Donald Trump is starting a messy fight with the entire internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/28/21273019/donald-trump-executive-order-twitter-liability-facebook-230-ftc-fcc <comment><USER2> Many threads on this. Some with comments: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=trump%20executive%20order%20comments%3E0&sort=byDate&type=story)

At this point we should probably wait until something actually happens, and then hopefully the discussion will have details to be grounded in.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry, i totally missed those. thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> truly wild that the fight over whether social media platforms should be held liable for speech happens the one time they actually _do_ make a feeble attempt at moderation.

<comment><USER3> My sense is that moderation has been around since virtually the beginning but has been getting more heavy-handed as time goes on. Moderating _political_ views on international-scale open fora, though, seems far newer, and far more troubling.

Most of us are appalled at the censorship in China, and yet we seem to be galloping in that direction. I'd like to feel that people will get sick of it and drop off of these platforms themselves, but I'm not sure that that will happen.

<comment><USER4> How is twitter labeling his lies as 'misleading' with evidence "galloping" towards china?

I think they have an obligation to annotate extremely popular and dangerous comments, but they do not have an obligation to fact check everyone.

<comment><USER3> > I think they have an obligation to annotate extremely popular and dangerous > comments

For one, _galloping_ in the sense that probably many Chinese citizens would agree with this sentiment.

Try to imagine what Lenny Bruce or George Carlin would think of all this.

<comment><USER5> I think Lenny Bruce and Carlin would say they were never dog whistling violence.

<comment><USER3> If you impute nefarious motives to all around you, communication collapses, and civilization will soon follow.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us- politic...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us- politics/trump-twitter-today-cowboy-democrat-dead-couy-griffin- tweets-a9537016.html)

So exactly what an I supposed to impute from that?

<comment><USER3> That he's kind of a jackass sometimes.

<comment><USER5> Like this?

[https://www.nytimes.com/1933/01/31/archives/hitler-puts- asid...](https://www.nytimes.com/1933/01/31/archives/hitler-puts-aside-aim-to- be-dictator-german-cabinet-also-reveals.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Big "tech's" positions about what they will and won't enable people to do have become so inconsistent with public focused principal that I struggle to be sympathetic.

If Section 230 is so important, then who the fuck got us in position that it's the current chesspiece between government and industry?

Consolidation of power invites attention from other power. Once that happens to you, don't expect to win on principal. You've already decided that you're not fighting on principal.

</comment><comment><USER7> If a platform would be responsible for it's users and comments.

Wouldn't Twitter remove Trump asap then? The guy is a trainwreck online.

<comment><USER8> I think the idea is that Twitter should either moderate the content and be (partly) responsible for it, or it should not moderate the content and not be (partly) responsible for it.

<comment><USER9> This is impossible. People who want this want the actual, literal, impossible.

And I don't understand it. Well, I do, mostly it's bigots wanting free reign to be bigots in someone else's house with a little bit of the ideologically inflexible thrown into the mix.

So I should say I don't understand the people who want this.

Not only that but if conservatives do what they are threatening to do, that will lead to an almost instant, complete, and full censoring of much of their content.

Which online service provider would want to be civilly liable for someone posting a video that says "the only good democrat is a dead democrat" if a nut job throws back a shot of hand sanitizer and goes on a shooting spree because "the president said so"?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/28/trump- ret...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/28/trump-retweets- video-saying-only-good-democrat-is-dead-democrat/)

<comment><USER8> Why would that cause instant censoring? It could go the other way too. Content doesn't get censored. No more games by websites like Twitter where they "accidentally" censor one political side over and over. (Or vice versa elsewhere.) The idea is that if these websites get special protections that regular people don't, and are big enough to essentially be the town square, then the values the society itself accepts are what should guide it. In this case that would be free speech.

Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily arguing for this. I'm just trying to explain how else this might work.

<comment><USER9> Let's say hacker news could be sued for me posting a comment threatening to kill you and refusing to remove it.

Because in many states (maybe all?) they can be.

Remember, websites are only given immunity if they fail to remove "sueable" content.

Will they (hacker news):

a. Prescreen all comments, like a publisher prescreens manuscripts, or

b. Just do away with user-submitted content, or

c. Let everyone say whatever they want in an orgy of freedom with no moderation whatsoever?

Privately owned media sites will never, ever be a public square just because people use them the same way my yard isn't a public square because you can walk across it on the way to ring my doorbell so you can ask to put a campaign sign in my grass.

Is the President of the United States of America sharing a video calling for the death of his political opponents a "sue worthy" event? What if he gave a speech saying that? Or published a presidential decree calling for it?

Some people see bigots saying "whatever dude it was just a satire joke" for what it is: bullshit.

<comment><USER8> They would pick c. All the legislators have to do is set a minimum size and certain exceptions on what can be removed, eg above 100 million users and remove off-topic and spam. HN and 99% of websites would be unaffected, but Twitter, Facebook et al would have to be more hands off in moderation.

If you own a giant piece of land and the government wants to build a highway over a part of it, it's still possible for them to legally do it, even if you refused.

<comment><USER9> Then you're saying that some speech is more free than others.

And they won't pick c, at least not after the first round of lawsuits.

As far as highways go, I don't follow the analogy. The government has to pay me for any land they take. Do you think that they'll buy twitter just so conservative bigots can have somewhere to go and be bigoted?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The interesting thing in this case is that Trump's tweet is a violation of the "Election Integrity" policy: [https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and- policies/twitter-rules](https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and- policies/twitter-rules) (see the "Authenticity" section) whereas his other tweets, while inflammatory, are not.

</comment><comment><USER11> The problem is that he can start a messy real world war too</comment>


A Taxonomy of Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=667622 <comment><USER2> THE TAXONOMY OF PRIVACY: by Daniel J. Solove (84 Pages Posted: 16 Feb 2005) Table of Contents:

A. Information Collection -1. Surveillance -2. Interrogation

B. Information Processing -1. Aggregation -2. Identification -3. Insecurity -4. Secondary Use -5. Exclusion

C. Information Dissemination -1. Breach of Confidentiality -2. Disclosure -3. Exposure -4. Increased Accessibility -5. Blackmail -6. Appropriation -7. Distortion

D. Invasion -1. Intrusion -2. Decisional Interference

</comment><comment><USER3> Off topic: that "T" really overlaps the "a" in Verdana font face.

</comment><comment><USER4> >Last revised: 6 May 2008

I wonder how relevant this will be to today.</comment>


Ask HN: BI/ML transferable to other industries - <AUTHOR> I wanted to get other BI/ML folks input on how transferable their abilities and knowledge is to other industries. It seems that a lot of the insights into the data and impact come through understanding the business and it would be interesting to hear if that has presented a significant roadblock to getting hired and/or being effective in a new industry.<p>I am pushing 7+ years in a BI/ML role with my current company and I want to make sure I am not locking myself out of getting employed elsewhere. <comment><USER2> Companies usually only pay lip service to the value of "insights" or the use of forecasting or rigorous modeling for business intelligence. They will require much fancier-sounding experience to appear on your resume than they will ever allow you to focus on for real work projects once hired. The value of "insights" is an ever-shifting political problem.

In that sense, whatever job skills you develop to be good at the political metagame being played between managers who supposedly wield data science or business intelligence will be transferable and help you survive in corporate culture.

But any authentic skill you have in statistics or modeling won't be valued except for the brief period when you need to use it to satisfy arbitrary and capricious credential signalling requirements during the interview process.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback.</comment></comment>


Massachusetts Toll Collectors Make An Average of $70,000/yr - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/09/18/pike_wants_to_eliminate_100_toll_taker_jobs/ <comment><AUTHOR> Know what amazes me? That you can't buy a Fastlane/EZPass at one of the toll booths. You have to order online and wait for it to arrive in the mail.

If they had one lane setup where you could pick up a transponder and then activate it via the phone or Internet when you got home, I bet in a month nearly everyone in the state would have one.

<comment><USER3> Agreed! But let's go further: there should be only one lane where you can pay cash.

Ultimately, even the transponders and phone-signup are superfluous. At least in the SF Bay area, there are license plate cameras which handle any case where the transponder fails or cars blow through without paying -- it's then added to your bill or mailed as a ticket.

So most lanes just need to be: "I agree to be billed according to my car registration."

With the one lane for people who want to pay cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IIRC the Massachusetts Turnpike is, mile-for-mile, the most expensive road in the state.

The Turnpike Authority was chartered as an independent agency that could float bonds for road construction, and once the bonds were paid off, ownership of the Turnpike would pass to the state government. So the Authority keeps itself perpetually in debt.

</comment><comment><USER5> For comparisons sake, the Harris County Toll Road Authority (Houston, TX) paid new toll collectors $8/hour in 2002, when I briefly worked there. My supervisor's supervisor made about $11 or $12.

<comment><USER6> One of the new toll roads here in Houston is EZ-Pass (electronic) only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _urnpike Executive Director Alan LeBovidge says the move is part of an effort to modernize its toll collecting system by eventually making it fully automated._

Thank god. Having 2 lanes out of 8 be automated means that everyone just has to wait in traffic until those lanes open up right at the tolls, thus killing any time savings.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there something wrong with toll collectors making an average of $70,000?

