Greenwald: Low-Level NSA Analysts Have Powerful and Invasive Search Tool [video] - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/07/glenn-greenwald-low-level-nsa-analysts-have-powerful-and-invasive-search-tool/ <comment><USER2> This is how I think the Congressional committee hearing will go down Wednesday. Or perhaps some variation of this.

1\. Greenwald testifies and talks about all the awful things the NSA has been up to.

2\. NSA offials will deny any and all claims made by Greenwald.

3\. Greenwald will release documents that directly refute the NSA's testimonial.

<comment><USER3> Please, take the time to read the article.

> "In fact, we don't monitor emails. That's what kind of assures me is that > what the reporting is is not correct. Because no emails are monitored now," > [Senator] Chambliss said. "They used to be, but that stopped two or three > years ago. So I feel confident that there may have been some abuse, but if > it was it was pure accidental."

They've essentially admitted that Greenwald's information is accurate, they're just claiming that Greenwald is late to the party and they've already dealt with the problem in secret.

It's interesting, because if you go back over the testimony I'm very sure that all of the NSA denials will be in the present tense. So it's quite possible that the NSA has not been lying at all, they've just been counting on us to fill in "That has never happened" when all they've said is "we do not [currently] do that."

<comment><USER4> Snowden left the NSA a few months ago. If the monitoring of emails had truly ceased 2-3 years ago, I would have expected that information to already have been aired since Snowden and the classified material he has is likely to be current enough to corroborate this claim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if Senator Chambliss realizes that he's being played.

"I have been assured ... that there is no capability at NSA for anyone without a court order to listen to any telephone conversation or to monitor any e-mail." Chambliss said that any monitoring of emails is purely "accidental."

You can't have it both ways. Either there is "no capability", or the monitoring is "accidental." It can't be both.

<comment><USER6> Every response from the NSA and people speaking on their behalf, both before and after the Snowden leaks, has basically been

1\. A denial that they have the "capability" to do [insert method of mass surveilance], leaving open the possibility that "capability" means legal authorization;

2\. A quasi admission that maybe the surveillance happens (Clapper: "not wittingly").

In other words, "we're collecting everything, but we'll only inspect your data if you're not American, or have a relationship of any kind with someone who has ever contacted a terrorist suspect."

<comment><USER7> 'In other words, "we're collecting everything, but we'll only inspect your data if you're not American, or have a relationship of any kind with someone who has ever contacted a terrorist suspect."'

Or if a random analyst is bored and finds you interesting for some reason.

<comment><USER8> Or if your information happens to be valuable (bitcoins, passwords, stock tips, blackmail material) and can be sold without it being traced back to an analyst in any of the facilities around the world where your information is cached.

<comment><USER9> Exactly!

At this point - every single "analysts" security-clearance worthiness has been jeopardized.

I don't trust ANY NSA employee at this point. NONE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _"I was back out at NSA just last week, spent a couple hours out there with high and low level NSA officials," Chambliss said. "And what I have been assured of is that there is no capability at NSA for anyone without a court order to listen to any telephone conversation or to monitor any e-mail."_

How _dumb_ must one be to continue to trust these agencies for just about anything, now? After they blatantly lie in Congress and then dare to "apologize" for lying in Congress, how much more do these "politicians" really need to start thinking for themselves?

Have they already been lobotomized? Are they lizards? Or what else exactly is going on?

<comment><USER11> Errr, given how easy it appears to be to get a "court order" (note, that's not as high a bar as a "search warrant"), I don't have as much difficultly believing that's the case.

The case today, that is; tomorrow....

(Technical note: right now I gather the NSA et. al. are making a distinction between Hoovering up "everything", like all of Verizon Business's call records in that blanket warrant we've seen, and actually looking at them. Infamously, "collection" only referrers to the latter act. Just like how inside a decrease from an automatically increased baseline, even an increase after inflation, is called a "cut".)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Video of the interview: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMvFj7KeGs8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMvFj7KeGs8)

</comment><comment><USER13> Greenwald and Snowden are my heroes of the year (at least). The amount of lies in .gov and Internet-industry is amazing.

I hope none of the involved politicians and companies ever speak of "privacy" or "security" again. It'd be embarrassing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nope, no chance anyone will abuse that.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure if anyone else picked up on this, but one of the things Snowden said, now makes perfect sense. He said,

       "Any analyst at any time can target anyone… I, sitting
       at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from
       you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the
       president if I had a personal email."

What he meant was you only needed someone's email _address_ (or IP address) as search parameters, to return all the connected data!

</comment><comment><USER16> Of course - Snowden was about as "low level" of a guy as they come (contractor for four months) and was able to basically access everything.

<comment><USER17> Don't assume that contractors start at the bottom. I've got personal experience doing DoD contracting and the entire reason I was there was because I was a systems expert. Even if they had not given me root access, I could have had it at any time because I knew the systems better than they did.

The details are fuzzy due to incomplete reporting, but it seems Snowden had worked for the CIA for many years before going to Booz Allen.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Career_in_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Career_in_the_U.S).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> And if they have that, imagine what the more clever sysadmins can work they way into without proper authorization...

</comment><comment><USER19> Regarding the "court order" mentioned as being needed to listen/read/monitor, a helpful followup question might be, what court gives the order and how many such orders are in effect on average for each of the past five years.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have a feeling that everyone having this tool is a better situation than only few-at-the-top having it. Older people who sit at the top tend to elicit a different and often machine-like behaviour [1] on emotional or privacy matters. Their decisions are likely to be blind to what people in their privacy want - that is emotional freedom. And their micro-decisions could be worse.

Rather I'd suggest that the PRISM search tool be made available to every individual on the planet. Perhaps in _competition to Google_ (If we don't get rid of snooping in its entirety that is.). At least we can weed out Weiners which are on one end of porn-spectrum to Camerons who say they are on the other end of porn-spectrum.

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677442/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677442/)

<comment><USER10> > Rather I'd suggest that the PRISM search tool be made available to every > citizen on the planet.

Of course you are joking. But if you think about it:

If humanity is forced to give up privacy, the only way we could achieve this would be by giving it up _symmetrically_ :

If everybody is naked, it's normal and not a problem anymore, provided we can then evolve our culture to completely drop the "judging".

<comment><USER21> That's what Zuckerberg had in mind, originally (reportedly).

<comment><USER22> Not that I am pro him or not but if everyone was held accountable for the dumb stuff they said in their early 20's everyone would have a sick of shit hanging around their necks.

<comment><USER23> It's not meaningless, though. I would say that the reason is not that it betrays what they really think, but that older people learn not to say it out loud. In this sense you would essentially be saying, "don't judge him until he learns to hide his true thoughts."

I'm not saying this is what you truly feel, but you relate a cultural convention that perpetuates a stereotype that young people are stupid.

<comment><USER22> I think your comment is a correct assessment. Adults do learn this but in addition to learning to hold back your thoughts maturity brings many changes in view and ideology, and I suspect that as many of us might have, Zuck's ideas and views most likely changed dramatically from his early years in college to adulthood - or not. But I think the safer assumption would be it has, for the better or worse that we cannot know but personally I prefer to give people the benefit prior to the doubt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is huge security issue. Is there a bug report? An estimate when it will be fixed?

<comment><USER24> Why downvote? When NSA steals my data I want at least secure storage. This way entire NSA database will leak sooner or latter.

<comment><USER10> Hehe, you sound like Travolta in Hunting Season, I like that :-)</comment></comment></comment>


TFX: A TensorFlow-based production scale machine learning platform - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/10/03/tfx-a-tensorflow-based-production-scale-machine-learning-platform/ <comment><USER2> Brilliant!

      > We want the user to treat data errors with the
      > same rigor and care that they deal with bugs in code.
      > To promote this practice, we allow anomalies to be
      > filed just like any software bug where they are
      > documented, tracked, and eventually resolved.

If a human screws something up we expect that person to fix it. If an A.I. screws up, we're like "we're within 2% of the best score on Kaggle so we're doing pretty good".

A.I. is not going to replace humans until we have a disciplined process to get it to work right.</comment>


FreeCAD 0.18 released with Python 3/Qt 5 support and more - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85HlYXnaxbw <comment><AUTHOR> More than 2500 commits. More than 100 contributors. More than 11 months in the making: [https://www.freecadweb.org/downloads.php](https://www.freecadweb.org/downloads.php)

0.18 is not a big change in terms of features but very important for the core. FreeCAD now supports Python 3 and QT5. Still, some important changes and convenience functions have been added in the user space as well: [https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Release_notes_0.18](https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Release_notes_0.18)</comment>


LibreOffice under the hood: progress to 4.4.0 - <AUTHOR> https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-01-29-under-the-hood-4-4.html

<comment><USER2> _This turns a 2000 record mail-merge from a matter of hours down to a few minutes._

Nice one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting plot of "Detected lines of German comment" vs. version.

