WikiLeaks proposes tracking verified Twitter users' homes, families and finances - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/01/06/wikileaks-proposes-tracking-verified-twitter-users-homes-families-and-finances/ <comment><USER3> WikiLeaks' online presence was taken over in October, when riseup.net got an NSL to give access to the email accounts associated with the WL Twitter accounts and other WL properties. Around that time WL removed some insurance file torrent links from wikileaks.org, distributed new pre-commitment hashes, and stopped responding to PGP-encrypted email.

People who work for WikiLeaks are still probably involved, but they are no longer in control. Ever since late October, their behavior across all of their Twitter accounts has been markedly different.

<comment><USER4> I was almost certain the things you're suggesting were true, however I also thought Julian assange was no longer alive, or not free/able to reach out, as did the people who came up with and spread the theories that something big went down. However this week Hannity flew to the UK and interviewed Julian Assange who is alive and well. Don't you think he might have hinted at the fact that such was the case during the interview or via an alternate channel? I'm fairly certain that the majority of the people who believed WikiLeaks was taken over or underwent a change of management/control no longer believe so since that interview, which was the first proof of life in months, and the first since the suspicious events occured.

<comment><USER5> See [https://twitter.com/oheard/status/817486353801900032](https://twitter.com/oheard/status/817486353801900032)

It's entirely plausible that the video interview was not actually Assange.

AFAIK there has been no cryptographic verification, that's the only thing that could prove all is well.

<comment><USER6> If there was cryptographic verification, the same people doubting that video would suspect that his cryptographic keys had been compromised.

(Which, come to think of it, is a _lot_ more likely than actors as disparate as Sean Hannity, John Pilger, the Swedish prosecutor, the Ecuadorean embassy and Pamela Anderson all being very happy to pretend to interact with a Fake Assange who keeps making very similar arguments to the inexplicably- disappeared Real Assange.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >"We are thinking of making an online database with all 'verified' twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships," WikiLeaks tweeted Friday.

Not WikiLeaks, but "WikiLeaks Task Force" (@WLTaskForce). I'm not even sure it's widely known who exactly is behind that account, though it's interestingly a verified account itself.

UPD1 After some googling it seems the account is listed as official on wikileaks.org:

"Follow our official accounts @wikileaks, @wltaskforce, @communitywl and @wikileaksshop."

[https://wikileaks.org/What-is-Wikileaks.html](https://wikileaks.org/What-is- Wikileaks.html)

But it was added recently (after 16 Nov 2016):

[https://web.archive.org/web/20161116072950/https://wikileaks...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161116072950/https://wikileaks.org/What- is-Wikileaks.html)

(via [https://www.reddit.com/r/WhereIsAssange/comments/5h2qqp/can_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhereIsAssange/comments/5h2qqp/can_we_welcome_wltaskforce_communitywl_to_the_wl/))

UPD2 Article about "Wikileaks Task Force":

[https://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikileaks-is-making-a- twit...](https://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikileaks-is-making-a-twitter-army- to-fight-against-misinformation) (4 Oct 2016)

<comment><USER8> There's a recent @wikileaks tweet saying only they can make official statements : [https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/817538212709203968](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/817538212709203968)

The link you posted still mentions the others though.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, didn't see this one! Apparently WaPo should update their article then, though replies to that tweet point out that @WLTaskForce is still mentioned in @wikileaks's profile. Quite a confusing story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ok. I went and read some of the tweets this article is based on.

I think what Wikileaks wants to build is a social graph of influential and powerful people (big enough names to have a blue check mark) using their tweets. Then weight and couple that with information on family relations, job, living place and so on - available from other public sources (i.e. Wikipedia biographies, LinkedIn or official websites).

Sounds like an interesting idea.

But man; Wikileaks is sure getting a lot of negative press. I guess if you want to play the game of politics you better start weighting your words like a politician.

<comment><USER10> The @verified badge does not really signify a "big enough" name. Back when it was a manual process, unless you were a huge celebrity, you got on the list if you were a member of a media organization and if Twitter happened to contact your comms/social media person to submit a list of employees and Twitter names. People with just a hundred or so followers could be verified this way.

Now that you can apply to be verified, just about anyone can get the blue checkmark. You just have to provide proof of identity and fill out a form. I didn't get verified through the manual process even though I worked at a fairly prominent media org. But working in non-media, I got accepted within a couple days by filling out the form.

Check out @Verified's following-list and you'll see lots of similarly non- influential people on there: [https://twitter.com/verified/following](https://twitter.com/verified/following)

<comment><USER9> Yes. It would have to be coupled with information on how rich and powerful someone is coming from other sources.

<comment><USER10> Usually, such a process is done by starting with lists of those who are actually powerful. These lists are plentiful, especially in democracies. Starting with the presumption that the world's influencers are all on Twitter is a strange view of how the world works.

<comment><USER9> You have to work with the data that is available. Lists of most influential or most powerful people are also based on data available and possibly some subjective assessment. Some times when I scroll thru them I get the feeling they are far from the truth. Not that I know exactly what the truth is.

<comment><USER10> > _Lists of most influential or most powerful people are also based on data > available and possibly some subjective assessment_

The measure of "power" and "influence" has always been a subjective assessment, whether it's PageRank or the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hard to believe we've so far from the HBGary/Palantir plot to undermine Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald to today's Wikileaks.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/11/palanti...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/11/palantir- apologizes-for-wikileaks-attack-proposal-cuts-ties-with-hbgary/#1dcb5f111345)

</comment><comment><USER12> Wikileaks used to be a platform for venting information. Data that was secret and had power was laid open for consideration by anyone interested.

Now it is a platform for some insiders pushing an agenda. Data is solicited, filtered and used to push in a direction. Wikileaks has become a player.

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks like the tweet WaPo links to was deleted. So probably WLTF realized it's kinda very bad idea.

I _think_ what they are trying to do is a standard journalistic thing of building influence network, but they managed to say it in a very creepy way and of course WaPo grabbed it and run with it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't like it one bit, but they're taking the internet to its logical conclusion. At least they're only doing it for public figures it seems, for now. It is probably totally legal too.

This is what radical transparency looks like, by the way. It is consistent with and logically flows from Assange's long-stated philosophy. Basically, what the crowd on this website was defending when Wikileaks first came onto the public scene.

Here's what Twitter has to say about verified accounts:

> _What types of accounts get verified?_

 _An account may be verified if it is DETERMINED TO BE AN ACCOUNT OF PUBLIC INTEREST. Typically this includes accounts maintained by users in music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, sports, business, and other key interest areas._

<comment><USER15> The criteria for "verified" status have changed recently and I'm pretty sure it now includes a group much larger than the law's definition. There are quite a few JS developers with the tick mark, for example. And I doubt they'd count as celebrities.

And even for public figures, there are and/or should be (depending on jurisdiction) limits. Their family, for example, are people with their own rights, often don't fit the "public figure" definition, may be minors etc etc.

I also don't remember ever defending radical transparency, and I wouldn't even characterise Assange's actions as consistent with it. Or could I have an archive of his emails, please?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just found this:

[https://twitter.com/BethElderkin/status/817461392462807040](https://twitter.com/BethElderkin/status/817461392462807040)

"Wiki leaks falsely ID's someone while trying to demonstrate why a mass dox list isn't a terrible waste of their time."

<comment><USER10> That is just sad. It was bad enough last night when they were using buzzwords like "proximity graph" to make their data mining sound...extra cool, I guess?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So instead of working with Chelsea Manning, they're doxxing Chelsea Manning?

Once upon a time Wikileaks was about holding governments to account. Apparently that was too hard because privacy violations appear to be the theme these days.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yes... a world in which Sarah Palin is apologizing to Assange isn't one I understand very well.

How they respond to the Trump administration when it's in power will tell us a lot about what's happening at wikileaks.

But it seems like the world needs more diversity in Wikileaks-like services. I feel like they have done important work in the past, and it would be a shame for that to end.

<comment><USER19> its all politics. Democrats hate wikileaks when it hurts them. Republicans hate wikileaks when it hurts them

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yup, not compromised at all. Nothing to see here, carry on!!

<comment><USER21> Not sure what you're referring too...?

<comment><USER22> [https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/5cgwau/has_wiki...](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/5cgwau/has_wikileaks_has_been_compromised_megathread/)

<comment><USER23> Had to laugh at the opening paragraph of that thread:

> I think it is high time that we address the elephant in the room. I am not > saying to stop what we are doing, but we need to band together and get > wikileaks to prove themselves, or we need to take everything read with a > grain of salt.

Surely we should be taking _everything_ we read with a grain of salt?

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the reddit link.

Not sure if that's laughable or not. The fact a PGP sig still hasn't been used since the date of the alleged "takeover" is a very strong point against complaisance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well this is horrible. This is good for the world, how?

<comment><USER25> Radical transparency of the powerful/influential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How and why would they do that? The idea does not much sense reading this article.

<comment><USER26> "We have your name and address. Stop talking about the connections between Wikileaks and Putin." That's why.

<comment><USER13> If Wikileaks is indeed connected to Putin, and they are intended to prosecute you for talking about it, don't you think Putin has more resources to find out where you live than Wikileaks? I mean, of this (hypothetical) tandem, I'd rather be afraid of the guy with trillions of dollars, nukes and one of the best intelligence services on the planet than of a guy that has to hide in Ecuadorian embassy.

