Statement about the 480M animals killed in NSW bushfires since September - <AUTHOR> https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/01/03/a-statement-about-the-480-million-animals-killed-in-nsw-bushfire.html <comment><USER2> Ironically, hundreds of billions of animals are killed every year for food, contributing massively to climate change, which is the root cause of these massive fires. But no one seems to care about _those_ animals.

EDIT: This was linked below which further illustrates my point: [https://twitter.com/mbeisen/status/1212959832522625024?s=21](https://twitter.com/mbeisen/status/1212959832522625024?s=21)

"if you find the death of 500,000,000 mammals, birds and reptiles in weeks of australia wildfires mind blowing and horrifying, note that more were killed worldwide for food in the same period of time - and these facts are not unlinked"

<comment><USER3> 1) That's not ironic

2) Do you not see the massive obvious difference between killing an animal with a PURPOSE (sustenance), vs ones that die completely without any side benefit?

3) Plenty of people care about animals being killed for food. That's why there is continuous progress and campaigns to A) change how they are raised (more humanely), B) how they are killed (ditto), C) reduce overall consumption of meat by meat eaters, and D) change entire diets to cut out meat entirely.

4) The animals killed for food are MOSTLY (exceptions - certain forms of hunting and fishing) raised for that purpose, and therefore their populations and species are entirely sustainable. The animals that died in wildfires are wild ecosystems, some of which may not recover (see: Koala population)

<comment><USER2> The irony I see is that people suddenly care about animals being killed for no purpose.

Regarding your #2, no, it is not a necessity to raise and slaughter animals. You can survive just fine on an entirely plant-based diet. It's detrimental to the world which is literally on fire right now. To add to this, there is no sustainable way we can raise them "more humanely" as the population increases and countries like China raise the demand exponentially. Factory farming exists for a reason.

Regarding #3, there is no way to humanely raise an animal only to kill it unjustifiably. If we needed them to survive, that would be a different story. But we do not.

#4, I don't even know what point you're trying to make here.

<comment><USER4> > no, it is not a necessity to raise and slaughter animals. You can survive > just fine on an entirely plant-based diet. It's detrimental to the world > which is literally on fire right now.

Surviving purely on plant based diet and remaining in your top form will require more than stop eating meat and solving

\- Cost \- Availability \- Education

and few more major issues. That is for consumers only, corporations have different problems. They won't suddenly disappear and if they did, it might become a problem for you indirectly through state.

> the population increases and countries like China raise the demand > exponentially.

Population is declining everywhere except Africa and some odd balls.

> there is no way to humanely raise an animal only to kill it unjustifiably.

That depends entirely on you. Although I agree humanely way to kill is more of a need for humans than animals, it seems.

<comment><USER2> Consumers need to be educated, you are right on that. But corporations will evolve like they always have - look at Nestle buying SweetEarth brands. Tyson entering the plant-based market. They will adapt and overcome. But it all starts with the consumer.

>Population is declining everywhere except Africa and some odd balls

Then why do projections put us around 10 billion people in the next 30 years?

>That depends entirely on you

It depends on individual morals yes, but on the grand scale of things, I don't think any sound-minded human would, without outside influence, find it completely alright to murder an animal. If you give a child an apple and a bunny, do you think they'd kill the bunny or eat the apple?

<comment><USER4> > Then why do projections put us around 10 billion people in the next 30 > years?

I didn't mean population globally but China isn't contributing to it as much as you think it is anymore.

> I don't think any sound-minded human would, without outside influence, find > it completely alright to murder an animal. If you give a child an apple and > a bunny, do you think they'd kill the bunny or eat the apple?

Let's do an extreme take, giving apple is not comparable as it is [1][2] already 'murdered' compared to a bunny. A better comparison would be prepared bunny meat and sliced apple. Would you say the kid will choose one over other out of instincts?

1] [https://m.dw.com/en/when-plants-say- ouch/a-510552-1](https://m.dw.com/en/when-plants-say-ouch/a-510552-1)

2] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the- intelligen...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent- plant)

Just meant to illustrate that when we think of suffering, it needs to be visible for us to do something about it and see it as a problem. Buying meat from a grocery store doesn't help your perception, so I wouldn't blame people for not caring as much.

I think it is hypocritical to neglect plants that can show stress and feel that they are being literally eaten alive and advocate for less suffering by asking people to eat them instead of meat but that's not pragmatic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The figure includes mammals, birds and reptiles and does not include insects, bats or frogs."

I wonder what the figure for just mammals would be.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can someone tell me how quick and easily nature can bounce back? I guess the speed of tree growth might be a bottleneck.

<comment><USER7> >I guess the speed of tree growth might be a bottleneck.

Also depends on what grows back in their place. For example, re-forestation efforts in places like Ireland have lead to an "ecological dead zone" [0] due to the choice of the trees that have been planted, the Sitka spruce and its sheddings offering or removing habitable areas for animals to prosper.

Without an expensive and concerted effort to clear the floors of ash and re- plant animal-friendly, indigenous fauna I would imagine we won't see much of a recovery in our lifetimes, if ever.

[0][https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/trees-...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/trees- ireland-biodiversity-sitka-birds-extinction)

<comment><USER8> This is Australian bush we are talking about: there won't be any ash clearing or replanting. The indigenous flora will regrow by itself.</comment></comment></comment>


Why We Fear the IRS - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-04/why-we-fear-the-irs <comment><USER2> People don't realize that the U.S. has the most efficient tax system in the world in terms of what we spend to get a dollar of revenue and that means there is a very low amount of bullshit per mile.

I have gotten just about every kind of income there is at some time in the last 30 years and been self-employed and also made mistakes, or had documents be disappeared by the maid, had customers and publishers make mistakes on 1099s, etc. I'm actually better than average at dealing with paperwork but sometimes when I am stressed I get in a funk where I don't open my mail for a month.

Thus I have gotten real scary letters about how I owe $40,000 (the IRS didn't correctly process the decimal point on a 1099 I got from Wrox press) or I owe $351.82 (just got that one right after Christmas, despite the fact that I paid them $350.82 out of my bank account on Dec 5) I even was late to file my taxes for one year by a year and a half and have sometimes completely screwed up estimated tax payments.

Practically though I have dealt with all these situations and the IRS people have been very nice to deal with on the phone and via mail. Every time I have had much more apprehension of how bad it is going to be it turns out to be no big deal. I have paid fines but these are not at all punitive and if you are in some situation where you really can't pay you can negotiate a payment plan with some write-off of the debt with help from a tax lawyer or enrolled agent.

Back in the 1970s the IRS was awful and there would be horror stories like what happened to R. Crumb, but both Reagan and Clinton introduced major reforms in how the tax system works that greatly improve the "customer experience."

I have seen how they have integrated with the IRS with Obamacare and they have done this in a way that addresses the issue of people having unpredictable income that is actually simple and practical for everyone concerned.

So don't believe the right wing propaganda. The worst administrative problem the IRS has is that they still have a shocking number of people filing fake tax returns, collecting the money, and running. My uncle was working for the IRS and flabbergasted about this in the first few years of e-file and I don't think it has gotten any better.

<comment><USER3> You don't have to believe right-wing propaganda to see it's a mess. You even provided many examples. Like the author says, you can either try your taxes yourself, or dump hours into working with a tax accountant going through every possible thing you could pay or deduct. And people do realize how efficient and machine-precise the tax machine is when they come after you for every last penny if you got it wrong or didn't do it. Even if you don't get the police knocking on your door, it's a huge hassle that everyone has to go through every year, and why April 15th is an unofficial, tongue-in-cheek "holiday". There's still a lot of room for improvement on the "customer experience".

<comment><USER2> I see the glass as half full.

You are right it is complex, but some of that complexity is inherent to the problem of determine what the income of a self employed person actually is.

When I started my taxpaying career I would fill out the 1040EZ in 15 minutes, that was one of Reagan's best things. A lot of people only get W-2 income for them and the experience is streamlined.

The key thing is emotional. If you have a complex life over a long period of time you will have trouble with your taxes but you also will have trouble with your bank, phone company, airlines, and many other public and private organizations. The people at the IRS are not ogres who want to wreck your life but who want to orderly keep the lights on.

Don't get me started about how they'll (almost) stick probes in to your orifices in Japan or how people in Italy pay a fraction of what they should. VAT taxes work a lot like the "Flat Tax" some people like, and the administration of those is far worse than the administration of income and payroll in a small biz, I funded one that had a near death experience. If a small business has to pay it in multiple jurisidictions, such as US states, it's maddeningly hard. A central VAT could help with that though.

(For instance, you have to pay a few $100 in NYS just for the privilege to file your sales tax. You can get started quickly making and selling a few widgets that cost, say $50 and thus learn something about product-market fit with a tiny investment. It's a great way to make money and have fun and maybe you can scale it up. No way are you going to pay that fee before you start doing such a little thing and practically you won't later.

You think you got away with it because it takes a long time for the government to scan all the paperwork for problems.

Get up to having a storefront with a corporate registration and you will likely get caught and then you owe something like $5K of sales taxes so if you are not good with paperwork you'll find the corporate veil works against you and not with you this time and you could end up with no corporation in weeks unless you pay up the cash and all of it. A photo of our shop that was barred by the state was in the local newspaper If it wasn't for the faith and good will of our customers, who bought into the company, it would have been done for. )</comment></comment></comment>


Firefox PDF reader passes 'pixel-perfect' test - <AUTHOR> http://cnet.com/Article.rbml?nid=20076699&cid=null&bcid=&bid=-264

<comment><USER2> Link is broken.