<comment> tech-no-logical probably a legacy from stardivision, the german makers of the original staroffice, which became openoffice.org, which in turn became libreoffice. it's origins go back to when the z80 was a 'current' processor :)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what is interesting about LibreOffice. It's a thirty-year-old C++ codebase. Computers now have 100,000 times the memory and 1,000,000 times the CPU! And this codebase has had mediocre commercial coders working on it out of public view and following the hairpin turns of marketing. And commenting in German, because they were substantially in the StarDivision office. It's _very messy_.

But it's an actual product that, for all that, _basically works_. And millions of real people do real work with it every day.

I find Michael Meeks' tech reports really interesting, because they show how on earth a small band of very high-calibre software engineers can possibly maintain a several-million-line codebase with far too few people.

The answer is automation, directing slogging through. Unit tests, automatic code checkers, Coverity, clang plugins, assorted torture tests ...

It's a useful example of how too few people can effectively maintain and _develop_ a huge codebase. This is knowledge the world will need for the future, as software continues to expand as absolutely large as it can.

<comment><USER4> Well, the OTHER useful example is STEPS project of the VPRI institute which claims that you could build the equivalent of our modern desktop software which much, much less code. The big issue with this project is that AFAIK no code is available.. But it could be an interesting way: maintain an existing enormous codebase and build from scratch in parallel another one, then meet at the middle.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for comments on my new site release - <AUTHOR>

I've been a member here for as long as I've worked on this project and I always said I would ask HN what they though of my site or what I could improve on. From my own research I think that the online dating arena has room for more players. The users never have just one account and tend to cycle through multiple sites in kind of a circle of life. Anyway without further ado the site is at DiveIntoThePool.com
I'm starting out with a few other sites turning all ads over to this new venture and a small advertising budget. I'll be sure to blog the process and post anything I find very HNish
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Not the nicest design I've ever seen. But, I guess Plenty of Fish does very well on similarly ugly design. Maybe a case of worse is better.

</comment><comment><USER3> The design is a step below PlentyofFish (ASP as well - a pattern?), but just because its bad doesn't make it effective.

I'd at least have featured members who happen to be good looking - yet still normal - on the front instead of just new members.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea for featured members, might make the first page a little nicer looking. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yup, i think you have design issues. All blue kind of hurts the eye. I think that should be your first priority for a site dealing with dating.

I haven't checked it out by signing up. But usually sites like these turn out to be feature greedy and implement lots of things like twitter etc etc. I think it might serve you well to define what kind of audience you would like. Flork.com is an excellent example, with its minimal design, and an interesting crowd.

</comment><comment><USER5> What differentiates this dating site from others?</comment>


Investigating fraud on Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/gallery/OmIsA

<comment><USER2> Expanding on the point that this isn't just limited to dietary supplements, I ran into what I'm pretty sure is another example of this today. I was looking on Amazon for an inexpensive Android tablet, and came across a brand I'd never heard of: [http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_pc?ie=UTF8&field- brandtext...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_pc?ie=UTF8&field- brandtextbin=Dragon+Touch&node=541966)

Lots of products with vast numbers of great reviews, interspersed by occasional individuals pointing out seemingly fundamental flaws. There wasn't much mention of the company other than on Amazon, Ebay, and their own site. I did come across one seemingly reputable review by the WSJ: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/finally-a-100-tablet-worth- buyin...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/finally-a-100-tablet-worth- buying-1412700029)

They gave it their lowest rating in every category they considered: battery life, camera, screen, and speaker. Not only this, but they also rated it as worse than each of the 3 other tablets they considered in each of these categories.

While I suppose they could be a great tablet at a great price with lots of excited fans, it seems odd that the only major media reviewer I could find came to a totally opposite conclusion. Eventually I came across a 1 star Amazon review that seemed to explain the discrepancy:

 _Terrible product, even for the price. I can only think the positive reviews are due to the extra offer that came with the tablet for positive reviews._

[http://www.amazon.com/review/R2QZCEUWC4MQKB/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R2QZCEUWC4MQKB/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00ORFSSQM&channel=detail- glance&nodeID=541966)

While it would be interesting to know exactly what that offer was, it removed my interest in researching them any further.

<comment><USER3> > the company offers a protective case with the completion of a review

[http://www.amazon.com/review/R2ZIC24LFDBD1D/ref=cm_srch_res_...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R2ZIC24LFDBD1D/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_6)

> comes with a FREE case if i write a review!

[http://www.amazon.com/review/R1JNOKKTR5XM7B/ref=cm_srch_res_...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R1JNOKKTR5XM7B/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_3)

> there is a slip that comes with the item offering a case free giveaway all > you do is review your purchase and rated then copy the review and send it in > email with your order number n in seven days u will get your case I did it n > nothing so far only a email asking for screenshot did it n still nothing > anyone else is having the same issue

[http://www.amazon.com/review/RI65M4YHQAC8N/ref=cm_srch_res_r...](http://www.amazon.com/review/RI65M4YHQAC8N/ref=cm_srch_res_rtr_alt_9)

<comment><USER2> It may go beyond a free case. One of the 5 star reviews says:

"Disclosure - I received this product in exchange for an honest review."

[http://www.amazon.com/review/RGESQVR7NTLPX](http://www.amazon.com/review/RGESQVR7NTLPX)

One wonders if there might be other reviewers who also received the product in return for a "honest review" but failed to include such a disclosure. The problem, of course, is that if you give an honest but negative review, you are unlikely to continue to receive free things to review.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised at this because of my experience as a seller.

A couple of years ago, I was an Amazon seller. Amazon essentially saw that I was making money and started directly competing with me and undercutting all of my prices.

Soon after this, I was banned completely with almost no explanation. When I asked why, they told me that the information is proprietary to their business and I would not get a reason. After this canned response email, they ignored all of my emails. In any other industry, they would be investigated by the government.

My money was also held for 90 days, which nearly put me out of business.

<comment><USER5> so, what were you selling?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've had nothing but bad experiences with Amazon re-sellers and I avoid them completely.

<comment><USER7> Do you care to explain? I have had only good ones, I mostly bought strange cheap stuff from China like vacuum pumps, endmills and the like (they are often the same sellers than on ebay). But I don't buy in competitive markets (dietary supplement, electronics, photo).

<comment><USER6> I bought a bunch of books from different resellers (biology text books that I could not buy new) and none save one arrived.

Amazon was pretty good about it even though it took months to resolve.

<comment><USER8> Yikes!

Almost all the books I buy are used, through resellers, and I ... buy a lot! Maybe not quite 100 per year, but tens and tens, and at one point I got a somewhat up to date but still used set of first year and a bit beyond college textbooks. And I can't recall a single one not arriving (the condition it was in, that can be another story). Ah! And I had to replace on the order of 50 of them after a tornado trashed my apartment, but fortunately only a small fraction of my books.

So I guess this must be a regional thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd imagine that it can't be too hard on Amazon's side to predict whether a product receives a lot of fake reviews or not. Just checking if the reviewer has other reviews would be a simple first step to grab the low-hanging fruit.

Amazon is a huge search engine. They should act like one and prevent attempts of gaming the system.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll just note that other search engines have been waging a ~15 year war against deceptive content, fake links, and other shenanigans. It's a war of attrition and whack-a-mole, not something you can straight-out win.

That said, if Amazon incentivized private fraud-busters like amazonthrowaway here, that might be a Good Thing.

Faith in the site itself, reviews, and products should matter to Amazon, after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have proof of similar fraud. My wife ordered a premium-priced hardware item which was completely sub-par and nothing like the 5* reviews suggested. The product description was purposely misleading (which is how they fooled my wife). She mentioned the many 5 star reviews.

Checked out the reviews, noticed a similar U-shape review distribution. Checked out the reviewers and a multitude of them reviewed the same or similar products (e.g. supplements) and many showed a very "random" set of previous purchases, ie nothing seemed related, everything was cheap, one-liner reviews. Reported to Amazon, no action taken.

PS I love the convenience of Amazon, but never buy from third parties.

</comment><comment><USER11> The album got deleted because dox, can anybody reupload with censor bars?

</comment><comment><USER12> These kinds of practices would be commonplace. The only thing to ensure is its scale.

</comment><comment><USER13> job well done sherlock!!</comment>


EU copyright proposal could undermine the use of Creative Commons licenses - <AUTHOR> https://creativecommons.org/2018/03/29/head-copyright-committee-wants-deny-eu-creators-right-share/ <comment><USER2> While this isn't great, it is worth remembering that this is one individual's proposals that hasn't passed any committee, any vote, any vetting, any review period, and is a long way off becoming enacted.

