, it still would take a week or so. Most people would get bored and move farther out before that week was over.

So, is that 10m² per person-second a good guess? I won't know, but looking around my living room, I doubt I could do double that rate there, so I (very, very tentatively) conclude it isn't completely bollocks.

There will be places where searching can be done much faster, but also ones where it is much slower, if only because navigating there is slow.

<comment><USER21> Their plan for the run and the terrain would constrain the highest probability area quite a bit more than a circle around the ranch.

<comment><USER19> Yes, an arc of even 60 degrees looks too big

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> >Joe's body was 1.7 miles as the crow flies from the ranch. Searchers had been close. In November 2015, Keller and David Van Berkum had come within several hundred yards. "I regret not searching there on the 25th of July," Keller told me. "That's where I wish I'd started. What part of here would take a life? It's not the meadow on top; it's the cliff."

In populated areas you can skid off the road into a pond and not get found for years, if ever. When you hike even heavily travelled trails, all kinds of wildlife is just outside your range of perception along the trail. It's easy to stumble upon a bear's den, for example. Missing skiers can be 10 meters into the woods, off a marked trail, in a hole at the base of a tree.

Searching for a cold corpse in a fairly wild area is a low-odds roll of the dice, not a determination that a body isn't there. Unless you have something like a mobile phone or body heat that can be sensed at a distance, you have, at best, a well-trained dog's nose at ground level, limited by where the dog and handler can reach. Human senses have much lower odds of success.

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of [http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the- hun...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the- death-valley-germans/) another very compelling read.

<comment><USER9> I've read that a couple of times. His final theory seems pretty plausible. In addition to Death Valley being a huge place, no one was really thinking like a German family with no real experience of just how vast and remote much of that area is.

Of course, that search took place when their car was found months after they disappeared. No one searched for them at the time because all that was known was they hadn't returned their car and had missed their flight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> See also the Pima County Missing Migrants project. When a corpse is found in a desert a group of people try to identify who it used to be and inform relatives.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21029783](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21029783)

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01v5sq8](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01v5sq8)

</comment><comment><USER25> It's a really sad story.

But for me, the upside to this story is knowing that it is still fully possible to disappear in these places, which makes me all the more convinced these lands are worth protecting. For many, the subconscious draw of truly wild places is often that how they stand in sure counterpoint to the modality our society has adopted (i.e., so many people go the wilderness to "get away" or keep their mind off things.) Not every square inch of this world needs to be made friendly to humans, though, but I don't think everyone wants to fully accept that even if they normally pay lip service to conservation principles and the important of our national parks and wildlife refuges. So excuse me if I come across as callous, but if people don't bring their phones or come in the least prepared for their "walk in the woods," I'm not sure I quite see a problem that _society_ needs to bend over backwards to solve.

<comment><USER15> Particularly not when "society" is a sparsely populated county with a low-six- figures budget for the entire sheriff's department. The dude died when he landed at the base of the cliff and his body was found a year later by a hobbyist. That means everything the county spent looking for him was completely wasted. I wonder if the family, entitled as they seemed in their grief, used any of the money they raised from donors to reimburse the county's expenses? I wonder, as well, if the hobbyist actually received the advertised $50k reward? He seems like someone who knows what's going on, so I wouldn't be surprised to find that he had split the reward with the county.

I fell while downclimbing a cliff off-trail in remote federal lands in Colorado, but landed mostly on my backpack. That fall, the night I spent finding the trail again, and walking out the next morning are some of my best memories. This wasn't a tragic death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is actually a standard [0] and devices that meet this standard you can buy from places like REI [1]. That will send alerts/help and get you found. They require no monthly fees, etc. You can also buy "fancy" ones like the spot [2], that don't generally meet the standard but allow you to send messages besides "EMERGENCY".

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cospas- Sarsat_Pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cospas- Sarsat_Programme)

[1] [https://www.rei.com/c/personal-locator- beacons?r=c&ir=catego...](https://www.rei.com/c/personal-locator- beacons?r=c&ir=category%3Apersonal-locator-beacons&page=1)

[2] [http://www.findmespot.com/en/](http://www.findmespot.com/en/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Completely tangential, but "faith, hope and charity" are also the 'names' of Oregon's Three Sisters mountains, more commonly referred to as South, Middle and North.