<comment><USER9> Aside from the "robots could do it cheaper", it is a misallocation of resources, and that makes all of us poorer.

The job is worth minimum wage ($12,000 / yr or so) at best. In a free market, you could find folks who would work this job at that price.

Some of these folks have so few skills that they would still work this job.

Other of these folks have higher skills, and isntead of using them in some productive role (manager at a pharmacy, etc.), they're wasting their skills sitting on a stool making change.

If you think that it's a good thing for unskilled labor to be paid - <USER2> of union monopolization of labor - far far above it's productive level, then why not make the minimum wage $70k/yr for everyone?

Or better yet, $120k/yr ?

<comment><USER10> "far far above it's productive level, then why not make the minimum wage $70k/yr for everyone?"

I'm intrigued with the idea of the government just delivering a bucket of money to every household once a year.

An advantage is that you place some sort of floor under everyone's income, that would mitigate against basic poverty issues like homelessness, no money for food or health care, etc. Another advantage is that everyone still has the same incentives to work, because they can get ahead without worrying about losing their assistance from being too successful. And (bringing back to HN) having certain necessities taken care of could enable risk taking and entrepeneurship. Basically, the government paying for you ramen noodles, instead of pg :).

I know there are lots of potential problems with this idea, but I've seen it proposed before, and think it makes a good starting point for a discussion of thinking of things like poverty, minimum wage, health care, etc. in a different way.

<comment><USER11> _I'm intrigued with the idea of the government just delivering a bucket of money to every household once a year.

An advantage is that you place some sort of floor under everyone's income, that would mitigate against basic poverty issues like homelessness, no money for food or health care, etc. Another advantage is that everyone still has the same incentives to work_

Hmmm. That sounds like what I just wrote. Here is the link again:

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

 _I know there are lots of potential problems with this idea_

Actually, there are not any problems with it. A capitalist society cannot function on a healthy level without universal no-strings-attached trickle- capital. However, I am interested in finding out what you find wrong with the idea.

<comment><USER10> I was assuming others would immediately find problems with the idea that I hadn't thought of. I really don't know what the downsides are.

Thanks for the link! Interesting to see Alaska mentioned as an example of this idea, especially given current political discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes they get free fruit, too:

[http://www.zug.com/gab/index.cgi?func=view_thread&thread...](http://www.zug.com/gab/index.cgi?func=view_thread&thread_id=31934)

</comment><comment><USER13> And this factoid is on the front page of HN why, exactly?

They could all learn programming and then they would earn closer to $130K/year, I suppose, but does that make it relevant to HN?

<comment><USER11> _They could all learn programming and then they would earn closer to $130K/year_

How do you figure? Do high-IQ people normally become toll-collectors?

<comment><USER14> This is anecdotal, but I'm pretty certain that most programmers don't have a high IQ. However, readers of this site probably have a higher IQ than the average programmer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> the state charges a dollar twenty five

</comment><comment><USER10> mean or median?

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of that twilight episode where a plant manager began replacing workers with robots, up to and including his assistant manager. At the end, the company that owned the plant replaced the plant manager himself with a robot. It poignantly ends with the plant manager and the assistant he had fired drinking together in a bar and discussing how people need the dignity of work. A perfect "poetic justice" Twilight Zone "lesson of the week".

Replacing toll workers with automated systems may save money, and may be inevitable, and trust me, I have quite a fascination with robots, but still, I am sorry for those hapless humans in their way.

<comment><USER17> _I am sorry for those hapless humans in their way._

Don't worry! If you really care about reintroducing useless inefficiency by paying people to do things a robot could do instead, there are plenty of outlets for your passion. For example, why not hire someone to transcribe your email by hand, instead of writing it directly? All the benefits of useless labor, but taxpayers don't feel disgruntled about it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That $70K figure is probably dramatically understating the real present value of their compensation. State employee pensions and retirement health benefits are ridiculous.</comment>


Floating point error is the least of my worries (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/11/01/floating-point-worries/ <comment><USER2> In a funny way, reminds me of football: they'll bring out the chains to precisely measure the yardage... to a spot that was arbitrarily chosen by the ref. The refs do the best they can, but there's often no way they've spotted the ball exactly where the play died. The whole ceremony with the chains is ridiculous.

See also: economics.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I agree, and have thought about this a bit.

It seems like it effectively reduces to a coin flip choice.

<comment><USER4> I think that is the intent. If its really close then the system turns it into a random outcome with no apparent bias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having been someone that has programmed alternatives to IEEE FP, I would say that this is not a correct perspective in this sense: Floating point error can crop up in places _you will never expect_ , and when it does the magnitude can be very difficult to predict (and can be far worse than any approximation or modeling error).

Here's a good example. Try solving this set of linear equations by hand (it's nearly trivial):

0.25510582x + 0.52746197y = 0.79981812

0.80143857x + 1.65707065y = 2.51270273

The answer you should get is: {-1, 2}, btw, which should be fairly easy to verify by hand.

Now try doing it with a computer.

<comment><USER6> That's only a place you would "never expect" because you've carefully hidden the gotcha. Stated less obtusely, you're finding the intersection between two lines _which are parallel to JUST above the precision of an IEEE double_. This is a cute example, not a real world situation. In the real world, precision loss in this circumstance is acceptable and any real system that accepted a "parallel" condition like this would have a check for it.

For a similar situation: atan2() exists because of a coverage issue in the problem area and not a bug in the idea of a tangent or a float.

<comment><USER7> I would think that atan2() exists because atan() doesn't invert tan() correctly for some purposes -- if you're trying to find the angle associated with a point then atan(y/x) is just the wrong answer.

The fact that it avoids the division by 0 is a convenient side effect of also being more correct.

(I'm just guessing; I don't know the actual history of it.)

<comment><USER6> The point was more that problems that need to use atan() in a context where the line may point near the Y axis don't flip out over "floating point precision", they just use atan2().

Problems like the one in the grandparent that need to intersect nearly- parallel lines (or subspaces) use special techniques better suited to the problem and don't just feed it to a linear solver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As he says, if you understand the nature of floating point, it should be fine. But having seen this been misunderstood over and over and over and over again on stackoverflow, many don't.

While we are on floating point, I really liked this article that was on HN a while back [https://lemire.me/blog/2017/02/28/how-many-floating-point- nu...](https://lemire.me/blog/2017/02/28/how-many-floating-point-numbers-are- in-the-interval-01/)

</comment><comment><USER9> He is right, but misses the big issue with floating point which is that, as far as I recall, it is neither commutative or associative. Hence, you can't use algebra then check equalities.

Most capable programmers just don't think to use a == b for floating points, because it isn't going to work a lot of the time, but for someone who isn't aware of that minefield they can wander in and get some very stupid bugs.

<comment><USER10> > Most capable programmers just don't think to use a == b for floating points, > because it isn't going to work a lot of the time, but for someone who isn't > aware of that minefield they can wander in and get some very stupid bugs.

Well, there are two separate issues here:

1) The default for programming should be _decimal_ floating point instead of _binary_ floating point. Suddenly, your strange "a == b" for floating point works just fine because 0.1 is exactly representable. Thus, addition, subtraction, and multiplication behave just like integer. Computers are now fast enough that any language in which you don't actually specify a floating point, should default to decimal. This covers 99% of the silly cases for beginners, and benefits people doing actual monetary calculations.

2) Programmers need to be able to specify when they want _binary_ floating point for speed along with all the weirdness.

<comment><USER11> The default for programming should be arbitrary precision rational numbers. Think the rational numbers in Scheme or Haskell.

<comment><USER12> > _The default for programming should be arbitrary precision rational > numbers._

And all is well – until you learn about _e_ and _pi_ and realize, that your arbitrary precision rational numbers are no better than floating-point.

<comment><USER11> I find that the typical developer's typical work doesn't require irrational numbers at all. Of courses those specifically doing numeric computing would be best served with traditional floating point, but I truly think most don't. Maybe my experience is biased then.

<comment><USER12> The typical developer's typical work mostly requires integers, and when they need reals, 64-bit floats are nearly always sufficient. I would even say that arbitrary-size integers are needed more often than true rationals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am struggling to see how this argument applies to things requring serious numerical analysis, such as finding eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a 500th order matrix, or some other complex control system with feedback and many parts.

Great pains need to be taken for calculations of this sort. One test: why would you sort floating point numbers in an array before taking their sum?

</comment><comment><USER13> OP has never played KSP - had the kraken rip whole colony ships apart because of oscillatory wobbles coming in and out of physics modes :(

<comment><USER14> As far as I can tell, that supports, rather than contradicts, the post's point about modelling, fp, and approximation errors. It's a little too easy to ascribe KSP's bugs to floating-point errors, its physics engine just isn't trustworthy enough. How do you really know that the oscillations are not just due to it solving a stiff system of ODEs with explicit Euler, or something perfectly predictable like that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just ran into the problem for an HR collegue that uses Excel.

