Show HN: Monocypher: a small, easy to use crypto library - loup-vaillant http://loup-vaillant.fr/projects/monocypher/ <comment><AUTHOR> This project seems to be the culmination of a rhetorial question that the author posed a while ago: if the advice is 'don't roll your own crypto' [1], then how does any crypto ever come into being? [2]

So perhaps the marketing is off: I don't view this as a "small, secure, auditable, easy to use crypto library"; I view this as a practical and ongoing study in investigating how to make small, secure, auditable, easy-to-use crypto libraries. To be fair, the page mentions that it's "not ready for production" and needing external review a quarter of the way down, but if the point is to prove that a sufficiently dedicated individual can learn the material, endure some criticism, and produce quality software following the example of well-acclaimed experts, then _own_ this point, bare your disclaimers in the beginning, and make it more prominent.

And once you phrase it that way -- which is arguably consistent with the author's previous posts (and HN comments) on the topic, it's suddenly a lot more palatable, and regardless of its ultimate outcome, I can only applaud.

[1] I use an interpretation of "don't roll your own crypto" that's slightly less circular than the author's. In my opinion, it's shorthand for _' defer to the opinion of experts, use ready-made constructs when possible, and if not, then exercise caution when hooking crypto primitives together in unproven ways'_. Originally posted here: [3]

[2] [http://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/rolling-your-own-crypto](http://loup- vaillant.fr/articles/rolling-your-own-crypto)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12400040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12400040)

<comment> loup-vaillant I'm fairly confident I can write a bug free crypto library. Monocypher is probably already bug-free.

On the other hand, I don't see how I can _ensure_ my library is bug-free without external help.

"Probably bug free" is not good enough. I need over 99.9% certainty, and I'm currently pretty far from that.

<comment><USER2> I would be careful with statements like this, largely because the question of what 'bug free' means is real.

Do you mean that the crypto algorithms work as advertised? e.g. would DES after public knowledge of differential cryptanalysis be okay?

Do you mean that you have implemented algorithms exactly as specified?

Do you mean that you have implemented algorithms exactly as specified that are also constant time so that they resist timing attacks?

Do you mean that you have implemented algorithms exactly as specified that are not vulnerable to cache eviction attacks on shared hardware?

Do you mean that you have implemented algorithms exactly as specified that resist bit-flip attacks or SDR attacks, or audio attacks, or other Van Eck style listening?

I'm actually not trying to be down on your work. It's hard work, and the world needs more people who actually do it. I'm just saying it is VERY hard to feel confident, and as someone who has a passing interest in this kind of security, I worry when I read statements like you made.

<comment> loup-vaillant Exactly as specified, and immune to timing attacks including cache eviction. I make no claim about other side channels, or the strength of the primitive themselves —though I did pick strong primitives.

<comment><USER2> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Two things.

First: it needs to be made clearer why anyone would use this rather than Nacl/Sodium.

Second: this statement does not inspire confidence:

"The current code is fairly rigorously tested. Every primitive match their respective test vectors, and most constructions are tested for consistency. The entire test suite is Valgrind clean."

If your primitives don't match their test vectors, your tool doesn't work at all, so pretty much every crypto tool, including MiLiTARY-GRADE-CRYPTO v20 GOLD on the Android store or whatever, achieves this level of rigor.

Here's a good Reddit comment on the last crypto thing the author wrote, a few weeks ago:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5iv1ti/rolling...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5iv1ti/rolling_your_own_crypto/dbbmwwo/)

<comment><USER4> Instead of digging through OP's Reddit history, it would have been much more useful for everyone if you lent OP your trained eyes and had a look through his project's codebase (which is quite small). Screaming "NO!" at every attempt to implement crypto primitives is not a constructive form of criticism.

Regarding the Reddit thread, I actually enjoyed a response much more than the comment you linked:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5iv1ti/rolling...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5iv1ti/rolling_your_own_crypto/dbg58iy/)

<comment><USER5> Why is it necessary to volunteer expert time every time someone publishes a new piece of code that by their own admission is not a significant improvement over TweetNaCl? Time is limited; if something doesn't do a good job arguing why you need it, pointing people to things that are packaged, updated, have been consistently maintained and reviewed is _solid engineering advice_.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _someone publishes a new piece of code that by their own admission is not a > significant improvement over TweetNaCl?_

That one is a tough call for me. If I brag too much, I can be dangerous. Too little, and nobody uses my stuff. I'm not sure about the significance of the improvements, but they are undeniable: except for curve25519, everything is more readable, faster, and a bit more useable than TweetNaCl (curve25519 is merely more usable).

There is also one significant contribution I did not brag too much about: my Argon2i implementation is _much_ simpler than the reference implementation. I'm considering adding support for multiple lanes (maybe with threads, maybe not), and Argon2d. The result should be RFC worthy.

Was re-implementing Argon2i from scratch good engineering practice? I don't know. What I do know is that I ended up uncovering a long standing bug in the reference implementation; one that complicates implementations _and_ hurt security a little bit.

I think Monocypher was worth the effort, even if just for Argon2.

<comment><USER5> The Argon2 improvements are interesting and I'd love to hear about them.

Re: usability of other core primitives: I'll bite. Places where you don't get to solve a hard coordination problem to agree on a nonce matters. I know you document that you can't use a random nonce (and that's accurate), but I think that is an important safety regression.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _I know you document that you can 't use a random nonce_

Looking back at my manual, I understand it was easy to miss. But you _can_. You just have to use XChacha20, which gives you a 192-bit nonce, where the chance of collision even after 2⁶⁴ messages is negligible. The high level constructions all use XChacha20, so random nonces are possible.

I really should re-arrange the order of presentation.

The slightly better usability mainly referred to the fact that functions that cannot fail return void. It's small, but the user is not left wondering whether the return value should be checked, or why the manual doesn't say anything about it. I tried to make the ordering of arguments consistent across the whole library. Easier interfaces have shorter names (no "easy" suffix).

Then there are opinions. Primitive functions are named after the primitive, because I don't believe in hiding those to the user. Fixed sizes are hard coded, because I don't expect them to change without changing the primitive itself. Constants like CRYPTO_ENCRYPTION_KEY_SIZE obscure the point somewhat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Saved you a click: it's many of the same ideas as libsodium, but mostly with ChaCha and allegedly easier to deploy. I'm not sure I believe the latter, and my recommendation to use libsodium stands. ChaCha20 is also available (but only in AEAD mode with Poly1305) in libsodium, if you really need it. I think XSalsa20 is a reasonable default: if you had a protocol where there's an obvious sequence number to use as a nonce, you probably should already be using TLS anyway; most of the things where libsodium is your best option is precisely in the cases where you don't have the luxury of solving that sort of coordination problem, and you want a random nonce (and hence, extended-nonce versions like XSalsa20 or XChaCha20. I don't know of anyone who has deployed XChaCha20, although the construction is "obvious".)

I've previously criticized a blog by the same author called Rolling Your Own Crypto, which had serious flaws.

AFAICT, this is ostensibly cryptographically fine (modulo some safeguards that probably only matter if you're Doing It Wrong already anyway), even though the final recommendation is still "avoid". There are many things I disagree with (don't put the documentation for the internal hash for ChaCha20 before the authenticated encryption API!), and using TweetNaCl as a base is less interesting than using libsodium which is both fast and has a lot more eyeballs on it.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _allegedly easier to deploy._

One .c file, one .h file. No fancy compiler option. It doesn't get any easier. I agree with most of the rest, including the "avoid" recommendation, since Monocypher had only one pair of eyeballs so far.

> _There are many things I disagree with_

Please, I need more! (The documentation order was out of laziness, I'll change it.)

> _using TweetNaCl as a base is less interesting than using libsodium which is > both fast and has a lot more eyeballs on it._

TweetNaCl is smaller. _Much_ smaller. It doesn't need nearly as many eyeballs as libsodium to reach the same level of confidence. And I'm not sure libsodium had as much audits and static analyses as TweetNaCl, if only because its size may render some analyses impractical.

I tried to use ref10 as a base. It's too much code.

<comment><USER5> I'd disagree with "easier to deploy". Most users are going to do this via FFI, and then one .c and one .h pales in comparison to "already has a dylib/so" I can use.

It may be true that it doesn't need as many eyeballs; alternative implementations of the same code have the benefit that they're pretty easy to automatedly check. libsodium is not anywhere near the size where static analyses become impractical -- do you have any evidence that would support that?

<comment> loup-vaillant > _Most users are going to do this via FFI_

The C interface is the first step. I may consider C++ and OCaml bindings in the future. Still, point taken: calling C from other languages is always a bit of a pain.

> _libsodium is not anywhere near the size where static analyses become > impractical -- do you have any evidence that would support that?_

It's not much, but the TweetNaCl papers indicate that its size made it possible to automatically prove the absence of a couple classes of bugs with an algorithm prone to combinatorial explosion. Even being twice as big could have been too much for those.

<comment><USER5> I'm not suggesting so much that it is painful in general (that's neither here nor there): I'm suggesting that existing libraries, specifically libsodium, make this _easier_ for anyone who isn't writing like C or _maybe_ Rust and _maybe_ Go. (So, anything on the JVM, Python, Javascript, Ruby, PHP... You name it.)

