Ask HN: Review my webapp PCPartPicker: pick parts, build a pc, compare prices - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I'd love to get some feedback from the HN community on a webapp side project I've been working on recently.  In the spirit of November launch month, I'd like to offer up PCPartPicker:
http://pcpartpicker.com
PCPartPicker provides computer part selection, compatibility guidance, and multi-part pricing comparisons for DIY PC builders.
I originally created it to solve a problem I had at my day job: quickly pricing out cheap systems for a small cluster I was building.  After talking with friends and colleagues it appeared there might be utility for the PC building community.  I was encouraged by feedback to a HN comment regarding hard drive prices (here:  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1546145 ), so I decided to continue on with the concept.
My target audience is DIY PC builders who are building systems of moderate complexity.  I think with some work I can target both novice builders as well as more serious builders/gamers.  However, I'd like to validate the concept further before investing considerably more time.
Any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks! Philip <comment><USER3> I really like the "Featured System" functionality.

In fact, I think you should focus on the Featured System thing. I am a casual DIY part picker, and I would rather just browse several community vetted configurations.

Other people are more interested in building a system from scratch, or commenting on other people's configs.

Now, imagine a "fork this configuration" option! So a builder can fork someone else's system but make some slight mods.

\---

Please add a Disqus thread to the bottom of each page, so people can comment on the configuration or part.

\---

Also, if you are buying a bunch of parts, you might be able to save money on shipping by ordering parts from fewer distributors. Incorporating shipping cost would be another useful feature, but perhaps tricky to implement.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea of promoting the featured system aspect more. The ability to fork a configuration is already there - perhaps not visible enough (the "Edit this part list" on permalinked/featured part lists).

Disqus was a great idea. I've added it to the bottom of the part list pages. I'll look into adding it to the individual part pages.

<comment><AUTHOR> (Too late for an edit, but I'm going to roll back the Disqus integration - <USER2> least until I settle on a community involvement strategy.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats on launching this, it's great. I'm in the UK so obviously my first suggestion is UK webshop integration =)

The site is simple, clean and easy to use. I noticed that a lot of the small touches of UI which add to the experience were there as well - eg a little tick next to each component when you've selected it and then it does go away again when you click remove. (Sounds straight forward I know, but great attention to detail)

Here is my feedback - I've thought of a fair few things - please don't take that as a negative, it just has lots of potential!

1\. Lots of the items you have lots and lots of components, which makes it quite difficult at first to look at. I have a few ideas but don't know if they will help

\- RAM - perhaps tabify the interface (eg have tabs of 12GB, 8GB, 6GB, 4GB). You are even listing 256MB ram sticks on there. No-one should be buying 256mb of ram. Educate your users and don't allow anything less than 4GB.

\- Hard Disks - you could tabify that by SSD, and then speed perhaps?

\- CPU - tabify by number of cores or clock speed?

2\. the tag line "Pick your parts. Build your system. Compare and Share" is pretty good - how about "Pick your parts. Build your own PC. Compare and Share" - system is ambigous, PC clarifies what it is, and ties in with your domain better

3\. Bring in ratings / reviews from other sites, link to them etc...

4\. Have a "E-mail me when this system price drops below $xxx" form

5\. I might want to buy all the items from one store - give me a comparison between 'source parts from anywhere' v one store. I don't know if you can get stock status as well, but that would be good.

6\. You don't have monitors or software. You could have a "I also need Windows" button or something like that

7\. With so many components on the graphs, some of them are grouped together so tightly, that's it almost impossible to distinguish them without a lot of tedious hovering. Not sure how you can improve that

8\. Add a Reset / remove all button to the system build page

9\. Once I've made my component choice - when looking at the component page, put that clearly at the top of the list - rather than a little box in the right hand side?

10\. Fill out with content - suggest enthuiast websites, "Why build a custom PC?" etc etc

11\. White label it and sell it to pc component e-stores.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, lots of feedback - much appreciated.

Re: 1: This is becoming a common theme, so it's definitely something I need to address. I like your suggestions on how to break it down into more manageable sub-categories.

Re: 2: Changed it, thanks.

Re: 3, 4, 6, 8, 10: All definitely on the roadmap.

Re: 5: On the System Build page, there's a tab for viewing the price breakdown by merchant. Is that along the lines of what you were thinking? -- <http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/by_merchant/>

<comment><USER4> Thanks for that on point 5, didn't see it, but very nice

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks and works great.

It would be an improvement to ajaxify the process so it doesn't refresh every time I choose a product.

Also, start marketing this like, pronto! Open a blog linked to it where you benchmark and review hardware and build a community as fast as you can around it. That way your idea is harder to steal by the big players (and they'll look bad by doing so exponentially), and you'll have a ton more leverage to have an affiliate program going on with the retailers.

Finally, implement user accounts so they can save their systems and configurations, and compare between them in with a spreadsheet like view. This can also go hand in hand with social features and will help create a community around your product.

Good Luck!

<comment><USER6> I think the static page views are fine, for what it's worth.

As for protecting the idea, I think the only real concern is that one of these merchants hires a contractor to copy the concept. But their version will be fundamentally flawed because it won't have price history (against their interest) and price comparison.

<comment><USER5> It's not just protecting the idea, it's about creating a user base and rapport to go with it. I can go out and create a worse version right now, but market it immediately and create a community around it, and then boom I have a thriving business. This has a great potential not only to grow as an app to plan your machine ahead of time, but it can also easily become the go to place for hardware reviews and articles on DYI computer integration, and the number one spot for hardware searches.

This can become the Google of PC Hardware searches and as such MUST be protected and monetized by means of an affiliate program ASAP!

By the way, not a big fan of the name. Something like PCHardware.com seems like a better fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome tool, great idea, great implementation,

Couple ideas: 1) On the CPU and HDD graphs if I just keep my mouse over the dot the tool tip blinks in and out, if I mouse over the tool tip it stops blinking (this is with chrome)

2) I like the review info on CPUs it would be handy to have it for other components (from new egg or amazon ratings perhaps)

3) It would be useful to have more categories for mother boards (e.g. RAID support, USB 3 support, ect...)

4) Adding a social component would be handy. Let people build, share and vote on builds. Basically I would like see the top three builds for a development machine that the rest of community has selected.

5) I would prefer if the filters on the right were defaulted to collapsed if everything is checked in them.

6) It would be nice if the graph resized, If i just select SSD's on the HDD $/Capacity graph all the data points are on the left 1/8th of the screen, it would be nice for the graph to resize based on what data points are being shown.

Great job I will definitely use this to spec out my next build.

</comment><comment><USER8> I _really_ love the site. It's a great concept. The next step is providing a service charge (25%~?) to build the computers and ship them to people.

I'd also make it much more ajaxy, it's currently too slow! Also, if it's possible, a picture of the computer so far would be cool, and would be a major innovation.

</comment><comment><USER9> Two things:

1\. If you could somehow get ratings on quality/reliability of parts from other sites, that would greatly help in picking individual parts.

2\. If you could also make it group the parts into a small set of vendors so that you wouldn't have to buy from more than X (user defined int) companies, that would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestions, thanks. I'll definitely look into both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be nice to have something where it searches pre built systems with 'specs like this'.

Sometimes it is cheaper to buy a pre built system with all (or most) of the right parts than it is to build it yourself.

Another option would be to let users spec out the system and then let manufacturers bid on delivering a system with those or similar specs.

A manufacturer that buys parts wholesale will be able to give a significant price reduction over buying all of the parts on ebay or amazon or egghead. (And any parts they have sitting around are just wasted capital, so they want to move parts as long as they can make money on them... you could even let them sell excess parts).

You could take a cut of the money saved through the bid process/whoesaling.

</comment><comment><USER11> Clickable: <http://pcpartpicker.com>

</comment><comment><USER12> Cool idea. I suggest also asking for feedback over at Reddit:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/hardware>

</comment><comment><USER6> Great idea. Seems obvious in hindsight, but I can't recall ever seeing it before.

From a feature perspective I'd like to see more reviews on parts, price to performance indications, and part hierarchies.

For example, I know what an i7 is - but I don't know what the difference is between an i7 870 and an i7 875k. Once I select an i7 I'd like to see descriptions, a breakdown of reviews, and prices to benchmark performance.

From a business perspective you should start to come up with a business model. This is a really cool site but it's also a lot of work to do right. Do any of these sites have affiliates? If not, you may be able to get merchants or hardware manufacturers to pay for paid messages, but that seems doubtful. So failing that it's possible someone like newegg would want to buy this tool from you, but they'd probably just copy you instead.

