A subfield-logarithm attack against ideal lattices - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cr.yp.to/20140213-ideal.html

<comment><USER3> This sort of thing is a recurring theme in cryptography:

1\. Someone proposes a scheme based on Hard Problem X. X looks strong, but the resulting scheme either is too slow or has gigantic keys.

2\. Someone else comes along and proposes a related scheme based on Hard Problem Y which, having more structure, allows for either smaller keys or faster computation.

3\. Later turns out this extra structure also helps the attacker.

An example of this phenomena is the McEliece code-based cryptosystem. Many variants based on alternative codes, attempting to reduce the public key size, have been proposed over the years, and very few have survived. Another example is elliptic curves: early on speed was an issue for their practicality, so many weak curves were also proposed that tried to speed things up (one particular example was Koblitz's supersingular curve that rendered point doubling into a linear operation).

Ideal lattices have exacerbated this phenomena by its applications. Lattices are a key tool in fully homomorphic encryption and friends (multilinear maps, now also obfuscation), and in the frenzy to get these applications into practicality ideal lattices (as opposed to unstructured ones) seem to be the fastest shortcut into better speed and size. It remains to be seen whether they'll survive.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's exactly how cryptography research works: first, find and publish a plausibly secure and practical scheme, then have other researcher try and break it. If it does not break, it is considered secure.

<comment><USER5> that's not really what he's saying. he's saying that adding structure for speed also tends to add structure for breaking.

practical, modern crypto (in my limited understanding) seems to be increasingly about choosing the right "place" to do your maths - <USER2> that's got just enough structure to do the encryption, without enough for the _known_ attacks to be implemented.

but that has two issues. one, people push the boundary for speed. two, because you're close to the edge you are arguably more vulnerable to new (incremental) advances.

it makes you wonder whether all this new-fangled crypto based on clever maths is such a good idea. maybe the old school block ciphers that simply throw enough non-commuting, non-linear operations at the problem to make it "too hard" are smarter than they look. but of course, they tend to be symmetric only (and i am not sure the distinction above is real; you can try to formalise why old block cipher systems are hard, and if you do so you come up with things like aes, and then again you open the door to worrying about algebraic attacks...)

<comment><USER4> > that's not really what he's saying. he's saying that adding structure for > speed also tends to add structure for breaking.

I may not have been clear in my reasoning. Modern crypto research does rely on stress testing newly crafted cryptosystems against peer researshers, who will try to find a flaw in the system, think of a way of applying an existing attack, or make a new adapted one. It is to say that published hash function or block cipher schemes are not necessarily secure; the process of peer- reviewing before publication only (partially) ensures the good-redaction of the article and checks for blatant scientific errors. The consequence is then that every single change to a cryptosystem, like using optimized structures for speed, memory, sizes of keys, …, changing the key generation algorithm, using parallelism or even creating an additional functionality using private data (e.g. the secret key) may result in a partial or total compromise in security.

So, in clear: yes, using time-optimized structures for crypto mays lead to new attacks, but this is just a particular case and it does not in any tell that faster necessarily means weaker, just that crypto is hard, since anything can go wrong (consider timing attacks for instance).

> it makes you wonder whether all this new-fangled crypto based on clever > maths is such a good idea. maybe the old school block ciphers that simply > throw enough non-commuting, non-linear operations at the problem to make it > "too hard" are smarter than they look. but of course, they tend to be > symmetric only (and i am not sure the distinction above is real; you can try > to formalise why old block cipher systems are hard, and if you do so you > come up with things like aes, and then again you open the door to worrying > about algebraic attacks...)

This is an usual rant against "post-quantum" crypto. Old schemes were not all bad, but they were actually impractical when studying their security. Consider DES, that basically just mangles bits with other bits depending on previous bits. There is virtually no connection between studying the difficulty of cracking DES and the rest of research. You will have to look for individual bit propagation and other dirty stuff (and of course check for obvious attacks using linear cryptanalysis). Well, the point is that, this way, you only some public research of the matter. Maybe a few hundreds will seriously try and find a way to decrypt DES. And they won't dedicate their career to this. This means that the probability that an effective attack being privately (say, by the NSA) discovered is not so low.

On the other hand, when you know most attacks against your cryptosystem would imply the solving of a NP-problem, you can rely on a ton of research material (mathematics and computer science). The point is that solving _any_ NP-problem would be a revolution in lots of mathematics fields (especially CS-related). In other words, you have thousands over thousands of researchers devoting a lot of their time to try and break your cipher. And the probability that a lone organization finds a solution first is very low.

Of course, as noted by the original author, you could still have other attacks, that would not compromise the NP-hardness:

> The same theoreticians also say that lattice-based cryptography has "strong > provable security guarantees". If this istaken literally then it is false > advertising. The correct advertising is that a broad class of attacks > against various attice-based cryptosystems can be converted, with limited > loss of speed and success probability, into attacks against ertain standard > lattice problems.

This is exactly what happens when adding "structure" to your keys. Relying on the NP-problem basically means that what your adversary sees is indistinguishable from random (when solving a NP-problem, your solution must work for _all_ instances). So the "mangling" from old crypto is brought back here. However, this way better, as the part that is to be studied is smaller and more flexible since we are now considering controlled data and we can make sure that a mangling brings a good distribution.

The attack which was presented here basically does that. It found a flaw in the way one lattice-based crypto scheme relied on a NP-problem.

Note: by solving an NP-problem, I mean find a polynomial-time solution to a question known as "NP-hard"

tl;dr: "this new-fangled crypto" is not about using "clever maths" but having a more important pool of knowledge to rely on

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bernstein's paper are very interesting and contain strong material. He uses an excellent theoretical background but keeps practical considerations in sight. The cryptographic constructions he published are very efficient (e.g. RFSB [1] is way faster than all other code-based hash functions). I should also add that this blog entry is a good illustration of how clear his explanations can be.

[1] see [rfsb] in [http://cr.yp.to/codes.html#rfsb](http://cr.yp.to/codes.html#rfsb)

</comment><comment><USER6> For more background on ideal lattice based encryption see [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~odonnell/hits09/gentry- homomorphic-e...](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~odonnell/hits09/gentry-homomorphic- encryption.pdf) (pdf).

<comment><USER7> Just a note: this paper includes a small introduction to ideal lattice based encryption, but it's topic (homomorphic encryption) is not necessarily tied to lattice based crypto; the author has since provided different and more efficient constructions.</comment></comment>


Airbnb Apologizes and Offers $50,000 Guarantee to Home Owners - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20110801/airbnb-apologizes-and-offers-50000-guarantee-in-hopes-of-defusing-security-concerns/ <comment><USER3> Actually, I'm impressed. The apology is pretty comprehensive with no weasel words, and the new features seem pretty serious. My personal chances of using the service as a host have gone from 'just might try it' a few weeks ago to 'yeah, no' a few days ago, back up to 'I'll think about it' after reading this blog post.

<comment><USER4> I feel the same way reading this — but there's a small voice in my head asking whether they're being honest even now. Both EJ and Arrington have accused them straight out of lying in their efforts to manage this, and it looks like at least one other Airbnb host has had something similar happen, so I wonder how many other people this has already happened to. Are we going to find out in three months that there's no $50k, no customer support team, etc.?

<comment><USER3> Maybe that's what's keeping me from immediately jumping in, too. But I can't imagine such a high profile startup with serious funding and such public statements would really be straight-up lying about this. And in light of the blog post, it seems likely to me that while their initial reaction was poor and, well, reactionary, they've scrambled not just to address the specific incident but to put systems into place that address the underlying causes.

<comment><USER4> Either they have been straight-up lying about it, or Arrington and EJ have been.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From AirBnB source: <http://blog.airbnb.com/our-commitment-to-trust-and- safety>

</comment><comment><USER6> big question: Will EJ settle for $50k or will she try to get more in court?

</comment><comment><USER7> > Airbnb now has an in-house task force devoted to the manual review of > suspicious activity.

I just finished reading the businessinsider piece and maybe they'd want to hire an outside firm to manually review all suspicious activity, from both the host and renter perspective and Airbnb itself. Also, and this may be a little bit of closing the barn door a couple of months too late, but one assumes that guest/host welfare would've been paramount right from the beginning, as one case like EJ's demonstrated how vulnerable a publicly-facing business model can be, as any real life business/insurance executive could've explained.

Is it me or did the idea of making off with $50,000 in renovations cross anyone else's mind? I think telegraphing the intent to pay a guaranteed specific amount sets the new minimum for fraudulent activity and removes the burden of responsibility from the hosts, whose relation to Airbnb is that of a customer, not a business partner.

And yes, back in the old days and out of necessity, people did stay in other people's homes, but not every apartment was a rooming house and the landlord was usually on the premises.

</comment><comment><USER8> Are you kidding me?!?!

a) Airbnb needs to recognize the risks they are creating for guests - <USER2> move is purely a reactionary response to placate public perception about the risks to hosts. They do not care about safety so much as the supply of the product they broker.

b) $50K is a pretty good prize for anyone who can game them on this one.

