I was a robot and this is what I learned - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/07/i_was_a_robot_and_this_is_what_i_learned/ <comment><USER4> I've experienced this as well - albeit in a slightly modified form, but one more people can relate to.

I work with a friend of mine who has a non-profit to repair and donate power wheelchairs and scooters for people in need. Basically, he gets old or unused chairs (you'd be surprised at how many "new" chairs get donated - <USER2> because the batteries died, and people can't afford new ones), and we fix them up, clean them up, then donate them back out (many times they get donated back to us when the person no longer needs the chair).

Anyhow, one year we decided to go to the Abilities Expo which was being held in Los Angeles that year. As a part of this experience, we decided to take some of our chairs (including some we had customized in various ways - <USER3> friend is also an artist when it comes to metal craft - and fire art) to the expo to ride in them and "experience" what users of these chairs experience and gain that perspective, so we could apply what we learned to customizations and such.

What we learned are that people are assholes (big surprise).

Despite us being in chairs, at an Expo dedicated to products and companies marketing devices, materials, etc for those in need - we experienced on a constant basis people not watching out for us, stepping in our way of travel, not respecting us as human beings (like some people couldn't even look us in the eye as we talked with them - like we weren't human or something), etc. We also found the aisles between vendors to be poorly laid out for wheelchair and similar navigation.

We came away from that conference with a new perspective on what power wheelchair users and other people in similar situations face - and it isn't a very nice situation to be in. Furthermore, these are real people, intelligent people - just with a different way of getting around.

Unfortunately, for many able-bodied individuals, it appears that those with less ability to move around either don't exist to them, or are a nuisance in some manner - or they have some kind of fear about their situation. The experience greatly opened my eyes to something which until that time, I hadn't been aware of (iow - I was probably one of those on "the other side").

<comment><USER5> I understand that people not being able to look you in the eye makes you _feel_ extremely disrespected.

But I don't think it helps anyone for you to jump from there to assuming that what's going on inside their head is "[I don't] respect [this person] as a human being".

To be clear, I think other things you mention, like not getting out of your way, _are_ evidence of that. But eye contact? Probably anxiety from an unfamiliar social situation.

<comment><USER6> I would go a bit further, and say it is from trying not to be rude. For example, it is rude to stare, and if you encounter someone who has a disability, you want to counter the natural instinct to stare by over- compensating and not looking. Also, if you look at someone in a wheelchair in the eye, you are also looking down at them, which seems rude. But if you kneel down so you are at eye level, you are now patronizing them. So what is the correct behavior, especially if you are trying hard to be polite but it is conveying the opposite effect?

<comment><USER4> > So what is the correct behavior, especially if you are trying hard to be > polite but it is conveying the opposite effect?

How would you approach a conversation or a polite word with someone who was significantly shorter than you (but still an adult)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How could this experience be improved? The "funny" behaviour of sneaking up behind it and covering its eyes is just inexperience with the rules that come with new tech perhaps. Some of it might improve by just upping the number of telemachines on the streets.

* How visual is your head? Do you see someone's head also from behind?

* Do people know it's a person or do they think it's an AI?

* Do people know you're a visitor or do they think you're a researcher?

* It's small. Would making it bigger already help?

* I say excuse me when I want to pass through. How good is the audio to convey that intent?

* Do you see your surroundings good enough? People are smart in finding their way, so might see a different route you can take and don't step aside because of that.

And probably a 100 other things to research and improve!

<comment><USER8> > I say excuse me when I want to pass through. How good is the audio to convey > that intent?

Perhaps a bicycle bell would help?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7oGk- ozhKI&t=26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7oGk-ozhKI&t=26)

That's a "prank" video, but I'm quite serious - it does demonstrate that people will instinctively move out of the way when they hear a bike bell. And towards the end of the video (1:38-1:47), he even uses it successfully on an escalator, and in the aisles of a grocery store - so the effect isn't limited to places where you'd expect to encounter bikes.

<comment><USER9> Not "instinctive", but "sensible". Saying "excuse me" or "passing through" would work just as well.

<comment><USER10> Assuming the audio is good enough to use in such a fashion in a crowded conference, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Beam is a wimpy teleoperator. Send the new Atlas, from Boston Dynamics [1], to a conference, and you won't have that problem. People running away in terror might be more of an issue.

(It's not clear what will become of Boston Dynamics. Google wants to sell them. DARPA and the Marines gave up on their BigDog as not militarily useful. The technology is impressive, but it cost well over $100 million (mostly DoD funding) and 25 years to get to this point, with no market in sight.)

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

</comment><comment><USER12> _To admit this, especially within the confines of the technology industry, is to show weakness._

Really? It seems like every conference I go to the hottest off-subject topics of chit-chat are griping about conferences, work travel, and stress of above. Followed closely by other crowd favorites "things used to be better" and "I haven't walked more than a mile a day in months, my feet suddenly hurt!"

</comment><comment><USER13> We have a Beam. We put a staff shirt on it just to humanize it a bit and it worked pretty well. From a distance you can't really tell if it's a robot or a dispenser. Our Beam is 2 pedestals with a screen and camera. Our sanitizer dispenser is 2 pedestals with a head full of sanitizer gel. If you put them next to each other you have a 50% chance someone would stick their hand under the Beam camera expecting gel to come out.

</comment><comment><USER14> So sad that this article has a stereotypic caricature as first illustration.

<comment><USER15> Yeah... the article itself is about the perils of meat privilege, yet the editorial staff can't even escape their own biases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used a Beam to "attend" a robotics conference in San Jose (just a short drive from my house, but I wanted to try it out). A lot of people treated "me" oddly, of course, but it did work to get vendor info.

It felt like a kind of gimmick until I had one amazing experience. I was talking to a sales guy from a big machine company -- he looks like he used to sell trucks or aerospace stuff. He forgot that he was talking to a screen and at one point leant forward to touch my on the "arm" (I assume he touched the vertical screen supports). We both laughed. But it was a telling moment.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think it's a bit much to ask that you be treated just like being there in person when you are simply controlling a small vehicle on wheels remotely.</comment>


Show HN: Sentiment analysis of tweets - <AUTHOR> http://126.96.36.199:5000/graph <comment><AUTHOR> These are four charts containing statistics about tweets from the Austin area.

The charts discuss a sentiment analysis of the tweets and when the tweets were sent. Red means the tweet was catagorized as positive (for example: What a great day), blue as negative, and green as neutral. The last chart contains the 50 most common words used in the tweets.

I think the results are pretty interesting to see, but if you're interested in a TLDR: People tweet sad things on weekdays and happy things on weekends, and tweet sad things late at night and happy things in the afternoon and evening.

[https://github.com/amend/austins-sweet-and- sour](https://github.com/amend/austins-sweet-and-sour)

</comment><comment><USER2> Statistics without info about sample size and why the data is supposed to be significant and not just random noise are pretty much worthless.

And the wordlist ... simply impossible. One of the 50 most common words is "auditorium". And "the" and "a" are not even in the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, the amount of tweets is show if you hover over the charts and on the side bar next to the charts like most graphs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You might get more readership if you submit using a transparent domain address. Many people won't click on bare IP addresses.</comment>


Mr. Moore gets to punt on sharding - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1509-mr-moore-gets-to-punt-on-sharding

<comment><USER2> I'm a little surprised that 37signals hadn't sharded some of their applications. Sharding can be hard because you often don't have a logical way to separate out data. For example, on a site like this, you could shard articles based on year, but then if you wanted to get all the articles that a single user had submitted, you'd have to query several servers.

However, the inherent design of 37signals applications make sharding a lot easier. With 37signals apps, you're not dealing with all the users in the system or all of the data. You're dealing with one company's data and the users from that company. You could much more easily put data from companies with names A-I in DB1 and J-Z in DB2 and call it a day than most sites can shard. You wouldn't have to worry about things like losing cross database joins or having to lookup in multiple databases for certain reads.

In fact, with Basecamp, there's 6 possible domains that your site can be a subdomain of (projectpath.com, clientsecton.com. . .). Each one of those could point to a different set of app/DB servers. If you ran metrics on usage, you'd have to run it 6 times and aggregate the data, but in terms of user usage, each could be its own little separate system not even knowing the others existed.