I'm all for voicing descent to this bad idea. I just want people to keep it in the context it belongs (a very big longshot for getting through as-is regardless).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's too optimistic. Let's dive into how EU law is made:

First, the Commission (~government) proposes a law. They proposed this "extra copyright for news sites" that covers even tiniest snippets of news content and thus would put a price tag on links to news. In their version, publishers could opt out of it – but it would still cause major problems. Leading IP researchers said it will "deter communication of news", "negatively affect authors" and "hinder European innovation" [http://www.create.ac.uk/policy- responses/eu-copyright-reform...](http://www.create.ac.uk/policy-responses/eu- copyright-reform/)

Next, the Parliament and the Council (member state governments) need to approve the plans or suggest changes. The Parliament nominates one MEP to shepherd this process. In this case that's Axel Voss (from Merkel's CDU). His job is to get together with the other parties and then make a proposal that in his assessment enjoys majority support in the Parliament.

This is what this article is about. Not "one individual's proposal", but the lead negotiator's view of what a majority of the Parliament supports: Doubling down on an already bad idea by making the right inalienable.

He may be wrong about that – we'll know when the Legal Affairs Committee votes on it on June 20/21\. Other MEPs will file counter-proposals, but one of them winning out would be a rare, unexpected upset. Voss may also make changes to his proposal until then, but so far he's brushed off all opposing arguments. And yes, even if his plan is approved, there's a chance the "inalienable right" addition (the threat to Creative Commons) may not survive final negotiations with the Council and Commission.

The thing is: This vote is the number one chance the public has to affect what will be in this law, and thus whether there'll be a "link tax" in Europe. We need to push our representatives to reject that idea in that vote, not double down on it.

<comment><USER3> This isn't the first time Axel Voss has dumped out a proposal that would undermine how half the internet operates and make the other half open to a court case from the first half.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > But Voss wants to amplify its worst features by asserting that press > publishers will receive—whether they like it or not—an "inalienable right to > obtain an [sic] fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses." This > means that publishers will be required to demand payment from news > aggregators.

Does "inalienable" mean something different in European law than it does in US law?

In the US, having an inalienable right doesn't mean that you are required to exercise that right. It just limits what others can do to stop you from exercising it. For example, we have an inalienable right to travel. That doesn't mean we _have_ to travel. It just means that government is limited when it comes to things that impact our exercising that right.

I could contractually agree to limit my exercise of that right, and that would be fine. Such a contract could be enforceable.

<comment><USER5> From the uses I know in my European country, it usually means you're not required to exercise it, but you can't limit it by contract either.

That said, in this particular case, the linked proposal specifies what it means:

 _" The digital use of press publications should be obligatory remunerated"_

<comment><USER6> Looks like a mistake there - _obligatory_ is not an adverb, that's _obligatorily_.

UK is not even out of the EU and the level of English is already going down! /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _[T]he latest proposal from the head of the copyright committee would deny > creators the right to refuse remuneration — the right to share a work > without getting paid — which could undermine the use of CC licenses if > approved._

This threatens all Open Source too!

EDIT: Ok, missing from the article, but this would only apply to "press publications" by "publishers of press publications and news agencies": [https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/voss11.pdf](https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/voss11.pdf)

UPDATE: full picture here: [https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra- copyright-for...](https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra-copyright- for-news-sites/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This particular new right would apply only to "publishers of press publications and news agencies" (to quote one of the recent drafts), which is why I added "in journalism" to the title to clarify [edit: but mods removed it].

Open source is unfortunately threatened by a different provision, which would force GitHub and other code hosts to implement "ContentID"-like filters trying to detect copyright infringement in commits: [https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload- filter...](https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-filters- code/)

<comment><USER8> Some quick googling didn't turn up an answer - do you know how "publishers of press publications and news agencies" are defined? Does my blog count?

<comment><USER9> [https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/voss11.pdf](https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/voss11.pdf)

> For the purposes of this Directive, it is necessary to define the concept of > press publication in a way that embraces only journalistic publications, > published by a service provider, periodically or regularly updated in any > media, for the purpose of informing or entertaining. Such publications would > include, for instance, daily newspapers, weekly or monthly magazines of > general or special interest and news websites. Periodical publications which > are published for scientific or academic purposes, such as scientific > journals, should not be covered by the protection granted to press > publications under this Directive. This protection does not extend to acts > of hyperlinking which do not constitute communication to the public > according to the judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union > (CJEU), notably hyperlinking to content which is available in the internet > to the public with the consent of the rightholder, and hyperlinking to > content which is available on another website without the consent of the > rightholder for non commercial purposes by a person who did not know or > could not reasonably have known the illegal nature of the publication of > those works on that other website (CJEU Judgement of September 8, 2016 in > Case C-160/15).

<comment><USER8> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am a content creator that sometimes uses CC as a license. I am also American.

I know this is a bit of a nuclear option, but would (re-?)licensing my works as CC+"EU ban" actually help the use of my works in the EU? Essentially, I would ban the use of my works in any country that makes such laws (which would violate my rights as a copyright holder to license my work however I see fit), thus preventing the foreign nation from applying additional restrictions to my license because it is already banned in their country.

Obviously, I could not enforce such ban (nor would I; the entire point is to hamstring the government's actions, not the actions of the consumers of my content), but they couldn't modify my license without legitimizing my license.

In essence, it's like how in the US, it is illegal to pay taxes on illegally gotten gains, because it puts the IRS in a weird spot and forces you to violate your own rights of self-incrimination while making the IRS implicit partners in your crime.

<comment><USER11> It is illegal in the US to NOT pay taxes on illegal profits. That's how Al Capone was taken down - it's infinitely easier for the government to prove that you had income that was not declared than it is to prove that the income came from specific illegal activities a, b and c.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Have the concerns raised by CC received attention from serious lawyers? I'm no lawyer, but I fail to see how this:

... an "inalienable right to obtain an [sic] fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses." suggests that I _must_ get paid whether I want it or not, as the CC post seems to rely on for stoking up concern.

Surely it's the same as an inalienable right to free speech - you're not obliged to actually go round speaking freely, it's inalienable in the sense that you can't get rid of that right, not that you must exercise it!

<comment><AUTHOR> The back story of the law may shed some light.

First, it's no secret that the intent is to prop up the business model of struggling publishers by getting internet platforms to pay them for spreading (links to/tiny snippets of) their content.

After a "link tax" law was introduced in Germany, some publishers decided to waive it. Google reacted by removing snippets from those who didn't in Google News, making their links less likely to be clicked on. Afraid of losing traffic, these publishers then granted Google a free license.

The government of Spain looked at this result and decided to implement the idea as an inalienable right, to make sure some publishers couldn't opt out, and Google would have to pay up. In response, Google shut down Google News altogether in Spain.

This is the version that the Parliament's chief negotiator now wants the EU to implement. He believes that Google (and Facebook and Twitter, which have been added as targets) wouldn't dare shut down a service across all of Europe.

<comment><USER13> Google (and the other portals) would probably shut down a service across all of Europe if it were losing money.

That might be the outcome publishers want. They might imagine that if they eliminate outside links to individual stories, people would be forced to use publisher's sites as portals to the news.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're exactly right: The big publishers lobbying for this aren't particularly scared of that outcome. They'd prefer to just receive millions from FB & Google, but if those platforms get out of the news sector entirely, they expect their consolation prize to be regaining control over how people find news, renewed brand loyalty, increased front page traffic and an advantage over smaller and new competitors.

<comment><USER14> Couldn't I or a million other individuals that aren't multinationals with holdings in Europe just start a news site while thumbing my nose at their inalienable rights?

<comment><USER5> You could. And then you could get blocked by the ISPs after the courts order it.

<comment><USER14> Lets see if we can teach Europe that they need to pay US companies for vpns in order to get around the right to be forgotten AND link copyrights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's useful to read the actual proposal, which doesn't seem to match the angle from creative commons: [https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/voss11.pdf](https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/voss11.pdf)

For example, compare this from the article:

> 11\. This is the provision that would introduce an additional right for > press publishers to extract fees from news aggregators for incorporating > short snippets of—or even linking to—their content.

With this from the proposal:

> 2a. The rights referred to in paragraph 1 shall not extend to acts of > hyperlinking which do not constitute acts of communication to the public.

EDIT: the analyis from Julia Reda is pretty good too: [https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra-copyright- for...](https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra-copyright-for-news- sites/)

<comment><USER15> What text are you going to include in your hyperlink? Must every hyperlink title be paraphrased? It does seem to impact even the most basic hyperlinking as it has been used for the entire history of the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Doesn't this provision basically contrast with copyright itself? Doesn't this erase the rights an author has on its work, including giving it away for free?

<comment><USER17> There are similar inalienable rights in copyright, collectively referred to as "moral rights": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights#In_Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights#In_Europe)

It's a bit murky, especially in an international context. But they generally aim to protect authors, specifically in the author<->publisher relationship.