Other ways to make money: Show people how much money you saved them via comparing merchants and ask for a donation. Sell premium features to people who buy in batches for companies or local shops. Offer to assemble PCs for people. Maybe you can make some money selling MS software licenses to people.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very nicely done! What I'd enjoy seeing: A listing of builds/combinations, which can be filtered by price, popularity, etc. Other HNers have suggested this too so I imagine this feature would be popular.

Along the same lines, it's not so much the parts that should be emphasized, but the whole: combinations of hardware that are known to work well together, and deliver the best value. So perhaps the site name/domain should use terms like "rig," "system," "combo" etc.

There may be copyright issues, but two sources of vetted combinations are the system guides at The Tech Report, and ars technica; would be nice to have those on your site:

<http://techreport.com/articles.x/19868>

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2010/09/the-ars- system...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2010/09/the-ars-system-guide- september-2010-edition.ars)

</comment><comment><USER14> I like it. It could be more ajax-y and not have as many page refreshes.

It could also provide more info on individual parts. I do a LOT of spec- reading when I buy hardware. Customer reviews usually factor in as well.

I would like to be able to pick which retailers I want it to use prices from. I only shop a few places, so some of them wouldn't really be the best price for me.

I didn't have any confidence that it matches my CPU and RAM and Motherboard properly because of the warning on the page. I thought that was the main draw, but having to match those things manually defeats the purpose for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I agree - the individual parts do need more information, and that's something I plan on augmenting. Regarding compatibility - I'm slowly getting to the point where I can guarantee compatibility. There's a lot of combinations and data points to fill in. It gets a little complicated with things like CPU/Motherboard compatibility, which can vary depending on bios revision. I've been working on back-filling that data both with web scraping (have to be careful - even some manufacturer spec pages have errors) and by hand where necessary. In time though I intend on filling in the gaps there.

<comment><USER6> Error on the side of caution and require qualified editors to fill in cases like bios revisions. There are so many parts to pick from, it's okay if you error safe and exclude 10%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Excellent idea. I'm looking at the cpu tab now -- will probably apply to all tabs; how about a general "value" gauge that's the average of all values (for non-star data such as speed, cores and price, scaled to the full data set's minimum and maximum -- inverted for price, so high price = low score)?

edit: The video card tab is very lacking in attributes. I absolutely need to know how many VGA, DVI and HDMI outputs a card has. (Also, adding the same to the mobo tab would be useful.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Great work!

I really loved the Price/performance CPU chart. I do find it hard to believe that the Intel Core i5-661 3.33Ghz Dual-Core Processor is much faster than the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor. But I guess it depends on how TomsHardware, etc. did the benchmarks.

One nitpick, the warning about not having enough slots on the motherboard for the amount of RAM is not visible enough because it's at the bottom of the page and in a gray font.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've put in an incompatibility notice closer to the top that should be a bit more prominent - it's not perfect, but hopefully a little more visible until I can figure the right way to present it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congrats it's great.

Some vendors in France have this kind of in-house services to build a PC with a subset of parts.

Here some links, so you can see it (it's in french but you should find your way) :

[http://www.pcbysurcouf.com/Configurateur/configurateur.aspx?...](http://www.pcbysurcouf.com/Configurateur/configurateur.aspx?idNoeud=3471)

<http://www.ldlc.com/assistants/devis.html>

</comment><comment><USER18> It would be nice to be able to change the columns in the matrix when selecting a part, and sort/filter on arbitrary criteria that you already know about.

For example, when I pick CPUs, I like to compare cache sizes. You already pull those items out in the View section, but they aren't available in the matrix.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you included Canadian stores (NCIX.ca, Amazon.ca, etc), this would be immensely helpful. Also, including Opterons and Xeons (and their motherboards) would be nice.

This app is incredible. I wished for something like this years ago while building PC's off pricewatch. thanks for making it happen.

</comment><comment><USER20> Without a doubt one of (if not) the best idea/execution I've seen on here. Very well done, congrats!

</comment><comment><USER21> Ahh, love this idea. Was going to use PriceMyPC.com / PriceAPC.com for it and have it affiliate the parts efficiently. I never worked past the hw compatibility issue. Great to see it working.

</comment><comment><USER22> Great Idea

Suggestion: it might not be a bad idea to include the age of a certain part.

</comment><comment><USER23> What a great idea and site! Great execution.

Are you making money through this via affiliate sales? With a little more polish and popularity, this site could make a ton of cash that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the intent - the merchant price links are affiliate links when possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very cool.

I didn't see a link to back out of the page for adding a component, for example a hard drive, other than the browser back button of course. Maybe it's there and I'm blind?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're not blind. :) Once you click from the System Build view to choosing a component, there isn't a backlink to get back to your part list. That's a part of the navigation I couldn't figure out a clean way to present well, at least with the current design. You can, however, click on the System Build button along the top to get back to your part list from any page.

<comment><USER24> A cancel button?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> this is genius.... It's so true that whenever I'm on newegg.com I also go out to browse amazon, then tigerdirect, then my neighborhood Fry's electronics. Good look on this. I think this can be big!

</comment><comment><USER26> This is really cool. Wish I had this when I built my PC.

</comment><comment><USER27> very nice! Was planning on building a PC after I get paid on the 15th. Will without a doubt use this. Thanks!</comment>


I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/?ck_subscriber_id=411910246 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20183001](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20183001)

</comment><comment><USER3> This article has been discussed to death on HN. It's been posted 13 times by my count, the most recent of which was a mere 24 days ago! Is there some reason why we need to rehash it again, or is this just spam?

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=I%20Can%20Tolerate%20Anything%...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=I%20Can%20Tolerate%20Anything%20Except%20the%20Outgroup&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><USER4> It only ever got traction twice. Once four years ago and once 24 days ago. That's hardly "discussed to death." OP probably just thought it was a relevant thing to share and all the upvoters seem to agree. Not everyone checks HN constantly.</comment></comment>


A Ransomware Attack Messes with Texas - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/ransomware-strike-local-texas-government-agencies/ <comment><USER2> > "single threat actor"

One person is responsible for not keeping patches up to date in the IT of 23 government entities? /s</comment>


Visual Illustration of How the Rails Stack Works - <AUTHOR> http://strd6.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/rails.png

<comment><USER2> What's the point?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you Source Control your notes? - <AUTHOR> I've been getting more serious about taking notes lately.
I've moved to MarkDown, and so far, have been filing them away in my company share.
Despite our size, we don't have a wiki that supports markdown. And the Wiki we do have is woefully lacking in organization and content.
I was considering moving my notes into our Centralized Version Control system, where most of our developers go every day, and understand the structure of very well.
This will also ensure that all developers have access to this documentation. With the added benefit of version control and a proper review process for changes.
Sub-Question: What are your note taking habits? <comment><USER2> We believe in versioning notes, hence built [http://write.pub](http://write.pub)

Please take it for a spin, & share feedback</comment>


Telling Photos from the Mark Zuckerberg Presidential Campaign Trail - <AUTHOR> http://observer.com/2017/05/mark-zuckerberg-running-for-president-photos/ <comment><USER2> Zuckerberg has the charisma of a damp rag, he'll embarrass himself if he actually runs for president. Clinton had experience and all the data in the world thanks to Eric Schmidt and still lost to a novice because she lacked any charisma at all.

The fact he thinks corny stuff like this actually makes him more relatable to the average american really says it all about how out of touch he is.

<comment><USER3> Could you explain further?

I was very impressed with his ability to learn Chinese and speak it semi- formally in a room filled with Chinese. I think that showed a certain charisma.

I'm not personally a fan of him and I agree that this stuff is representative of being out of touch, yet this behavior does win elections.

I think he would actually be a decent centrist (Obama-style) candidate. He's mildly progressive (not full out Bernie) has no serious negative legacy (this imperfect pledge to run a mile a day stuff is a non-starter) like HRC.

<comment><USER2> The reason trump was successful is because he didn't apologize for being rich. On the other end you have hillary clinton pouring beer terribly and spending hours planning which meal to get a chipotle to appeal to the most voters. People aren't dumb and they see right through that type of stuff.

As for charisma nearly every interview I've seen of him has been painfully awkward and it's pretty hard to learn something like that.

On paper he's a great candidate, but on paper nobody thought Trump would make it past the Iowa primaries and now he's in the white house.

