'Big brother' black boxes to soon be mandatory in all new cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/19/big-brother-black-boxes-to-soon-be-mandatory-in-all-new-cars/ <comment><USER2> Infowars. Right. Also:

        (b) Limitations on Information Retrieval-

        (1) OWNERSHIP OF DATA- Any data in an event data recorder required
        under part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, regardless of
        when the passenger motor vehicle in which it is installed was
        manufactured, is the property of the owner, or in the case of a leased
        vehicle, the lessee of the passenger motor vehicle in which the data
        recorder is installed.

        (2) PRIVACY- Data recorded or transmitted by such a data recorder may
        not be retrieved by a person other than the owner or lessee of the
        motor vehicle in which the recorder is installed unless--

        (A) a court authorizes retrieval of the information in furtherance of
        a legal proceeding;

        (B) the owner or lessee consents to the retrieval of the information
        for any purpose, including the purpose of diagnosing, servicing, or
        repairing the motor vehicle;

        (C) the information is retrieved pursuant to an investigation or
        inspection authorized under section 1131(a) or 30166 of title 49,
        United States Code, and the personally identifiable information of the
        owner, lessee, or driver of the vehicle and the vehicle identification
        number is not disclosed in connection with the retrieved information;
        or

        (D) the information is retrieved for the purpose of determining the
        need for, or facilitating, emergency medical response in response to a
        motor vehicle crash.

You're wondering, "section 1131(a) or 30166 of title 49"? That's the NTSB. Highway safety investigations.

For perspective: had this standard not been pushed federally, the private sector could probably do far worse; your (mandated, and reasonably so!) car insurance influences all sorts of standards on the vehicles we drive.

<comment> buff-a Honda Civic 2015 EULA:

126.96.36.199 (Page 198 of 301) "Your use of this vehicle grants us your irrevocable and permanent consent to download, transmit, or otherwise obtain the information contained in the onboard data recorder, and to share that data with third parties, including but not limited to law enforcement (without a court order), and marketing companies."

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a reason not to buy a 2015 Honda.

Note that Honda (and most other manufacturers) were _inevitably going to put event data recorders in cars anyways_. They are too cheap and they make too much sense not to have.

So without the federal rules, what you'd have is market full of cars with event data recorders _and no rules regarding data ownership or requirements to disclose_ (this bill requires full disclosure about the devices and their purpose).

But BGR doesn't want to tell you that, because their purpose here isn't to inform, it's to generate rageviews.

<comment> buff-a >Sounds like a reason not to buy a 2015 Honda.

Ah yes, the "free market" in action. That has worked so well for us in protecting our privacy, as evidenced by the plethora of commercial software with EULAs that respects the user's rights.

Or are you saying Richard Stallman is going to build us a car next?

Here's how it works:

1\. Government is constitutionally forbidden from collecting this information.

2\. Government observes that private corporations can collect this information.

3\. Government grants private corporations immunity from prosecution and civil liability if it collects this information and hands it to the government. Threatens prosecution and civil liability if corporations fails to collect information and "something bad happens".

4\. US Supreme Court pretends this is acceptable by ignoring "intent" and "consequences" and then goes on to uphold "intent" and "consequences" in every other case before it.

<comment><USER3> which might be true except for

> (2) PRIVACY- Data recorded or transmitted by such a data recorder may not be > retrieved by a person other than the owner or lessee of the motor vehicle in > which the recorder is installed

also, you say

> Ah yes, the "free market" in action. That has worked so well for us in > protecting our privacy, as evidenced by the plethora of commercial software > with EULAs that respects the user's rights.

this bill is exactly the opposite of free market. it says everyone has to put recorders and cars and then explicitly forbids certain uses of them.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't explicitly forbid use of them. Honda's EULA is lawful and binding under the new law. But the case could be made that without the new law, Honda wouldn't need a EULA (although having it probably cuts down on their legal bills).

Obviously, though: Honda's EULA is lawful and binding _without_ the bill. This bill can only improve matters at this point. You can be irritated that it doesn't improve them enough, but that's not the case BGR is making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Civil liberties are under attack on so many fronts, it seems like the few who cared initially are punch drunk. This is such a painfully bad idea on so many levels. Here's a list:

1\. This adds cost without adding value to the consumer of the product.

2\. The only value add is the ability of a democratic government run by the people...to track its people.

3\. We already carry cell phones and use facebook. Do you really to build a whole new physical platform to get this done? Can you do it better than the cell phone providers and facebook?

4\. We're not deep enough in debt yet? Want me to skip to the end game and just cut out my liver and hand it to you?

Every day I read HN and politico. I think politico is destroying things faster than HN is building them.

I want to see a PG post titled "Lets Hack Washington". I think the RIAA is too small a target.

<comment><USER5> The other value add is for insurance companies. They can use that data to alter rates.

<comment><USER6> Pushing through my own cynicism here, you can't ignore the fact that there is added value to the consumer if she/he is a defensive driver. In the event of an accident, there is significantly more data for the insurance companies to use to determine fault and liability.

<comment> DanI-S _"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"_

<comment><USER7> Possibly one of the worst quotes ever.

[http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/the-data-trust- blog/2009...](http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/the-data-trust- blog/2009/02/debunking-a-myth-if-you-have-n.html)

<comment><USER8> I have read a number of articles on "debunking" that statement, but they always have large holes.

This one in particular attacks what it considers consistency. It suggests that we cannot be sure that the data that is collected will consistently used accurately. It suggests that having ones fingerprints on file were the cause of a number of false arrests.

While I agree that if we collected no data, we'd probably have less false arrests, they convinently avoid talking about how many people have been correctly (as far as we can tell) convicted because of that data.

I'm not saying this has anything to do with the whole car article- I'm just saying that if someone is swayed either way by that simple computer weekly article, they haven't really thought the issue through themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it's time to be clear about what the concern is here, because it's become a bit of a cottage industry to call out provocative headlines, wave your arms around a bit, and then claim the readers are being manipulated. Kind of "Nothing to see here, folks. Please move along."

What we've learned through repeated experience is that data collection always leads to some future configuration that we are not happy with. Maybe it's advertisers tracking our every move on the web. Maybe it's the police getting all of our cell phone records simply by filling out a form. Perhaps it's the government tracking all international calls. Maybe it's the cops taking COTS GPS devices and using them to track cars without a warrant. Whatever. The pattern is clear: one day we start collecting data. Somewhere down the road somebody starts using that data in a way we do not like. Big Data is simply too attractive to too many entities to leave alone.

While the cops angle is the one that's most emotional, my money says the real players behind the scenes here are the insurance companies. Initially, the spin will be for accident litigation, but within a few years they'll have "collecting any relevant data" clauses in all their new car insurance policies. And then they'll be able to see exactly how you drive. Insurance companies are already trying to do this voluntarily. I think Progressive has some kind of Orwellian name for it like "Safe Driver Program" or something. Don't know. All I know is that whenever I see their commercials it reminds me of how stupid they think their customers are.

It's a fair cop to say that many of these stories are overblown, emotional, and manipulative. But that's a far cry from saying they are useless. The problem here is trying to guess a future world in which this goes south. For every ten guesses, maybe one is close. So looking at it from that angle, what a terrible track record! But looking at it from the proper (in my opinion) angle, the problem is simply one of style. Nobody wants to read a long-winded discussion of the problems here, but everybody will click on "The police are checking your underwear every night using your iPad!" stories. Simply because that's the nature of the business doesn't mean there aren't also serious concerns.

<comment><USER10> If anyone is wondering about the Progressive device I can give some information. My girlfriend actually asked for one.

They gave her this thing that she plugs into her car's diagnostic port. The incentive is that if an insured driver agrees to use the thing and wants to "prove" they are a good driver they can. In return the user gets an insurance discount if their driving stats are good.

The little object does something very basic: It counts the number of "hard stops" in every trip and uses cellphone networks to report the data. People can then go look up the stats online. 2 hard stops for this trip, 7 for this trip, etc. It's neat to see your stats.

Eventually it turns into a sort of game to eliminate the hard stops from your driving routine. You pay more attention to driving because of it and therefore become a more attentive driver.

At the end of 6 months you send the device back and your insurance is adjusted (or not).

This is a huge win-win for software making people behave better:

1\. Girlfriend gets a lower insurance rate

2\. Progressive has evidence she is not an insane driver

3\. Most interestingly, the device has forced her to be (seemingly) permanently more conscious about her driving and has made her a better driver. Not only does the device find bad drivers, but it can convince many to become better drivers, possibly without them realizing it!

Literally software has consciously and unconsciously made her into a better driver and literally every party involved (her, progressive, people near her on the road) are better off for her having used this device.

<comment>

All of that is good, as far as I can tell. But all of it was optional, too, and I understand that the topic at hand involves what happens when it becomes less-than-optional. It is not hard to envision a future where it will be impossible to get affordable insurance if you opt out.

<comment><USER11> I can see this sentiment being easily twisted around to...

       This is a huge win-win for surveillance software making people behave better:

       1. Well-behaved citizens carry on in their lives relatively freely

       2. Gov't has evidence of your innocence (notice the implication here)

       3. The constant surveillance has forced society to be permanently more
       conscious about their behavior and made them better citizens.
       Not only does it identify "bad people", but it can convince them
       to become better people, possibly without them realizing it!