Real financial data manage to produce three floats (with only 2 decimal places as usual with finance) that when used together a+b-c produced -0 (actually -0.1336e-20 or something like that).

The result ended up producing a cascade of mismatching results in further calculations seeking for 0 balance.

It's a known and identified "feature" with a correct workaround which is rounding (for finance) and an horrible evil twin "formatting away and praying" that can lead to futur unfigurable mess for candid users.

So for me I agree that floating point error is not so bad from a mathematical standpoint, but from a technical stand point let us all remind that for most humankind 3/2 = 1.5 (and not 0).

<comment><USER16> _"with a correct workaround which is rounding (for finance) and an horrible evil twin "formatting away and praying" "_

Are you suggesting the "precision as displayed" setting in Excel is that evil twin? Why?

<comment><USER15> Because financial data (in our use case) have a fixed 2 decimal format. In almost every other context you could impose this constraint by somehow defining a data type and be done with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Floating point is a trade-off which you just have to consciously choose. Sometimes you need more precision. Sometimes - even less: in my current project, I encode horizontal object position (coordinates x and z) in 2 bytes, while y coordinate (vertical) and all 3 euler angles fit into 1 byte each. It's far from precise, but looks OK from the point of view of our top-down camera, and all movement updates of players and NPCs fit into half of a pessimistic IP packet (about 400 bytes) per frame.

</comment><comment><USER18> Floats are used in applications other than simulations and modelling. Probably they're mostly used in applications other that simulations and modelling. Modelling errors are nowhere to be found, but floats can still be troublesome. I once spent a day trying to determine why a filter criteria wasn't being met that stated {numberA} + {numberB} >= 0.3 The answer as you can guess was that the system _wanted_ to be doing decimal arithmetic, but was implemented (by me) using floats.

</comment><comment><USER19> And I take exception to your lack of worry about floating point errors (FPE).

Trefethen's statement was made only in response to the outrageous mischaracterization of numerical-analysis by non-numerical analysts as "people who are mainly concerned about errors in their calculations". Trefethen wrote a paper debunking the claim that numerical analysis is all or mostly about error analysis.

Now back to FPE. Let me give you a few arguments for why FPE is a major headache:

\- Consider a random collinear triplet of points on a 2D plane. What I mean by that is three (x, y) pairs (x1, y1), (x2, y2), (x3, y3) such that they make a straight line. Do you know that if you generate such triplets with random angles, 99.999% of your triplets would not be collinear if you're using FP? Why? because FP representation is not exact except for a hopefully small number of scenarios. E.g., if your lines are perfectly vertical (x1 == x2 == x3) or perfectly horizontal (y1 == y2 == y3), or a perfect diagonal (x1 == y1, x2 == y2, x3 == y) you'd have collinearity, otherwise it's a toss up. For any other lines, you could try to be very careful in picking x and y values, but then you probably compromised some other property of your points depending on the application (and btw, when you decide to carefully pick x and y values, welcome to the world of 'being concerned about FP' already). This is the well known problem of 'robustness' in computer graphics, and something CG researchers have to spend a lot of time on, "beyond" their work of actually having created a correct algorithm, and "beyond" actually having implemented a performant version of it.

\- You compare floating-point error magnitudes with modeling error magnitudes. I'm afraid that's a silly comparison. When you're working as a numerical analyst, the modeling domain is the primary part of your research activity. You're expected to spend time on looking at modeling and associated errors. FPE could have much smaller magnitudes, but when you have them, they're a serious headache and a distraction, and force you to drop down to system- programming and dealing with the IEEE standard and how you can circumvent the negative affects. That's like saying "I'm not concerned about leaks in the fluid systems of my car because they're insignificant compared to my worries in driving the car in dangerous conditions like snowy weather, steep hills, rough terrain".

\- Also by the way, good luck creating a reproducible system primarily based on FP if it has to run on different architectures. Various microprocessors like Intel x86, x86_64, arm, power, etc, etc have implemented their own slightly differing ways of doing single and double precision operations like addition, multiplication, trig functions, etc. Your FP numbers are pretty much guaranteed to differ in their 10 or 11th decimal points. You might think this is not a big deal. But then make sure your system is not running for hours or days, (and definitely make sure your system is not for critical applications like medical or space, etc), or you will encounter these errors accumulating and results diverging away from each other in more and more significant decimal places.

So to summarize, if you're not worried about FPE, I'm afraid it's gives a strong impression that you're only getting started in FP based work (hands-on numerical analysis, computational science, stats/ML, etc) and have not acquired enough experience to realize its importance.

edit: I see you have a PhD in applied math based on non-linear PDEs, and a postdoc. So my question to you is, did your PhD involve implementing and running numerical algorithms (meaning writing/compiling/testing actual numerical code)? If the answer is yes then I'm extremely surprised that you don't worry about FPE.

<comment><USER20> He's not saying that he's not worried about FPE. What he's saying is that misunderstanding the physical system being modeled is far more likely to cause problems, and that it's much harder to spot than an FPE. So your mathematical model requires much more scrutiny for that reason. Basically if you don't spend much time questioning your assumptions about the world your system exists in, then don't even bother accounting for FPE because it's going to be overwhelmed by errors that you actually chose to introduce by your modeling assumptions.</comment></comment>


How has Google's monetization of Google Maps API affected you? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/9862qv/how_has_googles_monetization_of_google_maps_api/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have seen some people getting hit hard because of Places API price increase. Did it hurt any of you?</comment>


It's weirdly hard to steal Mark Zuckerberg's trash - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/3994/it-is-weirdly-hard-to-steal-mark-zuckerbergs-trash?zd=1&zi=4elkle6k <comment><USER2> > I could learn more about Mark Zuckerberg's habits and interests, creating my > own ad profile of him. Then I could sell this information to brands looking > to target that coveted "male, 18-34, billionaire" demographic. Think of it > as a physical version of Facebook's business model.

That's just pure gold!

</comment><comment><USER3> It's obvious that Mark values his privacy. There are numerous articles about the lengths he goes to secure his physical privacy at pretty much every single residence that he owns.

To have a business model that operates completely opposite to that isn't a surprise if you read some of his original view points on facebook users and also how he handles various issues at the company.

That's not to say that he hasn't changed with time, but certainly, no one looks at Facebook and says oh gee wiz that's a company that has my best interests at heart.

So if the way you live your life personally is at odds with the way you run your company, then something really is out of whack, and it is a element of distrust in a sense. The work culture, and life culture don't match, so in essence you are saying that one of them is "wrong" by the very fact that they don't coincide.

I think what's interesting is that we are looking at Facebook and saying oh man 2B people, that's a big moat, how will Facebook get displaced. But I think that process has already started and it won't be through the #DeleteFacebook campaign, but instead a social network that takes messaging, group organizing, and events - and then layers privacy on top of that.

Hrm... maybe like Telegram which just passed 200MM users.

The network is the key moat, but we are happy to part with most of the useless stuff on Facebook, and you can always download and archive your photos for later, though I think everyone is using Facebook photos less and less anyway.

This disruption can happen very rapidly, in the span of 2-3 years, Telegram can become a network with 1B people, and everyone who really does use Facebook as a tool to keep in touch with people can easily leave.

<comment><USER4> As we can plainly see, most people in the world don't give a shit about privacy.

The moat can also become irrelevant overnight, see MySpace for reference.

What do people care about? You'll be the next Zuck once you figure it out, but it sure ain't privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I posted an Instagram story that I was going to steal Zuckerberg's trash ...

This guy doesn't take OpSec very seriously. I mean, reallY? Does he know who's website he's posting on?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty hilarious. It's also indicative of what a two-faced, paranoid, antisocial human Zuckerberg is despite playing nice in public. His image is extremely well-curated and clearly quite different from reality.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair, people are trying to rummage through his trash. If you had people trying to go through your trash and you could prevent it for a marginal amount, wouldn't you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This guy checked his trash after it was picked up, then went to an under construction house and was surprised the dumpster was near where the construction was?

What's weirdly hard about any of that?

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps facebook is kind of an incredibly over the top paranoid mutually assured destruction (with respect to privacy) tool. (I don't 'actually' think this, but, even if that's not the intent, it is probably 'at least' an unintentional side-effect)

</comment><comment><USER9> Robots don't create garbage, except maybe in the form of heat.

</comment><comment><USER10> So we learned nothing.

And as usual an article ends on some pithy musing. Weird :)

</comment><comment><USER11> It's almost as if he knows the value of ones personal data.

</comment><comment><USER12> > I reached out to a representative at Facebook to confirm how Mark Zuckerberg > disposes of his garbage, but as of press time, they did not respond.

I really, really hope he actually did.

</comment><comment><USER13> Talk about having no skin in the game. You want my data, then your data should be fucking public.

</comment><comment><USER14> What the hell is with the scrolling on that site!

</comment><comment><USER15> "Weirdly hard", yet they're the one trying to steal someone's trash.