The "apology" says: "There have been a lot of questions swirling around, and I would like to apologize and set the record straight in my own words. In the last few days we have had a crash course in crisis management."

If crisis management is something you're only just now learning about, in this highly risk inducing business, what does that say about your founders, investors, and your investors' funders?

I honestly now wonder if there aren't already any guest victims who we haven't heard from because, well, they're gone. I seriously wonder if this company hasn't already killed someone.

<comment><USER8> I know that the rules state the rule of thumb that one should not post explaining down-votes but I am curious about these, if an exception might be carved out. Looking at airbnb over the past week, and winding up with this recent move, I feel like I'm watching a slow-motion train wreck that is so predictable I can't imagine how they got to this state.

I'm also quite sincere, wearing my "engineering hat", at least as I understand it, that there are serious life-critical mistakes getting papered over here.

<comment><USER4> My downvote was in response to what I perceived as an unrealistic (and hysterical) assessment of risks on your part.

Airbnb now claims to be the size of, say, Albuquerque: one of the cities where I grew up, with somewhere around half a million people. In Albuquerque, there are 200 reports of vandalism, 100 stolen cars, 100 burglaries, 50 aggravated assaults, 10 kidnappings, 10 forcible rapes, two acts of arson, and one homicide, according to <http://www.cabq.gov/onlinesvcs/crimestats/>.

 _Every week._

 _EVERY WEEK._ A murder _every week_. Fifty aggravated assaults _every week_. 200 reports of vandalism _every week_.

From this we can draw three conclusions:

1\. You're probably right that there are other incidents. Probably some vandalism and assaults, maybe even some homicides.

2\. Airbnb is a lot smaller than it appears to be. Maybe it's more like a 10 000 person town than like a million-person city. Maybe that's because their average user only use their service for a week every year as either a guest or a host.

3\. Even so, Airbnb is a hell of a lot safer than Albuquerque, or actually any city in the US. An Airbnb user is a more likely to get kidnapped or murdered just at random than by someone they met through Airbnb. And that's probably still true even if you just consider the time they're actively using Airbnb.

<comment><USER8> Ok, well, thanks for answering.

The comparison to Albuquerque makes no sense to me. We could as well guess that Airbnb is less safe than riding a roller coaster at Disneyland -- so what? Those kinds of random comparisons prove nothing.

Because of its inherent structure, we can reasonably suspect that Airbnb is far, far riskier than current measurements yet show. I think of lots of nasty crimes that it facilitates and I'm sure you can as well. There is next to nothing in it that would prevent much higher rates of crime. It's structure is attractive to crime. The toll of the kinds of crime it is well suited for is incredibly high. Unless the basic model is significantly changed, none of those risks will go away or much diminish. Meanwhile the attractive potential for abuse of Airbnb is now well advertised to all potential criminals.

I suppose what most greatly offends and alarms me about Airbnb is how sharply it diverges from very well established cultural and legal norms. It is as if the designers of this product want glibly to overturn common sense about how far to trust strangers and it wants to ignore the many rules and regulations that are designed to prevent precisely this kind of business activity -- all on the basis that "most people are basically good" or something. That's socially irresponsible engineering.

<comment><USER4> > I suppose what most greatly offends and alarms me about Airbnb is how > sharply it diverges from very well established cultural and legal norms.

Your cultural and legal norms are stupid. They have no basis in reality. They are the product of scaremongering TV networks competing for advertising eyeballs with sensationalism. They have produced a society of isolation and paranoia where talking to strangers in the park is a faux pas, and suicide is a major cause of death. They kill people every day. They need to be destroyed.

> Those kinds of random comparisons prove nothing.

On the contrary, comparison to a baseline is the only thing that would prove anything about riskiness. This single incident shows us that (a) apparently Airbnb is run by a bunch of insensitive and dishonest people, and (b) some people steal stuff and smash stuff up for fun. But we already knew (b). To make a judgment of whether Airbnb makes this kind of thing more or less likely, we need to know the baseline.

Urban US society as a whole, not a sanitized amusement park, is the correct baseline to use. Albuquerque is reasonably representative of urban US society.

<comment><USER8> Wow. It is "stupid" to be skeptical of handing over your home and access to your most valuable assets to relative strangers? It is "stupid" to isolate yourself in a non-public, unwatched space controlled by strangers? And one would only think otherwise because of TV? And the legal landscape here "has no basis in reality" in spite of the various laws and contracts that say otherwise?

Wow.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Live undersea robot as exciting as a space walk - <AUTHOR> http://www.interactiveoceans.washington.edu/visions11/live

<comment><USER2> I never thought looking at underwater lava formations could be so mesmerizing. I could easily spend an hour or more looking at that. Half of it is just lure of the ocean, and half of it is just the coolness of watching a live feed of a underwater robot from the comfort of my den at 5:00 AM.

I wonder if that's a stereoscopic camera. The depth of field looks good, but I had a problem gauging distance several times. Some formations, viewed straight on, looked small until the robot came around for a side view and I realized they were much bigger than I thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you watch long enough you will see what appears to be a green V. This is actually two green lasers mounted in parallel, 10cm apart. This gives the pilots "depth perception".

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I saw that in the FAQ. I tweeted a question to them about the camera. Their reply: "the camera is a Zeus plus built by insite pacific..a high end hd fantastic camera but not 3D". Here's the camera product sheet: <http://www.insitetritech.com/Camera_Summary.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is very cool. Looking at and being near volcanic activity with temperatures near 300°C. There are narrators coming in occasionally to provide additional information and explanation.

Here are some links to provide some background and interaction:

Twitter feed for updates: <http://twitter.com/#!/VISIONS11ops>

Visions '11 cruise that you are watching the mission of: <http://www.ooi.washington.edu/visions11>

Approximate location: [http://maps.google.com/maps?q=45.55586,-129.587516&hl=en...](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=45.55586,-129.587516&hl=en&t=h&z=3&vpsrc=0)

More information about the submersible: <http://www.ropos.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> It is at times like this I think "Wow I live in the future!".

<comment><USER5> The image quality is also amazing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What would be awesome was if there was a corresponding Map which showed where in the ocean the image is coming from -

<comment><USER5> According to there Tweet: _"45_ 55.586N 129 _58.7516W axial seamount, eastern side of caldera."_

It would also be nice to see things like depth.

Edit: I guess you can use these to search Google maps: 45.55586,-129.587516

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> According to the comments, they have a fiber optic cable up to the ship and from there a sat link to a server at washington.edu...</comment>


Detecting Money Laundering - <AUTHOR> http://conf.startup.ml/blog/aml <comment><USER2> The direct and indirect cost money laundering regulation has reached a point where it far outweighs the benefits. Thousands of clients have to jump through cumbersome hoops just to increase the chances of catching one single money launderer by 1% or so. Even the IRS estimates the implementation costs of Fatca at 100 billion worldwide. In reality, it is probably much higher and far exceeds the amount of additional tax 'income' it generates. We really need to start to discuss the negative externalities of overzealous regulations.

<comment><USER3> With the possible rise of cryptocurrencies its only going to get worse. I believe governments should back off from income and profit taxing, its going to become more futile then the war on drugs.

Governments should be focusing their taxes and revenue on tangible things that cannot be hidden or evaded, like property. This would solve so many problems in places like London or Vancouver where foreign money floods the market. Why waste time tracking endless trails of shell companies when you can just tax the wealth when it appears in public?

Plus I see income and revenue as non-zero sum, one man or company making more money doesn't preclude someone else from creating wealth. Taxes on this are just a friction on the economy. But property is zero sum, every piece of coastline bought up by rich people as 4th or 5th homes means entire neighborhoods of normal families can only see water when they are on their 2 weeks of vacation.

<comment><USER4> Ease of collection is just one of the goals of a tax system. Others include fairness, and not distorting the underlying economy more than necessary. Taxing only tangible things might make collection easy, but may not be fair (it'll generally tax higher income people at a lower rate than lower-income people), and may also create artificial incentives to engage in activities that result in non-taxable wealth rather than taxable wealth.

<comment><USER5> It will only tax higher income people at a lower rate if those higher income people don't receive any tangible benefits from high income. That's a good thing - the person who receives a lot from society will pay high taxes, while the person who receives a little will pay low taxes.

In contrast, with income taxes, the person who _produces_ a lot for society will pay high taxes.

It's well accepted by economists that a consumption tax is the least distortionary tax.

<comment><USER6> Your argument depends on a stipulation of the definition of "fairness" where the persons most easily associated with production are entitled to the most favorable tax treatment. Without that assumption, all you're saying is that just as there is a suboptimal tax system that is least expensive to collect, so too there's a suboptimal tax system that is least distortionary to the economy.

There are notions of fairness that aren't premised on the idea that tax rates aren't a point score system for rating people, and it can be rational to accept some degree of distortion so long as it's not so powerful that it prevents the economy from serving its purpose (and so long as that distortion is buying us something).