<comment><USER27> Well yeah, but WikiLeaks will publish the data on you, Russian intelligence is not going to do so (directly).

<comment><USER13> Why not? Putin has tons of media at his disposal - in fact, all media in Russia is at his disposal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Positive interpretation:

The sooner the general public realizes how stupid it is to give these companies their private information the better. Maybe then the internet can move past this phase and become more sane.

</comment><comment><USER29> Twitter is a content generation engine with a seed of 140 characters. Then everyone interprets it in their own way, preferably by being outraged.

Unless something tangible appears all this exercise is a big waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER30> This makes me lose any remains of support I've had for WikiLeaks.

</comment><comment><USER31> Isn't privacy by obscurity just as broken as security by obscurity is? I mean, if it is possible to build such a list from publicly available data, the bad guys already should have one so why not make it public? Or are they planning on building the list from leaked data? The article doesn't talk about the origin of the data.

<comment><USER10> What does "broken" privacy even mean?

<comment><USER32> >"What does "broken" privacy even mean?"

"Broken" means "doesn't work". In the context of GP's post, the suggestion is that attempting privacy through obscurity doesn't work/is ineffective.

<comment><USER10> A large part of privacy is fundamentally about obscurity. If you have sex in a public park and someone tapes it, it can be put up on YouTube. If you have sex in your fenced backyard pool and someone holds their camera up over your fence to film it, you have a very good invasion of privacy lawsuit, even though your privacy had been "broken".

Similarly, the burden of legal proof for libel or defamation are different for public vs private figures. An obscure YouTube vidmaker has a substantially different burden of proof than does a popular Youtuber when it comes to certain scopes of libel/defamation.

Yes, there is a kind of privacy you can expect in your own home. But some right to privacy is preserved even if you go out the in public

<comment><USER32> The privacy being discussed in the context of this topic is online privacy. The point is that attempting to have online privacy through obscurity is increasingly ineffective. All traffic through the web is monitored, and I'd even suspect that some common methods of encryption will have been compromised (and even when they haven't been, some governments have made it clear that using VPNs and similar privacy protecting measures are close to an admission of guilt).

<comment><USER10> This is a fair argument. Actually, I don't think we're really arguing, in that I agree with you, particularly on the technical parts. My main complaint was that privacy is a quasi-legal and technical matter. Whereas security, at least in the context of the motto, "Security through obscurity is not security", is a near-binary, either-or claim -- which I agree with.

To elaborate, for many people, the concept of privacy is already compromised when they discover sites like pipl.com. Pipl.com already has data-mined information for every American with a SSN. If you have a credit history, like the kind you provide to a landlord when applying to rent -- Pipl has that too, that's why it can list where you have lived in the past, and who you lived with.

But that's a fairly old situation; private investigators have been using LexisNexis/Accurint to do those searchers for more than a decade. And fancy things like satellite photos of where you live? Reason Magazine did that back in 2004: [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1870509](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1870509)

(the impressive feat, IMO, was not the photos, but the ability to custom publish 40,000 print covers, using the technology and infrastructure at that time)

But does that mean privacy has been compromised? Sure. Or, maybe. The ambiguity in possible answers is a huge contrast compared to the answers you'd get if you asked "Is Dual_EC_DRBG secure?".

But if you think that privacy is unambiguously compromised, given what I've described...here's what I mean. There's a difference between LexisNexis/Accurint/etc. (never mind ad companies, which is a whole different thing) having your normal next door neighbor's information. It's another thing if a highly-followed Twitter account tweets a link to Pastebin with all of that information.

Perhaps the original commenter didn't mean that, but that's what I think of when I think of the average person's privacy being compromised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Welcome to the modern world. In the 80s we had AI Winter, now we have AI Nuclear Warfare (to be followed immediately by AI Nuclear Winter).

</comment><comment><USER34> Or they're just a front for Russian intelligence, as has been suggested for years, as evidenced by the fact that Assange says there's no need to report on Russia because of the "free and open media" they have, as evidenced by his show on RT, as evidenced by their facilitating Snowden's defection, as evidenced by...

It seems like there are a few die-hards left who thought Assange and Manning were the greatest thing ever exposes the big bad USG, and are refusing to acknowledge the obvious: wikileaks exists so the FSB can run agitprop against its geopolitical foes.

Edit: I'd just like to point out the fact that all of these downvotes are flooding in at 3:00 am PST on a Friday night. Can anyone think of a timezone that might coincide with?

<comment><USER35> Mind giving the source where Assange said that?

<comment><USER36> See: [https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary- of...](https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of-julian- assanges-interview-went-viral-and-was-completely-false/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > To "dox" a person is to release documents related to his or her personal > life in a way that potentially endangers that person's safety.

No. It means to release publicly available documents (docs -> dox) about the subject of a journalistic investigation - usually by amateur journalists. When professional journalists do it, it's just called "journalism".

</comment><comment><USER38> I think this is a very good thing.

We need more accountability from public figures. Moral fibre is a rare element among the top 1%. If they can't regulate themselves, then someone else ought to do it.

We need an incentive for people to pay their fair share of taxes and to behave ethically - Protecting your public reputation is a good incentive.

The law is simply useless when it comes to ethical matters - <USER2> transparency might be a better solution.

Public figures currently have way too much control over their public image.

<comment><USER27> Just because someone has that blue checkmark next to their Twitter username (reminder: Twitter doesn't have public guidelines on who gets it and who doesn't) doesn't make that person a public figure.

<comment><USER19> twitter is by nature public. try gab.ai for more privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Queue the hypocrisy from American media. They surely didn't fuzz about the NSA doing the same thing, but taking in orders of magnitude further.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think this is an absolutely hilarious troll and I congratulate Wikileaks on it.

Why?

This already exists. It's not just for verified Twitter users either. You have used this "database" yourself. You and your family are already in it. Wikileaks will use this "database" to raise awareness of just how dangerous it is. It will rile everyone up and create a groundswell of action to thwart it. When the outrage reaches it's peak, the name of the "database" will be revealed:

It's called Google+Facebook+Twitter+LinkedIn+Reddit+Yahoo+Amazon+Apple+Youtube+Pinterest+Instagram

EDIT: typo

</comment><comment><USER41> Much more silliness to follow until Wikileaks is thoroughly destroyed

[https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/5cgwau/has_wiki...](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/5cgwau/has_wikileaks_has_been_compromised_megathread/)

</comment><comment><USER42> If the verified Twitter user means public figures, this would be OK to certain extent (leave underage children out). Persons who place themselves in the public light through politics or voluntarily participate in the public arena have a diminished privacy rights. Tracking what they do and their connections is essential part of journalism.

Somehow this comes out as slashing out from WikiLeaks. They seem to be really out of touch. Maybe because Assange is behind it.</comment>


Show HN: Peddle, a marketplace for system utilities - <AUTHOR> http://www.peddle.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> As a systems programmer, it's surprising a marketplace for system utilities doesn't already exist - which is why I'm creating peddle. I'd love to hear from anyone else, their experiences buying or selling system utilities. Would something like peddle help you?</comment>


Ask HN: What's to stop the US Government from buying 51% of Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR>

Hopefully this is not a silly question. <comment><USER2> Why would you buy 51% of BTC? What you really want to buy is 51% of the hashing power in the BTC network.

And the correct answer is nothing stops them from doing that (or even stops them from _having done that_ in the past).

Its generally presumed that they haven't and won't because it is presumed the cost to do so would exceed the value to the government of doing so.

<comment><USER3> If I understand BTC correctly then the return on mining is going down. Once the cost of mining exceeds the return in coins then there are only a few reasons to continue mining: 1) Altruism. Some people will just want to support the network. 2) Botnets. If you aren't paying for the hardware then you don't care about the cost. 3) Control. You are a large entity that wants to take over the network. 4) Ignorance. I assume some people will continue to mine and just not know they are losing money doing it.

Please let me know if I am missing something.

I am betting on a turning point where it becomes more reasonable for the government to take over the network, at least temporarily. It is not a stretch to think that someone (not necessarily the US govt) with enough computer power could get a benefit from controlling the entire network.

<comment><USER2> > If I understand BTC correctly then the return on mining is going down.

The cost in terms of hashing effort expended to produce new bitcoins goes down over time, and eventually no bitcoins can be mined, _however_ , there are two reward systems for mining: _first_ (and by design important in the early stages of bitcoin adoption) is production of new bitcoins, _second_ (and by design important in the late stage of bitcoin adoption) is transaction fees.

Remember that miners are the ones verifying transactions in the bitcoin network, that they can prioritize which transactions to verify, and that all transactions can include an offer of a transaction fee as a reward for verifying them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even if they did, it wouldn't matter. They need 51% of the _hashing power_, not 51% of bitcoins, to be able to manipulate the blockchain.

</comment><comment><USER5> Because quite simply, they can't.

To buy it, they would borrow the money from China. China would provide it by using the BTC they own at whatever price they choose to sell it at.

<comment><USER6> They most certainly would not have to 'borrow it from China'. If for some reason they wanted to do this, they would just have to sell some securities, most of which would be bought by U.S citizens, the main holders of U.S. Government debt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Obviously this wouldn't work as bitcoin clones will just pop up.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not an expert at all, but right now, I think the only thing stopping them from buying large quantities of Bitcoin is availability. Throwing money at a problem is sort of a unique proposition when the problem is money, and everybody else is doing the same.