Sharding becomes a problem when you can't fit all the data that will be used together on a single server. For example, Facbeook could shard by college, but you're allowed to have friends at different colleges from your own. So, you have to do things like cross shard lookups and that mess. With 37signals products (to my knowledge), everyone gets an account with your company's site and interacts with your company's stuff and if they want to interact with another company's stuff they log out and log back in with a different username/pass. So, everything can be neatly sharded by company since you don't have things that cross that boundary.

<comment><USER3> Not sure how one would shard the data based on a RoR app.

<comment><USER2> Hypothetical: So, you have 26 companies using Basecamp (Company A-Company Z). Your single database server can't handle all 26 companies so you decide to shard them.

Your previous setup: Webhead1-|- Database1 Webhead2/

So, you have two webheads reading from one database. You need to shard and have a second database: Webhead1--Database1 (Companies A-M) Webhead2-- Database2 (Companies N-Z)

Easy! Think of it this way: because a person at Company A is never accessing Company Z's data, there doesn't need to be any communication between the databases. So, it shards in the same way that Wordpress shards: different sites are on different servers.

With Basecamp, you don't need every company to be on the same server because you don't move data between companies. But you don't need a separate server for every company either. So, you can put a bunch of companies on the same server and a bunch on another server and you're done. There's nothing magic or RoR specific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The one thing to keep in mind with 37signals advice: I assume they are building-out and maintaining their own boxes (TaDa List being the one known exception). Could be wrong about this, of course, but not all startups have the luxury to do that. If one can't afford to rent or build-out boxes stuffed with lots of ram goodness and super-efficient raid setups (perhaps 37signals has a dedicated highly optimized RAID-10 file server? that would also play into their ability to run from a single server), then sharding becomes much more important much earlier in the growth curve. I've always viewed sharding as a poor-man's approach to scaling (with the exception being rich-man's boundary condition sites such as flickr and facebook that have absolutely no choice). And, of course, let's not forget that memcached can play an important role for most people. The number of read queries they're executing might be 90% fewer if they're utilizing memcached properly.

</comment><comment><USER5> So Basecamp runs on a single database server?!

<comment><USER6> Sure does. There's a backup database that has a live replication feed, of course, for availability. But for performance, we only need one.

I'd only run one application server too, if I could get away with it. Dealing with 1 is much easier than dealing with many. Do it as long as you can!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _So as long as Moore's law can give us capacity jumps like that, we can keep the entire working set in memory and all will be good._

I'm not going to say "this guy does not know what he is talking about", but what kind of shitty database are you running if you need to have the entire database cached in memory?

Isn't the point of having a proper RDBMS that it should be able to handle data more efficiently than what would be "logically" possible?

I've run databases with 100s of gigs of content on a 2-node cluster where each node "only" had 8GBs of RAM and performance nor memory usage wasn't an issue at all.

 _One point of real pain we've suffered, though, is that migrating a database schema in MySQL on a huge table takes forever and a day._

Oh right. MySQL. That explains it.

<comment><USER8> That's great if your data access is localized or infrequent enough that you aren't exceeding your disks' I/O limits, or if you have lots of I/O capacity by adding lots of spindles, but even adding spindles isn't going to be as good as adding RAM. Sharding just makes each shard's local RAM cache more efficient, and 37signals is choosing to have one 128GB server instead of 4 32GB shards, which is great as long as Moore's law keeps up with your growth.

<comment><USER7> My point was more that adding RAM isn't to be as good as having an actually good DB which doesn't rape your disk and CPU by using inefficient lookup methods, employing overly broad locks and which fails at transactions.

His IO-problem is because he is using a shitty database. Only in the MySQL- world is it common to need the same amount of RAM as the dataset you are working on.

And if you are going that way memory-wise, you might as well you use an in- memory flat textfile or persisted objects.

I'm not saying having excess RAM for caching is bad, because that is obviously silly, but when you need to have the entire DB in ram, you should realize something is horribly wrong.</comment></comment></comment>


NSA Spying Risks $35 Billion in U.S. Technology Sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-26/nsa-spying-risks-35-billion-in-u-s-technology-sales.html <comment><USER3> Who would have thought that acting like an asshole would drive people away from you?

Was that too blunt and direct? Somehow I don't think it's blunt and direct enough for the decision-makers to figure out this obvious consequence of their actions, however unintended and however well-intentioned they were when they decided to read so many people's emails as if they were entitled.

<comment><USER4> I suspect they know. They just happen to be the types of people who would "burn down the kingdom so long as they could be king of the ashes."

<comment><USER5> There is no 'they' in this picture, nor a thing that can be personified (i.e. an asshole). It's just a currently broken set of institutions. There's no reason to be angry at institutions, only persons. Direct that anger at particular elected officials, the president, congressmen, and at particular people that act as enablers: people in the media, press or private persons in some (corporate) power that are advocating surveillance.

<comment><USER6> > It's just a currently broken set of institutions.

no it's not , these institutions work as intended by those who put them in place. And frankly these institutions are not about "terrorism", they are here for industrial espionnage.

<comment><USER7> Have any leaked documents mentioned industrial espionage?

<comment><USER8> [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/08/us-usa-security- sn...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/08/us-usa-security-snowden- petrobras-idUSBRE9870AD20130908)

Either Petrobras (Brasilian state owned oil company) is a terrorist training camp, or they are doing industrial espionage there.

And I don't think that this 50000 networks ( [http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/11/23/nsa- infected-50000-compu...](http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/11/23/nsa- infected-50000-computer-networks-with-malicious-software/) ) have backdoors installed by the NSA for the terrorists neither.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Comments in here currently are on par with YouTube. It's disgusting - we get it, you don't like NSA's spying programs. Breathless pontification on that point is utterly worthless. Stop.

Source report for the article: [http://www2.itif.org/2013-cloud-computing- costs.pdf](http://www2.itif.org/2013-cloud-computing-costs.pdf)

I always laugh at graphs who move steadily upwards from the beginning of recording to the present, but then do insane things like dip dramatically and then rise prolifically in the future, like figure 1 in the report.

After looking at the endnotes for this report, it's clear that the writer has actually bought the meaningless blustering these companies and governments are doing. Threats, promises, and warnings aside, there's a distinct lack of actual action on the part of governments and companies towards this idea of harming US companies for what their government did.

<comment><USER10> This is all nice and well, but here on the ground, the NSA scandal has really bad consequences for tech companies.

Do you know what it is like to live in a jurisdiction where you are actually liable for what happens to the data of your users? Especially if it is data on teachers and pupils, which are (due to the fact that they are children) especially protected, as is the case with education software startups?

I can't use the Amazon cloud, can't use App engine, Cloudflare or anything that is connected to the US or companies with a US mother firm.

The whole situation is one infuriating clusterfuck and I find it really insulting when people claim that there are no real consequences to the recent scandal.

<comment><USER9> Actually, what you can't do is expose that data to the Internet, period, if you're attempting to be consistent with your, "NSA spying is causing me problems" viewpoint, because the NSA is monitoring network traffic around the globe, and decrypting what it can and storing what it can't.

So, if you're going to be internally consistent, you're going to have to delete all digital copies of all "sensitive" data, lest you yourself get hacked.

Or you could accept that with all operations there exists risk, and attempt to mitigate that risk using methods which are consistent between one another.

Not using US products gets you nowhere, in other words.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. There is _zero_ reason to suspect non-US clouds are any more secure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think that's enough. It needs to be 10x more than that before the government will start taking this issue seriously, and actually rein on NSA's power. And you can tell by the actions of their insider, Dianne Feinstein, that they have no intention of doing that right now.

When she will support bills like Rush Holt's Surveillance State Repeal Act that repeals the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act, _then_ you'll know the government is serious about reining in on their power and actually care about the many billions the US corporations stand to lose from not doing that.

Until then, pay no attention to their NSA "reforms" \- or better yet, _do_ pay attention, because they are likely to add in a lot of backdoors to give NSA _more_ power by explicitly legalizing many of the things they have been doing, like Feinstein's "FISA Improvements Act", and call your representatives to reject it.

<comment><USER13> I think you can count on that happening. If Cisco sneezed last quarter, the whole telecom infrastructure business in the US is going to have pneumonia.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's crazy that people don't connect the NSA to their job. Their job disappearing, like Detroit style.

Stage 1: denial.

</comment><comment><USER14> Actually, for all you non-American persons why have been asking what can you do about the NSA...

The way to do it is through the pocketbook.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well, don't worry , the NSA is a 50 billion industry itself. So you could always work for the government as Obama wants.