<comment><USER5> I'm making two arguments. One is based on the economic concept of distortion - people making choices they wouldn't make absent the taxes. That's a strictly positive claim and it's not based on cost to collect.

The other is the normative one. My premise is that people should pay in proportion to the benefit they receive from society. Do you disagree with this claim?

<comment><USER6> I agree with your positive claim. Some tax systems are more distortionary than others. I think it's likely that consumption taxes are less distortionary than income taxes.

I don't think I agree with your normative claim. I think _ceteris paribus_ that it's a virtue of a tax system if people pay in proportion to the value they get out of society. It sounds like you think that virtue is controlling. I think there are other virtues as well.

<comment><USER7> People get value out of a society by consuming goods and services, income is how we as a society measure the value a person provides.

Income Tax taxes value provided, Consumption Tax taxes value consumed.

\-- Consumption taxes can also be scaled/slabbed with the amount consumed, they don't have to be regressive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Financial institutions are not interested in being good at catching money laundering operations. They are interested in avoiding expensive fines. False positives are really bad for customer relations.

<comment><USER9> When a bank loses money they pay for it. It happens often, for millions, says a friend who works in fraud analysis.

<comment><USER10> You are talking about fraud (I'm assuming wire fraud, chargebacks, stolen accounts, etc.) which I would put in a different category of risk for a financial institution than money laundering. These activities would lead to direct losses, whereas money laundering would not.

I assume allowing laundered money through your institution is of less concern, since it would not lead to a direct loss to the institution. This is assuming you are not knowingly allowing the laundering to occur and you are following all AML and KYC regulations meant to prevent money laundering. If these standards are not met, it may lead to fines and having regulators watch your institution more closely.

<comment><USER11> Wire fraud and stolen account schemes generally get eliminated/caught because of laundering issues, not because of how they do the actual fraud; and for large cases of fraud / large stolen accounts, the laundering capacity limits the total amount.

Good AML provisions help reduce your fraud losses, even if you decide to make some "exceptions" for your VIP customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow. Since when is every regulation supposed to pay for itself? Do police? SWAT?

I highly suggest reading Steve Randy Waldmann's analysis of the Baltimore riots and altruistic punishment. He is an actual economist, whereas this thread is as if he came in here and was telling you your code sucked.

For those curious, his blog is called interfluidity.

<comment><USER13> I just followed your advice and read Steve Randy Waldmann's analysis of the Baltimore riots and altruistic punishment.

It is very clear that he is biased in his analysis. He is also wrong about the Baltimore riots being "altruistic punishment", at least according to the strict definition here[1], as the people rioting claimed to be directly harmed by the existing law enforcement structure that they were rioting against.

Finally, why do you think that simple economic concepts can not be understood by developers? Why do you think there there are not lots of people on here with business degrees or backgrounds in economics?

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third- party_punishment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_punishment)

<comment><USER12> I think his point is that the idea that knowing you will be retaliated against, even if it's a "net loss" in some ways for those retaliating against you, is an extremely powerful force for good in our society. Do you disagree? I think that because I'm a quant and I see people making pretty basic mistakes here, or making fallacious assumptions about other fields assuming they follow the same logic as software, quite often, and that seemed to be happening in this thread. I maintain that developers are usually not qualified to talk about economics in much beyond the most basic sense, because they haven't actually studied advanced economics beyond how it pertains to the tech industry. They just make linear extrapolations and are shocked (shocked!) when their narrow (and admittedly unique) model of the world breaks down.

<comment><USER13> > I think his point is that the idea that knowing you will be retaliated > against, even if it's a "net loss" in some ways for those retaliating > against you, is an extremely powerful force for good in our society. Do you > disagree?

If you have taken anything beyond economics in the most basic sense, then you know the answer to any economic question is, "it depends."

So in this case, I do not think that the riots did anything to the city government's or local police force's sensibilities, because it doesn't cost them anything...they get to use the house's (the citizens) money. It is the same reason lawsuit settlements do not seem to have an effect on police misconduct -- they don't care, it doesn't really cost them anything. So to your direct question, regarding the Baltimore riots, no I do not think it was a net good. The people protesting got nothing, businesses and private property got trashed, and the city paid costs with taxpayer's money, and nothing changed. There was nothing good that came of that, or the threat of that.

I do take your point about armchair economists seemingly having the solution to nuanced macroeconomic problems that stymie experts, and I agree we have seen a lot of that recently with Brexit.

However, I do not think that people can't have an opinion on something because their eduction level in that specific area is not elite enough, better to explain why they might not be right, if you have a better answer.

Maybe you could make them one of today's lucky 10,000.[1]

[1][https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

<comment><USER12> Hold on you really don't think the Baltimore police will back off or hesitate before they do what they did again? The only thing that influences their decisions are if it cost them money or not????

<comment><USER13> And to be more clear, yes, if penalties came out of their pensions instead of taxpayers pockets, they would change their behavior long-term.

<comment><USER12> You don't think having to stand down rioters, have molotovs and stones thrown at you by an entire community of people proclaiming they are fucking done with dealing with you around, have shots fired at you, have officers shot in their squad cars has any effect on long term behavior? Sorry I'm just sitting here scratching my head.

<comment><USER13> I can't tell if you are being serious or not, but there is no mystery and this should not be confusing to you.

Baltimore was far from the first "ethnic" riot[1] in this country and none of them have ever caused a lasting change in police behavior. If anything, they just reinforced the notion among police that militarization of police is necessary. And I stick by this track record for my analysis of the situation.

Now, there is some very recent activity to support your analysis. Namely, Baltimore has released a new "use of force policy" in reaction to the Baltimore riots.[2]

I am not immediately conceding here, because it is common for local governments to make token "changes" to placate the agitated after flareups, mostly to save their next election. Furthermore, as the article points out, this change has no teeth, meaning there is no external oversight, so these are all more "recommendations" than anything else. The attorney for the ACLU expresses the same skepticism that I have regarding the recommendations.

So will Baltimore be the first to cause lasting change in local police behavior? It remains to be seen, but if it does, it will be the first. Showing that historically, riots do nothing for long-term change.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_riots#1978_to_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_riots#1978_to_today) [2] [http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci- pol...](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-police-use- of-force-20160629-story.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There seems to be some bizarre skepticism by some HNers of financial institutions' AML practices. But the thing is, AML is really difficult and expensive for banks, hiring floors of consultants dedicated to AML. This is a billion dollar problem (or more?). Whatever about training a CNN to classify images, an effective ML model/pipeline to tackle AML will break the back of a huge problem.

<comment><USER15> It may be a billion dollar problem but it's a billion dollar problem like tax software, it wouldn't exist without the troll demanding his toll. The resources could be used elsewhere like on curing disease or on educating people: [http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/money-laundering- is-...](http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/money-laundering-is-financial- thoughtcrime-1058902-1.html)

It's a billion dollar problem that doesn't need to exist.

Many people will probably make cursory argument that taxes(and by analogy ML regulation) are a necessary evil(They're now doing the troll's work for him)— I'd argue they are not necessary and they short-circuit us working on better replacements.

<comment><USER16> The troll is money laundering, not the regulation. And you can't ignore the troll, or even get rid of it, so you must mitigate damage.

<comment><USER17> "Money laundering" is an imaginary crime. If certain patterns of transactions were not arbitrarily outlawed, there would be no need to enforce this law.

<comment><USER18> Only in the sense that all crimes are "imaginary." Crimes are acts made illegal by law, which money laundering is. It's as illegal as murder.

<comment><USER19> Certainly you're not comparing tax evasion to murder?

<comment><USER18> Insofar as the logical basis for classifying them as "crimes," yes, I am. Not in terms of seriousness or morality, obviously. Also, conflating money laundering and tax evasion shows a serious lack of understanding. Tax evasion can involve money laundering, sure, but money laundering is often the mechanism used to enable far more serious crimes, including, yes, murder.

<comment><USER19> Many things "enable" murder, including cars, guns, bullets, knives, etc. In any case this utilitarianism is a dead end. If it is not absolutely fungible, it's not money, it's coupons, food stamps, tokens, but not money and will not ultimately be used as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is zero incentive to recognize money laundering "too well", particularly because it means essentially whatever FinCEN wants it to mean. It's an issue for lawyers to hash out exactly what patterns must be recognized.

<comment><USER21> There may not be an incentive to recognize money laundering "too well" but there is incentive to get better. FinCEN will continue to raise the stakes of what is an acceptable AML program and staying ahead of the curve reduces the probability of a future fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't find the reference right now but someone once wrote that PayPal was, at its core, one of the most sophisticated fraud detection engines ever created.

In their early days, they almost went under multiple times because of the millions in chargebacks (This is one of those impossible problems that Elon Musk helped solve).