For those use cases, the consumed artifact is a .so. Having a .so is easier than having to make it. Furthermore, having repeatedly built libsodium (I built FPM debs when libsodium wasn't yet commonly packaged), for those people building this is just as easy as libsodium if for some reason they need to build at all.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _Having a .so is easier than having to make it._

What's the point, a compilation unit is only a gcc call away from being an .so, right? Besides, I made sure I don't expose unnecessary symbols to the linker. What you're telling me amounts to saying binary distributions are easier to consume than source distributions.

I would be quite bewildered by such a claim. As well as a little upset at my disadvantage: I do not have the resources to package my library for all major OSes and distributions. This of course has nothing to do with the library itself, merely the community around it (with one author and no user, as is the case with anything new).

I've seen new programming languages being criticised for the immaturity of their tooling or the lack of community. This feels similar.

\---

Or, your idea of an .so is different from mine. Does .so libraries have something the C source files don't?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The manual is absolutely amazing. It shows proper and improper use, and explains how and _why_ to the lay person.

[http://loup-vaillant.fr/projects/monocypher/manual](http://loup- vaillant.fr/projects/monocypher/manual)

Example from crypto_chacha20_init (grammar aside):

"Warning: don't use the same nonce and key twice. You'd expose the XOR of subsequent encrypted messages, and destroying confidentiality."

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm torn about this.

Brought to you by the person that wrote "Rolling your own crypto" (see earlier discussion linked below), with the motto "Impossible? Like that would stop me."

Some fields of knowledge in certain phases benefit from iconoclasm and Sturm & Drang, but is cryptography one of them? On the other hand, many existing implementations are so crufty that a fresh wind might help (if only by pushing more experienced cryptographers to put out better implementations).

At any rate, at least the writer followed through, though I'd not be inclined to use this in production anytime soon.

[http://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/rolling-your-own-crypto](http://loup- vaillant.fr/articles/rolling-your-own-crypto)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13221923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13221923)

<comment><USER5> Right there with you. A question that helped answer this for me personally: does this library need to exist given that libsodium already exists?

The answer seems "no" to me.

<comment> loup-vaillant The very existence of TweeNaCl indicates that DJB would have answered "yes". And I do have a couple minor advantages over TweetNaCl…

<comment><USER5> TweetNaCl was created approximately simultaneously (2013) with libsodium.

<comment> loup-vaillant Hmm, that explains a number of things. Still, I've dug through libsodium, and it's still a bit of a mess —not that I would've done better given the constraints they had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like such tiny projects: you can drop .c and .h into your own project and have something useful ready-to-use. Thanks for sharing! For those asking, this is what distinguishes it from libsodium. Compared to NaCl or TweetNaCl, it has password hashing (Argon2), although, to be fair, I wouldn't recommend using non-optimized implementation of it, like in this library, for serious stuff.

Some notes:

\- Let's call Ed25519 with BLAKE2b something like "Ed25519-BLAKE2b" to avoid confusion.

\- crypto_chacha20_random is a confusing name, I'd prefer crypto_chacha20_stream

\- Everyone uses "crypto_" for namespacing their libraries nowadays! Let's use something else to avoid collusions :)

<comment> loup-vaillant \- Naming Ed25519 is not obvious: I do provide SHA-512 as an option.

\- I'll consider crypto_chacha20_stream

\- I'll stick with "crypto_", for 2 reason. First, you only need one crypto library. Second, a brutal search & replace will let you use another namespace in 30 seconds. Maybe I should provide a script to do that?

<comment><USER9> > I do provide SHA-512 as an option.

Why? If the goal is compact, easier to deploy - why have choice at all?

[ed: I just saw this on the homepage:

Note the presence of SHA-512 in a separate compilation unit. It is meant to test ed25519 with the test vectors I got from the RFC. In production, most users will be expected to use Blake2b —the default setting.]

I also wonder a bit on the naming - using algorithm over intent (sha512 vs "hash") - I can see why transparent naming is good - on the other hand, wouldn't the _easiest_ approach be: use some sort of framing (monochypher_v1) and pair that with primitives that "do the right thing"?

I suppose one could use monochypher as a provider and another "interface" library as a consumer - might make for easier auditing and development.

But now you need two header/c files, and they have to stay in sync in order to be reviewed in pairs (to avoid subtle bugs in key handling and such?).

Which brings us back to: in five years, when a developer needs to update their simple utility that uses monochypher - will that developer have to consider changing cryptographic primitives, moving users from one generation of ciphers to another - or will monochypher handle that?

<comment> loup-vaillant _(I spelled it "Monocypher", without the first "h".)_

I need SHA-512 for tests. The only test vectors I could find were for the official ed25519, with SHA-512. The option is there anyway, I might as well provide it.

I do transparent naming because the choice of primitive has user visible effects. If I have the SHA-512 of some file, I can't just use Blake2b to check that hash. Same for encryption and authentication: changing them is transparent only for transient messages. Encrypted files won't convert themselves to the new encryption scheme, and neither will the authentication tags. Same thing for long term secret/public key pairs.

That said, the high level constructions don't mention the primitives. They're all called "crypto_lock" or something.

Long term, changes are not expected to be transparent. The only backward compatible path is to stick to the older version of Monocypher. Any transition will need to be handled explicitly. I think that's okay, because I don't think I'll need to make breaking changes often. I expect a stable version to last at least 5 years, possibly 15. Then the next version will break everything, and users will just have to cope, most probably by supporting both v1.0 and v2.0 for a time. Hopefully that won't be too hard, given the small size of the library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you don't mind me asking, how much time did it take approximately for you to write the whole library, excluding the online documentation and other stuff not directly related to the code? (2 hours each day for a couple months, 18 man hours total, etc.)

<comment> loup-vaillant I think about 9 weeks, full time. (I'm currently on sick leave.)

Documentation took me relatively little time. Probably a week if I count my previous blog posts on the subject.

I've had some false starts and gaps in my knowledge. I think that slowed me down by a factor of 2.

If I lost all data, I think I can re-do it in a week and a half.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the reply.

I think we all will appreciate a follow up blog post on your experiences when you were writing it and also post-'Show HN'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't see anything in the code that would stop someone from using 0 as a public key for a x25519 handshake.

<comment><USER8> To add more:

Not only 0, but also some other keys listed here [https://cr.yp.to/ecdh.html](https://cr.yp.to/ecdh.html) which produce all- zero shared key.

DJB argues you shouldn't validate public keys except for "some unusual non- Diffie-Hellman elliptic-curve protocols that need to ensure ``contributory'' behavior". So NaCl/TweetNaCl also don't do anything about it. Libsodium, on the other hand, returns an indicator when the shared key is all-zero.

One recent example where it was considered a ("low") vulnerability is in the recent wire audit: [https://www.x41-dsec.de/reports/Kudelski-X41-Wire-Report- pha...](https://www.x41-dsec.de/reports/Kudelski-X41-Wire-Report- phase1-20170208.pdf)

 _Therefore, if Bob sends all-zero ratchet public keys, subsequent message keys will only depend on the root key and not on Alice's ephemeral private keys. A dishonest peer may therefore keep sending degenerate keys in order to reduce break-in recovery guarantees, or force all sessions initiated by a third party to use a same message key, while a network attacker may force the first message keys to a public constant value, for example._

<comment> loup-vaillant Crap, this is more severe than I anticipated. I'll think about it, and probably change the code and API.

That's said, I don't understand why DJB says this is unnecessary for Diffie- Hellman? I mean, an all-zero shared secret sounds pretty _bad_ , doesn't it?

Or is it because DJB assumes that if one party decides to publish the communication, it can do so anyway?

<comment><USER5> Not all AKEs require contributory behavior to guarantee their security properties, but many do. Your suggestion is pretty close to why; if you're using plain scalarmult as opposed to an AKE with fancier properties (say, 3DH, HMQV...) in the context of e.g. box, it's the sender that picks public keys anyway, so they don't care.

In the context of most transport encryption, you presumably do want to prevent those keys from being selected by either party. That means either filtering those keys, or, perhaps better, using a fancier AKE like the 3DH in Signal/Noise or HMQV or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the same vein: libhydrogen [1].

Both the API and the underlying primitives are still moving targets, but one of the motivations behind this project was to revisit the NaCl/LibSodium/SUPERCOP API to build something more difficult to misuse.

In particular, users never provide nonces. Contexts are mandatory everywhere. A broken PRG is not always catastrophic. Operations requiring keys have a dedicated keygen() function (eventually, keys may have their own type instead of generic byte buffers). There's no crypto_stream_* API, but a randombytes_buf_deterministic() function.

libhydrogen is not meant to replace libsodium, but the libsodium2 API may resemble more to it than the current one.

[1] [https://github.com/jedisct1/libhydrogen](https://github.com/jedisct1/libhydrogen)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why this instead libsodium?

<comment> loup-vaillant Libsodium is _big_. Smaller than NaCl, but still a little unwieldy. A bigger contender is TweetNaCl, but it doesn't provide password key derivation, and I dislike some of its primitives a tiny little bit.