</comment><comment> FLUX-YOU Alternate universe headline in which man finds Zuckerberg's trash:

"I found Mark Zuckerberg's trash. Tech CEO can't reasonably secure his own data, so you shouldn't trust him with yours."

<comment><USER16> He didn't find any trash.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Candidates with no sample code? - <AUTHOR> I've been interviewing/hiring a lot lately ( www.fancyhands.com/jobs ). One thing I've noticed is that a lot of candidates don't have code samples ready. After looking at a good resume, I tend to ask for code samples and to set up an interview in person. More often than not, people don't have any code samples they can share. No github, etc.
I'm not looking for "work" code or even a full application. Just something above a hello world that the candidate wrote.
Personally, I'd rather see a few code samples than a resume. You can talk me through your work history, but you can't just talk about code. I'm not going to hire someone on a code sample alone, but I think it really moves the conversation forward.
So, the question: Am I being harsh in thinking it's a BIG red flag if a candidate has no code samples? How do you approach a candidate with a solid resume but zero code samples? <comment><USER2> I think the first time I was asked for a code sample, I didn't have anything specifically ready. I found the idea of sending a piece of code that was part of a larger application and didn't really function outside of it a little weird. I ended up taking some time to build a little command line script that used a few of the classes I had written and provided that as a sample.

Now that I'm on the hiring end, I've been ask for a sample from candidates, but I'm starting to find them not all that helpful. I've gotten a ton of model classes that are pulled out of Rails or Django apps. Which is fair, if you're building a fairly vanilla app on an MVC web framework, a model is probably one the more self contained pieces, but I think it's really hard to judge a candidate by them.

Ultimately, I've found a much better way to get a feel for how someone codes is to have them come in and pair with them for an hour or two. First spend some time showing them the codebase at a high level and work with them on a really quick problem to see if they get the basics, and if they do, dive into something a little more substantive. Has the nice side effect of seeing if you're going to get along.

</comment><comment><USER3> I kind of see this issue from 2 perspectives:

1) You're perfectly in your right to ask for code samples. Given, you have to make sure in some fashion that they wrote it.

2) From the perspective of someone without sample code -- I can't show you what I make. I can count a number of reasons why it wouldn't be available: NDAs, trade secrets, company owned code, and even government classified work. In this situation, I would prefer a whiteboard test or code up this problem in a few days and submit it with your resume.

You might logically ask, why no other code outside of work? To that I would respond work-life balance. If you insist on "free time" code you'll get a whizz bang coder probably. You'll exclude the people who strive for balance (which may not be what you want, you just have to know you're excluding these people). These people have other interests outside of work and I might argue be more well-rounded individuals than someone who codes for 8 hours and then goes and hacks for 6 more on their side project.

Obviously this isn't a hard and fast rule, I'm just giving you the other perspective.

I work in IT. I like to code, and I code at work (which means I can't show it to you). I have some sample code from some school projects, but older individuals wouldn't.

If you were to do the same thing with IT you would ask "Why haven't you set up a webserver and configured the database." Maybe because I don't have a use for that outside work. Maybe I have other interests or other time commitments that prevent me from doing that sort of work. In respect to coding, maybe I don't have a problem that can be automated, and I would absolutely hate to spend my time implementing an idea that is probably worthless. If I bother to validate it and do my homework, you're looking for an entrepreneur to give up their work in order to join yours as less than a founder.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree. Some people don't have time to code outside of work. I have two kids, a full time job, I haven't had time outside of work to write code in ages... and I've only been a startup founder for a short time. However, my point is that "code" is as important as "resume" when looking for a job. As someone hiring, I'm just thinking the time would be better spent on code samples than writing a resume. I'm probably wrong though as far as it goes to hiring at most companies.

<comment><USER3> > As someone hiring, I'm just thinking the time would be better spent on code > samples than writing a resume.

I guess it depends on what you're looking for and your point of view.

It sounds like that given the choice between coding something in order to show employers versus creating a resume you would rather produce the code. But as an employer, do you want code that they wrote to show off, or do you want code from a project that they enjoy and to solve a problem, rather than as a demonstration? And as other people said, you don't know how long it took them to write that spiffy code they're showing you. If you spend enough time on it, the turd will eventually be polished.

Resumes are pretty much universally accepted. Startups are tending towards more code based, but I get the impression that you don't know going in if they want to see existing code, or a specific problem solved. Given that situation, your bang for the buck would probably go with a resume. Even if you tweak your resume to have 3-4 versions in order to apply to different positions it's probably time better spent than creating contrived code examples to serve as a resume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my short career I've worked with enough developers that are water walkers that don't code in their free time to know that limiting candidates to people with code samples will seriously affect your ability to hire talent.

On the flip side, I just accepted an offer where the interview basically revolved around discussing projects in my github profile. But, the comment was made that they've never interviewed anyone with a github account...

</comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't say it's a BIG red flag, because it's certainly the case that there are good engineers out there who don't have an online presence for various reasons, and excluding them for this prima facie reason seems like a poor practice.

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask everyone to submit a code sample, and in fact I think it's a stellar idea. Provided that you make sure that they actually wrote the code and didn't appropriate it somehow, it's a really good way to ensure that they know what they say they know. However, I wouldn't hold it against anyone if they didn't have something prepared. I'd just tell them to write a relatively simple app and submit it in a relatively short timeframe (maybe a week).

That said, I'd make sure that if you're looking for something in particular, you mention it when you ask for a sample. I've been in interviews where they specifically asked for a code sample that ignored persistence and display, and later been asked to give a sample that showed I knew SQL and a UI technology. That was frustrating.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, I'm not suggesting they need to have an online presence at all. I'm just talking sample code. They can email a zip file even.

Seems like good practice to specify UI/non-ui. I'll keep that in mind. At this point, I'm just asking for any code as a basic sanity check before we meet up. Deeper dives could come later...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's kinda dumb to ask for code samples, because while a code sample from a honest candidate can be very helpful in determining how good they are, it is very easy for a dishonest candidate to doctor something up. Also when looking at a code sample you have no idea how long it took them to do it or how much hand holding they needed to do it.

Having a coding question (Something clever but doesn't take up a lot of time to do, the best programmers have plenty of options, they don't need to jump through your hoops if they don't want to) on your website and asking for solutions to that is a better filter imo.

<comment><AUTHOR> I keep hearing this... that people send in other peoples code. I smell a startup idea: is-this-code-stolen.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see no issue with asking for a sample. I ask them to demo something that they have built if they can and I personally bring a working app with me on an interview. If they do not have a code sample, I would ask them to choose an intermediate tutorial code base on the web and walk me through the code. But without a code sample I would probibly only offer them a junior position, with the understanding that if they prove to be a senior in 30 days, that we will change the position with back pay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea with the tutorial walk-through... hadn't thought of that.

<comment><USER7> Being able to walk through someone else's code is a critical skill that a lot of people take for granted. I am not a big fan of the whiteboard during an interview and like to create environments that mirror what they would do on the job. Walking through a tutorials code is one of them. The other thing you can do is have them write a fizz buzz program, at home after they come in for an interview. But if you do this, you should reserve it for candidates that have no code to show but that you are strongly considering picking up. I would have no problem writing a fizz buzz for a company that I know I am in the last round of hiring with so long as I can do it in my environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You could always send a candidate a simple(or complex, depends on what you are looking for) task that they need to complete a working solution for. This could be more beneficial than already prepared code samples.

1: You will know the time frame in which it took the candidate to write the solution.

2: You are setting out the parameters for the task and can choose an area(specific skills) that you are particularly interested in testing knowledge for.

I know a lot of companies do this as a standard practice.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's what interviews, temporary contracts, or 1 week in-house trials are all about. If an Engineer doesn't have a code sample, then you should move forward and find another way to see them write, critique, and complete code.

I recently tested the job market and found that I also had no code sample that I could share, but I know personally that it doesn't make me any less of a coder.

Your loss.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting. Would you really be more interested in leaving your job for a one week trial than writing a code sample?

I have no problem with trials.

Also, you mention my "loss," I've NEVER turned anybody down because of a lack of code samples, I've just moved faster with other candidates. I've never hired anybody with code samples, but there were other factors...

<comment><USER9> No, I wouldn't be more interested in leaving a job for a week, but there are those working on their own thing (or, _shock_ , not working). My main point was that there are other ways to gauge how well an Engineer can write (and deliver) code.

Its great that you've never turned down an candidate due to lack of a code sample. I think passing on someone over such a thing is a bit unwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Had part of this discussion on forrst, too: <http://forrst.com/posts/Code_samples_from_Programmers-6pi></comment>


How to charge money for things that don't exist yet - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140423214327-7006635-how-to-charge-money-for-things-that-don-t-exist-yet

<comment><USER2> Surprised this didn't get more upvotes. It's great.</comment>


Australia Deploys Sheepdogs to Help a Penguin Colony Back From the Brink - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/world/australia/australia-penguins-sheepdogs-foxes-swampy-marsh-farmer-middle-island.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Discussion over here on the front page.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10512370](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10512370)</comment>


Futhark 0.15.1 - <AUTHOR> https://futhark-lang.org/blog/2020-03-15-futhark-0.15.1-released.html <comment><USER2> I briefly tried Futhark for a couple of weeks but it feels like wishful thinking.