<comment><USER4> Trump was successful not because he was unapologetic for being rich, but rather because he said things that a large plurality of voters wanted to hear and was able to win states that gave him a big victory in electoral college votes. The only people who didn't think he had a chance are those who cannot hear or understand those voters, and what's disturbing about that is that inability to understand those voters is supposed to somehow delegitimize his victory.

<comment><USER5> What delegitimizes him is that he is a notorious lier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He would/will get slaughtered. The guy lives in a bizarro world, surrounded by a legion of handlers and yes-men. I strongly believe that history will be very, very unkind to him.

<comment><USER7> Replace "he" with Trump and I would've agreed with you 6 months ago.

<comment><USER8> Now imagine Zuckerberg 2020 VS Trump 2020. Who has better chances?

<comment><USER9> I'd have my money on Waldo 2020, much more loveable

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "In regards to finding a family to visit, the local newspaper The Vindicator reported he asked his staff to find Democrats who voted for Donald Trump."

No doubt an easy task using GraphQL or whatever more powerful version they have internally.

</comment><comment><USER11> I keep saying this to anyone who will listen — I doubt very much that he's interested in running for anything. As CEO of Facebook, if he's not as powerful as a US president yet, he very well might be in 5 or 10 years. He hinted in his globalization "manifesto"[1] that he wants Facebook to become what the UN could not be. I recommend everyone read it in full, as well as some critical commentaries.[2][3][4]

If anything, it's much scarier to think he sees this as a necessary part of his job as Facebook CEO.

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building- glob...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global- community/10154544292806634/)

[2] [https://medium.com/@CharlieBeckett/facebook-grappling- with-p...](https://medium.com/@CharlieBeckett/facebook-grappling-with- political-reality-4a18999f12aa)

[3] [http://www.roughtype.com/?p=7651](http://www.roughtype.com/?p=7651)

[4] [https://stratechery.com/2017/manifestos-and- monopolies/](https://stratechery.com/2017/manifestos-and-monopolies/)

<comment><USER12> I completely agree. I think people like Zuck and Gates are better off doing work via the private sector and philanthropy.

Also, regarding the types of people he's meeting. Yes, they are people one would expect a politician to meet with while campaigning. However, given our past election I don't think it's surprising that a man as intelligent as Zuck would want to meet them. He seems to genuinely care in his mission statement, even though I believe he's out of touch, and this tour does truly make sense as it is stated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone have any information on what his political views actually are? I assume he'd run as a Democrat but that provides me with little comfort given his history.

<comment><USER14> Please don't consider the facts-loose movie based on the tabloid hit piece as history. It's a great movie, but it intentionally washes the story out in ways make the characters look absolutely horrible.

I highly recommend _The Facebook Effect_ by David Kirkpatrick. It's a great read and a far more accurate book on the history of Facebook and who Mark Zuckerberg really is. [https://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company- Connec...](https://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company- Connecting/dp/1439102120)

<comment><USER13> I'm not concerned about any arbitrary depiction in a movie ( _The Social Network_?), I take issue with the move fast and break things attitude taken by the platform he created regarding news distribution, privacy, individual liberties, and mental health.

<comment><USER14> I'm as big of a critic of the implications of social networking as anybody, but:

> news distribution

Increased people's ability to share news with their friends.

> privacy

Made changes to give users nearly complete control over it (outside of the very legitimate concerns around advertising targeting, but does anyone really think running a successful advertising company disqualifies someone to be president?)

> individual liberties

Hasn't yet formed a paramilitary group of SA-like jack booted thugs to hit opponents with billy clubs, confiscate their guns, and replace their health insurance with death panels.

> and mental health

Is working on hiring more staff to deal with suicide intervention issues, which they have to do either way because the police ultimately get involved and start issuing subpoenas, and it's illegal to not respond to valid subpoenas in a timely fashion.

<comment><USER13> > Increased people's ability to share news with their friends.

So they can now share a filter bubble. Also, the US 2016 Election debacle followed by a push to become the arbiter of truth on the internet (after significant complaint and shaming from users)

> Made changes to give users nearly complete control over it

After significant complaint and shaming from users.

> does anyone really think running a successful advertising company > disqualifies someone to be president?

I do? I'd prefer someone with his skill level in solving the worlds problems, not telling the world about how he's solving them.

> Hasn't yet formed a paramilitary group

I'm not arguing they're using physical violence. They're an ad company.

> Is working on hiring more staff to deal with suicide intervention issues

After significant complaint and shaming from users.

Notice a trend? I've watched them exploit people over the past decade. I don't like what facebook has done to my more vulnerable friends. Elected office is the same deal, only you (inexplicably) get to ignore the public outcry every time you screw up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Imagine what our country would look like if the guy who owns every bit of people's digital legacy and information is now running the country of people who depend on his services? Now imagine if someone like Trump, who appears just a bit upset anytime he is criticized, had access to everyone's Facebook account in this country and others?

Just my two cents but, would anyone truly believe that Zuck has the public's best interest in mind? If so, what if his interpretation of the public's best interest is built around a growing dependence on platforms he's created?

</comment><comment><USER16> I get that the whole thing smells like overpolished PR, but personally I think it's a neat idea and more power to him for just getting out there and meeting so many people.

</comment><comment><USER17> I will believe this is a genuine and earnest attempt to connect with people, because what other options do you think he really has?

It's all too easy to find some way to criticize his actions: Meet with Kids? - FB shouldn't and doesn't target kids for privacy reasons. He's the CEO of the most massive and influential social media company, he'd better do more than just sit behind a computer, but he also can't spend all his time socializing either.

</comment><comment><USER18> According to wikipedia facebook has 17,048 employees. Couldn't he have chosen 50 of those instead ?

<comment><USER19> All 17,048 employees are in the same open-plan office. Wouldn't be much of a tour.

<comment><USER18> I meant that he could easily find one from every different state there. Not much of a tour indeed but it would fulfill the objective he set himself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Corporate CEO goes on cross-country tour to show "regular folk" how relatable he is.

Barf. What shit "news".

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't think anyone wants him to run... and he's young. 2020 he'd be barely old enough to be on the ballot. Lots of time left...

I think this is some sort of weird "I'm a billionaire and I make money by selling your secrets, here let me show you pictures of me doing human things so you won't think I'm creepy" tour.</comment>


The End of the Free Internet? - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=11128321

<comment><USER2> I remember the internet before it became a corporate whorehouse and it was fine. Back when the newspapers didn't take it seriously and every little mom and pop shop didn't have a website. Before people felt the need to tweet every time they take a dump. Back when it was just people talking to people.

I say hey - if you can't make a buck and that's the only reason you're trying to communicate then just go away. I'm not logging on to spend money... go get a real job.

<comment><USER3> I kind of like mom-and-pop places having websites. Not necessarily the honest to god mom-and-pop's in the middle of nowhere, but it's handy that more than just the chains, franchises and giants have web pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Google, Times of London, New York Times Consider Paid Content Plans"

Google, Times of London, New York Times is not, however hard it is to snap out of that belief, the internet.

Another point totally oblivion to many authors of such articles is that the internet is a WORLD WIDE web. For many europeans for instance "internet" is still "free internet". Content is free. News is free. Information is free.

Personally I wouldn't say it's free per se though. Rather "publicly available". Still, in practice it's the same effect for the end user.

Headline should read;

"The end of Big Corporations providing free access to their content on the internet"

</comment><comment><USER5> Digital content and services are no different than real world content and services. You do not walk into a grocery store expecting everything to be free. Why would you expect all digital content to be free? Likewise, you have to pay for a copy of the New York Times at a newsstand, so why would you be surprised to find that you have to pay for the digital version of the same thing? The internet is not some strange medium that is outside the realm of profit-seeking capitalism; among other things, it is a convenient way to provide services and content, sometimes requiring payment, and I see no problem with that.

</comment><comment><USER6> _iPads and Smart Phones May Change People's Minds About the Free Internet_

Ah. Another one of these. I'm sure ABC will have an original take on the topic.</comment>


If you want to teach, isn't it only fair to learn a few things first? - <AUTHOR> http://software-carpentry.org/2012/06/if-you-want-to-teach-isnt-it-only-fair-to-learn-a-few-things-first/

<comment><USER2> > Of course, we could cut some corners here. She could download the data as a > CSV file, load it into Excel, define a couple of new columns to hold the > Kelvin equivalents of the Celsius temperatures, and then plot a graph

Why does she need to convert to Kelvin? She's trying to compare differences in average temperatures. Wouldn't that be the same in Celsius?