I realize I am putting words in your mouth and I apologize. You probably don't believe my "translation" but I want to point out that it doesn't take too much work to go from your words to mine.

<comment><USER9> This thread is diverging from what the GP meant, which was just to describe how fun and good for you collecting data can be. After all, how can you get better at certain things if you're not willing to collect data on your performance?

But the problem is that you can spin just about any kind of data collection in just the same way. In the 1960s, this exact scenario would have been part of a futuristic horror story. Robots and computers monitoring your every move, with your permission and encouragement, in an effort for you to become "better." In fact, I seem to remember several old sci-fi shows with just this kind of plot.

It's interesting to note that such a scenario doesn't seem so horrific any more, and those warning about it are more and more seen as alarmists. I'm not sure where this is all heading, but the trajectory in public opinion is not very heartening. Modern marketing is turning its attention to popularizing your life "assisted" by machines which then take lots of observations about your behavior and report on them back to some third party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _"the primary function of the black box devices would be to record..."_

Ok.

 _"...and transmit data"_

Wait, what?

Are there any further details on how this is supposedly going to work? Do the boxes have built-in cellular modems with permanently-activated SIMs? What network are they connecting to? Where are they transmitting the data? Who maintains the servers?

Transmitting black-box data is a huge leap beyond simply recording it.

<comment> excuse-me In legal terms transmitted can just mean downloaded after an accident.

One computer company famously had an OS that met a US top security classification which required that all user events were logged. There was no way of reading these logs - but the security standard only required that there were logs, it didn't say anything about extracting them!

<comment><USER13> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_only_memory>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The subcomment by jen_h has the best information in this thread.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3863555>

The submitted article is just passing on the content of an Infowars post

[http://www.infowars.com/mandatory-big-brother-black-boxes- in...](http://www.infowars.com/mandatory-big-brother-black-boxes-in-all-new- cars-from-2015/)

but the true primary source for this story is one of the United States federal government sources, for example

<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s1813/text>

with the text of the legislation.

<comment><USER15> Can anybody find the part of the text of the legislation that requires transmission?

Skimming the table of contents and looking through SEC. 31406. VEHICLE EVENT DATA RECORDERS I couldn't find it. I could only find requirements to record data, not transmit it.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't require transmission ("(4) may require an interoperable data access port to facilitate universal accessibility and analysis.", as you saw) --- but note that if you're worried that the government might try to slip medium-range RF into the recorder standard, there's a Rulemaking procedure yet to come that could mandate wireless access to the boxes.

Which doesn't mean "start hyperventilating", of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Event data recorders are already in almost all new cars. They record what was going on just before and just after something causes the airbags to trigger, and in the event of any sort of severe crash, the accident investigators will download the data from the box. The privacy implications are mild.

This repost of a repost of a repost of a reposted blog article is useless and needs downmodding.

<comment><USER17> Mild? Being essentially forced to testify against yourself in a trial? That's a fundamental liberty being abrogated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If the primary use for these really is to help find the car in an event of an accident then why are there penalties in place for circumventing the tracking. Shouldn't this be as politically controversial as forcing me to buy health insurance?

<comment><USER2> No, the primary purpose of these is to determine the events that lead up to an accident. The penalty is because the only people with an economic incentive to remove the boxes are the ones likely to cause accidents.

<comment><USER19> _Seriously?_ This statement is synonymous with, "If you have nothing to hide, then you should have nothing to fear." I expect this fallacy from politicians but I'm pretty surprised to hear it from you.

I've noticed you seem to dedicate a lot of time to denouncing privacy and civil liberties issues on HN lately, but that statement is absurd.

<comment><USER2> I care about _real_ privacy and civil liberties issues. Compared to drug dog probable cause searches, this is a tinfoil hat concern. My guess is that many of the people denouncing EDRs the loudest _have_ EDRs in their cars and didn't even know about it.

If you feel like I spend a lot of time shouting down civil liberties issues, consider that maybe that has less to do with me --- a liberal ACLU supporter and donor --- and more to do with the tenor of civil liberties discussions on HN.

... I mean, if you care enough to consider why I'm on the other side of this issue. If you just want to yell at me, that's fine too. (Really, it's fine; I'm not being snide).

<comment><USER19> Well the point was to call out that offensive fallacy, not to berate your own views. To be honest though, I feel like you are the guy referred to in the top post, in every thread on (what I and many others, including the EFF consider) _real_ privacy and civil liberties issues.

I also don't understand why you keep using "they can already do this" as an argument against those who are opposed to these issues. The fact that many people are unknowingly already equipped with EDRs is completely irrelevant. Or that companies already share breach data. Your logic is such that if X is already doing Y, being opposed to X is an invalid position. What?

I don't think you can call anything a tinfoil hat concern without understanding every individual's reasons for being opposed to something.

I don't want someone logging everything I do and everywhere I go, and not being in control of that data (yes I own a cell phone; see previous). Why? The same reason many people want the right to own a gun.[1] _"Because fuck you, that's why."_ The fact that I have nothing to hide, to me, is _all the more reason I deserve to be left alone_.

[1] I personally don't actually believe society is better off with guns. I think the "protection" argument is equivalent to what tinfoil hats say. But it doesn't matter what I think. That's what it means to be a civil libertarian. I don't care what your voter registration says or who you donate to, if you don't understand this, you are not a civil libertarian.

"Hacker News comment threads: where people apply 'works on my machine' to social problems."

<https://twitter.com/#!/jcoglan/status/192408075917983744>

<comment><USER2> It would have been helpful if you had read the legislation we're commenting on before forming an opinion _about me_ based on my position on that legislation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While I'm not saying it's false I'd treat any news article using Infowars (Alex Jones, NWO, Chemtrails etc.) as a source with certain scepticism.

<comment><USER21> Yeah. I always have trouble linking to these folks (even though they're on- target a lot of the time) just because folks dismiss it out of hand.

Here's the source:

[http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/F?c112:3:./temp/~c112n8J...](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/F?c112:3:./temp/~c112n8JXN9:e1259800):

<comment><USER22> On target perhaps, but overly sensational - any valid points they have are drowned out by the "CHEMTRAILS!!" "9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB!" "UFOS!!!" that surround it.

A much superior source is the one you linked - factual and free of sensationalistic spin.

<comment><USER23> And already a dead link...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "While the primary function of the black box devices would be to record and transmit data that could be used to assist a driver and passengers in the event of an accident..."

I'm not even convinced the primary use case is helpful. Most people have cell phones nowadays, and sometimes systems like OnStar. Furthermore, who is going to handle the data (storage, responses, etc.)? How much money are we going to spend on this? Scary monitoring implications aside, this seems like a terrible idea.

</comment><comment><USER25> While the common meaning of the word 'transmit' generally implies wireless communication nowadays, it can also be used to mean any transfer of information - wireless, wired, even written letters sent over snail mail. The text of this bill uses the word 14 times, and in almost all of them, it's clear that the latter meaning is the intended one. It's used only once in reference to these black boxes, in a section that starts with:

      Data recorded or transmitted by such a data recorder may not
      be retrieved by a person other than the owner or lessee of
      the motor vehicle in which the recorder is installed unless--

And proceeds to list a bunch of limitations that all sound fine to me. It's essentially saying that the police need a warrant to retrieve the data (duh), and that if you rent a car, the car's owner can't use the black box to monitor you without written consent.

I see nothing in there to imply that these devices must transmit wirelessly. Much more likely, the device will transmit data the same way an airplane's black box does - via some sort of physical port that you have to plug into.

<comment><USER2> The bill does not require event data records to transmit anything. The word "transmit" in the subsection of the bill pertaining to event data recorders is a restrictive clause; the effect is that if your box _happens_ to transmit anything, those transmissions are covered by the privacy provisions of the bill.

<comment><USER25> And if you read from the original bill, it becomes even more clear that this could not be used for wireless snooping.

The need to attach physical hardware to get data out of it is made clear here: [http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text- idx?c=ecfr&sid...](http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text- idx?c=ecfr&sid=e20dce3ff7d472b52847e33bddb998b9&rgn=div8&view=text&node=49:126.96.36.199.220.127.116.11&idno=49)

And the conditions under which it's recording data, and the data being recorded, are described in the following two links: [http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text- idx?c=ecfr&sid...](http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text- idx?c=ecfr&sid=e20dce3ff7d472b52847e33bddb998b9&rgn=div8&view=text&node=49:18.104.22.168.188.8.131.52&idno=49) [http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text- idx?c=ecfr&sid...](http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text- idx?c=ecfr&sid=e20dce3ff7d472b52847e33bddb998b9&rgn=div8&view=text&node=49:18.104.22.168.22.214.171.124&idno=49)

Long story short, it's really not very exciting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cars kill 30,000-40,000 people per year in America. They're 4000 pound killing machines. If this actually happened it would be a good thing.

<comment><USER27> Please show me a death caused by a car and not by the driver.

<comment><USER28> See how well this argument has worked for gun owners over the last 50 years :)

<comment><USER11> Its working for cigarettes and foods with trans-saturated fats. (somewhat tongue-in-cheek here)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Section 31406 of this bill says that "Secretary shall revise part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, to require, beginning with model year 2015, that new passenger motor vehicles sold in the United States be equipped with an event data recorder".