It may seem counter-intuitive that taking away "your right to relinquish your rights" may be protecting you. But the idea is the same as whatever law stops you from selling yourself into slavery.

<comment><USER18> This is completely typical in consumer protection laws. You can't legally sign away your right to warranty for example, and I believe that in some jurisdictions you can't sign away your right to sue (like you would if you agree to binding arbitration).

I'd really like to see a more thorough argument than the linked blog on whether or not the proposed section is really a huge problem, and/or does nothing to protect legitimate rights holders who are in an asymmetric relationship with google that is maybe not to dissimilar to the consumer situation.

<comment><USER14> It's unalienable because a reasonable party would just refuse to pay for the privilege of linking to you and a reasonable content creator would realize that losing 50-80% of traffic coming from the people who you think ought to pay to promote you would be a bad bargain.

Its inalienable to short circuit the normal results of negotiations between big companies because they don't like the end result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Before you call this legislation, and legislators everywhere "clueless", as some unfailingly will, take a moment to consider its motivation.

Because you can disagree with this proposal, and I do. But arguing against it should start with an attempt to understand its background.

Many European countries, as well as rural US states, have seen their local press landscapes dying. Where there used to be two or three quality local papers, there are now one or none. And those often no longer have the resources to devote to actual investigations of local issues.

The reason is obviously the internet, on two fronts: First, often overlooked yet more important, is the death of classifieds and ads. These used to provide about half of publishers' revenue. Craigslist and Google Ads have reduced these opportunities drastically (i. e. by about 80%).

On top of that comes the competition by publishers on the internet.

The issue now is that it simply doesn't pay to devote any resources to any serious investigation. The Wall Street Journal might pay a reporter for half a year of work to produce a story on corruption at the FAA. But ten minutes after that story is published, the AP and every news site on the web can quote the essential information.

Nw if you believe copyright and patents should be completely abolished, then it's completely fair to call this idea by the EU "clueless".

But if you think that (limited) intellectual property laws may, in principle, be acceptable and important to allow investments in such endeavours, then this idea doesn't seem as outlandish.

I still believe these ideas are misguided, and there might just not be a good way to create a workable system around such rights. But as a believer in the necessity for a vibrant media landscape to inform the public discourse, I don't enjoy watching the press' misery either.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true: Publishers' business model is under threat, and some politicians pushing for this law are doing to so out of a genuine interest in fixing that.

But actually, only a few very big publishers have lobbied for this, claiming that this would "save journalism in Europe" when they care mostly about their own bottom line. Limiting how news spreads on social networks and aggregators is not in the interest of and would actually harm smaller publishers, who benefit from competing with the big brands on such sites on an equal footing.

Small, independent and innovative publishers had to get together to form their own lobby organisation to OPPOSE this law that politicians would claim is to their benefit: [http://mediapublishers.eu/our- views/](http://mediapublishers.eu/our-views/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find it humorous that this is being done with good intentions, "to benefit creators".

In one sense it appears tone deaf to how much CC-licensed sharing can be argued to enable an economy of content creators, by lowering certain transaction costs.

But in light of recent revelations and the public mood, it seems more prescient: perhaps pointing the way to a future where everybody pays for every little bit of content they consume, rather than being the product themselves, in a "free" offering. That old idea of micropayments for content, here we come, eh? And the EU being the first (for once) to lawify it. Is it too early to pat them on the back?

If you can encourage reuse, that's good. If you can encourage payment, that's good. Different strokes, for different folks, works. As I understand it, the proposal forces payment. That's not good. Creators choices should not be constrained in this way.

Instead of constraining options, I feel EU legco, should see if there is an opportunity to legislate to ease the way for implementing and executing micropayments / content transactions ( a real problem ), if there is, do that. Law that engages with and enables technological realities, rather than trying to constrain something already useful, would seem to work better here.

</comment><comment><USER20> _press publishers will receive—whether they like it or not—an "inalienable right to obtain an [sic] fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses." This means that publishers will be required to demand payment from news aggregators._

Is this even what Mr. Voss intended? Who benefits from this? Couldn't this be fixed by replacing "obtain" with "demand" or "choose to require" or something?

<comment><USER21> I used to think nobody was that awful, e.g. nobody was anti-public-library, until I met people who were.

It's totally understandable that the _goal_ is to eliminate the public domain and all free/libre/open publications as a _means_ to the end of funding proprietary stuff.

Say you have a business mowing people's lawns. If you were anti-social, you might support outlawing friendly neighbors mowing others' lawns for free or even outlaw people mowing their own lawns. You might even deceive yourself with some pro-social ideas about how forcing all lawn-mowing to be paid-lawn- mowing will end up with a world of better lawns, better economy, and all the extended benefits of well-paid lawn-mowers besides yourself…

Similarly, if you're a news outlet, you'd be happy to see a price forced on all your competitors. It's easier for you to charge your price if everyone else has to also. Ironically, this could be argued from a pro-social consideration of solidarity and funding journalism.

Of course, deeper pro-social inspection of the situation reveals that sabotaging FLO works and public domain is an unacceptable tragedy that is _not_ a respectable means to the end of funding journalism. But short-sighted folks will try anything since they are freaking out about the _valid_ concern over journalism funding in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> IANAL, so can someone explain how we get from "inalienable right to obtain an [sic] fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses" to "required to charge a fee"?

Can one just say the fee is zero?

<comment><USER15> You could, but then you would be able to later sue and/or rescind the right to use if it became popular. It is a right to undermine contracts after the fact, which would be extremely stifling to publishing in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why does it always seem as if such proposals are written by clueless people?

Can't we, people of HN, draft proposals collaboratively, perhaps with some moderation system?

<comment><USER24> Can we even agree on such a proposal among ourselves?

I would like to see all copyright completely abolished, or at least reduced to max 2 years or so. I imagine a lot of people will disagree with me.

<comment><USER25> I have lately been fond of the idea of not abolishing, copyright, but setting a copyright tax that increases heavily over time. Say, first two years tax- free, third year USD 1000 and doubling after that each year. Once copyright holder fails to pay the tax, the copyrighted work becomes automatically public domain. Orphan works would be solved as well with this.

(Admittably, I have not thought the international problems that this might cause)

<comment> V-2 > _Once copyright holder fails to pay the tax, the copyrighted work becomes > automatically public domain_

...or it gets bought by some more powerful entity - capable of paying the tax - shortly before this happens. Leading to concentration of copyrights in the hands of big corporations, to an extent even larger than under current system.

<comment><USER26> > or it gets bought by some more powerful entity - capable of paying the tax

The "doubling after that each year" provision of the original comment neatly takes care of that. After a relatively small number of doublings the size of the tax for the single item would be larger than the current US national debt.

The 'math' term for this is "exponential growth".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I suspect they are doing this because otherwise no one would ever make use of this provision. (No one would be that stupid.)

By forcing people to make use of this, their law actually gets used, which is important because otherwise they look like they don't know what they're doing.

But the law of unintended consequences is going to cause serious problems if they actually pass this law.

<comment><USER28> Or, if the scenario they're thinking about is news aggregators: probably they don't want to see an aggregator (let's say Google News) to force deals for free licenses or the articles won't be included in its pages. Maybe they didn't even think about other scenarios or they accept them as collateral damage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if that link tax provision isn't a door-in-the-face technique? It just seems so blatantly ridiculous given how the internet works that I have trouble believing anyone genuinely thought it was a good idea. Links almost by definition aren't copyright worthy information, it makes no sense to charge for them.

</comment><comment><USER30> It amazes me that the EU can be so forward thinking on Data Privacy. Yet so draconian when it comes to copyright laws.

<comment><USER31> I dont know how to think of the EU.

I think the US government is sick, but the EU is new and needs to be a benefit for it to survive.

My assumption is that they are entirely incentivized by niche groups in each country that are pushing for reform to help their own goals. I dont see how many of their policies are beneficial to the masses.

<comment><USER32> Why do you think the US government is sick? It's certainly not perfect, but would you really prefer any previous or existing government over what we have?

<comment><USER31> Every country over a long enough time-span becomes sick and corrupt IMO.

I think when you are the world's only superpower, the worst of the world has gotten involved in the US's affairs.

Prior to my birth, the president's role was limited and congress wasnt as paid for by lobbyists.

<comment><USER32> I'm not an expert on history, but I don't think that holds true, at least based on my limited knowledge. As I understand it, we've always had a government partially beholden to certain large interests, but it's offset by having to maintain some level of restraint on behalf the public interest.

If we look back at our government's founding, we have large interest groups pushing to maintain horrible things such as slavery. But eventually we moved past that.

I won't claim that things couldn't be better; we certainly have a lot of room for improvement. But I don't think we're doing as poorly as many people would like to believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r I don't understand how the proposed language leads to the conclusion. How does an "inalienable right" to compensation turn into compulsory compensation? Don't you have the ability to choose not to enforce the right?