<comment><USER27> And Mount Bachelor is thus named because it stands apart from the Three Sisters. Originally, though, I think it was named Brother Mountain.

The occurrence of "sisters" geographical names is a common pattern.

<comment><USER26> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Bachelor#Name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Bachelor#Name)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Are there statistics on how often such searches have found the missing person alive? Or even some representative cases?

<comment><USER29> I read 14ers.com, a Colorado based hiking social network. A lot of incidents are real time. Someone will be overdue several hours, then both a social network alert and formal SAR will start. I'd guess about half have happy endings. Just last week a climber of Pyramid near Aspen was overdue. He survived a 2000 foot fall and hobbled out to a joyful reception.

This week starts the spring break danger period. Invincible college newbies post nearly impossible trip plans. And I roll my eyes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Strange stuff happens in the wilderness. Strange beasts sighted. People disappear.

Some say that it's because what we call "reality" is, to a significant degree, conjured into being by our collective attention. So the edge of the collective (civilization or whatever) is the edge of reality.

<comment><USER21> I think vastness has a lot more to do with people not being found than anything strange.

<comment><USER31> Agreed. The sad but likely explanation for most of these disappearances is that they simply became lost and succumbed to elements within a few days, or injured themselves and became immobilized. When there's no one for miles and miles in any direction, you're very much on your own.

<comment><USER9> Once you get off a trail, it's very easy to get disoriented and lost, especially if you can't see major landmarks to orient yourself by.

Quite a few years ago, before smartphones and handheld GPSs, I went to take a walk from where I was staying to a relatively nearby lighthouse on the coast. I didn't take a compass with me and, as soon as I walked into some woods, I very quickly realized that I had gotten disoriented and wasn't sure which direction I had come from.

I did find my way out really quickly but it was really a "well, that was dumb" moment and a realization that if you step off a trail into the woods you could end up getting very lost very easily.

<comment><USER31> There was a nature preserve at the end of my block growing up. Maybe 2x2 miles of light woods with a creek and some minor trails. I explored it regularly and often had to find my way home by walking in a straight line to the edge of the woods (where there would be recognizable streets in the town).

When I'm backcountry I always have a GPS and good maps. You can lose a trail walking 100 yards off it to check something out.

<comment><USER9> >often had to find my way home by walking in a straight line

Which often isn't straightforward, especially in uneven terrain. "Walking in circles" may be a cliche but it definitely happen when you don't have a distant point to lock onto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This hits close to home. My dad was raised in this area and I go down here quite often to escape the stresses of "city life" (live in Denver) and spend time with my parents. He tells me so many crazy stories, mostly surrounding weather. One of the most notable was a similar situation to the missing campers scenario wherein a freak, late spring snow storm dumped over two feet of snow overnight on my dad and a college buddy. They really didn't believe that they were going to make it out alive and they were making end of life plans for identification when S&R arrived. He said that he learned that he only thought he was prepared, but that event taught him to prepare even more thoroughly and to expect the unexpected. He was lucky.

Here's a map, just for reference. [https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CS1dchOHf79iGj4GHdlqWHkvpx...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CS1dchOHf79iGj4GHdlqWHkvpxA&usp=sharing)

In fact, a just a few days after Joe (now I know is name) went missing, I was up in that general area on a solo camping trip of my own (Kerr Lake, on the map). I also spend time in the La Jara Reservoir area (in an area known as Jacob's Hill on the map). I remember how rainy that summer was and how much time I spent in my tent that long weekend. During one of the breaks in the rain, I went wandering around and was struck by how remote everything was. I was used to the remoteness of the La Jara Reservoir wilderness area, but this was on a totally different level. I've linked to a few pictures from my aforementioned trip. One is of my poor dog trapped in a tent with me at Kerr Lake. The other two are from the Conejos River, a few miles south of the Platoro Reservoir. In one you can see some of Platoro's buildings. Admittedly, this is probably about 15-20 miles north of Rainbow Trout Ranch, but the pictures were taken on my drive down the same road on which Joe and Collin were running and I would have driven past that area (2015-07-29).