<comment><USER16> "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." \- Benito Mussolini

<comment><USER17> _\- Benito Mussolini_

Probably not him.

[http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/02/07/fake- quote-f...](http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/02/07/fake-quote-files- mussolini-on-fascism-and-corporatism/)

<comment><USER6> That's exactly what Benito Mussolini (and Adolf Hilter) did. + extra free workers in death camps for the german industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm gently surprised that people aren't looking at all the other terrible privacy policies and laws in the US.

NSA spying is terrible, and must stop, but many companies slurp way too much data, and store it sloppily. Look at the number of password database leaks, and that's stuff that they want to keep secret.

The lack of sensible privacy regulation has _already_ caused many companies to not send data to the US.

</comment><comment><USER19> There haven't been any real political consequences to supporting surveillance. Who's lost an election over it? Until that happens, expect this to continue. It's like how now one gets fired for buying IBM. The politicians are worried that if they did support rollback, and then some event happened, they'd get primaried out of office.

</comment><comment><USER20>
        "International anger over the National Security Agency's Internet
        surveillance is...and setting back U.S. efforts to promote Internet
        freedom."

What?! A surveilled Internet is not a free Internet.

        'Salgado said. "This could have severe unintended consequences, such
        as a reduction in data security, increased cost, decreased
        competitiveness, and harm to consumers.""

Uncorrected surveillance activity by the NSA likely will result in "unintended consequences, such as a reduction in data security, increased cost, decreased competitiveness, and harm to consumers"

Overall very strange journalism here.

</comment><comment><USER21> Between patent trolls and the NSA, if I'm going to start the software business I've always wanted to start anytime soon, I'll find anywhere else to do it other than here in the 'good ole' USA.

</comment><comment><USER16> > International anger over the National Security Agency's Internet > surveillance is hurting global sales by American technology companies and > setting back U.S. efforts to promote Internet freedom.

Of course yea... because now we all know that the US (government)actively promotes 'freedom'. God the MSM really sucks these days.

</comment><comment><USER22> Let's keep the loss above the NSA's budget so they can rationalize their stupidity with the only thing they understand: $

</comment><comment><USER23> Does Washington want a strong tech industry? Our own Senator Feinstein regularly votes against the interests of Silicon Valley. I see a Washington with lots of enthusiasm for Military and Oil/Gas, but not much for Technology.

<comment><USER24> > Our own Senator Feinstein regularly votes against the interests of Silicon > Valley

So when are you (plural you) going to put your money and your time where your mouths are and find someone to challenge her, including in the primaries?

<comment><USER25> Why should we have to outspend established industries just to have our voices heard? That sounds like a rigged game and a loosing battle to me. If any energy is to be spend addressing the issue it should be to route around these parasites, not greasing their wheels for adding no value to society.

<comment><USER24> > Why should we have to outspend established industries just to have our > voices heard?

The world is not perfect or fair, sorry.

But you do have a chance to work to fix things.

<comment><USER26> Also, if the Mafia threatens to burn down your business, the proper response is not to call the police or pay the protection money, but to join the Mafia and reform the system from within. Right?

Seriously -- it's too late for that. These so-called "security" agencies and their sponsors in Congress have already ignored dozens of laws going all the way back to 1776. What's another law going to accomplish? Is yet another Church Committee the answer? If so, how do you anticipate the outcome will be different this time?

<comment><USER24> Oh, well if you put it that way, I guess bitching on Hacker News is definitely the best option.

<comment><USER26> I guess answering my question is too much trouble, huh. For the record, in case you missed it, it was, "How do you expect the (legislative) outcome to be different this time?"

Edit: here's another question, seeing as you're in Italy. What do you think will happen when the power of the NSA ends up in the hands of a politician like Berlusconi?

<comment><USER24> Things can and do get better: when the United States' constitution was written, slaves were considered 3/5ths of a human being. Now a black man is president.

That has taken some 200 plus years, a civil war, and many other deaths, and is still not really a 'solved problem'.

So sometimes these things take a long time and a whole lot of effort. Whining about how something is impossible is just a waste of everyone's time, and potentially discouraging to those with the means to get out there and work for change. Mostly it's just a weak excuse to sit on one's ass and do nothing.

Speaking of Italy, this cynical "oh, nothing ever changes, all the politicians are the same, blah blah blah" attitude is one of the worst problems, and one of the best ways to keep people from standing up and _doing_ something. That kind of attitude is far more common here than it is in the US, and the results are pretty evident.

<comment><USER26> _Speaking of Italy, this cynical "oh, nothing ever changes, all the politicians are the same, blah blah blah" attitude is one of the worst problems,_

No one _but_ the native Italians are truly qualified to render such an opinion. They can cite 2000+ years of history as evidence. You wouldn't want the NSA to work for Caligula, the Borgias, Mussolini, or Berlusconi, but somehow, people like you think the next guy or gal in line for the throne will be different.

<comment><USER24> When I was talking about 'the problem', what on earth gave you the idea that I was talking about anything other than severely limiting the powers of the NSA?

My whole point is that this is something people will need to work out - <USER2> won't let go quietly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> NSA is hurting: US citizens US economy US confidence US foreign relations US privacy US law US

This isn't their government, it's ours. Take it back please.

1 person can make a difference. We are in this together.</comment>


The Apple double standard - <AUTHOR> http://macdailynews.com/2013/01/18/the-apple-double-standard/ <comment><USER2> "For some reason, Apple is not only never allowed to fail, its successes are quickly glossed over while competing products like the Microsoft Surface are lauded as products of the future."

These people must be reading different pundits than I am.</comment>


Protection for your ideas and creativity - <AUTHOR> http://hagyma.posterous.com/entering

<comment><AUTHOR> Just recently, I decided to switch from "work-to-order" and enter the startup arena... Things are fast here... Sites, apps, services launching every hour.

Last week I saw an article on techcrunch about a startup and saw some of my ideas in their app. That is cool... but, how will I be called when launching similar features?

So... here's an experiment that we came up with as our very first product:

<http://www.custodly.com/>

Give it a try! Tell us what you think! :)</comment>


A brief, incomplete and mostly wrong history of programming languages - <AUTHOR> http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html

<comment><USER2> _Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by not having them._

Alright, this was surprisingly amusing. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> My favorite: 1972 - Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots both forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied with the number of deaths and permanent maimings from that invention he invents C and Unix.

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh my God! That was the best belly laugh I've had in a long time. Very fun read.

> _1995 - Brendan Eich reads up on every mistake ever made in designing a > programming language, invents a few more, and creates LiveScript. Later, in > an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed > JavaScript. Later stil, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin > diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript._

<comment><USER5> The footnote's better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Each one of those was quite amusing.

 _1958 - John McCarthy and Paul Graham invent LISP._

 _1983 - Bjarne Stroustrup bolts everything he's ever heard of onto C to create C++. The resulting language is so complex that programs must be sent to the future to be compiled by the Skynet artificial intelligence._

I genuinely laughed out loud at this article.

<comment><USER7> As did I. I laughed out loud at most all of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> """Alan Kay creates Smalltalk and invents the term "object oriented." When asked what that means he replies, "Smalltalk programs are just objects." When asked what objects are made of he replies, "objects." When asked again he says "look, it's all objects all the way down. Until you reach _turtles_ """

</comment><comment><USER9> Hmm, no mention of Erlang. I'll add one.

1986 - Inspired by Prolog, Joe Armstrong designs a massively scalable messaging system that allows computers to SMS each other and has the attention span of a teenager. He calls it Erlang.

<comment><USER10> BTW, "lang" == german for "long"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like [1] the subtle touch of adding Graham-essay type footnotes to the section featuring Graham and arc.

[1] I suspect a large part of this like is due to the old trick of throwing in a reference only a subgroup of the readership will appreciate, thus forming a special bond with the author.

</comment><comment><USER12> _2003 - A drunken Martin Odersky sees a Reece's Peanut Butter Cup ad featuring somebody's peanutbutter getting on somebody else's chocolate and has an idea. He creates Scala, a language that unifies constructs from both object oriented and functional languages. This pisses off both groups and each promptly declares jihad. Odersky goes into hiding. His whereabouts remain a highly guarded secret although there is some speculation that he is locked in a Swiss vault._

This sounds vaguely familiar.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not as accurate or complete as <http://www.levenez.com/lang/lang.pdf> , but a nice read.