The question I would have is what objective would that satisfy? Is there some power in holding a slight majority of the currency? I mean, they already hold quite a lot of regular cash (or at least do transiently), but that doesn't seem to be affecting dollars in the same way that shares in a corporation does.

Perhaps I'm missing it, but I don't know what significance would arise from a single entity holding a majority of the currency. If there is, and I'm clueless, my apologies.</comment>


Forest.gif - <AUTHOR> https://trasevoldog.wordpress.com/forest-gif/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure, but I think that for HN it would be better to have the explanation about the generation of the gif in the top of the page instead of the bottom.

> _Thank you for going through the whole forest! These trees were generated > procedurally in Pico-8. Here is a demo of the cartridge I coded in order to > do that. This little application randomize all the parameters so that you'll > be able to generate an army of misfits if you want to! It's also my > participation to #procjam, have a look at the other softwares made for > that!_</comment>


How a homeless person moved an audience of tech workers to tears  - <AUTHOR> http://www.tryary.com/news/815/how-a-homeless-person-moved-an-a

<comment><USER2> I really wish the Launch crew could have gotten The Learning Shelter up on stage.

[0][https://twitter.com/TheITSystem/status/438397895675351040](https://twitter.com/TheITSystem/status/438397895675351040)

[1][http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-learning- shelter](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-learning-shelter)</comment>


IOS 6 Ajax image capture and upload - <AUTHOR> http://clubsexytime.com/projects/mobileupload/

<comment><AUTHOR> pardon the url :)

<comment><AUTHOR> or domain rather, the url leads to an interesting example</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What books are you reading right now? - <AUTHOR>

I'm reading two small books in parallel.<p>1. The old man and the Sea , by Hemmingway 2. The Last lecture by Randy <comment><USER2> "The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name".

A really interesting history book. I'm now in a great part, about how knowledge of geography (and map projections) was disseminated in Europe through a network of scholars and humanists during the 15th century. There was this huge collaborative effort to reconstruct ancient texts and to bring them in line with (then) current knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just read 'The Innovator's Dilemma' by Clayton Christensen and it's awesome.

There's all this talk of "disrupting" everything in the tech world right now and a lot of it is really bullshit. This guy is the one who coined the term disruptive technology, and when you dig into it it's a really interesting concept that he actually backs up with great research on the disk drive industry.

The core of the idea is that 'disruptive' technologies are underdog technologies that actually have worse performance than the leading technologies of their time, but also some other attributes (smaller, lighter, etc) that make them valuable to customers in niche, less profitable markets the big guys aren't interested in. Since technology progresses much faster than our demand for it, those cheaper, crappier technologies improve over time and end up killing the big, expensive players who originally dominated the market.

Really great read

</comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone recommend some good cypherpunk books, aside from Stephenson? Preferably fiction that communicates ideas revolving around anonymity, crypto, privacy?

I've been trying to read Cryptonomicon, but get turned off by the "hipstery" (for lack of a better word) informal writing style and can't get into it.

<comment><USER5> I would say "self-congratulatory" rather than "hipstery" — I'm reading this right now too, and although I find it fascinating (like I find reading about any cryptography fascinating), it often feels impenetrable without a cause to be, other than "aren't these characters all such geniuses, I bet you can barely keep up." Also, I get <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Shaftos_Gone_to_Sea> stuck in my head for hours afterwords each time.

<comment><USER4> Nothing's been above my head, it's more like it takes him too many words to make a point or get the jist across. He gets too creative/clever. I would like it to be more straightforward. Then again, I mainly read non-fiction from journalists or government types.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen

[http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told- Everything/dp/074...](http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told- Everything/dp/0743296281)

2\. Clojure Programming, by Chas Emerick

[http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Chas- Emerick/dp/14...](http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Chas- Emerick/dp/1449394701/)

3\. Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis

[http://www.amazon.com/Zorba-Greek-Nikos- Kazantzakis/dp/06848...](http://www.amazon.com/Zorba-Greek-Nikos- Kazantzakis/dp/0684825546)

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Causation ([http://www.amazon.co.uk/Causality-Reasoning-Inference- Judea-...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Causality-Reasoning-Inference-Judea- Pearl/dp/052189560X))

2\. The Boardman Tasker Omnibus ([http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boardman-Tasker- Omnibus-Peter/dp/189...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boardman-Tasker-Omnibus- Peter/dp/1898573859))

</comment><comment><USER8> Very good book about the tech industry: "rework" by the 37 signals guys.

Other very good non-tech book I've read recently: Walk the Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm actually reading academic papers from ssrn.com about platforms, shorter than most books and usually just as much information/learning and often times more.

For fiction I'm reading stuff my friends write; currently The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There and David Drake's Hammers Slammers omnibus volumes.

</comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Red Mars. Read a chapter and digest it. Packed top to bottom with all kinds of ideas.

2\. Cyberspace: First Steps. From the early 90s, a collection of academic essays on the concept of cyberspace. Reading it as a kind of retrospective on where we were and where we thought we were going.

3\. Rule 34. For fun.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Another Day of Life" by Riszard Kapuscinski and "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer.

<comment><USER12> +1 It's a shame that Moonwalking with Einstein didn't get to the top. Great book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For work: Quine's _Word and Object_ ; Dummett's _Frege: Philosophy of Language_ ; Plato's _Republic_ ; and paper after paper. (I am a philosophy graduate student.)

For pleasure: just started Virginia Woolf's _To the Lighthouse_.

</comment><comment><USER14> Molly Fyde series from Hugh Howey. Loved his WOOL books, so giving this series a go. Like it a lot.

Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas - just started this, and enjoying it so far.

</comment><comment><USER15> The Viral Storm: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Viral-Storm-Pandemic- ebook/dp/B004...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Viral-Storm-Pandemic- ebook/dp/B004V9O58E)

</comment><comment><USER16> Essays and aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer

John A. MacDonald: The young politician by Donald Creighton

Comedy of errors by Wm. Shakespeare

Paradise Lost by John Milton

</comment><comment><USER17> 1\. 'Classical Mechanics' by Herbert Goldstein 2\. 'Operational Amplifiers with Linear Integrated Circuits' by William Stanley 3\. 'Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer' by Cyrus Mistry

</comment><comment><USER18> 1.) Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?: Seth Godin

2.)Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm - Verne Harnish

<comment><USER12> I finished Linchpin just for the sake of doing it. That book would be great if it wasn't the zillionth book telling the same story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict" for myself and "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader"(Chronicles of Narnia Series) for my children.

</comment><comment><USER20> Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

</comment><comment><USER21> Frank Chimero's _The Shape of Design_ in PDF. Great, thought-provoking book on design in everything in life.

</comment><comment><USER22> 1\. Ulysses 2\. The Dilbert Principle

</comment><comment><USER23> The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker

<comment><USER23> Im finding it very enligthening, have anyone read it? care to share your opinions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A Beautiful Anarchy: How to Create Your Own Civilization in the Digital Age by Jeffrey Tucker

</comment><comment><USER25> 1\. A Lovecraft anthology 2\. Programming Clojure (Stuart Halloway)

Both books make me dream.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm trying to expand my horizons a bit, so I'm reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Amazing!

</comment><comment><USER27> Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad

</comment><comment><USER28> Where wizards stay up late. The origins of the INTERNET.

</comment><comment><USER29> Just started "The Connected Company" by Dave Gray.

</comment><comment><USER30> The Lean Startup for the third time in a row. :)

<comment><USER31> Not very lean of you :P JK

<comment><USER30> :D Good one!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas (Lewis Black)

</comment><comment><USER33> Meditations - Marcus Aurelius. Recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER34> Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card.

</comment><comment><USER35> James Bond books by Ian Fleming

</comment><comment><USER36> Neuromancer by William Gibson.

</comment><comment><USER37> Coding Horror: The Book</comment>


d-Threeact: Making d3 and React the Best of Friends - <AUTHOR> http://blog.siftscience.com/blog/2015/making-d3-react-the-best-of-friends

<comment><USER2> I think this makes sense. I've been trying to use react-d3 but I think I'm already getting some friction integrating. The tooltip and point click handling is exactly what I'm working on right now, so I think I'll switch to fully my own integration based on this article. Thanks a lot!

</comment><comment><USER3> this made up to front page with no comments (discussion), strange.

<comment><USER4> Happens all of the time, many people only monitor the front page so discussion doesn't start until they've read those articles.</comment></comment>


Maps on Android - <AUTHOR> https://engblog.nextdoor.com/2015/06/25/maps-on-android/

<comment><USER2> The Google Maps API for Android is one of the rare SDKs that continually gets worse over time. In the Android beta it actually had more features like driving directions, but the classes were moved off into undocumented classes, then made unreachable completely driving people to use JS APIs or competitors like Skobbler. It's pretty clear Google isn't eating their own dog food with this and that it's just a back water that has nothing to do with their own Maps app. Kind of a shame because they could be making every mapping app on their entire platform better with a good SDK, making their entire platform much better, instead of only helping their one app.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is my experience exactly with PressureNet[1]. The SDK is terrible. And they know this too, because I just found the android-maps-utils library on GitHub [2], written by someone on the Google Maps Android team. It's a library of additional, critical features that the Maps SDK should have built in, and it's made by Google! So why aren't these features in the SDK?