My library have two clear (albeit small) advantages: first, its interfaces are more consistent with its (non-existent) failure mode. NaCl and descendants have most of their function return an error code for no reason –the underlying primitives are foolproof.

Second, my Argon2i implementation doesn't allocate. Okay, the _user_ must allocate, but that give more control, and let me guarantee I cannot fail. For some reason, the reference implementation is not like that. Surprising, considering the Argon2 authors make sure implementers could avoid spurious allocations.

\---

My current recommendation still goes to TweetNaCl and Libsodium. My hope is to be able to recommend Monocypher instead. Maybe sometime later this year?

<comment><USER13> Thanks! Considering that this seems to be a popular question, maybe it makes sense to state this more clearly on the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am curious as to why you've posted this as a tarball on a private website instead of to Github, Bitbucket, etc.

<comment> loup-vaillant My web site, my domain name, my home, my freedom. I avoid centralised services whenever I can. Besides, my git history is not very interesting, so I didn't feel the need to publish it.

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't it make sense to share this over https though?

<comment><USER16> I agree, https to serve software (libraries included) is a must, even if the source is open. (That's not to get into the debate on whether or not to use https for everything, but I am a proponent of that as well).

Since he's running his own server, it should be easy enough to add a certificate from [https://letsencrypt.org/](https://letsencrypt.org/)

<comment> loup-vaillant It's on my TODO list…</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How a late-blossoming classics don became Britain's most beloved intellectual - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/30/mary-beard-the-cult-of <comment><USER2> What a writer, and what a speaker. See her if you get a chance. Rather than dragging through some uninteresting confrontation with Taleb, spend that time reading her review essays at _NYRB_ \- [http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/beard- mary/](http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/beard-mary/) . Some are subscriber- only, but many are open.

<comment><USER3> Seems to be mostly pretentious over written prose with little to say:

e.g. [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/01/12/do-classics- have-...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/01/12/do-classics-have-future/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A great long read, and I had never heard of her!

But what does "don" mean on this context? It's repeatedly used, but not explored or explained.

<comment><USER5> Each college has a don for each subject, who is responsible for all students taking that subject within that college

<comment><USER6> Is that the same as the term "Dean" that's used elsewhere?

<comment><USER7> In my Cambridge college there is one 'dean' (not the same as the Master or Mistress of the college - who is essentially the figure-head of the college) - who is responsible for the students welfare. Any member of staff formally associated with the college is a 'fellow'. Each speciality have 'tutors' and 'senior tutors' as well as one 'director of studies'.

Wikipedia says that a 'don' would apply to a 'fellow' or 'tutor'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mary Beard is "Britain's most beloved intellectual"?

Not Brian Cox? Not David Attenborough?

Please let's keep HackerNews free of the media's usual hyperbolic nonsense.

<comment><USER9> C.S.Lewis probably has the best claim, and I thought they were referring to him at the first.

<comment><USER10> Most people know Lewis as an author of children's books and probably wouldn't really of him as an "intellectual".

<comment><USER11> He was an Oxbridge academic (like his friend Tolkien) which I would have thoughts qualifies him as an "intellectual" to most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nassim Taleb on his interactions with Mary Beard:

[https://medium.com/east-med-project-history-philology-and- ge...](https://medium.com/east-med-project-history-philology-and- genetics/something-is-broken-in-the-uk-intellectual-sphere-7efc9a1f154a)

<comment><USER13> Taleb isn't painting himself in a very flattering light with these attacks. They're very weird and bitter.

And I can't tell what his actual point is! He furiously complains that the BBC and Mary Beard are "bullshitters" but I can't figure out exactly what corrections he wants made.

<comment><USER14> > Taleb isn't painting himself in a very flattering light with these attacks. > They're very weird and bitter.

This is his default style as a polemicist and it distracts indeed from the points he is trying to make.

> And I can't tell what his actual point is!

The first 3 bullet points are his actual message. The rest is a reaction to some preceding drama on twitter.

His point is basically that Africans were a statistically insignificant subgroup among Romans in Brittain, and by adding them so prominently in a short animated cartoon for school children (who hardly know anything about antiquity) the BBC is performing historical revisionism.

He also casts doubt on the assumption that these Africans were black, pointing out that Northern Africa was inhabited by Berbers and Phoenicians.

> He furiously complains that the BBC and Mary Beard are "bullshitters" but I > can't figure out exactly what corrections he wants made.

He wants scientific rigor to prevail over political correctness.

<comment><USER15> We have no reliable evidence regarding what proportion of Roman Britain was "black". We have good historical evidence that there were Romans present in Britain who we'd these days describe as black (e.g. an Ethiopian soldier garrisoning Hadrian's wall). For 101 reasons, the genetic evidence is not very informative, and certainly can't be used to justify that claim that Africans were a "statistically insignificant subgroup" (which by the way doesn't even make sense as a statistical statement). As Beard points out, even _Norman_ DNA is not very well represented in the modern population, and we know for sure that plenty of Normans came over as a result of the Norman invasion.

<comment><USER16> In the depicted cartoon case of an Ethiopian that has a local Briton or Celt wife, who has multiple children with her, there is the valid question of seeing what is in the genetic record, though, wouldn't you agree?

The reaction, and Beard's answer, was specifically about the family shown and not the narrow question of whether or not an Ethiopian conscript would have ever set foot in Roman Britain.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure why you assume he would have been a conscript.

There is no reason to think that a few interracial marriages in Roman times would have left much of a trace in the modern genetic record. Surely no-one would get so up in arms about a cartoon that showed a Saxon married to a Norman, but we have no modern "genetic record" of this either. We know with a reasonable degree of certainty that interracial marriages existed in Roman Britain, often involving soldiers.

Talk about the "genetic record" might seem sciency sounding, but its really the historical evidence that's much more informative in this instance.

<comment><USER16> I think we are not far from each other in what we understand... the issue raised between Beard and Taleb seems to revolve around the meaning of "typical" .

Beard seems to say, "it was possible that it could have happened, here are a few Ethiopians for instance that we know were in Roman Britain, for example".

Taleb seems to say "typical means what is likely to have happened 50% or more of the time; since there was no chance that Roman Britain had 50% of marriages with children that involved Ethiopians/Berbers/etc. thus Beard is very wrong"

<comment><USER15> Beard's point is that we really have no idea what "typical" ethnic backgrounds were for Roman families in Britain. There's just no reliable data, and it most likely would have varied enormously between different parts of the country.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Larry Ellison hates cloud computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UYa6gQC14o

<comment><USER2> Isn't this the same guy who said "the network is the computer"?

The cognitive dissonance is staggering.

<comment><USER3> No, that was Jonathan Schwartz former ceo of Sun, now acquired by oracle

<comment><USER4> The appropriate credit supposedly goes to John Gage (also of Sun)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gage>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never actually seen Larry Ellison speak before. He's pretty hilarious.</comment>


The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf <comment><USER2> The ironic part is that Apple is based on a UNIX, Microsoft is hawking Linux in Azure, and Linux is running most of the internet.

I think in 2015 we've gotten to the point where we have our cake and we're eating it too. Some people got used to the command line tools and love them, others have fancy GUIs that do what we'd expect. Regardless worth a read even for UNIX users.

<comment><USER3> > Regardless worth a read even for UNIX users

 _Especially_ for UNIX users, I'd say! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember this. Re-reading the Dennis Ritchie-penned "anti-foreword" is awesome. Dennis was such a giant.

</comment><comment><USER5> A great book. It talks about valid, serious points and does in such a playful style that makes reading a breez.

</comment><comment><USER6> valid points in the intro. I feel this way about html.</comment>


Truth does not exist - <AUTHOR> fact     = truth
fact     = statement proven with evidence
evidence = anything presented in support of an assertion
so
truth    = statement proven with anything presented in support of an assertion
source wikipedia, just a little condensed <comment><USER2> > Truth does not exist

Are you claiming that this is true? If so that is a self contradiction and you have reached a dead-end. Check your work.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right my mistake, the title should have been: "Does the truth exists?"

thank you :)

<comment><USER2> Changing it to a question with only one possible answer does not solve the problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> This wanted to generate a discussion related to a problem that, I aree with you, in my opinion seems unsolved. Not only truth, but also at higher level, looking at the scientific method and its problems and limitations.

<comment><USER2> I think you misunderstood my reply. Your original statement that the truth does not exist was shown to be self-contradictory. Changing your statement to a question does not solve the self-contradiction problem, it just masks it.

It is valid to ask "what is the standard for truth?" but it is not valid to ask "Does truth exist?" Such questions are part of philosophy and in particular, epistemology.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your answers :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The steps have similarity but not equality

football = air filled balloon

air filled balloon = hot air balloon

But if we assume no truth/equality, then each of your steps becomes in effect correct, and the final step self-fulfilling

The result would be Nihilism -- nothing is true or false or meaningful

But the evidence against this, for me, would be that 2 == 2 has held throughout my lifetime

I.e. 'truth does not exist' holds where 'reality does not exist' also holds

<comment><AUTHOR> an air filled balloon does not necessarily contains hot air

football = hot hair balloon holds in some cases

a fact is necessarily true

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't matter, we can know enough to get structural work done. Everything else is decoration.