And if anyone is wondering (as I was) how many programming languages there are, <http://people.ku.edu/~nkinners/LangList/Extras/langlist.htm> has information on about 2500 languages.

<comment><USER14> I looked for 'E' both for the Amiga language, and Mark Miller's language.

Neither was there! Bizarre...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love the one on Obj-C

"1986 - Brad Cox and Tom Love create Objective-C, announcing "this language has all the memory safety of C combined with all the blazing speed of Smalltalk." Modern historians suspect the two were dyslexic."</comment>


Seahorse Lets You Collaborate to Build Photo and Video Albums, Shared Privately - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/04/seahorse-lets-you-collaborate-with-friends-to-build-lasting-photo-and-video-albums-shared-privately

<comment><USER2> What's with all the accounts being created to shower praise on this app here?

abarriga, batmelon13, mzegers, nicoberman, and daniellr all created in the last half hour. Diasol and omena haven't commented in a year.

<comment><USER3> lol attention employees of Seahorse: leave glowing comments about our software on HN!... Aside from the lameness that devindotcom points out, the app is pretty cool, let's see if it gains traction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using Seahorse about a year ago and it has been really useful for our friends and family cause it's finally a place where we can share without all the exposure of personal pics on social media! UI is great as well! Love Seahorse!

</comment><comment><USER5> I love Seahorse!

</comment><comment><USER6> Sleek UI!

No more Facebook for this

</comment><comment><USER7> GREEEAT APP and TEAM!

</comment><comment><USER8> very cool - finally an app thats for people who dont want to put their entire life on instagram / fb - but still want to share it with loved ones. The UI is also pretty impressive - 5* from me !

</comment><comment><USER9> Great App! Congratulations to the team, I beat your product will be a huge success!

</comment><comment><USER10> Love this app so far! It's an easy and handy tool for storing and sharing my photos in an organized and private way

</comment><comment><USER11> My family and I use Seahorse to share our photos and it has been working just great to us. Previously, we used to lose all the pics we shared through whatsapp. Now I also got my iPhone synced with Seahorse and all my camera roll is automatically backed up in a 'scene' and pictures are ready to share whenever I want. Love it.</comment>


Mathematical fiction: Narrow Valley (1966) - <AUTHOR> http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf733

<comment><AUTHOR> This short story can be read at [https://web.archive.org/web/20040813150700/http://www.scifi....](https://web.archive.org/web/20040813150700/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/lafferty3/lafferty31.html)</comment>


Synthesizing Hi-Hats with Web Audio - <AUTHOR> http://joesul.li/van/synthesizing-hi-hats/ <comment><USER2> Here I am, programming synths for a couple of years and it never occurred to me to make a hihat out of square waves (instead of noise) to have a more characteristic, well, noise. It's _so obvious_ that it hurts! :D

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool way of doing this. Firefox (41 / Windows 10) seems to cut the sounds short a little, which makes the end result sound as little more than a tick. Had to switch to Chrome to hear it properly.

<comment><USER4> Thanks! Yes, it looks like in Firefox (and some Chrome situations) the sound is effectively being scheduled in the past. Something to look into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> All I hear is a very short _tick_ sound. Chrome 45.0.2454.93 m

</comment><comment><USER6> Nope, no AudioContext in my Safari.</comment>


Cryptomancer RPG - <AUTHOR> http://cryptorpg.com/ <comment><USER2> Someone over in the SA Fatal and Friends thread did a review that was posted here: [http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and- friends/binarydoubt...](http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and- friends/binarydoubts/cryptomancer/)

<comment> bjelkeman-again He complains the manual is 400 pages, then proceeds to write a review that is probably 20. And he isn't done yet. At least it is comprehensive.

<comment><USER3> That comment about it being 400 pages is not a complaint, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of the time my party argued about how much modern information theory we were allowed to use in D&D. We wanted to maximize the amount of information to communicate using Sending which states that it sends "twenty- five words or less". Can I use a form of encoding and a compression algorithm? Or can we make up words and can they be arbitrarily long?

<comment><USER5> Codes have been around since forever; isn't the problem that you have to make sure the receiving party knows the algorithm, too?

<comment><USER6> Encryption yes, but compression encodings haven't.

<comment><USER7> Compression schemes (in the form of code books) to save on telegraphy costs have existed almost as long as the telegraph itself.

From [1]: "Elaborate commercial codes which encoded complete phrases into single words were developed and published as codebooks of thousands of phrases and sentences with corresponding codewords... Cable tolls were charged by the word, and telegraph companies counted codewords like any other words, so a carefully constructed code could reduce message lengths enormously."

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_code_(communication...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_code_\(communications\))

<comment><USER6> Is D&D set in a world where the telegraph exists? I've always gotten the impression that insofar as it's linked to our history of technological progression it is set well before that invention, while after the times of e.g. the Caesar cipher.

<comment><USER7> Good point. So here is a compression scheme from about 350 BC, describing how to pass messages from one mountain peak to another, using a torch and a water clock [1][2]:

"The water-clocks are an early long-distance-communication-system. Every communicating party had exactly the same jar, with a same-size-hole that was closed and the same amount of water in it. In the jar was a stick with different messages written on. When one party wanted to tell something to the other it made a fire-sign. When the other answered, both of them opened the hole at the same time. And with the help of another fire-sign closed it again at the same time, too. In the end the water covered the stick until the point of the wanted message."

[1] [http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Communication.htm](http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Communication.htm)

[2] [http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Technology/AncientGreekTechnol...](http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Technology/AncientGreekTechnology028.html)

<comment><USER8> That is AWESOME. What an incredible feat of engineering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is very nice artwork. I wonder if this is the same Chad Walker who worked on Age of Empires and BloodRayne? They've done some pretty cool stuff too at [http://www.walkerboystudio.com](http://www.walkerboystudio.com) .

</comment><comment><USER10> Really enjoy running across this and in the process ran across a nice list of security games & related resources:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13148899](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13148899)

</comment><comment><USER10> Here's an log of a chat with the game's creator that provides a lot of additional information: [https://gmshoe.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/qa-chad- walker-crypt...](https://gmshoe.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/qa-chad-walker- cryptomancer/)

Which links to an indepth description of how the game works by the creator: [https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?781271-Cryptomancer- A-f...](https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?781271-Cryptomancer-A-fantasy- role-playing-game-about-hacking)

</comment><comment><USER11> Cyberpunk...or wait...Shadowrun!

<comment><USER12> Definitely feels like a variation of Shadowrun.

<comment><USER13> Except it's inverted. Shadowrun is cyberpunk with orcs and elves. This is orcs and elves with cyberpunk.

<comment><USER12> I honestly prefer Netrunner. I'd rather keep my fantasy and cyberpunk settings a little separate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone played this? Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER10> How many players including the DM are required to play?

<comment><USER15> Assuming it's like most tabletop RPGs, the answer is probably "one." Three to six is more typical, though.

<comment><USER16> How do you play a tabletop RPG by yourself?

<comment><USER10> Agree, though appears to be a thing; here's a pretty good guide to "solo rpg/roleplaying":

[http://www.rpgready.com/solo-roleplaying-solo- rpg/](http://www.rpgready.com/solo-roleplaying-solo-rpg/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great artwork, but I'll never find time to actually read the 400-pages manual.

</comment><comment><USER18> hijack this to push HeroKids RPG game. I don't have any vested interest in it, other than it is super rad and my kids love playing it.

<comment><USER10> To give a comparison between the two, here are the two preview files for each:

Cryptomancer RPG [http://watermark.drivethrurpg.com/pdf_previews/186678-sample...](http://watermark.drivethrurpg.com/pdf_previews/186678-sample.pdf)

Hero Kids RPG [http://watermark.drivethrurpg.com/pdf_previews/106605-sample...](http://watermark.drivethrurpg.com/pdf_previews/106605-sample.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm down. Anybody in Denver want to do this?

Is there a place for tabletop gamers to organize? I've always wanted to get into it, but just not with the Doritos+MtnDew sort of people. A bunch of infosec professionals playing this game would be highly entertaining, I think.

</comment><comment><USER20> So I guess we all think it is legit that this ad has 96 points in 3 hours. More than anything else on HN in this time period.

<comment><USER10> Point of HN is to share.

As long as what is shared follows the guidelines, that's literally all that matters.