The terrain, as described in this article, is imposing but tranquil. There's a fun rock formation in the area that locals call "Monkey Face" because it looks like a monkey's face from the road. Unfortunately, years of weather have eroded it so that the features are not as prominent. Unfortunately, I don't recall noticing any S&R activity. I've ridden through the canyon with my dad many times, but this was my first time driving it (37 years old) and I remember remarking to myself about how beautiful it is and how I wish that my family had retained their property in the area.

Conejos County is extremely poor. Their taxpayer base couldn't sustain a significant S&R budget even if a law enacted it. There would absolutely need to be significant federal support. As the article mentioned, the amount of wilderness in this area, both in the plains of the San Luis Valley and in the remote San Juan forest lands, would be a rough place to get lost in general. That there's simply no real budget for organized S&R exacerbates the problem. It is a nice escape, but it is no place I would want to be stranded or lost.

My heart breaks for Joe's family. I can't imagine losing my only son. How traumatic. I have further thoughts on this, but I believe reverence for their loss is a higher priority than pressing into those thoughts.

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

<comment><USER33> Thanks for posting this, the map and photos give a better idea of the terrain, which the article failed to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Sounds like first season of True Detective

</comment><comment><USER35> I always intended to read "Missing 411" after hearing the author speak on the radio, but haven't made time for it.

</comment><comment><USER36> There is nothing surprising, technological or policy relevant in this article. Although better than a previous similar HN story (see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12674976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12674976)), it is just a run of the mill tabloidish Outside Magazine article</comment>


The Man Who Stuck His Head Inside a Particle Accelerator - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.12/science.html

<comment><USER2> I would have thought the chamber these beams travel through would have to be kept at vacuum to work -?

<comment><USER3> They don't really provide details, but generally yes. If you have achieved your desired energy, you might then want to irradiate something in air (remember some of this was used in weapons research). So he could have stuck his head in front of the beam exit, or they might have pulled apart a section of the accelerator, sealed it off, but for some reason the beam was still run and the beam simply passed through the seal.

I'm guessing that he was probably working on one of the beam dumps (not the main accelerating ring), which meant that the beam could have already been accelerated many times around the synchrotron.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FTA: "though we don't know of anyone else who has been exposed to radiation in the form of a proton beam moving at about the speed of sound"

Do they mean "speed of light"?

<comment><USER5> hmm.. yes. Otherwise it wouldn't be that different to shooting a jet of hydrogen from a tank at someones head (assuming some would be stripped of their electrons on the way out the tank !).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If anyone is interested in sticking their head in a proton beam, you could try proton therapy. Like most things, the dose makes the poison.

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

</comment><comment><USER6> Note to self: "Keep head out of proton beam".

<comment><USER7> "Do not look into proton beam with remaining eye."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess he got bored with the pickle slicer.

</comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this old news?

<http://tinyurl.com/2dr69e></comment>


Show HN: Shortly, a serverless pastebin - <AUTHOR> http://lucaspiller.github.com/shortly/#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9 <comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by ZeroBin I started to wonder whether you could create a pastebin service with no server side component. Shortly (yeah I'm not really sure what is with the name) is the result of that.

Data is compressed using the deflate algorithm, then base64 encoded to ensure it can be stored safely in a URL. It is then set as the window.location.hash of the current page. Testing with various URL shorteners has shown that they don't care about long URLs generated by this. I still need to add checks to ensure that the URL isn't too long (I'm looking at you IE), but as a quick proof-of-concept I'm happy with what I've come up with. I'm wondering whether the same idea could be used to share data in other formats...

<comment><USER2> I use the same method for share links in <http://padhacker.net>, a server-less JSFiddle-type of tool. The data is just JSON, but I've been toying with adding arbitrary binary files. The link fragments explode with even small images. Some sort of chunking might be able to address this, with part of the fragment pointing to the next short URL in the series. (I recall seeing a project on top of bit.ly doing exactly this, but can't seem to find it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Someone made a service like this last year (<http://hashify.me>).

HN submission: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2464213>

</comment><comment><USER4> In the same vein, <http://hashify.me/> stores markdown documents in URL and uses bitly for "persistence". Previous discussion here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3407197/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Hashify.me lets you store an entire webpage in a url. As I recall it links bitly addresses. This lets you store up to 22500 characters.