</comment><comment><USER19> There is no such thing as money laundering. There is such a thing as food stamp fraud.</comment>


Show HN: AI Style Transfer Webapp - <AUTHOR> http://ba.net/monet/ <comment><USER2> Why do you have a picture of Van Gogh's The Starry Night if it's called Monet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. Wrong name. The image applied to the style transfer is Starry Night</comment></comment>


A better ATM experience from Wells Fargo - <AUTHOR> http://physicalinterface.com/view/that-design-is-money

<comment><USER2> I stand unimpressed...</comment>


50th anniversary of the first human space flight - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin#50th_anniversary_tributes

<comment><USER2> On the one hand I'm really impressed we've managed to do this. On the other hand I'm disappointed that 50 years after the fact, this is still something special.

</comment><comment><USER3> First Orbit[0] - A real time recreation of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering first orbit, shot entirely in space from on board the International Space Station. The film combines this new footage with Gagarin's original mission audio and a new musical score by composer Philip Sheppard.

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKs6ikmrLgg></comment>


Show HN: SyndiFeed - Online RSS Reader - <AUTHOR> http://syndifeed.com/?ref=hackernews

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been working on this for over a year and thought it was time to show it off, if you do not want to sign up to have to try it then you can login with the username Demo and the password demodemo.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. A mobile app is on the way.</comment>


Charges that Canada Spied on Brazil Unveil CSEC's Inner Workings - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/brazil-spying-report-spotlights-canadas-electronic-eavesdroppers/article14720003/

<comment><AUTHOR> From the linked article:

>The slide suggests the presenter hoped to reach out to American superhackers – the NSA's "Tailored Access Operations" group – for a more specialized operation: "I am working with TAO to further examine the possibility for a Man on the Side operation."

And from an earlier article ([http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/tor-attacks- nsa...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/tor-attacks-nsa-users- online-anonymity)) from Schneier:

>To trick targets into visiting a FoxAcid server, the NSA relies on its secret partnerships with US telecoms companies. As part of the Turmoil system, the NSA places secret servers, codenamed Quantum, at key places on the internet backbone. This placement ensures that they can react faster than other websites can. By exploiting that speed difference, these servers can impersonate a visited website to the target before the legitimate website can respond, thereby tricking the target's browser to visit a Foxacid server.

It seems that MITM attacks are a relatively general purpose tool. Tor users --excuse me, _terrorists_ \-- Brazilian petroleum companies, and other "new [targets] to develop"... Who's next on the list of "[targets] to develop"? I would have thought MITM attacks were a more closely held technique, but it seems they're routinely deployed.</comment>


AMD's Epyc Potential Win: Google May Ditch Intel - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-switch-intel-server-cpus-amd-epyc,40045.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the one to say, well, if this happens, the ramifications are huge.</comment>


Ask HN :Domain Name Idea - <AUTHOR>

Wanting to build a simple app that I'd like to use. Having read Think and Grow Rich I want to build a simple app that allows me to store my daily affirmation or auto-suggestion text, and it gets emailed to me every morning to read. A daily affirmation can be something like:
You are great at... If you keep working hard at.. you'll achieve... You are a confident person, go and ....
etc
Hopefully others might find it useful too.
I can't think of a good domain name though. I'd love dailyaffirmation.com but it is gone (and I don't really want to splash lots of cash buying it), and can't really think of anything else...
Any ideas out there? <comment><USER2> Take a look at pool.com for deleting/backorder domains with the word affirmation or a synonym. Even if you don't find what you are looking for you will probably find some good ideas.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.affirmationfortoday.com/> ?

("todaysaffirmation" is taken, but for sale.)

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.ideacounsel.{com,org,net}></comment>


I was an undercover Uber driver - <AUTHOR> http://citypaper.net/uberdriver/ <comment><USER2> I also drove for Uber in DC for a few months while I was between jobs. I thought it would be a fun and easy way to get a few dollars for beer. My experience mirrors that of the reporter. Towards the end, I would only drive during surge pricing hours, as that was the only way to make a reasonable net hourly wage.

I have no problem hailing an Uber - they are really, really cheap. However, it's a raw deal for drivers. Uber turns a blind eye to driver-contractors driving without commercial vehicle insurance. It has to, as the additional cost (which is pushed onto the driver) would cause the driver's hourly rate to plummet even further. In addition, there is no way to purchase commercial insurance on an hourly basis - therefore part-time drivers would be squeezed out. The flat-rate $1 safe rides fee causes low-distance fares to be even more unprofitable, even when many short trips are already a bad deal due to the overhead involved in each pickup and drop-off.

To fix this, Uber should probably cover drivers with an on-demand commercial policy while they are logged into the app. The flat per-ride fee should go away. And while I doubt this is going to happen, Uber should probably also reduce the commission they take per ride.

<comment><USER3> > It has to

So basically you mean than Uber can only make money if most their drivers do not respect the law. Which gives Uber an unfair advantage over the competition (regular taxis that do respect the law ). It's like saying employer X doesn't check if his employees are legal workers, because if he did it would be too expensive to do business. But hey, even startups got to hussle to make a good living.

<comment><USER4> This is the whole idea behind regulatory arbitrage. Find an industry that has built up "inefficiencies" due the law and then undercut by deliberately breaking the law.

The only thing that amazes me about uber (apart from its current valuation) is that the taxi industry is powerful enough to prevent the issuing of more taxi medallions, but not powerful enough to get the current laws enforced against uber. Assuming uber recognised this in advance (I don't have any evidence that they did) then this was pretty clever.

<comment><USER5> "Taxi lobby" makes it sound like Uber is disrupting some megacorporate industry who control government in smokey back alleys. Taxi corps are small, many are essentially sole proprietorships. The drivers are essentially all running their own business, but the medallion owners tend not to be huge corporations.

Medallions are required because cities regulate taxis prices and policies. Doing so distorts normal market forces. So medallions are a sort of conciliation prize for taxi drivers having the business model dictated. Govenment limits price, but also lowers competition to ensure they can make a profit.

Uber isn't beating some mustached villinous Taxi lobby. They are beating cities who wanted a regulated car service.

I think Uber is probably better than the status quo, but it's not fighting big business, it is big business.

<comment><USER6> Uber is nearing $10 billion in bookings, or about 50-100x as much as the largest cab companies. The need of some people to see every tech company is the underdog is ridiculous. By and large the whole point of tech entering these traditional markets is to use capital and technology to achieve scale and efficiency the small businesses playing in those spaces can't hope to match.

<comment><USER7> You need to look at market size to make that statistic anywhere near interesting.

<comment><USER6> Uber is 2-3x the size of the whole taxi industry in SF. Remember, it's not like there is a national taxi regulatory system. It's a bunch of separate municipal systems and Uber is far bigger than any of the other players in all of them.

<comment><USER7> Yes, of course, that's what makes the 50x-100x number so inaccurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few months ago when I was in Seattle for work, I caught Uber everywhere. I had so many conversations with Uber drivers about why they drove for Uber, how much money they made and why they weren't doing something else.

Needless to say, unless I felt legitimately fearful for my life (which rarely ever happened) I would always rate 5 stars. I realised a lot of these Uber drivers (usually migrants with broken English) probably didn't have many other options to earn money. An almost consistent sentiment amongst those drivers was they were working long hours and support family (not just a wife and children but parents/relatives). My reasoning for this was I am paying like half the cost of what a taxi would cost me, so why not 5 stars?

I think Uber is great for a certain subset of people. While most people who frequent HN on six figure tech salaries would definitely struggle to live on an Uber salary, a lot of people rely on it. In all honesty, I couldn't do it and I have a certain level of respect for those willing to earn so little and work so much to support their families. As a passenger Uber is great, but you can't deny that drivers get absolutely shafted unless they're driving through surge pricing periods and areas. I always rate 5 stars when I get an Uber unless of course the driver is swerving all over the place, speeding or doing dangerous things to endanger my life (which has happened like twice in all of the time I have used Uber).

Aside: Anyone else find the article sporadically refresh? Made it very difficult to read the article.

<comment><USER9> > Aside: Anyone else find the article sporadically refresh? Made it very > difficult to read the article.

Yes. It did for me in Firefox on the desktop, but not on mobile safari. I thought I was crazy when it did it the first time but the second time, I knew it was the citypaper site.

<comment><USER10> Very strange. For me on mobile safari (iOS 8.whatever's newest) it refreshed six or seven times by the end. Very frustrating. I don't have traffic inspection tools on my iPhone but usually I find weird page refreshes like that are due to advertising.

<comment><USER11> Same for me on an iOS 8 iPad. I only got the website to stop refreshing by constantly holding down the screen and scrolling

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Human labor is not a commodity.

This was the common sense amongst all working people for most of the 20th century. Samuel Gompers, maybe the most conservative labor leader of his time, said "You cannot weigh the human soul on the same scales as piece of pork." And working people, along with the management class for the most part, understood this to be an undeniable truth. In fact, this piece of common sense was enshrined into US law with the Clayton Act of 1914, which stated "The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce." But in the last 20 years, as capital has gained the firm upper hand, the common sense understanding has shifted towards the idea that labor is in fact a commodity.

The ideas behind the so-called "on-demand workforce" further solidify the notion that labor is a commodity. After all, you can order an uber ride just as easily as you can order vitamins online.

