Yahoo Mail's Plan to Fix Email: Make Computers Read It - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/yahoo-mails-plan-to-fix-email-make-computers-read-it/595183/ <comment><USER2> Yahoo should probably focus on getting the basics of email deliverability right first. They could have the best client side features by a distance, and I wouldn't go near them and would continue to tell others to avoid using them.

The number of times their servers reject emails at random, causing yahoo email users frustration, is astonishing for an email service provider. Contacting their postmaster to spell out the issue results in a dispute over email headers (which they insist can be obtained from their email client even though the emails are being rejected server side) - and their numerous problems go unsolved. We tell users to switch away from yahoo if they want to receive emails with a reasonable probability.

We've never had issues sending millions of emails to Gmail, outlook, or pretty much any large ESP other than yahoo.

<comment><USER3> Worse than rejecting emails, Yahoo _silently_ rejects emails. No error on SMTP delivery, no DSN sent back, sometimes it just drops the email into /dev/null.

Never use Yahoo mail. There are much better alternatives out there, even if you want a free service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Yahoo Mail is an underdog too: It represents 6.3 percent of email clients, > versus Apple's 43.6 percent, Google's 30.3 percent, and Microsoft's 11.4 > percent

When I read this I thought this Apple's 40%+ email share can't possibly be true and I read the linked article and realized if an iPhone user is reading their yahoo.com or hotmail.com email on the Mail app on their phone, it counts as an "iPhone email", so this number is meaningless, although it's probably true that Yahoo email has a smaller share than Hotmail or Gmail.

<comment><USER5> It's referring to email _clients_.

<comment><USER6> I wasn't even aware they have a client, I thought it's just the web view.

<comment><USER7> The web view is the email client they provide. The statistic shows how people access their email account, not where it's hosted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> yahoo mail really hurt me when they threw all my childhood correspondence away without warning. it would probably fit in 600 KB.

like this:

[https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/yahoo-email- deleted-...](https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/yahoo-email-deleted-all- my-emails/)

or maybe a different issue where they deleted mails older than 1 year or older than 10 years or something, I forget. (you can google it. people were comparing it to going into your attic or back of your closet and throwing away old letters you'd saved.) anyway it really made me very sad. I don't use them and am unlikely to ever trust them. they really let me down.

<comment><USER9> Even being 100% sure Google won't lose my email in an accident and 99% sure they'll never duck my account, I still IMAP all my messages out of it. For that 1%, no less.

<comment><USER10> I have created a to-do list for the start of each calendar quarter. It includes things like:

* Replace toothbrush heads (electric)

* Spring clean two rooms in the house

* Download backups of all email accounts

* Download backups of all cloud web sites

* Sync external hard drives to cloud archival storage

* Download QIF and QBO of all bank accounts

It's quarterly. Worst case scenario, I lose last three months. And by doing it quarterly, I usually add to the to do list, and it's a catch-up.

Cleaning two rooms of my house take the longest time. Everything else can be done in about 1-2 hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > They started taking screenshots of boarding passes or coupons so they could > find them more easily. This is a dumb way to use computers,

What? This is a wonderful way to use computers. Screenshots are offline storage of specific, useful information in a universal format whose content can be browsed and recognized at a glance.

People don't want better organization, they want to get their boarding pass out easily. You can do that a million ways, but the one way that makes no sense is "pull up the virtual letter I received at time of purchase and see if it contains an embedded image or an attachment I forgot to download". What would make more sense is to have an extension to something like vCard called "tickets" and allow special ticket-holding apps to keep them. Your email client could download them and pass them to the app automatically, ensuring you always have your tickets offline and organized in a dedicated ticket program.

We don't have to live in a world where one application tries to do everything, and we can use standards to make universal things (like tickets) actually universal.

<comment><USER12> With Apple Wallet and Google Pay apps it's easy to add tickets/boarding passes/cards etc

Companies should make it easy to add it to those apps. For me boarding passes are really easy to add to Apple Wallet for example.

<comment><USER13> Where I live (Scandinavia) most boarding passes are just QR codes and a screenshot of that does just fine for the few cases where the app used to book the ticket doesn't handle it for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I crazy for kind of hating this. Half of the article feels like a PR piece for functionality that gmail already has, and the prospect of emails changing after theyve been sent is kind of unsettling.

</comment><comment><USER15> Probably worth noting that aol and yahoo don't even use their own mail internally, they use gmail. Or at least did as of a couple of years ago.

<comment><USER16> Really? I hadn't ever known this. If true, this saddens me greatly...This means that even more of the global email traffic than previously thought is under/traverses google's infrastructure umbrella. </sigh>

<comment><USER17> Not really. The communications team (about 400-500 people) who develop email product do use it. Unfortunately, for larger Verizon media, verizon has dictated that they use gmail. Explanation is that "Yahoo Mail" is consumer focused not enterprise focused which requires calendar support, conferencing etc.

<comment><USER18> Why doesn't corporate get them to make those feature then? Complete joke that we don't even use our own stuff in house.

Not that I want to use Y! Mail but it's the principle of the thing.

<comment><USER19> I do think dogfooding in general is a good thing but I feel like it can hold you back if you're dogmatic--especially with a large company. Sure, people snicker when people found out MS uses Linux for some services. Same with Apple using Linux for their services when they still had xserve and osx server. I think both companies were better served by not being forced to use their own products.

I know someone who works at a Microsoft subsidiary. She'll bring up using MS Lync, Teams, Skype, Excel or something and I'll be thinking "oh, most companies just use X." The few times I've used those Microsoft products I found them confusing and error prone...this also means I should spend more resources learning this. All of that would take away from my day job.

I can easily see not wanting to spend time investing in half baked calendars and conferencing taking resources away from consumer focused features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In the early 90's I used something called QuickMail [1]. It was pretty awesome, especially for its time. You had the ability to do things that SMTP couldn't do, like unsend, see if message was viewed, send 'smart emails' etc. The issue was that it only worked well if other users were on QuickMail. Beyond the other dramas of acquisitions [2], it never really caught on to replace plain old SMTP.

It seems the tides have turned a bit. Now that SMTP email is everywhere, users could reverse the situation. I could say that I will only accept emails which can be parsed by a computer. I (or my provider) could then publish a schema for the types of emails that I'm willing to receive (and how they should be formatted for me). The rest would go into some other folder (ie: spam), that I could look through if I cared enough.

[1] [https://tidbits.com/1991/09/16/ce-ships- quickmail/](https://tidbits.com/1991/09/16/ce-ships-quickmail/)

[2] [https://www.engadget.com/2008/07/28/outspring-puts-the- final...](https://www.engadget.com/2008/07/28/outspring-puts-the-final-nail- in-quickmails-coffin/?guccounter=1)

</comment><comment><USER21> Email overload already has a fix - filtering rules and email folders have been a thing for decades, and most popular email clients have offered convenient ways to quickly create the rules for nearly as long.

The problem is people not learning to properly use a tool that they spend a big part of their time with, and instead fearing that if they touch one wrong thing, one wrong button, their computer or smartphone will explode.

<comment><USER22> IMO writing good filters can be pretty hard. I literally spent what must've been an entire hour on updating just 1 Gmail filter today. All going through my mailbox cross-checking to make sure it would mark exactly what was needed, no more, no less.

(It'd have been a lot easier if I was more tolerating of errors, but the entire reason I was updating it was to eliminate errors that had started getting annoying. And I'm guessing errors are one reason why some people don't use filters.)

<comment><USER21> Most people can get by with nothing more complex than "put all messages from this sender to folder X", or a few similar options. Heck, even MS Outlook makes this easy.

If Google makes this difficult, that's on them.

<comment><USER22> "Filter messages like this" is literally in their drop-down for precisely this...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Fix Email

Why does everyone keep being fixated at the idea that email is broken?

The only broken thing in email is Google and it's obscenely obscure and paranoid spam filtering.

<comment><USER24> Email has numerous issues, from default security (in flight and at rest), formats, workflows, privacy, retention, directories, routing, spam, and more.

The underlying protocols are well over 40 years old (RFCs 822, 821, 733, 630, 561, possibly others), and are showing their age. ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc733](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc733))

In theory, email is universal and distributed, in practice it's very highly concentrated amongst a few major providers (Google's Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo, as of 2016 [http://blog.shuttlecloud.com/the-most-popular-email- provider...](http://blog.shuttlecloud.com/the-most-popular-email-providers-in- the-u-s-a/)). Google alone has a majority of US email addresses. Some see this as a problem. ([https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email- be...](https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it- has-all-of-yours))

In practice, self-hosting email is problematic and presents risks to the administrator, their correspondents, and third parties through possibilities of spam and other abuse.

At the same time, the utility and practicality of email is rapidly declining. I've used email for well over three decades, and defended the basic protocols until recent years. I can do so no longer, and actively avoid email in general for numerous reasons, something that does not please me in the least.

Unfortunately, getting protocols and standards un-stuck is exceedingly difficult, not just in tech and comms, but generally, and for deep and systemic reasons. Greenfield domains with a small but collaborative community seem best disposed to developing standards -- that's not what we have presently in the online / digital world.