To clarify: we may never truly know the value of pi as it is an irrational number, but we really only need the first 5 digits or so for most things. Still, you have to be careful of accuracy loss and should wait to use its numeric representation until the last possible moment.

</comment><comment><USER5> Non-Truths certainly exist and can be proven as such. The truth is what remains. This process is known as Falsification.

<comment><USER2> This is Popper's theory and it is false. You can't define what is false without some standard of what is true. It is a misapplication or misrepresentation of Aristotles's law of non-contradiction, i.e. a contradiction proves something false but not what is true.

<comment><USER5> So if you had a theory that the moon was entirely made of blue cheese and Buzz Aldrin gave you a piece of lunar regolith that was obviously not blue cheese. I'd say he proved your claim wrong without necessarily establishing any necessary standard of truth. In pure sciences like physics, if you need to use statistics to make your point then you've probably did the wrong experiment.

Popper's contribution is about finding theories that offer greater explanatory power than previous theories.

Also it's a misunderstanding of his work to think he rules out establishing a standard of proof. He does not. Check out the wikipedia page for more about this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability)

<comment><USER2> A "theory" that the moon was made of blue cheese is complete arbitrary non- sense which doesn't need refuting. On the other side -- the moon, orbital mechanics, Newton's laws to design the space craft and get it to the moon, that there are men who fly such machines and the machines are designed to support human life are all facts that are being implicitly denied by the blue cheese "theory". There is nothing to refute it is non-sense on its own terms.

Moreover, theories are just a collection of statements so your distinction is irrelevant and you contradict your own position by claiming a statement; "that the moon was entirely made of blue cheese" is a theory.

While your example is fanciful and exaggerated to make your point, it actually makes mine. You/Popper can't rip the application of the non-contradiction principle out of the context of the law of identity on which it is based and gives it meaning. The fundamental principle of existence is that anything that exists has identity. Non-contradiction is a (very crucial) corollary of identity and not a primary as Popper holds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Err... Citation needed? I think the definition of _fact_ changes if you ask a mathematican or a lawyer. Those definitions will both be good in the context of their work.

</comment><comment><USER7> Earth orbits the sun. I love my wife and children. Checkmate. :)

<comment><USER8> >Earth orbits the sun

This is not true. The earth and sun both rotate around its barycenter. The point is that the sun is so huge that the barycenter is (really) close to the center of the sun which makes it seem that the earth orbits the sun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Everything and nothing co-exist as one. Truth is relative to time. Both are invented paradigms to describe the great state machine that is the universe.</comment>


OpenAI Team Update - <AUTHOR> https://openai.com/blog/team-update-august/ <comment><USER2> Nice! I read Dario Amodei's paper on Concrete Problems in AI Safety a few months ago, and I'm excited that he and OpenAI are going to be working on them. There's a lot of important research waiting to be done!

</comment><comment><USER3> They also have Andrej Karpathy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Scott Gray not heading to Intel. Interesting...

<comment><USER5> He actually commented on the Nervana systems thread[1].

He says he is more interested in basic research than pure hardware optimization. I understand, but he's pretty good at that!

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12257668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12257668)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What about Tom Brown?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me, or is the OpenAI hype finally dying down?

<comment><USER8> I presume we'll see hype when OpenAI starts posting :results: rather than generic plans.

<comment><USER5> They have plenty of results. All their work on GANs[1][2] has been great, and the OpenAI gym has proven to be pretty popular for reinforcement learning research already.

I'm not sure how "hype" is measured - perhaps people thought they were going to invent some kind of AI entity we would have to persuade not to shoot us all by now or something.

I know that all the papers coming out of OpenAI get hyped just as much as anything from DeepMind, Google Brain or FAIR, so there seems to be decent amount of hype still? But then usually that hype is justified, in which case maybe it is better characterised as "excitement"?

[1] [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.03657.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.03657.pdf)

[2] [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.03498.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.03498.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish OpenAI would work harder to hire more women on their research staff specifically.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry. I'm not PC, I'm not Millennial, I'm Gen-X.

I was brought up to think about the concept: the best person for the job. The BEST. If I were to hire someone now, I couldn't care less where they were born, what language they spoke, what colour they were, what gender they were, what hobbies they like or gasp political leanings.

Does anything of what I mentioned contribute to how they could perform? NO!

What does? How effectively they are able to actually perform in the job.

I will NOT be pressured by society or anyone else to fill quotas.

I think someone said it best in Twitter. Diversity does not mean lowering the bar.

If you want more of a certain group of people to be in a certain profession. Then make it attractive to them to be interested in it ALSO make them work hard to have the skills so that an employer would hire them on the SPOT!

Let me tell you something. I have worked with some amazing female developers. In my book? I'd hire them over a guy any day, especially when it's coupled with analytical skills.

Seriously. I wish this forced diversity thing would just die. No one company should work hard, it's the other way around. Want to get into a company, work hard and get into it yourself!

<comment><USER5> Is there anything the OP said that implied lowering the bar?

Indeed, I doubt OpenAI has a strong head-count limit, so hiring a highly qualified man shouldn't mean that hiring an equally qualified women isn't possible at the same time.

There are plenty of women who are more than qualified for OpenAI[1], and yet I'm not aware of any that they have hired in research positions.

(They don't seem to have a team list, so it is hard to know for sure)

[1] Start here: [https://sites.google.com/site/wimllist/](https://sites.google.com/site/wimllist/)</comment></comment></comment>


This man built a bedroom 'pod' because SF housing's too expensive - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-berkowitz-bedroom-pod-in-san-francisco-2016-3 <comment><USER2> Nice, it reminds me of Ken Isaacs. He designed free standing living structures with movable pallets so they could be reconfigured and plywood skins for privacy. You can read his book online [[https://issuu.com/golfstromen/docs/ken- isaacs-1974](https://issuu.com/golfstromen/docs/ken-isaacs-1974)] since it's out of print.

</comment><comment><USER3> The median rent for a 1 bedroom is $3460? I knew it was bad up there, but that is almost double what it costs in Los Angeles.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> and living in the pod costs "only" $500 a month

my boyfriend immediately said that for this guy, having a girl staying over would be problematic</comment>


Goldman Buys $2.8B Worth of Venezuelan Bonds, and an Uproar Begins - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/business/dealbook/goldman-buys-2-8-billion-worth-of-venezuelan-bonds-and-an-uproar-begins.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article <comment><USER2> Goldman bought a lot of Greece debt that it knew wasn't great and made tons:

[https://www.thenation.com/article/goldmans-greek- gambit/](https://www.thenation.com/article/goldmans-greek-gambit/)

Goldman Sachs was also very involved in selling subprime mortages to unwitting investors. Goldman Sach has had to deal with lawsuits that it wasn't acting in its clients' best interests:

[http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/16/business/la-fi- hiltz...](http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/16/business/la-fi- hiltzik-20100516)

If Goldman Sachs is involved, you are likely getting fleeced in some fashion, you probably just do not realise it yet.

<comment><USER3> If they go long these bonds they are nasty speculators who are betting on the fact that Venezuelans will bleed themselves to repay. If they go short the bonds they are nasty speculators who are trying to make money on a country going bust. At this game it doesn't matter what they do, they will get this sort of reaction.

<comment><USER4> It's true that any involvement with Venezuela will make someone angry, but I don't think it's the same someone.

Would shorting them really have angered the opposition? It seems like a move that would mostly have outraged the Venezuelan government, and having them angry at you is hardly a moral failing.

<comment><USER5> Yes, because heavy action on the sell side means Venezuelan debt prices would go down, which would raise the yield. Which means that future bonds issued by their gov would have to pay a higher coupon. This would definitely anger them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It looks like Goldman Sachs is betting that Venezuela will sort it self out by 2022, and getting a good discount. I'm not sure how that is "making a quick buck off the suffering of the Venezuelan people", or how the people would benefit if nobody buys the bonds.

<comment><USER7> As happened in Greece, such purchases result in pressure applied to the country to pay off its debts, rather than help its people. It's good in the short term, but in the long term, government debt ends up as a massive transfer of capital to the lenders.

<comment><USER8> >As happened in Greece

Greece had the largest default in history[0], virtually all private debt holders were forced to take a ~70% haircut.

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

<comment><USER9> That 'haircut' is based on interest assumptions not actual costs. The actual haircut was only _53.5% of the face value_ so if you bought it from someone else at a higher discount you made significant profit. Assuming you sold it or there will be no second default.

<comment><USER10> I'm all for knocking on predatory bankers, but that's not a very compelling argument.

The borrower sold a bond at par -- so they got their $1. As the entity who bought that bond, you're fucked... the borrower isn't making interest payments and the debt is looking like a bad debt. So you sell it at a distressed value, in your example $0.53, losing half your principal investment + interest, to cut your losses.

The entity buying the distressed asset knows it's junk, which is why they buy it at a steep discount. The fact that they may make a significant profit if the borrower starts making payments is irrelevant.