Example critical feature: Place text on a map. Supported method of doing so is to create Bitmaps on the fly using the drawText() method to compose your dynamic image. Ridiculous. So this new library supports simple features like that, but why isn't it baked into the SDK? Argh.

[1]: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbu...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbus.barometernetwork)

[2]: [https://github.com/googlemaps/android-maps- utils](https://github.com/googlemaps/android-maps-utils)

<comment><USER4> Author of said library here. I still work for Google, but I'm not on the Maps team anymore :)

Agree that some of the functionality in the util library should be in the base library, or the util library linked to from the Maps documentation. For example, all of the spherical math stuff.

However, I'm not happy with how some of the API turned out. The clustering library is quite complex. I think it's fairly well designed, but overly flexible. I'd re-do quite a few things, given another chance. It's always hard to get those kinds of APIs right the first time. You don't get to re-do things like that once they're in the official SDK. That API needs to be supported approximately forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there a reason why so much functionality is not exposed?

<comment><USER4> Not sure what you mean specifically, but here's some of my thoughts (note that these do not represent those of the product team)...

* Technical reasons. All calls to Android Maps API happen via an IPC (inter-process, not intra-process, actually), so they are generally slow. That could be bad for things that should be fast to compute like everything in SphericalUtil and PolyUtil.

* It's hard to design a nice API for Clustering. Having it open-source means Google doesn't have to guarantee support for that API according to the ToS (iirc, >1 year)

* Open source library code demonstrates use of the API. You could think of it as additional sample code.

* There's some value in having open source code, generally. A lot of the stuff could be useful in other settings - for example, you could port a lot of the math code to other languages.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-2016-election-121548_full.html <comment><USER2> I'm really not concerned with Google's ability to "rig an election", when the mainstream media's editorial choices already exist and get far more mindshare. He gives the red herring of there being multiple, eg, television stations with lower market shares than Google, but all of those theoretically competing media sources (yes, even the dreaded Fox News) have a very narrowly defined set of allowable opinions and they push them relentlessly.

And further, if minor changes to news composition are sufficient to "rig an election", maybe we should start talking about whether democracy is actually a good decision mechanism.

<comment><USER3> One mechanism that I find very striking, is when journalists make the choice between stories like "X says Y" vs "X refuses to apologize for saying Y".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pff, voters. Wake me up when Google is manipulating the electoral college, that's where the action is. Manipulating voters is the explicit raisin d'être of every news organization, politician, and super pac in existence. One more player in that field isn't changing anything.

</comment><comment><USER5> I feel like this article is going from a well-supported and accepted point—that search engine results can influence our decisions—to then just belabouring the point and making dark allusions to this "powerful" effect and the "possibility" of Google rigging an election.

<comment><USER6> Don't forget the nefarious possibility of a rogue AI governing us all from the shadows! Or how those pesky Googlers deleted the election data from the Internet but NOT before our hero and his colleagues got it safe! Surely we must sign another huge grant for this man to save the planet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> First off, the WiFi thing. Ffs. The difference there is literally typing "-s 0" or omitting that parameter vs "-s 64". Hardly anything evil or firable or criminal. Making them seem bad because they didn't fire someone for a trivial mistake is silly (and anyways it was public broadcasts, not that it totally excuses it but come on).

Second, Google's entire point of existence is to give an opinion on search results. Full stop. If Google decides that people searching for Clinton want to see positive articles, that's their call. Again, that's their entire product. People are trusting Google's _opinion_ on search results.

And calling Google's response meaningless? Google's saying they're screwed if they deliberately betrayed users. And what they aren't saying is that if they ever were caught really manipulating results, they would be hit with so much regulation that Bing would have a chance.

<comment><USER8> >Second, Google's entire point of existence is to give an opinion on search results.

Nope, their point of existence is to sell ads. Showing good results is how they create value, and you are just stretching the meaning of "opinion".

>they would be hit with so much regulation that Bing would have a chance.

This is just naïve. Google is one of the biggest companies in the world and consequently their lobbying power is huge. Besides, I don't even know how they could regulate it. Their algorithm will always be a trade secret and there is no regulation that could ever force them to publish it.

<comment><USER7> You're right about the ads. I should say the entire functionality of the search product itself. As far as "opinion", while you might call it a stretch, it's still quite valid and true. There isn't any standard definition of "relevant".

As far as regulation, eh, I'd love (in a perverse way) to see what the EU comes up with. They could assign officers that get secret reports on algorithm changes. They could mandate that Google justify, in secret, every change, with scrutiny on anything that doesn't serve a clear purpose. They could make it a criminal offense to intentionally change results to skew elections. A government isn't just gonna shrug and go "oh well, trade secrets".

There's no way that Google wants more people thinking "monopoly" and "fair search results".

<comment><USER9> While there are many situations where regulation is important, I'm not so sure about governments secretly interfering with how media report on electoral candidates. The agency responsible for this would have to be absolutely guaranteed completely independent from political branches of government and established parties.

We don't accept this kind of interference with newspapers and TV news. Why would it be acceptable for search engines?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find it strange that the article claims that Western Union's manipulation of coverage influenced Hayes' election, since as any worthwhile student of American history ought to know, the election of 1876 was marred by far, far worse facts. Hayes actually lost the popular vote, but this needs to be tempered by the fact that both sides engaged in voter fraud and intimidation (e.g., Democratic ballots being printed to fool illiterate voters (i.e., Southern blacks) into thinking they were voting Republican). Partisan electoral commissions duly responded by throwing out ballots to make sure the electoral votes went the right way.

The Democratic House balked at accepting these results, while the Republican Senate claimed it didn't matter what the House thought when it came time to officially count the votes. This crisis was resolved by creating a commission, but the Democrats decided to try to buy the vote of the only true independent, who responded by showing surprising integrity and immediately resigning, which left the commission with having to choose the most supposedly impartial Republican member of the court to cast the swing vote, which was finished only two days before the inauguration.

In the face of all of that, claiming that Western Union support was decisive in landing Hayes the presidential office is intellectually dishonest.

</comment><comment><USER11> > So they fired him, right? Nope. He's still there, and on LinkedIn he > currently identifies his profession as "hacker."

Oh no, a "hacker". He's definitely nefarious then.

</comment><comment><USER12> The Google Headlines on my new Android phone is basically a mechanism for seeding emotional contagion and topic sharing at work, home, etc. This should not be underestimated. What happens when you push a particular site's article about a particular topic, at a particular time of day, to millions of phones? Who seriously is not worried about the susceptibility of this mechanism to manipulation?

<comment><USER13> I'm worried, but only _slightly_ more worried than I already am about the effects of mass media on societies.

Articles like these often give me mixed feelings. On the one hand, it's good to point out these specific dangers. On the other hand, it strikes me as counter-productive to focus or spend energy on this 'hypothetical' situation when the current media landscape is already way too big and bad an influence on our democracy.

It's a bit like discussing Obama's track record ad nauseam when it's quite likely that he himself has limited influence, and the problems are deeper and broader. It's a case of focusing on a symptom at the expense of fighting the root cause.

(that said, I'm also conflicted because it could also be said that it's better to get going, fight a symptom, and see where the path leads, rather than sussing out the root cause and then feeling powerless to do anything about it)

</comment></comment><comment> Dorian-Marie Google's response: [http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/google-2016-e...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/google-2016-election-121766)

</comment><comment><USER9> Google is hardly the only one with this kind of power. News media have been doing this for ages, and are doing it far more explicitly. How many news stations in the US are still neutral and unbiased?

Worth noting, for example, is the relative lack of coverage for Bernie Sanders in mainstream media, despite his name being all over the internet. Could that be related to Sanders wanting to break up big media conglomerates?

Google seems a lot less politically motivated, and seems to be under a lot more scrutiny, than most news media.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ok, the general idea of the article totally makes sense to me. But the argument doesn't work out for me:

> That high volume of search activity could easily have been generated by > higher search rankings for Modi.

Is it just me or is this article confusing the connection between "search ranking" and "search activity"? What influence does the order of the results for a candidate's name have on how ofter people search for this candidate's name?

Can anyone explain what I am missing?

<comment><USER15> As far as I can tell the argument goes like this: people are only likely to click on the number one or number two search result for a given search. Pushing favorable news stories about a candidate to the number one or number two spots (instead of neutral or negative stories) influences public opinion positively in favor of the candidate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The response by Google is not exactly convincing.

<comment><USER17> What would you have them say? It's the obvious answer: if we start rigging elections and get found out, we lose our customer's trust and hence their business. We have a good thing going here and value that too much to screw it up by "being evil".

<comment><USER18> It's no answer at all, and it's certainly not a foregone conclusion. They could easily just blame it on a rogue employee etc, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that they would lose business, since competitors would be equally suspect.

If they wanted to actually rebut this they could easily say something much stronger such as: "This would be absolutely against company policy, and we have process in place to safeguard against it which we publicly document."

The problem is that the search results almost certainly _do_ reflect the company's biases even without any intentional rigging, so they can't answer that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> At one point Google was eliding several prominent conservative personalities, amongst them Pat Buchanan, from its autocomplete.