<comment><USER23> > The underlying protocols are well over 40 years old

old != broken

> In practice, self-hosting email is problematic and presents risks

Not more, than self hosting WordPress.... And it's really not that problematic to self host it. I'm very tired of always hearing how hard it is when all one needs to do is adding a few dns records for spf, dkim, dmarc and reverse dns, and it works.

> At the same time, the utility and practicality of email is rapidly > declining.

Not as infrastructure, no. In personal communication, yes.

You are correct on some points, especially the power concentration. On other points we're over complicating email. We need to accept that it'll never be as "private" as some enthusiasts would like it to be, but it's a more than adequate for reliably exchanging information.

<comment><USER24> No, old does not _necessisarily_ mean broken. But the assumptions, scale, and environment (particularly trustworthiness and safety) under which email was developed no longer match present reality.

I've hosted email for 40m+ users. It's nontrivial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People keep declaring that email is broken and needs fixing.

But I use it everyday and it is one of the few things in the computerised side of my life that actually does work properly.

Mind you I almost never use web mail even though my main account is Hotmail and I have both Gmail and Yahoo accounts. I use Thunderbird on several machines, built in email client on my Lenovo tablet and the Gmail app on my Moto g5+. They all work.

So what is it that everyone wants to fix?</comment>


83 year old nun get's 3 years jail time for breaking into a nuclear power plant  - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/18/justice/tennessee-nun-sentenced/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1

<comment><USER2> I like the idea of 83 year olds doing civil disobedience because they have nothing to lose. Let them stand beside the 18 year old protesters.</comment>


Linux Performance Analysis and Tools and Methodologies - <AUTHOR> http://joyent.com/blog/linux-performance-analysis-and-tools-brendan-gregg-s-talk-at-scale-11x

<comment><USER2> I didn't know much about perf (<https://perf.wiki.kernel.org>) before watching this talk. I had no idea that perf supported dynamic tracing in the kernel (around minute 40/slide 57). I'm definitely going to play around with it more this weekend.

I always enjoy Brenden's talks. He really knows his stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome presentation. Brendan Gregg shows a scary amount of expertise here. Very motivating to start using more advanced tools.

<comment><USER4> I consider the Joyent (Ex-Sun guys) the gods of Unix based operating systems, just reading how they ported KVM from Linux -> Illumos displays their deep understanding of what is going on under the hood. Seriously if you want to be an above average Unix system administrator, consider learning and using Dtrace with Solaris/OpenIndiana as it will improve your troubleshooting skills immensely with *nix in general. I just wish it existed in GNU/Linux (yea,yea Oracle is trying this, but still very incomplete atm), and Linux based SystemTap just does not feel as awesome as Dtrace.

<comment><USER5> Apple should buy Joyent immediately and put them in charge of the entire Service side of Apple (iCloud, etc.).

There isn't any better way for Tim Cook to spend that amount of money, full stop: Apple is getting it's ass kicked on the server side by Google, and they deserve it, because Apple doesn't have the talent and won't get it because, let's face it, who wants to work at Apple on server stuff that has any kind of skills?

Buying Joyent would change that overnight.

<comment><USER6> I don't think they'll like the idea of dealing with Apple after they left Oracle. They have better things to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haven't listened to the presentation but the diagram doesn't list this project which I learned about from a Misko Hevery post on the googletesting blog. <http://freecode.com/projects/fio>

Look forward to watching it.

<comment><USER8> The talk focused on observability tools, not experimental tools like micro- benchmarks. I probably should have made that more clear (I only mention experimental tools on slide 84).

I've actually been using fio a lot recently, especially since it can do non- uniform random distributions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        sudo perf top

is really great!

</comment><comment><USER10> Great stuff. Thanks!</comment>


Stack Overflow avoids developer turnover by having a "Culture of Trust" - <AUTHOR> https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2015/09/culture-of-trust/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, I'm Arie Litovsky, the author of the blog post. I would be happy to discuss this article or anything else about the technology/culture/perks of working at Stack Overflow.</comment>


Show HN: When-online – utility for executing online commands while offline - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ihoegen/when-online <comment><USER2> Neat little program! Looking at the source, it simply polls until the computer is connected to the internet and then executes the command.

It would be nice to have this run in the background as well.

Anyway, great idea!</comment>


Ask HN: Does JavaScript have race conditions? - <AUTHOR> During an interview, I was asked how to avoid race conditions in JavaScript. When I explained why JS did not have race conditions(single threaded event loop) the interviewer looked unhappy. I googled and received mixed answers. Some say yes while others say no. Any experts here can help me with this confusion? <comment><USER2> Yes, (in my view) you can have race conditions any time asychronous operations (like network requests) finishing in different orders results in unexpected state. You don't get the specific type of race condition caused by interleaved multi-threaded code though. So it depends on how restrictive your definition of a race condition is. (Those races belong to the system as a whole, so are arguably not "in JavaScript.")

But since that's possible in basically all languages, I think your answer is more responsive to a question about race conditions and JavaScript. If the interviewer didn't like it, he/she could have dug into the issue more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Javascript as a language is single threaded. Essentially JS is just an API working with text,arrays, dates but does not include I/O (networking and storage) typically implemented by host environment.(mostly browsers). So this is where async nature arises from the network requests and storing data. Hence race conditions can arise from doing async operations on which finishes first.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think he wanted you to make use of Promises.</comment>


SecondMarket CEO: Forget Facebook, the IPO market is dying - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/17/secondmarket-facebook-ipo-private-shares-barry-silbert/

<comment><USER2> FTA: > _"The IPO market is dying," he said. "You see companies achieving robust valuations on the private market but being treated poorly when they go public." (We're looking at you, Groupon and Zynga.)_

It seems quaint, but there was a time that a company had to have 6 quarters of serious revenue and 2 quarters of solid profits before they went public.

That was before the dumb money from 401k's entered the picture.

<comment><USER3> I think that is an oversimplification. I dont see the average 401k investor investing in IPO's so I dont see how you arrive at the conclusion that more 401k money equals to more companies going public.

<comment><USER2> > _I dont see the average 401k investor investing in IPO's_

Nor, for that matter, do you see many investors at all getting pre-IPO shares. Most of the small guys come in after the IPO.

The problem is that the 401k's go to funds, who are playing a big game of averages. They buy the S&P +/- some delta. IPOs form the delta for some of the funds. (And all of the money buying the S&P means that valuations in general have gotten quite a bit higher over the timeframe of 401k's, which drives post-IPO valuations, which drives pre-IPO valuations.)

<comment><USER3> Can you point me to any funds that invest immediately in the illiquid shares of a recently listed company?

<comment><USER2> Search SEC's EDGAR. You will find who the underwriters are selling the IPO shares to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"We started at the very top with these outliers like Facebook and Twitter, but the aim is to work our way down to much less high profile companies."_

I don't see how SecondMarket is going to fill the void left by FB, Groupon, and Zynga with long-tail trades. But that doesn't mean I don't want to see that happen.

But all I've heard is the headache caused by these types of trades on the company. Sure, disproportionately on Facebook, but if I or one of my coworkers posted and actually sold shares on SecondMarket from our little company, it would be a major annoyance, and spark a lot of internal hand-wringing and tension.

I see it difficult for SecondMarket to create a long-tail market in the smaller, non-SV/NYC, non-consumer internet startups. I can't imagine them doing trades in small middle America biopharma companies (such as we are).

What epxerience does anyone on HN have when SecondMarket trading started happening with Founders/employees/investors at their companies? Was it noticeable? What impacts on employee morale/focus/work did it have, if any? It would drive me nuts if I was CEO and all the water cooler talk was about employees selling shares/options/RSUs (if even possible to trade options/RSUs) on Secondmarket and what they got out of it, etc. Seems like a horrible, distracting idea at a small, <25 person company - not to mention the impacts on your valuation/investor perception in future raises, other externalities.

</comment><comment><USER5> A stock market with much less leeway for financial speculation is something that I really hope for, but the problem I see is liquidity. I guess that most of the buyers on SecondMarket are looking forward to the IPO anyway, which was only a question of time for Facebook, but is a much less sure event with the smaller companies that would really benefit from this market.

I wish SecondMarket well, but the one it decided to pursue is a very difficult path.

</comment><comment><USER6> If true, it is bad news. The non-public markets are by and large only open to 'qualified investors', which in practice means those that are quite wealthy.

The single best investment strategy ever devised is diversification. The more of the economy closed to the general public, the less they can diversify, and the worse their risk adjusted returns.

</comment><comment><USER3> Markets without broad transparent participation and non-existent regulation will be prone to fraud and manipulation. The last couple of years have shown us that even markets with broad participation and (under enforced) regulation can be manipulated. I am waiting for the first few blowups and scandals to happen to restore some balance in this trend of keeping things private for longer.

<comment><USER7> Exactly! This feels like a "scam" to skirt the rules of the SEC.

> "The IPO market is dying," he said. "You see companies achieving robust > valuations on the private market but being treated poorly when they go > public." (We're looking at you, Groupon and Zynga.)

Zynga and Groupon were "treated poorly" because their numbers showed that they were NO WHERE NEAR as profitable as they wanted us to believe when they were private (and secrete). I suspect Facebook, also has highly inflated valuation in these "second markets" where information is scarce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a self-serving statement. You really don't hear anyone else repeating this. What's wrong is that SecondMarket has to exist to fill a large liquidity void between startups and public companies.