Writing efficient GPU programs is all about modeling the hardware memory hierarchy in your algorithms, and using it efficiently, eg by controlling the memory transfers across the hierarchy.

Futhark doesn't really let you do that, and the consequence is that if you need to use sort, inclusive_scan, or similar, either your Futhark compiler exposes a times primitive for that, or you are out of luck. Sure, that can be done by calling CUB, cutlass, cuFFT, etc. but if you need to solve a problem in your own domain, that means that you probably need to use something else.

</comment><comment><USER3> Related previous threads: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Futhark%20comments%3E0&sort=byDate&type=story&storyText=none)

</comment><comment><USER4> Size types looks nifty. I have had my eyes on Futhark for a while, but I think I'll actually try it out now.</comment>


Today's Deep Learning "AI" Is Machine Learning Not Magic - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/11/14/todays-deep-learning-ai-is-machine-learning-not-magic/ <comment><USER2> Maybe building deep learning models is not magic, but using AI models in the business/company is still a magic!</comment>


Dogs improve office productivity - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/16789216?story_id=16789216 <comment><USER2> I'm not familiar with the basic research, but the article itself is one big non sequitur. It starts with the subtitle "Dogs improve office productivity" and proceeds to establish that:

1\. "those who had had a dog ranked their team-mates more highly on measures of trust, team cohesion and intimacy"

2\. in the Prisoner's Dilemma game, dogs "made volunteers 30% less likely to snitch"

At best, this tangentially indicates that the presence of one dog in the office has the potential to improve team cohesion. There's a big step from that to productivity.

</comment><comment><USER3> The issues with bringing a dog to work (and more generally, with raising a dog) are similar to personal hygiene. Some people raise a dog properly — you then get well-behaved animals that are a joy to be with. And some people just don't care too much.

Just as you can't generalize about programmer's hygiene (or can you?), you can't generalize about how dogs behave at work.

And BTW, raising a dog is a commitment many people should not undertake. It requires a lot of work and dedication. All too often people blame problems on dogs, while it is practically always the human who failed.

<comment><USER4> Raising (and properly training) a dog is wonderful opportunity for the trainer. You'll _practice_ patience, creativity, empathy, and the value of having a long-term plan. These are maybe not bad skills to develop as a hacker or startup founder.

That said, some of the most trainable dogs are the easiest to get into trouble with and I speak from experience. Most people probably don't have enough experience to gauge the effort or different ways to undertake a dog training program.

I recommend Karen Pryor's "Don't Shoot the Dog" for people interested in training philosophy. Be aware, there are rabid (sorry, couldn't resist) advocates for various dog training approaches online and they take great pleasure in destroying forums, online discussions, and generally making sure that only their viewpoint is "the one true way."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I might be an antisocial misfit but I find the idea of having stranger's dogs hanging around while I'm trying to work distracting at the very least.

</comment><comment><USER6> I haven't had much experience with dogs in the workplace, but having my rat around while I work is a very positive experience. He isn't particularly distracting, and he certainly reduces stress levels. I don't know if I'm a more productive programmer because of the rat, but I'm definitely happier while working.

<comment><USER7> How's Hermione doing these days?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I worked in a fancy NYC startup back in 1999 we had an AIBO - Sony's $5000 robot dog.

Having an "OFF" switch probably helped productivity.

</comment><comment><USER9> I agree completely: The dog of my office mate successfully keeps others (i.e. management) from comming into our office. That makes them think twice about giving me more tasks.

</comment><comment><USER10> My overly friendly dog will definitely improve your productivity if by 'productivity' you mean the number of times you are able to scratch a dog's belly over eight hours.

</comment><comment><USER11> Dogs have been intimately intertwined with human survival for thousands of years. They're actually more emotionally intelligent than most of the primates.

A dog will risk its own life to save another dog. And at least one saved a human baby for a very likely death.

But yeah, I am not crazy about people letting their dogs roam free at the office and peeing on things while their guardians are stuck in a meeting. That is not cool. If you can't keep them in your office or cube, they should be left at home.

</comment><comment><USER12> Haven't they also shown that interacting with pets (petting, etc.) can reduce stress? Less stress in a team environment could have all sorts of positive results.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't increase productivity if I'm allergic to dogs and it causes me to sneeze instead of think.

<comment><USER14> Yeah; I grew up as something of a dog person and liked/loved our general property dog plus my father's hunting dogs (short haired pointers, about the nicest breed in the world) that I took care of ... but within a quarter century or so I became allergic to dogs in general (not sure why, having had terrible allergies all my life).

This sort of thing sounds like something you could make work in special cases but could fall apart in all sorts of ways. E.g. I show up to interview at your office (at which time I'd immediately start reacting), and I'd have to say sorry, I like the office dog(s) but I can work here only if you banish them and _seriously_ clean the carpets....

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not sure how popular this book would be here but if you are a dog lover then you will relate to Rescuing Sprite. It's a good read.

[http://www.amazon.com/Rescuing-Sprite-Lovers-Story- Anguish/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Rescuing-Sprite-Lovers-Story- Anguish/dp/1416559132)

</comment><comment><USER16> I designed and cut vinyl signs for a summer and we had a lazy dog that loved listening to the Yankees in the afternoon. The dog could have been an adept WalMart greeter. If they're not barking or threatening, they're quite charming.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not in my experience. Barking, piddling on the floor, having to interact with the dog owners when they come over to fetch the dogs, etc. Of course these were probably not the better dog owners out there, they thought everyone was delighted to have dogs in the office.

The dogs were nice when I wasn't working. I enjoyed petting them, etc. but bad for productivity.

<comment><USER18> I wonder how the Googlers handle this @work. Obviously, in overall, they are a productive bunch, but it makes me wonder upon your comment if the dog friendly groups get as much distracted or not.

<comment><USER19> It depends. Some people bring their dogs in to work every day. If the dog is not well-behaved and quiet, this can be very annoying. For example, when you're having a meeting about integrating two systems and a fifty pound animal is moving about under the table. If you work near a cafeteria, people will frequently leave their dogs tied up outside, which often precipitates barking, even though both leaving the animal tied up and bringing a barker to work are explicitly against policy. Then there was the time a coworker brought her dog in and there was a seriously enormous (>1 foot diameter) wet spot on the floor where the dog had lain and slobbered all day long.

There are definitely good aspects to having a dog-friendly culture, but it can be trying for us non-owners when some coworkers forget that the comfort of other humans takes priority over that of their pet.

<comment><USER20> Is there anything you don't hate?

<comment><USER19> You could answer that question for yourself by reading my comment history. A substantial portion of my last ten comments have positive sentiment, and some of the negative ones are about other negative comments (e.g. The one where some idiot floated the idea that the US will shortly go the way of post- Communist Russia). I daresay if we compare mine to yours I come off as downright cheery, not to mention largely civil.

But it is true that I don't think a piling on of "this is awesome" comments are particularly useful in the average case.

I do fucking love automatic memory management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Christopher Honts and his colleagues at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant were surprised to find that there was not much research on this question, and decided to put that right."

Who funds these clowns?</comment>


Getting a Fair Flip out of an Unfair Coin - <AUTHOR> http://jjinux.blogspot.com/2011/06/python-getting-fair-flip-out-of-unfair.html <comment><USER2> John von Neumann came up with this algorithm. Basically, it goes like this: flip coin twice. If result is HH or TT, flip it twice again. If result is HT, player 1 wins, if result is TH, player 2 wins.</comment>


No Traffic Lights Vs Traffic Lights - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFOo3e0nxSI&feature=player_embedded#!

<comment><USER2> Interesting. But I think it should be noted that the no-lights video is not a picture of a world without traffic lights. Rather, it shows how people who have been trained by repeated exposure to traffic lights, react when there are none for a little while.</comment>


Ask HN: How much of a myth is the notion that one does'nt need degree to succeed? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> A degree is not necessary for success. A degree is not sufficient for success.

However, a degree creates _better_ access to certain opportunities that are more difficult to access without a degree. This is weighed against the opportunity cost of earning a degree. It is worth keeping in mind that opportunity costs are not unique to earning a degree and are part of every decision whereas the increase in opportunity access that comes with a degree is unique to earning a degree.

Credentials are not everything, but they are not nothing either.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> One can fail with or without a degree. One can succeed with or without a degree.

It's almost as if success and failure can't be assured by anything. Color? Gender? Age? Upbringing? Education? Field? None of that guarantees success or failure.</comment>


Show HN: OneClickMobile – Pack WebApps into Android/IOS Native Hybrid Apps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Arshu/OneClickMobile

<comment><USER2> the instruction is very long for something that's "one click"

</comment><comment><USER3> What are the advantages over say, Titanium?