Everyone once in awhile you'll see something that's clearly attempting to exploit HN to promote whatever they're pushing, put I don't see anything that fits a pattern like that and appears to be well within the scope of the guidelines.

<comment><USER20> Is the point of hn to make a bunch of bot accounts on proxies to massively upvote your ad in the first hour?

<comment><USER21> I think you're right that that is not the point of HN, but I think HN attempts to automatically (and the HN moderators attempt to non-automatically in some cases) detect various kinds of voting abuse, including that kind. It's possible that these detection mechanisms are flawed and that this story was upvoted in that way but managed to get past those mechanisms, but another possibility is that people found the concept interesting and upvoted for that reason (or hoped for it to produce some interesting discussion). Many of the other comments (most of which do post-date your original complaint, of course) do seem to support the hypothesis that some HN users would find it interesting.

With that said (and assuming you have sufficient karma to flag stories), I think that believing a story to have reached the front page via such abusive voting would be a good reason to flag the story, which will bring it to the attention of the mods, who hopefully would be able to determine whether anything improper was in fact going on.

<comment><USER20> So do you think the mods are paid more than the marketers pushing stuff to the top? As a person who has benefited from having posts on the top of reddit I can tell you that there is a massive incentive to manipulate the system and that mods do not really have enough incentive or resources to stop them. It is basically like trying to keep drugs from crossing the border. The people who make money from the drugs can marshal massive resources in order to get the them across the border, and the will/resources just aren't there on the opposing side to really stop them.

r/gaming is massively gamed, r/news the mods are in on the gaming and have made it illegal to post links that don't lead to big news sources. This was done under the guise of making r/news more legit I guess, but it is hard to believe the fix wasn't in. Also mods of r/gaming are probably also in on it because there is just too much money at stake. Try to contact some of the users posting gta 5 gifs on the front page and see how real they are if you don't believe me.

It strains credibility to believe that this post had a massive number of upvotes in the first 3 hours and almost no comments, and it is a pretty blatant advertorial. I think it did gain some real traction after that, but when you boost something into a high visibility position it always generates some decent numbers. The question is would it have actually gotten to the top on its own? I really doubt it.

There is no smoking gun here and there never will be. It is incredibly easy to make 100 accounts on proxies and make some comments with them and then upvote a post. We are talking about one employee for less than a week of work. The payoff is very large and it is basically untraceable by mods. It happens all the time on reddit and hn.

<comment><USER22> I am _massively_ skeptical of this. This seems to be the sort of thing that would come to the top on its own.

Also, this isn't Reddit. The commuity and moderation are pretty different here.

In addition, do big advertisers even know about us? We're pretty niche, and not all that well recognized outside of the programming community.

<comment><USER20> "This seems to be the sort of thing that would come to the top on its own."

Maybe, but not in that time period.

"Also, this isn't Reddit. The commuity and moderation are pretty different here."

If anything Reddit does more to defend against this sort of thing.

"do big advertisers even know about us?"

I have seen so many posts on the top of hn talking about "the hn effect" It is ridiculous to think that people in pr and marketing aren't paying attention to that, while gaming product hunt and reddit.

I own a software studio that makes software and I am noticing how vulnerable HN is. Other people have obviously noticed as well.

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=498634.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=498634.0)

that is from 2014

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> why is first image a elf lady? shoudnt hackers be sort of gender neutral?

<comment><USER24> I looked. I actually don't see that art pushing many of the fantasy art sex trope buttons:

1\. Wearing what looks like not-outrageous closes. 2\. There is no obvious cleavage. 3\. There is no willing-come-hither smile at the PoV 4\. Indeed, they are ignoring the PoV.

Look, that whole Male-Gaze thing is not about erasing all aspects of feminine form in art. That'd actually be a worse outcome if our goal is better and fairer representation. It's about pointing out that Cindy from FFXV is a pretty manipulative and somewhat denigrating trope in fantasy art.

Think about how many _male_ body types have become acceptable in fantasy art over time. Old men, fat men, emaciated men, short men, slouchy men, skinny men. We're getting progressively more comfortable with men of color in fantasy art as well (although still a long way to go here in many ways). Healthy or sick, brown or pale, native or imperialist, writers find a way to make identifiable and enjoyable protagonists out of a lot of male archetypes, and for what it's worth most of that is great.

But when it comes to women, we see WAY fewer allowable templates and they tend to skew towards what the male consensus finds desirable. When we really sit down and see what's fair game for these genders, obviously that's not terribly fair.

That's the principle complaint people are trying to redress. By locking every female archetype to what a 25-year old man fantasizes about, we create fewer opportunities for a real and textured world and create a sensation of isolation, distance and difference among those ignored groups.

<comment><USER23> You're right. I looked up "cindy ffxv" since I didn't know and by comparison this is one is cool.

I guess I was expecting an image which says more about what happens in the game.</comment></comment></comment>


TurboTax halts all state e-filing amid data breach probe - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2015/02/06/turbotax-halts-e-filing-of-state-tax-returns/ <comment><USER2> Lots of speculation in this thread. Here's my hypothesis.

Federal tax return fraud is huge. It's a growing problem that the IRS is struggling to cope with and it's been going on for years. State tax return fraud has been largely non-existent... so non-existent in fact that USA Today reported the state of Minnesota got suspicious when there were _2_ reported cases of fraud[0].

So what's going on and why is TurboTax being called out by these states? First off, know that when a tax return is e-filed either to the fed (who also handles most state e-filing) or directly to the state, every software provider transmits an identifier along with it. So if you get a bunch of bogus tax returns submitted it's trivial to see where they're all originating from. Second, the rise in federal tax return fraud has grown steadily in relation to the number of software providers offering a _free_ option... the reason we haven't seen state fraud as rampant is because it has always cost money to prepare your state return with software. But what's new this year besides a dramatic increase in state tax return fraud? TurboTax's Absolute Zero campaign. That's right, a whole lot more people can file their states taxes for free using TurboTax's software. That may seem great at first blush if you qualify, but an unintended consequence of that is it's now a completely free roll for a fraudster to file a state tax return IN ADDITION to a federal one.

[0] [http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/02/...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/02/06/turbotax- state-filings-halted/22979519/)

<comment><USER3> Why would free filing increase fraud? It's always been free to file if you do it yourself.

Can't it be that there's just more at stake with the Federal return in terms of total dollars, and far more tax deductions available?

<comment><USER4> If it cost $10 per filing that would be a huge up front cost for someone, especially if it turns out many of their fake returns are invalidated en mass. It's pretty hard to file several thousand fake returns with plausible data (esp if you have last years or several years ago data) by hand, if you are putting up that much work you might as well just prepare people's taxes in a legitimate way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The title of the article is misleading. "Data breach" implies a release of sensitive data, which is not what appears to have happened.

 _Intuit said its TurboTax unit took action Thursday after seeing attempts to use stolen personal information to file fraudulent returns for tax refunds._

 _The tax-software company said that after a preliminary examination with Palantir Technologies, which provides security and antifraud services, it believes there wasn't a breach of Intuit systems and that "the information used to file fraudulent returns was obtained from other sources outside the tax preparation process."_

<comment><USER6> _"Fraudsters obtained information that's generally only found on income-tax returns." In some cases, the fraudulent 2014 returns closely resemble 2013 returns, with only minor alterations—implying that the scammer had access to the taxpayers' 2013 returns._

There was a data breach.

<comment><USER7> _The tax-software company said that after a preliminary examination with Palantir Technologies, which provides security and antifraud services, it believes there wasn't a breach of Intuit systems and that "the information used to file fraudulent returns was obtained from other sources outside the tax preparation process."_

Did you read the article?

<comment><USER6> There is a single, solitary sentence in this article that implies there might not be a data breach: _Perhaps someone got a name and guessed a password," she said._ The rest of the article is full of evidence that there was a data breach.

Edit: including the part you quoted, _information used to file fraudulent returns was obtained from other sources outside the tax preparation process._

<comment><USER8> Someone getting a name and guessing a password would be a data breach. What else can you call it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As far as I know, TaxACT[0] is the only tax software whose parent company doesn't actively lobby against tax filing simplification. I haven't used them nor do I have any stake in them, but I figure it is good for people to know of this TurboTax alternative.

[0] [http://www.taxact.com/](http://www.taxact.com/)

<comment><USER10> Has anyone actually used TaxACT recently and can compare the experience with TurboTax?