What I'd love to see is a public stock market akin to Toronto's Venture Exchange, but specifically for technology companies. A mini-NASDAQ if you will. If I could raise money in the public market I could skip VC's, brokers, underwriters and all these middlemen between my company and potential investors.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think his point is that not every company can get to $1 billion valuation or wait ten years before going public. Like you said, there is a big void to fill, and one that could be very productive for the startup ecosystem.

Think of all the tech companies that can get to $150 M. in a couple of years and still need sensible capital to grow before they are ready for the big time.</comment></comment>


Target of Silk Road murder-for-hire plot tells his story - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/target-of-silk-road-murder-for-hire-plot-tells-his-story/

<comment><USER2> This article adds more contenxt to the story... [http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2013/10/feds-silkroad-bos...](http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2013/10/feds-silkroad-boss-paid-80000-for-snitchs-murder-and-torture/)

</comment><comment><USER3> "According to federal agents, DPR paid an undercover agent to murder me"

How much credibility should one assign to Fed agents in such situations.</comment>


Dropwizard: library for making fast Java or Scala web services - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/codahale/dropwizard

<comment><USER2> 'Log4j for loggin' ? I would rethink that. Log4j , venerable as it may be, is getting long in the tooth .</comment>


We know a lot less than we think, especially about the future - <AUTHOR> http://lemire.me/blog/2016/04/27/we-know-a-lot-less-than-we-think-especially-about-the-future/ <comment><USER2> I believe Nassim Taleb has a strong argument for why things "that don't break"\- or in other words, things that maintain consistency throughout human history (e.g. Relgion, the chair, writing tablets) are likely to be around in the future. [http://www.economist.com/node/17509373](http://www.economist.com/node/17509373)</comment>


Show HN: Tutorial: Build Decentralized YouTube Using IPFS - <AUTHOR> https://simpleaswater.com/youtube-on-ipfs/ <comment><USER2> >You can follow these instructions to install, initialize, and connect IPFS to the public network.

no, you can't. all of those links go to "work in progress".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out ;) Just updated!</comment></comment>


Professor used group semi-ignorance to pick stocks [translated] - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.zeit.de/campus/2007/03/interview-gigerenzer

<comment><USER2> Single page, plain text, no images or ads. Still translated by Google.

[http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=h...](http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://images.zeit.de/text/campus/2007/03/interview- gigerenzer)

<comment><USER3> Google's machine translation has really gotten much, much better. This is perfectly fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I saw an episode of "Dirty Jobs" (Discovery Channel) and they humourously demonstrated and explained how the dirty job of "baby chicken sexing" is done. The episode first aired on Aug 16, 2003.

Yet, there article claims ...

"Chicken Sexer the chicks after a few days differ, although the sexual characteristics until after four weeks to train. If you ask these people how they do that, they can not explain it."

It makes me wonder if the rest of the article on stock-picking is similarly inaccurate.

</comment><comment><USER5> > The value of my portfolio rose in six months by 47 percent.

This is poorly explained. How did the market itself, or the selected-from stocks, do over the same time period?

How did it do versus the ten biggest or most active stocks for a lagging period?

I'd be curious to know the sharpe ratio for the various portfolios as well.</comment>


How to verify the URL is up in different location/countries - <AUTHOR> Dear All,
I'm going to develop a tool using C#/asp.net to monitor a website and reports whether its down in specific country. Please advise how to access the website (URL) from server (tool hosting server) to other countries and check whether URL is up or not. <comment><USER2> I use the TOR browser to spoof my location. Hard to target specific countries sometimes but works pretty good for sanity checks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok. Thanks for the reply. So we have to manually do the above in browser and check the access right but cant rely this to check URLs with multiple countries.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, probably not the solution you're looking for.</comment></comment></comment>


Generative Visual Manipulation on the Natural Image Manifold - <AUTHOR> https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~junyanz/projects/gvm/ <comment><USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c4z6YsBGQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c4z6YsBGQ0)

Really cool, especially the morphing stuff which is amazingly convincing. On the other hand the drawing stuff, I just _still_ can't get over the feeling that it's very similar to looking up best matches in a database, perhaps slightly morphed to better match the input. I guess that's more or less what it is..

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you guys for the interest. The interactive image generation interface as well as trained models are available at [https://github.com/junyanz/iGAN](https://github.com/junyanz/iGAN). It is still under active development and let me know if you find bugs or would like to suggest new features.

</comment><comment><USER4> The morphing is impressive. I wonder if something similar can morph between faces. It may even be possible to morph faces of parents and get something similar to the children of the parents, especially if that's set as the objective. Looking forward to release of the code.

<comment><USER5> Tom White has done a lot of fun work recently in this direction [https://twitter.com/dribnet](https://twitter.com/dribnet). You can absolutely do it with faces.

<comment><USER4> That's very cool, it's amazing what's become possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool... Is there anyway to combine this with a seam carving approach?

</comment><comment><USER7> Great interface interface to GANs. Nice work</comment>


Ask HN: Can we design secure games using HTML5? - <AUTHOR>

Everyone seems to be preferring HTML5 over Flash. It is a good idea for most of the things. But then what about the games? If the source code is loaded in the browser we could easily manipulate it and change the gaming experience.
I am the highest scorer on many HTML5 games without even playing the game.
How can we add security to HTML5 games so that no one can actually manipulate the gameplay ? <comment><USER2> I've been through this questioning a few years ago. The conclusions:

1\. generate a one-off .js file with a salted hashing function. keep the salt variable in a "private" scope, remove the script from the DOM as soon as it loads or use XHR

2\. keep track of game progress and player history, validate scores

3\. obfuscate scoring beyond the hashing (false messages, symbols, etc)

4\. don't calculate scores on the client, send player positions or something else instead (not possible for most games)

You can go around all of this though. It seems impossible to prevent manipulation completely, you can only raise the effort necessary to accomplish it. In consoles this is solved by closed platforms - PC games are still victim to cheating.

For that project, we ended up doing nothing and manually deleting suspicious scores from the database. Worked fine :)

<comment><USER2> This sounds interesting too: [http://www.cryptovirology.com/cryptovfiles/newbook/Chapter6....](http://www.cryptovirology.com/cryptovfiles/newbook/Chapter6.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm right there with you in looking for solutions. As owner and lead developer for nitrotype.com (competitive real time online typing) and funtotype.com (soon there will be a real time scoreboard for competing).

At the moment we do all development in flash, not only because it allows for old IE support, but because I am able to salt+hash the scores sent to the server to verify the data but this is all done in flash.

In JS I'm stymied. Every scheme I can come up with I could easily defeat. No level of obfuscation is really that difficult to reverse. Hopefully somebody else has better input!

<comment><USER2> There are plenty of tools allowing manipulation of Flash too, pausing execution, changing variable values, intercepting network requests...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a good attempt to using homomorphic encryption?</comment>


Pai's FCC orders cities and towns to stop regulating cable broadband - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/pais-fcc-orders-cities-and-towns-to-stop-regulating-cable-broadband/ <comment><USER2> > The FCC action was spurred partly by an Oregon state Supreme Court decision > that upheld a 7% "telecommunications" license fee the city of Eugene imposed > on Comcast. The FCC's Republican majority says the court got the law wrong.

So Congress passed a law. A state Supreme Court interpreted the law. And then a _Federal Regulator_ , tasked with devising rules to _implement_ the law, decided that the court got it wrong and just writes a new rule? That's not really how it's supposed to work. If the Oregon state Supreme Court actually "got it wrong" then SCOTUS or Congress can correct it, not the FCC.

<comment><USER3> That is how it's supposed to work. Congress can delegate regulation writing powers to federal agencies. The state Supreme Court can interpret the rules one way, and then the FCC may change the rules. If Congress has let them.

Now maybe Congress shouldn't be allowed to delegate it's powers, but that ship has long past sailed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wasn't his ideals originally based around the federal government deregulating, and letting states decide how to handle internet?

<comment><USER5> No, his plan was allow the cable companies to do what ever they felt like doing

<comment><USER4> Ah that's unfortunate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like liberalism.

<comment><USER7> Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and definitely please don't do ideological battle here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER6> It's not an ideology. Liberalism means one set of rules that applies to everyone. It's the definition of the word.</comment></comment></comment>


Best lenses for sunstars - <AUTHOR> https://phillipreeve.net/blog/best-lenses-for-sunstars/ <comment><USER2> Ten blades is better than 5 blades because the spikes are half the width on defocused points.

Newer Canon lenses have been 9- and 10-bladed.

Hasselblad's old V system lenses had 5 blades, curved in C lenses and straight in CF and later.

Fun fact for manga fans: the heavy use of Hasselblads in fashion and the resulting pentagonal bokeh lives on today in the frequent appearance of pentagons in the screentones of shoujo manga.

</comment><comment><USER3> I get these sunstars (I hadn't heard that name before) in my normal vision at night. I see them on all the street lights and car headlights.

Is that normal or does it indicate some sort of problem?

If I were to ask an optician about it, what words should I use to explain the problem? Would they know what a "sunstar" is? Is it different to "lens flare"?