At this point people start whining about predatory Goldman Sachs, etc. Notice that there was no outcry when places like Greece and Venezuela were happily borrowing and squandering money based on German credit (Greece) or temporarily inflated oil revenues (Venezuela). In the case of Venezuela, they managed to also kill the golden goose by deferring critical investments in oil infrastructure and making dumb political decisions.

<comment><USER9> Goldman Sachs has not and is not lending Venezuela any money. So, if they buy a bond from someone else at less than face value they have zero room to complain about an agreement that was not made with them. At best they are trying to make a quick buck off the person that sold them the bond and again have no room to talk with the issuer.

<comment><USER10> That's not really accurate. Goldman bought the bond from the original owner and is now a creditor.

They can and will talk to the issuer about payment and have every right to demand full payment -- the obligation to pay is not diminished by the secondary market value.

In my personal case, I had an opportunity to buy tax exempt New York General Obligation bonds at a discount during the 2008 financial crisis. I did so, although New York isn't Venezuela and the discount wasn't 50%, the interest payments are based on the originally issued amount and if I hold the bond to maturity I will get the full principal.

As an individual with 1 bond I don't have the leverage of an investment bank, but I'm still a creditor and will be get paid in the event of some serious financial crisis.

<comment><USER9> The idea that debt is transferable like this is a specific rule under a specific system. You can also loan debt so the recipient has right of first refusal on all transfers and then they could have simply bought that debt at that same discount.

I am not saying the second system is universally better, but there is a reasonable argument for and against it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article and a similar one about India are on the HN front page right now. In addition to simply taking advantage of people in countries with political problems, there is also probably a trend of wanting to divest some investments to alternatives out of the USA, England, etc., to smaller countries with huge natural assets. I don't think it will happen in the short or medium term future in the USA, but someday our economic system will pop due to the debt of government and individuals.

I took my assets out of the US stock market in 2007 and avoided some pain, and a few years later when I wanted to start investing again, I diversified a bit more to international funds. I understand the desire to do that now also.

</comment><comment><USER12> Matt Levine's take on this is thoughtful and nuanced, as usual: [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-30/airlines-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-30/airlines- stock-splits-and-voting)

Scroll to the section titled "Venezuela."

</comment><comment><USER13> Does this anyway mean that Goldman will have its hands in the oil can once Venezualan Govt. bites the dust ?

<comment><USER14> Basically. Either the govt. uses it's oil money to keep paying Goldman or Goldman can attempt to seize every Venezuelan oil tanker that enters waters where the US has jurisdiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting to think how the Venezuelans nationalized so much industry and used it to fuel socialist economic experiments under the pretext that it was an affront to "globalist western capitalism". Chavez announced that capitalism was a dying economic system. Yet their own failed economic policies only caused further dependency on it.

It's not something that is enjoyable to watch and rub in as the people there are starving and have resorted to mob justice such as lynching in order to have some rule of law.

Hopefully they get a proper change in rule soon.

</comment><comment><USER16> goldman's asset management arm bought the bonds for client portfolios- not goldman itself. I don't see any controversy here.

<comment><USER17> I agree with you, but also your comment made me think about the absurdity of how most people perceive banking. I.e. "if a bank does it to be profitable, it's bad; but if somebody else does it, it's OK".

<comment><USER16> if it reads that way, then know also that the bonds already existed. the IOU shifted from one entity to another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We are approaching the point where helping the Venezuela is akin to helping North Korea. I suppose Goldman was able to squeeze in some business a few days/weeks before we start officially sanctioning support for their corrupt and inept government, but it's 100% fucked up that anyone would offer support for this regime. And every dollar that Maduro gets to help sustain himself is a dollar that will functionally be used to kill another civilian through starvation/malaria/etc.

And do not mention the secondary market. The Fed buys off the secondary market, but that doesn't mean it's not the one providing liquidity.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/opinion/venezuela- needs-i...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/opinion/venezuela-needs- international-intervention-now.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been reading a lot on the deal (I'm Venezuelan, so yes, I'm pretty concerned) and I am trying to find out how exactly is Dinousaur Group (the original lender) tied to the Venezuelan government. Because the only way that the Maduro regime can actually obtain more money than the 2.8 billion it first got in 2014 is for it to be tied in some way to Dinosaur Group and get the GS deal money from them, correct?

</comment><comment><USER20> Goldman is not betting Venezuela will sort itself out. Goldman is betting it can extort the future government of Venezuela out of money it does not have if it wants funding from IMF or the World Bank. The justification they are giving is that they bought it off a secondary market...

<comment><USER21> With the government owned oil co being the issuer, this looks like a pretty smart bet by Goldman.

If oilco does not default, great, you get a ridiculous discount and a high coupon.

If oilco does default, great, you have ample of collateral in tankers and other tangible assets you might be able to recover, so the recovery rate will be higher than the 30 cents that Goldman paid on the dollar. Also, whatever happens with the venezuelan government, the new government will also want to have a functional oilco.

<comment><USER22> > If oilco does default, great, you have ample of collateral in tankers and > other tangible assets you might be able to recover, so the recovery rate > will be higher than the 30 cents that Goldman paid on the dollar. Also, > whatever happens with the venezuelan government, the new government will > also want to have a functional oilco.

I don't think that's the case simply because if it were that safe a bet the bonds wouldn't be trading at such a huge discount. It's the inherent risk that the government won't pay the bonds that enable them to trade at a discount. The bet is that the government won't default because if they did they would have a very hard time convincing people to buy bonds again in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They just see that the oil price will go up. Since Venezuela is a monoproduct economy, they will get better and be able to pay their debts. No politics here.

<comment><USER22> Then why not buy oil?

<comment><USER23> Where would you stock it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Damn, this is argentina all over again.

And this was a HUGE bet also, they must think the government is going to come down any moment.

<comment><USER17> No, they are betting for either the government to survive, or the new government to honour its previous debts.

<comment><USER24> I would find it hard to believe that GSachas believes that this government will have an economic recovery. Specially considering the maturity of the debt, its surely a bet that the next government will honor the debt.

But that is pretty terrible for the next government, that today would like no new debt to be issues, since it will all be spent today against them, and they will have to pay it in the future.

<comment><USER17> It is a difficult situation, but then again, revolutions are tough.

I'm not sure about this debt package, but I'm betting this was issued by the Venezuelan government to fund some real assets, like oil rigs or whatever. If that's the case, then the capital is still there, one just must make sure it generates profits.

A worse situation would be if the gov't loaned out the money, put it in suitcases and ef'ed off.

<comment><USER24> The latter is what happens on an unstable government that thinks its going down. Poeple scramble to get the last piece and get out.

IT might not happen with this, but it might and being south american, its likely.

<comment><USER17> This might happen, if the government can issue the debt immediately. That's highly unlikely in an unstable situation like in Venezuela.

I couldn't find anything in the article, but I bet the debt was issued way before the unrest began. If there was any embezlement, it had to be way earlier.

<comment><USER24> The article mentions that the sellers were a government group, and the payment got to government accounts, if i read correctly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Arizona governor and Uber kept self-driving program secret, emails reveal - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/28/uber-arizona-secret-self-driving-program-governor-doug-ducey <comment><USER2> Most of these interactions actually seem rather benign. Politicians routinely attend company events, and I don't think there's a general problem with a photo-op wearing some company gear.

What's really surprising, however, is the sort of decisions a US governor (or maybe just Arizona) is apparently involved in. In my small European country, a license to operate some new and potentially dangerous technology is a matter for some executive agency, which would routinely involve at least one expert on the technology and a lawyer.

Now, obviously, that agency is part of the executive branch and theoretically below the Governor in a hierarchy. But in practice it's very similar to the federal US Government: the US President actually can't directly order some low-level bureaucrats at the FDA/SEC/etc to do anything. Such an order has to go through all the levels of that hierarchy. And if anyone refuses, their firing also has to follow that path.

Individual decisions are almost completely independent from top leadership. A series of questionable decisions will probably get you reassigned to the mail room, but even then past decisions would usually remain in force.

That system does not only strengthen the role of subject matter experts in the process and reduce the appearance of arbitrary favouritism. It's also in the best interest of politicians: to put your signature under an order allowing an individual safety-critical project without following some sort of established process is almost certain to end your career the first time one of those projects goes south.

Less relevant nitpicks:

\- What exactly did Arizona stand to gain from a few hundred autonomous cars with minimum-wage drivers behind the wheel? It's not like Uber was going to move their software engineering to Tuscon, was it?

\- Getting free use of Uber's offices in San Francisco is obviously bribery if it was for personal or campaign staff. Although I guess it's technically legal in the US if properly reported.

<comment> purple-again One of the main points of the federation model was that it should be able to scale. Local regions rule themselves in nearly all things (the governor is the president of Alabama) and the regions people are only required to comply with a small number of issues that effect everyone (like national defense).

Of course we all know how that ended up. The federal powers increased steadily until we got where we are. This is one of the reasons you see so much anger against the coasts and cities.

<comment><USER3> With some exceptions, Federal powers increased because we couldn't agree that human beings are not property, among other basic rights issues. The touchstone moments were not simple disagreements on policy, it was the pot boiling over into extreme violence. Even the Federal model requires some basic level setting for it to function. There's either a rebalancing or the whole thing falls apart.