I've used TurboTax almost every year for the last decade, except one in which I used TaxACT because it was a lot cheaper (my taxes are moderately complex enough to send me into the more expensive TurboTax price brackets).

At the time the software felt shoddy compared to TurboTax in almost every way; it was certainly better than form-filling myself but it didn't inspire confidence.

<comment><USER11> If your taxes are complicated enough to pay for a high tier of TurboTax, you may be better off finding a good CPA.

I'm an independent consultant, use QuickBooks throughout each year, and have used TurboTax for quite a while out of inertia from having my data already in a friendly format in QB. I finally decided to give an actual CPA a try last year. Among other things, she has already saved me an order of magnitude more than her fee just by amending my old TurboTax returns. Not to mention the value of the time that she has saved me.

I would never go back to TurboTax (or TaxACT or similar) unless I was a straight W-2 salaried employee (and only maybe then).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There was some discussion relating to this on /r/personalfinance earlier today: [http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/2uzfel/minn...](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/2uzfel/minnesota_no_longer_accepting_tax_returns_from/)

<comment><USER13> Wow. According to several posters in that thread, Intuit was allowing guest users to pull up data from prior years' tax returns (and subsequently file this year with correct data) by providing only an SSN and not any other form of authentication. If true, that's basically a criminal level of negligence.

<comment><USER14> That means you could brute force your way into getting someone else's tax return... scary

<comment><USER15> This has always been possible. I knew a guy who bulk downloaded returns from hr block because they required only last name, zip, and partial ssn. He picked a zip where everyone is named Stein and was born at the same hospital (which gets its own ssn shard) and went to town. Naturally they had no rate limiting.

<comment><USER4> How do you find a zipcode where everyone has the same last name? I'm guessing a very small town several hours from a single hospital?

<comment><USER15> Wrong it's one of the most populous zips in the nation and I'm being flippant about the name but when you are brute forcing things an unusual probability is all you need.

<comment><USER4> Oh seems like it would have been just as easy to grab census data for the past 50 years and run through last names by decreasing frequency.

Here I thought you had found a unique zipcode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you're wondering what folks are going to do with that treasure trove of Anthem data, I've got two ideas:

1) File fraudulent tax returns

2) Fill bogus prescriptions

<comment><USER17> So who's ultimately going to pay for fighting this fraud? Lemme guess: probably not Anthem.

<comment><USER18> As with most data breaches involving theft of personal information, especially the type that have the potential to exploit a single point of failure (otherwise known as your SSN) the affected company needs to offer credit protection and credit monitoring for a period of time. I sure hope Anthem has good re-insurance. By one account ([http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2015/02/06/anthem- di...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2015/02/06/anthem-didnt- encrypt-personal-data-and-privacy-laws-dont-require-it/)) it seems they were storing SSNs in the clear, which is probably akin to begging for something like this to happen in this day and age.

<comment><USER19> It seems like every 2 or 3 months there is data-breach in the news and a bunch of plain-text info is stolen. And ever-time I am inclined to imagine the companies storing in plain-text would think "oh we should change something about this"

But then it happens again 2 or 3 months later anyways ...

<comment><USER20> Before we go to encryption, let's talk about all the SSN you put on paper you file for bank, government, employment. That's right. They are all in clear. Whatever you sent to your employer over email (rather than fax) are still in clear.

A lot of these attacks are trojan already breached the network and insider attacker. The latter is often due to infection (e.g. USB, browsing problematic website). Encrypting file, encrypting SSN field is not a full solution but is definitely a really good solution.

<comment><USER21> What surprises me most is that the US doesn't seem to have the same law as here in Canada. Here, pretty much only the bank, government, or your employer can ask for your social as that's the law. Plus, they don't send it in the clear on-line. You'll get receipts either from a secure Web site or physically mailed to your address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Out of curiosity, if someone e-files fraudulently for you, are you held liable by the IRS if you are audited?

<comment><USER22> I don't have much insight into the legal end of this, but I will say I've had (or at least been involved with) "run-ins" with the IRS twice, both times were legitimate misunderstandings on our part. We were in the wrong, but no actual malice was intended. Both times the IRS was quite flexible in getting the problem sorted out. It's just personal experience, but that experience was not of the IRS as a monolithic government body that bulldozes people. They wanted their money and were willing to work with me to get it.

<comment><USER23> Nitpick: they wanted _your_ money. It's not "theirs" by any stretch.

<comment><USER24> If we're nitpicking, it's the result of a transaction. Granted it's a transaction you're not opting out of, but it's still an exchange of service for payment.

By any other measure in a transaction that money ceases to be _yours_ and becomes _theirs_. We can argue the merits of income tax or taxation in general, but in our (and many similar) systems, it's not _your_ money if you wish to live in the country and thus partake in this transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> From the TurboTax blog:

[http://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/2015/02/06/intuit-working- wi...](http://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/2015/02/06/intuit-working-with-state- governments-to-solve-emerging-tax-fraud-problem/)

(Shouldn't this be the proper link for the HN post?)

</comment><comment><USER26> With the language being used to describe what's going on, combined with the numbers that Alabama is estimating, it smells a lot like malware-infected PCs combined with the desktop edition of Turbotax (which offers free e-file if you buy the software).

That would explain: * why it seems to be only hitting Turbotax users * the availability of 2013 data (Turbotax users usually buy every year) * the availability of logins to these sites

While I wouldn't go so far as to say that this _is_ the source of the data/problem, malware + desktop app + efile through Turbotax online fits the public information really well.

</comment><comment><USER27> Yeah this happens more than just with Turbo Tax.

It used to be a scam that prisoners did by requesting 1040 forms and having some help on the outside to make bank accounts to direct deposit the money for refunds into it. They would get fake W2 forms and make them from fictitious companies and enter a large withholding tax on them. File the 1040EZ form with the standard deduction and file a state form too for extra money. Everything was done via postal mail before Turbo Tax and others provided e-filing.

A friend of our family had someone file taxes as her, and we think the SSN got stolen from the church we go to by ex-employees because they need it for donation tracking. She hadn't filed taxes in a while and Turbo Tax would not help and she was seeking an accountant to find out someone else already filed taxes as her.

I buy the desktop Turbo Tax edition and I try to file early before anyone else can file as me. I am disabled and don't make a lot, but there have been many data breaches that include SSNs over the past decade or so. When I had a student loan, someone stole a laptop with a harddrive on it that had SSNs and other info on it from the company that managed my student loan.

Actually if people are getting SSNs from outside of Turbo Tax they can e-file with the other tax filing software as well.

</comment><comment><USER28> How to file fraudulent tax returns:

      Step 1. Take someone's W2.
      Step 2. File.

Why would they stop all state filing because of this?

<comment><USER22> Just to be clear, this is a major problem:

[http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Combats-Identity- Theft-a...](http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Combats-Identity-Theft-and- Refund-Fraud-on-Many-Fronts-2014)

It's called SIRF (Stolen Identity Refund Fraud) and it likely costs billions a year at the federal level (I could not find data on states).

The difference seems to be that Turbo Tax was just the vector because it could be automated. Not a lot of payoff in doing it by hand.

<comment><USER29> I'd be interested to know how hard it is to trace the destination of fraudulent tax refunds.

<comment><USER2> It's trivial for the IRS. They either cut a check (and mail it to an address) or direct deposit it in to an account. Most fraudsters opt for the check option... so much so in fact that one of the new fraud prevention mechanism the IRS introduced this year was to cap the total number of refund checks to any specific address at 10(!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm not USAian, so I'm not familiar with the US system. But why would criminals want to fill in someone elses tax details?!

<comment><USER31> To claim a refund based on incorrect/falsified statements of income, deductions, and withholdings.

Claim that SSN 123-45-6789 worked a job where they made $19K in income, had $4K in taxes withheld, and owed a total tax of $0, so please mail the $4K refund check to 12A Main Street, Fraudville, MA 02341.

The tax authorities are often compelled to process the refund in a certain time window that precludes cross-checking all the information and certainly precludes waiting to see if the actual taxpayer will file an actual (non- fraudulent) return.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So, what is the best way to find out if you are the victim?

Call IRS? (Assuming you haven't filed it yet) Check TurboTax? (Essentially filing yours and wait for it to be rejected?)