Now you combine that with this in a bookmarklet / plugin. Add some obfuscation so bitly or whatever url shortener you use has a hard time detecting you and so the wrong anchor or no anchor shows an innocuous page.

Now the host isn't aware of the existence of the data nor is the encryption being done using server side code.

I am of course probably missing a huge flaw, so someone tell me why this won't work and how to fix it.

</comment><comment><USER6> why not sending this directly?

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

        data:text/html;charset=utf-8,Hi HN

<comment><USER7> <http://caniuse.com/#feat=datauri>

<comment><AUTHOR> datauri encoded would be larger (this is deflated before being based64 encoded), and the formatting for the docuent needs to be encoded within the URL where as this doesn't. Plus it doesn't make a cool HN story :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hrm, if you add a link shortening service you can host the pastebin <http://bit.ly/IcBhvN>

</comment><comment><USER9> Well that was disappointing. I was hoping for a distributed P2P object store.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm being pedantic, but this is not a server-less pastebin. A server must still serve the HTML page and the javascript used to decode its content.

A truly server-less pastebin would use the `data:` URL scheme to encode the html & js script boilerplate in addition to its content.

<comment><USER11> Well yes, and no. All paste data is stored in the URL, and the algorithm for encoding/decoding is known[1]. Github-hosted tool provides only the default implementation.

You're right, data: would be more pure, but AFAIR it has some limitations.

[1] - <https://github.com/lucaspiller/shortly>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice service, I like the idea very much.

One problem I noticed with it though: It does not work correctly with Japanese text. I can input & "save" Japanese, but upon opening that link the text will not be displayed correctly.

<comment><USER9> JavaScript's stuck with UTF-16, so apps assuming bytes not shorts will mangle text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is cool!

I think you should implement the hash-based encryption key support from Zerobin, though. That way you could send around the message or the message and the key, as you choose.

</comment><comment><USER14> This could be extended by adding file upload support. What impact would this have under a SOPA-world?

</comment><comment><USER15> Sweet hack. Would be cool if there was a way to make it secure as well...

<comment><USER16> What kind of security risk do you have in mind?

<comment><USER17> Take a look at this:

<http://www.vincentcheung.ca/jsencryption/>

A lot of ciphers have been ported to JavaScript now:

<http://code.google.com/p/crypto-js/>

<comment><USER18> And what benefit do you imagine that conferring?

<comment><USER17> By encrypting the data before turning into a URL neither the server, nor anyone who obtains that URL would be able to read the message without knowing the password.

<comment><USER19> Kinda like how ezcrypt works? <https://ezcrypt.it/>

<comment><AUTHOR> As I understand it this is exactly how Zerobin works. The server stores the encrypted data, and the key is passed in the URL only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> so, basically you are abusing link shorteners for data storage :)

i would like something like this for binary data, with the option to specify a filename, as that is something the data url scheme does not provide.

<comment><USER21> I'm running several URL shorteners and I don't mind.</comment></comment>


Watch starwars in ascii - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired2tech.org/2016/12/watch-starwars-in-ascii.html <comment><USER2> (December 2016; I can't get the site to work today, myself.)</comment>


Let's Talk Password Hashing - <AUTHOR> https://pthree.org/2016/06/28/lets-talk-password-hashing/ <comment><USER2> "Do not hash passwords with: ... 10\. Plaintext"

It's a shame that sites still do this.

<comment><USER3> A shame, definitely. It's unbelievable really. We've known how to properly hash and store passwords for years, the information is readily available, yet these big name companies still have these poor practices in place.</comment></comment>


My iPhone Software Company's Struggle Part II (Ad Impressions, Conversion Rates) - <AUTHOR> http://techneur.com/post/443135737/iphone-company-struggle-2

<comment><USER2> Bad link, FYI</comment>


Silicon Valley 40 under 40: Garry Tan - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/12/12/silicon-valley-40-under-40-garry-tan.html?page=all <comment><USER2> garrytan is one of the best people I have ever met.

There are many different functions for evaluating "good person". Some look to kindness, compassion and trust. Raw intelligence or creativity. Wealth and influence. You name it, garrytan has it. Of course no one is perfect. But some people are inherently _good_.