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20076699-264/firefox- pdf-r...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20076699-264/firefox-pdf-reader- passes-pixel-perfect-test/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is the original blog post from mozilla → [http://blog.mozilla.com/cjones/2011/07/03/pdf-js-first- miles...](http://blog.mozilla.com/cjones/2011/07/03/pdf-js-first-milestone/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Someone else already corrected the link.

Commenting the article itself: If I click on the link that is supposed to show me a pixel perfect PDF in my FF 5 instance, I get a lot of gibberish (misaligned braces, text that overlaps) that is most certainly not part of the original PDF.

So - while I'd love to see something like this in the future, the author seems to see wildly different results than I do. For now, this _fails_ the pixel- perfect test and just about passes the readable test.

<comment><USER5> "but right now it requires a nightly build of Firefox"

<comment><USER4> Thank you for pointing this out. I was too eager to see it in action and - after skimming the article and obviously missing that clause - proceeded to hit the nice blue "read the JavaScript paper with pdf.js online, too" in the paragraph before the quote that contains the statement about nightlies.

My bad, mea culpa.

I won't run a nightly on my main machine to give it a try, but awesome if it made the leap to pixel perfect between FF 5 and current builds.

<comment><USER6> Apparently there's a number of bugs with Firefox's implementation of canvas and web fonts that were fixed for FF7. They rely on those fixes to get correct behavior.

(They've also found a couple WebKit bugs as well)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FirefoxOS 2.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Releases/2.0

<comment><AUTHOR> Switched to a Flame (from a Galaxy S4) and have never looked back since -- Update to 2.0 dropped on 11/07 it seems.

I got it a little late, but am still excited by all the new changes.</comment>


A New Wave of Reckoning Is Sweeping the Porn Industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxqn55/sexual-abuse-allegations-on-porn-sets-ryan-madison <comment><USER2> I guess some of it is the people who get in this business and get used to abusing people so much they expect it to be okay. I'm glad this kind of thing that has historically been accepted is seeing light of day.

Just because you're being paid to perform doesn't mean you've signed up for abuse and violence.</comment>


JavaScript makes all other languages irrelevant and why you must master it now - <AUTHOR> http://projectricochet.com/blog/javascript-making-all-other-languages-irrelevant-and-why-you-must-master-it-now#.VCJvb2X726c.twitter

<comment><USER2> «(I purposely exclude Java because recently my virus program declared it a hazard).»

Java is heavily used in finance, general business, science and academia and the JVM is the basis of vital new languages. I guess some people don't let a Windows virus scanner dictate their choices.</comment>


Desired destinations amongst top tech company employees - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/kat47BG <comment><AUTHOR> Data gathered from [https://repher.me](https://repher.me), where you can give/get referrals to tech companies.

Sankey diagram shows Lyft/Uber/Airbnb being the most desired companies, and the most number of requests came from Amazon/Microsoft/IBM employees.

Sample size is around ~500.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you beat depression or total burnout state? - <AUTHOR> (Throw away account)
50-60% through building MVP for my startup - currently alone.
But I am going through a state of depression since last 6 months. Reason I say this : I have noticed that I have total absence to any emotions.
Even when I get good news: I feel like I am not even close to feeling happy.
I find it hard to even get up and put good 100 lines of code a week in this state.
To beat blues :I somehow barely managed myself to do some weigh training this week and in the process have managed to sprain my back. More rest.
How to beat a state like this in life ?
Any advise is highly appreciated. <comment><USER2> I have suffered from depression and still have those downer phases every once a year or something. For me these are what worked:

\- Find people who love you and like to be with you unconditionally. People who do not need you to be at your best all the time. For me these are my parents, brothers, my wife and my in laws. All these people are just so happy being with me. When I visit home, I can tell my parents are having the time of their life just having me and all my brothers and the kids together. Its so liberating knowing nobody is expecting me to be the oh-so-perfect programmer or manager or even the perfect son or brother or husband. Also, 2 of my friends. I only have 2 great friends. But it's amazing when we are together. Too bad we are now in different countries.

\- Learn to keep an eye on your emotions. Over-analyzing? Immediately try to reason and convince yourself to just live in the moment.Tell yourself that everything is ok. We came in this world without anything and everything we have including relationships is what we got later.

\- Exercise. When you notice that week after week you make tangible improvements like lift more weight, run longer, or simply breather better- it does wonders to how you feel

\- Take it easy- Its alright to fail.

\- Nature- May be live near some greenery or lake etc. Take a walk in the woods. Just try to spend time with yourself, preferably in some place natural.

Something I must add: Try to build relationships. Good relationships with family and friends really take the edge off the hardships in life. Doesn't have to be 100 facebook friends, just a few solid ones.

I am at work and wrote this quickly. Sorry about grammar/spelling mistakes

<comment><USER3> This is great. And true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's hard to fully analyze your situation in this small paragraph.

1\. Acceptance is the starting point or in the case acknowledgement of the problem 2\. Talk Therapy / Counseling works. I would personally stay away from any pharma drugs, unless truly warranted. 3\. I liked that you mentioned some weight training! Any regular exercise routine never hurt anybody. I have fought off depression with hitting the gym hard. It was what I needed at the time. 4\. Can you smell what the Rock is cooking! [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dwayne-johnson-the- rock-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dwayne-johnson-the-rock- depression_us_564c2533e4b06037734bb59d)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Depression is a serious disease and very rarely can you "do better try harder" and actually conquer it. Treat your mental state like your injured back: you need time, rest, self care and possibly professional help.

Maybe this is "just stress" but "just stress" adds up over time to produce adrenal fatigue and other physical effects in your body. Maybe there's also some brain chemical stuff going on, in which case no amount of thinking or willpower will get you out. Needing medication, if indeed you do, is not a sign of your personal failure. Needing professional help of any kind for depression is not a sign of your personal weakness, it's a sign of your personal strength that you're willing to reach out when you need help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much. I will seek help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like so many here have said: Take the time to speak to a Therapist. If you need help finding one, I'll be more then happy to give you a hand. Hell if you just want a "sounding board of sorts", I'm game too. And if you are able too, find a "workout buddy." (Personally for me - this helped greatly for motivation to get to the gym.)

Also: This is a good first step that you know there is a problem and you want to start correcting it. A sizable portion don't even know/care there is emotional problems with themselves until it's too late. But please know that this will take time, there is no quick fix. (That is one of the many primary reasons why people don't seek out treatment.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is your product going according to plan? 6 months by yourself without releasing is a very long time without feedback or validation of any sort. That kind of uncertainty can wear you down.

Is it possible to release a cut now? Actually meet people or customers for feedback before going further?

On the other hand, if it is not going as per plan, may be it is time to let go. Try to tell to yourself it does not matter anymore and spend a few days away from screens and keyboard. Sleep well and eat healthy. Once you are well rested, go out and meet friends or strangers, who will not remind you of your project. Take as long as you want as mental and physical well being is so much more important than a startup. At the end of the break, you will be able to decide what direction to take.

It could also be that you have a more lucrative/interesting idea on mind and the current project is a blocker. That can make your current project feel more and more like a dead weight around your neck. In such case, you will need to decide what your priorities are and pivot accordingly.

Sometimes, just doing some market research to validate the need for your product can also do wonders to your morale.

If none of these help, pl consult a professional. Do not be afraid. Burnout, just like any other symptoms of illness, is just another indication that for the time being, we need to bring our focus back to us, in our life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for your words.

Project going according to plan ? It has slipped towards no unfortunately. But I keep telling myself that a 'better me' can do it (alas). But I need fresh perspective - agree with your advise.

<comment><USER7> Hi, I feel you. In my case, a project that was supposed to take 2 months, Took nearly a year to complete. By the time I completed it I almost couldn't stand it. It is not a case of not being a better me/you.

That is just the nature of the beast. Each software project/business is unique. So it is impossible to make accurate estimates. New features will keep cropping up. An integration that was supposed to be straight forward would fail because library A does not play well with library B. To hold yourself responsible for something beyond your control will obviously hurt you.

This is just an experience for you to learn that feature creep is real. Working alone is different from working in a team. In a team, gathering requirements, making estimates, development, marketing, sales, support are each shouldered by different teams. Each team would have multiple people. So any individual ends up with a small share of the responsibility pie. They have the luxury to draw a line on how much stress they would like to handle or move out.

In a single person company, one person gets to handle all the responsibilities and there is no way out short of giving up. The way you manage it is entirely different and that is what you really learn the first time you start a company. It took me nearly 3 projects to understand this. This is the rite of passage for Everyone who goes the solo route because there is nothing in the corporate/employee world to prep us for this.

Nowadays, I try to keep the features as minimal as possible. Everytime I ask, is this truly needed for the first release. I go to local meetups when ever possible to be among like minded techs.

Happy Producing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >> managed myself to do some weigh training this week and in the process have managed to sprain my back

You just described my on/off relationship with the gym.

>> 50-60% through building MVP for my startup - currently alone. But I am going through a state of depression since last 6 months

Did your depression start when you started your MVP? Or did something else change a around the time you started feeling this way? For me personally, I have felt quite crappy when I forced myself to operate in/under some circumstances.

>> Social life: nothing really (answered in another thread)

If you wanna do some remote pairing, or in person if you're in San Francisco,CA, with full permission to vent about whatever you wanna verbalize, I'd be happy to make some time to do that with you. I'll just listen and/or chat about code.

>> How to beat a state like this in life?