<comment><USER3> >the gap between the average annual temperatures

She is probably using the percent difference, where an absolute zero scale should be used.</comment></comment>


Herd of Fuzzy Green 'Glacier Mice' Baffles Scientists - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/858800112/herd-like-movement-of-fuzzy-green-glacier-mice-baffles-scientists <comment><USER2> [https://thespacewriter.com/wp/2019/11/16/scientists-are- not-...](https://thespacewriter.com/wp/2019/11/16/scientists-are-not-baffled/)

Start: "Every week, I see headlines in the mainstream media (as well as the "social" and online media outlets) that say something like "NASA Scientists Baffled at…." or "Scientists Bewildered by…". It's annoying and tells me that the writer and/or the headline writer is a) lazy and b) doesn't have a clue about science or scientists. "

<comment><USER3> Or, c) they interviewed a scientist doing the research and literally reported the fact:

> "We still don't know," he says. "I'm still kind of baffled."'

Scientists are baffled. It's what gets us out of bed. If we knew everything, we'd be called oracles or something. If we stuck to the comforts of the known, applicable facts, we'd be called engineers.

Humans are curious beings. We enjoy the trivia at the forefront of science, even if we won't read the boring details of the precise scientific answer. Mulling the questions that scientists are investigating is a delight. And yeah, sometimes it's a lazy editor who exploits that curiosity, editorializing without verification, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

<comment><USER4> > if we stuck to the comforts of the known, applicable facts, we'd be called > engineers.

seriously? you are showing off your knowledge of science by displaying an ignorance of engineering... engineers don't live in emotional comfort, and the best experimental scientists are engineers or they'd never create novel equipment to test ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds similar to the so-called "sailing stones": rocks in the desert that move seemingly on their own. The explanation for their movement is essentially wind, aided by thin sheets of ice that melt a bit on sunny days: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones#Explanation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones#Explanation)

<comment><USER6> There is a simpler explanation for that phenomenon:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Beneath_the_Ground](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Beneath_the_Ground)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like scientists are _always_ baffled. (What's that old quote about "the most important phrase in science is 'hmm, that's funny...'"?)

Being baffled is pretty much a scientist's job.

<comment><USER8> Sometimes I wish I was a scientist rather than a programmer. The kind of baffled I get as a programmer is usually as a result of recent human creations rather than the more numinous natural ones.

<comment><USER9> "If debugging is the art of taking errors out of programs, then programming is the art of putting them in." \-- someone far smarter (and funnier) than me.

<comment><USER10> Programming has two stages that alternate: bugging and debugging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really like how that site solved the problem of visitors that don't accept tracking. I got a challenge asking me to accept cookies, out get the just-text version.

No images, no scripts, no cookies, no styling. Just the text. What a great thing!

<comment><USER12> The question I keep asking myself is why tracking and cookies can't be handled at the browser level?

<comment><USER13> One facet of this: the dominant browser manufacturer is the dominant tracking body.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would go with the experimental approach: cover a few glacier mice from the sun and see if they change behavior relative to the others, cover a few from the wind and see if they change behavior, paint a few with heat resistant paint, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is probably obvious and not it since they roll and it's not just on antarctica, but did they check that it isn't the entire ice plate under them that's moving?

<comment><USER16> I asked myself the same question. Unfortunately this isn't addressed in the article. But I think that the glacier researchers probably though about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Bartholomaus

Nice aptronym!

</comment><comment><USER18> If these are green Tribbles, don't be fooled by their fuzzy cuteness, they are very dangerous: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribble)

<comment><USER19> This is what they use to make that green drink.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQAG0JEb718](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQAG0JEb718)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This could be related to this phenomena: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones)

</comment><comment><USER21> Why the hyperbole? Science has known multiple plant movement mechanisms. They will follow sunlight, mineral content and even their equivalent of pheromones.

Looks freaky though. :)

<comment><USER22> What interesting about these 'glacier mice' is the moss forms into a ball that somehow roll around which is why the moss on the bottom of the ball doesn't die. So far they can't figure out what makes them roll.

> _The researchers considered several possible explanations. The first, and > most obvious one, is that they just rolled downhill. But measurements showed > that the moss balls weren 't going down a slope.

"We next thought maybe the wind is sort of blowing them in consistent directions," says Bartholomaus, "and so we measured the dominant direction of the wind."

That didn't explain it either, nor did the pattern of the sunlight.

"We still don't know," he says. "I'm still kind of baffled."

"It's always kind of exciting, though, when things don't comply with your hypothesis, with the way you think things work," says Gilbert.

The work has charmed other glacier scientists who dote on the adorable moss balls.

"I think that probably the explanation is somewhere in the physics of the energy and the heat around the surface of the glacier, but we haven't quite got there yet," says Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute._

<comment><USER23> Their center of mass shifts as they grow.

Besides growth, their center of mass may also shift when one side becomes damper or dryer faster than the rest, due to sunlight, wind, or the wet ground.

<comment><USER24> The curved upper/exposed surface could act as an airfoil, allowing gusts of wind to lift the moss-mouse, and move it a bit, and/or rotate it around it's vertical axis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hey, so called 'scientists' a collection of mice is called a mischief, not a herd. This is obviously not true, glaciers are made of ice, not cheese.

<comment><USER26> > _a collection of mice is called a mischief_

I always found this aspect of English, uniquely naming sets of animals, to be simultaneously adorable and thoroughly useless and anachronistic.

Is there a defence of this flock of birds, mischief of mice, whateverthefuck of whosits system? (Does it have a name?) Do all linguistic systems do it?

<comment><USER27> I suspect these collective nouns as they are called were invented, or expanded, by the victorians, it's the kind of thing they did (if they were sufficiently wealthy).

A parliament of owls, a murder of crows etc. I can imagine it was a way of excluding people without education.

My speculation anyway. Whole things just seems silly to me.

<comment><USER24> I believe they may have grown out of "terms of venery" or words specific to hunting - an activity often divided into class-specific groupings.

<comment><USER27> I do believe you hit the nail on the head. For others who are unaware of the term [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#Terms_of_vener...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#Terms_of_venery) \- thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Wearable Eyes' Make You Appear Friendly, Social Even When You're Not - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/wearable-eyes-agencyglass-emotional-cyborgs <comment><USER2> I'd also want a screen to pull down over my mouth to hide my scowl and show a smile.

</comment><comment><USER3> who would perceive such a thing as social or friendly

</comment><comment><USER4> Guess this works if you have a lazy eye too hehe.

<comment><USER2> And crazy eyes, too! [1]

[1] [http://postgradproblems.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/02/31c89...](http://postgradproblems.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/02/31c89191d4c97207db931bda891f6846.jpg)</comment></comment>


Javascript or Objective C? - <AUTHOR>

If we were trying to hedge your bets on your programming future would you devote all your time to becoming a Javascript Ninja or would you switch to IOS development. <comment><USER2> I have learned both languages in the past year. Objective-C is better in most ways (and not in a few others). But that doesn't matter.

If you're serious about mobile right now, you really have to just get over whatever is holding you back and learn Objective-C. If you don't, you won't be able to write apps that can use the camera, load quickly, feel native, etc. And the big one is that you won't be on the App Store. I don't think this is going to change anytime soon, and it wouldn't be good for your users (if and when you have them) if it did (power consumption, look and feel, access to the accelerometer and camera, etc. all matter on mobile).

</comment><comment><USER3> I hate Objective-C and I'm not in fond of iOS, so clearly JavaScript. Moreover, it'll probably become (if it's not already) a general purposes language soon, so it wouldn't be wasted time.</comment>


Rendering a Sierpinski Pyramid in Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://ideolalia.com/rendering-a-sierpinski-pyramid-in-clojure

<comment><USER2> Mostly unrelated, but I find this disgusting, along with some of the other fractal visualizations I've seen. I don't really have a reason for it; it's just a visceral reaction that makes me cringe. All the little parts and the strange shape..

Does anyone know why this might be the case?

<comment><USER3> Some people have a similar reaction to porus/holey objects like [http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1406/1093460880_2af2500cc8.jp...](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1406/1093460880_2af2500cc8.jpg) . It seems common enough that there's probably some instinctive reason for it. The image of the triangle has a kind of similar feel to it.

<comment><USER4> What plant is that? It's repulsively beautiful.

<comment><USER3> A lotus seed pod.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


US tariff revenues are way up, but China isn't paying for them - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1614032/us-tariff-revenues-are-skyrocketing/ <comment><USER2> I can only hope that this is benefiting domestic/!china suppliers by making their products more competitive.