Here is CFR part 563 of title 49: [http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text- idx?c=ecfr&sid...](http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text- idx?c=ecfr&sid=7bf119326a224d36a4a35bcfc817451c&rgn=div5&view=text&node=49:220.127.116.11.31&idno=49)

and you'll notice that all of the "data elements" captured are regarding velocity/acceleration, air bags and seat belts. There is nothing about the actual driver/occupants (except maybe how many occupants and in what seats) or location (gps tracking).

In fact there is a specific note in this CFR:

       These data can help provide a better understanding of
       the circumstances in which crashes and injuries occur.
       NOTE: EDR data are recorded by your vehicle only if a
       non-trivial crash situation occurs; no data are recorded
       by the EDR under normal driving conditions and no
       personal data (e.g., name, gender, age, and crash
       location) are recorded. However, other parties, such as
       law enforcement, could combine the EDR data with the
       type of personally identifying data routinely acquired
       during a crash investigation.

Here are further limitations as outlined in Section of 31406 of the linked bill: [EDIT: removed as `tptacek` already linked to this, see above]

So, is there anything in here to get in a big fuss over? Maybe, but I don't see it.

Should we still keep a rational eye on it and make sure it stays this way? Absolutely.

On a related note, did anybody else cringe a bit when they noticed the original article came from infowars.com?

<comment><USER29> I noticed BGR's paranoid stance last time I read an article there. I don't remember the subject matter, but it too was linked to infowars.com. I cringe every time I see an article citing that site.

And yeah, the bill looks harmless to me. Just an EDR with no requirement for wireless transmission, and no identifying information. And when I saw the section on ownership I was pretty satisfied.

I could see this data being required by the insurance companies though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Black boxes are already in use here in the UK.

They're actually a new initiative provided by the 1 insurance company, fitted to cars owned by young drivers. The data indicates your driving style in an attempt to bring car insurance down for more responsible young drivers. There's even an online dashboard to track your own info.

It's actually been well received especially since normal yearly insurance costs for teenage boys can be 3x the price of your first car!!!

[http://www.co- operativeinsurance.co.uk/servlet/Satellite/128...](http://www.co- operativeinsurance.co.uk/servlet/Satellite/1280989445872,CFSweb/Page/Insurance- Car)

<comment><USER31> I think the box is a fine idea - without the GPS. GPS speed limit data is wrong often enough in any case; IMO decent accelerometer data should be more than enough to correlate to aggressive driving.

<comment><USER30> I think GPS is ok, as long as you have access to your own data. Another good side effect is that the smartbox monitored cars also have a rear window sticker to say "I'm driving responsibly & saving money on my insurance" Initially it was a promotional tool but now it is actually helping stop car thefts as theives are less likely to target a car they know is GPS tracked!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of- court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

</comment><comment><USER33> A car transponder I would like to see is one that coordinates self-driving cars to eliminate traffic congestion. You can do a rough version of this by reading traffic reports, but finer grained decisions would require something invasive like this. I care about my privacy, but I think privacy would lose over the safety and convenience such a system would provide.

</comment><comment><USER34> Oh man, I wish I had noticed the "Infowars" cite before I upvoted this.

</comment><comment><USER35> Circumvention tools soon to be available for black boxes in new cars.

<comment><USER36> Or maybe 2014 models will become very valuable.

<comment><USER37> All Toyotas in North America have had them since the 2010 model year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If someone does stupid things with the car and has an accident it is going to be recorded.

This is not a problem if you don't do stupid things.

Is going to take less than a megabyte to record an entire day(I use smartphones to record inertial movements), and everything is already on place on cars accelerometers, gyros, gps, and 3d compass(plus tacometers and maps).

They even can add microphones to the mixture(from the hands free phone system).

The problem in USA is the Patriot Act, every info the government takes about you should be clear, and it is not, they want to spy on you and they have no limits.

The problem is also the facebooks: "give us your inertial information and you will have a discount, or a free lollipop, or your friends will be able to know were you are driving".

This will happen, maybe it is a good thing. We need the wrong things that could happen with technology to happen fast so people develop antibodies as they do with every new tech.

</comment><comment><USER39> Isn't this just like putting GPS on everyone's cars without a warrant and then giving access to authorities to that information? Didn't the Supreme Court decide that's unconstitutional?

<comment><USER40> The supreme court decided it was unconstitutional when does as an unsupervised action of the executive branch. The action is in principle legal, but requires a warrant. The warrant is a check vs. a different branch of government. This is a _law_ passed by the legislature, so that analysis doesn't hold. As long as the executive branch stays inside the boundaries set by the law, the checks are in place.

That doesn't mean that it's clearly constitutional either, just that the basis for the court decision isn't applicable here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> >> The U.S. Senate has already passed a bill that will make >> the devices a requirement, and the House is expected to >> approve the bill as well.

I'm not very well versed with the political process in the US but why aren't these bill ever discussed (or voted on) before they are passed.

Doesn't the public get to vote on these important issues?

(By the way, I come from a country where I don't get to vote on individual bills. Just thought things were slightly better in America.)

</comment><comment><USER42> I have privacy concerns like everyone else. But fatal traffic accidents are a tragedy, more often than not caused by irresponsible people. In Canada, 34% of motor vehicle deaths are associated with alcohol use. In Australia, 40% are associated with driving too fast.

Driving is a privilege, not a right. It's also a responsibility which more than a few-bad-apples don't take seriously. If you don't like it, don't drive.

</comment><comment><USER43> quote the bill, "(1) shall require event data recorders to capture and store data related to motor vehicle safety covering a reasonable time period before, during, and after a motor vehicle crash or airbag deployment, including a rollover;"

so I suppose the question is, what's a reasonable time period?

<comment><USER44> Since a crash can happen at literally any time while driving, and the bill requires data to be recorded before a crash, I suspect "reasonable" would be "any time the vehicle is turned on." I guess it depends, then, on how loosely you define "crash."

<comment><USER45> If I were implementing one of these black boxes, I'd interpret "reasonable" in a privacy-preserving way: use a ring buffer that stores, say, 4 minutes of data, and stop recording 2 minutes after a crash is detected. That should provide enough data about the crash without being useful to someone who wants to spy on the driver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Court orders, how do they work?

Seriously, what oversight is there over court orders? Wiretaps, getting private information from social networking sites, now car black boxes- who monitors and evaluates court orders to make sure the judges made the right decision?

</comment><comment><USER47> They don't even have to track you illegally anymore, just have one build in by default.

</comment><comment><USER48> Prediction: there will be a black market for hacked data recorders that tell my insurance company I drive like a granny and never leave my house except to go to the grocery store.

</comment><comment><USER49> Insurance lobby - how to find any reason not to pay

<comment><USER2> Uh, no. When your car insurance pays out for accidents that they shouldn't pay for, everyone else's rates go up. Making insurance claims more accurate is a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> _In the US_

<comment><USER51> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16969509>

Coming soon to a country near you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Hope this stays away from Canada.

</comment><comment><USER53> Welcome to the future!

<comment><USER54> And here I thought 1984 was in the past.

/s

<comment><USER55> 1984?

<comment><USER54> Shoot. I try for a witty response and get it totally wrong. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> what's next? GPS bracelets?</comment>


Time-To-Know Aims To Revolutionize The Classroom - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/02/israels-time-to-know-aims-to-revolutionize-the-classroom/ <comment><USER2> I think a lot of people miss why we need a massive improvement in education. As a civilization, our knowledge and understanding increase year to year, but instruction time stays constant. The basic level of understanding needed to perform most non-menial jobs is skyrocketing, but we're still getting a constant number of learning-hours. It's not just "oh, we need students to score 10% better", but rather "we need to compress 17 years of current education into 13, because next decade, we'll need those college years to teach people about the new stuff". If we want to graduate and employ well- rounded and well-trained citizens, we have to make education more efficient just to keep up year-to-year.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. school is not there to teach you procedural knowledge. school is there to teach you how to learn. once this lesson is properly instilled the rest is just frosting on the cake so to speak. fast moving technology doesn't demand people who learned about XYZ in school, it demands people who can constantly learn new things throughout their life.

we need a massive improvement in education because we have been backsliding from "teaching children critical thinking skills" to "make sure they know XYZ so we can shove them along." When you subsidize something you typically get more of it. We've been subsidizing crappy education for decades.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying that school has to teach you every piece of procedural knowledge, but there's a baseline of what someone needs to know to succeed in life, and that list gets longer and longer each generation.

I agree that we also need to innovate beyond our current "shove knowledge down kid's throats" approach, but I think that's a separate issue. Doing that would be an improvement in results over our current system. I'm saying we need innovation just to keep the same results our current system is getting. I definitely think we need our education system to do a better job teaching kids how to think and how to learn and it needs to install in them the desire to keep learning once that diploma's in hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> funded entirely out of the CEO's pocket at this point. not interesting yet.</comment>


Web Development as Tag Soup - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001155.html <comment><USER2> Most projects that use a template based approach to layout end up looking like this. The example in the article is relatively straightforward, in my experience. Things get even uglier when your hot AJAXy javascript gets tossed into the template.

We ended up here because for the past 10 years the imagined process for web app development was that you had a programmer working on the "back end" and this back end spit out stuff to some templates, which a "web designer" could modify when you wanted to change the look and feel. Rails is a project started by people coming from the web design world, so the default approach is to use the typical division between back end and templates.

The workflow which splits things into back end + html templates, with differently skilled people productively contributing to each side of the app doesn't exist in reality. You'll eventually need some logic in the template. The web designers don't want to modify a template filled with logic, so what happens is the programming team gets "wireframes" from the designers, and then modify the templates themselves.