It's so pervasive that even I, someone born into a union family and a firm believer in the idea of worker solidarity, have to force myself to believe that labor is not a commodity. Why? The business class treated labor as expendable in 1915, just as they do in 2015. Why did working people understand this truth in 1915 but not today? I don't know.

I read a recently released sociology book earlier this year (going crazy looking for the title/author, can't find it), that posits millennials are far more likely than any recent generation to blame themselves for the problems they face. It's part of the reason that the self-help industry is bigger business than it's ever been. It's not always your fault. Our modern economy is built on rotten ideas like labor = commodity. If we want to do something about inequality, it's time that we subject fundamentally unjust ideas like these to a serious critique.

<comment><USER13> That labor is a commodity is not an "idea", but in the case of Uber drivers and the Foxconn workers who assemble iPhones, a fact. It is a fact because that's how those jobs and service/production processes have been designed. The work has been broken down into their smallest parts, so that it will require no special skill or intelligence to perform them. As anyone can do those jobs, they have been de facto commoditized.

For someone who cares for the wellbeing of people at the bottom of the enterprise pyramids, the goal should be to design new organizations, with jobs that have latitude for learning and development, that is multi-disciplinary and creative. And many of the worst jobs today should be automated because they are not fit for human beings.

<comment><USER12> In that regard, it's been a fact since the division of labor was first outlined (and then fetishized) in the late 18th century. In terms of breaking down the tasks needed to build the final product, early Ford factories were just as efficient as modern Foxconn assembly plants.

I'm not arguing whether it's a fact or not. Culturally, in 2015 America it's a fact. In 1915 America, the same "fact" would have been handily rejected, even by conservative minds. Most people only read the first chapter of Wealth of Nations where Adam Smith extolls the virtues of the division of labor. The second half of the book, where he warns that the division of labor taken to the extreme could result in unfathomable social ills, and we ought not ever travel down that path, is usually conveniently ignored.

I'm all for automating jobs that technology deems unnecessary. The solution isn't to push everyone into some multi-disciplinary creative class. Many people would be very happy as uber drivers, or any other menial job, if they were treated with respect by their employer. I'd say the solution begins with treating workers with dignity and respect.

<comment><USER13> >I'm all for automating jobs that technology deems unnecessary. The solution isn't to push everyone into some multi-disciplinary creative class. Many people would be very happy as uber drivers, or any other menial job, if they were treated with respect by their employer. I'd say the solution begins with treating workers with dignity and respect.

I agree, but the problem is not a moral problem but a business problem. How do you design a product, and then the process of making that product, so that you can afford to treat employees well in a competitive, global market? I'd even put it like this: How can you turn paying employees more into a competitive advantage?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I live between NYC and Bangalore, India. I have used Uber and its closest competitors (Lyft and Ola respectively), in both cities.

I have a mental questionnaire I go through with 90% of the drivers and here is what I have learnt:

Uber vs Lyft: Drivers make more money with Uber, but rules of engagement are more relaxed in Lyft.

Uber & Ola (not vs): The drivers in India hone in on these three points:

1\. They make 3-4 times the money they would if they were employed as a driver in a upper-middle class household (very common in India).

2\. They feel respected and think of themselves as "Business owners" now. It is heartening to see how much the "feeling respected" theme repeats itself.

3\. They know the good times won't last.

Unlike US, in India, Uber and Ola are do not take a cut from the ride. In fact it is the opposite - They keep the per kilometre cost to the end consumer lower than Auto Rickshaws and compensate the drivers the difference. In fact Uber has taken a "not-for-profit" model in India (and in Beijing).

Citation for not-for-profit: [http://blog.uber.com/the-government- way](http://blog.uber.com/the-government-way)

<comment><USER15> I was just in Guangzhou where this is also the case; they have a non- profit/subsidized tier called "People's Uber". A 20 minute ride would come out to the equivalent of $3. The weird thing to me was that there were 5 tiers of service and while there were different cars available for UberX and People's Uber, I couldn't tell the difference in the service. Not sure why anyone would choose UberX when the VC-subsidized version was available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there some reason why the page keeps refreshing automatically? It's annoying and makes it difficult to, you know, read the actual article.

<comment><USER17> I'm glad it wasn't just me, but I had this happen with (what I think is) another site earlier. Are you guys using Ghostery too, perhaps?

<comment><USER16> I'm just using AdBlock Plus on this particular browser (Conkeror; Firefox- like). Haven't bothered to try with Firefox (which doesn't have Ghostery, but has a more stringent ad-blocking policy and some other privacy-ish addons that I can't recall at the moment).

<comment><USER17> Hmm, must be the site, then. I'm using Firefox (with Ghostery, why do you say it doesn't have it?) and it refreshes for me as well.

<comment><USER16> Well yeah, it's definitely the site; one of the replies to my original comment managed to identify the piece of JS that's doing it. Using a JS-blocker (or inserting a bit of JS into your developer tools to blank-out the offending function) would do the trick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Link to a version that does not autorefresh constantly: [https://www.instapaper.com/text?u=http://citypaper.net/uberd...](https://www.instapaper.com/text?u=http://citypaper.net/uberdriver/)

</comment><comment><USER19> This site refreshed itself 6 times as I read it on my mobile device. Each time it lost my location on the page. Quite a frustrating experience.

<comment><USER20> Same here on laptop.

"Hey Boss, I know a way to increase visits to our site by 6x..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Off-topic, but what the hell is wrong with the website? It kept refreshing every minute or so for some reason.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, had the same issue here. It refreshed like almost 10 times before I manged to finish the article. Incredibly annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> While I like the improvements to regular taxi service that the competition has brought, I don't like Uber. They're just shady all around.

The "We're not a taxi service, we just sell software" is a load of crap.

How many apps take a piece of the gross? Purchase a license? Ok. A monthly fee for ongoing service? Sure. A chunk of all the money made from using it? I don't think so.

<comment><USER24> Doesn't the App Store take a cut of in-app purchases?

<comment><USER25> If it's a 'digital' product by Apple's definition they get 30%. If it isn't there is no cut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not a bad investigation of Uber-like companies from an economics perspective, Michael Munger on the Sharing Economy: [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/07/michael_munger.html](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/07/michael_munger.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> Kind of disappointed that the author neglected to discuss how the $9.34/hr she earned as an Uber driver compares to her salary as a "senior staff writer".

</comment><comment><USER28> offtopic, but that website kept refreshing over and over, it was hard to read on mobile

<comment><USER29> Literally just threw my phone across the room in frustration over this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I found it interesting that many customers were complaining about drivers with accents. I wonder if, would Uber implement per-driver pricing, those people would really pay a premium for drivers with no accent.

</comment><comment><USER31> Driving people from A to B individually would be a "perfect competition" kind of situation without regulation. Some of the motivation behind regulating this market was that some taxi drivers just started robbing their customers.

Now Uber is doing away with the regulation, and it's "perfect competition" again, the state of affairs when prices have to be so low that there is almost no profit for the suppliers. Uber will always make the most overall profit with their drivers just on the edge of survival.

Uber may actually set the fares just below the profitability point, because new drivers or those "driving for fun" actually put money on the table rather than being paid.

</comment><comment><USER32> Travis sounds exactly like a Disney villain. I bet somehow dead puppies are also involved.

</comment><comment><USER33> Here's what I do: take lyft, and tip your drivers well!

</comment><comment><USER34> > Uber reassures drivers that they've got them covered, but their vaunted $1 > million policy is secondary for collision — that is, drivers must try to get > their own insurance companies to pay the claims first. If the claim is > rejected because the insurer figures out it's Uber-related, then Uber's > policy kicks in — but the driver's almost certainly going to have his > personal insurance policy cancelled, and in some cases be investigated for > fraud.

What? Has this ever happened before? Surely by now there would be specific examples of this taking place, if it were indeed a real thing.

> CP: Yeah, not really — when they take UberX into a new market like Philly, > they start off by paying drivers a lot. So in the beginning, you get a lot > of drivers who look like the drivers in Uber ads, like, suits and bottled > water and no accents. And everyone gets the idea that Uber drivers have > suits and make a ton of money. Then after a while, usually when a competitor > comes in — you know Lyft just started up a couple weeks ago, right?

(CP is the person who wrote the article, not anyone being interviewed) -- How impressively unprofessional. The entire section that quote comes from is just the person writing the article yelling at someone she's ferrying around as an UberX driver. A more obvious hit piece could not have been written.

Also, the site keeps refreshing on me, losing my place in the article. I think it's related to the graphs, but I can't be sure. They randomly go into "loading..." mode when this happens.

<comment><USER35> Go check the forums at uberpeople.net to hear firsthand the numerous stories of drivers having their personal insurance policies canceled after an accident. The media doesn't care enough to cover these stories.

It's not a myth, it is actually right in the agreement with your insurer, that your vehicle will not be used for commercial purposes.