It helped me to learn that my feelings didn't need to be coupled my actions. And also accepting that it is OK to be depressed. Looking for smaller solutions is also a heck of a lot easier than trying to escape depression in one monolithic effort. When I am bummed out, big efforts are too hard.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm in the same situation you are, dealing with the exact same depression issues. I think what Ive slowly come to learn is that I simply needed to get away from my startup for a while to refocus and think about how to continue.

Exercise also seems to help beat the blues. My happier days are when I take a day off of work and walk around the exploratorium.

Take breaks, and get some physical activity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I am coming to a conclusion whilst replying that I need to get out of house more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mine occurred during a culmination of overworking and family acting outside of my expectations at my expense.

Here's the harsh truth. Burnout is going to cost money and time to fix. It's not simple. It's likely your brain is saying that things aren't right in your world representation. The best long term solution is understanding yourself and learning to explain what your subconscious is telling you.

Maybe your startup is taking more time to develop than you thought. Maybe your anxious about the market impact, the usefulness, or something else related to your timeline. Or you might just be watching too much CNN. You have to identify the variables that are contributing to your state(disbelief in your own world model will do it).

I don't believe that the root cause of depression is always nihilistic, although existential crisis' do exist. That's more about the state of being - and not everyone who faces the truth of reality crumbles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing your experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seek therapy. It doesn't happen overnight. Don't mix emotions with business. Have a life outside your business.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm also a solo founder writing an MVP, and have been working on it for maybe a year. It can be lonely, but keep the faith.

I think you're right on with hitting the gym. This is what I've done as well. Having people around, change of pace, and doing something that has progress I can see (body, weight) has been helpful.

Another thing that has been helpful is daily journaling to just get it out. I've been to therapy a lot, and while it can help, I find that really the best cure is to learn to help yourself. That starts with learning the actual problem, which it sounds like you need to figure out with some deep introspection.

I'm also a big fan of long walks and road trips to give you some thinking time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much. Your words made me look at my few old notes of mine. I have written few activities which make me happy and I'd made a note to myself to fallback on them. Amongst them one is long walk!

Having people around, I would pretty much like to. But I have to agree that I have been hard on this aspect since having friends kind of chips me away from goal. Background, age and other things are not on my side. And my friends have different priorities going on now. So keeping myself away for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's usually "a good sign" when you're self-aware of your current state and emotional behavior. I'd say seek therapy first, but you might just be going through a down time. You're doing good because you know what's happening to you. Surround yourself with people in your project. I burnt out once and it took me 2 years to recover. I wasn't aware of my emotional state. During these 2 years I almost reached depression. My wife is the one that helped me going back outside, doing normal things. As of today, still looking at the world differently, things aren't that awesome anymore but you learn how to live with these feelings and you just deal with it. One day I hope to be fully recovered.

Seek for help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing your difficult experience and words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Before some advice, a few quick questions: 1\. What other things are you doing? Are you sleeping/staying in bed all day? Are you eating normally? 2\. What kind of things do you like to do? Have you been doing them over the past few months? 3\. What's your social life like?

Okay, now some advice based on what you originally posted: 1\. Continue your weight training. If you can afford it, get a personal trainer or start going to exercise classes. Research has shown time and time again that exercise is one of the most important things to do when depressed. But when you're depressed it can be hard to motivate yourself to exercise. Making the gym a validating environment by seeking out a personal trainer or exercise class could motivate you to go! In addition, it is less likely that you would hurt yourself with someone guiding you through proper technique and giving you adjustments. 2\. Seek out a therapist. I have been in an incredible amount of therapy and can say from personal experience that it is one of the best things that you can do. If you have the time or finances to seek out a DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) program, I highly suggest doing so. It is far more structured than traditional CBT therapy, by pairing individual therapy with skills coaching that focus on mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance. Through DBT I've become a lot more mindful, so I can recognize when I meet my limits and accept that. DBT is truly life changing. 3\. Create a work-life balance. Working 24/7 simply isn't feasible or effective. Find activities that you enjoy doing and make a point to do them on a daily basis. For instance, I love to cook and make meals from scratch. So spending time meal planning/researching and cooking is a huge stress reliever and I get a daily "chore" done! 4\. Change your mindset. View each bump on the road as a chance to improve and learn. Approach rather than avoid and face your fears. If at first, you don't succeed, analyze what went wrong and how you can improve for next time. Never give up. Validate and celebrate your accomplishments.

Go to therapy. Try different styles and different therapists until you find one that is the right fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> First up, thank you so much.

Social life: nothing really (answered in another thread) Staying in bed all day: for last couple of days - yes. Otherwise not - mostly in front of screen. Im eating ok I think. Am I doing things I like (apart from work) - not really. (answered in another thread to do those) DBT - I would look up on this information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Learn how to play an instrument you've always wanted with a teacher: it will be harder than building the MVP, more stressful, you will feel you are shit for a lot of time... but it will take you back to reality.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is such an important and common issue for many of us. And there is a wealth of experience in here. It should be in the FAQ. (If we had one)

</comment><comment><USER17> Dr. Rhonda Patrick explains how inflammation and depression are related. Might find these videos useful: [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rhonda+patrick+...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rhonda+patrick+depression)

</comment><comment><USER18> Accept reality and you'll be halfway where you want to go. One such realities is that you are no longer who you used to be, and won't become that person ever again. Who you will be in the future, is still mostly decided by you alone and no one else.

</comment><comment><USER19> Have you thought about whether you really want to do this alone (i.e. without co-founders)? There's a reason YC has a higher bar for accepting startups with a single founder.

</comment><comment><USER15> Also, why are you building it alone? Nobody find it interesting? You lack the leadership skills? What is drawing you back from getting people to help you?

If you want, feel free to contact me.

</comment><comment><USER20> From my abundant experience, go to a Therapist, then exercise as much as you can, everyday would be ideal

</comment><comment><USER21> Seek therapy.

</comment><comment><USER22> Running hard. Pain is a gift :)

</comment><comment><USER23> ALL startup founders go through this (similar) stage. You are not alone! I know many founders personally who have experienced this and I have noticed this a recurring theme in many startup stories I have read… I have personally come very close to burnout / depression, but was lucky / fortunate to have come across people and resources that helped me manage it.

You are experience a Dip. You might be able to get out of this mode / phase fairly quickly, if you "change your perspective" on life. As a founder in a startup, you have to worry about a lot of things and most of the time you are doing this alone, at least until you find a good co-founder. Even with co- founders, it sometimes feels extremely lonely and depressing, especially when things slow down or grind to a halt.

Here are some tips & tricks:

1\. There is nothing wrong with your situation. You are not alone. Almost every startup founder goes through this. Push through it, you will come out a stronger founder. Keep saying this to yourself as a mantra: "This is just part of the startup grind. You are stronger than this, you can push through this, you are going to make it!"

2\. Keep in mind that eventually when your team grows from one to many, and the company experiences another dip like this one, you will have first hand knowledge on how some of your teammates might be feeling and you will be able to guide them out of it. So, think of this as an opportunity to learn.

3\. Ask for help. There is nothing wrong in opening up to close friends and family about this. Try to make friends who are in other startup companies. (big small or just getting started… they will be able to relate to your situation and sympathize with you much better than friends or family who have no clue about how startups work / how startups are created)

4\. Read books. (at least one every week) Biographies and business books that dive into startups. This is a great way to ground yourself in reality and see that you are not alone, many founders before you have gone through similar phases.

5\. Take a break- do something that stimulates your mind positively. This is very different for everyone. Try to cultivate a new hobby or learn a new skill. Something different from your project.

6\. Change in environment (location, people and problems) might be all you need. Try working from a library or coffee shop for a couple hours a day. Go to meetups or other startup events… see if you can find a startup co-working space. Try to help others, listen to their problems. I have personally noticed that when I help others solve their problems, I sometimes end up realizing solutions for my own…

7\. Exercise, sun and fresh air. Go on a long walk / jog / bike outside (preferably in the morning) Listen to the wind and birds, take in the fresh morning air.

8\. Meditate. This really helps me clear out the "noise". Try to meditate at least 20 minutes a day. Focus on the process of pushing away thoughts. Once you get a hang of how you can "push away" thoughts and noise, apply that technique when you start feeling like things are getting "out of hand" or when your brain gets foggy / mope.

9\. Break the problem into bite size chunks and CELEBRATE every time you successfully solve a bite of the problem. Having a sense of progress goes a looong way in keeping the motivation levels high. Track your progress and award yourself for hitting goals. You have to win many battles to win the war. Don't try to fight them all at once. Live to fight another day. You are in a marathon and not a sprint. So take it slow and steady. knock out one part of the problem at a time and before you know it you will have momentum again!!

Good luck! (May the force be with you!)</comment>


AWS Is Now Available from a Local Zone in Los Angeles - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-now-available-from-a-local-zone-in-los-angeles/ <comment><USER2> That feels like they used the ground work laid with AWS Outposts to enable such smaller auxiliary local zones as well: In both cases the control plane still resides in the "real" region, but the data plane for a local zone and an AWS Outpost is located somewhere else (customer data center or in the case of this local zone somewhere in LAX). I'd even bet that the hardware that they use to power AWS Outposts and such a Local Zone is the same. Of course obviously the scale and the offered services are different.

<comment><USER3> They said during they keynote that they used the outpost technology to make this happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This could also be big for web UIs which leverage server-side rendering. I've been ramping our use of blazor server-side for web interfaces, and putting an application server in one of these local zones near where we all work/live could have a really positive impact on perceived performance.