<comment><USER3> I'm assuming the downvotes are because claims like this are very common, and without some kind of presentation of evidence, and discussion of the explanation (if any) given by Google, they just become background noise in any discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As any fan of the Foundation series knows, the true power of mass data is not in chasing down individuals, but in being able to statistically predict and manipulate the group average.

Google are not the only player in this area though, I suspect that Facebook can also reliably influence enough people.

<comment><USER20> > Google are not the only player in this area though, I suspect that Facebook > can also reliably influence enough people.

Facebook have published research in this area of emotional manipulation through their news feed: [http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full)

> We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional > states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people > to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide > experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct > interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is > sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Old school FUD! I haven't read anything like this in awhile.

they greatly underestimate the complexity of preference algorithms. Facebook is said to have more than 100,000 variables in their news feed algo; I can't imagine what's under the hood at Facebook. In a system that complex, making gross decisions trying to compromise one particular set of results without compromising everything else is not just idiotic, it's impossible.

Also, I enjoyed the yellow journalism gems in there, such as phrasing like "Google refuses to apologize for" etc.

BUT just because the idea is stupid and unworkable, does not mean we should discount the article. It will resonate with a lot of non-engineers, and it will be repeated. So I would advocate for some kind of "common carrier" laws for enormous information brokers like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Never mind that actually manipulating the results would be prohibitively difficult and dangerous to the health of the company, and proving manipulation would be effectively impossible. If such a legal framework makes people who don't understand complex engineering sleep better, I support it.

<comment><USER12> >not just idiotic, it's impossible.

I am not even that great of an engineer but I could probably sit down and in a couple hours come up with a hundred different ways to do this.</comment></comment>


OKCupid Hides Good-Looking People From Less Attractive Users.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/16/okcupid-hiding-hotties-fr_n_614149.html

<comment><USER2> With more and more people meeting and mating using computer dating, will this selection factor have an evolutionary impact?</comment>


Ask HN: I want to write a simple webapp, how should I start? - <AUTHOR> First of all, thanks for reading this, you probably have read it many times before.
So, here is what I want to do: I want to index some of my magazines. My webapp should have a search field, where I can type in a single phrase or look up complete issues.
I know that I need a database in the backend for this (that I need to populate).
But since I have no experience in developing (neither web nor other) and only possess a "dangerous half knowledge), I'd thought I ask your advice.
Which road should I start on? PHP + MySQL would be the first to come into my mind, but since I'm a clean slate, would it make sense to start with something completley different (and maybe as accessible)?
Thanks for taking the time to read and answer, looking forward to your input. <comment><USER2> The fortunate thing is that you have a fair amount of options when it comes to technologies for a web app. I personally have used php for years and have been working extensively with ruby and python recently. Here are some general things to consider.

Language choice.

For a long time PHP was the defacto standard. It has a lot of resources and tutorials plus the advantage of a huge amount of hosting options. However, I'm the last five to ten years, the field has opened up. Ruby and python both have strong communities and with app hosting solutions like Heroku, it is just as easy to get them up and running. All three are fine choices and if you're looking to make a career of web programming, you'll find plenty of jobs for all three.

Frameworks.

Frameworks are essentially scaffolding you can build your app around. The benefit is that you can get up and running pretty fast with them. Ruby has rails, python has django, and php has a plethora, with laravel being my favorite right now.

The downside of these is that they add another level of complexity to your app. In addition to learning the basics of a programming language, you also have to learn about routes,models, controllers, etc. While this information is very beneficial to have, it could overwhelm when you're just starting out.

If you want an app working fast, you can try one of the frameworks. However, if you want to understand the language more fully, at the cost of time, you may want to try your hand without a framework. If you do choose that route, php may be the best choice, since it was the only one designed specifically with web programming in mind. I'd reccomend php with mysql (using PDO for database interactions).

I'm currently on mobile right now, but if you'd like any more resources I can reply when I get to a real computer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the answer. Yes, the ammount of solutions is staggering, however it makes the choice a little harder.

<comment><USER2> Well, if you have any additional questions or need a direction to start in, I'd be more than willing to help.

From your basic description, the simplest way to be to just have straight PHP with MySQL/postgresql. And I believe you mentioned in another response thinking about using a Raspberry Pi, it looks like a LAMP stack might be easiest to set up, so another point in favor of PHP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Miguel Grinberg created an awesome step-by-step guide for building Python Flask applications: [http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega- tutorial-...](http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial- part-i-hello-world)

<comment><USER4> I agree Miguel's tutorial is fantastic for a step-by-step walkthrough. He also has a video to cover much of the material: [http://pyvideo.org/video/2608/flask-by- example](http://pyvideo.org/video/2608/flask-by-example)

If you're going down the Python route I'll throw in Full Stack Python [http://www.fullstackpython.com/](http://www.fullstackpython.com/) I wrote FSP to provide beginners with context as to what these terms like web server, WSGI server and platform-as-a-service mean without assuming you have prior programming experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would start with this awesome free book on Ruby on Rails (it's designed for beginners): [https://www.railstutorial.org/book](https://www.railstutorial.org/book)

<comment><USER6> I'd second this. Using the Cloud9 development environment eliminates the hassle of setting up a local dev environment, which can be a major road block for beginners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd highly recommend [http://meteor.com](http://meteor.com) for building you app. It's new and shiny and very easy to learn. Here are some reasons to develop your app with Meteor [http://www.sitepoint.com/7-reasons-develop-next- web-app-mete...](http://www.sitepoint.com/7-reasons-develop-next-web-app- meteor/)

<comment><USER8> I would not recommend this for beginners at all. Not going down on Meteor but a traditional MVC framework gives beginners a much more broad understanding of web technologies that they can use with any language and most frameworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It depends on your motivation. Do you want the tool? Or do you want the experience of building it? Is it just for you, or do you want/hope/expect other people to use it?

If it's just for you, and you just want the tool, use a google spreadsheet.

If it's just for you, and you want the experience of building it, then create a simple PHP script, and use a flat file to store your magazines.

If your hope is to build a "real" web app, with user accounts and all that, then you've got a lot of choices. Start with a list of features and functionality you want in your app, and put them in order of priority (including "user signs in", "user recovers password", etc). Choose a technology, and start piecing together those features. Use stack overflow, and find communities for the technology you've chosen. Ask for help often. Take your time, and have fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

It's just for me, I was hoping to use it as a kind of springboard to get into coding. I used a few of the ressources (including Learn XX in XX days), but I think I'll learn best, if I have something to work on.

So I'll probably go for the real web app part, just to learn. It'll be ugly, probably, but hey :)

<comment><USER9> That's a great answer. It's a great example app for learning on. How it looks isn't important. There are plenty of tutorials out there for building a simple CRUD app. I think those would be a good place to start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would recommend not using PHP. [http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal- of-bad-design/](http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/)

Here are some suggestions for web-app languages:

Python + flask.

Ruby + rails.

Go standard HTTP library.

Haskell + snap.

I've used all of those and thought they were at least decent. The last two are my favorite for web development.

<comment><AUTHOR> Python and Ruby look really nice. I read a lot of good things about Go. Choices, man....

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really, front end JS frameworks don't make sense for an app like this (I would only use a JS framework if there was a significant amount of rich client interaction; in your case there is not, you're justing searching from a form).

Rails or Django would be easiest, IMO, and they have a ton of libraries to make the search easy. You should absolutely not have to write any algorithms or anything... whatever you choose would probably just look like ExampleSearchLibrary.new(magazine_records).search(string_from_form) and that's it. I think the hardest part is getting all the magazine data in a DB, and designing the model layer in a way that makes sense. I'm assuming it's already digital, so it would be a matter of writing scripts to scrape & save.

</comment><comment><USER12> Try Base Rails: [https://www.baserails.com](https://www.baserails.com)

It's not free, but you can run through at least one of their full blown web app tutorials in less than a month so you'll only pay $25.

I've been helping a friend who is trying to learn to build webapps and this has been his favorite resource so far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll have a look at that. The courses look really interesting. Hmm.

<comment><USER13> Hey I'm Alex, one of the cofounders of BaseRails. There's a lot of great advice in this thread already, but here are my two cents. Learning the fundamentals of coding is somewhat different from learning to code to build X. If you're focused on the latter, find a good tutorial on how to build something similar to X (or a simplified version of X). You'll pick up the basics of the language/framework along the way, and when you've finished the tutorial, you can then customize what you've built to match the app you were envisioning all along.

If you have any specific questions about BaseRails or Rails/coding in general, I'm happy to help. Feel free to reply back here or shoot me an email at email@example.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you go with PHP, I would suggest learning how to use Composer[0], PHP's sort of de facto package manager, to organize your project. What you're describing seems like a really simple application, but even so, with dependency management, a router and the PSR autoloader it's much, much easier.

Of course, choosing another language (Python, Ruby, whatever) will likely mean choosing a framework and the package manager for that language, but with PHP you have to decide whether or not to use package management or a framework on your own. The minimum viable product version of this as I see it can be done within a single PHP file, so it could be argued that the extra complexity isn't strictly necessary.

If you're working in Windows, Xampp[1] makes it very easy to set up a local server and test PHP applications on your own machine.

[0][https://getcomposer.org/](https://getcomposer.org/)

[1][https://www.apachefriends.org/](https://www.apachefriends.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thanks, haven't thought of that.