It can be rather frustrating when cheap (as in quality) crap enters the market place and drives out better alternatives purely on price. I see it with tools all the time, to the extent that you can't even purchase quality tools for some things any more.</comment>


Whatsapp security hole allows changing status message of other users - <AUTHOR> http://whatsappstatus.net/

<comment><USER2> The site says the hole has been patched but I was just able to change my own status with this:

      curl -A "WhatsApp/2.6.7 iPhone_OS/5.0.1 Device/iPhone_4" --header "Accept-Language: en-us" --header "Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate" --header "Connection: keep-alive" -d "cc=1&me=%2B1{10_DIGIT_NUMBER}&s={URL_ENCODED_STATUS}" https://s.whatsapp.net/client/iphone/u.php

It did take some time to show up under my name, even after restarting the app.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did anybody have any success with changing someone else's status with this? If so, please post.

I got the success message on site and restarted the app too on iPhone by killing it from the multitasking bar but my friend's status is still unchanged.

Makes me doubt it is a fraud site as BuddhaSource mentioned.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some more information about this can be found here: [http://packetstormsecurity.org/files/108010/SA-20111219-1.tx...](http://packetstormsecurity.org/files/108010/SA-20111219-1.txt)

<comment><USER4> Wow it seems there is no security at all:

> By providing any WhatsApp registered telephone number and the text for the > status update, it is possible to change a user's status. This action does > not require any prior authentication or authorization

> (on registration) The vendor has implemented bruteforce protection by > locking a number after 10 tries. This step makes a successful attack on a > specific number unlikely but an attacker bruteforcing X00 numbers can still > guess X number(s) on average.

> As published in the past several times already the XMPP traffic from > WhatsApp is not encrypted.

And they are planning to charge money for it?

edit: perhaps even worse is their response to the security vulnerability seen in the timeline - they knew about the bug since 09-14

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a frequent WhatsApp user, I must say I find this more amusing than anything. I've never really understood what the status feature is for anyway.

<comment><USER6> As a frequent WhatsApp user I don't find this amusing at all. If this is how the engineers handle security issues, it might be time to convince my friends to switch to another messenger. It's not like there was no competition in that field.

<comment> mike-cardwell Kik Messenger seems to have been doing very well recently.

<comment><USER7> Do you know if this can be used with Jabber and if the messages are sent on an encrypted connection to the server?

If not, any good apps that do for Iphone or Blackberry?

<comment><USER8> I played a little with reverse engineering Kik a while ago. I'm not sure about the messages, but I was able to siphon off the plaintext password using ngrep. It's XMPP, btw.

<comment> mike-cardwell When they originally launched, they were not using SSL, and were using plain text authentication. Since then, they changed the authentication so it wouldn't be sent in plain text. Then they later added SSL. Then in the middle of last year, they updated their SSL setup so it actually did certificate verification.

It took them a while to get there, but it's secure now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not changing status anymore, did they already block the site's IP?

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this a Fraud site? Not working for me.

<comment><USER11> Ain't working for me either, but I've read report of people who were able to to that.

Too bad :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I could not change mine. If the leak is plugged would you be willing to explain where the hole is?

</comment><comment><USER13> What would the legal liabilities of this site be?

</comment><comment><USER14> dumb question - how exactly can I try this? I went to the site, but didn't find relevant information.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not working for me.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ridiculous!

</comment><comment><USER17> There's a few ways that they can patch this. I'm assuming that there's some sort of auth process in place for their http calls and this could simply be a case where this particular endpoint missed the auth.

Or they're simply blocking the whatsappstatus's ip and a fix would actually require both client side and server side changes.

But honestly its just a messaging app and how many people really cares if "let's go grab a beer" is encrypted or not.</comment>


Why Bach Moves Us - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/feb/20/why-bach-moves-us/

<comment><USER2> I've convinced a few people who were fans of rock guitarists like Blackmore, Malmsteen, Rhoads and EVH to listen to teh Prelude #2 in Well tempered Clavier and describe the commonality. A couple of them opened their eyes wide and went "Woah".

</comment><comment><USER3> Review of the book _Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven_ by John Eliot Gardiner. A couple other reviews in the NYTimes [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/books/bach-music-in-the- ca...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/books/bach-music-in-the-castle-of- heaven-by-john-eliot-gardiner.html?_r=0)

...and the Washington Post [http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book- revie...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-review-bach- music-in-the-castle-of-heaven-by-john-eliot- gardiner/2013/12/23/ac347e2c-55df-11e3-ba82-16ed03681809_story.html)

The Bach piece that most moves me is the 2nd movement (Largo) of Harpsicord Concerto No. 5 in F-minor (BWV 1056) here played by Glen Gould in 1957 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0zPokdN2wg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0zPokdN2wg) [video]

 _What Bach work moves you?_</comment>


Kandan - an open Source alternative to HipChat - <AUTHOR> http://kandanapp.com/blog/2013/02/06/kandan-1-dot-0-release-announcement/

<comment><USER2> It looks like it is browser only. We are currently looking for something like this that also has a standard protocol like XMPP. Actually all we really want is for Google Chat to support rooms for apps/business users.

<comment><USER3> Full disclosure: I built Candy

You could use Candy (<http://candy-chat.github.com/candy>) as a nice web UI for XMPP MUC (Multi-User-Chat). It supports basic features but is easily extendable through plugins.

<comment><USER2> Apologies for not being clear. We all already have and use Google Chat. Failing that there are XMPP clients on all the relevant desktop and mobile platforms.

The one thing that has the lowest utility is a web based interface to chat since it essentially doesn't work well in the background in the same way as an app like Pidgin does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've worked in offices where Skype or Hipchat were used exclusively. There is nothing that Hipchat can offer for which I'd give up audio and video chat. You can say people are free to arrange a Skype call if they want, but when a text- based chat program like Hipchat is the office norm, no one bothers to use any other medium.

Hipchat is great at what it does, but without audio and video support, I'd never deploy it in the office.

</comment><comment><USER5> The only advantages this seems to have over IRC is the ability to embed images and videos. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER6> I've always wondered why is this not a client's responsibility? There must exist a good IRC client that can recognize links. From there, it can fetch videos and embed images.

<comment><USER7> LimeChat does. Previews images and Youtube videos, also Adium has a plugin for Youtube.

I have too much free time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're looking to use it for anything other than unmodified internal use, be aware that it uses the AGPL license (the "A" at the start being quite important), and may place restrictions on what you want to do, much more-so than the GPL.

<comment><USER9> I think that AGPL requires you to give source code to the _users_ of the program. If you use a modified version internally then you'll have to give the source code to your employees. That isn't as problematic as sharing with the whole outside world.

Or maybe I misinterpret the license?

<comment><USER8> No, thats my point, it may only be usable internally, and if modified only if you trust your staff

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Demo server pleeeeease

<comment><USER11> <http://kandan-demo.kandanapp.com>

<comment><USER12> not working

<comment><USER13> Yes it is...

<comment><USER14> It's buggy. Maybe just on Chrome 24.0.1312.52 running on OSX?

<comment><USER15> It looks like it's back again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does it support HTTPS out of the box? I notice the demo isn't running on it, which is a deal breaker for an internal communication network.

<comment><USER17> You may be able to proxy it behind nginx, which does support HTTPS.

Some applications do struggle when running behind a proxy (I'm looking at you Jira) but my experience tells me that it's harder to break SSL support than not.

<comment><USER18> We're running JIRA behind nginx with https. To get it to work properly we had to edit JIRA's server.xml, duplicate the connector but append (e.g.) proxyPort="8443" and scheme="https". In addition, in JIRA's general settings you should make sure that the base URL is set to use https to avoid the SSL warnings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks really nice though I'd like it more if it would also use XMPP as the protocol. (Or did I miss that it actually uses it?)

</comment><comment><USER19> Are there any plans to support external authentication/authorization methods?</comment>


Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March - <AUTHOR> http://rce.ir/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=173&start=20#p1716 <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what we're looking at there, but it's something I probably shouldn't have clicked on.

<comment><USER3> Last time I checked reverse engineering forums weren't forbidden by the thought police.

<comment><USER4> He actually has a point, sadly. Visiting a "Jihadist" website, based on some arbitrary definition and interpretation from some cyber freedom fighter in DC, VA, or MD, is enough to get your "metadata" added to their graphs. You think Iranian sites with posts about hacking the US aren't on that list? I don't.

It's not enough to get you a visit from the feds or anything, but it's almost certain that any competent intelligence agency is storing _anything_ that touches that website. Whoever posted it likely has links in their social graph to very high value targets.