Also, the $1 "Safe Ride" fee only covers excess liability, not collision. So if you're driving for Uber or Lyft, and the accident is your fault, everyone else is covered. Your passengers, the other driver(s), their vehicle(s). You have a totaled car with no insurance and have to pay your own medical bills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I see people buying 2008 plus four door vechicles(that Uber approves of--on the ever changing list) and not making money and stuck with a four door car. Four door cars are harder to sell than two door cars.(I can't point to a link to prove this, but I used to sell cars, and four door cars were a tough sell.)

My problem with Uber is the requirement for a 2008 or newer car, and Uber decides if it's cool enough to represent their company. This is not an independent contractor Uber?

Let the driver use any registered vechicle? Your brilliant app will let the consumer look at the vechicle before before the hire? If you are worried about safety--just because a person has an older car doesn't mean it's less safe. Bring every vechicle in for a safety check if worried?

Maybe then, when the Uber driver finds out it's not the opportunity your company claims; they aren't stuck with a car they can't sell, or take a huge loss when selling your "acceptable" vehicle, or worse claim bankruptcy?

People are desperate for jobs--don't exploit them! I liked your company in the beginning(before I looked into the requirements of Uber).

<comment><USER37> The "Sidecar" app may be more appropriate for drivers who want to take customers for a ride in their go karts/tractor trailers/dune buggies/mopeds/cat busses/... :)

<comment><USER36> Besides the Moped--they aren't quite street legal? What is the point of the App if you can't see the vechicle? Do you happen to work in a climate controlled Uber office--with stock shares?

My point is don't claim Independent Contractor status when you're obviously not. This link makes fun reading. Maybe you can explain automotive aesthetics to me, Honda, Chevrolet, or Volkswagen?

[http://www.driveubernyc.com/vehicles/full- list/](http://www.driveubernyc.com/vehicles/full-list/)

<comment><USER38> The list is amazingly odd. I get that a BMW 3 series is acceptable but an M3 is not -- perhaps they don't want customers being given rides by those who fancy themselves "performance drivers".

But the Subaru Impreza WRX but not the Subaru WRX? They're the same car! Impreza not acceptable, but WRX is? That turns the "performance vehicle" thing on it's head.

Many small luxury vehicles (Audi A3, etc) are not acceptable. Okay, fine. But the Prius is! But the Lexus Ct200h (which is a Prius with a fancier badge) is not acceptable.

The BMW 3 series is acceptable, as is the 4 series coupe, but the 4 series Gran Coupe (a Sedan version of the 4 series coupe, which is a coupe version of the 3 series sedan.. yeah, don't ask) is NOT acceptable?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth the Scala's Ordeal? - <AUTHOR> Novice here, It took 70 seconds to see the results of a HelloWorld.Scala program with the "help" of SBT. I mean, Scala seems to me very appealing, but this kind of process is really depressing. :) <comment><USER2> It will take a bit longer on the first run to bootstrap SBT and the environment. After that, it's very fast.

You can try [https://github.com/alexarchambault/coursier](https://github.com/alexarchambault/coursier) for another factor-of-ten speedup in artifact resolution.

</comment><comment><USER3> What are your system specifications? Runs in less than a second for me? > run [info] Running HelloWorld Hello, World [success] Total time: 0 s, completed Feb 23, 2016 11:09:23 PM

<comment><AUTHOR> Subsequent executions took only 1 second. So, I suppose this only happens at first. Thank you for your answer.</comment></comment>


Show HN: TensorSpace.js – Neural network 3D visualization framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tensorspace-team/tensorspace <comment><USER2> This is neat! I hope you don't mind a bit of constructive criticism here, but early on in my research career I also thought it would be a good idea to "visualize the neural network connectome" in 3D (I implemented a very rudimentary version of your Browser-based visualizer in QT + OpenGL, no training frontend).

And then I followed up with an early TensorFlow visualizer [https://github.com/ericjang/tdb](https://github.com/ericjang/tdb)

It turns out that while such tools seem useful at first glance, they turn out to not be that helpful to power users. For models bigger than LeNet, things get really ugly to visualize. And once you understand a high-level module and can take its training for granted, there isn't a need anymore to really look at it anymore. It can also be kind of annoying to tumble around in 3D when you just want to look at some activation maps. What does the 3D aspect of the visualization buy you here?

Tools like TensorBoard + Jupyter notebooks for inspecting weights and ad-hoc visualizations (e.g. VizDom) seem to strike the right balance.

If you want to continue pushing in this direction, I highly encourage embarking on an actual Deep Learning research project using your tool. In ML it's so important to dogfood your own software!

<comment><USER3> Are there any good guides, tutorials, or research papers that investigate or advise how to inspect weights during training for debugging. The only things I read are to watch out for vanishing gradients, and when fine-tuning the most change in layers are seen toward the end of the network, not the beginning layers.

<comment><USER2> Yes, a recent exciting phenomena of interest to researchers is how and why the spectrum of the Hessian appears to separate into 2 parts - a "bulk" part that changes very slowly and "outliers" that change quickly. This suggests that only a few weights in the model actually change during training. If one could determine which weights these are, it might lend to faster and more efficient learning algorithms that don't have to backprop to all the parameters in a large neural network.

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.04454.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.04454.pdf)

[https://openreview.net/forum?id=ByeTHsAqtX](https://openreview.net/forum?id=ByeTHsAqtX)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks really neat and it's definitely fun to play around with. I can't resist playing around with tools like this for a few minutes, but I've never really figured out what they're good for.

What am I supposed to learn from them? What is the actionable information? That's not really a criticism, I just feel like I'm missing something.

<comment><AUTHOR> TensorSpace provides structure information and some basic metric for deep learning, and we use these famous network to show what TensorSpace can do, and how to use TensorSpace API to construct networks. For deep learning experts, these famous network's information is really basic, but we hope TensorSpace can help others to understand existing model, or help to present customized models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty cool.

If you're looking for ideas on what sort of information to display in the visualizations, this article is just chock full of them: [https://distill.pub/2018/building-blocks/](https://distill.pub/2018/building- blocks/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your recommendation, I can not wait to add more interesting idea into TensorSpace!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quite neat! Some constructive feedback - I think in addition to mouse controls, having keyboard 'spaceship' flying around is pretty important. I would also try to add model interprability tools (SmoothGrad) as an option, and perhaps contact some of those researchers to see how this can best be used for model understanding (I would guess visualizing grad flows / weights is more interesting than just layers).

PS I actually worked on something similar, was quite fun... [http://www.andreykurenkov.com/projects/major_projects/KerasJ...](http://www.andreykurenkov.com/projects/major_projects/KerasJS3D/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for your suggestions. As you say, visualizing weights may be really helpful, and I get many feedbacks for adding visualizing weights. I will try to add this feature in later version of TensorSpace. Temporarily, TensorSpace integrate TrackballControl which is an plugin for Three.js to handle "space exploration", and I will try to add more keyboard event for TensorSpace.

I have viewed your blog, and it is really fun. However, it is a pity that the online demo is outdated. Could you tell me what technique you use to construct 3D scene? Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To provide some feedback:

1\. display weights and gradients (in addition to activations)

2\. display how activations/weights/gradients change during training. For example, I should be able to point to checkpoint directory where my model is saved every epoch (or every few iterations), and then hit 'play' button to see how a particular feature map or weights filter is changing as I move between epochs/iterations.

3\. display which inputs contribute the most to the activations, at every layer.

These additional features would be very useful for debugging, for model compression, for identifying information flows (e.g. in a DenseNet), for saliency analysis, and probably for other things as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback, I am planing to visualize weights in next version of TensorSpace. These days, I add a "live loader" for TensorSpace, user can use this API to visualize online training process.

And for others features, we are discussing how to integrate them with TensorSpace, looking forward to your further suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> And use an Occulus rift for full immersive visualization!

<comment> mcc- Well, take a look at this :) [https://github.com/NCBI- Hackathons/deVoReaNN](https://github.com/NCBI-Hackathons/deVoReaNN)

Totally independently, we had the same idea of visualizing a DL in VR using an oculus -- a few months ago. We worked on it last Friday and Saturday in our hackathon: [https://www.u-hackmed.org/](https://www.u-hackmed.org/) [https://www.u-hackmed.org/2018teams/team-3](https://www.u-hackmed.org/2018teams/team-3)

Here is a demo: [https://youtu.be/E_VWewj_jX8](https://youtu.be/E_VWewj_jX8)

Really cool ideas going around in this thread. I really like thoughts around visualizing the changes during training -- not just activation.

As these tools currently stand, I agree that they are mostly for educational purposes. Taken to the nth degree, however, I think they can make a DL expert put on a VR headset when they get to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is convolution transpose supported in this/tensorflow.js? Might be fun to visualize fully convolutional networks this way...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, TensorSpace provides TransposeConv2d ([https://tensorspace.org/html/docs/layerTranspose.html](https://tensorspace.org/html/docs/layerTranspose.html))

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, this looks amazing.

Going to check out how to process my model from keras to use with this tool. Doesn't like that complicated.

Gonna give this a shot :)

Great work !