If you're a programmer, and you prefer to generate your html programatically, there are many tools that do this. A few have been mentioned already: seaside, markaby. This approach is great if the programmers have control over the development process from the back end to the front end. However, if you are working with an existing team, you've got 10 years of process inertia fighting against you. Thus, as is the usual answer on Hacker News, your best bet is to start your own company where you can apply the tools and processes with which you are most effective.

<comment><USER3> One advantage to the tag soup approach is that you can just take the templates the designer gives you. Usually they have been created with some WYSWG- software like dreamweaver and contain hundreds of nested tables and divs. Translating all that to a completely different language would be a nightmare. Much easier to identify the parts you have to manipulate programmatically and leave the rest of the code alone...

(This goes mostly for client projects, for my own projects I might have other standards. Although in fact for my moon calendar web site, I ended up doing the same).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _But I have to wonder: is there a better way?_

The answer is a language that can use a unified syntax for both generating markup and server-side functionality at the same time. There's probably only one candidate at the moment, and that's Lisp with a special set of macros that translate to HTML tags on output. The beauty of it is that S-expressions nicely map to markup and can execute stuff on the server. This macro library does exist and I think I saw it here at YCnews. It was a video and unfortunately I can't find it now.

There's one bit missing in this solution though: the client side. Can Lisp be translated to JavaScript? Something suggests that's perfectly possible.

<comment><USER5> Lisp is hardly the only answer. Smalltalk does this just fine in the Seaside framework, which threw out templates to get rid of this exact mess. We write our html, server side code, and client side ajax code pretty much entirely in Smalltalk.

        renderContentOn: html
            50 timesRepeat:
                [ html div
                    class: #SomeStyle;
                    onClick: (html element hide);
                    with: 'Who needs HTML?' ]

<comment><USER3> What I don't like about this approach is that it forces me to learn a new language just to create HTML. I don't mean Smalltalk, but the specific "HTML generation API".

I have to know HTML anyway (because eventually I will have to debug it), so it seems preferable to me to also code the output in HTML.

Another approach against tag soup I have seen is xmlc, which manipulates the DOM tree of the HTML template. The xmlc project doesn't seem to be very active anymore, though.

<comment><USER6> Just curious: how is xmlc not an extra "HTML generation API" that you have to learn?

I mean, it seems we're stuck here. Either we use tag soup templates, or we use some abstraction to express the structure of the page in the language of the generator code. The former requires less training and discipline, but complicates maintenance. The latter is a framework to which you'll need to adhere. No free lunch.

<comment><USER3> You have a point. I guess whatever you do, you need something to output HTML, and something to code logic. What I like about xmlc is that it stays within the standards. DOM is maybe too much to know for HTML developers, but still. It actually worked quite well to have "designers" create HTML templates and manipulate them in the servlet. The designer doesn't need to know anything but HTML, except that he has to use id tags where values in the template have to be manipulated.

Overall, I guess web development is always ugly :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always liked _why's approach with Markaby: <http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/markaby/>

It's "Markup as Ruby". Quite an elegant hack I must say. :)

<comment><USER8> You can do the same with Smalltalk and Seaside of course ;)

<comment><USER9> Does anyone know of something similar for Python?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> He is using convoluted presentational HTML interleaved with logic. This makes it a mess. For example, the upper half of the code seem to be some kind of tabular data, while the lower half seem to use table-markup without any reason at all. This could be made much simpler by using clear semantic markup. He is even mixing style info into the HTML by using things like   and class="gray" - this shows a complete misunderstanding of the concept of separation of content and presentation.

Now, there may be legitimate reasons why you would use presentational markup - e.g backwards compatibility with old browsers, or very complex layout or effects. In that case a transformation should be done - using XSLT, custom tags, or whatever is appropriate for the framework. This markup transformation should be separated from the logical markup just like CSS is.

The code is a bit ugly too - the f and c variables see to be used to switch styles for the first row and for every other row. Again, this is presentational and should be handled by CSS or some kind of transformation system.

Lots of comments suggest that the code could be improved by using round or square brackets instead of pointy bracket. This does nor really reduce the complexity though, the important thing is to simplify by abstracting styling and layout away from logic and structure.

</comment><comment><USER11> In order to put data into the output format you have to have some form of tag soup because that's the only way to put information and display logic into HTML.

The question in my mind is more, are you a developer or web sites or a developer of tools.

Something like .net components or JSP taglibs allows the developer to off load data/widget to a tool developer by just calling a widget.

The two problems I see with that a) historically the people building a lot of those widgets produced markup that _sucked_ b) it's kinda inflexible

</comment><comment><USER12> That code sample is either really old or a good example of why you should read up on the framework your using

</comment><comment><USER13> I've went away from template-like solutions for this reason, moved to XSLT/EXSLT and very happy now.

</comment><comment><USER14> I like using the builder approach in Ruby.

x.html {

      x.head

      x.body {

        for i in 1..5 {

            x.div(:id => i) {

               "yo"

...

but my designer likes the templating stuff better. With a good IDE, it does become pretty easy to tell the code from the template.

</comment><comment><USER15> our webapp is written in php and using javascript ajax calls we keep all php, html and js code seperate</comment>


Proving P!=NP: "...Ryan has taken the first real baby step in decades." - <AUTHOR> http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2010/11/breakthrough-circuit-lower-bound.html

<comment><USER2> Could anybody with a more mathematical background explain what this means?

<comment><USER3> First of all this has no relevance if you're not a complexity theorist. No "practical" impact, not even remotely. A real downer, I know, but I thought that had to be stated up front.

The question is why are complexity theorists excited about this.

When a problem is too hard to solve, you look for easier versions to solve first. Here the easier version is to prove that the complexity class NEXP (which is intuitively vastly more powerful than even NP) is bigger than a certain class of circuits of constant depth (circuits with polynomial depth are known to be roughly equivalent to P, and constant-depth circuits are intuitively vastly _less_ powerful).

ETA: the circuits considered here are "non-uniform," which makes the previous paragraph slightly inaccurate. Nevertheless, the point stands that the goal here is to separate two complexity classes that are intuitively very different in their power.

Circuit lower bounds -- proving that a restricted class of circuits, as above, is in fact limited in its computational power -- have been notorious for their hardness. The reason one would want to prove this kind of statement is not because these circuits are objects of practical interest, but because of the _proof techniques_ that would come out as a side-effect, in the hope that these techniques would be applicable in solving other, harder problems.

So that's the gist of it: the 3 reasons this theorem is exciting are: proof techniques, proof techniques and proof techniques.

Now some of the statements from the post should hopefully make a lot more sense:

 _This approach converts weak algorithms for solving circuit satisfiability questions into circuit lower bounds. Ryan's proof doesn't use deep mathematical techniques but rather puts together a series of known tools in amazingly clever ways._

 _Ryan breaks through the natural proofs barrier in an interesting way. ... he avoids the issue by using diagonalization and so his proof does not fulfill the constructivity requirement of natural proofs._

What's going on here is that there are often meta-proofs in complexity theory showing that a certain approach to proofs won't work. The "natural proofs barrier" being referred to is (apparently) a limit on what you can achieve by a certain type of "natural" construction that is explained in this post by Lipton: [http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/whos-afraid-of- natu...](http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/whos-afraid-of-natural- proofs/)

The one thing I haven't touched upon is why there are "mod m" gates in the circuit class under consideration. That is also (surprise, surprise) related to proof techniques. As Luca Trevisan explains, using mod m gates instead of binary gates or mod-prime gates disables two well-known classes of proofs ("fixing variables to random values" and "low-degree polynomial approximation"), ensuring that some heavy artillery will need to be developed in order to prove statements about them. [http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/a-circuit- lower...](http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/a-circuit-lower-bound- breakthrough/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Diagonalization" strikes again.

There's a lesson here kids: when you can't prove something, "diagonilization" is the proof-tool of choice. Sure, if you include it, you won't have proven anything either, or useful, or correct, but you might just get a PhD.

(For those who are curious: diagonilization is a proof that takes the form: "Imagine you did this impossible thing. With the result of doing that impossible thing, now try and do this other, reasonable thing. You can't! So whatever properties I can derive from not being able to do this other, reasonable thing are true. (Please ignore that the first step is impossible, and focus on my brilliance in discussing the second, reasonable step.)"

That is, in a nutshell, the diagonilization "proof". The rest of the details are just there to make it look like it's actually logic or math. Best not to look too closely.

Also, you'll be shocked, SHOCKED to learn that not a single result in the real world relies on the diagonilization proof (though a lot of real-world PhDs would no doubt be affected by it's loss). _sigh_ Mathematicians are idiots when they try and do logic. Stick with numbers, boys.</comment>


Eric Raymond on CUPS usability [2006] - <AUTHOR> http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html

<comment><USER2> CUPS main developer was hired by Apple in 2007, and the source code was purchased from him, with open source releases ongoing.

That said, there's not much of an improvement to the device configuration, even in OS X, since this came out, if you have to configure the printer manually.

The one big thing that makes OS X printing so easy is that it tends to autodiscover directly connected USB printers, and most recent networked printers support Bonjour which in most cases "just works".

</comment><comment><USER3> Entry is from 2006.

Why isn't there a generic printer driver, like USB HID or USB Mass Storage?