I was thinking to use either a virtual machine or the LAMPP stack on my NAS/Raspberry. I tried Xampp, but it kind of screwed with my installation back than. Plus, the Pi isn't really doing anything, time to change that.

<comment><USER15> If you're going the PHP route, I recommend Laravel. It's easy to pick up, there's a ton of interest and plenty of places to teach you. They even have a neat little Vagrant box to help you with the initial set up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think you should learn the fundamentals of programming first. Choose a language, probably one commonly used in web development (JS, Ruby, Python, Java, etc), and go through tutorials on basic programming. After you master that (maybe 1+ years) then start learning web development.

Most people here seemed eager to point you to various tech stacks and toolkits. But if you go down that road you'll be in over your head without understanding the most important thing, which is how software works. And you might also take time to understand how computers, electronics, networks, and compilers work before getting into web development too (i.e., a computer science approach).

Your first development projects should be along the lines of number sorting, playing tic-tac-toe, or [http://projecteuler.net/](http://projecteuler.net/) , not a search engine.

</comment><comment><USER17> Depends what your goals are. if you want to learn a lot; you could write it in PHP/MySQL; if you just wanna get it done, you could do it in Rails (or some other framework).

The thing is, there are really lots of ways something like that could be achieved.

I use Ruby/Rails for philosophical reasons; I really love the language and framwork. I could do php - i just don't like php. Been there, done that. Others prefer JS for everything, or maybe ASP. None are "wrong". but there are differences and tradeoffs to each path; its not arbitrary by any measure.

If you want some fancy search, I do favor elasticsearch quite a bit. Everything else I've used doesn't compare. (but again, largely preference (because its better))

</comment><comment><USER18> I agree with grandalf: the search component will be the most challenging part of this. (The data entry may be challenging too, depending on what format your magazines are currently in.)

I would start by building a tool that can do this easily at the command line or with hard-coded inputs (whether you write it in Python, Ruby, PHP, Go, etc). Once the hard part (the search) is working to your liking, you can then go building out a web interface to it.

With this approach, you will work on the most interesting part of the problem first, which should be intrinsically motivating. And, when it works to your liking, you will be motivated to develop a functional interface, which will sustain your drive to finish the project.

</comment><comment><USER19> It all depends on how much time you have and what your end goal is. Do you want to be a web developer for your career or just a hobby? How much time do you want to put into this web app? Python/Django/Flask or Ruby on Rails are both great choices but I would go pick up the book or search on the internet for a book called PHP Apache and MySqL web development by Wrox. They walk you through building a web app for a music collection which is just what you want anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> This one: [http://it-ebooks.info/book/1060/](http://it-ebooks.info/book/1060/) ?

It'll be just a hobby, so I have the luxury of taking it slowly :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You could easily do this with Elasticsearch. I've created a search UI([http://www.github.com/romansanchez/calaca](http://www.github.com/romansanchez/calaca)) for Elasticsearch, which is what I think you're trying to do. You may want to recreate it on your own for learning purposes.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm surprised to see so many leaning towards PHP.

Personally I think it would be easier to use an embedded database such as leveldb, and build everything out with browserify, npm, and io.js. This way you can build your application as single process. The entire application can then just be streams of data and tiny modules of code that do one thing well.

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's a book that got me started - [http://www.amazon.in/Practical-Django- Projects/dp/1590599969](http://www.amazon.in/Practical-Django- Projects/dp/1590599969)

Practical Django Projects got me started with a simple webapp in around 24 hours.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sounds to me like indexing the magazines is perhaps the most challenging aspect of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, data entry will be a whole lot of work. But since it is just for me, I can take my time :)

<comment><USER24> It's not just data entry. The actual search aspect is gonna be challenging (it's not harder than the web itself, but you need to know where to look, the keyword would be either "Lucence, "Solr" or "Elastic Search", for the record).

One thing I want to note is that you didn't mention which "kind" of webapp development you care about (ie frontend, backend or both). Roughly, the distinction is whether you care about making a website (the part where people look at) whether you care most about just the functionality part of the webapp.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, interesting point. Although I don't think it will be a lot of data, but I'll look into it when I have it up and running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Honestly, I'm inclined to say pick one and deal with the pains later - you're invariably going to make mistakes, so in this case, it is more important to pick a piece of tech and use it so you can learn the pain points later.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you want to go up with PHP then better use Laravel + Mysql or Postgresql. And if you want to learn you can opt for laracast.com videos. They are one of the best resource for laravel.

P.S Laravel is one of the best PHP based framework.

<comment><USER27> A lot of people is talking about Laravel. I'm new on web development, and I thought that Symfony 2 was more popular. Any specific reason for prefering Laravel to Symfony ?

<comment><USER26> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284803) One person replied to this here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Check out Spring Boot - [https://spring.io/guides/gs/spring- boot/](https://spring.io/guides/gs/spring-boot/)

</comment><comment><USER29> > But since I have no experience in developing (neither web nor other)

I'd try and get some basic programming in first. Javascript makes sense if web development is the end goal.

<comment><USER30> "Web development" can cover a lot. JavaScript makes sense if you want to be more font end focused. PHP or Rails (or Django or Flask) make more sense for back end focused stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I know, its a little vague. But that's how it is if you look at it from the outside, I guess. There are so many languages, frameworks etc so it is kind of hard to find the right starting point.

One of the reason why I asked here :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For what you describe, perhaps an Excel spreadsheet would be best.

Although if you're just looking at learning how to CRUD, then it's a good learning exercise.

</comment><comment><USER32> Not being a web developer, I don't see any mention of Node, which makes me curious. Is Node not a good option?

<comment><USER21> Above I mentioned io.js, an up-to-date fork of node. I think either are a great option.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You guys are fantastic. Thank you so much, you helped me a lot. This is why I love this community, so much help for newbie.

I'm still sifting throug the comments, so please be patient, I'm trying to answer to all of you. It might just take a while :)

</comment><comment><USER33> when I read this question, I thought - let's see how long it takes for me to do this from scratch. so I got conscript, downloaded scalatra, started coding , and about 26 minutes later, I have created this webapp exactly as you specified.

just another data point.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is exactly the reason why I want to do it:

The task is not very complex, as some mentioned I could to it in Excel. So I'm confident that I won't run into any big problems (aka stuff I can solve with a little Google-Fu).

It's not a useless app, I can see myself using it. Maybe for the magazines, maybe for wine/booze-collection

It should cover a lot of basic operations like talk to a backend, add/delete/update a databasae, handle (at leaset one) user and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Learn from W3Schools tutorials

HTML [http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp)

PHP+MySQL [http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_connect.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_connect.asp)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, those look like really nice ressources. Bookmarked.

<comment><USER35> Don't rely too much on them. [http://www.w3fools.com/](http://www.w3fools.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> >>For many beginners, W3Schools has structured tutorials and playgrounds that offer a decent learning experience. However, it would be a mistake to continue your education without learning from more reputable sources, so when you're ready to level up, move on.

Oh thank god, I thought I had stumbled in some kind of developer flamewar there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


E-commerce sales up 13% year over year - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/09/comscore-u-s-e-commerce-spending-up-13-percent-in-q3-to-36-3-billion/

<comment><USER2> I will ask the opposite question, what are the goods you prefer to buy off- line and why?</comment>


The Sad Story of Heisenberg's Doctoral Oral Exam - <AUTHOR> https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199801/heisenberg.cfm <comment><USER2> This highlights what was a huge misconception for me about a PhD. I thought a PhD was about making an original contribution to my field. I thought Academia was a place where you took risks in pursuit of knowledge, and a PhD was your first real go at it.

In retrospect (I'm a PhD dropout) the PhD is really more about training in the fundamentals of scholarship. It's about building up background knowledge, and learning the mechanics of research and publishing.

The actual scholarly contribution matters _almost not at all_. This is why faculty will pressure you to pick a conservative project... the results are besides the point. The point is demonstrating that you can do all the steps. Because lots of great people can only do half the steps. A PhD means you can do all.

Once you have your PhD, then its your career on the line and you can do whatever you want. Before that point, you're really working on borrowed (from your advisor) time, and as much as it might seem like you are supposed to blaze a path, they really just want you to show that you can walk in a straight line.

<comment><USER3> I'm getting a negative tone from this post and I don't really see why. Training is the point of graduate school. That is why we still call them graduate _students_.

> I thought a PhD was about making an original contribution to my field

> the PhD is really more about training in the fundamentals of scholarship

You realize that these two concepts are not mutually incompatible? And furthermore, that the former is contingent upon capability in the latter?

> as much as it might seem like you are supposed to blaze a path, they really > just want you to show that you can walk in a straight line

The vast majority of graduate students are not capable of conducting independent research when they start (I certainly was not!). Often, it takes _years_ of training to get them into a state in which they are sufficiently knowledgeable to take a real leadership role. Expecting someone to be capable of independent research would be wasteful: they need more guidance! This is why they are called 'advisers', not bosses. Without them most students would zig off into a direction that is fruitless.

However, to suggest that the work you do at this time is meaningless is also wrong. Your adviser almost certainly has funding sources that support the work, and this is likely directed towards productive and meaningful pursuits. The fact that students are not leading these effort is not a detriment, and in my experience even smaller research projects quickly provide amply opportunities for taking initiative. Furthermore, very few students finish a doctorate without writing papers, so I find the notion that there is no actual scholarly contribution inaccurate.