<comment><USER4> You might have astigmatism. A simple examination will tell you. When I put on my first pair of prescription glasses in my early 20s, I was astonished at how different everything looked, and how so many weird optical effects like starbursts/sunstars slowly crept up on me such that I didn't realize my vision had changed so drastically. (The period between my last eye examine in adolescence and when I sought help for night driving was also the period I discovered computers and Linux and long nights hacking.)

<comment><USER3> Ah, thank you. I do have astigmatism and my glasses do correct for it. That explains it then.

<comment><USER4> I've had a few lens corrections over the years, but starbursts seem to only get worse with time since that first prescription where they completely disappeared.

Whenever I bring up the question of corrective surgery my ophthalmologist manages to somehow change the subject. I suspect that my astigmatism has gotten so bad that lenses can't completely correct it (thus worsening starbursts), making me a poor candidate for surgery in his opinion, notwithstanding all the marketing promises out there. Perhaps we're both in the same boat if you're also still seeing starbursts with your prescription.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Straight blades+even number of blades get the best sun stars.

Rounded blades can still get a cool effect but the sunstar points look like a triangle instead of a straight line.</comment>


The Campaign to Take Torvalds Out of Linux - <AUTHOR> http://techrights.org/2019/06/29/ousting-linus-torvalds/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some quick backstory as to why I just posted this: I originally submitted it almost three months ago [0]; it was quickly flagged down as a "conspiracy theory". I don't necessarily agree with everything here, but don't think it's that. I'm posting again in light of rms' recent expulsion from almost everything, because I think the increasing "corporatization" of OSS stuff will lead to him eventually being kicked out. I'm certainly not sure of any of this, but I think recent events make this article particularly pertinent.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325213)

<comment><USER3> Definitely not a conspiracy in the crackpot sense, but one in the "organized subversion" sense. I posted on the Amazon walkout thread as well - <USER2> orgs are becoming too focused on politics. Of course some politics is to be expected, FOSS itself is somewhat a politically-motivated movement, but the end goal is apolitical.

Really this deplatforming is getting ridiculous, and the only goal it achieves is dumbing down society by merging all social environments into one so they have less to assess about an individual

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does /. even have any influence anymore? They seem to be k5 lite nowadays, tbh. At least in terms of comments

</comment><comment><USER5> As always, follow the money.

Linux (no matter what it may be called at the time, or who is its current poster boy) is now too big to be nailed down by any one company or even any one country.

Microsoft may, in fact, end up owning the name 'Linux' and proclaim that it is the 'one, true owner'. That will not stop Linux from being forked into another cloned project with a different name and letting 'Linux (TM)' wither on the vine.</comment>


Show HN: Programming Languages Influence Network Based on Wikidata - <AUTHOR> https://programminglanguages.info/influence-network/ <comment><AUTHOR> This graph is based on influence relations retrieved from Wikidata, which is the central storage for the structured data of Wikipedia. I'm sure that some relations are debatable and that there are missing relations. That said, just like Wikipedia everyone can help improve Wikidata by adding, editing or removing information and by adding references. Would love to get your feedback und suggestions for improvements.</comment>


Gitlab is closing all its job postings - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/gitlab-hire-critical-roles-recruiting-coronavirus-2020-4 <comment><USER2> "This story is available exclusively on Business Insider Prime."</comment>


TPP Goes Down to the Wire: Help Stop It by Joining Our Call-In - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/tpp-goes-down-wire-help-us-swing-it-joining-our-call <comment><USER2> I don't see it passing in the lame duck session. Winning republicans will want to see President Elect Trump not need to veto it, while loosing republicans will not want to add TPP to Obamas legacy. So both groups will band together to stop it. There just isn't the votes for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> We tend to forget every evil, the off-shore banking accounts, the oil and banking ones, but the TPP... can we just agree we don't want the US bullshit in the rest of the world? And can we try and contain it and suffocate it?</comment>


US can't access NSA phone records in California terror case - <AUTHOR> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CALIFORNIA_SHOOTING_PHONE_RECORDS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT <comment><USER2> No doubt policy makers will use this tragedy as a justification to restart the debate on mass surveillance programs and encrypted communication. But a lot of good the mass collection of phone records did to prevent this. The lack of success of these programs speaks to the impracticality and ineffectiveness of these program.</comment>


Ask HN: Will you take a short survey about improving (or replacing) email? - <AUTHOR>

Many people have talked about how bad (or misused) email is, but I haven't seen much progress toward fixing it.  PG talked about it back in 2008 (http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html - #28 Fixing email overload) and again in 2012 (http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html - #2 Replace Email).  There have been a few attempts to layer functionality on top of email (Mailbox, LinkedIn Intro), and of course there are other ways to communicate (social media, messenger apps), but nothing really fills the space that email does, at least for me.  I have a few ideas to either improve, or as PG suggests, possibly replace email, but I'd like feedback from others to see if I'm on the right track.  I'd appreciate if you could take a few minutes to answer the following survey.  I promise to do a follow up post with the results once I have enough responses.  Thanks!<p>https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TTE7bCSLY4KqWOre5EsVbR_xk-c9F9bxO1XJKe_qbYg/viewform?usp=send_form <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TTE7bCSLY4KqWOre5EsVbR_xk-c...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TTE7bCSLY4KqWOre5EsVbR_xk-c9F9bxO1XJKe_qbYg/viewform?usp=send_form)</comment>


Cisco Systems to lay off about 14,000 employees: report - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/cisco-systems-to-lay-off-about-14000-employees-report/article31440950/?cmpid=rss1&click=sf_globe <comment><USER2> Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12302216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12302216)

</comment><comment><USER3> They are also giving away free coffee at the CalTrain station in SF today to try and gain mindshare for recruiting new employees for Meraki at least.</comment>


Shades: In-memory OLAP cubing, histograms, and more - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/d2fn/shades-rb

<comment><USER2> Nice project. I've messed around with cubes in the past. Curious what algorithm you used for the cube? I was mostly working with powersets and trees, and then experimented with dwarf petacubes. Do you have a limit on dimensions due to code, beyond what fits in memory?

<comment><AUTHOR> No dimensionality limits but I wouldn't use this for truly high-dimensional problems like text analysis and inverted indexes (1000s of dimensions). It might work but I wasn't really thinking about those kinds of use cases when building this.</comment></comment>


How To Launch A Successful Blog In The First 90 Days - <AUTHOR> http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2008/10/how-to-launch-a.html

<comment><USER2> Considering I launched my blog about 90 days ago... and I have no idea if you'd deem it a success (i've had about 40k uniques in that time -- a runaway success by my standards), my approach was somewhat similar to this. I did install analytics early. I went live very rapidly, and I've begun integrating it into all my profiles. These seem like logical things to do.

As far as branding, I went ahead and made it slightly above ugly but recognizable such that repeat visitors might recognize that they've come frequently, and subscribe.

My main difference from him is how I actually go about marketing it. That part is much easier, in my estimation. I write about the union of the stuff that I know and the stuff that I find interesting. I then submit it to the appropriate social news sites. Since, for me, that is pretty much covered by hacker news and reddit (proggit), that's all I've done. I haven't been "greedy" and have tried to be really sensitive to the predilections of the respective communities, and so far it's worked out great. If I post it in the place that I'd expect to find it, the people who think and enjoy the same things I do might find it interesting. So far they have.

It seems like a pretty simple two step process. Find a niche you like and write some content, then post it in the social news sites that dominate that niche.

The only piece of advice of his I haven't done but I'd consider is directly emailing other bloggers who might enjoy reading and/or responding to what I've written. Maybe I'll give that a try.

</comment><comment><USER3> Something tells me that the most successful bloggers are the ones that never followed a list like this.

Wasn't blogging all about the "personal" revolution? Wasn't the point that now you were allowed to just be yourself? If you have a blog, write whatever you want to write. If you happen to be bright and learned enough to have things people want to read, you'll be successful. That's the big secret.

<comment><USER4> I believe one of the best blogs that was original from the outset is: waxy.org

<comment><USER3> I love Waxy. I got really into it after the last redesign, and I've loved most of the things I've read on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Day 91: Write a linkbait article about how to launch a successful blog.

j/k, these tips are good, but only about 5% of the overall picture. 95% = must love blogging. There's a pretty easy test, just ask yourself if (honestly) you'd rather write a blog post or watch TV.

</comment><comment><USER6> step 6. Reevaluate your blog title

Did he skip this step when he titled his blog _Influential Marketing Blog_?</comment>


New virus can repair the liver damage caused by drinking - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3622368/Have-scientists-CURE-alcoholism-New-virus-repair-liver-damage-caused-drinking.html <comment><USER2> Abstract and link to paper:

[http://www.cell.com/cell-stem- cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(16)30...](http://www.cell.com/cell-stem- cell/fulltext/S1934-5909\(16\)30089-3)</comment>


iFrame – Deactivating Related YouTube Videos Deprecated - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters#rel <comment><AUTHOR> I stumbled upon this and figured I'll share...if you counted on that option to not draw your potential visitors to a "competitor's" related YouTube video, better look into this.