<comment><USER4> Winprinters are supposed to be as cheap as possible; adding a layer of abstraction would cost money. OTOH if you buy a printer with PostScript, Ethernet, and Bonjour it will likely just work with a generic driver.

It's not clear that ESR's problems had anything to do with drivers, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I bet there's a premium market for software and hardware that "just works"...

Nah.</comment>


Being Open and Honest About Startup Process - <AUTHOR> http://andrewhyde.net/being-open-and-honest-about-startup-process/

<comment><USER2> I would love to see this, and it's something that we've played with doing as well. There was some concern that too much transparency or openness could hurt things like funding opportunities.

<comment><USER3> Whatever we learn we will share. I will be meeting and recording conversations with a few investors in the first week with that very question you ended with. Interesting to see how much that would hurt (or help?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see an upcomming YComb book in Jessica Livingston's future: "20-somethings at work."

<comment><USER3> I would love to see that book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to see it in action because I was considering doing the same thing for 14gears, especially if we make it into the ycombinator session after the interview in a few weeks. I've often wondered about the nuts and bolts of YC and it doesn't have fancy video segments like techstars :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I would love to see what goes on during the ramp up to and rollout of a startup. I know what I'm going through right now, but how does my day to day compare to other startup founders?</comment>


Ask HN: Tech Stacks at Healthcare Startups? - <AUTHOR> Anyone have some insight and willing to share what technologies are used at places like 23andMe, Color, Insitro, Freenome, Flatiron, etc [1]? That is, what's running client- and server-side, what cloud platform and how maybe how is it configured, what languages and tooling? For example, you can get some insight from JDs [2, 3] like 23andMe using Scala and HBase.<p>[1] Yes these examples are in distinct life sciences / biotech sectors, that's on purpose.<p>[2] https://www.23andme.com/careers/4018380002/<p>[3] https://insitro.bamboohr.com/jobs/view.php?id=29 <comment><AUTHOR> Open source projects on GitHub:

[https://github.com/23andMe/](https://github.com/23andMe/)

[https://github.com/color/](https://github.com/color/)

[https://github.com/recursionpharma/](https://github.com/recursionpharma/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> GCP has a few case studies that are useful, e.g. Recursion Pharma: [https://cloud.google.com/customers/recursion/](https://cloud.google.com/customers/recursion/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Would be interested in similar insights from energy startups.</comment>


I don't want to be patronized and much less by a software vendor - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bembel.net/2020/04/i-dont-want-to-be-patronized-and-much-less-by-a-software-vendor/ <comment><USER2> It's funny how his tone is condescending and superior through the post as he googles (sorry, uses "search engine of choice") for obvious hacks to remove this file, then at the end there's an update that he just didn't bother to find a checkbox in settings which disables the functionality :)

<comment><USER3> I mean, he found the checkbox in KDE's settings, which should have been respected, and several other technical ways to disable it from starting by itself, all of which should have been respected. It's still a shitty way to operate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So the guy tried every Linux hack he could think of to prevent Skype from starting to no success. Until another user pointed out that there is an autostart checkbox in the options tab. Marvelous.

<comment><USER5> If a software doesn't use standard features tondo standard stuff, and in the end forces users to go through wild goose chases, then obviously there is a problem with the software.

<comment><USER6> Putting settings in a settings menu is non-standard? It takes two seconds to click the menu and check.

<comment><USER7> The thing that is non-standard is the fact that it's a setting at all. It's not up to the application to decide when it should start, it's up to the system. And it should most definitely not override the settings of the system.

<comment><USER8> This is the sort of thing that's typical since time immemorial of software running on an OS that isn't its "preferred" choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the same feeling I got when I discovered that I can't remove[1][2] dropbox's "send with transfer" option from the context-menu in Windows 10. I had no choice but to remove it from my computer.

[1] [https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-installs- integration...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-installs- integrations/How-to-remove-a-context-menu-that-move-to-dropbox-in- windows/td-p/305768)

[2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/dropbox/comments/drlt50/how_to_remo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dropbox/comments/drlt50/how_to_remove_send_with_transfer_from_context_menu/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)

</comment><comment><USER10> When it started, skype was p2p, and it wasn't anymore after microsoft acquired it.

There are alternatives to skype, obviously. I don't understand why most of those alternatives have a hard time becoming more popular. I'm not even sure those alternatives are p2p.

Because it doesn't require a lot of bandwidth to run a p2p chat/video system, so it seems like it's pretty cheap.

<comment><USER11> "Tried to be p2p".

Most of the time, our routers/APs defeated that. Skype would 'fall back' to using a server, which I believe it did 90% of the time.

<comment><USER12> I'm not convinced. It would use every trick in the book to punch holes; stun, upnp, sip, it's own protocol on top of udp, it would even send data over port 80 or 443. And if that failed Skype would use a third Skype client to open a port, or even route the calls through the third party.

I always thought this was the major reason why Skype was so successful. It would penetrate almost any workplace firewall and "just worked" for most people. Shady, yes, but it worked.

<comment><USER11> And all those tricks either worked for you (your endpoint), or they didn't. No middle ground.

I worked 8 years in this environment (collaboration tools) and it was our holy grail to get p2p connections. We tried all those tricks and more. It worked a fraction of the time (at that time, 8 years ago).

<comment><USER12> I guess most holes got patched. I worked with the same things around 2007.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Keybase uses a very similar approach for keeping its autostart enabled. It is necessary to explicitly turn it off in the application's settings, otherwise it would always try to overwrite the autostart file.

<comment><USER14> Now that I think about it Keybase autostarting has never bothered me at all, but I recently installed the alpha release of teams for Linux and I have just been waiting for the time to tinker and find a way to disable it autostarting. Says a lot about my trust for each.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a part of normal human behavior. People often do corrupt things, as they seem beneficial to them. I wouldn't get angry/emotional about it. People often don't care that much about you, unless it benefits them.

Acceptance is important. We all have a human mind with an ego vulnerable to corruption. We think we are the solution to the problem, but we often aren't.

Nobody really likes Skype and Facebook anymore, but I guess short-term it boosted their numbers. Most applications send annoying notifications. The application owners will rationalize and say anything to look good and imply they are trying to improve society. It's just a rigged game, stop engaging emotionally.

</comment><comment><USER16> Two days ago I went through a wild goose chase stopping Skype from autostarting on windows 10; the app didn't have any "autostart" checkboxes inside of it (though it does on my partners laptop).

After bouncing around Task Manager -> Startup, Startup Apps, various startup folders, and some more silly duplicate places, I ended up downloading Microsofts Sysinternals tools and using one of those to stop everything I didn't like the look of.

I _think_ I've put an end to it, but I'm starting to think it might re-appear if I launch it once...

<comment><USER17> Next time you could check msconfig on the Services tab, or else services.msc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was remembering Pulse VPN... I had to install it on my own computer when my work laptop died. Now I have to tolerate it everytime I log on, although I use other user account for job related things.

<comment><USER19> Pulse VPN continues to be actively exploited in the wild.

[https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/aa20-010a](https://www.us- cert.gov/ncas/alerts/aa20-010a)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > I feel being patronized by a large SW vendor who forces me to automatically > run his software on my system after each login.

I know this isn't really related, but we should really get rid of the nasty habit of genderizing people and companies.

In this sentence it would be more appropriate to use "their software," not "his software."

A large software vendor most certainly isn't a "he."

Edit: every time I point this out on a threads I get downvoted. That's fine, I don't really care about that. But it disappoints me to see that because it reflects how so many people are that much against a really simple way to be inclusive. So, I want to emphasize that this is just a polite suggestion, not an inquisition.

<comment><USER21> Fair enough, but FYI: In some languages, _all_ nouns are genderized and there isn't a gender-neutral form. e.g. in Arabic, "table" is grammatically female, while in Hebrew, it's grammatically male.</comment></comment>


Users get message about sexual harassment scandal when trying to delete Uber - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2017/02/22/uber-message-when-delete-account-susan-fowler-blog-post/ <comment><USER2> _Everyone at Uber is hurting_

Fowler is not at Uber. Nobody at Uber is taking responsibility.

No statement from Uber has been explicit that the behaviors are upsetting or that losing an engineer because of company culture as manifested in the workplace was upsetting. The statements have all been about how reading the post made people unhappy (perhaps because the behavior was made public). The loss of company value due to the fallout probably makes people unhappy too. Heck, any bad press will make people unhappy.

Uber's response narrative reminds me of a "What's really important here is how hitting you makes me feel bad about myself" bully.

</comment><comment><USER3> On Tuesday I contacted Uber about Fowler's account. (I've supported them in New York City and Albany, albeit informally, and wanted to know if I needed to make the rounds and recant my support.)

The response? "Thank you for writing in to Uber Support...for any information related to the U.S. immigration ban, please see our Newsroom post..."

Thanks bot. I request again. "I can't speak to your concerns or questions regarding this issue."

Swallow my pride and recant it is...

<comment><USER4> Isn't it illegal to comment on matters before the court or due to appear before the court?

<comment><USER5> It's not illegal, it's just really not beneficial (to the litigant). So generally your lawyers will tell you to shut up, because you might say something that'll torpedo you in court, but it's not illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They must be _really_ bleeding users.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ugh..

I no longer believe in the hope that sexism against women (or queer folks) will disappear..at least not in my lifetime.

Imagine..all the bandwidth wasted on noise like this..