<comment><USER4> Or Phonegap Build ? Or Cocoon JS ?</comment></comment>


How to start developing a web application? - <AUTHOR> While starting, developing a new web application how should I start. Should I focus on developing a skeleton of UI first or should I focus on developing appropriate data model or should I focus on choosing appropriate technology for server and client side like that.. Kindly advise me. <comment><USER2> Start with a broad overview of what you want the app to do \- This will guide you in terms of knowing whether you need a front and backend.

When you know this do mockups of the app then choose the tech that best meets your needs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish to develop an app like posting problems and it should contain the following part ( i] discussing about the problem ii] why this problem has occured - the root cause of the problem iii] and the finally solution for the problem and iv] suggestions for improving the solution ) like this..</comment></comment>


Mesos, Omega, Borg: A Survey - <AUTHOR> http://www.umbrant.com/blog/2015/mesos_omega_borg_survey.html

<comment><USER2> One important point that the author seems to have misunderstood is that Borg was the _predecessor_ to the other two systems, not the successor. Borg went into production (running a bunch of websearch dedicated clusters) in late 2004, long before Mesos or Omega were around. Omega is/was an experimental replacement for Borg that was started much later, although I'm not sure how much production load it actually took over.

<comment><USER3> Author here. I ordered them based on time of publication, and evaluated them based on the contents of the paper. My summary wasn't meant to be a substitute for actually reading the papers either, the Borg paper states that it started out as a centralized scheduler and has evolved over time, and also that it's been in production for over a decade. Clearly, it predates Mesos and Omega.

I've heard varied things about the use of Omega in production. The Borg paper mentions that it runs 98% of machines at Google, but that number is apparently dated. One person said that Omega runs all the batch work, and is being rolled out further. However, I've also heard it's being phased out.

<comment><USER2> We did try to write a paper on Borg way back in ~2008 but it got bogged down by internal disagreements on the style and approach ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also Google's blog post summarizing Borg -> Kubernetes improvements.

[http://blog.kubernetes.io/2015/04/borg-predecessor-to- kubern...](http://blog.kubernetes.io/2015/04/borg-predecessor-to- kubernetes.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Its interesting to see how other industries tackle the same problem.

VFX has essentially the same problem to google: a huge bunch of tasks that need to perform all at once.

However VFX only tend to have one data center, so they don;t need or want clustered scheduler.

[https://github.com/mikrosimage/openrendermanagement](https://github.com/mikrosimage/openrendermanagement), Alfred and tractor from pixar, and framestore's FQ (which is faster and more efficient than Borg at job dispatch. ) Are a few good example of task management.

</comment><comment><USER6> I know a lot about Mesos and Mesosphere's DCOS, so can comment on those:

* There are users of these systems that get 90+% cluster utilization.

* Pre-emptable tasks (e.g., best effort scheduling vs guaranteed SLA scheduling) will be landing in Mesos.

* Mesosphere is building advanced scheduling plug-ins that will use the new scheduling models to do oversubscription of a cluster, helping to drive utilization to the 90%+ range without the need for any special tooling. You can get an idea of some of the algorithms being employed by checking out the Kozyrakis/Delimitrou Quasar paper[1].

[1] [http://csl.stanford.edu/~christos/publications/2014.quasar.a...](http://csl.stanford.edu/~christos/publications/2014.quasar.asplos.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is anyone using these at scale but with a small team to support it? We have a 5-6k fleet of servers across 3 DCs + another 1.5k in AWS. I tried deploying Mesos with mixed results. I also experimented with CoreOS. Considering re- exploring XEN/VMWare.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not a sysadmin but recently started using CoreOS to deploy small web apps. Could anyone explain to me like I'm 5 what's the difference between those cluster schedulers and something like CoreOS' fleet ([https://github.com/coreos/fleet](https://github.com/coreos/fleet))?

<comment><USER9> I think they are trying to achieve the same thing, with differences in API and richness of each ecosytem.

[http://www.slideshare.net/teemow1/container- orchestration](http://www.slideshare.net/teemow1/container-orchestration)

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/coreos- dev/nHK8irdnmM0...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/coreos- dev/nHK8irdnmM0/BSwZpV1SNisJ)

<comment><USER10> Actually, having spoken with one of the CoreOS guys recently about this, it seems that their concerns are a bit lower-level. Where these resource managers actually do concern themselves with the problem space of resource management as well as orchestration, Fleet is taking the position of a "distributed systemd" in a way without much else in terms of provided porcelain.

For those of us who are old school HPC people, it's probably more reasonable to think of Fleet as a dynamic always-running manifestation of xCAT or, perhaps, Fabric (of fabfile.py fame) or similar. For example, I've heard of people installing and running Mesos with it, which might seem like a bit of cluster scheduler self-satisfaction at first until one understands the reasoning.</comment></comment></comment>


We've Seen This Movie Before - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/opinion/weve-seen-this-movie-before.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> And yet again the media gave him all the attention he was seeking. Also with that very article.

As a German it is always disturbing for me to read their full names (we cencor them here). Since this is one of the problems (media coverage of such events causing ever more copycats) I think the cencoring is a good thing in this case.

Boy, never thought I'd _ever_ write that sentence.</comment>


How Saudi Arabia Infiltrated Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/how-saudi-arabia-infiltrated-twitter <comment><USER3> I worked on a support team for a company that that had some major financal institutions as a customer.

We had remote access to their networks at times. My very first day I was amazed how much access I had at will.

One day it was announced that a customer had come to us and demanded everyone had to meet X requirements to be able to work on their networks.

Not long after another financal institution made a similar request.

Some folks inside the company were a bit riled up by the requirements (background checks, some other things). They felt the requirements were absurd.

Considering the access we had I thought they weren't strict enough. As just a lowly support dude hired during the dot com boom because the company needed warm bodies (who could do some independent thinking / troubleshooting) ... I had a lot of access.

I don't know if they were thinking about spying like this, but I'm always amazed how much access people have to data and etc just from a technical support perspective (forget developers...).

Later the company outsourced support to other countries... I'm not even sure you need spies in the US / would know anyone was spying under those circumstances.

Support teams are probabbly a hell of a lot cheaper / easier to infiltrate / they get little / poor management / oversight. I saw tons of strange choices by our outsourced technical support staff, every single time I raised concerns it was discarded by something to the effect of "yeah they suck".

And that doesn't account for all the financial institutions who outsourced their own direct ops teams to other countries ... I'd call them and if they ever were capable of following instructions 9x out of 10 they'd open up the wrong network / modems / etc.

<comment><USER4> This is a very common answer to these stories on hackernews but this one is from a humble point of view that truly brings home the point.

My side is that I worked for a bank on the brokerage side for ten years in different positions. What always struck me was that my access was very carefully controlled, I was a background checked employee and had to meet with compliance once a year, etc etc.

However when a law firm asked for anything or consultants said they needed more data they just sent massive data dumps to the network admin guy, no questions further asked. At least not at my pay grade.

As I've consulted I ask for only what I need to keep my own risk down but it is always a surprise to my clients I don't want PII I don't need and only the data that my model will help enhance.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I had a similar experience in terms of security being strong in one place. .. and non existant (as I describe) elsewhere.

Some of our customers did have pretty strong proesses in some places... but then zero when a process changes or something like that.

Lots of: "Oh no we can't do that because <security>".

Ok makes sense. It's a hassle but it is a good policy.

"But you can..."

All sense out the window, everything is undone.

<comment><USER5> It's a tale that plays out in many forms. In the early 80's I worked for a goverment entity and had tough physical security to enter the building - however, monthly fire drill would see this large building empty onto the open carpark that was easily accessible as no perimeter fence and with that and the aspect that when re entering the building after the fire-drill, there was always one fire door open to circumvent the bottleneck at reception and with that - no security checks then.

Though many instances of weak links in process due to human nature that get overlooked and only come to light once there is an incident.

Which is the crux, incidents cause things to change, yet if you see that potential flaw the gravatas you have in flagging that issues is often dismissed because it hasn't happened. That is sadly often a pattern we see play out time and time again in many forms.

<comment> murph-almighty Literally yesterday we had an issue with someone trying to piggyback into the office behind an employee who had badged in. Said person was intoxicated and removed his pants in the elevator, so it was immediately apparent there was a problem, but what happens when it's someone more nondescript?

<comment><USER6> About two years after my company was bought by a larger one, I was the first person at the office one morning, only to find someone waiting outside the doors. Before I could ask, he introduced himself as an employee from an out- of-town office, and produced a company ID, so I let him in with me.

We had been told to expect some visitors from that office, but I was almost hoping he was not legit, since most of us at my location still do not have a company ID, so I couldn't really say if his was real or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd also remind that Twitter is surprisingly leaky for Chinese using it, even for people who can get foreign simcards to register an account.

API leak is one hypothesis, another one is that they got a mole there too.

The same goes to Facebook. A number of FB users got detained in China with no better explanation than MSS getting access to FB's internal information like phone ID and IMSI data in user database.

The most probable explanation people have crafted is following:

1\. Using internal or external tips, MSS gets user account info of a person of interest

2\. Their mole accesses the user database for info on cookies, IMSI, advertising ID and such

3\. MSS than cross-references the data with data on the open market, like IMSI databases sold by mobile advertising companies

4\. One way ticket to Heilongjiang is issued the next day, once the identity of the person is confirmed using logs of phone companies or ISPs.