<comment><USER2> The value "0" now restricts the suggested videos to your own channel, so the problem you describe is not (yet?) what Google is doing.</comment></comment>


A simple explanation of how money moves around the banking system (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://gendal.me/2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-money-moves-around-the-banking-system/ <comment><USER2> This is the problem that Stellar ([https://stellar.org](https://stellar.org)) can solve better than Bitcoin. Unlike Bitcoin which takes 10-30 minutes to confirm transactions, Stellar takes seconds with its new consensus system ([https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide- consensus-...](https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide- consensus-359e9eb3e949)). This eliminates the need for mining which consumes a exorbitant amount of electrical energy. Stellar is also built to work with a diverse set of currencies (USD, EUR, CNY, BTC etc).

<comment> o-0 I'd bet my money on ripple instead of stellar. RL is more professional and has much better personal resources. From Stellar Foundation I've seen only a chain of fails - initial distribution using facebook, modifying consensus and blaming RL for breaking it, STR auction, promised&undelivered STR distribution to BTC&XRP holders, community communication, mccalebs secret bitcoin projects revealed as just a ripple fork with no real innovation..

<comment><USER2> Ripple Labs is strong in the business development side. Stellar's new consensus system is very much different from Ripple's. I would say the Stellar's FB distribution is a major win since over 4 million people have signed up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> >First, we need to acknowledge that SWIFT is not cheap. If Barclays had to send a SWIFT message to HSBC every time you wanted to pay £10 to Charlie, you would soon notice some hefty charges on your statement.

Why is this so? Sure in decades past it might have been expensive to send so many messages, but today it should be easily accomplished with moderate hardware. Wikipedia says SWIFT did about 15M tx/day in Sept 2010. That seems pretty miniscule as far as hardware load goes.

<comment><USER4> Fortunately SWIFT pricing is freely available on the Internet: [http://www.swift.com/solutions/pricing/fs_pricing_easier_200...](http://www.swift.com/solutions/pricing/fs_pricing_easier_200803.pdf)

All the per-transaction prices are below 15 euro cents. Banks charge you many £/€ for a SWIFT transfer because they can, not because of what it costs; usually to subsidise the existence of branches.

Edit: I see another commenter has hit the same link :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great article on the global correspondent banking system.

For anyone interested in how US domestic payment systems work (checks, ACH, Visa/Mastercard) check out Payment Systems in the US by Carol Benson. It is the bible.

</comment><comment><USER6> Now that was one of the most eye-opening small articles I've read in a while. Many a times over the years have I been privy to a tiny glimpse here and there of the internal workings of the banks. This helped open the portal a little.

<comment><USER7> Part of the issue is that banks and banking in general is so large and they have so many systems that the vast majority of people have no idea on the big picture of how things worked on a more fundamental level.

This changed to a large extent when Bitcoin came about and people (technologists especially) began asking what is money and how does it move.

The average person still has no idea though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love the article. This is a kind of explaining that really works for me - building bottom-up, outlining the problems that are to be solved and the new ones a solution introduces. Thanks for posting it, rndn!

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6793063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6793063)

</comment><comment><USER10> Learned something today. This is an informative piece on the behind the scene activities on fund transfer between banks. Very nice.

</comment><comment><USER11> I met Richard when I was working at a different bank. Nice chap.

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome! A nice and rare view into how banks work internally.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for sharing, really interesting.

</comment><comment><USER14> Thats fascinating! nice find

</comment><comment><USER15> Excellent article</comment>


AirType - <AUTHOR> http://airtype.io/ <comment><USER2> If it works well, the demand is there, but we all know that, don't we?

The question is whether it works well in real use, and no landing page can show that. I can likewise put up an email subscription page for a $20k flying car.

Making this product work 50% of the time takes some serious work, but making it work the 99.5% of the time which would make it qualify as a keyboard replacement is something else entirely.

I wouldn't waste potential customers time with a landing page like that, and their video is downright insulting. Spend your time and resources making something that works instead.

Anyway, with all the buzz around hardware startups, I would expect more landing pages like this to crop up. People simply don't realize how difficult making good tangibles is, but they will find out soon enough.

<comment><USER3> Agree completely, just wanted to point out that 99.5% accuracy would mean 5 typos within the length of your comment. For any significant amount of typing it would need to be way more accurate. But then again, all this thing really is is a super-charged autocorrect, so they could probably fix those errors.

<comment><USER4> Or spawn a whole new class of damn you auto-corrects.

<comment><USER5> People who type a lot may be interested in moving away from the keyboard-and- screen model for ergonomic reasons. "This is how you don't fuck up your body while working" is a lot stronger selling point than "Wouldn't not carrying a keyboard with your tablet be nice?"

People who type a lot are likely to be working with some level of jargon (variable names for programmers, macros and cell codes for data analysts, etc.) rather than the pure prose autocorrect is designed for.

AFAIK, there aren't any good demos of autocorrecting keyboards for technical domains. That said, TextMate's autocomplete works pretty well most of the time. If you could seed the autospell dictionary with a combination of language-specific keywords and the variables that have already been defined in your project (ala TextMate), that could be pretty powerful for technical people trying to be productive with alternate input methods.

<comment><USER6> > "This is how you don't fuck up your body while working"

As an aside, "Using Python to code by voice"[0] is quite an inspiring presentation on the topic.

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI#t=542](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI#t=542)

<comment><USER7> That talk is why I switched to a standing desk and changed my keyboards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm, Dave Rosenthal suggested such a keyboard when the first accelerometers came out, basically put one on each finger tip and 'train' it by your typing on your regular keyboard, 'use' it by making some gesture and then typing. His concept though counted on 8 3DOF accelerometers per hand (5 on the fingers, one on either side of the palm and one on the wrist. The sketch showed something like fingerless biking gloves that had blobs and wires attached to your fingernails.

I'm not sure if it goes past the proposal stage however, the folks who were researching those sorts of issues were at UC Berkeley in the late 80's so that would be a good place for a literature search.

If this can be built and be as reliable as a keyboard (and I make mistakes/miss keys on my keyboard too) it could be really really useful. At some point, something like this and something like Glass will be a 'terminal' to the internet. The Myo folks have some interesting ideas in this space too, not clear if they get the fidelity they need through the upper arm though.

<comment><USER9> You've mentioned Rosenthal before, about the Myo: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5280700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5280700)

Was that conversation and/or those sketches ever published? I didn't find anything in a brief Google Scholar search. They'd be interesting to see.

<comment><USER8> I sent you email. Checked with Dave and he does not recall that anyone pursued it, but that isn't necessarily the definitive word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this is going in the wrong direction. Tactile feedback is so crucial for keyboards and this just completely removes it. In my opinion, technologies like the morphing touchscreen keyboard[1] are the future.

[1] [http://tactustechnology.com/](http://tactustechnology.com/)

<comment><USER11> Neither. Truth is we are a generation that grew up using keyboards. The one coming after us will consider normal to use an onscreen keyboard or voice recognition. This is a problem that will solve itself.

<comment><USER12> No. Humans depend on feedback loops to coordinate their fine motor movements. Otherwise absolute positioning accuracy is bad. Even an on-screen keyboard provides such feedback. Typing in the air doesn't.

<comment><USER13> So type on the table?

Seriously, wouldn't that be the same amount of feedback as a touchscreen keyboard? Flat, and you get the wrong letter when you miss?

<comment><USER14> No, a table gives no feedback whatsoever in the manner that he's referring to at least. When you hit a key on a keyboard the key sinks into the board, you have a positive 'strike'. If you miss the key slightly then it feels different and you'll know before the wrong letter appears - this is what is meant by a feedback loop.

<comment><USER13> That's off-topic. We're talking about touchscreen keyboards, as is very clear in my post, and we won't pretend their keys sink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really want a portable keyboard that I can type on quickly while walking around, but I don't think these guys have anything like a product. This looks like an empty web page to measure interest.

<comment><USER16> That's what I'm hunting for as well; have been for the past few days. Something like BlueTwiddler ( [http://hewner.com/programming/](http://hewner.com/programming/) ) is pretty much perfect for me, but it was never commercialized. I'm thinking about picking up [http://theperegrine.com/](http://theperegrine.com/) , adding Bluetooth support, and turning it into essentially a chording keyboard for wearable computers. I need something that will let me type on Glass, the Epson Moverio, and my phone with ease. I'm hoping in the next year that I'll be able to ditch non-wearable computers, from an interface perspective (I'll still have them for heavy lifting, of course).

<comment><USER17> The Peregrine looks to be the most promising platform for this kind of input. The only limitation I've seen is you need the finger dexterity of a guitar player to quickly and accurately type that way. Then again, the only other solution I've seen is the four button spiffchorder[0] and a trackball in the other hand. I don't like those only because you can't do anything else with your hands while you're using them.

[0] [http://chorder.cs.vassar.edu/spiffchorder/forside](http://chorder.cs.vassar.edu/spiffchorder/forside)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a hard time trusting a product when it's promo video shows someone mashing random keys pretending to type.

<comment><USER7> I think he's hitting the right keys though

<comment><USER19> they weren't. I noticed it right away and it annoyed me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wish the demo video had actually been a demo. They typed nonsense on the real keyboard and then flailed similarly with the AirType.

<comment><USER21> Honestly. For a moment I thought this was another [1] viral in-universe ad for that HBO show Silicon Valley. Then I realized they are serious...