Right now, I ping ~50ms out to us-east-1 and things feel "pretty good" in our server-side web UIs. If I could drop this by a factor of 10, we are getting into gaming monitor latency territory, and pure UI state changes could be resolved in timeframes that would be perceptually instantaneous for most users. I.e. things like clicking a button to pop a modal you wouldn't even worry about trying to make a client-side interaction anymore. You'd just wire it up using some trivial @if(showModal) inclusion block on the server-side html page template.

Granted, this imposes a pretty harsh geographic constraint if you have just the 1 server, but it is likely feasible to separate the view layer from your persistence/stateful layers, so you could host your view rendering services in multiple local zones, with all the business logic and state kept in one of the primary regions. Not all things can always be instantaneous, but if the UI is highly-responsive there are countless UX approaches for indicating to a user in a friendly way that they simply need to wait for a moment. Being able to build your web UI around blocking calls into business logic seems like a powerful place to be in terms of simplicity and control.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is the parent zone for LA us-west2 in Oregon and not us-west1 which is actually in California?

<comment><USER6> AWS seems to want to discourage the use of us-west-1, which is in San Francisco AFAIK? us-west-2 probably has a lot more capacity. Historically it's tended to be cheaper, too.

<comment><USER7> It's in San Jose.

<comment><USER8> Unlikely it's just San Jose unless there's only one AZ (and there's two, plus one for legacy customers only I thought). Each AZ is customarily separated by at least a distance of a few miles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have a test IP address for this? I'd love to see how far away it is from where I'm sitting in Southern California right now.

<comment><USER10> [http://ec2-reachability.amazonaws.com/](http://ec2-reachability.amazonaws.com/)

It's on here.

<comment><USER11> On an OpenBSD box that is hardwired:

        ping -c 5 220.127.116.11
        PING 188.8.131.52 (22.214.171.124): 56 data bytes
        64 bytes from 184.108.40.206: icmp_seq=0 ttl=235 time=16.018 ms
        64 bytes from 18.104.22.168: icmp_seq=1 ttl=235 time=13.120 ms
        64 bytes from 18.104.22.168: icmp_seq=2 ttl=235 time=23.026 ms
        64 bytes from 188.8.131.52: icmp_seq=3 ttl=235 time=13.656 ms
        64 bytes from 184.108.40.206: icmp_seq=4 ttl=235 time=15.517 ms

Orange County, Spectrum cable. I used to get sub-10ms to us-east when I lived in Fairfax County, VA.

<comment> blaser-waffle > I used to get sub-10ms to us-east when I lived in Fairfax County, VA.

AWS East is in Ashburn, VA, just up Route 28 -- a stones throw from Dulles Airport. Not sure if they're still in the Dupont Fabros buildings or the Equinix campus.

<comment><USER8> Only four of the data centers that make up us-east-1 are in Ashburn, most are in the surrounding area (Sterling, South Riding, Chantilly, Manassas).

If interested, I listed them all out a while back here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20876909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20876909)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who's excited about this? What's your use case that just became viable because of it? Definitely don't mean these questions in a condescending way, just want to get a read on the pulse from the folks here that will use it :)

<comment><USER13> The big use case I see are render farms. Moving terabytes of data can be made incrementally faster if the DC Is physically located closer.

<comment><USER14> Unless there's better bandwidth, this will be on the order of milliseconds.

<comment><USER15> Its mostly higher bandwidth from being closer to source. Latency is definitely improved but so is bandwidth if you are in peered in the same exchange. Peek bandwidth is going to be much higher, especially if you are pulling/pushing north of 10G.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've always loved the "torn-page" look of some of the AWS Blog screenshots - is there a tool to provide this functionality that I don't know about?

<comment><USER17> Seems like it's SnagIt's "torn edge" effect

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Let's see how much code like this exists:

if 'us-west-2' in region: // do it

</comment><comment><USER19> Presumably the first of many. Will they map this to all of their Cloudfront locations eventually?

</comment><comment><USER20> AWS is slowly going after StackPath and Cloudflare.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can anyone explain why this is different from a region or an AZ?

<comment><USER2> An AWS region consists of several availability zones (AZ's) which consist of several data centers running AWS' hardware. Each region is designed in a way that services provided by it can tolerate the loss of a availability zone. A local zone is now something like an additional availability zone with the important difference that it only runs a subset of services of a regular availability zone and doesn't feature its own control plane (which are the services AWS needs to run all this infrastructure including API endpoints, etc.). Instead the control plane of the local zone just runs the so called data plane which is what contains the services used by their customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does this host any actual services, or is it just a quick way to get on the AWS backbone from LA? So it becomes a kind of "Region Endpoint"?

<comment><USER23> The blog post contains a list. Quote: "Services – We are launching with support for seven EC2 instance types (T3, C5, M5, R5, R5d, I3en, and G4), two EBS volume types (io1 and gp2), Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre, Application Load Balancer, and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. Single-Zone RDS is on the near-term roadmap, and other services will come later based on customer demand. Applications running in a Local Zone can also make use of services in the parent region."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For my niche use case, I'd love to see this somewhere in the middle of the US so I can have a single instance with similar ping to both coasts.

<comment><USER25> Try us-east-2, it's located in Ohio.

<comment><USER26> canada-central-1 is also close-ish.

<comment><USER27> Oddly enough, ca-central-1 is in Montreal... even further east than their Ohio and Virginia data centers.

[https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global- infrastructure/](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/)

Scroll down to AWS Global Infrastructure Map

<comment><USER28> It seems Central Canada is more philosophical than Geographical.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This would be exciting but I'm already having trouble managing subnets and this just makes it worse. If these new Local Zones support IPv6 then that makes it much easier to plan and support new networks.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is AWS running Outposts in internet exchanges instead of them building out full datacenters.

<comment><USER31> That would be a very sensible way to dogfood Outpost indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > The new Local Zone in Los Angeles is a logical part of the US West (Oregon). > us-west-2-lax-1a

Wow, yet more obscure non intuitive naming from AWS. Why not just us- west-3a-local?

<comment><USER8> It's extremely intuitive, it's part of the 'us-west-2' region, but an extension in 'lax' and it's the first availability zone there '1a'.

Your suggestion makes no sense, it implies an entirely new region 'us-west-3' but with an entirely different naming scheme (no regions have an 'a' on the end of them) and the 'local' provides zero context about it with no expansion capability.</comment></comment>


Prenav "hello world" drone drawing cubes inside a building [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.prenav.com/blog/2015/8/26/hello-world

<comment><USER2> Very nice. But there's no information about what they use as a position reference. GPS with a pseudolite, maybe?[1] If you have a clear line of sight to your local reference transmitter, 1cm repeatability isn't that hard. If not, you need a much more complex system.

They're at my favorite local intersection, Industrial Rd. and Commercial St.

[1] [http://gps.stanford.edu/papers/Thesis/StewartCobbThesis97.pd...](http://gps.stanford.edu/papers/Thesis/StewartCobbThesis97.pdf)

<comment><USER3> _The precision comes from custom software and hardware we 've created, including a robot on the ground that's equipped with a camera and laser rangefinder to guide the drone along a pre-defined path._

That's relative position, which seems adequate for what's exhibited here.

<comment><USER4> This makes me a little sad to learn that's the method involved.

All the timelapse video now proves is that the drone was in the proper position to flash its light.

Out of position (as measured by the precise laser rangefinder)?

Then don't flash the light yet, drift/adjust, check again, repeat until correct - then flash.

It's not precision as much as it's "eventual precision".

<comment><USER5> We're more focused on the "go to this point in 3d space and take a picture" use case, so we don't care as much about the shape of the path in between the points. It is however a totally smooth to the 4 derivative path we are planning and executing to get to that new position, so its quite mathematically pure... Wind and actuator dynamics get in the way of perfect planning though. We did some work on more continuous velocity paths, which are more in line with my computer graphics and cinematography background, but those will have to wait for a future video. =)

<comment><USER6> But you care a bit about that path if you're up close to cell towers or power lines, surely? You at least care that your path doesn't cross a minimum distance threshold from the object.

<comment><USER5> Well, sure. I don't really mean we don't care about the path, we care quite a bit about the path, mainly that it gets from point A to point B directly and doesn't hit things, and that it is somewhat as smooth as possible (easy on the actuators to follow). We have a 3d map of the environment we build from the ground robot to directly test against while we are flying to make sure we don't hit things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really cool technology, I can see many applications.

I would love to see their business case math.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of this quadrotor lightshow, with music by OPN:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cseTX_rW3uM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cseTX_rW3uM)

</comment><comment><USER9> so many real-life applications to this tech. awesome. Nicely produced introduction video. good job, guys.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can see this being used mostly for advertisement :/

Wait a second, these videos are not real-time!

<comment><USER11> That can be solved by just using more drones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really impressive. Plenty of real-world applications for this.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice, impressive.

</comment><comment><USER14> Impressive demonstration of precision!

</comment><comment><USER15> Very cool.

AstroScript Pilot Program :D

</comment><comment><USER16> Off-topic: the cheapest home on zillow available in San Carlos, CA (where Prenav is located) is $698k + $458 monthly HOA fee for 1,040 sq st.

<comment><USER17> It would have been more interesting if you had mentioned why this was important. FWIW, the San Carlos CalTrain station is an easy walk to these guys so you pretty much could live anywhere from San Francisco (SoMa) to Gilroy and be able to work here with a public transit based commute.</comment></comment>


Game: Multitask - test your ability to mulitask - <AUTHOR> http://www.kongregate.com/games/IcyLime/multitask

<comment><USER2> Multitask 2: <http://www.kongregate.com/games/IcyLime/multitask-2>

Second version just came out, now has 6 games instead of 4 to multitask!