<comment><USER5> Is this really the point we've reached? Where people with no intention of being a terrorist are bothered about visiting a site because they know everything they do is being observed?

If we've reached the point of self censoring behaviour, then we're definitely in the Panopticon.

The harder it becomes to break out of our filter bubbles, the more foreigners will look alien, strange and scary :(

<comment><USER6> Isn't this self censoring one of the main goals of a Orwellian society?

<comment><USER7> Yes, but to be Orwellian the self-censorship must be borne out of government intimidation. In this case the government hasn't intimidated anyone, we were just leaked information.

Unless you want to argue that Snowden intentionally leaked the PRISM slides so that society would be intimidated by the governments reach, thus giving way to society censoring itself without them having to publicly punish people that were guilty of thought crimes. But that's getting into Alex Jones territory.

<comment><USER8> >In this case the government hasn't intimidated anyone...

I disagree, with the government having the 'you're with us or against us' polarizing attitude since 9/11 along with Gitmo and an official kill list I think the U.S. gov't is pretty intimidating for anyone who doesn't fall into line.

Just look at what happened in Boston. A whole city shut down, house to house searches, an unprecedented reaction in the west for a bombing. No where else has that kind of reaction been seen, even in the UK when the IRA was blowing shit up, at no time was a curfew imposed and houses illegally searched by a militarised police.

The US is an incredibly intimidating place at times.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, instead of anyone, I should have said "average citizens".

Yes after 9/11 the government has a "your with us or your against us" attitude, promoted by Bush. However, your examples of Gitmo and kill lists are not evidence that this has continued. Those two examples only pertain to the ongoing war effort, not an intimidation campaign aimed at the average citizen, and the Americans that were involved were in the current warzone, not shipped off to Gitmo from the US.

I would address the Boston situation, but I don't think it is relevant. Sure shutting down the city is intimidating, but so is any other active shooter situation like a school shooting. You might feel intimidated by the police presence but ultimately the police are not focused on you.

But more to the point, of course the US is an intimidating place at times, everywhere is, but the key is that the intimidation is not focused on citizen self-censorship, which I think is the key to saying that we live in an Orwellian society.

Whether or not the US is an intimidating place, or debates about the validity of the Boston searches and curfew is a different discussion. They are not forms of intimidation aimed at self-censorship, and thus not valid reasons that we should assume that we live in an Orwellian surveillance state.

If you would like to have a debate about the role, or non-role of self- censorship in an Orwellian society, and you believe that some other form of intimidation is a valid criteria then I am all ears, but the discussion isn't about intimidation in general, only intimidation whose ultimate goal is self- censorship.

<comment><USER8> > not an intimidation campaign aimed at the average citizen... > but > ultimately the police are not focused on you.

This is exactly what is wrong. As long as these massive injustices don't affect the 'average' middle class unit it's all ok. As long as the military police thrashing through your house on their latest manhunt aren't actually after you, that's ok. It all seems pretty Orwellian to me, right down to the citizens actually justifying it all.

Anyway to be more on point: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper- spray_incident](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper-spray_incident)

This seems pretty intimidating to me. It would certainly make me think twice about attending even the most peaceful of protests. Pepper spray and tazing is a common response to people objecting to the status quo. Hell, if you want to protest a political rally you have to actually go to a 'free speech zone', if that isn't Orwellian enough for you I don't know what is. Than again, the 'average' citizen probably is ok with a two party 'choice' and so doesn't need free speech.

And then you have Obama's HR347 'anti protest' bill which could potentially be used to lock people up for many years for protesting in an area which the Secret Service/DHS etc. has _secretly_ declared a heightened area of security.

It's really frightening how much potential leeway there currently is for arbitrarily locking U.S. citizens up. All these loosely defined laws are sitting around just waiting for someone to come in and abuse them. While things are quiet and everyone is behaving it all seems ok, but as soon as there is a bit of trouble, another Occupy protest for example it will be a different story.

Watch how you see your right to due process being eroded away next, it's already not needed when hunting down suspects on foreign soil. You watch as language is changed, terms subtly augmented to make it ok to execute US citizens with a drone - you know, for your protection. Maybe you, the average citizen, aren't intimidated yet, but perhaps tomorrow you might be.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-08/obama-s-drone- attac...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-08/obama-s-drone-attack-on- your-due-process.html) [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-usa- security-dr...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-usa-security- drones-idUSBRE95I1NW20130619)

<comment><USER7> Again... the key thing that makes it an Orwellian society is self-censorship, not just intimidation.

<comment><USER8> Ok, here's a real life example then. My parents were on Skype to me today, and my Dad was talking about some controversial topic or another - a couple of times my mum said "you can't say that over the internet, people are listening".

Furthermore I actually disagree that self censorship is _the_ key component of an Orwellian society. I think surveillance itself is the key component. Reading the interpretation below I challenge you to deny that the US and many other governments aren't well on their way to the dystopia described by Orwell.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian#Meanings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian#Meanings)

Police charging through your house without permission whist you sit back and say 'they are just doing their job' is the epitome of an Orwellian society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This thread seems to be pretty chock full of some tinfoil hats.

1) You're not going to be added to "a list" because you clicked a link on hacker news. Remember that the NSA employs some of the smartest people in the world. Would it be meaningful to add a bunch of curious silicon valleyists to a list of "possible terrorists"? Probably not.

2) If you think that an aircraft that is anything bigger than a small pigeon could get anywhere _near_ a major airport without getting itself a nice escort, then you're nuts.

Here is a map of the airspace near JFK: [http://www.aeroplanner.com/notams/airspace.cfm?apt=jfk](http://www.aeroplanner.com/notams/airspace.cfm?apt=jfk)

This is all "Class b" or "bravo" airspace. It's all heavily controlled, heavily monitored with radar, and you have to ask permission to enter it.

It's _incredibly_ unlikely that there was a "drone" in bravo airspace. Possibly a UAV, definitely not the boogey man Iranians.

3) This website doesn't even say anything. It's some pictures that could have easily been photoshopped together. Google translate isn't giving me anything interesting, and unless HN is a LOT more diverse than I realized, you're all going nuts over a couple of grainy photos.

Finally, here is what the drone that Iran supposedly "captured" last year looks like: [http://i.imgur.com/ALveZWi.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ALveZWi.jpg)

It isn't a toy. It's huge. There is no way that is getting anywhere near a RADAR without everybody knowing about it. Yes, it is [possibly...meant to be, rumored to be] stealth. That doesn't mean it's going to go undetected into a major airport like that.

Relax. Go have a beer.

<comment><USER10> 1\. You have a lot more confidence in our government's ability to accurately compile lists than I do, particularly in light of the failures of the no-fly list: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#False_positives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#False_positives)

2\. Based on commentary from native Persian speakers on this thread, it would appear that no one is claiming that the drone was remotely piloted by Iranians into US Airspace, but rather the one that was shot down in Iran several months ago (confirmed by the US Government __) had these photos on it.

3\. See above, there are at least 2 Persian speakers on this thread. HN _is_ a LOT more diverse than you realize.

__[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–U.S._RQ-170_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–U.S._RQ-170_incident)

<comment><USER11> "2\. Based on commentary from native Persian speakers on this thread, it would appear that no one is claiming that the drone was remotely piloted by Iranians into US Airspace, but rather the one that was shot down in Iran several months ago (confirmed by the US Government) had these photos on it."

If this is true it means the Iranians compromised the encryption on the UAV's drive, which would be seriously not good.

<comment><USER12> The Iranians outsmarting NSA encryption? Not likely. Possible in theory and a huge deal, but not likely. If they decrpyted something from a military aircraft, it's much more likely that shoddy engineering work was done on that aspect of said aircraft because it was decided that security wasn't a top concern. (And, indeed, having pictures of JFK _isn't_ a big deal.)

<comment><USER11> Totally possible the imaging equipment retains data in an insecure fashion.

However, milspec != NSA, and its highly likely the Russians would help the Iranians in such an endeavor in exchange for intelligence sharing.

<comment><USER12> > milspec != NSA

What exactly is "milspec"? I was under the impression that military security standards in the US _are_ produced by the NSA.

> highly likely the Russians would help the Iranians in such an endeavor in > exchange for intelligence sharing.

I must be missing something... yes, but what do Russians have to do with it? I thought this was a US drone captured by Iranians. Genuine question here.

<comment><USER11> MIL-SPEC means encryption built to military specifications. It includes, but does not equate to, NSA Suite B cryptography. As you can imagine, using crypto designed by a paranoid spook agency would not be appropriate for all military applications, for example a near-real-time flight application. As a result, there are a variety of encryption standards used by the military, some of which would be approved by the NSA, others which wouldn't.