<comment> j-c-hewitt Why would a serious government not walk through the open door and take what they needed while their agents collect two salaries? It's just a win-win for foreign intelligence. They would be negligent in their duties to NOT infiltrate US companies with open doors and permissive, trusting internal policies about user data.

Then the company can do the liability minimization dance when the FBI comes and points out that they are running a cheap data service for foreign spies. "We, uh, had no idea..."

<comment><USER8> Absolutely. It's their job to do this.

But what should large tech companies do? Avoid hiring people from certain countries/heritages? Obviously that's not fair and not a good look. Same for putting extra monitoring on them. This is independent of Twitter apparently trying to downplay this and cover it up, which of course is wrong. It just seems like preventing this is really tough unless you state "we won't hire anyone who's lived in, was born in, or whose parents are from China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Russia", which is untenable.

<comment><USER9> Instead of targeted monitoring monitor everyone who has certain level of access regardless of origin? It's not like it's not scalable, obviously they are capable of widescale automation.

<comment><USER8> It's really not that easy to monitor for every possible violation/exfiltration, especially at that scale. Of course those need to be monitored for, but they're never perfect. NSA obviously had mechanisms to detect this, but it didn't work for Snowden.

They likely have already had such monitoring in place for years, and are probably augmenting it now. It just didn't work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> loup-vaillant > _Ali Alzabarah was panicked. His heart raced as he drove home from Twitter's > San Francisco headquarters in the early evening on Dec. 2, 2015._

Ok, how could you possibly know that? That's a pretty good _guess_ , but writing it like it was the start of a novel… fells like read bait, really. Especially given the following:

> _Alzabarah, Abouammo, and al-Asaker did not respond to requests for > comment._

<comment><USER10> In the same article, the FBI quotes his private messages from his email account that same year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know why they started the blue checkmark.

It's not to verify identity. It's more like imprimatur (anointed by Twitter as whatever). And that is stupid because it's basically up to the whims of the company and becomes open to abuse internally and externally.

<comment><USER11> It originally was to verify identity. Then they started withdrawing it from controversial figures, as if those people stopped being who they really were overnight. Nowadays it just means "this persons views are endorsed by Twitter staff".

<comment><USER12> That's surely not true. Lots of people have blue checks even though Twitter staff would never endorse their views - Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Candace Owens, and so on.

<comment><USER13> You're correct that it's generally not true. But the grain of truth is that they did punish some notable jerks by removal of verified status: [https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/15/technology/twitter- verifica...](https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/15/technology/twitter-verification- remove-new-policy/index.html)

IMHO these were pretty clear anti-abuse actions. But of course those people claim that they were being punished for their views.

<comment><USER9> I think the claim is a little more nuanced. Basically yes those people went over a line and got punished but at least some claim that others also go over that line but don't get punished (as often).

I don't know how true that rings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember serious concerns about Australian citizens suddenly being legally required to be spies for the Australian government regardless of where in the world they're working due to a new anti encryption law sometime in 2016. That and Twitter somehow being caught with their pants down regarding user phone numbers and other personal information makes it all the more important that all the engineers and product people on this site make it very clear to management that the systems must be set up in a way that simply doesn't allow people to access that information. It's morally good and it might prevent you from making the papers as a host of a bunch of spies that got your Chinese, Saudi Arabian, or Turkish users assassinated or jailed.

<comment><USER15> > _regardless of where in the world they 're working_

I don't think this is correct. The legislation as drafted didn't seem to claim extra-territoriality and courts will basically never interpret legislation as being extra-territorial without an explicit clause.

There's also the point that if you are overseas and refuse to comply with a request by ASIO or whathaveyou, they can't legally arrest you outside of Australia. In theory they'd need to ask for your extradition, but that requires equivalent laws to be in operation in the country you're extraditing from. But you'd be at risk of arrest upon returning to Australia.

That doesn't stop it from being a terrible law. And it also doesn't stop me from not being a lawyer who isn't giving legal advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > At 5:17 p.m. he called a handler, identified as Associate-1 in the FBI > complaint, who arrived in a white SUV two hours later. Driving around > Alzabarah's neighborhood, the two men called "Foreign Official-l" — al- > Asaker, according to the Washington Post — at 7:20 p.m., and again at 7:22 > p.m. and 7:31 p.m. They then called Dr. Faisal Al Sudairi, the Saudi consul > general in Los Angeles, at 8:30 p.m., 8:38 p.m., and 9:26 p.m. Shortly after > midnight, the consul general called Alzabarah back and spoke with him for > three minutes.

Slightly off-topic: I feel that gives a good idea of how much information can be extracted from very simple metadata (here timestamp and number called) in that kind of context.

</comment><comment><USER17> Shit happens (a spy makes his way to your organization). In large companies, especially such as Twitter, there are processes to handle such cases.

The process does not include firing the employer first thing in the morning. It includes calling the equivalent of the FBI for your country.

The way Twitter failed to handle this case is staggering.

</comment><comment><USER18> They bought a huge chunk?

<comment><USER19> Why is this downvoted? It's true:

[https://qz.com/519388/this-saudi-prince-now-owns-more-of- twi...](https://qz.com/519388/this-saudi-prince-now-owns-more-of-twitter-than- jack-dorsey-does/)

"Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, who in 2011 invested $300 million in the social network, now owns 34.9 million shares of Twitter's common stock, according to a new regulatory filing (pdf)."

That is from 2015, but as far as I know he still owns a huge stake in the company. It would seem relevant when discussing SA's influence on Twitter, but I don't see it mentioned in the article for some reason.

<comment><USER3> The downvotes are because the "infiltrated twitter" in the story has nothing to do with the investment.

<comment><USER20> Sure. Nothing at all. Except that Prince Walid surrendered his investment to the same people who ran moles at Twitter. Nothing to see here. It's just a coincidence. Move along.

<comment> j-c-hewitt They didn't really need the investment to plant the spies. He just applied for a job and got it. Any foreign spy can do the same and nothing will change.

<comment><USER19> This seems to me like focusing on the trees instead of the forest. I would think that when discussing Saudi control over a company, we might be interested in more than just some low-level henchmen, but maybe the Saudi prince who owns a third of the company.

To hear some other people talk, this is "conspiracy" territory now. But c'mon, we're supposed to believe that some nobody henchmen are solely responsible for this and ignore the fact that the Saudis own a third of the company.

<comment><USER3> >we're supposed to believe that some nobody henchmen are solely responsible for this and ignore the fact that the Saudis own a third of the company

Without proof for your second part... yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was wondering if it was an SRE when the original story came out.

I'd be interested in seeing perspectives on how you avoid this scenario. While you could isolate data access by team in many models, you're still going to have engineers who have access to valuable data. Random access audits? But what about the scenario where your database lives on someone else's hardware?

I guess you could always decide you want to use your cloud providers FedRAMP- compliant offerings.

</comment><comment><USER22> tldr; With money.

</comment><comment><USER23> Yet another reason why Twitter should be banished to the depths of hell - <USER2> a stupid shit-show of a company.

I eagerly anticipate their downfall. Just like I did MySpace. And hopefully someday, Facebook. Fuck these parasites.

<comment><USER24> OK, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. Maybe you don't owe shit-shows of companies better, but you owe this community better if you're commenting here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> People from certain countries are different, they have different values and some loyalties to the old country. IMO, it's wayyy much easier to corrupt people from second or even third world countries, there corruption id the norm.

Money is not an issue for a nation state and then they can fix things for family back home etc etc so they are bound to find people that say yes.</comment>


Ask HN: Films for Hackers? - <AUTHOR>

Hey everyone,
I normally avoid television like the plague, but a few friends have convinced me of the beauty in film. Out of curiosity, what movies would you recommend? Whether related to hacking or not, what have you found most fascinating / meaningful / intellectually stimulation / etc?
Forgive me for being off-topic, but Hacker News provides some interesting perspectives, and I'm curious. <comment><USER2> A few years old but: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=450702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=450702)

Also: [http://www.hnstore.co/movies.html](http://www.hnstore.co/movies.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the history of Technology Industry in movie form.

Pirates of Sillicon Valley... a direct to TV movie that is becoming a classict tells the early history of Microsoft and Apple. my personal favorite.

\</comment><comment>-----

Then the Social Network... to see the founding of Facebook

JOBS... the new movie about Steve Jobs is my least favorite, but gives an idea of the departure of Jobs and his return.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sneakers is a one of my favorite old movies. Have to give props to the above mentioned Pirates of Silicon Valley also.

</comment><comment><USER3> Moneyball... the use of DataScience in order to improve a Base Ball team and change the game forever.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love Skeleton Key. One of the most underrated movie. Or may be my taste is strange.</comment>


ThinkPad X1 Carbon 6th Gen: BiOS update adds S3 suspend support for Linux - fiji-flo https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/de/de/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-x-series-laptops/thinkpad-x1-carbon-6th-gen-type-20kh-20kg/downloads/ds502282 <comment> fiji-flo Finally Lenovo gave in and we don't need the community hack ([https://github.com/fiji-flo/x1carbon2018s3](https://github.com/fiji- flo/x1carbon2018s3)) anymore!