</comment><comment><USER3> First try, 91. Once the fourth game comes on it gets really hard.</comment>


An Epic Tale of How It All Happened : The Story of an Indie Book Writer - <AUTHOR> http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/2010/08/epic-tale-of-how-it-all-happened.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because I'd never read a tale of a writer that sounded so much like a hacker. BTW, she is one of the best selling authors on the Kindle with something like 7 books in the paid Kindle top 100.</comment>


Hjson, a User Interface for JSON - <AUTHOR> https://hjson.github.io/ <comment><USER2> Seems like it overlaps a lot with Yaml. What are the benefits to using Hjson instead?</comment>


A decentralized marketplace for digital content - <AUTHOR> https://lbry.com/ <comment><USER2> The fact that I have to install a Windows app to see the content makes this an instant non-starter for me. Sorry, but I have no idea who you people are or whether I should trust my security and privacy to you. Why couldn't this have been written as a web app?</comment>


Duck Typing in Piston: Experimenting with Abstractions for Game Dev in Rust - <AUTHOR> http://blog.piston.rs/2015/02/10/duck-typing-in-piston/

<comment><AUTHOR> In yesterday's Hematite thread I mentioned how the Piston project is a community effort to explore idiomatic approaches to game development in Rust, and today Sven Nilsen just so happens to grace us with an example. :)

Beyond the specific application of game development in Rust, I think this serves as a great example of how new languages impose novel restrictions that force us to rethink how we model things which seem so straightforward in more familiar languages. Whether or not the benefits are worth such efforts is ultimately an exercise for the reader!</comment>


Ustream.tv: A network of justin.tv knockoffs without the tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.ustream.tv/ <comment><USER2> They should get some big players to wear cameras around. Have a featured promotion like 'The Day in the Life of..' to boost their traffic. I'd love to see a day in the life of a semi-popular person(All I can think of is a musician). Okay, this is probably an obvious idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> Justin.tv is going to be a network. So this isn't a network of knockoffs, just a knockoff.</comment>


GCHQ Used Fake LinkedIn Pages to Target Engineers (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ghcq-targets-engineers-with-fake-linkedin-pages-a-932821.html <comment><USER2> And we all know that they are using this data only to fight terrorism.

They would never use it to give their own industry insider information.

</sarcasm>

<comment><USER3> As outlined in the NSA recruitment audio, the term "adversary" includes everyone - not just terrorists. There is nobody who is not considered to be an "adversary", so that includes commercial rivals too.

<comment><USER4> NSA collects intelligence from people so that US policymakers make informed decisions (like about Russia invading Crimea or how badly Malaysia is lying to the world), same as every other intel agency does for their home country. Big difference is that NSA won't give their analysis to private companies. In many countries, things like State-Owned Enterprises blur the things and economic espionage is widespread.

<comment><USER5> according to Snowden, some of the NSA documents suggest the NSA did give their analysis to private companies. [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57617823-38/snowden- accuse...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57617823-38/snowden-accuses-nsa- of-conducting-industrial-espionage/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So you have targets (basically employees of said company) browsing popular sites and becoming infected. You can't deny access to all popular sites. Would it be possible to build a 'scraper' that copies content and places it on your local network for your employees? Perhaps also allowing comments to be placed back on your behalf? You'd give the employees access to things they want to read, but stop attacks correct?

<comment><USER7> I don't think the filtering approach is feasible. You need separation.

Maybe run separate VMs for casual browsing, work, entertainment, etc? Like Qubes does [http://qubes-os.org/trac](http://qubes-os.org/trac)

<comment><USER3> It soon begins to become infeasible. Unless you can identify when these quantum attacks are occurring and block them this is really more of a political problem than a technical one.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. This is also a technical problem. Good engineers need to keep working to minimize the possibility of MITMs in their purview. It's a technical arms race.

Also, even if you solve the political problem in one country, you still need to worry about external and criminal threats that operate with the same tradecraft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "[LinkedIn] does not sanction the creation or use of fake LinkedIn profiles > or the exploitation of its platform for the purposes alleged in this > report."

If I understand things correctly, it's not claimed that GHCQ made fake profiles or exploited their platform. It's possible that whoever made the statement didn't really understand MITM, but this kind of reads like another one of the usual carefully worded non-denials.

Full paragraph in the article:

When contacted, LinkedIn stated that the company takes the privacy and security of its members "very seriously" and "does not sanction the creation or use of fake LinkedIn profiles or the exploitation of its platform for the purposes alleged in this report." "To be clear," the company continued, "LinkedIn would not authorize such activity for any purpose." The company stated it "was not notified of the alleged activity."

</comment><comment><USER10> But LinkedIn uses SSL. There's no mention of how GCHQ got around this. Does anyone know?

EDIT: Because the ability to MITM SSL sessions is a lot more scary to me than the willingness to MITM non-SSL sessions.

<comment><USER11> Well since the GCHQ is part of the government, and the government has a root cert in the browsers, they can basically create all the SSL certificates they want.

Governments can MITM without any problems.

<comment><USER12> I don't believe the UK gov have a TLS CA in any standard browser deployments do they? I'm not even sure we have a CA HQd here for them to compel into giving them certs for mitm?

<comment><USER13> Out of curiosity I had a quick scan through the "Trusted Root Certification Authorities" on this Windows 7 box and it's quite a surprising list - I have no idea who a lot of these organizations are...

Also, one thing I'm pretty confident about, is that if GCHQ is behind any of these certs they wouldn't go labeling it as "UK Government - GCHQ". So presumably I'm just trusting Microsoft that when these certs get pushed out as part of Windows they are who they say they are...

<comment><USER14> CA's can issue or lose intermediate certificates that they shouldn't. These have been detected at least 3 times when these technically valid but never before seen certificate chains are used for google.com/yahoo.com/microsoft.com etc.

[http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/enhancin...](http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/enhancing- digital-certificate-security.html) [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/detecting-certificate- autho...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/detecting-certificate-authority- compromises-and-web-browser-collusion) [http://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium- security/root-ca-polic...](http://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium- security/root-ca-policy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why do the NSA and GCHQ want this much access? Everyone's location in real time? This is ludicrous. Terrorists don't use mobile phones anyway.

I'm still waiting for the blackmail revelations. Though I doubt NSA & friends would be that stupid to make slides about that little objective.

<comment><USER16> >Terrorists don't use mobile phones anyway.

There you go! Track all the phone users, and anyone who doesn't have one, and is therefore untracked, is probably a terrorist!

Actually that's not far-fetched. I do recall, vaguely, some old indymedia article about a European political activist being arrested, with the fact they left their phone at home before turning up at a meeting being part of the grounds for suspicion. Indymedia stories tend to be rather ephemeral and hard to search so providing actual details is somewhat troublesome...

<comment><USER17> > There you go! Track all the phone users, and anyone who doesn't have one, > and is therefore untracked, is probably a terrorist!

This is how I would scare people if I were paid by the NSA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Then they determined which of the potential targets used LinkedIn or Slashdot.org, a popular news website in the IT community.

So is HN. And it's ancient. Any ideas of possible vectors to attack HN-loving engineers?

<comment><USER18> MITM on a connection to hackernews probably doesn't differ in any significant detail from MITM to facebook, linkedin, slashdot, etc.

<comment><USER18> Update, this sibling post claims that HN is at least a _well-configured_ website; and so MITM attacks will be on the upper end of the normal difficulty range: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421558)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What does this have to do with saving us from terrorism?

<comment><USER20> Absolutely nothing.

It's Totalitarianism, nothing more or less.

<comment><USER21> I just can't understand how the people who work in there do not see it.

<comment><USER20> I worked in the defense industry for a few years (1998-2002). I didn't see it at the time. Everyone works in isolation, no one talks about work and everyone is micromanaged to bits and separately motivated. It's heavily draped in propaganda as well, most of which is horse shit. It's all much like the promoted status of imperialist armies.

Obviously september 11th 2001 happened and to see your colleagues actually see that as job security and a way to sell more weapons and celebrate that turned it for me. I started to question the ethics of what I was doing and decided it was best that I left. I bailed one afternoon, gave no notice and spent three months selling Sun kit on ebay before taking a job at a web agency selling whiskey and houses instead.

Most people didn't get that "moment" and are still prisoners of the inane propaganda. The same is true of those at GCHQ.

My children are doing GCHQ sponsored mathematics work (cryptography challenges) at the age of 10 probably in the vain hope that they will eventually see this as normal and be recruited before they have a chance to question the ethics of it all.

<comment><USER22> >My children are doing GCHQ sponsored mathematics work (cryptography challenges) at the age of 10 probably in the vain hope that they will eventually see this as normal and be recruited before they have a chance to question the ethics of it all.

What? Care to elaborate? (I'm American if that explains why I have no idea what you are referring to)

<comment><USER20> Well it goes like this....

There was a lot of publicity and propaganda and hype around Alan Turing and _cyber-security_ over the last few years in the UK media. This drove a whole codebreaking fascination thing with mathematics.

So not wishing to miss out on all the action, a project was started called The Enigma Project which features basic codebreaking challenges (basic substitution ciphers, OTP etc) aimed at primary school children. This was started by Simon Singh / Cambridge University after good old Si released a book called The Code Book after which he wanted to drum up publicity rapidly. No other reason.

So after a year or so of neglect these sheets work their way into "photocopy circulation" amongst schools in the UK as part of the typical "teachers don't give a shit and just want to hand out worksheets" culture that appeared.

Obviously any other material that could be assembled cheaply was chucked on the back. Turns out there's a couple of sheets plainly marked from GCHQ in there as well as "additional exercises". Rather interesting as they are above what you'd consider appropriate for that age (prime factorisation and rapid factorisation techniques etc). Very odd!