It's a good question about the Russians. The ties between Russia and Iran are much tighter than most in the US realize, especially when it comes to national security, and particularly with regard to US-related issues. If we used industrial grade crypto on a system, it would be in line with past behaviors for the Russians to help the Iranians with it.

<comment><USER12> Thanks.

Regarding the Russians: Oh, I see, now. Yes, you're right that if country X cracks our encryption, we can't assume that they didn't get help from <insert China or Russia here>.

> for example a near-real-time flight application.

Wait, why do you say such a system wouldn't use NSA-grade encryption?

<comment><USER11> > for example a near-real-time flight application.

Primarily latency. Now, ideally you'd like the entire subsystem moved off disk into volatile memory, but for some things you're going to have to read from disk. I can imagine cases where that wouldn't be easily feasible if the drive had NSA crypto.

"Regarding the Russians: Oh, I see, now. Yes, you're right that if country X cracks our encryption, we can't assume that they didn't get help from <insert China or Russia here>."

Right, but its more than that in the case of the Iranians. The Russians have a long and documented history of assistance to the Iranians and the Syrians.

<comment><USER12> > for some things you're going to have to read from disk.

I'm not sure I follow. For some things you're going to have to _write_ to disk... like captured video. (I wouldn't consider that to be the "real-time" part of the software, though.) And you might have to read from disk occasionally... maybe you have map information stored there... but that probably doesn't need to be real-time. Can you tell me an example where you would need to read from disk in real-time? (Which I think should anyway be impossible, regardless of whether or not heavy crypto is being used.)

> The Russians have a long and documented history of assistance to the > Iranians and the Syrians.

Yeah, very true, I have noticed that, too.

<comment><USER11> Sure! Man I love when people on hn ask genuine questions rather than trying to one up one another. It's one of the reasons I was so reluctant to stop lurking for so long.

Much like the Mars rovers, the navigation system is loaded in a modular fashion, with complex algorithms for each scenario loaded on the fly. So for example, imagine a UAV goes into a stall. Likely the aircraft needs a whole new set of algorithms to recover. It's very likely I this case you'd need low latency disk reads. Now again, this is just a guess based upon my experience with similar systems. I've never developed a UAV system.

<comment><USER12> > Man I love when people on hn ask genuine questions rather than trying to one > up one another. It's one of the reasons I was so reluctant to stop lurking > for so long.

Well then, you're exactly the kind of person we need to stop lurking and start participating, so welcome aboard. But yeah, I totally understand you.

> this is just a guess based upon my experience with similar systems

You mean planetary rovers? If not, can you be more specific? I realize it's not necessarily wise to divulge too much industrial information. I actually have worked on UAVs... not to the point that I can say the scenario you're presenting is incorrect (I wasn't involved in that kind of stuff), but I don't think it's very plausible. I could see that strategy being more reasonable on a super memory-constrained device where the system is radiation hardened, like space equipment. I would think for a normal UAV, you'd just keep all the code (algorithms) you might need in memory.

<comment><USER11> Its possible I'm wrong. I've never designed a UAV flight system, so I was speculating as to reasons why a lower level of encryption might be needed. Its possible that's not a realistic constraint for atmospheric craft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My take on this is that someone is claiming that the UAV that crashed in Iran (supposedly hacked) had images on its hard drive of the JFK airport.

That person is basically claiming that the UAV was at one point flown over JFK airport at some previous time before the US moved the UAV to the middle east.

<comment><AUTHOR> The person does not claim that. Where did you draw this from?

<comment><USER13> I said "my take" because i, like other hn readers have no idea what I am looking at so I made a guess. You are the poster, you can explain what is going on here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What kind of list did I just get myself on for that little visit?

<comment><USER15> Depends. At the bottom of the page did it have a "Like" icon, and the words "432 of your friends like this page, you should too?"

If it did, you're already on that list.

<comment><USER16> It's a No-fly list!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> All I see are two images of nondescript buildings and cars labeled "FLIR Systems". Would an actual drone image used for reconnaissance over hostile territory waste a bunch of screen area on the manufacturer name of the camera?

Also, there's some censored text in the upper left. I suspect that's the date and time.

My guess is these pictures were lifted from promotional material like the "MicroSTAR" sheet just below it.

<comment><USER18> I thought "FLIR" meant "Forward Looking InfraRed?"

<comment><USER17> Yes, it's also a brand name of a prominent manufacturer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Excuse the ignorance but can someone explain to me what it is I'm looking at?

</comment><comment><USER20> So... this is really interesting and I have no idea what any of it says. I haven't tried google translate yet but there's also text on the images...

Anyway, can someone (perhaps the original poster) explain what specifically is happening? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> A user/group named "Parastoo" has been hacking targets like IHS Janes: [http://cryptome.org/2013/02/parastoo-janes- cbrn.htm](http://cryptome.org/2013/02/parastoo-janes-cbrn.htm)

Recently has started making statements about hijacking drones: [http://cryptome.org/2013/07/parastoo-uav- launch2.htm](http://cryptome.org/2013/07/parastoo-uav-launch2.htm)

TLDR: Iranian chap(s) have been on a hacking spree and seem to be honing in on what they like to target. In this case US drones over US skies/assets.

<comment><USER21>
        US drones over US skies

Are you saying the US uses drones on their own territory? If yes, what for? Spying their own people comes to my mind, but maybe I read to much spy stories lately and there are legitimate reasons.

<comment><USER22> of course we do

<comment><USER21> I'm sorry, I don't believe that. I mean, all this Internet and telecommunication surveillance is one thing - and a bad thing for sure, but spying drones is in another ballpark.

I'll just leave this here from Orwell's 1984:

        In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs,
        hovered for an instant like a bluebottle,
        and darted away again with a curving flight.
        It was the police patrol, snooping in people's windows.

<comment><USER23> Border Patrol has 10 Predators in operation along the U.S. border. They're supposed to only be used within 30 miles of the border, but they loan them out to other agencies for more internal purposes all the time, including detecting fishing violations.

> According to the documents, CBP already appears to be flying drones well > within the Southern and Northern US borders, and for a wide variety of non- > border patrol reasons. What's more — the agency is planning to increase its > Predator drone fleet to 24 and its drone surveillance to 24 hours per day / > 7 days per week by 2016.

There appear to be no privacy controls for citizens currently, but they may add them… eventually.

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130705/17154023725/borde...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130705/17154023725/border- patrol-drone-fleet-straying-far-from-borders-when-not-being-loaned-out-to- whatever-agency-comes-asking.shtml)

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/customs-border- protect...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/customs-border-protection- significantly-increases-drone-surveillance-other)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> That page is so incredibly foreign to me - right justified, stuff from right appears on left, things from top on bottom etc. I'm surprised how striking I found it.

<comment><USER25> What if I tell you all your favorite website has right-to-left layout for right-to-left languages like Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi?

<comment><USER24> Which site are you meaning? Thinks like Google? Its made me realise how much I depend on so-called normal layouts for things like next page buttons etc. something I had never thought about really. Obviously I don't frequent many sites that are primarily in another language, Der Speigel is the only one I think. That site is left to right reading so it can follow the same formatting styles as English. I haven't noticed any German language related layout quirks there.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, Google ([http://www.google.com/?hl=fa](http://www.google.com/?hl=fa)) Facebook. Basically any international website. If you ask UI developers of those companies they will tell you pains of making a UI that works both RTL and LTR

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just yo let you know those text on photos are basically mystic poems. One of the tools Iranian propaganda uses

<comment><USER25> Translating this forum is hard. They uses a specific language that has tons of reference to the way Iranian government sees the world. For example they never say "Israel", they would say instead "Usurper Regime". Because they never recognize Israel as a country.

What we have here is a forum by Iranian semi-military force "Basij". They bluff all the time and you never know what is truth. They have no shame in photoshoping and manipulating the truth.

<comment><USER10> If you recall the Iranian uprising a few years ago, the Basij were the jack- booted thugs who were beating the shit out of innocent civilians. It was a member of the Basij who killed Neda: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha- Soltan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I call bullshit. There are numerous "funny bits" in this thread, number one, they display the info page for a "UAV Imager system" which in no way offers control of a drone. Second, the very generalized schematic for a nuclear power station, most likely a mid-60's design BWR, means nothing to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER27> Just because you can use MSPaint to draw some text on some images doesn't mean you're a hacker. Get it right HN!

</comment><comment><USER28> Look at OP's submissions..