Regardless, GP's points are notable just a local level. States have different weights assigned to executive and legislative. It appears that Arizona leans heavily towards a strong executive branch although I have to wonder if any laws were broken here. People expect corruption in US politics at this point but this incident has some staying power in the news.

<comment><USER4> More so federal funding has bent states into the shape that the federal government wants them to be. Funding with strings and the interstate commerce clause subdued the States' power realistically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I got trashed at a party with a leader of Uber's self driving program. He told me it was normal to lie about who was in control when incidents happen. He said everybody does it. He said nobody's numbers were as good as they said and deception is standard practice. After an extended conversation with him I have no doubt this crash is due to negligence

<comment><USER6> Sounds like rationalization. Even if it's TRUE it's still rationalization and a way to talk oneself into irresponsibility: lowering the bar.

<comment><USER5> Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but this was months ago. No rationalizing needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was waiting for the moment when this would come up. A friend of mine had worked for Uber for a few years, and a couple of times when she came back to town, she'd mentioned over drinks that they have been "secretly" running autonomous vehicles around the ASU campus in Tempe for some years now.

</comment><comment><USER8> Now THAT explains a lot of that "she came from the shadows" and "a human driver could not have prevented this" and "The car didn't do anything wrong" bullcrap we've been reading from the Tempe Police right after the accident, as well as the quick release of the highly misleading (in terms of lighting situation) dashcam video.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you...

<comment><USER9> I still see facts as:

1) Nothing was reflective

2) She was walking across the road between street lights in a random space.

3) If a person hit the woman it would not have been homicide or manslaughter even if we didn't know the driver was on their phone.

I would say the pedestrian was legally more than 50% at fault in this horrible accident.

[http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/auto-accident/driver- at-...](http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/auto-accident/driver-at-fault- pedestrian-car.html)

<comment><USER10> The test for a self-driving car isn't "does it drive as well as a human," it's "does it drive as well as a self-driving car which normally beats a human should."

This might sound like it makes no difference, but the car had LIDAR. That the scene was badly lit, whether true or not, is irrelevant; the car didn't use ambient light to see. If it could hit her under these circumstances, then it could just as easily hit her at noon.

<comment><USER11> This is what gets me! I really wish they would talk about why the LIDAR didn't notice her. Was it off? Was it malfunctioning? Was there some other issue there? I've been puzzled about how it didn't see her!

<comment><USER12> The theory I've seen the most is that the LIDAR probably did detect her just fine, but Uber's software failed to act on the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I asked this [1] in ask HN sometime back

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16696681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16696681)

No comments and it is removed from the ask page as far as I can see....

Why are people so indifferent and why are they just standing by and not asking relevant questions and not demanding for proper test/procedures in place before continuing the test of SDVs?

<comment><USER14> Accidents like this will spur the AV community of companies to form a body (AVI?) to protect AVs from bad press by enacting a set of rules for all AVs to abide by.

Eventually, gov't policy will take AVI rules and recommendations and formalize them into their own books. But until then, the whole thing is deeply experimental. And regulation is premature. Otherwise, you may be crushing potentially great ideas unknowingly.

<comment><USER13> >But until then, the whole thing is deeply experimental. And regulation is premature

If it is deeply experimental, then it should be conducted in experimental settings, and not on public roads. If regulation is premature, then public tests are also premature. I am surprised I have to explain this. To be on public road the vehicle should pass a minimum benchmark that shows that it can consistently handle at least all the common scenarios..

There is no urgent need for self driving vehicles. It is not like they are going to solve some of the pressing issues that humanity is facing right now. It is just a curiosity, and can may be boost the profits of some corporations. That is about it.

I don't think it is worth or just to risk lives of unsuspecting public towards that end..

<comment><USER15> The best angle I have seen for this is: if we knew a safer way than road testing to teach something to drive we would do it. Teens are way more dangerous than experienced drivers, even after classes and 100 hours of training, but we still let them on the road. It's imperfect but the only known way to get the experience needed to get better is drive in the real world before you are 100% safe too (and nothing ever hits 100).

<comment><USER13> > if we knew a safer way than road testing to teach something to drive we > would do it.

Exactly. The tests and regulations for self driving vehicles only need to ensure this. That it has been taught to the limits of what can be done in an experimental setting, _before_ it is allowed to be on public roads.

Right now this is not the case. A company can put a SDV on road, that is not even capable of avoiding hitting a pedestrian right in front of it in plain sight at more than breaking distance. I mean, there is nothing to ensure this does not happen. That is my whole argument.

There should be a minimum benchmark that any experimental SDV should pass consistently to be tested on public roads. There should also be some process to ensure the continued validity of the license thus given. For example, it should only be valid until a software/firmware update.

I short, authorities along with engineers and company execs need to sit down and think this through and create a framework before this program can continue..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Secrecy in policy has no place in a democracy. Keeping your spies hidden or war plans makes sense, but not things that directly affect the public.

<comment><USER17> This article is pretty sensational, it's not really a secret. Ducey has been a big proponent of autonomous vehicles, it's known to anyone paying attention. When Uber, Waymo, and GM (the 3 biggest autonomous development operations in America) started testing in the Phoenix metro area it was publicly announced.

Michigan, Florida, and Georgia also have similarly lassiez faire policies towards autonomous vehicle testing, but most of the action has been around Phoenix because of Ducey's active courting of the autonomous driving industry. In the wake of the Uber incident, a violation of Ducey's trust in Uber's obligation to test responsibly, he has ordered Uber to suspend their operations:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/biancabuono/status/97842803263227...](https://mobile.twitter.com/biancabuono/status/978428032632279040?s=21)

Interestingly, cities don't have much power to decide whether, or how, autonomous vehicles can test in their cities. When NY state governor Andrew Cuomo and Cruise Automation jointly announced GM's plan to begin testing in NYC, Bill de Blasio and the mayor's office were surprised, they hadn't heard anything about it, but NYC testing appears to be going ahead anyhow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If this was a company from any other sector, such as a bank, people would start crying corruption; not that there probably was any. I think the governor was trying to court one of the largest Silicon Valley companies and that's trying to develop some "exciting" new technology and bent over backwards for them, which is cool and all, but he didn't perform his due diligence.

I find it interesting how the governor just "trusted" that the company was obeying all federal laws and guidelines and didn't check to see if: (a) they were indeed complying (b) there were any outside of the car itself (c) if any exist about self-driving cars, how those guidelines ensure public safety.

This is the exact kind of thing that ends up driving knee-jerk legislation to go the opposite direction. Does anyone know what federal laws and guidelines (from NTSB or other dept) exist that govern self-driving cars?

<comment><USER19> Just guidelines at this point.

[https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/us-dot-releases-new- aut...](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/us-dot-releases-new-automated- driving-systems-guidance)

<comment><USER13> > NHTSA strongly encourages States not to codify this Voluntary Guidance (that > is, incorporate it into State statutes) as a legal requirement for any > phases of development, testing, or deployment of ADSs. Allowing NHTSA alone > to regulate the safety design and performance aspects of ADS technology will > help avoid conflicting Federal and State laws and regulations that could > impede deployment.

Can someone clarify that this please? To me it appears that this body is saying that, "States, Please don't make laws requiring minimal standards for SDVs for things, including deployment on public roads, because that would impede deployment. Allow us to handle all that"

But they didn't do it, right? SDV's were on roads even before the "safety design and performance aspects of ADS technology" was regulated, right?

<comment><USER20> >not to codify this Voluntary Guidance ... as a legal requirement for any phases of development, testing, or deployment

I don't think it's meant to impede anything. It's just saying "don't use this as a go-ahead to base your state's SDV laws and guidances since this document will change".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you watch the video, it's clear uber/the safety driver were at fault. Which made the rapid announcement that "nothing could have been done" by the police so surprising when the evidence was so clear. But now with this coming out, it all makes sense.

I like that uber called the governor a "thought leader" as doublespeak for someone in their pocket, or who at least gave them their ear.

But doing this in secret is the real icing on the cake. great leadership there. Should we expect anything different from republicans/russians at this point?

</comment><comment><USER22> I had a passenger (circa 2015) who was gung-ho about driving for Uber. He'd driven for the taxi company for a few shifts, but couldn't make money. He'd ordered a taxi to take his family to the airport because they had luggage. He couldn't risk getting a miniature uber that wouldn't be big enough. He'd bought the cheapest black BMW he could find so that he could get Uber Black fares too, and was going through the state's procedures to become a vehicle- for-hire. He whined about how much commercial insurance was going to cost him...

Governor Ducey threw us taxi drivers under the bus as soon as he took office in January 2015. (edit2: the NFL's Superbowl was in Glendale, AZ that month.) Arizona has very minimal regulations for taxis and vehicles for hire -- basically a vehicle inspections, background checks for drivers and commercial insurance. Anyone who wants to become a taxi company is welcome, no medallion required. Taxi companies are trusted to take care of the regulations for themselves. Essentially Ducey said he was going to stop enforcement of the state's existing minimal laws pertaining to private transportation until the legislators came up with replacements.