Now this in itself is pretty null and void but it leads into the culture which I experienced where we were asked in secondary school mathematics to enter various "challenges" to play off against other schools. I was pretty good at mathematics (at GCSE and A-level) and did well on these challenges but was approached after this by people recruiting for SIGINT rather than go to university. Other people who did well were similarly propositioned. I impolitely declined and relaxed into a life of electrical engineering, pizza and beer which I thoroughly don't regret.

I'm worried my children will be similarly filtered out and recruited to be honest.

<comment><USER15> Really interesting (if a bit disturbing, to be honest). Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Who needs enemies with such friends...

<comment><USER24> With friends like these, who needs enemas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Please add [2013] in the title.</comment>


Are we there yet? (The traditional YC "waiting for the acceptance mail" thread) - <AUTHOR>

Did you submit to YC? What did you submit? Do you think you'll make a chance? Have they sent out the mails yet? <comment><USER2> Think someone beat you to it....

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5558201>

</comment><comment><USER3> I am still waiting</comment>


Monitor Crypto Events with Akka Streams - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ticofab/monitor-crypto-events-with-akka-stream-b2d5d6687804 <comment><USER2> I see several problems: the biggest is that the project is based on CMC. The data available there has several known problems, so garbage in, garbage out!

Take the recents jumps to 8kUSD of bitcoin for example, based on the ETF stories. If you followed the market at that time, you would know that the CMC represenation of it is at best flawed. Also there are plausible accusations of faked volume and market manipulation.

The second is the project does not monitor the blockchain itself, or sentiment analysis of news feeds, so it is missing alternative stories.

Finally, the architecture is way too complex. The author mentionned in the first post doing things the right way, but I see that mostly as an exercice to try to use Akka for a problem where it is a bad fit.

The work is interesting, but I fear it is the wrong approach</comment>


WaveNet launches in the Google Assistant - <AUTHOR> https://deepmind.com/blog/wavenet-launches-google-assistant/ <comment><USER2> I'm most interested in its potential for audiobooks, especially of the vast array of old and less-common books that don't have human-made audiobook equivalents. I find myself constrained by the limits of audiobook choices, which tends toward best-sellers lists or pop-sci. Current attempts to use text-to-speech to generate audiobooks results in something that's frankly unlistenable. If TTS could get to a "good enough" point for audiobooks, that would open up a huge range of less-common content.

<comment><USER3> One of my co-workers told me in 2012 that he was doing exactly this. He used an ebook reader to download free ebooks from Gutenberg and then the IVONA text to speech engine for Android to listen to them on his drives. He had already finished a few classics like Treasure Island this way.

I'm sure things have improved significantly since 2012 so what you're looking for is probably easily done.

<comment><USER4> If your co-worker could share how he did this, it would be appreciated (specifically, what apps/code needs to be run).

<comment><USER5> Not the coworker, but I've been doing this for a couple years. If you're on iOS, the simplest option is Voice Dream Reader [1].

It can read .epub files directly, along with text files and webpages, and integrates with Dropbox, Pocket, Gutenberg, etc.

On Android, you can get Voice Dream Reader (though it has less features than on iOS) or @Voice Aloud Reader which is free [2].

[1] [http://www.voicedream.com/reader/](http://www.voicedream.com/reader/)

[2] [http://www.hyperionics.com/atVoice/](http://www.hyperionics.com/atVoice/)

<comment><USER6> It also works reasonably well for academic papers as PDF. Equations get butchered, of course, but overall it's not bad (you can set PDF margins so that headers/footers are not read out aloud on every page). I use it to proof- read my own writing, it helps you spot things that spelling/grammer checkers miss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am wondering what their baseline is. They call it "Current Best Non- WaveNet". Quite frankly, Apple's most recent deep learning-based speech synthesis sounds superior, but there aren't enough samples to for a proper comparison: [https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/08/06/siri- voices.htm...](https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/08/06/siri-voices.html)

<comment><USER8> It could just be a matter of opinion, but I prefer both Google's unit selection synthesis, and their WaveNet synthesis. The prosody in Apple's latest method is still annoying, nowhere near as good as the Google models of 2015 and 2016, and not remotely comparable to the WaveNet models.

Apple's change in voice talent is an improvement though, and they may have more units than before, which is helpful. I believe their model also works offline, which is a huge plus (though I think Google's prior model works offline as well).

<comment><USER9> > prosody

I learned a useful new word, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, I hear a _huge_ improvement in the Japanese model: the difference between a robot in person and a young woman on the phone.

<comment><USER10> It's a huge improvement, but still nowhere near the state of the art for Japanese TTS which has always been ahead of English (since the phonetics are much simpler).

Listen to the samples here for example: [http://voicetext.jp/samplevoice/](http://voicetext.jp/samplevoice/)

<comment><USER8> Mm, I see what you mean. It seems like voicetext.jp has more "correct" prosody, and seems to reproduce vocal fry correctly, I'm noticing that's missing from the WaveNet sample now. There's still some work to be done around filtering with voicetext, I hear pretty glaring artifacts between the units, whereas WaveNet doesn't produce any such artifacts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always wondered why companies don't just take all the close-captioned TV streams and use that as training data for their voice models. Seems like it would create a much more natural sounding voice model (at least as far as humans are accustomed to).

<comment><USER12> What happens if the CC isn't entirely in sync with the video or audio?

<comment><USER13> Strictly speaking, the text is never 'entirely in sync' because spoken words inherently blur together and are seamless; individual letters in the text do not start and end at precise intervals. This is one of the things that makes speech recognition so hard: letters, syllables, and words do not really exist as discrete things on the raw audio level. So this problem exists for any speech transcription dataset. To provide a loss function, then, you would use something like CTC: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=FD2...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=FD2D37798AA9ABA95F00F67FA604F1AD?doi=10.1.1.75.6306&rep=rep1&type=pdf) Fortunately, NNs are good at handling noisy data, and in practice they work very well for speech recognition/transcription.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I still don't understand the difference between Google Assistant and Google Now (or whatever), other than when I accidentally launch Assistant instead of Now, my commands are never understood.

<comment><USER15> I don't understand the difference either other than Assistant seems to be replacing Now. The issue, I'm finding, is that Google Assistant requires that you turn on the recording of usage data and history to your account, such as Web & App activity, Location History, Voice & Audio activity. All recorded and tied to your account. I don't believe this was the case with Google Now.

Google, to their credit, normally allows you to erase all this data and turn recording off, but with Google Assistant, they require it all to be on and recording. I avoid using it because of this restriction.

<comment><USER16> IIRC one could use Google Now with voice recordings off and the extra-spying setting of "web and app activity" off (though web and app activity had to be on for many features). All this must now be on for the assistant, as you say.

I did try out Google Now for a time due to having an Android Wear watch and found that as time went on more functionality required the turning on of these settings. One particular oddity for a time was that "OK Google, Navigate Home" would produce only a complaint about web and app activity being off, but "OK Google, navigate to $HOME_STREET, $HOME_TOWN" was fine.

I've abandoned Android Wear because of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To be honest, it still obviously sounds machine generated. I guess it's a slight improvement, but the examples shown do not include any challenging words or phrases. We've been able to generate adequate sounding speech for simple phrases for quite some time. I bet this was really fun to work on however.

<comment><USER18> If you ever listen to people try to record sound that's clear and precise, they actually sound fairly robotic. See this Google 20% Project where they explore Google Assistant's voice creation: [https://youtu.be/qnGNfz7JiZ8?t=5m23s](https://youtu.be/qnGNfz7JiZ8?t=5m23s)

WaveNet is probably modeling the source data very well. It sounds like they just need more data with emotion and inflection, rather than having source data that is optimized for monotonicity and precision.

<comment><USER19> The improved voices sound exactly like the audio from CBT's I've taken in the past. Could possibly have fooled me.

<comment><USER20> What is CBT?

<comment><USER21> CBT is commonly understood to mean Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but in this case I believe OP means computer based training(s?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This would be great for games with lots of speaking characters and other npcs.

You could vary so much

</comment><comment><USER23> I hope somebody uses this to immortalize Sir David Attenborough or the sadly departed Don LaFontaine.

<comment><USER20> Oh man, I can already see the court cases of a certain robot's voice sounding a little too similar to a deceased human's that it should make royalty payments.

<comment><USER23> Heh, in my original post I wanted to follow up that paragraph with a question: Is someone's voice their IP?

Would e.g. Don LaFontaine's family go all J.R.R. Tolkien and forbid the use of his voice in certain contexts?

Then again, for now, it seems that it's easy to get away with synthesizing voices of popular characters as long as you don't use copyrighted names:

[https://acapela-box.com/AcaBox/index.php](https://acapela- box.com/AcaBox/index.php)

(choose English(USA) - "Little Creature". Borked on Firefox but works in Chrome)

"Little Creature" my ass.

Apparently, names are IP, voices not so much. But we can't have nice things because like you said - eventually, someone's going to figure out how to file an effective lawsuit.

<comment><USER24> I don't see it as being very different than using someone's face to promote something.

For example, should a lifelike digital model (or even a still image) of an actor's face still generate royalties for the actor's family after their death? Both cases are using a unique attribute of the person to promote something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So, when can we expect an open source release of the tech and model?

<comment><USER26> Never, and it fucking sucks.

<comment><USER27> Do you know any higher quality speech synthesis software?

<comment><USER26> Nope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> These things are highly nuanced.

The amount of tweaking and finessing that goes on under the hood for specific scenarios can change outcomes quite a lot.