<comment><USER29> What about them, exactly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Because I can't read moon runes, what is this this about? Its bad enough when people drop technical posts without context, but seriously what is this saying? Perhaps we should actively encourage posts in English so that anybody from Bangkok, Baghdad, Beijing and Boston and could understand these posts.

</comment><comment><USER31> Hey, iranian coming here, how are you doing?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The incident reported back in March via LATimes: [http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/05/nation/la-na-nn- faa-...](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/05/nation/la-na-nn-faa-drone- jfk-airport-20130305)

Back-story on the series of on-going hacks by Iranians against US entities/corporations: [http://cryptome.org/2013/07/ir-hack- forum.htm](http://cryptome.org/2013/07/ir-hack-forum.htm)

<comment><USER16> This is the recording (needs a login) [http://www.liveatc.net/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topi...](http://www.liveatc.net/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=10676.0;attach=7169)

Drone sighting at JFK

<comment><USER22> can someone post their login info here please?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I made a brief timeline of Parastoo hacks when submitting the Cryptome.org article on this topic. The hacker(s) referenced VSATs and drone hijacking after hacking IHS Janes, pre-JFK drone incident. They then started to reference the JFK incident in further releases about hijacking US drones over US skies/assets: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6038657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6038657)

</comment><comment><USER32> If you look at OP's submissions you can see that well, this person posts iranian hacking stuff, and thats it. Makes you wonder about OP's motives.

I'm also okay if the NSA targets OP looking at his submission list.

<comment><USER33> I looked at his submission history. I see four items.

The first, dated four days ago (and the only I see one preceeding this), is a title making some sort of claim about Booz Hamilton based on a whois lookup. Not exactly a quality submission, but it has nothing to do with Iran or hacking.

The other three submissions are all about what seems to be some news he's stumbled on about hacking/reverse engineering claims from Iran.

Considering this is 'Hacker' news, you can understand why he might think we'd be interested in this. Of course, it would be better form for him to write up an article explaining the separation or link between these items rather than posting lots of direct evidence.

None of that means he should expect to have his privacy breached by a US intelligence agency, and frankly your support for that on the basis of such a flimsy characterisation is blood-chilling.

A lot of people seem to have become alarmed because they've seen persian text and heard that it's about hacking. That's equally chilling.

Is this all it takes?</comment></comment>


I had to learn assembly language to truly understand my grandfather - <AUTHOR> https://massivesci.com/articles/grandfather-neuroscience-machine-assembly-code/ <comment><USER2> A great simple story. This will potentially mov eyes, tears;</comment>


Joscha Bach: Do we live in a simulation or in the base reality? - <AUTHOR> http://bach.ai/Do-we-live-in-a-simulation/ <comment><USER2> He recently did an interview with Lex Friedman ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM)) and it was pretty good. It's a bit long but worthwhile. Covers a bunch of topics about the philosophy of machine learning, models of thinking and consciousness, and some bits and pieces of future directions for AI.</comment>


Ask HN: Any advice for raising a hyperlexic kid on the autism spectrum? - <AUTHOR> I have a 3-yr old son who has issues with social interaction, ability to answer questions (and pronoun reversal, name recognition, repetitive actions) etc. He started to read words before 3 and reads sentences now, is good with basic math etc; but I'm not sure to what extent he understands what he reads.<p>We had consulted a therapist early on (before 18 months), and identified some issues. They mostly went away after focused effort. Does anyone here on HN have advice which could help him (especially on what we could do as parents), and also what to expect as he grows older? <comment><USER2> Sounds like me :)

It's great to already have a caring parent, so double down on focused efforts.

Get the Asperkids' books, and just be there for him.

I still have issues with following orders, but tbh doing fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much, and we will. One of the things we wanna start doing more is to distract him if stimming. Perhaps with reading, or playing "foot ball" or hide-n-seek. And to cut out TV/phone entirely - although he learnt most of his reading from videos.

<comment><USER2> great!

does he like sports, group activities? has any special interests?

I'd advocate for increasing and focusing on activities he likes that have a social aspect built into it * , to help with interaction and dealing/socializing with other people. Look for activities that have some leadership/cooperation in it, and/or where he needs to speak.

* Except online gaming</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Auto generate REST API from Mongoose schemas - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cktang88/mongoose-api-generator <comment><USER2> For a long time I've thought that the idea of having an entire, Turing- complete layer between the database and the HTTP API felt like overkill. You know your collections, you know the shape of your data, auth doesn't vary much between orgs. Unless you're doing interesting computations after querying, why do you have to _program_ those endpoints over and over again for each entity in each project? It just seems silly.

I'm honestly surprised there aren't more projects like this

<comment><USER3> >> why do you have to program those endpoints over and over again for each entity in each project? It just seems silly. I'm honestly surprised there aren't more projects like this

This is exactly what got us started - we are solving automatic REST-GraphQL API endpoint creation for all SQL databases. Check us out [https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud](https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow this looks awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello Hacker News! This is something I quickly prototyped yesterday to automatically generate a REST API from existing Mongoose schemas. It's incredibly useful for mocking your exact backend, or just spinning up an MVP backend.

Authentication is also built in (currently only supports email/password, but more in the works). I implemented granular permissions for API routes that can be set via configuration really easily, which uses JWTs from the user login.

<comment><USER3> >> Creates a hot-reloading server that auto-updates whenever models are updated or created.

This is neat.

Does this mean - if your generator finds a new model in mongodb, it autogenerates model file within the folder and vice-versa it creates APIs if there is a new model file within model folder ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, if it finds a new model in the `./models` folder, it'll automatically create those endpoints!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems pretty useful! Will try out for my next side project.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your workflow for simple side projects? - <AUTHOR> Simple one page static pages that you may make small edits to (such as a simple web game or demo page), what's your setup for efficient deploys? Framework, hosting, uploading? <comment><USER2> I have a bunch of boilerplate repos.

[https://github.com/Jon-Biz/simple-static-react](https://github.com/Jon- Biz/simple-static-react)

[https://github.com/Jon-Biz/simple-static-react- router](https://github.com/Jon-Biz/simple-static-react-router)

I'm going to publish a React/Aframe version and one with a server tomorrow.

EDIT: probably not tomorrow, but in the next few days for sure :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I use this to generate new project skeletons and handle all the dev/test/build tooling:

[https://github.com/insin/nwb](https://github.com/insin/nwb)

I just use GitHub pages for static project hosting. Surge, or something similar, would probably be more convenient.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just wrote out a boilerplate for side projects [https://github.com/zweicoder/react-redux-express- boilerplate](https://github.com/zweicoder/react-redux-express-boilerplate)

Normally I host it on DigitalOcean

</comment><comment><USER5> Simple html and CSS, Zurb Foundation(super convenient, has all the elements I need, takes care of 80% of the design), deploy to Digital Ocean, serve with nginx.

Just made myself a homepage like this:

[http://rayalez.com](http://rayalez.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's changed over the years, but presently I use GitHub for Source control and pull down to a Raspberry Pi for hosting. Then I connect using Dynamic DNS.

If it's something that I can do completely in markdown, then I just hosted on GitHub

</comment><comment><USER7> Super efficient? Just upload content to production. I remember at my first job they pressed an "up" arrow button once content looked good in their browsers.

Super duper efficient? Develop on prod.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you elaborate on the up arrow button?

<comment><USER7> It was a little Web IDE with an "up" arrow. It would send the file to a website by ftp. I forget the name it was so long ago.

<comment><USER8> I remember Macromedia Dreamweaver had a down arrow (download) and a up arrow (upload) through FTP it felt magical on those days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Quick and easy project for me I use just HTML, jQuery. Host on AWS S3. Upload via S3 console.

If it's a big one. I use Play Framework and React. Host on EC2. Upload is depend on project.

</comment><comment><USER10> If it is static webpages, S3 hosting.

</comment><comment><USER11> For deploys I use PubStorm (www.pubstorm.com). Super easy and straightforward deploys for static sites.

</comment><comment><USER12> at a meta level, I plan everything the night before. my time is short, so I need to optimize productivity.

<comment><USER13> I do the same. I spend a lot of time sketching and mentally toying with it before I drop code. It gives me something to do on train rides and is a welcome luxury in comparison to agile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> App:

\- HTML: Vanilla

\- CSS: Bootstrap 4 (SCSS) + node-sass

\- JS: Any framework (ES6) + Rollup + Babel

Deployment:

\- Repo: GitLab

\- Host: GitLab Pages

\- CI: GitLab CI</comment>