Ducey's predecessor, Jan Brewer, vetoed a bill that gave personal vehicles transporting passengers for "ride sharing" an exemption from having commercial insurance - at the time Uber's insurance was "trust us, you're covered". The company I drove for spent a ton of money on their lobbyists to get that bill vetoed, and for a bill that was somewhat-fair for everyone.

> Arizona was not always a friendly state for Uber. In April 2014, then- > governor Jan Brewer vetoed legislation that would have exempted taxi-hailing > companies from insurance regulations imposed on traditional taxis.

(I believe this is a typo - the veto'd bill exempted personal vehicles used for "ride share" from the insurance regulations for taxis).

The taxi company I drove for is doing fine. They've adapted, and now lease unbranded vehicles that drivers can use with any of the app-based services. Their contracts pay better than the apps' non-surge fares. One of my driver- friends said the scene on the ground is okay - fare volume is down, but quality is up (calls are from people people who really want a ride).

(minor edits)

</comment><comment><USER14> I just saw the dashcam of the bicyclist getting hit. It seems like had waymo's lidar been installed, the cyclist would have been detected.

</comment><comment><USER23> Move fast and break things may not be suitable for all development projects after all.

</comment><comment><USER24> If after all the deregulation companies got at the federal level, plus even more deregulation in Arizona, they still had to do this, then something smells very bad here.</comment>


I'm selling my open source app - <AUTHOR> http://sdegutis.github.io/2014/07/25/im-selling-my-open-source-app/

<comment><USER2> I took a similar model with Isomer: [http://jdan.github.io/isomer](http://jdan.github.io/isomer). I tried it as an experiment, and was delightfully surprised by the number of people who wanted to pay for it.

<comment><USER3> That's a very cool library. I may just have to pick it up myself. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Anything that uses Apple's "Accessibility API", which lies at the heart of > Hydra, is forbidden by Apple to enter their App Store.

Not heard that before - why is that?

<comment><USER5> So I guess for the author, without the Mac App Store, there's no hope for commercial success?

I thought the Mac App Store might take longer to gain full traction - the buy- and-download from the developer website model was pretty prevalent. I guess it happened faster than I expected.</comment></comment>


Who wants a long-term intern? - <AUTHOR>

I hate to spam y'all, but I'm looking for a co-op (6-8 month internship) from June(ish) of this year to January of '11. The last time I posted something like this was before the summer and it ended up leading me to a summer internship doing a mix of IT and web development at EMC. I had a fantastic time there, but I'm thinking that I'd like to work at a company with a different style of getting things done (more getting things done, less bureaucracy) -- not that I don't love EMC.
Recently I've become enamored with the idea of working in systems stuff (GPU, low level stuff, etc) or Quantitative analysis, but I'm very much the kind of person who would try new things as long as it's interesting.
My ultimate goal in pursuing a degree in CS is to solve the problem of Strong AI through non-traditional means, but I love to play with either really big or really fast things when I'm not trying to build Skynet.
The farther away from Boston/New England the potential co-op the happier I would be, but I wouldn't mind working in/around Boston either. I've lived in and around Boston for most of my life, so I'm trying to spend long periods of time in different cities/states/countries.
I'm only a sophomore at Northeastern University, but I like to think that my actions speak louder than my words do.
You can check out my current resumé at http://vafflor.com/resume.pdf and you can contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> Well, if you're interested in low-level systems stuff (like you wrote above), we might need someone right around that timeframe. I'll shoot you an email later tonight about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to stick you in the Facebook recruiting system.

Edit: done. You should hear from someone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sticking me in there, I'd love to work over at Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, if any of y'all have any company suggestions, I would love to hear them.</comment>


Show HN: INeedAResume – Modern free resume generator - <AUTHOR> http://ineedaresu.me <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys! So I made this webapp in a few hours over the weekend and wanted to share! I would love to hear your feedback. I know it's not perfect, but there are some limitations due to how I'm generating the file. I'm trying to figure out some solutions!

I'm also looking for some feedback on the UX/UI. If you have any suggestions on improving anything, please let me know!

<comment><USER2> Hi Mitchas. I've not used the service yet - I'll be using it tomorrow - but as a prospective user the big thing that is missing is the example! I know you have one, but it is hidden away in a block of text. Show that visually with a thumbnail and a heading so I can spot it immediately. I don't know about other people, and it's not exactly rational, but I generally don't take the time to read even the tiniest bit of marketing copy (if it isn't a single sentence- fragment in very large letters) if I don't first see something graphical demonstrating the product (such as a thumbnail of an example generated resume).

Thanks for putting this out there, I otherwise like the presentation of the form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is no visual element to go back, only to loop through the category again.

I can go back using arrow keys after making an error, but I didn't even know that was an option until reading the comments in this thread since I so rapidly skimmed through the introductory headlines. One doesn't expect to learn about a new/foreign navigation method under a headline titled 'SUPER DUPER SIMPLE', and so I missed it entirely.

The geo-locate area code, while maybe convenient for some, is creepy. I'd prefer another set of '555' 's or (xxx), but that's probably just me. I don't need help remembering what area code my primary phone number is within, and in my case the suggestion was incorrect anyway.

I very much like the styling and the liveliness of the UI otherwise. It feels very polished.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fantastic work. Two suggestions:

1\. I found having the navigation mapped to my arrow keys super frustrating.

2\. Embedding your URL into the finished product is unnecessary and as an employer, I would find it off-putting.

Address both of those points and I will happily plug the crap out of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the Feedback!

I'm working on finding something better than the arrow navigation. I thought it was a good idea at first, but then realized it's annoying when using the textarea boxes to type paragraphs because you're unable to switch between letters. I'll definitely be disabling it now until I find something better!

As for the URL in the finished product, that's there by default since I'm relying on Chrome's "Print Page" function, and I have no control over those settings. I need to find a way to tell the user that they can click "More Settings" then uncheck "Show Headers & footers" to remove that. It's just hard to display since I can't show anything over that dialog.

Again, Thanks for the feedback though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As I keep saying on all these sites, looks good but without a .doc export it is worthless in Europe.

Pro-tip if you are unemployed, send in a Word document and not a PDF and you are substantially more likely to get a reply. I know it is idiotic, but would you not rather have a job?

<comment><USER4> >without a .doc export it is worthless in Europe

Not sure what part of Europe you are referring to but that certainly doesn't apply to the UK & Ireland.

<comment><USER6> Yeah... Nobody asked for a .doc version of my resume in France either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hijacking the left and right arrow keys turns filling out forms into a frustrating experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I switched it to using the tab key, thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I add 3 employers, I am not able to go back and edit the first two after reaching the preview stage.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a bug I'm trying to work out right now. Sorry about that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Needs a preview with dummy text.

<comment><USER10> There is. [http://ineedaresu.me/src/example.pdf](http://ineedaresu.me/src/example.pdf)</comment></comment>


Why Facebook Failed Our Censorship Test - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/why-facebook-failed-our-censorship-test <comment><USER3> What is the reasoning behind this prisoner takedown?

 _[...] after an inmate in New Mexico was sentenced to 90 days in solitary confinement because his family posted updates and photos to his Facebook account on his behalf._ [1]

What? Why? What business does the state have in that? And the state messing with your private property in this way without a court order seems plain illegal to me.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/facebook-reforms- inmat...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/facebook-reforms-inmate- account-takedown-process)

<comment><USER4> What kind of person wants to dedicate their lives to managing humans trapped in cages? I can only imagine they're deranged sadistic people.

<comment><USER5> Some may be characterized that way, but my guess is that most believe they are taking the burden from society and sacrificing themselves for the better good. In other words, my guess is that most don't take pleasure in it but rather believe it's a dirty job but someone's got to go it.

Also, as it is with many blue collar jobs, its a job that employs them and support their family, or, self. No greater intention, good or bad

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought EFF was finally over the decades of acting as though only government demanded censorship matters? Here it sounds like they're singing the old song.

Content I've written was censored when others shared it on Facebook-- e.g. the essay accompanying the release of 30GB of previously paywalled JSTOR documents ([https://thepiratebay.gd/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosop...](https://thepiratebay.gd/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosophical_Transactions_of_the_Royal_Society__fro)), was silently hidden from the receiver when people tried sharing it on Facebook.

I doubt any government asked them to do this-- especially considering how fast it was suppressed.

Focusing only on government "requested" censorship likely ignores even the majority of government _induced_ censorship: Consider the censorship executed through soft power like a fear displeasing the powers that be and that resulting in less favorable policy or the loss of lucrative contracts. Not to mention censorship which occurs for merely private economic gains-- which might be tolerable in a true private space; but should not be tolerated in places which serve the social role online of public forums and common carriers.

Is it beneficial to the public to mark facebook down for denying inmates access, when presumably this is just belt-and-suspenders on top of physical control of the inmates, while not carefully exploring the other kinds of censorship they and their competitors in the pseudo-public-forum business engage in?

<comment><USER7> IMO, corporate censorship is a far more common occurrence and most likely has greater effects on society. I too wish there was more scrutiny. EFF seems to largely deal with legal matters though. Possibly there should be a sister organisation to the EFF, or maybe they should extend their mission. I dunno.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even if they DID report on half this stuff, I would still suspect that there's more happening than they can disclose. At least Facebook has the decency to make it painfully obvious that they're not disclosing things that are happening.