Maybe TurboTax should have a tool that checks against their system(based on SSN and some credit history questions, etc) to see if you(the fraudster in this case) has filed your taxes or not.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately there isn't an existing easy way to find out if your SSN has been used to file a tax return. When you file your taxes via efile[0], the IRS system will reject the tax return if a tax return with the same SSN has already been filed for that processing year.

If this happens to you you're forced to file by mail.

[0] Doesn't matter who you use to do your taxes. Even an accountant that has access to e-file.

<comment><USER21> In Canada, you can't get the e-file code if you've moved in the tax year so you have to mail in your tax return.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If Intuit wasn't breached, that means the problem could affect everyone in those states, not just TurboTax users.

<comment><USER33> Fraudulent tax refunds are a huge issues that the IRS has not kept up with. The IRS itself estimates it paid $5.2 billion to identity theives[1]. Protecting taxpayers without creating too much of a hurdle to tax paying is a very hard problem to solve.

[1] [http://time.com/money/3419136/identity-theft-social- security...](http://time.com/money/3419136/identity-theft-social-security- number-tax-return/)

<comment><USER34> It's an easy problem to solve but the solutions (Estonia style national identity cards or a flat PAYE tax on all forms of income) are not politically viable in the US.

<comment><USER35> Why is PAYE unviable? It wouldn't have to be flat.

<comment><USER34> Because there is an entire industry of which Intuit is part of that profits off the complexity of current tax system. Simplify the system and profits go down.

HR Block was caught lobbying against simplification of the tax system for this very reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If people can anonymously get money from refunds, doesn't that mean they're also using a fake ID to open their bank account, meaning the bank is being negligent and now "knowing its customer"? Or does the IRS pay people with cash?? Something's missing here.

</comment><comment> mark-r Maybe somebody's figured out an automated way to harvest the data from infected individual PCs? Then they use that information to file new returns.

<comment><USER37> Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but there have been bots doing this for well over 10 years now.

<comment> mark-r No, not being sarcastic - this is the first I've heard of it. And if it's been going on already, what turned it into a bigger problem all of a sudden?

<comment><USER37> Just trends in the cybercrime world, and the increased publicity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why doesn't the IRS issue pin codes to every registered social security number or entity? They don't even have to mail the pins. A simple web portal, where you log in, enter your SSN or EIN and it sends the pin via SMS or e-mail. Pins reset every year.

<comment><USER39> what about the people who don't have internet access?

edit: I'm also pretty sure the IRS and e-tax filers already do this for (edit: electronically filed) Federal returns, there it makes sense because if you're e-filing already, you can deal with a website for a PIN.

if you file without a PIN, they request more identifying information from you later, via mail.

<comment><USER40> You can also call 211 (United Way) in your area to see if you qualify for My Free Taxes.

[http://www.myfreetaxes.com/](http://www.myfreetaxes.com/)</comment></comment></comment>


TiVo: Cable is strangling our business with switched digital video (SDV) - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/02/tivo-cable-is-strangling-our-business.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss <comment><USER2> I've been a TiVo subscriber for almost 7 years now and hope they're around for a lot longer. As a Cablecard user, I've given up on-demand and PPV in exchange for having my own set top box. The change to SDV will only make things worse. I'd hate to give up my TiVo in exchange for a box from Comcast. My TiVo has a nicer UI, better recording options, and allows me to stream Netflix.

<comment><USER3> I miss my TiVo. I was an early adopter, buying one in 1999, and buying several more (with lifetime subscriptions) as wedding presents and christmas gifts.

Their idea won, but now I'm saddled with an awful, clunky satellite DVR that doesn't do anything useful with the unused space, and that has an interface that continues to baffle me slightly, despite having used it for a few years now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With the reunion between TiVo and DirecTV (there's a new product coming in the spring, supposedly, although I've been waiting a year), does this at least give TiVo a safe niche? Perhaps they'll be swallowed by DirecTV?</comment>


Ask HN: How do I find the time to read when I always feel compelled to create? - <AUTHOR> I want to read more books which I think will help my productivity and creativity, but I have more than enough creative projects to focus on. What is the best way to balance this? <comment><USER2> I would recommend scheduling it. Set a reminder on your phone. Personally I use Saturday mornings to get a couple of hours of reading in.

Having the reminder go off on my phone makes it feel like something I have to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Setting aside protected time sounds like a good idea. Simple.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Streem.io - Media Center on the Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.streem.io

<comment><USER2> So…are you fishing for interest/validation?

I don't mind it, just put it upfront that I'm not getting anything in exchange for my email address. Thought I get to try out the product but I'm just on a waiting list.

Then I'm asked to share/spam it, something that I have not tried/vetted, with my social circle?

I'm very interested in the service, just tell me upfront you're only collecting emails for now.

</comment><comment><USER3> A fantastic alternative is Plex (no affiliation). You can host your media on your own computer and watch it anywhere. Plex handles all the network nonsense (no ports to forward, etc...). Depending on the filetype and what your device can play, plex will either transcode on the fly seamlessly or just stream the exact original file.

Downside is you have to have a computer that is always on, connected, and potentially unusable for other purposes when transcoding. In my case it's a Acer Revo HTPC connected to the living room TV.

<comment><USER4> Is there a Plex client for Android?

I use AirVideo on iOS and it is flawless, but would like to find something similar for Android.

<comment><USER5> The Android client has just got a complete rewrite that's made it better than its iOS counterpart (I use both regularly). However, it's still in beta and only available to Plex Pass users until the final release.

There's also an app for Samsung Smart TVs that I use a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been a beta user of Streem, and how _fast_ my videos are ready to view is pretty incredible. Other services I've tried easily take an hour to transcode, but Streem gets it done in a few minutes. Really excited to see more folks using it.

<comment><USER7> With Flex and AirVideo transcoding is done in real time and works really well. Zero wait time for uploading and transcoding sure beats even a few minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks cool - but what is the advantage of using this over something like Plex? With Plex - I'm hosting the files myself... so I don't have to upload something until I want to watch it remotely. I realize that could also be a negative (if my server goes down while I'm traveling - bummer). But surely with my own server, I can have much more storage, and my files are instantly available once they're on the computer. Also - Plex is free.

<comment><AUTHOR> You nailed it -- we're useful for people that want to access their library from anywhere (at work, on vacation halfway around the world, etc.) on any device (phone, someone else's laptop, etc.) without having to lug around their DVD collection or an external hard drive. Having a server at home is also limiting because a) it uses your upload bandwidth, which clogs up your home internet connection, and b) your upload bandwidth probably isn't fast enough for instant streaming (the average is around ~1.6mbps these days), so buffering/seeking will slow you down.

The best way is to compare it to Dropbox -- Dropbox : USB :: Streem : Plex

<comment><USER9> Your position overlooks the massive file uploads we'd have to do to use your service. That's a lot more content "clogging up your home connection".

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true. The way we look at it is that it's a one-time hit that you take initially versus always having to keep a computer on at home for streaming using your home connection; we also let you transfer in files through other means, so if you already have some content stored online, you can easily transfer it in.

<comment><USER10> With most media like TV shows, you only watch it once - so watching it remotely from a home server is the same as your "one-time hit."

Just my two cents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a souped-up alternative to what I've been using for the last six months: <https://put.io/>

Part of what I love about Plex (which has worked great at home; not so much remotely) is that it aggregates a lot of online video sources inside the app. This looks to do about the same. Very cool. Best of luck to you guys.

</comment><comment><USER12> Do you anticipate any legal repercussions?

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting title but the site doesn't display correctly on the iPad, which is the only device I have handy…

<comment><USER14> Yeah I found this too, like some weird side effect of overflow hidden on the viewport perhaps? (disclaimer: not a great CSS dude...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just upload things to my s3 bucket and streams perfectly. Takes a little more management as I'll maybe delete a season and upload a season or movie at a time, but its really minimal amount of work for the times that I do know I'll want to watch something when away.

<comment><USER16> Interesting. Are you able to access your content on the go with a mobile device ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This needs an about section to show who is behind the service.

</comment><comment><USER18> I am a big fan of Put.io. This seems like a contender to replace it, although there is a long way to go. One of the wonderful things about Put.io is that it is so versatile. I use their Boxee app, Android App, iPad app, as well as the web version regularly. That's a lot of work to replicate.

</comment><comment><USER19> What sorting of pricing/space requirements are you planning on offering? I run a boxee server with several NAS devices on my home network and it works great - but it would be nice to watch something at my girlfriend's place without loading it up on a USB drive and carting it over.