<comment><USER33> Not sure as maybe the term "inalienable right" has a different meaning, but I feel like the article is making too strong a claim. An "inalienable right" is usually something you cannot waive by contract, and so while you could promise never to enforce a right you cannot legally bind yourself or the state from enforcing it.

Basically it makes CC licenses more risky for distributors of such content as there is always the risk that the previously waived right is now enforceable on a whim.

However, maybe "inalienable right" in EU legal language means that you must enforce it, which seems like quite a legal burden on the license issuer.

<comment><USER5> The linked PDF with the proposal makes it clear:

 _" The digital use of press publications should be obligatory remunerated"_

So it's more than inalienable - the payment is _obligatory_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hacker news is buggered then.

</comment><comment><USER35> We've seen it before:

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-google-news-effect- spain-r...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-google-news-effect-spain- reveals-the-winners-and-losers-from-a-link-tax/)

Everyone loses. And smaller, local, independent companies lose more.

</comment><comment><USER36> Seems like the consequences could go way beyond licensing and into monopolization of news and press. They just can't help themselves but always push to centralize control over media.</comment>


Show HN: NoPasta. VS Code extension that helps you stop copy-paste - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stepanvanzuriak/nopasta <comment><USER2> Sometimes it's OK to repeat yourself. I really wish devs didn't abstract every line of code for "reuse."

<comment><USER3> Agreed, with abstraction comes complexity... complexity causes problems too

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is the point?

<comment><USER5> Agreed. If one wants to stop oneself copy-pasting, one should have a little willpower.

If one wants to stop _someone else_ copy-pasting, like for a student's test in a school environment, there might be some utility here — though I would say a system-wide utility might be more useful.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Connect a Raspbery Pi to a Sonos with 100% On-Device Voice AI - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-a-voice-controlled-home-sound-system-using-snips-and-sonos-2aaf16523ce9 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a co-founder of [https://snips.ai](https://snips.ai), and we are building a 100% on-device Voice AI platform which protects your privacy

It is free for makers, forever, and we plan to open-source it over time, we are interested in what you can build with this!</comment>


Show HN: Contentent – Doing for content what Soylent did for food - <AUTHOR> http://www.contentent.co

<comment><USER2> You got my curiosity and I subscribed for 1 day trial but I have a hard time believing people will pay for this service.

Maybe consider an ad based revenue system.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting indeed, perhaps a example on the landing page would be beneficial?</comment>


Free SSL Certificates for Open Source Projects from GlobalSign - <AUTHOR> https://www.globalsign.com/ssl/ssl-open-source/

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the bigger sites using this would be [https://www.ruby- lang.org/en/](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/).

</comment><comment><USER2> startssl.com have free certificates as well, [http://www.startssl.com/?app=1](http://www.startssl.com/?app=1) and not only for open source projects.</comment>


JSMpeg – Decode It Like It's 1999 - <AUTHOR> http://jsmpeg.com/ <comment><USER2> The "Why Use JSMPEG" section hits the nail on the head with respect to the needs of some projects I have worked on.

Particularly, I once needed to stream video from a UAV to multiple tablets and phones on a local network to allow collaborative annotations. Since it was a disaster response system there was no depending on external services, which at the time put WebRTC out of the picture (all of the easy to use implementations required internet access to use existing signaling services).

We ended up using MJPEG and then later a JavaScript implementation of a MPEG-1 decoder. This library certainly would have made my life a little easier at the time!

<comment><USER3> MJPEG is so freaking simple [1] and almost no one knows about it. It's one of my favorite things to play around with and in my opinion way underutilized.

I built "drawing board" a while ago using an old school image map streaming a motion jpeg. You can interact with the video without ANY JavaScript [2]. The browser stays where you are on posting because the server returns an HTTP 204 - also highly underutilized in my opinion.

1\. [https://github.com/donatj/mjpeg- php/blob/master/mjpeg.php](https://github.com/donatj/mjpeg- php/blob/master/mjpeg.php)

2\. [https://github.com/donatj/imgboard](https://github.com/donatj/imgboard)

<comment><USER4> MJPEG in casual parlance is more of a "technique" than a format -- and multipart/x-mixed-replace is a very loose definition of even something as loosely defined as MJPEG.

Out of video containers, QuickTime introduced "Motion-JPEG" [1] with each frame in the container being a JPEG, and there have been formal definitions of how to communicate "JPEG-compressed video" with network protocols, like in RTP [2].

Meanwhile mixed-replace was a Netscape trick [3] to do server push with HTTP that never became a real force but was reimplemented by almost every browser trying to stay Mozilla-compatible (except IE), and happily used by webcams for dead-simple videostreaming.

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/standards/qtff-2001.pdf](https://developer.apple.com/standards/qtff-2001.pdf) [2] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2435](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2435) [3] [https://web.archive.org/web/19981203153836/fishcam.netscape....](https://web.archive.org/web/19981203153836/fishcam.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/pushpull.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Video decoding in JS is very impressive - really highlights the speed of modern interpreters. I especially love that a Björk track from the 90's is featured.

I recently worked on a personal project which had to play back .webm files, and I used a similar utility:

[https://github.com/brion/ogv.js/](https://github.com/brion/ogv.js/)

It decodes .webm files and plays them in the web. I believe it's also used by Wikipedia to play bag Ogg files.

<comment><USER6> here is a nice talk about ogv.js: [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/94956075](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/94956075)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yet another people who cannot correctly decode video. Videos are not in sRGB color space and must be converted to it for displaying in browser. Also videos do not use full range 0-255, instead they use narrow range 15-235 where color (15, 15, 15) means black and (235, 235, 235) means white; this should be converted to the full range which is used in web-canvas.

<comment><USER8> It's great that you bring more information to the table, (I didn't know about the narrow range myself) but you don't have to be condescending about it.

<comment><USER9> I'm impressed by someone being able to write their own decoder, wrong color range or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember toying with this idea when I was doing some web-based slot-machine mobile games.

We had a ridiculous amount of assets(mostly animations) that had to be compressed, because one of the sales representatives noticed, that it's impossible to play any of the games if you're connected to a 2G network.

Eventually we didn't go with this solution, because it considerably reduced battery life and made the devices heat up too much.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is really cool! But the compression quality of MPEG1 is really nowhere close to h264.

If you're interested in this sorta thing, try taking a look at Broadway JS: [https://github.com/mbebenita/Broadway](https://github.com/mbebenita/Broadway)

Here's a simple demo page they have setup: [http://mbebenita.github.io/Broadway/foxDemo.html](http://mbebenita.github.io/Broadway/foxDemo.html)

Its entirely possible to use WebSockets to stream H264 to a browser and decode using broadway, and the performance is pretty good, even on mobile.

<comment><USER12> Don't browsers have built-in native H.264 support?

<comment><USER13> Media source extensions don't give you the low-level control needed for low- latency and streams need to be re-muxed into fMP4. Web-RTC is a good option, but the infrastructure required can be a non-starter for many projects. For example, native webRTC libraries for golang are currently lacking to support needed to stream low-latency video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This has also opened up some awesome new browser experiments, such as playing GTAV in the browser (on an iPhone!)

[http://phoboslab.org/log/2015/07/play-gta-v-in-your- browser-...](http://phoboslab.org/log/2015/07/play-gta-v-in-your-browser-sort- of)

</comment><comment><USER15> Cisco's got a royalty-free codec that would let you decode like it's 2017. [https://github.com/cisco/thor](https://github.com/cisco/thor)

<comment><USER16> Actually, they don't.

Thor has been merged with Xiph's Dalaa into IETF's NETVC effort, and both Cisco and Xiph are backing this.

NETVC is a next generation codec designed to replace H264, H265, and all future MPEG codecs with a system that is not user- and developer-hostile wrt licensing lock-in via (possibly invalid) patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is very cool! In 1999 my degree final year project was to implement an mpeg decoder in software. My only source of information was the MPEG technical reference manuals. It took me 3 months to be able to decode my first frame. It ran at less than 10fps on an AMD K6, but I learn a lot about video and compression.

<comment><USER18> I did exactly the same, but instead purely for fun and learning. Picked a random/blind clip from a naughty movie for extra motivation to get the first frames to the screen :D

I also worked from just the reference book, with no prior knowledge of video coding at all, which made it quite a puzzle to get something on the screen and moving, but it was extremely satisfying when it all worked (to some extent, the thing was horribly slow, broke after one group of predicted frames, and I never implemented chroma, just luma)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The talk about JSMpeg is an awesome learning experience. [https://fronteers.nl/congres/2015/sessions/jsmpeg-by- dominic...](https://fronteers.nl/congres/2015/sessions/jsmpeg-by-dominic- szablewski)

</comment><comment><USER20> Watch out! Some of this code may be GPL-encumbered. The decoder for JSMpeg is based in part on "Java MPEG-1 Video Decoder and Player" [1], which is licensed under the GPLv2. I am not a lawyer, but an argument could be made that the sections of JSMpeg's decoder that are directly ported from that project are a derivative work.