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Visualize Keras model is easier than other kinds of model, as TensorSpace's API is designed based on Keras, you can easily use keras-like TensorSpace API to build TensorSpace model and visualize it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Always wanted to visualize CNNs like this. I wonder whether it is possible to visualize RNNs at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am trying to design RNN layers, however, RNN is not the same as CNN layers. Now we use 3D to visualize CNN layer, as RNN has a time level information, it required 4D to visualize it, but I will try my best to add this attractive feature to TensorSpace!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Would love to see this be vizualized in Augmented reality as well, like an ARKit app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Augmented reality is really an amazing idea! As Three.js support web vr, I will dig into it. Hoping I can add this feature to TensorSpace soon.

<comment><USER3> You should look into 8th wall, they are a startup that implemented really advanced AR on the browser![https://8thwall.com/products- web.html](https://8thwall.com/products-web.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Minority report style!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is awesome!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What if we got rid of the kitchen? - <AUTHOR> Most homes have a kitchen. What if we got rid of it? What if society evolved in such a way that people no longer cook for themselves?
- Cost: Houses and appartments would be smaller and cheaper. No more kitchen and dining room. How much does a fridge, freezer, oven, microwave, stovetop, BBQ, table, chairs, granite countertop,  pots and pans, plates, glasses, utensils, kitchen instruments, dishwasher and sink cost?
- Environment: No fridge and freezer running 24/7. No oven or stove that consume energy. No need for your gas tank to be refuelled. No need to use water to wash your dishes. No need to drive to and from the grocery. Much less waste, and garbage truck doesn't need to go to every house as frequently.
- Safety: Less fire hazards, burns, cuts. Less expensive insurance?
- Time: No need to spend hours cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, driving to and from the grocery to stock your fridge, take out the trash, etc.
We could get rid of most groceries (at least, the consumer-facing aspect), cashiers, parkings, etc. Things will be packaged in bulk, which will reduce production cost and pollution (no individual or family-size packages). Because cooking will be done for a large number of people at once, it should be easier to predict demand, use local ingredients, use ingredients in season, and reduce waste and cost.
Looking forward to a new city or district designed for the kitchen-less lifestyle. <comment><USER3> Most homes have a bathroom. What if we got rid of it? What if society evolved in such a way that people no longer need to take a shit?

\- Cost: Houses and appartments would be smaller and cheaper. No more bathroom. How much does a toilet, sink, shower, vanity, and towels cost?

\- Environment: No need to use water to flush your toilet. No need to buy toilet paper . Much less waste, and plumber doesn't need to go to your house as every other week to unclog the toilet.

\- Safety: Less hemorrhoids and prolapse. Less expensive insurance?

\- Time: No need to spend 3-4 hours every day taking a dump, cleaning skid marks and blood out of your underwear, etc.

Looking forward to a new city or district without any assholes.

<comment><USER4> What if we got rid of the modern toilet and replaced it with a hole and you had to squat to take a dump? With a hose instead of a sink? Less hemorrhoids, less space. Less paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Except that, for many, eating is a social activity that is enjoyed, not just outside of the home, but _especially_ in the home.

For many, time around the dinner table is a highlight. Inviting people into your home becomes more hospitable with the addition of food and drink. Even if it is not a full meal, taking all means of food production from the home seems like a step back.

Also, when someone is sick, should they _have to_ go out to get food? Wouldn't it be better to be able to have something in the fridge?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you believe that in 100 years, most houses will have kitchens and people will cook for themselves? I don't think so.

<comment><USER6> Yes because cooking is not just a physical chore. It's how people customize and decide what to suit their personal tastes, and it's an action that requires thinking and intent. The act of choosing one option over the other given variety.

Unless you get every single possible option through some magical food provider, you will still have to put in work towards the food you eat. But even then, if I got to eat burritos every day (my favorite food), I would still eat something else.

This is all moot, because for a lot of people cooking is fun and a social activity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> J-dawg When I travel for work, it always surprises me how quickly I get sick of eating in hotels and restaurants. To begin with it's a great novelty, and it's nice when my employer is paying, but there always comes a time when I'd rather just buy some simple ingredients and make something for myself. I'm pretty sure I'm not unusual in this regard, so I think the kitchen is here to stay.

On the other hand, when I'm at home, cooking every day becomes a real chore and takes up a lot of time.

I think there is some very real potential for new approaches to communal cooking and eating, with more opportunities emerging as the cities we live in become more densely populated. Just don't pitch it as "getting rid of the kitchen".

</comment><comment><USER7> I think that this is interesting question.

It has been already pointed out, that cooking/eating at home is not just a way to provide fuel for your body. There are many other reasons, like: \- pure fun \- social activity \- adjusting the meal to your taste \- not having to go outside (especially when the weather is bad or you're sick) \- a way to save money (but you've proposed an alternative for this) \- eating healthy (it's very hard to eat the right amount of good quality food outside)

On the other hand, I've recently heard about a new marketing campaign by IKEA in Poland, where they opened a "social kitchen", where you could book some time and hang out together with your friends.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like you would enjoy the military. Barracks, no kitchen...at least not in the Marine Corps. You don't get to choose what you want to eat you just eat what is served whether you like it or not. If you miss the chow hours because of work, traffic, or any other activities tough luck. Maybe you won't miss the next meal. Oh yeah. Don't forget to get in the line early because if you don't get in line two hours before the meal actually starts you might have to wait in line for two hours and actually miss the meal anyway. And since everyone eats at the community kitchen you run out of food before the meal hours are even over.

Sounds like a good plan.

</comment><comment><USER9> We joke that I choose our current house for the walk-in pantry and large kitchen. What's the point of an home if you can't cook in it? That would be so sad, may as well sleep in a dorm.

I wouldn't mind getting rid of grocery stores buying in bulk for our family if the option was available, and have easy to compost packages so I wouldn't have to throw them in the trash. Those improvement could happen even if people cooked at home.

</comment><comment><USER10> The Soviets distrusted kitchens, because the kitchen is something bourgeois. Every family, as long as they have a kitchen, they have some part of their private life and private property > [http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/05/20/314054405/how...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/05/20/314054405/how- russias-shared-kitchens-helped-shape-soviet-politics)

</comment><comment><USER11> Even in cities where most people don't frequently cook and often subsist on eating out, takeout, and delivery, I don't think most people would choose to completely get rid of their kitchens.

That being said, this is an interesting thought-experiment and I'd certainly like to see more experimentation with non-traditional houses, tiny houses and microhouses, apartments, and living spaces.

Especially for young people just out of college and looking for inexpensive housing in big cities, I'd think apartment complexes that were more like college dorms with lots of built-in facilities that take care of tasks for you like cooking/laundry would be appealing to many.

Unfortunately however, I think that in many locations certain things are mandated into legislation that would prevent or at least make this kind of experimentation legally challenging. There's probably housing code in most regions that would make a kitchen-less home impossible to legally construct. This kind of legislation ostensibly exists to protect people, but as many people increasingly realize, often does the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER12> Everything depends on your income and opportunity cost. If you earn $100+/h maybe it doesn't worth to cook (as obligation), but if you earn $10/h, does this apply?

Imagine a low income family of 4 eating out every single meal. Do you think they could afford it? Probably not even fast food. HN community is the exception, not the rule. By the way cooking is one the most useful skills that you can have: within an hour you can transform a few dollars in a $100+ meal. Not a bad rate.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's a case of "if it's not broken, don't fix it".

If you can't cook, what are you going to be eating? Junk food? Gourmet food delivered to you?

The cost of feeding yourself will eat into your monthly wages in a hurry.

There're rental apts in New York City where you don't have cooking facilities. Folks in those situations do all they can to get a regular apt where they can enjoy a cooked mean whenever they please.

No, sir, I'll keep my kitchen.

<comment><AUTHOR> If nobody had kitchens, there would be cafeterias where you could go to eat (most people would get a monthly pass). Meals there would be much cheaper than anything you could cook at home, because of economy of scales.

<comment><USER14> What about people who _want_ to cook in their kitchen and eat with their family? I think you may be looking at this too logically, not taking into account the emotional part of preparing and eating food.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You might be surprised what you can cook on just a toasted sandwich maker - <USER2> call ours the UCD or Universal Cooking Device. Throw in a rice cooker and you can make all sorts of meals. My mother spent the first 3 years of married life with little else other than an electric fry pan in terms of cooking appliances.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe for single and rich people.

The cost for prepared food is at least 5x what you can do at home.

<comment><USER17> I guess you could argue that if you can't/won't cook, then paying 5x for food is better than paying thousands of dollars for stuff you'll never use anyway.

That said, I still want a kitchen. Cooking is fun!

<comment><USER16> Absolutely. My grandfather had a friend like that who was also loaded (DINK + old money) and had no kids. They lived in a fancy hotel suite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> China used to be like this, we called it socialism. Back then, the communities were organized around the companies, although we didn't call them "companies", we call them "units". they are all run by the government. And you don't get a salary, instead, the companies give food tickets (housing was free). you go to eat at the community cafeteria with the food tickets.

apartments had kitchens still. but they were very basic. I remember some apartments had only one kitchen per floor.