[1] [http://www.piedpiper.com/](http://www.piedpiper.com/)

<comment><USER22> Amazing ad by HBO for sure. The only other similar ad I remember was for The Office. [http://www.dundermifflin.com/](http://www.dundermifflin.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Using it with Google Glass: [http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/...](http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/20000/3000/800/23889/23889.strip.gif)

<comment><USER24> October 12, 1994 [1]

[1] [http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-10-12/](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-10-12/)

</comment></comment><comment> UVB-76 Alas, this is a fool's errand.

The keyboard is a broken interface, but this isn't an improvement.

Suppose I am the user identified in the video. I have a tablet—maybe not a Microsoft Surface, but a tablet nonetheless—and I currently use a slimline keyboard to type.

You hand me these. First thoughts: what are they? What do I do with them? Great products are those that someone can be presented with for the first time, and in a matter of seconds figure out what it does, how to use it, etc. Think kids reacting to technology [1]

So for argument's sake I read the manual, or you give me a walkthrough. Great, how do I start using them? Oh, they have to 'learn' my writing style? Is my first impression going to be a string of largely inaccurate input?

How am I going to 'teach' this system? Through some proprietary software, which I may have problems downloading, and which may not even work on my device? How are people going to demonstrate these in stores; how am I going to proselytize to my coworkers? "Just try these out; wait, no. Yeah, don't worry about that, they have to learn your typing style. Yep, they'll do that for a while... no, but they're really great. Honestly... honestly."

This is already sounding like a lot of effort, but you've assured me there's gold at the end of this rainbow. Surely the cost-benefit analysis will check out.

So I've got them working. Are they accurate enough? Let's assume they are. This isn't too bad actually. I'm going to hop on Twitter and tell people all about this. Hashtag AirTypeRocks! Hashtag... hashtag... where's my hash key again? I can't seem to find it on this wooden bench.

Okay, that's a downstream problem. For now, I'm going to pack these up and head home. But where do I put them? They're an awkward shape. They look pretty easy to break.

What happens when I lose one of them? Is the entire system rendered useless? They look expensive to replace.

Are these yet more devices I'm going to have to charge? I'm already fed up of charging my laptop, phone, tablet, etc.

Are they going to protect the screen of my tablet device in transit? Looks like the opposite. I think I'll hang on to the keyboard-cum-screen protector for now...

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk)

<comment><USER25> Looks to me like this type of device is the beginning of disrupting typing. Once you have a way to detect finger movement with something small, lightweight, unobtrusive (I'm making assumptions about AirType based on my own desires) and programmable, we can create the interfaces we want.

<comment><USER26> Or is it ? At least this one seems to be fighting the last battle.

It targets people who can blind touch, which may not be a growing population in 10 or 20 years. Computer will be more ubiquitous than now, but there will be a whole generation that would be raised on touch devices first and be very proficient with on screen keyboards or benefit from direct writing recognition (these two are both more discoverable than this technology), or more minorly speach recognition.

For a generation not trained on physical keyboards first, I'm not sure this kind of alternative input method will be better or faster that what they were already using as primary input device, and they'll want something wildly better if they have to switch to something else. Like a full size physical keyboard, if they're going to type for a long extent of time.

edit: spelling

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So it's a SenseBoard from 2001?

[http://www.keyglove.net/wp- content/uploads/2010/10/senseboar...](http://www.keyglove.net/wp- content/uploads/2010/10/senseboard.png)

</comment><comment><USER28> I doubt the ability to get a functional product to market.

The "Team" section lists only 2 actual doers and multiple product people. Never a good sign in a startup.

</comment><comment><USER29> If I'm following their logic correctly: Touchscreen keyboards are inferior to real keyboards, so some tablet users buy add-on keyboards for their tablets. These are also inferior to real keyboards. Therefore, AirType is better, because it's different.

Seriously though, I don't see this catching on. Keyboard enthusiasts obsess over the tactical feel of their mechanical keyboards for a reason.

</comment><comment><USER30> So it appears that you have to keep your fingers elevated off of the surface, and then strike down similar to a touch screen?

The best part about a mechanical keyboard is that you can rest your hand on the keys. I've actually never tried a MS Surface touch cover, but something like that without actual segmented keys might be best. Sort of like a touch cover and Fleksy hybrid.

</comment><comment><USER31> The demo video shows a Surface tablet that has zero visual response to the hardware keyboard and their demo product. Who thought this was a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER32> I wonder how accurate it will be.. For general typing, there is probably some built-in autocorrect, but, if you wanted to code, I wonder how that would work.. Exciting anyway.

</comment><comment><USER33> Accuracy aside. What do you you if you need to look at your keyboard to find an unfamiliar symbol. I can touch-type fairly fast but my error rate goes up dramatically when typing non-alphabet keys.

What would be neat is if you could bring up the tablet keyboard through a gesture, like clapping your palms together, select the unfamiliar symbol, gesture to remove the keyboard then continue.

Although I like the idea of something like this, I can't imagine myself using it for a long period of time.

</comment><comment><USER34> Could this work as a piano keyboard? That would be way more useful for me since I usually have a physical keyboard (laptop) but I can't really carry around a midi one.

<comment><USER35> I actually think this is pretty brilliant, have the hand parts hook up to some ear buds and plug them into your ears, any place your at you can practice piano.

<comment><USER36> Piano hand movements would most likely also be easier for the software to reliably track, and some people might like the gimmickry of "air keyboards" for live performance

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So the solution is to invent something worse than detachables and on-screen keyboards?

Not saying AirType is bad...yet. But I didn't see it working either.

</comment><comment><USER38> There's nothing I can say about this that Bret Victor hasn't already said better:

[http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...](http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/)

TL;DR: Give me some tangibility in my interfaces! (You really should read that rant though)

<comment><USER39> This is always the first thing that pops into my mind when talking about touch interfaces.

There is so much and so deep harm in taking away the tactile feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> And then I go to shake somebodies hand/ wave to somebody / hold a sandwich and I have this thing stuck to my hand.

Edit: Might be different if it wasn't so hard, big (across my whole hand), and plasticy. Gloves and rings don't seem to cause much trouble during day to day activities.

</comment><comment><USER41> Let's assume that this product works faultlessly.

What proportion of keyboard users are touch typists? I'm not.

</comment><comment><USER42> Is it just me or the intro video wasn't really clear how it works. Am I going to just move my hands on nothing and expect this thing to write? Can someone clarify how this works?

</comment><comment><USER43> I've always wanted to try a laser keyboard like this one [http://www.celluon.com/shop_epic.php](http://www.celluon.com/shop_epic.php) but not to the point of buying one...

Seems to me like it is a more user friendly approach no physical feedback and no visual sounds like AirType is a power user tool. And my Das keyboard lover friends who have blank layout would hate the lack of physical feedback.

<comment><USER44> I received one of these as a gift once. Played around with it for 2 minutes, then never used it again.

The main issue I had with it was that you had to 'hunt and peck' in order for it to register. Merely sliding your fingers around like on a standard keyboard would just register errant keystrokes.

Also, resting your palms had the same keyboard-mashing effect. It was cool to show off to others, but totally impractical for real use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I don't see myself ever replacing a real keyboard for this, at least not for long typing sessions (being tactile is the most appreciated aspect of a keyboard for me).

But there is absolutely a huge demand out there for this. Not to mention that other applications for it may appear (other than just replacing traditional QWERTY keyboards).

But in the end the question is the same: how good it is?

Anyone got a video showing it working (other than just the concept)?

</comment><comment><USER46> What problem does this solve exactly? I want to think this is really cool, but I'm having trouble convincing myself why people would buy this.

<comment><USER47> Ideally it would make writing on a tablet as good as writing on a normal keyboard.

<comment><USER46> So for this product to succeed we're also arguing that tablets can replace laptops? I own both for totally different reasons, and I don't think that will ever change.

Or this is just a "nice to have" accessory for tablets?

My point is this isn't really something the masses will adopt, and is instead a very luxury item for wealthy nerds (myself included). Totally fine if that's the case, I just want to understand the target market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The biggest problem for the average user, he can't see the keys. So while techies on this forum can pretty much type without looking at the keyboard, your average user still types with only two fingers, looking at the keyboard.

Also it has the same drawback as tablet keyboards, i.e. no positive tactile feedback when pressing a key.

But let's see, maybe this does replace keyboards altogether.

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't know... This won't be as accurate as we want it. No matter what they use. I tried making a similar prototype using motion sensors, muscle sensors, neural network. But the thing is, a keyboard is just alot of possibilities for anything like that to predict. Plus, no feedback means our motion will be whole lot different than on normal keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER50> I really hope they can handle chorded keystrokes if they want folks like programmers to use it.

Also, while tablets are an obvious starting position, perhaps consoles would be another good arena - having to lean over to type on that wireless keyboard in order to chat or enter detailed text seems more intrusive than just typing it out using AT.

</comment><comment><USER51> I think there are some keys that I couldn't reliably hit without a quick glance at what I'm aiming for. It's a reliable phenomenon that expert typists can't tell you where many keys are, so I'm curious how I'd fare when I need to hit the ^ or & symbols and can't look down.

<comment><USER52> Add in some speech recognition and it would be an ideal system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Cool and I would like to try it. But doubt I would sit down at a coffee shop and put my bionic hands on in front of everyone.

I would have to be better than typing on a keyboard.