      [1]: https://sourceforge.net/projects/javampeg1video/

</comment><comment><USER21> I notice that the demo video stops when I switch tabs. Is this by design or by accident? Can I use JSMpeg but have it play in the background? Another thing; can I have video controls?

PS: That video has a very late nineties, early double-ohs feel to it indeed. Good choice of video :)

<comment><USER22> Yeah. From the docs:

> pauseWhenHidden – whether to pause playback when the tab is inactive. > Default true. Note that browsers usually throttle JS in inactive tabs > anyway.

<comment><USER23> Supposedly, Chrome doesn't throttle background tabs where audio is playing.

<comment><USER24> JS hack idea! Play a silent sound to force Chrome to not throttle your page when it's not primary.

<comment><USER25> Please don't.

Also, Chrome puts a little speaker icon on the tab, so users might notice.

<comment><USER26> In the long run, the probability of this being exploited is approximately 100%. I'm surprised they left in such an obvious loophole.

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure how usurping this is an 'exploit'. It's used as a heuristic to save battery life.

and if you're trying to run down a user's battery I can think of better ways.

<comment><USER26> The goal isn't to run down the users' battery. The goal is to do whatever timer callback processing a tab is doing that got throttled in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Combine this with webtorrent and you have yourself a real nice distribution platform.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't know where they get the "5 seconds" of latency for dash videos. There's definitely a startup latency, but it's not 5 seconds, and can be avoided with some simple techniques.

<comment><USER30> They're thinking of live dash streams. Eg. how many seconds from video camera to screen.

I can see it would probably be possible to get low latency, but without a fancy server stalling connections till frames become available, flushing on frame boundaries, etc, I can't see it working. Try doing such things with a CDN like cloudflare to support lots of users...

Also, for true streaming, timing should be done by the _camera_. Ie. If the cameras frame rate is 0.0001% slower than the 60fps advertised, the display device should slow down to match.

MPEG-DASH has no ability to do this, and would lead to a "buffering" gap for a second every few hours of playback time.

<comment><USER29> Segment length can be set to 1 second, if you're brave. 5 seconds for live streams just happens to be the most commonly reached compromise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Advertisers will use this to get around video blocking in 3...2...1...

</comment><comment><USER32> It is incredibly hard to stream video from say, a Raspberry Pi to the web in a way/format that's easy to consume on multiple devices or using just the browser. This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER33> This begs the question, which codec is optimal in terms of "cpu-cycles-to- decode per second" for a given image quality ( for some subjective measure of quality)?

<comment><USER34> Offtopic grammar peeve: You probably mean "This _raises_ the question". Begging the question is rather different.

<comment><USER35> "Begs the question" is widely understood to mean the same thing as "raises the question" in common usage, and complaining about it is one of the sillier prescriptivist hills to die on.

The older meaning is obscure, largely redundant, and doesn't really make any sense etymologically, so it's not really surprising that the newer meaning caught on.

(And since we're being pedantic, it's got nothing to do with grammar.)

<comment><USER36> > In modern vernacular usage, "to beg the question" is frequently[citation > needed] used to mean "to invite the question" (as in "This begs the question > of whether...") or "to dodge a question"

That's just useless. And you know, saying "it once was A, now it's B, so it can never be A again" is exactly as "prescriptivist".

Little things add up, and before you know it people are just stringing words together as demonstrated on a million youtube videos.

> The older meaning is obscure, largely redundant

How so? How is the "new one" (which one? heh) not redundant? If you want to say something raises a question, that's an easy way to put it right there. On the other hand, I'm not even convinced that the bastardization of "begs the question" into "raises the question" wasn't simply based on not even understanding what assuming an initial point even could be, of just hearing the phrase without understanding the context and using it as _another_ way to say something or someone raises a question. I certainly don't hear it in common usage, regardless of the phrasing used. You know, if all those other people say they just say it because "most" people do, then none of them actually do have a reason. A billion times zero is zero.

And don't even get me started on people suddenly calling low framerates "lag" :P It just destroys information, and you can call it progress because the hands on the clock moved a little, but I won't.

<comment><USER35> >saying "it once was A, now it's B, so it can never be A again" is exactly as "prescriptivist".

Except I'm not telling you what you _can_ say, I'm telling you what other people _do_ say, which is descriptivist. You can use meaning A if you want to, but don't expect people to understand you.

>You know, if all those other people say they just say it because "most" people do, then none of them actually do have a reason.

That's like saying no one in the US has a reason to speak English, they're doing it just because everyone else does.

Language is about shared understanding, so most people around you using a particular meaning is pretty much the _only_ reason for someone to use it.

>you can call it progress

I don't call it progress, just change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can actually do this with H264 as well. I did it for a hack-a-thon a couple months back. We are actually looking at doing this in production for a video streaming on an internal network now that NPAPI is deprecated.

[https://github.com/colek42/streamingDemo](https://github.com/colek42/streamingDemo)

<comment><USER37> Beware of patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> _A stack that you can understand from top to bottom._

Love it

</comment><comment><USER39> Awesome work. I´m using it for an e-learning/robotics platform for low latency live streaming where it does a great job.

I´d like to know how reverse playback could be achieved. Is there a way to "undo" a P-Frame calculation, or is a second (reverse) mpeg file a possible solution?

</comment><comment><USER40> I used JSMPEG to process a live 360 camera feed and then a canvas to convert the output to the format to work with a google cardboard.

I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the output and speed of which the devices could decode and render the new output.

</comment><comment><USER41> What does "Decode It Like It's 1999" mean? Thanks.

<comment><USER42> It's a reference to the Prince song "1999" and the fact that it's using MPEG 1 video encoding that was available in 1999.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> sounds like the internet archive would love something like this.

<comment><USER44> VLC is working on a JS port. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113529)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> How power efficient is this? Just curious because iOS was mentioned as a target.

<comment><USER12> Not at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Imagine all cool stuff you can build with this. And it's JavaScript!!!

</comment><comment><USER47> This stutters a bit on my 2009 Macbook. If I weren't plugged in it'd probably kill my battery really fast.

It's a nice hack to get this kind of video on the iPhone, but somehow I feel that for decoding video JS is a bit high on the stack.

</comment><comment><USER48> main problem I see are bandwidth requirements to keep a decent quality. That said, very interesting project and well executed.</comment>


Twitter to keep 140-character limit, CEO says - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-character-limit-idUSKCN0WK275 <comment><USER2> John Gruber had a suggestion where they just make a new attachment type, "Text Post" that renders like an image card. Slack has a similar feature and it works well for posting very long form messages.

This would obviate extending the 140 char limit for regular tweets.

<comment><USER3> That's a decent compromise design. People already attach images of text to bypass the 140 char limit. It makes sense to "pave the cow paths" that users have found useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keeping the limit at 140 or maybe a little longer would be fine, but it shouldn't consume characters to attach an image or URL. It's annoying that when one tweets with a URL, every character of the URL is counted, but then replaced with a shortened t.co link anyway. And because they host images themselves, they shouldn't count as characters consumed.

<comment><USER5> This is for backwards compatibility with SMS (text messaging). Only the length of the t.co link is counted toward your 140 characters. Images are the same -- they are uploaded and a link is generated, so when you send a tweet over SMS the recipient can view the image.

More generally, if you think about Twitter's design decisions as preserving SMS compatibility, then a lot of strange choices make more sense.

<comment><USER6> You just taught me that Twitter has sms support. I always thought the character limit was odd. Is there a particular market they're trying to reach with that feature, because I've never seen anyone use it.

<comment><USER7> Twitter pre-dates smartphones, mobile apps and push notifications

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _Dorsey has changed some of Twitter 's core features since he returned to > run Twitter permanently in October. Twitter has added "Moments," which > allows users to easily find tweets about the day's biggest news stories, and > changed the shape of its "favorite" icon from a star to a heart._

And now Twitter will _keep_ the thing that made it unique. All kinds of innovation going on over there.

<comment><USER9> I'm sure a lot of decisions were made by him, specifically business related, that aren't visible as much as product features, but that sarcastic comment made me chuckle.

It reminds me of my brilliant designer friends who have done amazing work at small startups helping create ideas/features/UI for companies them grow from seeds of ideas into big, successful businesses. When they switched jobs to some of the bigger companies in SV (FB, Twitter, Dropbox, etc), they always seem to struggle to mention anything tangible they managed to accomplish during their tenure (all of them left left for startups).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think they should have done something. The 140 character limit might make Twitter a unique experience, but 140 is quite low. I think they could have bumped it to 220 at least or 240.