<comment><USER4> Hm, that's an interesting reaction. I also don't really see why that you're getting a negative tone. I don't think the post is suggesting that the work is meaningless (as your comment interprets) but rather that the meaning of a PhD is mostly not in the thesis itself, but in the ability to conduct independent research, like you said.

<comment><USER5> In science original research is only original if _you don 't know the outcome._ There is a huge temptation to assume the outcome matters, but as long as you can validate why you looked into something then the outcome should be meaningless. Thus the thesis matter's, but only up to a point.

Otherwise you push people to either make things up, or only reward the lucky.

PS: Some non science fields have other criteria, but they are not experimenting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A reassuring story for those of us who feel we are strong in many areas but fear we have deep, dangerous holes in certain fundamentals.

This vignette explains part of something I hadn't understood about the emergence of Heisenberg's work ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg#Matrix_mecha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg#Matrix_mechanics_and_the_Nobel_Prize) ): he seemed to work out the core theory of QM without really developing a sensible, general approach. Compare this to Newton, who did develop calculus to explain mechanics (even if we these days use Leibniz's contemporaneous work). In Heisenberg's case, Born was the one who realized that we should use matrices.

It's still weird that Born didn't get the nobel for this work and had to wait 20 more years to get one.

<comment><USER7> Wasn't it Schroedinger who approached QM using matrix algebra?

<comment><USER8> no, Schroedinger approached QM via differential equations

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I keep mixing them up...

<comment><USER6> Nothing wrong with that -- I find Schrödinger very hard to follow!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "But that fall Heisenberg's worried father wrote to the famed Gottingen experimentalist James Franck, asking Franck to teach his boy some experimental physics. Franck did his best, but could not overcome Heisenberg's complete lack of interest and gave up the effort. If Heisenberg was going to survive at all in physics it would be purely as a theorist."

I had not heard this part; and might shed some additional light onto why the German atomic project was significantly behind. When the lead of your project is a famous physicist, but who isn't strongly grounded in experiment, but who nevertheless feels like he can't simply be a manager and must have input, you're likely going to have problems.

Maybe not though; be an interesting line of investigation though. Anyone know if this was a documented issue? I know that Heisenburg had seriously overestimated the amount of necessary fissile material needed for a bomb.

[http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/09/13/what-did-the- nazis...](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/09/13/what-did-the-nazis-know- about-the-manhattan-project/)

<comment><USER10> As I understand it, the overestimation was (at least partly) about a failure to understand how cascades worked. In particular, to develop a proper model of a 3D cascade in a sphere.

The result was a consistent underestimation of how quickly fission would advance, implying the need for a larger reacting body than is actually required to sustain a chain reaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Jerry Lettvin used to tell a story, to support his contention that students were no longer being taught how to _think_. He said there was a grad student at whose orals Jerry was one of the professors. Before the student arrived, Jerry noticed a beverage bottle sitting in a window, with the sun shining on it. He went to the window and rotated the bottle 180°, and sat down. The student came in, and Jerry asked him to examine the bottle. "Which side is warmer?" Jerry asked. The student replied that the side facing away from the window was warmer. Jerry said, "Explain this."

To my recollection, Jerry didn't relate the student's response, but from the way he told the story I gather it was unsatisfactory.

<comment><USER12> That is hilariously cruel.

<comment><USER13> "Find the height of a building with a barometer."

"Lower it on a string"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love this story! This isn't a quip: read the article, then finish reading my comment.

"Was Heisenberg a good physicist" \- well, he was and he wasn't.

<comment><USER15> This works at the macro and micro level.

<comment><USER16> If you ask Schrödinger, he would comment "which depends on whether you ask him or not."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's always encouraging to be reminded of how the giants in the history of science were also just people.

</comment><comment><USER18> _" Accustomed to being always at the top of his class, Heisenberg found it hard to accept the lowest of three passing grades for his doctorate."_

The only sad thing I can see is that, according to the story, receiving such a low grade at his final oral exam in experimental physics undermined his confidence in his own skills in experimental physics.

I would hate to sound blunt, but receiving a low grade for being unable to answer basic questions should not be a surprise to such a theoretical genius. He got his doctorate anyway.

<comment><USER19> Indeed. It should never surprise anyone when mediocrity is valued above all else and ass kissing trumps brilliance. Never think that you are allowed to focus your efforts where you can actually make a difference. Not while in school anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It is somehow reassuring that even a mind as brilliant as Heisenberg's had its limits.

Mandatory lame joke - "I love driving my Heisenbergmobile, but every time I look at the speedometer I get lost."

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't know what's supposed to be sad about this story. It's interesting, reassuring even about the high level of scrutiny physicists are in if geniuses like Heisenberg even have such troubles. But sad?

<comment><USER22> I agree. "Sad" is the wrong adjective.

I've seen similar stories take place when I was in grad school.

In one instance, a professor wanted to fail a student (in his qualifying exam) b/c he didn't seem to take one of his courses seriously (and showed limited knowledge of this subject area).

The prof was willing to let the student re-take the qualifying exam, but he wanted to prevent what he perceived as a student "skating through" the program.

I think that's what happened to Heisenberg here. The only reason it's remotely interesting is b/c Heisenberg is a legend and so we all feel like he deserved to be forgiven for his distaste for experimental work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It shouldn't be surprising for anyone who takes an exam unprepared that you may walk out with only an average grade. I mean, it's not like he didn't know he was going to get questions on experimental physics, nor the impact they would have on the final grade...

</comment><comment><USER24> I was lucky to hear Heisenberg speak at MIT shortly before his passing. But I forgot what he talked about, something historical I recall. His son was a MIT professor. Dirac gave a talk that year too. But it was his silly numerology topic on large numbers.

</comment><comment><USER24> Some important scientists are smart about everything- polymaths- and other smart only in their field of interest. Dyson and schrodinger were more polymaths, while Heisenberg and Einstein more specialisrs.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well, if he did more interest/better skills in practical experimental/engineering type applications, that might have had some, well, unfortunate political consequences later on in life...

</comment><comment><USER26> Sort of a more high stakes version of the Grothendieck "prime"... makes you wonder how many more folks haven't made it through the gauntlet.

</comment><comment><USER27> Luckily now we have this useful FAQ on dealing with doctoral exams:

[http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight- porti...](http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of- your-thesis-defense)

<comment><USER28> What does the snake represent?

<comment><USER29> It represents the type of A/V cable used to connect your laptop to the projector

<comment><USER30> Oh, so THAT's why my projector that I used for my PhD defense didn't display red.

<comment><USER31> <dijkstra>

Why, did the red elements mean something special?

</dijkstra>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Today i learnt haha</comment>


Bootstrap Release Candidate embraces flat design - <AUTHOR> http://rc.getbootstrap.com/

<comment><USER2> Ok, that looks good! I wonder if LayerVault will put out a DMCA notice for this as well :P

<comment><USER3> I think it looks worse.</comment></comment>


Thanks TMZ, for make my weekend sad - <AUTHOR>

"the technology is always too late."
This quote is from one of my favorite movies, Cinema Paradiso, an 1988 Italian movie where Alfredo, the cinema projectionist, became blind after a film strip roll get fire. By that time film strips were made with nitrate what made it very flammable.   Some years later Alfredo was introduced to a new kind of film strip without nitrate that doesn't spread fire, and then he said the phrase above.
This weekend, for me, was a sad weekend, because on the last months I'm focusing this two days on what I'm passionate about, technology, business, startups, and everything related. At my regular week it's almost impossible to check tweeter, read HN, Techcrunch and others, so, until now my weekends was empowering, filled with good ideas, knowledge, researches and having a close look at the market players.
Happens then at friday night TMZ release a picture of a moribund Steve Jobs.
Then my weekend became suddenly sad.
I'm not a huge fan of Jobs. But I admit that he personalize in my mind a kind of super powerful man, the one who have the greatest conditions in the world to desire and archive almost anything. More than anyone the guy has the perspicacity, the people and the money to solve any kind of the problem.
Arthur Clarke said that advanced enough technology is like magic, so Jobs is our contemporary Houdini, one move and a million dumb faces appears in the audience.
I get myself wondering what kind of efforts a man like Jobs is applying to try to fix your health condition, what kind of genius are called, what king of research are made, what kind of technology was created. I particularly think that House are leading the medical team.
Then this super powerful man suddenly appears defeated this weekend.
There's nothing to think or say about the left of Jobs from Apple, or the picture. What I just known by now is that I really don't want to check my Ipad 6 in 2015 and see the discovery of cure of pancreatic cancer and think that technology arrived too late, to save our Houdini.
*sorry for the lousy english, it's not my native idiom. <comment><USER2> That image was very fake.