"I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it." \- The Doctor, The Unearthly Child.

<comment><USER8> Let's not restrict our concern to only "sexism against women (or queer folks)". It happens to men too, and men get far less support.

<comment><USER9> Harassment of men in sexual ways is less reported or taken less seriously, in part, because the culture of sexism _against women_ reinforces that male victims of the practice are somehow lesser.

Also, plenty of sex-stereotyping that rises to the level of an "ism" is generally positive for men ("big strong man help me move this <heavy object>" or "big virile man you have a beautiful wife"\--a doubly sexist trope--and so on).

So while I agree we shouldn't reserve concern only for women, we must also not present the issue as though it is somehow equivalent or equally applied.

The fact is that sexism against women is far and away the majority case. We shouldn't choose to address one concern over the other if they were equivalent, but in this case focusing efforts on combating sexism against women will also work to reduce sexism against men naturally. So it's a win-win to focus on and prioritize combating sexism against women.

<comment><USER8> Honestly we have no idea how widespread the problem is for men.

Most men who are victims of sexual harassment, domestic violence, and other forms of sexism don't speak out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish Lyft expanded into other countries. I'm visiting Mexico and Uber seems to be the best way for foreigners to get around. Taxis there are known to overcharge, just like the taxis anywhere else.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Taxis in the Netherlands are often overpriced, outright scams[1], aggressive[2], have curiously non-functioning card payment despite policy, etc. Uber is available, but nothing else. I'd gladly switch to an alternative for a number of reasons.

[1] [http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/09/taxi-driver- ch...](http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/09/taxi-driver-charges- tourists-e485-for-schiphol-to-amsterdam-hotel-trip/)

[2] [http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/02/judges- uphold-...](http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/02/judges-uphold- schiphol-taxi-tout-ban-licenced-cabs-only-allowed/)

<comment><USER12> To be fair, it is mostly just the taxis in Amsterdam that are notoriously bad — precisely because there are so many tourists. These taxi drivers would rather serve tourists with trips to and from the airport exclusively (it pays rather well, and you can easily scam the type of tourist that limits their visit to our country to just Amsterdam).

Taxis in most cities here are actually okay on the whole.

<comment><USER11> I've still encountered the "oh we'll have to go to an ATM instead" in the Hague despite explicitly asking the dispatcher if I could pay by card. That was for an expensive trip to Schiphol, for which 4(!) Uber drivers I had requested decided to cancel.

It can be that the same drivers will work for Uber (black level) and for taxi companies. The taxi companies that I've encountered in the NL don't have anything comparable to an app where you can hail and pay, so for that reason alone Uber still may provide a better service even though the drivers may be the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone who really relies on Uber for transportation in all the countries I travel to (no need to speak the local language) - I'm finally starting to appreciated the conflict associated with trying to be supportive of morally upstanding leaders versus desiring to deserve your fundamental needs.

Ironically, the Uber fiasco has now made me substantially more empathic to the single issue voters (Evangelicals, Right to Lifers, NRA Members, etc...) who voted for Trump regardless of his perceived faults.

<comment><USER14> > I'm finally starting to appreciated the conflict associated with trying to > be supportive of morally upstanding leaders versus desiring to deserve your > fundamental needs.

Using an app that removes the friction of having to communicate with people whose language you do not speak is certainly nice, but it's not a fundamental need. It's a choice and like all choices you trade one thing for another: convenience vs. supporting a stance that you can align morally with.

<comment><USER3> > _it 's not a fundamental need_

Reducing an argument to "needs" or "rights" is circular. Even across well- accepted cultures and moral systems, the lines between "needs" and non-"needs" is diverse ( _e.g._ duty to god(s), duty to family honour, securing one's life, securing one's happiness through artistic expression, _et cetera_ ).

<comment><USER14> Oh, I'm not debating whether it's a need or a right - I take objection to the qualifier "fundamental".

<comment><USER15> "Fundamental" was not an important qualifier in either of your posts. OP did not define what that meant in their context, and therefore it's not fair to nitpick based on that alone. They might as well have said "ticklish" for all the difference it made to their overall point.

If that's really what your whole post is about, why take the take to argue definitions? What does fundamental mean to you exactly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's a _really_ oppressive patriarchy we live in, when a single blog post with no evidence and only hearsay is enough to spike a massive protest and boycott...

<comment><USER17> I think you've just kicked yourself with your jerking knee.

This is _exactly_ the behaviour you'd expect under a really oppressive system: given a low-risk way to protest the oppression, people take it. Women and those sympathetic to the cause of equality can easily delete their accounts and take alternatives, so they do.

Consider the contra: if this _wasn 't_ an oppressive system, if there weren't real causes for complaint, nobody would care-- and so nobody would delete their accounts over the story.

<comment><USER18> Be aware of your underlying bias.

"This is exactly the behaviour you'd expect under a really oppressive system: given a low-risk way to protest the oppression, people take it." Welcome to 2017, where crying wolf has no negative impact on them if proved untrue.

"Women and those sympathetic to the cause" Because by default, _all_ women are automatically part of the _cause_.

"Consider the contra: if this wasn't an oppressive system, if there weren't real causes for complaint, nobody would care-- and so nobody would delete their accounts over the story." Of course, there's never been a case where a person has been really offended, got loads of people on side only to turn out to be false?

Regardless of her respect in SV, we can only look at the facts. Why is she the only person to leave Uber over this? Why have there not been previous cases of this? What evidence is there that the events unfolded as she suggested? All these things and more should be considered.

<comment><USER17> > Welcome to 2017, where crying wolf has no negative impact on them if proved > untrue.

This smells like underlying bias to me, I'm afraid. Crying wolf in many of these areas has frequent negative impact -- hell, speaking out with good cause has negative impact. Who wants to volunteer to be at the centre of the next ethics in game journalism storm?

But this specific action -- choosing to no longer use the services of a company -- does have few repercussions, which does make it a good way to protest.

> Because by default, all women are automatically part of the cause

This could have been worded more felicitously, sure. Substitute "those negatively affect by the oppression and those sympathetic to them" and the point stands.

> Regardless of her respect in SV, we can only look at the facts.

As others have said, it seems you didn't look at the facts here. But regardless, the original point is not about the author, it's rejecting the idea that people are only able to delete their Uber accounts to protest the patriarchy because the very patriarchy they're protesting doesn't exist.

<comment><USER18> > This smells like underlying bias to me, I'm afraid. Crying wolf in many of > these areas has frequent negative impact -- hell, speaking out with good > cause has negative impact.

It said in a mocking sense, but given the benefit of a doubt - it's difficult to read intention.

> Who wants to volunteer to be at the centre of the next ethics in game > journalism storm?

Lot's of people. Not everybody of course. There's lot of sociopaths/psychopaths that exist undiagnosed amongst us. I don't think that has any value in the argument as we really don't know this person.

> But this specific action -- choosing to no longer use the services of a > company -- does have few repercussions, which does make it a good way to > protest.

Ha! PR is one of the most important aspects to a company. Why do you think Google is so successful? Perception often outweighs truth.

> This could have been worded more felicitously, sure. Substitute "those > negatively affect by the oppression and those sympathetic to them" and the > point stands.

It was just a throwaway point about your default stance. We all have unconscious bias, I'm not holding it against you. My point was that we should all be aware of it.

> As others have said, it seems you didn't look at the facts here.

I've now read a lot of articles regarding this topic (it's interesting isn't it?).

> the original point is not about the author, it's rejecting the idea that > people are only able to delete their Uber accounts to protest the patriarchy > because the very patriarchy they're protesting doesn't exist.

> This is exactly the behaviour you'd expect under a really oppressive system: > given a low-risk way to protest the oppression, people take it. Women and > those sympathetic to the cause of equality can easily delete their accounts > and take alternatives, so they do.

But this isn't by definition evidence of that structure existing. Simply agreeing or disagreeing with a point of view can lead to the same outcome. And with "a really oppressive system", I would expect to see a much more solid foundation to the accusations.

Signs this may be false:

\- No evidence of communications

\- No witnesses to the events have come forward

\- No names of the people involved

\- No pursuit for legal rights

\- Disabled comments on blog

\- Uber directly addressing the blog (if they knew they were in the wrong, they would want this to go away)

\- HR woman didn't sympathize with her accusations

Signs this may be true:

\- Uber had an internal meeting regarding the accusations

\- Uber are conducting an internal investigation

\- Uber's history of being a tough working environment

It's simply not conclusive yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Name droping at its finest...

"Eric Holder", "President Obama"...

What's next Uber? Deleting Uber kills kittens?</comment>


Teens Define Themselves in Terms of Positive Traits, Adults More by Social Roles - <AUTHOR> https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/05/28/teenagers-define-themselves-mostly-in-terms-of-their-traits-adults-more-in-terms-of-their-social-roles <comment><USER3> Well a teen today doesn't have a social role, except as a vehicle for future potential, to put it dryly. My grandfather took care of domestic animals while they were grazing (not sure what that's called) before he was 10, so economically that's a different world to what I was doing when I was that age. So a teen today can't really define himself in terms of social roles. We also have a culture of performance-based social-worth, so kids will be openly evaluated "you're good at riding that bike" or "throwing that ball" or "doing schoolwork", and the child's inner dialogue will be like that as well: "Joe is better at this competitive thing", "I am better at this", etc. The only thing that kind of baffles me is that the article says that teenagers mostly define themselves in positive traits, as if it's implied that they're being honest: it's quite counter-cultural to bad mouth yourself. I dispute that we have a significant bias toward defining the self positively, examples are too banal to list.