<comment><USER11> Split the difference: 5,070 character limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I also find 140 characters to be too limiting and hate spending more time than necessary to twist my words into something that will save a few characters.

I know that this issue is very important for Twitter as a company, but it's just funny how the existence of a service is so highly dependent on the number of characters in a textfield.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why can't his cofounder, Ev Williams, just partner with him and make a Twitter + Medium feature. Embedding Medium article excerpts like how quote tweets would be fantastic. They did it with Periscope..

<comment><USER14> That's interesting. How would that work in practice?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sad. It's pretty much the only reason I can't stand Twitter. I'm sick of finding ways to save one or two characters but still get my message across.

<comment><USER11> I dunno, it actually kind of releases my inner editor. "What can I do to make this comment extra pithy?"

I dislike that it's essentially impossible to share more complex ideas on Twitter, but that's different that just having to make a single idea more concise so it'll come in under the Holy 140.

<comment><USER16> I stopped using it altogether; got bored of endless self-editing and reading people explain their misread truncated tweets. 140 is just retarded. Still, they'll prosper because google, ello (remember that?), app.net (remember that?) etc aren't up to the task, and facebook doesn't need to take them on.

<comment><USER17> Actually, Facebook copied the @mention system and the #hash_tagy thing from tweeter so... there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At some point they made it so that in the web UI (you could do this in some other clients before, but since they started shutting those out it doesn't really count) if you replied to your own tweet and removed your name you could connect tweets together. People have been making excellent use of this to link thoughts together in a way that's readable but still encourages you to pare down your thoughts into bite size chunks (though some people do abuse it to write uninterrupted essays, this was no less true before).

All they really need to do is make this feature a little more accessible, imo.

<comment><USER14> I have a love-hate relationship with that feature.

On the one hand, some of the most insightful things that I've seen on Twitter have been written in such way.

On the other, it's just so effin ugly. You can't reply/share/like the whole thing at once, so you end up with splintered conversation trees with different people replying to different parts of the mega-tweet.

I think it's a poor design choice, really.

<comment><USER18> Well, I think it's only worth comparing it to how it was before when someone had a train of thought in tweets. Linking to a single tweet then and telling people to follow it through meant that they had to go to the user's page, to the time it was posted, and then possibly go back and turn on tweets&replies, and then follow it backwards up the page.

I do not think there is any really perfect solution, but sometimes tweets should be connected to each other and much like many other twitter features (lists being the other really notable one) this one is only half complete and wanting of some extra love to make it not suck as much. But, like many of those features, does fill a real need.

<comment><USER14> I can see what you mean, but as a still-current user I only compare it to my user experience _at the present_.

Certainly I understand that it used to be much worse, but if it's not satisfying me now, well, I'm keeping an eye out for what will.

It's interesting you note lists as I agree that there's a really good underlying idea there that has never blossomed. Any ideas by how they could be improved?

<comment><USER18> Really I think they should be more like google+ circles (I don't like much about g+, but I do think that particular idea is well suited to twitter). They should be part of the home page presentation, allowing you to filter your main view down by list.

Personally, almost all the time I look on twitter I'm looking at a list. Either the one that's basically "these are the people I want to see all the tweets of" or topical ones (politics, infosec, etc). I spend very little time on the 'firehose' main feed.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I actually like that a lot. I was thinking of something along the same lines.

Do you think it would be cool if there was a way for people to choose which lists to post their tweets to? Like, I follow some people who do research on type theory and I love their insights, but I really don't care what they've had for lunch, or if they find some cat picture funny. So maybe if there was a way for them to tag things in such a way that when I filter by "type theory" I only see their posts related to type theory and nothing else.

I like the idea in general, but my fear that it might be a bit too complicated for a lot of people? I think it's important to have a really simple and intuitive user interface, and something like that could just overcomplicate things.

I don't know, what do you think?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Guessing it was a nightmare to change it in their codebase so they axed it. Also, increasing the limit would probably add no additional value to their business.

<comment><USER20> I'd argue the opposite. With them recently changing Direct Messages to account for 10,000 characters, they know what it takes to make the changes.

<comment><USER16> They know what it means to make the change, but it's entirely different to change something like direct messages, which go from one person to another, and the millions of tweets sent every day.

<comment><USER3> Do the Twitter APIs support direct messages? I imagine that the ecosystem of Twitter clients, libraries, site scrapers, and related database schemas have hardcoded the 140 char limit in many unexpected places. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is interesting to me. The 140 character limit definitely _works_ for what Twitter does, but is it _optimum_? How would you even tell?

I love the long form messages that being in a place like HN allows you to have.

I also think that there's something unique to Twitter that being on HN does not provide. I can't quite articulate that yet, though. Would anyone using Twitter care to try?

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how microblogging works in China/Japan?

With Kanji/Hanzi 140 character limit turns into a 140 word limit.

That's like a friggin essay.

<comment><USER21> You're making an excellent point about languages. 140 characters in French or German might not be enough to make a quick point, given how convoluted written French is supposed to be for instance ( I'm french ). "SMS writing" in french is almost like the worst offense possible to the language. I wonder what Balzac would have thought of Twitter.

<comment><USER14> I was just thinking about how it would work for German, which I speak to a certain extent. I suspect that, per-capita, twitter might be quite unpopular in Germany compared to other countries. Do a lot of people use it in France?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 140 chars is great.. shouldn't change - but urls, images, and hashtags and @users shouldn't count (hashtags may have a limit of 5-10 per tweet but all of those should be consider meta-data about the tweet and who it's geared towards and who it personally addresses. The msg itself should remain 140 chars.

</comment><comment><USER23> 140 characters makes twitter unique. It shouldn't be used as a platform for long form stories. Other platforms already exist for that. I don't want another facebook. Maybe it takes some editing to make your thought fit, but it also forces you to cut out the fluff. I like that.

<comment><USER21> > 140 characters makes twitter unique. It shouldn't be used as a platform for > long form stories

But it is (used as such). People try to have lengthy (arguments) discussions on Twitter. It ends up badly most often because people can't express themselves properly, the discussion lacks of context then it provokes outrage then people cry they are being "harassed" publicly. The way Twitter works cheapens communication. And when communication is reduced to the lowest common denominator anything can be considered harassement or insult. 140 characters works with SMS because people who send each other SMS usually are acquaintances, so there is some context. Publishing SMS out there in the wild is often a recipe for disaster. Now take any forum like this one. People don't know each other, however, they have enough space to at least attempt to convey their thoughts in an accurate way. I admit that the fact that is it a tech centered, well moderated forum helps to create a proper environment for discussion too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> With the Olympics and Presidential elections this year, this might be do or die for Twitter.

They're very relevant, but not in the ways they want to be.

People find out what happened on Twitter yesterday via the news the next day. Not while it's happening (which is how Twitter would like it).

</comment><comment><USER17> A simple way to change the limit without changing the limit has been shared here before.

Profile name shouldn't count as part of the 140 character limit.

</comment><comment> tek-cyb-org I don't know why but the title of this article sounds eerie and reminds me of something out of 1984.

</comment><comment><USER25> I will keep boycotting and stick with Facebook Notes. RIP!

</comment><comment><USER26> This seems like a silly thing to have an article about.

What next, are we going to have the news report when Fiverr changes the width of their "What are you looking for?" box to 361 pixels instead of 359 pixels to work around a browser display issue?

Or if Amazon adds a new dropdown menu to their product detail sidebar?

<comment><USER27> Given twitter's popularity, it deserves X amount of attention. Now, the product itself has really few features, so each feature will be disproportionally analyzed, no matter how simple.</comment></comment>


Reversible computing - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing <comment><USER2> Is there a link between this and generative neural networks?

<comment><USER3> I don't think so. Neural networks operate by taking sums, and addition is not reversible.</comment></comment>


Recon-ng Web Interface - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/interference-security/recon-ng-web <comment><AUTHOR> "Recon-ng Web" is a web interface for recon-ng and uses "recon-rpc" to execute commands and fetch data. I am the developer of this project; just giving my small contribution to the community.</comment>


Ask YC: Someone builds your idea in return for equity. Good idea? - <AUTHOR> http://www.prototypeinvest.com/default.aspx

<comment><USER2> Aiee! _How_ many times has this been submitted and voted up now?

I count three, now: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176381>, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176381>, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176055> and

This is getting silly. At least this particular submission linked to the actual _website_ of the people doing it...

<comment><USER3> It would be nice if a moderator could combine these threads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Tech start-ups with an inadequate or none existing prototype, seriously diminishes the chance of being clearly understood and fully appreciated by a potential investor."

Poor grammar and a lack of editing seriously diminishes the chance of being clearly understood and fully appreciated by a potential founder.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is more realistic in the long haul: <http://hashrocket.com/> "Your idea, implemented in 3 days. No joke."