And from a product perspective, it can be taken quite far - for example, most of the 'common' things Siri says are not synthesized, it's literally are recording of the voice over artists. The more arcane stuff is synthesized.

It's always comparing apples to oranges to bananas unless you really know what they're doing, even then it's hard.

</comment><comment><USER29> I would love something like this for computer notifications, or any sort of automated system notification. For a concrete example, my RC controller has the ability to do voice prompts (e.g. "landing gear down"), and it would be great if I could get a high-quality voice to speak all this.

Hell, I'd settle for an API where I could send text and get high-quality voice back. Maybe I can somehow hack the Google Assistant app to do it...

<comment><USER30> I think AWS Polly ([https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/polly-text-to-speech- in-47-...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/polly-text-to-speech-in-47-voices- and-24-languages/)) can do this. I'm not sure of the quality compared to Google's or Apple's TTS though.

<comment><USER29> Apparently it's semi-decent, thank you!:

[https://aws.amazon.com/polly/](https://aws.amazon.com/polly/)

<comment><USER31> I was hoping that the voice in the video was created by Polly. That would've been amazing but the samples they provide sound quite robotic.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, they do, unfortunately :/ Hopefully there will be some improvement they make or some other API that will be able to provide this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> While the 100x speedup sounds impressive, a raw speed number without details regarding hardware is pretty meaningless. I'm guessing they got the 20x realtime speed from running it on their new TPU hardware, which they say can do 180 Tflops. That means you would need 9 Tflops of computing power to run this in realtime -- still pretty far away from running on a phone, or PC for that matter.

<comment><USER33> They literally said it's launching in the Google Assistant (i.e. running on phones) now.

In fact that's the title of the article.

<comment><USER34> Does TTS run on the phone or the cloud?

<comment><USER33> It runs on the phone afaik, while speech recognition on the other hand is supported by stuff Google runs in the cloud.

Edit: I might be wrong, at the end of a paragraph they say it runs on Google's TPU cloud infrastructure, though it isn't clear to me whether they just use that for training.

Edit 2: I just tried it on my phone. At least stuff like asking it to "Turn on WiFi" works without an internet connection, and yields a TTS response.

<comment><USER20> > I just tried it on my phone. At least stuff like asking it to "Turn on WiFi" > works without an internet connection, and yields a TTS response.

But this is the status quo. You would not expect Google to disable offline TTS just for slightly improved quality. The real question is, is it running Wavenet offline or the previous version of its TTS engine offline?

<comment><USER35> Today's announcement is cloud-only. We also support an older algorithm for offline use that's less computationally intensive.

<comment><USER36> Is the offline one improving also? Google Maps often falls back to it (much more often than necessary for some reason) and it sounds completely different and far worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm interested in using similar generative adversarial networks to reduce artifacting in video streams. For example, highly compressed streams tend to show blocking artifacts on dark scenes, gradients, and static that could be smoothed in the decoder.

I haven't actually done much about it yet, but I'm interested.

<comment><USER38> Adding matching of the laplacian to the optimization could be really helpful for this. I found this paper the other day and really enjoyed it [https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.01253](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.01253)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Is there an api for this like amazon Polly?

<comment><USER40> I was wondering about that too. Google already has speech recognition APIs. I don't understand why they don't provide TTS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Awesome. I guess. Hard to know when everything AI/Assistant related is currently focused on the US market.

</comment><comment><USER42> But I'm imagining, but don't the wavenet versions sound very formal and a little depressed? As if it were a reflection of our society. Listen to them again. Very formal, lifeless and depressed.

</comment><comment><USER43> Wow. I can't believe they got such a significant speed increase.

<comment> jay-anderson Hopefully there will be enough details on how they accomplish this when they release their paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Guys, for those of you who would like to see how Microsoft Cognitive service's TTS fares when compared to Google's TTS.

We had launched a Bot which gives voice summary of web content on Messenger, Slack, Telegram & Twitter with In-line audio player on first three. It's great for sharing audio summary to our visually impaired friends.

Check it out here - [https://larynx.io/#larynxBot](https://larynx.io/#larynxBot)

</comment><comment><USER45> Can I get this on Mac OS as system voice?

</comment><comment><USER46> Apple's iOS 11 voice is pretty amazing too. I wonder what they are using.

</comment><comment><USER47> Beuatiful, but for certain voices.. seems very close to how computerized it sounds.... except Japanese....

I'd like to be able to record my voice - and have it translated to text, then compare how it sounds via both engines vs my voice/cadence.

</comment><comment><USER48> Any ideas when Assistant for iOS will released outside US?

</comment><comment><USER49> wow. I hope they will publish details on the optimisations

</comment><comment><USER50> is there open-source implementation on github?

<comment><USER51> There are two reachable from here: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09482](https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09482)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Oh how much I wish Google paid to Morgan Freeman or David Attenborough to have their voice as an option.

<comment><USER52> Wonder -- in all seriousness -- if the BBC will do Attenborough. If you're British and you've grown up with his documentaries, all other nature voices simply sound wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I think the logical next step for this is voice recognition.</comment>


Show HN: Analytics Setup Guidebook- Explaining the Confusing Analytics Landscape - <AUTHOR> https://holistics.io/books/setup-analytics <comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks,

Have you ever tried building a simple analytics stack for your company, yet not sure what's the best way to start with "just the right amount of effort" that can still scale it up later when you grow? And when you went googling you soon got confused by the conflicting advice on the internet: ETL or ELT, data warehouse or data lake, SQL or OLAP cube, etc?

That's a common problem that I saw when speaking to our customers. I soon realized that books about data analytics are quite outdated given the current pace of development in the space.

There isn't an up-to-date, high-level "map" that gives readers a proper framework of thinking about the analytics landscape. Much of the materials out there are step-by-step how-to based on a pre-selected set of tools/technologies.

We decided to write that "map" in form of this short book - "The Analytics Setup Guidebook". The book aims to give readers better clarity over the confusing analytics landscape.

It covers:

* How does a simple, yet scalable analytics stack look like, and how you can build one cheaply and quickly

* ETL vs ELT, what's the big deal? And why ELT is better than ETL nowadays.

* Why data modeling is important in analytics, Kimball data modeling and how it's relevant in modern cloud systems

* Why the market of BI tools is so confusing nowadays

* How company's BI adoption will predictably evolve over time

The book is intended as a comprehensive intro for data people, but data veterans might find chapter 3 and chapter 4 useful — we spoke about how Kimball Data Modeling fits in with modern cloud infrastructure (MPP), and how BI has evolved over time in an organization.

The best part about the book is it's short, well-illustrated and can be finished within 3 hours of reading!

Here's a direct, ungated link to the book if you don't want to give your email: [https://cdn.holistics.io/guidebook/the-analytics-stack- guide...](https://cdn.holistics.io/guidebook/the-analytics-stack- guidebook.pdf)

We've received some encouraging feedback, but love to hear you guys' feedback on the book.

Regards -Huy</comment>


Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto Denies All Bitcoin Ties in Verified Letter Via Lawyer - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/17/dorian-satoshi-nakamoto-denies-having-created-bitcoin-says-hes-not-been-coding-for-over-a-decade/ <comment><USER2> Here is what doesn't make sense about Dorian Nakamoto being the Satoshi behind bitcoin:

Here's a guy who code switches during conversations and emails to maintain either the secret identity of an old Japanese man living in CA and playing with model trains, or to maintain the secret identity of a sophisticated programmer who created a proof-of-work system called bitcoin.

But then this advanced guy maintaining a secret identity signs every message he posts to the internet with _his real name_?

Leah McGrath-Goodman found this secretive guy who people have been searching for for the laser few years by looking his name up in a phone book?

That doesn't really track.

<comment><USER3> This whole thing reminded me of the lesswrong.com post on Amanda Knox [1]

Even the initial assumption that the creator of Bitcoin used his real name, contained in the headline, was _extremely_ unlikely, and all other evidence was completely circumstantial. In my mind, it was nearly obvious that Dorian is not Satoshi after a few hours and was shocked to see that many believed the news story.

I'm still not sure if this was irrational on my part due to my own bias of preferring that Satoshi remain anonymous, or the irrationality of internet discussions is worse than I thought.

1: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1j7/the_amanda_knox_test_how_an_hour...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/1j7/the_amanda_knox_test_how_an_hour_on_the_internet/)

<comment><USER4> _the initial assumption that the creator of Bitcoin used his real name, contained in the headline, was extremely unlikely_

I'm curious: Why do people actually believe that this is so unlikely? By the time that I first read about Bitcoin, it seemed to be already accepted canonical knowledge that Satoshi Nakamoto must be a pseudonym, and I guess I just accepted that. But now that this discussion has come up, I don't think I remember any positive argument to that other than "he does not like to talk about his private life" (not a particularly strong argument given the amount of discussion of private life in typical open source projects) and "the inventor of Bitcoin must be some pre-established genius, and there is no such genius named Satoshi Nakamoto" (also rather questionable, and quite contrary to the startup culture usually seen here).

Are those pieces of evidence enough to make the use of his real name "extremely unlikely"?

<comment><USER3> It's unlikely that it is his real name because (1) the name does not appear outside of Bitcoin in any mailing list or forum and (2) bitcoin.org was purchased with anonymity in mind

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord The thing that most people ignored about the Newsweek article was that the author deliberately took the pivotal quote "I am no longer involved in that..." out of context by not specifying what it was referring to.

Remember that Dorian S. Nakamoto was a contractor who worked on many government projects. It's likely he was asked on that and answered, then had his words deliberately misconstrued to imply that "that" referred to Bitcoin.