Video was weak. Right when they show the product it cuts out.

Would be good if you were able to touch your finger to the surface and it becomes a trackpad as well.

</comment><comment><USER54> This keyboard will have the same problem that iPad/tablet keyboards have - lack of a mechanical response, and without that, you'd find it just as painful to use AirType as you would a tablet. IMO, sure, but you wait for it ;)

</comment><comment><USER55> Isn't this basically like the Magic Cube laser keyboard? [http://www.celluon.com/products.php](http://www.celluon.com/products.php)

</comment><comment><USER56> I wonder if the same thing could be done with a Leap Motion controller? Seems to be a more versatile solution.

</comment><comment><USER57> meta: its interesting that all of the team members are described with a short informal first name and a tagline while all the mentors are described with full names only.

it certainly shows the disparity between the generations and their different expectations in the business world.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'll believe it when I try it.

</comment><comment><USER59> I wonder if you could do something similar with a regular camera watching your fingers.

<comment><USER60> I have done that using Kinect. It's difficult to achieve a high level of accuracy, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Showing a fake demo, it's not helping their landing page.

I would love to see the real product.

</comment><comment><USER62> I personally like the tactile feeling so much that I bought a relatively expensive mechanical cherry-switch keyboard. There is no way replacing that feeling on your fingers.

</comment><comment><USER63> it is Senseboard from 2001 I think they are the same people reviving the old product which somehow failed at that time.

</comment><comment><USER64> Maybe I can use this to code while driving!

</comment><comment><USER65> Looks great. Need to see a real demo.

</comment><comment><USER66> i would pay so much money to be able to walk around and code

<comment><USER40> Would you buy an app that allows you to program on your phone (that is sensitive to the limitations of the on-screen keyboard)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Ben's photo is 1.2MB in size.

<comment><USER67> They fixed it. You are welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> The terrific song in the video is Boe Zaah by Mac Demarco.

It's unfortunate to see it in a product video unattributed (or at all — though I know his music is licensed elsewhere).

<comment><USER69> Do you know that they didn't buy the rights?

<comment><USER68> No, good point. I'd edit my comment to just point out the artist, but cannot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Wow, really exciting!

And I know I am ( __not __) being paranoid, but imagine how excited NSAs of the world all will be! A new kind of keyboard, that has capabilities to understand and predict what the user will write? This just looks like something Facebook could also be interested into (if you think at their "I keep what you wrote and deleted before even publishing" attitude).

This kind of tool __really __needs to be open source and open hardware. Otherwise they better stay far away from me.

<comment><USER71> This kind of cynicism is getting tiring. Being cautious about your personal information is good, but how exactly is this any worse than a bluetooth keyboard? OS X and iOS already have predictive typing with regular keyboards. There is no need for FUD.

<comment><USER72> Predictive typing for single words is usually based on a locally stored dictionary, and for sentences it can be done with a model like prediction by partial matching. The device functionality is similar to a system used for speech recognition, in that better accuracy would only be gained by sending motion and text data to the cloud at the very least in the training stage and then aggregate and analyse data using a prediction model.

However, no-one seems to care that most voice recognition tools like Siri nowadays send and store data on servers, and nearly all those aren't OSS.

<comment><USER73> > However, no-one seems to care that most voice recognition tools like Siri > nowadays send and store data on servers, and nearly all those aren't OSS.

I think one of the reasons Jasper [1] was so well received was that it was offline.

[1] [http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

<comment><USER70> Thanks for pointing out Jasper: great!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley Is Trying Out a New Mantra: Make a Profit - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/technology/silicon-valley-startup-profit.html <comment><USER2> Ahhhh, it is 2001 all over again. Actually I don't remember the exact year, but after the bottom fell out of the dotcom boom/bust VC's got on the profit and fundamentals track. Then somewhere those wheels came off again and it was invest in growth at, almost, all costs.

I wish the pendulum would find a happy median and stop swinging so wildly but reality is that isn't how humans work generally so that probably won't happen.

Profit is good, growth is good, but either in excess without a plan for balance will create problems longer term. Yes, extreme profit in the face of little, no, or negative growth does become a problem. Because without action to fix the growth the profit will dry up reasonably quick.</comment>


The Next Chapter - <AUTHOR> https://www.simple.com/blog/the-next-chapter/ <comment><USER2> How does Simple compare to something like Ally ([http://www.ally.com](http://www.ally.com))? Thinking about switching banks recently - are online only banks pretty nice, or do they have drawbacks?

<comment><USER3> I made a similar comparison and went with Ally - their rates are far better than Simple.

Simple's app is good, but in all honesty I don't have a huge need for it. Ally has a servicable app that does check deposits, and I use Mint to analyse my spending etc.

Also, Ally refunds all ATM fees, Simple doesn't. In a city like New York that's a huge benefit.

<comment><USER4> With Simple, there are no ATM fees at any AllPoint ATM, and they are _everywhere_.

<comment><USER3> ATM locations are a funny thing. I realise that there are many Allpoint/whatever network ATMs near me, but I really value just not having to care. I usually get cash out when I remember I don't have any and see an ATM, rather than hunting one down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope this means Simple will offer joint accounts someday soon.

<comment><USER6> Yes, that's one of the big remaining pain points, especially with taxes coming up - Simple has posted a statement that people filing jointly can't deposit refunds to their Simple accounts.

The IRS FAQ says you can deposit joint refunds to single accounts but that it's up to the bank, so this is either a Simple or Bancorp limitation. Annoying for those of us trying to switch entirely.

Instant account-to-account transfer has been great, though, for my wife and I.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, www.simple.com is joining www.bbva.com/TLBB/tlbb/esp/index.jsp

I don't know, doesn't really look like an improvment.

<comment><USER8> They are joining for exactly this reason.

Simple excels in their user interface and experience. BBVA is a huge bank with lots of cash and backing.

Seems like these are good partners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't see a need for any of this. Banking is ugly, but who cares? Interest > UX niceties.

Get a better interest rate and I'm in.

<comment><USER10> If you care about interest rates more than quick and easy access to your money, you shouldn't be putting your money in a bank account

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I get the impression that they undersold...</comment>


I Have Nothing to Hide – Really? Here's why privacy matters to all of us - <AUTHOR> https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/09/nothing-hide-really-heres-privacy-matters-us/ <comment><USER2> > Because of all the data they have accumulated about you and about lots of > other Internet users matching your browsing profile, they will not show you > the best deal available. Instead they will show you very targeted > advertisements that will very likely make you pay more than you should have.

This is quite the stretch. Advertisers will spend as little as possible to reach you, and charge as much as they can for their product no matter what they know about you. Highly targeted advertising saves advertisers money, not costs you more.</comment>


HalfMask - an Experiment in Password Masking - <AUTHOR> http://lab.arc90.com/2009/07/halfmask.php <comment><USER2> Let me just say, as retarded as I think this whole masking kerfluffle is, play with it or don't play with it, but if you don't mask passwords in your login box, expect to spend $10,000-$20,000 extra to your PCI auditors (and then restore password masking) when you decide to accept credit cards.

<comment><USER3> I don't think anyone has suggested individual sites should override the browser behavior.

The interesting question is whether client software (browsers/add-ons) should offer another option. And if it did, would the Payment Card Industry auditors demand a site override the user's choices, for example by simulating a masking password field outside the default HTML widgets?

<comment><USER4> I agree, this should be a user choice rather than site-specific.

The HTML 4.01 spec doesn't dictate how passwords should be obscured, although it does suggest asterisks. I think it would be reasonable for browser vendors to provide an alternative means of obscuring passwords.

If the PCI auditors aren't happy with this, and given the leniency of the HTML 4.01 spec (I haven't checked any other specs), should they take this up with the W3C?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey guys, I'm the author of HalfMask - please let me know if you have any feedback, or you can check out the source on google code: <http://code.google.com/p/halfmask/>

Forking to try new things is heartily encouraged - I'd like to see new approaches to password masking.

<comment><USER6> The masking characters need to be more similar to the characters being typed. eg. ll is easily readable with letters like nrs, etc. in the background.

<comment><USER5> This is a good thought - I had implemented character set matching (uppers to uppers, numbers, etc) before, but I worried that it made it almost too hard to read for the user.

You'll notice that I'm only using lowercase letters currently - that was an intentional choice as it seemed too obscured when using a fuller character set.

I'll give this another look though and see if there may be a good middle ground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is an argument in the whole masking argument that doesn't really have anything to do with security- it is that filling out a box and having the characters masked is a well known usability metaphor for users- implying the content should be kept hidden and implying (though it's not always true) that in the backend it is also kept secure. The metaphor comes from ATMs etc. All security aside, when the vast, vast majority of casual computer users finally have a computer metaphor nailed down it's usually very counterproductive to try to change it. Like trying to move the "File" menu to the far right of the menu bar for your next desktop app...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I modified his code to do the iPhone style masking. It masks everything except the last character. Demo page is unmodified. You can see it here: <http://nirmalpatel.com/hacks/halfmask/demo.html> and a diff of the code: [http://nirmalpatel.com/hacks/halfmask/jquery.halfmask.js.dif...](http://nirmalpatel.com/hacks/halfmask/jquery.halfmask.js.diff)

<comment><USER4> I like that, but it would make more sense if backspacing through a password didn't reveal each letter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My idea is the best: reveal on mouseover

<comment><USER9> How about having to select the (masked) text, to take it a step further?