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr</comment>


New Apple TV Is Said to Focus on Games, Challenging Traditional Consoles - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/technology/personaltech/new-apple-tv-is-said-to-focus-on-games-challenging-traditional-consoles.html

<comment><USER2> ...meanwhile mobile gaming in the US lost share to messaging, social and entertainment according to Flurry... [http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/127636097639/seven-years- into-t...](http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/127636097639/seven-years-into-the- mobile-revolution-content-is)

</comment><comment><USER3> The interesting part for me is what Apple is doing with their Primesense, Metaio and Faceshift acquisitions. If they are building an AppleTV with ability to recognise people in the room and automatically enable 3D models for gaming it could be offer something new in the crowded gaming space:

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

Then again maybe it is for the AppleCar.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but didn't Primesense make a lot of the hardware for the original Kinect? I remember at one point I couldn't download the original Primesense drivers anymore and read it was because Apple had purchased the company.

Not saying they can't do anything interesting with it because depth cameras really are cool and due for some "killer apps" but last time I heard talk of recognizing people in the room, it was regarding the Kinect and people were wringing hands over tracking and privacy. Either that or they were lamenting how the 3d tracking in games was mostly a gimmick.

Unrelated to the Apple thing, I still think depth cameras will come into their own when you can place a few small ones around a room and create a realtime 3d model of a space for VR.</comment></comment>


How to factor 2048 bit RSA integers in 8 hours using 20M noisy qubits - <AUTHOR> https://scirate.com/arxiv/1905.09749 <comment><USER2> I'm one of the authors on this paper and can answer questions if people have some.

<comment><USER3> Hi. I would like to take the opportunity to get your opinion on quantum computing.

My understanding is that there is a significant work in theoretical quantum computing done by you and many people. Results presented by you seems impressive. Congratulations.

On the other hand - everything I read, hear and try to interpret about D-wave seems like a nonsense. They show approximation computations and compare it to classical algorithms that provide exact results. But classical approximation algorithms work much better than their quantum computers. I do not see how scaling this approach could lead to anything that you describe in your paper.

In this regard - is my understanding of D-wave correct or does it provide some value that is better than classical computers?

Can d-wave or IBM's creation be used to do computations described in your paper?

Is their approach worth anything?

[edit] Of course I'm not asking about now - my question is whether there is anything connected to exact results (like factoring) and exponential speed-up in d-wave approach.

<comment><USER2> I don't really know a lot about D-wave to be honest. I defer to Scott Aaronson's posts [1] and to the opinion that the main criteria for success is "solve hard problems" as opposed to "solve hard problems with a quantum computer" [2].

[1]: [https://scottaaronson.com/blog/?s=dwave](https://scottaaronson.com/blog/?s=dwave)

[2]: [https://youtu.be/XbFoXT73xVQ?t=355](https://youtu.be/XbFoXT73xVQ?t=355)

<comment><USER4> Without hardware, you're not solving any problems. Glass bead game != solving problems.

At no point in human history as this sort of "detailed theoretical wanking" turned into progress in science; the hardware comes first.

<comment><USER5> I was under the impression that theoretical physics detailing underpinning mechanisms proceeded the transistor, nuclear weapons and fibre optics.

<comment><USER6> That's true of most inventions. We had programming and boolean logic before we had computers. And of course we would, you can't build a boat without water to sail on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How plausible is it that someone could acquire this many qubits? How many doublings away are we?

EDIT: [1] suggests D-wave could be 5640 by 2020, doubling approx. every two years - 12 doublings = 24 years from now.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems#D-Wave_2X_and_D...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems#D-Wave_2X_and_D- Wave_2000Q)

<comment><USER8> More than 500 qubits is enough for shore's algorithm to destroy everything

<comment><USER9> That is for perfect mathematical qbits. Real qbits are always noisy, and you need at least 1500 real qbits to emulate a perfect qbit with reasonable certainty, putting your number in the same ballpark as the number of 20M noisy qbits from the article.

<comment><USER8> So they can use shore's algorithm?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I haven't finished reading the paper, but maybe my biggest immediate takeaway is that significantly increasing the number of bits doesn't really help. Using the methods discussed in the paper, 4096 bit integers can be factored in less than 4x the amount of time needed to factor 2048 bit integers. In other words, should this method become practical, cryptographers couldn't solve the problem by using integers we would ordinarily consider much harder to factor.

<comment><USER9> Yes, that is why djb's post quantum RSA proposal uses public key sizes on the order of one terabyte (i.e. 8 trillion bits) instead of the more common 4096 bits. I have the slight suspicion that the proposal is slightly tounge in cheek, though.

See [https://cr.yp.to/papers/pqrsa-20170419.pdf](https://cr.yp.to/papers/pqrsa-20170419.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, that submission was absolutely a joke. It didn't get passed to round 2 of the NIST PQCrypto Standardization CFP. Bernstein and Lange intended that to be a bit of sardonic humor poking fun at the review panel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09749](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09749)

</comment><comment><USER13> It doesn't look like there is even a need for quantum proof algorithms. An Epyc CPU with 32 cores has 20 billion transistors. Even if we can build qubits as tiny as a transistor you won't be able to break RSA with ridiculous key lengths above 2000000 bits. In reality qubits will be bigger than transistors, not all quibits can be active at the same time and there won't be the same exponential growth in the number of qubits as we have seen in conventional computers.

</comment><comment><USER14> Relevant presentation on real world cipher reversing with quantum computing:

[https://www.phdays.com/en/program/reports/reversing- cryptogr...](https://www.phdays.com/en/program/reports/reversing- cryptographic-primitives-using-quantum-computing/)

Slides: [https://speakerdeck.com/rlifchitz/ordinateurs-quantiques- et-...](https://speakerdeck.com/rlifchitz/ordinateurs-quantiques-et-futur-de- la-securite)

</comment><comment><USER15> How likely is it that for breaking 2048 bit RSA integers you'll just need 2048 unnoisy qbits?

That this lowered 20M requirement is just ploy to keep people using 2048 bits, not 4K as required by GNU. It is my understanding that 2048 qbits are already in reach to well-funded state agencies.

</comment><comment><USER16> So, is there some alternative quantum-resistant cipher ready (i.e. with open source implementation, say on github) that we can use today to encrypt out long-term secrets?

<comment><USER17> A one-time pass is still uncrackable.

Take your secret. Write it on a piece of grid paper. Fill EVERY FIELD on another piece of grid paper with random data. Transform every character on the first piece of paper based on the corresponding characters on the second piece of paper and write the result on a third piece of grid paper. Then burn the first piece of paper.

It's not possible to read the 3rd piece of paper without the 2nd now. You also obscure the length by filling the second piece of paper with data.

<comment><USER11> One-time pads are extremely impractical and error-prone. You need:

1\. A secret key as long as the plaintext.

2\. A consistent source of true randomness and a way of sampling it such that your secret key is truly random.

3\. To never reuse a key once it's been used once.

Imagine the ramifications of retrofitting servers to use one-time pads for TLS. Moreover, essentially everything we take for granted in cryptography relies on constructions which use pseudorandom permutations and generators. Even if we resolved all these problems and forged ahead in a brave new world using stream cipher-like constructions based on one-time pads, we'd still have to rethink all of public-key cryptography.

This impracticality is one of the major reasons we moved on from information theoretic security to complexity theoretic security by the mid 20th century.

<comment><USER18> For what it's worth, quantum computers might give a provably correct source of 2 (random numbers).

The version I saw (requires 2 quantum devices): [http://www.henryyuen.net/fall2018/scribe2.pdf](http://www.henryyuen.net/fall2018/scribe2.pdf)

New paper that claims to do it with only one quantum device: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.00640.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.00640.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So RSA has some 10-20 years to go. Is there a quantum computing-proof encryption algorithm, or is it just a matter of increasing key lengths?

<comment><USER20> Many old, hard problems are still hard even on quantum computers (SAT, TSP, etc. cannot be solved in polynomial time on quantum computers). Factoring can be done in polynomial time on quantum computers. FFT can be made even faster. But again, some classic, hard problems still stand. So don't worry, quantum computers are not magic solutions to all hard problems, just some.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is this the long fabled quantum computing application that breaks asymmetric cryptography?

<comment><USER22> Its the continued advancing of the craft. Some newer techniques but an evolution of the attack. Now all one needs is a 20 Million qubit QC..</comment></comment>


Self-Destructing E-documents - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/21crypto.html?ref=science <comment><USER2> I don't see how this can work. Like all DRM schemes this breaks down the first time a user decrypts the message. At that point you simply make a copy of the decrypted data. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> I don't know much about this new scheme, but it sounds like Disappearing Inc. The objective of Disappearing Inc. wasn't to prevent employees from leaking internal documents on purpose; it was to prevent them from _accidentally_ retaining documents they shouldn't have. This may be the same thing, but with a clever new implementation.

That is, the intended recipient of the message isn't the adversary. So this might be a tractable problem, unlike DRM.</comment></comment>


Sony responds to claim PS4 used for terrorist communications - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-11-16-sony-responds-to-claim-ps4-used-for-terrorist-communications <comment><USER2> Such terrorist attacks are being cynically used as a pretext by the state security apparatus to shutdown private communication between its own citizens. If Chine spies on its own people then that's a violation of their human rights. If the freedom loving west does it, than that's to protect you from the terrorists.

"Despite what the papers say, there's no evidence ISIS used PS4 to plan Paris attacks"

[http://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2015/11/despite-what-the- pap...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2015/11/despite-what-the-papers-say- theres-no-evidence-isis-used-ps4-to-plan-paris-attacks/)

"Exploiting Emotions About Paris to Blame Snowden, Distract from Actual Culprits Who Empowered ISIS"

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