The last time I checked it cost 30k... ideas are cheap and even counting the really good ideas, a lot of people tend to have the same ones. If the idea submitters have nothing to contribute besides the idea, I feel that you're creating a self imposed 'tax' on yourselves.

I guess it's useful to you guys if you think that you're not creative enough to come up with any good ideas on your own.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would think that anyone smart enough to build a good prototype would have a drawer full of startup ideas.

<comment><USER7> So true. I have a book full of ideas that I keep. When I have free time I add them to an excel file, write a small vba script to randomize the list then pick the top one and work on it.

<comment><USER8> I'm curious: how many have you completed?

Do you find yourself re-ordering potential projects because one or another seems more promising or doable?

<comment><USER6> I've launched five of the ideas off my list in the last three years. <http://NearbyGamers.com> is the only public success (though it's small and growing rather than big and robust). I've got one idea currently in development and am actively exploring the design and market for two others.

I reorder the list probably every six months or so as markets change, I have new resources, and I finish things. With >30 ideas on the list I know I'll never get to them all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only question to ask is :How experienced is the team in converting ideas to businesses ?

...and if not then it's like someone attempting to build a car factory without knowing what a gearbox is.

<comment><USER10> Isn't it like a box with gear in it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I simply love the idea - can help a lot of people. Stop whining :-)

<comment><USER6> Hello, sock puppet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd be worried that their landing page is written in .NET</comment>


Brands pay Twitter to falsely appear in your following list - <AUTHOR> https://gigaom.com/2014/12/30/brands-pay-twitter-to-falsely-appear-in-your-following-list/ <comment><USER2> This was a bug. We rectified it as soon as the issue was brought to our attention.

The original version of this product launched in March 2013. Its intention was to just "bump" brands in your follow lists to the top, not to start placing Promoted Accounts randomly in the list—what the headline suggests. That was the bug.

<comment><USER3> Your account appears to be 100% anonymous and does not have any clear link with twitter that implies that you are really speaking for the company. Unlike say Matt Cutts saying something about Google handling spam.

I'm a bit skeptical about 'bugs' like this lasting for over a year and a half without there being some kind of intent involved. It's hard to imagine how this bug could have come into existence in the first place, harder still to imagine that code review and testing didn't catch it and that nobody complained about it in the meantime.

Random accounts appearing in followed/follower lists would be weird enough given that that is core twitter functionality but to have that happen specifically to promoted accounts would appear to be by design rather than by accident, _especially_ if those promoted accounts did not appear in the lists to begin with. That would require some serious overriding and additional logic unless twitter is implemented in an unlogical way.

To put it plain: a change in sort order does not normally change the contents of the lists, that requires a lot more work and is usually not unintentional.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, this is me: [http://twitter.com/x5315](http://twitter.com/x5315). I'll update my bio, how's that?

The 'bug' didn't last for over a year and a half. The product has existed for that long.

The bug was in the advertiser selection process. There was an issue with the job/dataset we use to select which advertisers to choose. It should only have been people in the follow lists.

As for "a change in sort order does not normally change the contents of the lists". Due to the size of some of the lists, we don't load the entire list when we show you the first 20 or so. Therefore, we would require an insertion process.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for clarifying this. I'm obviously not familiar with Twitter's code to any extent, but it seems reasonable you'd need the insertion process regardless.

Out of curiosity, can you speak to how long this bug actually appear in the wild before it was corrected?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't see how people tolerate Twitter's ad policy, I don't even use an ad blocker (I white list JS) but I find Twitter ads too annoying to use the service.

<comment><USER6> Someone suggested to report every 'promoted tweet' (ad) as unwanted/spam. That's what I do currently.

<comment><USER7> That sounds like a good way to have your reports ignored by the system.

<comment><USER8> Doing so also blocks the brands from showing up as ads, in addition to blocking them from organically appearing in your timeline. It's a strategy that works well, imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You're not Twitter's customer. You're the product.

(I once experimented with a Twitter client that did spam filtering, but it was clear that Twitter would never approve it. We need AdBlock for Twitter.)</comment>


Start up hosting - <AUTHOR>

What are good recomendations for hosting a start up? I dont want to pay fortune in the case nobody uses it or vice versa, its constantly down due to high traffic from it being a cheap hosting plan. <comment><USER2> Slicehost and AWS are among the perennial answers to this question.

<comment><USER3> So much so, that I just came in here to make that exact recommendation and found your post already here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use MediaTemple and am constantly impressed by the U/I and ability to manage wordpress, php, googlea pps and more from the management console.</comment>


Protesters toss scooters into street to block tech buses in SF - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Protesters-toss-scooters-into-street-to-block-12957488.php <comment><USER2> The article doesn't mention anybody getting arrested. Is that an omission or are there really no consequences for this kind of behavior?

<comment><USER3> These people are the overwhelming electoral majority. If the government gets involved, it will be to arm their sentiments with police power, not to punish them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Idiots.

Of course it's easier to just destroy property and piss people off while pretending to defend a cause rather than actually defend it. I would bet good money none of those people involved has even given a single cent to a charity helping the homeless.</comment>


Show HN: Dead-simple file lock implementation in C# - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/markedup-mobi/file-lock

<comment><USER2> seems like a good and simple solution, will give it a try

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Let us know if you have any questions!</comment></comment>


Pongo2 – A Django syntax-like template-engine for Golang - <AUTHOR> http://www.florian-schlachter.de/post/pongo2/

<comment><USER2> I love the Django-style syntax for HTML templates, but if I'm working on something on the web and I'm using Go it's probably for speed reasons. This means that I'm probably trying to avoid reflection. There's a bit of competition going on between HTML template libraries for Go and I'm not sure any has truly satisfied the majority of use cases. I'm curious to hear what other libraries people are regularly using.

<comment><USER3> The std. lib's html/template still uses reflection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love django/jinja and I hope it gets standardized as the default templating syntax for all languages.

I've been following pongo since day one and this release makes me really happy.

Don't ask me why but I hate go/template to death.

<comment><USER5> I remember some years ago, I needed to quickly prototype a proof of concept php project, and the first thing I did was find a django templating library for php; simply because I was lazy to learn back Smarty's syntax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting, I feel that if the trend of jinja-likes continues, we will eventually end up with another abstraction layer on top of the templating system; eg. a templating system that "compiles" to whatever you're using right now.

One alternative being a single unified "jinja" syntax with several backends.

In any case, good job on this! It looks really good.

<comment><USER7> So, this isn't Jinja2? I thought Django was using Jinja2, but I guess I was wrong.

<comment><USER6> Jinja is a bit more liberal when it comes to bringing pythonic syntax to the template, while Django retains a philosophy of "designers are sheep and we must feed them grass".

Disclaimer: I think part of that previous statement might be biased.

<comment><USER8> To rephrase it more charitably - Django's philosophy might be better summed up as "if you need a full programming language in your templates then you're doing something wrong".

Remember PHP started as a templating language and look where that got us.

<comment><USER6> Heh. Don't get me wrong, I agree with the general philosophy, but they took it a bit far. Before Django 1.3(?), there was no {% if x == y %}, or != etc; instead you had to use {% ifequal %}, {% ifnotequal %} and so on. Pretty ridiculous.

There are some similar lingering design decisions which do nothing but make the language uglier and more verbose. Jinja has the same philosophy of not doing evals in the template, but is still quite a bit more pythonic (eg. method calls with arguments, most python objects etc are allowed)

<comment><USER8> I'm curious to see when those things actually result in better code. A template tag is usually a much better idea and hardly onerous in terms of time or code.

Django's opinionated stance on this helped me to become a better developer. It pushed that stuff back into my views - which in turn made me realise that a lot of the stuff I'd been putting in my views really should be pushed back into a layer below that. It set me on the path to understanding the value of a good separation of concerns.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Very Aggressive Chess Openings - <AUTHOR> http://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/75/very-aggressive-openings/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised this is the first chess article I've seen on HN. I spend a ton of time on here and it seems like a very HN subject.

<comment><USER3> theres been a few in the past</comment></comment>


David Foster Wallace on Life and Work: Stay Conscious - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html <comment><USER2> I posted this last time it was mentioned, here's Wallace delivering the actual speech. The above article cuts out some sections making it less cohesive. Listen here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5THXa_H_N8> (part 1) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSAzbSQqals> (part 2)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mind your default settings :)</comment>


Ab Initio ETL Tool - <AUTHOR> http://abinitio-interviews.weebly.com/ <comment><USER2> That might be the most I've ever seen written about Ab Initio in public. The company is notoriously private with documentation and even discussion boards.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I couldn't find much about it. Looks quite smart though (not surprising, given the founders).

<comment><USER2> For the reasons above I'm not a fan. What I've seen first hand, you can build powerful solutions but you can also build powerful solutions with Perl, python, Hadoop and Spark and I can at least read documentation with those.</comment></comment></comment>