<comment><USER18> But I don't think your idea would work though. not everyone sees cooking as a burden of life. many enjoy it.

others prefer cooking for less living expenses. for connivence. what if you get hungry at midnight? what if the kind of food you like is far away.

making food together is also a good social occasion. it gathers people together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like cooking for myself. It's one of the few activities I can do that I can regularly feel productive in. If you take away my kitchen I'll start fires outside.

</comment><comment><USER20> So, life in a dorm room freshman year?

No thanks. It sounds terrible.

I'd type more but I'm about to trundle off to the kitchen to grab some aged cheese from the fridge, and a great beer.

</comment><comment><USER21> We were looking to buy a house. One house we were shown, there was something different about the kitchen. There was no stove! We laughed and left.

<comment><USER22> What were your feelings on the rest of the house? I'd imagine a dream house with no stove is something that can be overcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >\- Time: No need to spend hours cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, driving to and from the grocery to stock your fridge, take out the trash, etc.

Put part of those things are fun, the cooking and buying different groceries and walking around in stores to explore what they have to offer.

I don't get this "cooking is such a burden" thoughts that is quite frequent on HN

</comment><comment><USER24> You'd have better luck socializing/sharing/networking the automobile as they're mobile and not a part of literally +99.99% of all domiciles. And cars have an even bigger negative impact than kitchens.</comment>


High correlation between data loss events and numer of SMB in US states - yakir-mydro https://medium.com/@myDRO/high-correlation-between-data-loss-events-and-smb-in-us-states-acd4bf3c52e0#.n3e3p9ulv <comment><AUTHOR> What is a SMB?

<comment> yakir-mydro Small to mid-size business</comment></comment>


How HBO's Chernobyl reminds me of working in tech - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/characteristic-impedance/how-hbos-chernobyl-reminds-me-of-working-in-tech-6b993bb4c048 <comment><USER2> Brilliant piece of writing, some choice quotes:

"I've watched many tech managers research their positions by reading blog posts, books, advice columns, and so on — instead of simply listening to their team and putting effort into dealing with their problems."

"On some level, everyone in tech knows that the system and its founding stories are inadequate .. But they also believe that there are similarly- managed tech startups succeeding all around them, and so they refuse to conclude that the problem is with the overall system."</comment>


Has Augmented Reality Pioneer Magic Leap Fallen Off a Cliff? - <AUTHOR> https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/why-augmented-reality-pioneer-magic-leap-may-have-fallen-a-cliff-1158441 <comment><USER2> Every 14 or so years someone comes out with the one true 3D vision that fades about as fast as it came. They always forget the lesson: no one likes the glasses.</comment>


How to Deploy a Rails App with mod_rails on Slicehost (using an Ubuntu slice) - <AUTHOR> http://www.railsgarden.com/2008/04/12/configurating-passenger-mod_rails-on-slicehost-with-ubuntu-710/

<comment><USER2> someone really had to write this up? watch the screencast, it's pretty simple.

also, why "on Slicehost" instead of "on a VPS"? Still don't understand why people are so loyal to Slicehost. Linode ftw.

<comment><USER3> Screencasts take a lot of time to watch and, most importantly, they aren't google-searchable. Tags aren't enough.

In general, video sucks as a medium for surprising number of applications. I rarely bother with it - when I stumble across one while looking for something, I always move on to the next search result.

When I was transitioning from Windows development over to Linux world, I was lucky to have guys like this one, posting "obvious" things on their blogs: it's indispensable when searching for a specific error message you got in your terminal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Inserting a big chunk of C++ into my Apache listeners doesn't give me warm fuzzy feelings. Neither does the fact that mod_rails just flat-out doesn't work on OS X, which is where a large number of Rails developers do most of their actual, y'know, _development_.

Personally, I don't think you can really call this a 1.0 release. Pre-beta preview, maybe; stable, point-oh release, definitely not.

<comment><USER5> "Inserting a big chunk of C++ into my Apache listeners doesn't give me warm fuzzy feelings."

Uhm, what language do you think all the Apache modules (mod_rewrite, mod_perl, mod_php, etc.) are written in? They're all either C or C++, so by your logic all of Apache won't give you warm fuzzy feelings.

"Neither does the fact that mod_rails just flat-out doesn't work on OS X,"

This is false. Passenger _does_ work on OS X, but because of an issue in the _default_ Apache installation provided by OS X, Passenger is unable to work. If one installs Apache via MacPorts (or some other means) then Passenger will work just fine. In fact, the installer warns the user about exactly this issue.

Many, many people have tested Passenger on OS X, and it works fine for them. Ryan Bates of Railscasts, the one who made the screencast, used OS X. Pratik Naik, a Ruby on Rails core developer who helped with testing Passenger, used OS X.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Haven't tried mod_rails yet, but have had a challenging time deploying rails apps in general

For those that feel the same way I really recommend Rails Machine. Obviously getting something like mod_rails working on Amazon EC2 would give us scalability, but had to put that on the back burner for now.

<comment><USER7> Have you considered EC2-on-Rails? I tried it last week. Works like a charm exactly as advertised.

<http://ec2onrails.rubyforge.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has anyone figured out how much less memory mod_rails uses than say Mongrel? I haven't gotten round to experimenting with it myself yet.

<comment><USER9> It uses more.

<comment><USER5> It isn't quite as simple as that. After idling some time, it will release memory that Mongrel wouldn't release. There are many topics about the exact details. Future versions will feature more memory optimizations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> so many choices with Rails...does anybody have any experience with mod_rails?

<comment><USER11> mod_rails was released only this week. I expect to see a lot of experiences in the coming weeks. I'm curious too.</comment></comment>


Quadrocopter Ball Juggling - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CR5y8qZf0Y <comment><USER2> From 2 days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2380759>

Very popular - it was on the front page for _ages_ \- loads of comments.

(pause)

Yup - on the front page for about 17 hours.</comment>


"Hello, World" in 20 languages - need help. - <AUTHOR>

I'm planning on giving a small (barcamp-level) talk on the intricacies of varying programming languages. The basic setup is going to be 'hello, world' in various languages.
I've already picked a small set of esoterics to throw in there more as comic relief ('piet' in Piet is definitely nice, for example), but I'm trying to find short but profound snippets in various languages. So far I have:
* Java: "Hello, World".toCharArray().each(c -> System.out.print(c)); <--- these are java 8 closures, and would let me expand on how java closures in java 8 require a single interface type with 1 method to match, which then in turn lets you omit the type of the parameters. Closures without first-class functions.
* Fortress: Turn "Hello, World!" into a conclist, then print the list as 'self, left, right', which produces something like " lHeol,loWrd!" reliably. Explain what makes conclists so interesting from a parallelizing perspective. Take-away lesson: Conc lists; how anything with accumulators is not practically parallelizable, and that conslists are thus not that great, at least for parallelization purposes.
* Scala: turn hello world into a .par() list of characters then print those. Explain how at least in theory the output will be "Hello, World!" but with the string jumbled up non-deterministically. Take-away lesson: Parallelism can be that simple.
* ObjC or smalltalk: A random messagesend with colons in the method name to highlight this creative and somewhat unique way of providing named parameters. Take-away lesson: Sometimes weird design choices lead to elegant solutions.
* Javascript: Do something pretty profound using no actual alphanums anywhere - just wonky symbols. Explain how this was used to hack facebook at some point. Take-away lesson: Security is a heck of a lot harder than you think it is. Use deny-all with whitelists, not allow-all with blacklists.
.... but that's where I'm kind of stranded. I'd prefer it if I can show more tidbits of code that let me explain a relatively profound idea (such as conclists and parallel processing) in a relatively short amount of time.
So, hackernews: I'm looking for more ideas. <comment><USER2> Include some LOLCODE that always goes down well.

<comment><USER3> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_(programming_languag...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_\(programming_language\))

Whitespace is so much more readable...</comment></comment>


Silicon Valley's unicorn fantasy is collapsing in on itself - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/666927/silicon-valleys-unicorn-fantasy-is-collapsing-in-on-itself/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11539791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11539791)

</comment><comment><USER3> The sad thing about the rush to create all these unicorns is that there is a good chance that its the employee's who get screwed the most if there is a reset in funding levels.

Link to the original article that this one references: [http://abovethecrowd.com/2016/04/21/on-the-road-to- recap/](http://abovethecrowd.com/2016/04/21/on-the-road-to-recap/)

As Bill points out, its been speculated that in an effort to be coined a unicorn, many of these companies agreed to some onerous funding terms, including ratchets, PIK dividends and preferential treatment as to when they can redeem their shares if there is an IPO.

This might make sense from a founders perspective as reportedly many of the founders have taken some money off the table during previous funding rounds.

This leaves the employees as the only class of shareholders who often can't take money off the table during fund raising and who are usually the last to be able to sell their shares/exercise options when the company goes public.</comment>