EDIT: To be clear. I do think Facebook should be disclosing things. I was making a sarcastic comment about how it's nearly impossible to trust what companies are publishing anyway because of the nasty gag orders and secret courts.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I'd say that there is a 100% chance that Facebook, Twitter, reddit, et al have been targeted with National Security Letters which demand insane things while gagging any outcry or mention of the gag.

Most of the proles aren't too aware that their feed is heavily manipulated away from certain topics...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the EFF is being generous here. Facebook blocks posts to certain types of political material even if it is posted by an American citizen. They would round out and wax and wane about 'terrorist material' \- content such as the ISIL newsletter (which overall is not 'gross', especially compared to some American cinema). But blocked content is broader than that.

Facebook is also part of a network of other American Social Media companies that have automated systems to block content posted that match certain patterns and known propaganda efforts by other nations.

Recently an anti-TPP website was blocked simultaneously across several communication providers ([https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/38pmg8/hey_redd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/38pmg8/hey_reddit_someone_is_trying_really_hard_to_erase/)). This was a mistake as the website name closely matched the name of a Russian Anti-TPP propaganda campaign.

The mere existence of the ability to coordinate content blocking across service providers means that a censorship network exists - the question becomes whether it is 'abused'.

It's difficult to ascertain abuse, of course, given the Obama Administrations policy with regard to censorship and propaganda and its weakening of the Smith-Mundt Anti-Propaganda Act. The Administration believes that the US government is not responsible for having its influence operations online spill over to affect American people - it is merely prohibited from actively and specifically targeting Americans. That is, the new policy is that it's okay - even expected - for Americans to be 'collateral damage' in censorship and propaganda campaigns.

Thinkers like Cass Sunstein are traded high up in the US Government - <USER2> wrote a book on the 'Problem of Free Speech'. Broadly this influential Washington Legal Scholar believes that speech that is actively harmful or misinformed can and should be 'addressed' by the state - and he recommends ways in which that can happen.

The Snowden documents reveal that (so far as we know non-specific American targeting) the mass surveillance networks are intrinsically tied to influence operation capabilities - outside those capabilities at the GCHQ (which legally are not prevented from targeting Americans) - and who engage quite heavily in psychological influence campaigns.

I have personally, repeatedly witnessed Facebook selectively block posts of mine linking Wikileaks material, the Snowden documents (when they were first being published), and leaked drafts of the Trans Pacific Partnership and watched as others complained about having their posts trying to organize protests on May Day blocked similarly.

It's true also that Facebook has been associated with at least two studies on societal manipulation programs with researchers that are funded by the Department of Defense in the same area. Many people remember the "Emotion Manipulation Study" \- fewer the vote influence study. These sorts of programs have been called for in the past 10 years of Defense Document planning and DARPA today, under their SMISC program, study similarly how to shape and track ideas in social media networks like Twitter.

I'm honestly glad that the EFF is finally giving this issue some attention.

<comment><USER9> You make this case yourself, but I'll say it explicitly: the proven existence of a hidden censorship network implies abuse. There is no locus of power power without abuse; there is no hidden locus of power without extreme hidden abuse.

Psychological influence attacks against the public by governments are as old as time, and quite insidious. Remember on the day of Benghazi how the government tried to distract the public with the mention of that irrelevant video? They're still doing this. They think we're pawns that are easy to manipulate with information, even when the truth comes out and leaves egg on their face time and time again.

Every incidence of Facebook blocking like you indicate should be documented and dispersed publicly via non-controlled channels-- even 4chan would do, despite its recent clamp down on free speech. It's no secret that the US government is at the helm of these efforts to censor, silence, and manipulate the public.

I'm honestly waiting on the EFF, ACLU, and other human rights groups (and the public) to take a hard stance and declare outright that the Western neoliberal governments are malicious actors who are actively fighting against their citizens. It's been a long road from liberty to here, and we need to start fighting back.

<comment><USER10> Military information support for national security purposes within the borders of the US is considered legal by the US government. It is called Civilian Affairs Information Support. The Army, it was discovered, was sending fake letters to news media organizations about experiences and events that did not happen. The Bush Administration, with the Renton Group and through the Iraqi National Council (CIA front) influenced American journalists (Gordon, Miller) to write stories it knew to be false (about WMDs in Iraq) and then pointed to the resulting publications as justification for war. Jessica Lynch's story was a fabrication and the CIA helped in the production of "Body of Lies" \- this is similar to CIA involvement in the narrative development of the recent CBS production "Good Kill". Benghazi is a perfect recent example. The old terrorist boogyman line, too. Ken Dilanian was outed recently working with the CIA to 'craft' journalism about the use of Drones overseas. Speculatively: the fellowship of media executives put together by Lynton on the request of the State Department to help with anti-Russian and anti-ISIL messaging could find CAIS applications.

CAIS is a separate concept from psychological warfare that happens to weaponize American media that will also ultimately be consumed by Americans such as "The Interview" (revealed by the SONY hack leaks) or the use of front page New York Times article placement for Military Deception in the invasion of Fallujah. It is different because it specifically seeks to encourage the public to support military operations and wars: Americans are the audience.

It is also true that legally the US government is allowed to perform influence operations ("strategic communications") on Americans during states of emergency. There are reports of this being done during both Occupy and Ferguson (in Ferguson there was a media blackout zone placed over the city and the US government worked with airline companies to deny journalist travel to Ferguson to get coverage; its also true journalists were regularly and asymmetrically arrested and detained). It's true that both Occupy and Ferguson were declared states of emergency - and so it would be legal for the government to manage public perception in these cases. But we don't have smoking gun evidence to claim that there were concerted, explicit efforts.

American citizens should be aware of these things and discuss with their representatives what level of narrative support they would like their government to supply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yesterday I was lamenting the fact that a few companies now control a large amount of the information that gets to be seen online. The Internet is becoming a walled garden of sorts because you're forced to operate in these closed platforms if you want any visibility. Otherwise your voice won't be heard because no one will bother to check anything outside of these platforms. These platforms are becoming the primary sources of information on the web for the average person.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9736304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9736304)

Then I see this. As I said, I see a growing amount of censorship that is both ideological and business motivated. This news piece confirms my suspicions.

We embraced closed platforms like Facebook by ignoring their flippant ToS and privacy policies, and by spreading their adoption with supporting Facebook SSO and writing apps on their platform. We made our bed and now we must lie in it.

</comment><comment><USER12> There was more discussion of this in the submission about Facebook's overhaul of their account takedown process a couple weeks back[1].

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9664948](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9664948)

</comment><comment><USER13> Any kind of centralized communications medium invites censorship.

</comment><comment><USER14> no wondering really ...

</comment><comment><USER15> This article is so poorly written it is embarassing. In addition to the silly errors like "races the question" and and apparently being unaware of the word "euphemism", it buries what I hope is its main point--that Facebook should be more transparent--at the bottom of the article.

But Facebook is quite transparent about government censorship, even in the United States; see here: [https://govtrequests.facebook.com/country/United%20States/20...](https://govtrequests.facebook.com/country/United%20States/2014-H2/)

From what I can see it is much more transparent (and much more active) than Twitter, which for some reason the article praises.

It seems only to be castigating Facebook for "censoring" inmates--who are not, themselves, even the ones posting to Faceboook--and then for not reporting information about those removals. It then links to articles about an overreaching New Mexican prison which sentenced an inmate to ninety days in solitary confinement for refusing to tell family and friends to remove Facebook photos. It neglects to mention how Facebook is responsible for that and more importantly that the sentence was thrown out by prison officials (probably because its unconstitutional as hell and they know it). That particular example wouldn't even be a particularly good lead-in to an article about correction department overreach. It is much less useful here.

It is reasonable for Facebook to have terms of service which disallow third party access to user profiles, to suspend profiles of users which violate the ToS, and to have a reporting page specific to a class of user which is likely to violate an individual term. It is also reasonable for Facebook not to report this data as it is essentially private information about the inmates and their use of Facebook. Facebook has more responsibility to protecting its inmate users than it does to reporting that information to the rest of us.

<comment><USER16> Maybe you were looking at a previous version, but the only appearance of the word "question" in TFA is:

 _The fact that Facebook has not been reporting these takedown requests raises larger questions about what other kinds of censorship Facebook has been hiding._

That sentence is perfectly standard idiom.

[EDIT: and I commented 5 minutes after you did]

<comment><USER15> It said "races" in the original version. It has been edited.</comment></comment></comment>


Norco Mini-ITX NAS case with 8 hot-swap drives (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://jaimenow.blogspot.com/p/norco-itx.html <comment><USER2> I have this case in a 4-drive size in which I had a 4-drive 2TB raid 5 for some time - I had a couple of those disks go bad over time, and I was always nervous rebuilding the raid that another disk would die, so I eventually just replaced it with a raid-0 mirror with two 6TB disks which, for some reason makes me sleep easier.

And I recently put the most valuable 500GB or so into aws glacier deep archive for a couple bucks a month - this all seems to work pretty well</comment>