Garry is a true nerd, a social maven, a serial helper. He's the kind of person that you want beside you in a foxhole. It's worth making an effort to get to know him. There's a reason that he keeps showing up in these "N under N" things.

It's good to see a nice guy finish first for once. And I believe that his best work is yet to come.

<comment><USER3> Additional data point: Garry helped me prepare for my YC interview in 2008. He was happy to help and provided great feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really, in our industry, is it necessary to specify an upper age bound? It's not like we're nurturing new circuit court justices.

Why not, "Top 25 over 25?" We all know what happens when the taurine receptor count starts to tank...

<comment><USER5> It's a journalistic hook. It doesn't come from within our industry.

<comment><USER6> I think The Onion put it best:

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/40-numbers- under-40,32809/](http://www.theonion.com/articles/40-numbers-under-40,32809/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here is the entire list/slideshow in case anyone is interested

[http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/12/10/40-under-...](http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/12/10/40-under-40-yahoo- ebay-netflix-and.html?s=image_gallery)

</comment><comment><USER8> Garry is among the best people I've ever worked with--he's both a very smart and helpful investor and a great guy. Extremely well deserved.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yeehaw! Much deserved, Garry.

</comment><comment><USER10> OK, maybe I'm self-centered by I want to see a "SV 40 over 40 newcomers/founders" list! Or at least a 50 under 50

</comment><comment><USER11> The good thing about being older is that it becomes easier to figure in lists like this. Had I played my cards right, I could be in the 50 under 50 list right now, but, in just a couple years, my odds of being in the 60 under 60 list will be 20% higher even if nothing else changes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Aside from Garry almost always being the one YC Partner we could guarantee would show up at every drink up during our batch of YC I always enjoyed his straight to the point feedback and awesome design opinions on our product.

It's an honor well deserved. Congrats Garry!

</comment><comment><USER13> Garry is not just an awesome investor and advisor, he is one of the best human beings I know! I don't think I have ever had a conversation with Garry where I didn't leave more energized.

</comment><comment><USER14> It'd be cool to have a Q&A with the YC team on HN!

</comment><comment><USER15> I think Garry may be the nicest guy I have ever met. He is incredibly helpful. I have nothing but good things to say about him.

</comment><comment><USER16> This guy was cool. I pitched my idea to him for this winter batch of YC and didn't make it, but he was one of the ones in the room that I felt was most interested about the idea. I'd like to cross paths with him again some day.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm not going to lie, once I read the title I immediately looked to see if it was Garry who submitted the article, Even thought I didn't expect it to be him:)

I feel bad about that.

In all seriousness, Congratulations, this is a big honor!!

</comment><comment><USER18> Dear BizJournals.com, what could you _possibly_ be doing in order to serve up text and pictures that would cause my browser to freeze for _10 seconds_?

<comment><USER19> Not sure about this specific case, but I remember NYT.com completely freezing up Mac one morning few years ago. I opened up NYT and noticed some fancy ad done in flash on the page. And then I noticed my Mac was just crawling. After a few minutes I thought maybe flash was the cause. Updating flash plugin in firefox took care of the problem.

With auto update of flash in chrome, no more issues with flash related stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Winnipeg? G Tan! I never knew you were Canadian brethren.

</comment><comment><USER21> Congrats Garry! Well deserved.

</comment><comment><USER22> Awesome, congrats Garry!

</comment><comment><USER23> Congrats to Garry. hooande has said it best.

</comment><comment><USER24> Congrats Garry!

</comment><comment><USER25> Garry is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER26> Congrats Garry!

</comment><comment><USER27> Woot!

</comment><comment><USER28> Go Garry!

</comment><comment><USER29> Go Garry!</comment>


The Lindy Effect predicts that programming languages will further survive about - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/Ngnghm/status/1291554791659896833 <comment><USER2> Lindy Effect is prediction and obvisoulsy full of exceptions, yet tweets sound like it's a "law"

> Java has only 25 years of life in it

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course nothing is law. I just find this both an interesting perspective and good for entertaining a good conversation about programming languages and their longevity.</comment></comment>