<comment><USER4> > My grandfather took care of domestic animals while they were grazing (not > sure what that's called) before he was 10

'husbandry' probably.

<comment><USER5> Nope "shepherd" (EDIT: shepherding is only for sheep, herding is the general term via maxerikson). I've never seen husbandry used for individuals, shepherding however is a part of animal husbandry.

<comment><USER6> Herdsman or stockman and there's an old English name that completely eludes me at the moment.

Then also the species variations of shepherd: goatherd, swineherd and cowherd.

Edit: Most herdsmen in the UK had their own number system - 123: yan, tan, teddera etc. I wonder if that's the case elsewhere.

<comment><USER7> It looks like it was a slightly different system in various regions of the UK: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Tan_Tethera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Tan_Tethera)

<comment><USER6> Wow, I knew it varied widely across the country, but not between places only a dozen miles apart. Nor that it tracks back 1,500 years or more - <USER2> presumably explains the many variations!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Adults sink most of their lives into work and raising children. There's not much time for hobbies to define them, relatively. So they define themselves by their work.

</comment><comment><USER9> My experience aligns with this. It makes total sense too. When we were young, much of our focus was on the "me", so we define the self using language oriented that way. As we grow collaboration, relationships, etc. become more important and even the focus of our lives.

Late bloomers also are late to this shift in my experience.

The differences between girls and boys is especially interesting and does make sense. I wonder hows much is nature vs nurture. Anyone have insightful papers on this subject?

</comment><comment><USER10> I thought teenagers defined themselves in terms of their music tastes.

<comment><USER11> Or arbitrary social conventions? Jock, nerd, goth, rebel, etc... in Breakfast Club style.

<comment><USER12> There's no such thing as jock, nerd, goth, rebel etc anymore. Today's teens are actually pretty different than the generations that came before. Some things don't change though. There is still such a thing as asshole and douchebag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems in all history roles were a foundational concepts. Can social groups build on traits alone ?

<comment><USER14> It's more likely for traits to get imprinted in roles, for example priesthoods (shamans), excluded "dirty" social groups (Dalit, burakumin, European Gypsies), and nobles. But these are all big societies.

Perhaps early society, or small enough social groups, can have non-explicit assigned roles and can remember/recognise each other's traits. So who are brave, who are smart/knowledgeable, who are ambitious, who are hardworking, who cheats/lie/snitch to other groups etc.. I think I just described schoolchildren and prison inmates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, duh of course they do -- teenagers ain't done jack squat in life yet, what else are they going to define themselves in terms of?

<comment><USER16> Im surprised that "defining yourself" is even a thing that so many people seem to care about. It seems pretty unnecessary. I'm just ..me. If I was required to give a description of myself for some hypothetical reason then whether that description includes social roles, personality traits, or whatever would depend on the reason I'm being asked.

<comment><USER17> > It seems pretty unnecessary.

Most of the things we spend most of our time on are, strictly speaking, unnecessary.</comment></comment></comment>


The amazing iOS 5 API and iPhone 4S hardware nobody talks about - <AUTHOR> http://www.de-de.com/blog/14177518904-bluetooth CoreBluetooth 4.0 LE <comment><USER2> Is it just me, or did the 5 use cases proposed in the article immediately give you the reaction "Yuck, I'm kind of glad that none of those things actually broadcast that crap (yet)."

<comment><USER3> I'd go a step further and say that the 5 use cases proposed in the article give me the reaction "good thing no one does that yet, because it would probably kill the technology." These crazy would-be advertising innovations that rely on people cooperating with advertisers to _look at more ads_... what are they thinking??

(Wait. They're thinking "money money money", and apparently not much else. Duh. There's the problem.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bluetooth 4.0 LE - Non-paired communication in the 10s of meters range. Very low power. 250kbps or so max speed.

It could be useful for easily interacting with devices, e.g. thermostats, exercise monitors, televisions, cars…

There don't appear to be (m)any devices using it now. But it is in the phone, waiting.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. CSR has a nice-sounding SoC for this, but their dev program sucks for hackers. $10k for a seat? Blegh.

TI is a bit more friendly in this regard, see video in below link.

I'm interested to see if anyone could potentially implement a lightweight data format for send/receive to create an open system for communicating from app- to-mote. Right now, any iPhone receiver app on the store wouldn't be allowed to download any drivers, however a common application-layer protocol transmitting JSON would probably work. After all, it wouldn't be code, just rules on how to interpret it.

<http://www.ti.com/tool/cc2540dk-mini#Related%20Products>

<comment><USER4> I've pondered a similar concept whenever I design an embedded system that needs a user interface. Provide a common formatted set of data (JSON say), a fallback interface (HTML,CSS,javascript), and an identifier for a better interface if the user's device can get to a network and snag an app or updated UI (URL).

Look at all the things around you in daily life with awful user interface devices, and yet you almost certainly carry a really nice UI device in your pocket and probably have a really great device in your bag.

<comment><USER6> UPnP already does this. It can even include a presentation URL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Talking about iPhone and Bluetooth: is there any app that would make it easier to switch BT on and off? BT and WiFi are major power drains, so I always switch them off as soon as I can, but it's a major pain.

By default you have to go to Settings -> General -> Bluetooth -> on/off -- 4 taps, which is ridiculous. It's slightly better for WiFi, "only" 3 taps.

Ideally I'd be able to get buttons on my home screen that will quickly switch these on or off with 1 tap.

<comment><USER8> This guy made some shortcuts usingthe new urls to individual settings. It's not 1 tap (it's 2!), but it's a bit better if you need to use any of the settings a lot.

<http://brdrck.me/settings/>

<comment><USER7> That's sweet. Incredibly useful AND a nice showcase of what's possible with special web clips on iOS.

Installed and donated $10, well worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I highly doubt that Bluetooth 4.0 is going to remove the biggest obstacle to these sorts of applications on the iPhone, which is Apple's review process.

Right now if your Bluetooth device corresponds to one of the handful of profiles with blanket approval from Apple (headsets, keyboards, certain accessibility hardware) you're fine, but if you're trying to do anything as exotic as serial communication with a third-party device you're shit out of luck unless you join Apple's MFI program.

And the MFI program won't even talk to you until you've lawyered up, so it's pretty alienating to anyone who wants to build something as a side project.

The same goes for serial communication. You can buy a nicely-built RedPark cable and make a stunningly beautiful app to talk to whatever device is on the other end, but your app won't make it into the store unless Apple has put the MFI stamp of approval on your device.

Since Apple controls what goes into their App Store, it would require a major shift in their approval policy before we see any significant expansion of apps that talk to arbitrary Bluetooth-enabled widgets.

(If anyone has heard of examples of approved apps using serial or bluetooth communication to talk to unapproved devices, I'd love to know!)

<comment><USER10> I can't say much since I'm still under NDA, but I can tell you that my co- founder and I got all the way through the MFI approval process, without any kind of "lawyering up". Apple was great through the entire process—very eager to help us get our small project started.

The MFI program isn't the easiest process in the world, but it isn't impossible. Definitely doable as a side project if you're motivated.

<comment><USER9> That's good to hear. I remember starting to go through the signup process about a year and a half ago and by the third screen they wanted to know the contact information for my legal counsel.

I may have to revisit my project in light of your comment :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This stuff would probably be pretty useful for turning your iPhone into a remote control if Apple makes a TV

<comment><USER12> And for home automation in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Some things that are not possible yet (though it would be super cool if they were on Apple's todo list):

\- iPhone to iPhone CoreBluetooth communication_

This is a killer. All of the ideas suggested in the article would require custom built hardware- if we could do user-user connections then I think a lot more would be possible.

<comment><USER14> Apple has just revamped their hardware partner program, supposedly providing easier access to BL4 chipsets. Other hardware makers will certainly follow. I bet (and hope) this will be bigger than RFID.

<comment><USER15> What are you attempting to say here?

While Apple has made recent changes to MFi (can't discuss, NDA), these are expressly NOT about access to Bluetooth LE or 4.0 "chipsets".

What IS true is that you don't have to go through MFi to have a device that talks LE to an iOS device.

Is this what you were trying to say?

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I misused "chipsets". AFAIK you need an Apple-certified chip to interface to an iOS device via BT/AirPlay, isn't that right?

I'm just relaying news I've hear somewhere else, feel free to correct me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> looks like GAE quota was reached. fixing now.

article is also mirrored on tumblr @

<http://dedegroup.tumblr.com/post/14177518904/bluetooth>

</comment><comment><USER16> The only problem with all of these use cases is very few people walk around with their bluetooth on all the time! Cool technology but I don't see this getting picked up in the way you're imagining.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ironically this article looks terrible on an iPhone 4S <http://i.imgur.com/H4FXD.jpg>

<comment><AUTHOR> oh man. can you retry? i think it's cause not all the assets loaded (ran out of free quota on GAE) fixing now.

<comment><USER17> Ah! Much much better now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Usually Apple would use this kind of API to actually power some cool feature. Wonder why they didn't?

<comment><USER19> Yet.

Seems like a really good technology for, say, an Apple TV remote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is the page layout broken for anyone else?

(Me: Chrome 17.0.963.2 dev-m on Windows).