Thanks for all the support and contributions to this project.

<comment><AUTHOR> This headline was very confusing, since Googling S3, for context that doesn't involve AWS is nearly impossible.

Favorite search result:

[https://www.s3integration.com/company/executive- bios/](https://www.s3integration.com/company/executive-bios/)

<comment><USER2> Googling "bios s3 suspend" gave me good non-AWS results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you're looking for a great Linux laptop, this is one. Very happy with the 5th gen.

<comment><USER4> Running a 3rd Gen with Fedora 28. No issues but I could do with more RAM than the 8GB limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have the 6th gen X1, but still using Windows, and still its behavior bugs me a little bit --

I almost never really shut down my laptop (does anyone?) -- I simply close and open the lid. Annoyingly, the X1 still wants to persistently be connected to my Airpods via bluetooth. So lid close doesn't actually put it on sleep suspend, it's some other weird middle suspend mode which is not really suspended at all.

<comment><USER4> You maybe entering Windows Away Mode?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does windows behave with this option ? Would be interesting for those dual-booting. Things should work fine, but any major noticeable differences due to the lack of connected standby mode in windows ?</comment>


From Somaliland to Harvard - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-from-somaliland-to-harvard.html?ref=opinion <comment><USER2> I suspect the elite universities are actually pretty good at hoovering up good kids from unfortunate backgrounds. They tend to be able to fund the money from somewhere, and they don't have a problem with brand recognition, so there's a decent chance of getting an application.

I have a good friend who has an unlikely story of escaping a civil war, avoiding helicopter gunships, having so little paper he'd write his equations in teeny tiny letters. Somehow Oxford managed to find the money for him to fly across the world to do his degree. There was another kid who'd lived through the Balkans war, though I'm not as familiar with his story.

The dons probably have a bit of an egalitarian streak as well, preferring the hard-up kids (not just war of course) over the privately educated ones if there's a choice.

<comment><USER3> Inducting those who show promise into the upper class through admission to elite universities is one of the ways the upper class retains its stranglehold on power. And that's how a community organizer from Chicago can become a symbol for 'hope and change' when in reality he had been co-opted by the wealthy nearly 2 decades earlier. And once he's in office, business as usual continues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great story.

I wonder how many of the young kids currently crying in the arms of their Syrian parents and hoping to survive political games, voyage across deadly waters and, kicks and blows in foreign lands, would be future graduates of Harvard, if given the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER5> interesting article. Never heard of Somailand before but after reading few articles at [http://www.somalilandfoundation.com](http://www.somalilandfoundation.com). This breakaway region deserves to be heard and recognised by world powers.

<comment><USER6> Do you frequently hear about countries for the first time?

<comment><USER7> The point here is that Somaliland is not a "country" (as in, officially recognized), in spite of having, apparently, more solid institutions than Somalia.

<comment><USER6> Legitimate country or not, I found it amusing how people on HN were surprised it exists when it's just been sitting there for a long time. I guess everyone is at different stages of learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.change.org/p/independent-nation- for-300-million-...](https://www.change.org/p/independent-nation- for-300-million-india-s-untouchables)</comment>


The Fairey Rotodyne, the vertical takeoff and landing airliner time forgot - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/02/the-fairey-rotodyne-the-vertical-take-off-and-landing-airliner-time-forgot/ <comment><USER2> This is a great picture, if you're a structural engineer. If you look at the body panels aft of the landing gear, you see wrinkles in the skin, from lower left to upper right. Under the wing, you can see wrinkles from lower right to upper left. That means the skin has buckled in shear. This is known in the airplane trade as "diagonal tension". If you are careful, you can save a lot of weight by making the web of a deepish beam so thin that it buckles under limit load. You have to put in compression members to keep the flanges of the beam from collapsing vertically. In the case of the Rotodyne's body, that would probably be the periodic frames or rings.

I believe this technique was first used on the DC-3 wing spar.

Anyway, this means that the helicopter-rotor is pulling the Rotodyne up, causing the body to sag down on both sides of the wing. Either the Rotodyne is heavily loaded (crash-test dummies or something) or it's accelerating vertically. The depth of wrinkles would make me wonder if they skin is too thin, or ask if this was some kind of limit load flight test.

One of the other pictures in this article's slideshow is of the Rotodyne's interior, showing an alternative technique of lightening a beam's web: putting flanged holes in the web of the body frames. Sometimes you can't do thin webs for other reasons, maybe secondary loads like wiring or control surface cabling. You just cut holes and use some kind of ram to draw out flanges on the side of them.</comment>


Show HN: Making Postgres as Easy as Firebase - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/supabase/quick-demo-one-month-of-building-21no <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, for the past month we have been working on a building the easiest possible experience for Postgres.

We wanted to get a similar experience to Firebase, where you can set up and query the database directly from a dashboard - no other tools required like pgAdmin or Dbeaver. This is a quick demo of our progres. We've still got a long way to go, but thought the community here would enjoy it.

<comment><USER2> I've been waiting for a product like this! Excited to try it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's always nice to find people who want what you're building. Thanks @craig!

You can already start trying it on [https://app.supabase.io](https://app.supabase.io) if you want. And you can email me directly if you get stuck or have suggestions: email@example.com</comment></comment></comment>


RC-808 – Re-Create the 808 - <AUTHOR> https://rc-808.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm more on acoustic real drums and sampled drum machines so memory might not help much, however it seems to me that the bass drum attack is a bit too clicky. It could be a side effect of the audio compression though.</comment>


A DNA-based voltmeter for organelles - <AUTHOR> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/523019v1 <comment><USER2> I don't usually get very excited about low-level microbiology stuff (actually, just kidding, haha) but this has _enormous_ potential! If this works as well as it _seems_ like it should then whole hosts of (technical) biology (leading to medical) problems will cease to be "big problems".

Example: Say you've developed a new drug that--in hypothesis (thanks to millions of combinatorial simulations)--could cure a certain disease but in simple human cell testing the drug has turned out to be toxic... It kills the cells. If only there were a way to figure out _why_ it were toxic you might be able to modify the structure of your custom molecule so as to work around the problem (rather than having to preform real world testing on potentially millions of different variations of your drug).

With a process like this you could take that research to the next level by figuring out say, that the reason your drug is toxic is because it disrupts tRNA encoding inside of your targeted cell's rhibosomes (just picking a random example organelle and it's function). You know this because--after administering your drug--the "DNA voltmeter" dropped to near zero in the rhibosomal membrane it was attached to.

"Oh! We probably just need to wrap the molecule in <insert common pharmacuetical industry jargon> or deliver it via <insert bevy of complicated biological mechanisms>!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is a very general description of the system.

The DNA probe has:

\- conjugated voltage sensitive dye

\- a conjugated reference dye

\- a targeting motif

The targeting motif allows it to go into a specific organelle. The ratio of voltage sensitive signal to reference dye signal is used as a read-out. They calibrated and confirmed the probe by inducing artificial membrane potential changes and seeing if the read-out signal correlates.

It's a cool system.

</comment><comment><USER4> When it comes to _" things that make me feel like I'm living in a sci-fi future"_, things like drones and the internet doesn't hold a candle to the kind of stuff that is done in modern biological research, especially "nanotech" stuff like this. It's mind-boggling.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reading the article carefully (it's also VERY scant on experimental details) - you have to take a dye and conjugate it to the DNA, so it's not like the cell is producing theses voltmeters endogenously.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's truly incredible how elaborate a cell is</comment>


Ask HN: Internet was the coolest thing in the past, but what about now? - <AUTHOR> Before internet gave me some thrill. There were so many things to explore, services to build, strangers to talk and so on. Today, however, I feel that internet is a bit bloated. Many apps, too much influence of tech giants (google, fb) and so on. I wonder what's the coolest thing out there, not yet mature, but that gives this thrill of possibilities. I wonder whether it's internet of things that will change how things work. Imagine a change from filling forms on websites to be based on our behavior instead. I used to think that blockchain could be this source of possibilities, but it's a very controversial topic. I would love to hear your opinions. Thank you in advance, Anderson. <comment><USER2> I'd love to hear the same from people; the internet at an earlier point in it's life had an air of optimism about it - and certainly freedom (probably drawing from less of an obligation to use it for work, school, etc) that it no longer has.</comment>


Remember when TWTR was $69/share? - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?dcr=0&source=hp&ei=yBLyWdOhOOP06AT4xZ_oDg&q=twitter+shares&oq=twitter+shares&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l10.1004.4095.0.5220.127.116.11.0.0.0.139.918.13j1.14.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.14.914....0.QKuhPgufydQ <comment><AUTHOR> Twitter shares are skyrocketing after it says it might finally make money soon. haha. [https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/26/twitter-shares-are- skyrock...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/26/twitter-shares-are- skyrocketing/)</comment>