Then we had the P2P Foundation Satoshi deny that he was Dorian, breaking a 5-year silence to do so. Of course, it is unknown if it is the exact Satoshi Nakamoto of Bitcoin, or someone hijacked the account, or some member of the hypothetical pseudonymous Satoshi collective, but the email did match up with the one in the original Bitcoin paper.

At this point, Satoshi being Dorian is pretty much debunked, really.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've said before the Newsweek story makes no sense. In order to believe it, you need to think this guy hatched a brilliant plan to protect his identity (after 5 years of successfully doing so) by acting like a clueless old man and calling Bitcoin "bitcom."

And simultaneously you have to believe, during the execution of his brilliant plan, he goofed and unambiguously confessed to his involvement in Bitcoin.

>"I have no knowledge of nor have I ever worked in cryptography, peer to peer systems, or alternative currencies."

<comment><USER6> We are talking about the anonymous person behind Bitcoin. I would put absolutely NOTHING past the original architect. Honestly, I would expect nothing else.

<comment><USER5> >Honestly, I would expect nothing else.

You would expect the original architect to confess to being involved and then deny it hours later. Is there something about the original whitepaper that makes you think this person is _mentally ill_?

<comment><USER7> You don't have to be mentally ill to act mentally ill. The charade has pretty much removed all credence to the idea that he is the creator of bitcoin. Perhaps that's what he wants.

<comment><USER8> "Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right, I AM the Messiah!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What about that guy who, after the original Newsweek story was posted, made a post about meeting Nakamoto after he bought an item from his girlfriend's bakery? Apparently he recognized him from the Newsweek photos of Dorian Nakamoto. Was that just a bit of overactive imagination?

EDIT: The post I'm talking about [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7354326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7354326)

<comment><USER10> The rate of mistaken id is ridiculous.

For example, over 75% of DNA based exonerations were convicted based on mistaken ID's (and this is limited to those exonerations where DNA would be conclusive).

Post-identification feedback (IE learning facts later) can often even alter the original memory someone has of an identification:

[http://nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100715](http://nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100715)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Despite having a background in engineering, Nakamoto notes that he couldn't find a programmer's job for over a decade._

I get the sense that lots of 20-somethings in SV/Bay Area just don't think middle aged Asian men are capable of programming. (Middle aged Asian man.)

<comment><USER12> IMHO, ageism is a pretty big problem for developers and not just in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER11> IMHO, It's a much bigger problem in the Bay Area than most other places in the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is not looking good for Newsweek. For Dorian to give such a flat unconditional denial means:

1\. He _is_ Satoshi Nakamoto but is calling Newsweek's bluff.

2\. He is _not_ Satoshi Nakamoto and is calling Newsweek's bluff.

In scenario 1, he's apparently confident that Newsweek has no other real proof and won't be finding any proof in the future...which is a _lot_ of confidence in himself that he's wrapped up all the loose ends. Either way, Newsweek better have a trump card...they've been hinting that they had more information that backed their claims, so now's the time to show the cards.

<comment><USER14> > which is a lot of confidence in himself that he's wrapped up all the loose > ends.

I'd agree with him. SN's so far done a very good job of avoiding leaks and disappearing: there's a few potential errors he may've made, but nothing serious. And people have completely failed to find anything connected to Dorian which makes him a better candidate for SN, which is in stark contrast to Ross Ulbricht - after his name was released and you started Google-hunting him, within hours you could find tons of evidence he was DPR (most brazenly, his LinkedIn page). If nobody's found anything about Dorian by now, then either he's really not Satoshi or he's done a perfect job cleaning up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Shortly thereafter the reporter confronted me at my home. I called the police.

That reporter is such a scumbag. What repercussions did she face?

<comment><USER16> The ethics here are very questionable. Wtf - you just find some dude, based on no real evidence, then you "out" him for something that's not criminal and give the internet trolls his whereabouts? What could be more "yellow press"? I really wish their ass got sued.

<comment><USER17> The internet trolls are the least of his concerns; when you're possibly worth 400 million, you need to worry about criminals. You're a target. That story put his life in danger.

<comment><USER18> Criminals and the IRS. But I repeat myself.

<comment><USER17> Snarky, but the IRS isn't a danger, they'd need to see evidence of a vast fortune before wanting to tax it. Given his lifestyle, they wouldn't look twice at him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Statement from Newsweek:

 _Newsweek has not received any statement or letter from either Mr. Nakamoto or his legal counsel. If and when we do, we will respond as necessary._

[http://www.newsweek.com/newsweek-statement-dorian- nakamoto-2...](http://www.newsweek.com/newsweek-statement-dorian- nakamoto-232092)

<comment><USER19> Suddenly, accurate statements are important in this story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This proves that interviews really need to be done via email or audio recording. This would seemingly prevent a lot of basic reporting issues.

Interviewee: "I did not say this."

Interviewer: "Here's the email / audio as proof."

Problem solved.

<comment><USER21> Not really solved, since you can still have people misspeaking or misunderstanding questions, and there's no way to prove that without mind reading.

And isn't that what happened in this case? Nobody's saying she made up the quote. IIRC everyone (reporter, Dorian, police officers) agree it was said. It's just that Dorian claims he misunderstood her question, which is why he gave an answer that appeared to admit to creating bitcoin. A recording wouldn't be conclusive.

<comment><USER22> Yes but there is so much more information in audio like tone of voice, timing and cadence. (Most) humans are good at deciphering this information and plying out the true meaning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A very informative piece by Mike Hearn breaking down the inconsistencies in the Newsweek piece: [http://www.mikehearn.com/Hosted-Files/Nakamoto-Could- Newswee...](http://www.mikehearn.com/Hosted-Files/Nakamoto-Could-Newsweek- Have-Known/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> So is this the moment where all the bitcoin fanatics pool together a bunch of BTC for Dorian as.. a sort of apology? The guy should at least get a new train set outta the whole mess..

<comment><USER25> One was started 10 days ago, almost at $30,000 USD:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ztjmg/andreas_im_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ztjmg/andreas_im_fundraising_for_dorian_nakamoto/)

<comment><USER24> Oh, awesome!

<comment><USER26> I hope they have the decency to convert it to usd and not send it as a puzzle to an old man with enough hassles in his life already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can we drop it and leave these people alone?

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm not sure I understand how he figures that this scenario would keep him from finding work. Who wouldn't want to hire the creator of friggin' bitcoin?

</comment><comment><USER29> I've been wondering, will the word Dorian, real Satoshi or not, find its way into Bitcoin language? Like Satoshi being the smallest amount of Bitcoin.

<comment><USER30> We'll call a transaction with 0 confirmations a "Dorian".

<comment><USER3> Good idea, but nearly all 0-confirmation transactions are confirmed later.

Let's call invalid transactions "Dorian"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This man is not Satoshi Nakamoto, and the way I see it, even if he were Satoshi, he is not Satoshi. Not even the real Satoshi Nakamoto is Satoshi Nakomoto.

</comment><comment><USER32> Well he ought to apply to work at a bitcoin startup, because his name-branding alone would probably be worth $$

</comment><comment><USER33> What if the "inventor" of Bitcoin isn't even really named Satoshi Nakamoto? All of this manhunt would have been in vain for so long.

<comment><USER34> "What if?" Pretty much everybody assumed the name was a pseudonym until this story broke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> How long before he denies this under oath? At that point he's risking criminal charges if he is found to be lying.

<comment><USER12> Why do you think he would have to say anything under oath?

<comment><USER35> He doesn't _have_ to but he may choose to if he decides to sue Newsweek, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "I haven't been able to find steady work for ten years, and this article written a week ago is why."

<comment><USER37> This is the amazing part! The denial from Dorian contains an obvious lie in it and represents an enormous hole in his argument. I think this is extremely suspicious and makes me think that this guy really is the creator of bitcoin. But for some reason unknown, possibly tax-related, that he cannot let anyone else know about. Reminds me a lot of when Roger Clemens or Lance Armstrong vehemently denying they used steroids, when the evidence strongly suggests otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I tend to believe the Newsweek article because a reputable journalistic source of that caliber would not run a story like that unless they had enough evidence to prove it. Because this guy is not a public persona they would probably otherwise be guilty of libel.

\--

EDIT: As gamblor956 pointed out they would be "liable" rather than "guilty". It does sound like he may have a case though, especially if Newsweek is wrong.

<comment><USER39> Newsweek is not guilty of libel or defamation because those are torts for which criminal "guilt" is meaningless. Newsweek would not be _liable_ for libel or defamation because being labeled the creator of Bitcoin is generally not something that would harm one's reputation.

Libel or defamation claims are generally applicable where one person claims another person did some heinous act, like rape, or a felony, and told other people about it. Some statements, like accusing another person of rape are considered so "heinous" that to win, all the plaintiff has to do is prove the statement was made, in which case the burden of proof shifts to the defendant, who must now prove the accuracy of the statement. Depending on the nature of what was actually said, the defendant's burden may range from simply proving that their statement was reasonable based on the facts to proving that what they said is verifiably true. (And note: not a criminal case, so: proof on either side simply means more likely than not.)

<comment><USER40> Nit: you appear to be describing _per se_ defamation (accusations of heinous actions), but this is just a small subset of all defamation claims. So long as damages are incurred, false statements of fact can and do routinely incur liability, turning on the credibility of the statements, the recklessness (or deliberate deceptive intent) with which they're made, &c.

It's definitely not the case that a newsmagazine would be in the clear simply because designing Bitcoin isn't a crime (although other factors probably do rule defamation out).</comment></comment></comment>