<comment><AUTHOR> is it still broken? rand out of quota for a few minutes so maybe not all the assets loaded.

<comment><USER20> Looks good now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anything wireless that doesn't require some sort of pairing is crap.

Maybe fine for tv remote if you still want to be vulnerable to tv-be-gone. But since even tvs now have powerful cpus, not even it is worth

<comment><USER22> What about audio? I'm incredibly frustrated that I have 4 different devices capable of exporting Bluetooth audio, but I have to go through a bug-ridden and annoying pairing process to hook one up to my car or home stereo, so I don't even bother.

<comment><USER23> If you had non paired audio anyone walking by could hijack your audio stream

<comment><USER22> First, as security breaches go, that's pretty minor. Someone could also shit on my front doorstep too, but somehow it doesn't happen that often. Second, there are better ways to link devices than pairing; for instance, hit a button on the receiver to see the closest device by signal strength, while also remembering all previous devices. Or, a UI for booting out the device ID of an accidental linkage or ne'er-do-well.

Pairing makes sense for sensitive data usage, such as tethering. But it's a broken pattern for consumer purposes like multimedia and gaming.

<comment><USER23> It's not that big of a security breach but it'd absolutely be annoying is anyone could do it on the train. People don't steal your mail but as soon a firesheep came out a dozen jokers a block were logging in to people's facebook.

Make it so it doesn't interrupt your headphones and then all of a sudden it's trivial for anyone to listen to at least half of your telephone calls.

Most BT headsets already pose a serious everyday security risk to people who might be targets of surveillance by as minor players as private detectives or journalists due to both protocol and chipset weaknesses. BT security has been improving since then, but the last thing it needs to do is go backwards because you can't be bothered to pair a device with your car once(!)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


If your database has Mass. residents, you need a security plan per Massachusetts - <AUTHOR> http://www.sqlmag.com/print/sql-server/A-New-Law-that-Will-Change-the-Way-You-Build-Database-Applications.aspx

<comment><USER3> The title itself is a little FUD-ish.

According to this link: <http://www.leapfile.com/MA-201-CMR-17> , it only applies to the following subset of data:

\--snip-- According to the definitions in 201 CMR 17.02, personal information is a Massachusetts resident's first name or first initial and last name IN COMBINATION with any one of more of the following data related to the person: social security number, driver's license number or state-issued identification card number, financial account number, credit or debit card number with or without any required security or access code or password that would permit access to financial information. \--snip--

<comment><USER4> Well - that's enough to make it relevant whenever there's a card transaction... that's going to affect a lot of people.

This however "and perhaps the rest of the world" is complete FUD - <USER2> outside of US cares about US state laws (unless you have some branch there of course - but then you already know you have a lot more paperwork to do).

<comment><USER5> There's no need to store any of those things in your database in order to allow card transactions.

<comment><USER4> Unless I misunderstood this, it affects you even if you only transfer the information to a 3rd party:

 _17.04: Every person that owns or licenses personal information about a resident of the Commonwealth and electronically stores or transmits such information..._

Also many online shops allow you to save the info in case you want to reuse it in the future.

<comment><USER6> If you're not storing the information, presumably you don't need to encrypt the data that you're not storing. You do need to encrypt it while transferring it (i.e. use https instead of http), but if you don't do this already, shame on you!

Similarly, if you're storing credit card numbers in plaintext in a database, shame on you! That's worse than storing plain-text passwords.

I think the worst parts of this law are the "you have to file with the Massachusetts government" aspects. The technical stuff is basically common- sense data security that everyone should already be doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ummm, what's the legal theory that allows a US state to regulate out of state commerce like this?

On the other hand, I wouldn't want to be a web company based in Massachusetts and this might have more than a small effect on the Boston area's attractiveness to many startups.

<comment><USER8> It would be the US Constitution, where it gives all rights that are not explicitly enumerated to the states.

<comment><USER9> True, but the commerce clause is enumerated in the constitution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> After reading the law, I'm either missing the part where data has to be encrypted in all databases or (more likely) the article is misleading. As I read it, the data in question has to be encrypted during transmission (SSL, no big deal) or while stored on a portable device. Nowhere did I get the sense that a web application must maintain encrypted database records at all times.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I do like the idea of encrypting user names across the wire, but "to maintain a Written Information Security Plan (WISP) and file it with the state of Massachusetts" goes way too far, imho. I am not a lawyer nor a database geek, so perhaps your take will differ...

UPDATE: "Massachusetts does not require that written information security programs be filed at this time, just that they exist," according to a second article, [http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/government/show...](http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/government/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224400426) . That is alot better.

<comment><AUTHOR> For reference, the law's URL, which was cited in slantyyz's reference, was out of date. Here is the current link; <http://www.mass.gov/Eoca/docs/idtheft/201CMR1700reg.pdf></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get started with stock photography - <AUTHOR>

I've seen the other post about where to buy stock photography http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445106.  I'd like to figure out how to produce some.  I have a Nikon Coolpix P100 and an iPhone 4.<p>What kinds of things should I be taking pictures of?  What sites should I be submitting content to? <comment><USER2> I wrote about this topic a long time ago and as part of my reporting put together a list of tips^: [http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/01/stock-photography- cash-tech...](http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/01/stock-photography-cash-tech- egang08-cz_tb_0902stock.html)

^They are in slideshow format. Sorry!</comment>


Paging Design M.D. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kyrobeshay.com/paging-design-md <comment><USER2> FWIW, this is pretty much exactly what we do @ [http://elationemr.com](http://elationemr.com)

I understand the cynicism in a lot of the comments here about it being impossible to compete against existing juggernaut systems, ridiculous 500k servers for small group practices, and even the bits about nobody caring enough to fix it.

I've been in Health IT for something like a dozen years, and it's true that it can be a serious pain in the ass. At Elation I think we're doing the right things to turn the tide. We're selling a really amazing clinically focused EMR system to physicians (not to their C-level hospital administrators), and so far they love it.

There's a ton to do and we're a tiny team. If this problem resonates with you please do get in touch. It's easy to find folks that want to work on dropbox or the next YC Airbnb-for-X but not as trivial to find folks thrlled (or crazy enough?) to tackle the mission we're on. My contact information is in my profile.

Apologies for the plug, seemed appropriate enough to be warranted.

</comment><comment><USER3> GUI and visualization tools seem to be an afterthought for the big EHR vendors. Peeling the surface layers off of EHR systems, it seems they are essentially big ERP systems with a medical bent. So they require multitudes of system-building consultants, nine figure purchase prices, and a bigger focus on making sure billing/procedure auditing can be done by administrators than facilitating MD/patient dataflow.

FTA: "why wasn't the EHR already doing the legwork, displaying these potentially pertinent correlations and data points, painting a more descriptive clinical picture, instead of leaving me to wade through mounds of information?"

Because the focus of the EHR system is about billing and tracking medical record treatment for hospital administrators (auditing) rather than enhancing clinical treatment and understanding for MDs?

Probably a large opportunity here to do cool and better GUI and visualization, but good luck getting past the EHR vendor guard dogs to even read-only access the back-end data.

<comment><USER4> >but good luck getting past the EHR vendor guard dogs to even read-only access the back-end data.

I've had first hand experience with this. If you're going to build a startup in this area it is important to be a stealth mode as possible. It's also important to have a budget for legal services and LegalZoom™ won't cut it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I completely agree. I work with several of these, and I'd really like to help make them better.

There's no reason why an EHR used by 100 employees needs a $500K Dell server to run, doesn't support load balancing (but needs it, since the app can't handle more than 40 users, so you need a bunch of VMs on that server) and uses up hundreds of gigs in the database (wikipedia is like, what, 50gb uncompressed...?)

They suck, there's a market.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a physician. While musing about clinical reasoning based on robust tools like Kanren and miniKanren, I wrote a few thoughts that parallel the article:

"Much if not all of the current talk around clinical software unfortunately stops at electronic health records (EHR) – the paper chart (with all its limitations) mirrored in various incarnations of 'the cloud' (with the additional disadvantage of confidentiality rot). For all the endless effort put into EHR, it was a problem solved long ago with nothing more than punched- card-fed mainframes. All we are seeing now is the iterative pursuit of competing data interchange platforms."

"Physicians and researchers need software that advances the goal of making routine things routine beyond just the level of data storage and retrieval… _to decision support, data discovery and visualization, unsupervised ontology construction, and scripting of reasoning agents. "_

[http://apps.keithflower.org/?p=238](http://apps.keithflower.org/?p=238)

</comment><comment><USER7> Would it be easy to sell a more advance EHR to hospitals if you could show it would cut down on malpractice? Sounds like all the comments are saying penetrating the hospital market has huge barriers. But if this is obviously better, and could save time & lives, they should use it.

</comment><comment><USER8> forget design, from what I've seen of these systems, physicians would be happy to have a system that doesn't require them to log in 4 times in some rube goldberg contraption of a VNC in order to actually open the medical record...

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a common complaint amongst doctors. I'm not exactly sure how a call for design can really work. How can a future startup compete with these juggernaut EHR systems on design alone?

</comment><comment><USER10> tl,dr:

Better design will save lives, and EHR sucks.

1 is true, 2 is true but nobody cares enough to fix it.

You cannot begin to imagine the amount of fuckheadedry on parade in any hospital by the combined egos and efforts of doctors, administrators, and computer janitors.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this what IBM Watson is being built to fix?</comment>