<comment><USER10> If you highlight this, it pretty much reveals what the password is.

I know that isn't what you're talking about, but it is close. I know that I couldn't read this even when I knew what I was typing until I highlighted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The demo actually works better than you would think: Easy to read for the writer, hard to read for a shoulder surfer.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like the idea. But how about LCD screens where the angle changes everything? Right now it's difficult to read from the side, but "a piece of cake" from above.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice try, but I think this is the worst of both worlds. Still insecure in many situations (screencasts, presentations, or any time you might be recorded), and it's harder to character count than normal asterisks.

</comment><comment><USER14> the whole point of masking is so that you don't give away your password when you are using a projector(giving presentations etc)...this is no different than not masking the thing at all

<comment><USER15> Well, that's certainly part of the point, but it's also to prevent casual shoulder surfing/people walking by/etc...

I guess I'd prefer to see something like how the iPhone handles it, where each char is shown for split second before being masked. It lets you see that you haven't typo'ed, and yet ensures that your whole password is never sitting on the screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My main issue with this solution is that it takes the decision out of the user's hands. Granted, in some cases it is potentially beneficial to unmask the password, but I would not want a site to assume that I'm okay with this approach. Imagine if you have to type in a password presenting in front of a crowd of 100 people. Do you feel secure with this solution?

Whatever solution you implement, it's important to give the user explicit control to override the mask.

</comment><comment><USER17> nice idea and nice realization, too! it works pretty good! if you can't read the password after you've typed it in, try to mark it with _SHIFT + LEFT-/RIGHT-ARROW_ or _SHIFT + HOME/END_ :)

by the way: the guys from arc90.com cook up pretty cool things in their labs, like the greatly useful _Readability_ bookmarklet <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

</comment><comment><USER18> I still like my idea: * * * * els

Where you mask every character up to the last N specified characters. I started writing this up in JQuery, but... then I stopped ;)

<comment><USER19> Same as the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like what the wii and the android browser do, they show the last inputted character for a second or so

</comment><comment><USER21> well, the password can be copy pasted

</comment><comment><USER22> Very clever, and I love Readability, but I don't think this one's necessary. :)

On our signup for our time tracking app, Freckle (<http://letsfreckle.com>), we just left the password fields clear.

Number of signups: >4000\. Number of people who complained: 4. Number of people who wrote nice things: 15.

Translation: people like it, but it's not really remarkable. (And we did it 6 mos before the Man Who Would Be King wrote about this idea.)

</comment><comment><USER23> In the comfort of my privacy I want to see what I am typing.

There is nobody shoulder surfing, no cameras recording me.

A check box for unmasking will suffice.

Cool hack nonetheless.</comment>


Ethics: What do you think about sites that show people what they want to hear? - <AUTHOR>

This is an ethical question.  I've noticed lately that some of my friends have been telling me sending me stuff from Huffington Post or Daily Kos or Fox News or basically websites which offer a highly biased point of view while censoring or strongly downplaying other points of view.
I'm working on a project which allows people to personalize their information and find information that's relevant to them.  Then this ethical question dawned on me.  I have a personality which encourages me to search the world and find different viewpoints and find the truth.
Unfortunately, I find a lot of other people I find have the opposite.  They want to find information that suits their thought or their preconceived notions and reject anything that opposes that until reality hits them on the head with a brick.  Even then, they still want to defend their views and use strongly biased sites to help strengthen it.
As I go further in my project, I'm realizing I'm helping create a way where they can completely ignores everything about the world and thus create a place which tells them ONLY things "they want to hear" even if what they want to hear is wrong.
I'm worried about this ethical question.  I mean, there's a ton of money to be made in the "Tell People What They Want To Hear" space but I'm worried about the long term consequences of this.
How do you guys figure out an ethical questions like this? <comment><USER2> Well - if possible - try to be clear about what kind of filter is applied, and let users disable it.

A related Ted talk: [http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu...](http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> You can't beat confirmation bias. It's wired into human braaaaaains.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, what do you want to accomplish? If this will make money and that is your goal (and it's not illegal or some such), what's the problem?

I'm not trying to be a smartass. I've spent years helping people without compensation and can't seem to figure out the money-making thing. But one thing I have found is that people are not receptive to an overly idealistic solution. They seem unable to believe anything can be that good or they have bigger objections to the downside of it than they do to other downsides that I think are more serious problems. I'm stuck and feeling like I would like to just make money at this point and to hell with all this idealism. So I ask these questions in all seriousness. Wondering what your answer is.

Peace.</comment>


Hitman Runner Mark Fellows Convicted of Murder on GPS Watch Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/news/a25945315/mark-fellows-runner-hitman-murder/ <comment><USER2> Please use the article's title: "Runner found to be a hitman after GPS Watch ties him to crime scene"

Or at least tame the capitalization for a more readable "Hitman runner Mark Fellows convicted of murder on GPS watch data"

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I swear I spent a few minutes trying to parse that and still couldn't figure it out. Didn't realize there was a proper noun in there.

<comment><USER4> Probably a bot auto posting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It baffles me why you would do all that serious planning to commit such hifi murders but, somehow screw it all up by carrying a device that is _designed_ to track your location, activities and probably other data (like heart beat rate) that would simply undo all your efforts?

IMO, even the dumbest of murderers don't carry their phones with them because they know very well they can be triangulated long after the murders. So, why would you carry a smart device that precisely does just that? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER6> If you read the article, he didn't carry the device during the murder, he was carrying it a couple months before while he was doing surveillance for the future murder. And the only reason they found out about the GPS device was because they were already pretty sure he was the guy as witnesses saw him on his bike carrying a gun and wearing "commando gear", which sort of , you know, stuck out like a sore thumb. They used the witnesses to track him down and arrest him, and only found the GPS data later.

Obviously he's not that bright but the GPS was sort of a secondary issue.

<comment><USER7> All of that sounds extremely circumstantial tbh

<comment><USER6> I mean, it's the UK. Presumably there is video. Plus witnesses. Plus GPS. Plus he left the country immediately after. Plus he is known hired muscle. Certainly enough to charge someone.

<comment><USER7> If there is video sure, but the rest is literally "I saw a guy who looked similar in a park" and "the GPS said this guy was in the park a few times before the event occurred"

It is the UK though, so idk, but even in the US people get convicted on less. Just seems open to reasonable doubt

<comment><USER8> When you start stacking up evidence that by itself is inconclusive, you find that the overall probability starts to get very tight.

For instance:

        suspect was in this neighborhood at this time
        suspect was wearing a blue jacket
        suspect had short blonde hair
        suspect was an acquaintance of the victim

Each of those by itself means next to nothing; you can't go around arresting anybody with blonde hair because there are millions of people with hair like that. But if you find somebody who fits all four, they are almost certainly your guy. The chance of there being two acquaintances of the victim with blonde hair and a blue jacket in the neighborhood at the time of the murder is _much_ smaller than the chance of a false positive on any one of those individual conditions.

With enough circumstantial evidence, you can blow right past "reasonable doubt".

<comment><USER9> This line of thinking is rather dangerous when determining whether to lock someone up for life. Especially in the absence of direct evidence. The math is often tricky, given that we already know some highly unlikely things have in fact occurred (a murder, for one).

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Haha. Okay so this wasn't the crucial evidence. He cycled by in his hi-viz carrying a gun and equipment. If you guys aren't familiar with Britain, you should know that carrying a gun is extremely rare and being all decked out is not a thing people do.

The GPS watch wasn't got him.

</comment><comment><USER11> He did a 10K in 47 minutes, not bad.

</comment><comment><USER12> A bit confused they used the nickname 'Iceman'. That's the nickname of the well known [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kuklinski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kuklinski)

<comment><USER13> I imagine that's the nickname he had in English (?) the gang, yeah? They're probably can't be arsed to keep track of the used and infamous nicknames from gangs in the states.

<comment><USER12> The iceman nickname wasn't used for Kuklinsky in the mob. It was during media attention for his claimed body count of 200+ as a serial killer and mob hitman.

Jack the Ripper has nothing on Kuklinski, but people can remember both.

<comment><USER13> Fellows was in a gang in the UK... That was his nickname in the gang in the UK.

There's a vast ocean betwixt the states and England. While it's true that people can remember both names, it's far more likely that, in the UK, they'll remember the names of those closer to home - of the likes of Harold Shipman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is like a story you would read on [https://dumbrunner.com/](https://dumbrunner.com/) .

</comment><comment><USER15> Hey, even scumbags benefit from exercise.

<comment><USER16> But he killed two other scumbags.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The various media outlets seem to be overlooking the fact that he was retaliating for his own injury and near death experience?

<comment><USER18> This article mentions it. Does it matter?</comment></comment>


Is the Mathematical World Real? - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-mathematical-world-real/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Several years ago a frustrated philosophy professor said to me, "How can you know all this math but not know whether the number 2 even exists? Think about it!"

So I did. And then I wrote about it for @sciam "

[https://twitter.com/KelseyAHE/status/1169310784133971969?s=2...](https://twitter.com/KelseyAHE/status/1169310784133971969?s=20)</comment>