<comment><USER20> Plex and MyPlex is also a pretty good solution to watching your media library away from home. And Plex is really a great media center on its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Collect the email then give the "sorry". That shit is dirty. Be straightforward upfront.

</comment><comment><USER22> So what is the catch on this? I am guessing there are legality issues and/or they extremely limit your library. No company can afford to offer what they claim to be offering without some serious cash behind them.

<comment><AUTHOR> It'll be through limiting your library -- free users will get a certain amount of space and streaming bandwidth for free, paid tiers get more as you scale up the price ladder (Dropbox style).

Additionally, we have a completely free collection of movies/TV shows aggregated from Sidereel, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, NBC, etc. At the very least, you can use this as your one stop to browse all the movies/TV shows you can stream through other services (for free, or if you have their subscription), receive recommendations, track with friends, etc.

<comment><USER22> Are those limits established yet? There isn't any place on the page that would indicate any limits or even the existence of paid tiers. This stuff should be visible before requiring a user to signup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow pretty cool splash page. To bad I can't even check out the service.

</comment><comment><USER24> The homepage mentions you can use your account here to stream content to any device, including consoles. How does that work? Can we connect to it as a network file server?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use our webapp using the console's web browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is this running on Node.js? The favicon looks like Express's.

<comment><AUTHOR> The website is on Node.js; the webapp itself is on Meteor.js

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is it safe to assume this isn't exactly legal? Why haven't Apple or Netflix done this? (because licensing deals suck!)

<comment><AUTHOR> On the legal front it's like Dropbox -- storing your personal media collection online and letting us transcode and organize it is fine, especially because the content is private (like Dropbox) and not publicly listed (we're not like Grooveshark). Of course, we're DMCA compliant and take down files if they're deemed illegally obtained.

<comment><USER26> I see, thanks for that.

So does that also mean you have to store every file? or more like iTunes Match where if the file exists on the server, everyone gets served the master, instead of storing duplicates from millions of users.

You don't really have to answer that. it's not an end-user concern.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're actually storing a single copy of every unique file. i.e. if you upload a completely identical, MD5 hash duplicate copy of something we already have stored, we'll just give you a pointer to that file. This way, we don't have to store _every_ file, and we're not like iTunes Match (which actually requires licensing) because we're not giving you a master file (iTunes Match gives you a master file that plays at 256kbps, even if you upload the same song at 128Kbps -- they can do this through licensing; we can't give you a master 720p video file even if you upload a 360p version because we don't have those licenses). Legally, doing the MD5 hash duplicate technique was deemed legal after MP3Tunes' case (not referring to their entire case, just the part about the MD5 hash duplication) because it's just like any other method of compression.

<comment><USER27> So if I know the MD5 digest of some content I would like, all I have to do is generate a collision and then "upload" it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why do you have to sign up to browse? Seems barbaric, or at least Medieval.

</comment><comment><USER29> What is the backend?

</comment><comment><USER30> It seems a lot like the defunct wixi.com

</comment><comment><USER31> How much can I upload 1GB? 10GB? 30TB?

</comment><comment><USER32> Another alternative is Tonido. Install Tonido in your computer and stream music and videos to iOS and Android devices. No need to port forwarding. It simply works. You can even stream your iTunes playlist.</comment>


Is there any hope for our overfished oceans? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/08/02/100802crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=all

<comment><USER3> A good first step would be to completely abolish fishing subsidies. Fish is priced abnormally low in stores because a portion of our income taxes go to pay for the fish a second time over.

Similar happens with Corn, however corn is a multi-functional food product. Humans eat it as corn, as bread, as oil, as sugars; then humans can also eat the cows, chickens, pigs and lambs that can also be corn fed, but we can also drink the cow's milk, use it as butter or cheese and we can use the chickens eggs, or we can use leather from cows or pigs, feathers from chickens and wool from a sheep.

What we as humans can get from corn is a list with thousands of items. However, what we as humans can get from fish is only a couple of items - <USER2> and from certain fish usable oils.

<comment><USER4> > A good first step would be to completely abolish fishing subsidies.

Especially if you couple it with some form of jobs or welfare for fishermen, so as to _decouple_ the political issues from the goal at hand (saving our fisheries).

But if you refuse to do that, you willingly bolt the battle to save our fisheries with other political issues that can and should be debated independently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you need to be careful distinguishing the issue of overfishing apex predators like the Atlantic bluefin tuna and the Newfoundland Cod, where we suspect they can go effectively (or at least commercially) extinct because other species go to the apex and keep their numbers down, from the implication this might decrease the total animal biomass of an area.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sure, at some point it will become cheaper to grow the fish in fish farms, at which point we aren't going to be fishing in the oceans anymore.

<comment><USER7> Except what do fish eat? Other fish / sea life - so then we basically need to breed an ocean full of sea life in a farm in order to eat the fish - yes it can be managed better, but not sure that will mean it becomes cheaper.

I don't think it's that simple

<comment><USER8> We can probably achieve higher densities. On land farming is also more efficient than hunting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Catch shares and more room for local governance (cf. Ostrom) should go a long way.

</comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr - No.

<comment><USER11> That's an inaccurately bleak summary.

While the author is discouraged about the fate of the bluefin tuna, and her final note is one of worry, her last three paragraphs are mostly about things that _could_ work:

 _And yet this is never where the new fish stories, or stories about the fish stories, wind up. Just when things seem bleakest, hope—dolphinlike—swims into the picture. David Helvarg concludes his memoir-cum-ecological-disaster narrative "Saved by the Sea" by declaring that, owing to a new attitude in Washington, things seem "to be looking up for the ocean." Similarly, Roberts closes his chronicle of more than a millennium of overfishing by asserting, "We can restore the life and habits of the sea because it is in everyone's interest that we do so."

The way to keep fishing, according to Roberts, lies in not fishing—or, at least, in not fishing everywhere. He proposes that huge swaths of the sea be set aside as so-called "marine protected areas," or M.P.A.s, where most commercial activity would be prohibited. In "Four Fish," Paul Greenberg argues that the salvation of wild fish lies in farmed ones, though not in the kind you'll find on ice at Stop & Shop. (Today, most farmed fish are fed on wild- caught fish, a practice that only exacerbates the problem.) Greenberg is a believer in what's sometimes called "smart aquaculture," and thinks we should be eating species like Pangasius hypophthalmus, commonly known as tra. Tra happily feed on human waste and were originally kept in Southeast Asia to dispose of the contents of outhouses. Michael Weber, the author of "From Abundance to Scarcity," is encouraged by the introduction of new regulatory mechanisms such as "individual transferable quotas," or I.T.Q.s. The idea behind I.T.Q.s is that if fishermen are granted a marketable stake in the catch they will have a greater economic interest in preserving it.

M.P.A.s, smart aquaculture, and I.T.Q.s—these are all worthy proposals that, if instituted on a large enough scale, would probably make a difference. As Roberts notes, it is in "everyone's interest" to take the steps needed to prevent an ocean-wide slide into slime. But it is also in everyone's interest to save the Atlantic bluefin tuna. Still, it is being fished to the edge of extinction, which is why a hopeful ending is not always the most convincing one._

<comment><USER12> The world can barely agree to ban whaling and most of it doesn't have a taste for whale. Good luck with tuna.

The relevant agencies that would have to sign off on the sea preserves are the same ones that green-lit all the overfishing to date and show absolutely no sign of even acknowledging _why_ we've moved on to fishing things like the patagonian toothfish (itself now overfished).</comment></comment></comment>


What to Blame for Your Stomach Bug? Not Always the Last Thing You Ate - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/well/live/what-to-blame-for-your-stomach-bug-not-always-the-last-thing-you-ate.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share <comment><USER2> As a restauranteur, I (very occasionally!) get calls from people accusing us of making them ill, threatening bad reviews and demanding vouchers or refunds.

The majority of the time it's someone who tries the same scam on every restaurant. Fortunately, around here at least, independent restaurant owners and managers keep in contact with each other and keep a track of these things. I did hear about one scammer recently who called every restaurant in town saying they had made him ill on the same day - the chain places pretty much all gave a cash refund for what he said he'd spent.

Other times it's someone who has actually eaten with you but forgotten that they had seven beers with their steak.

Whatever the situation appears to be, the best way is to always take accusations super seriously, ask for a doctor's letter, a sample for testing, contact environmental health etc. This is the point where everyone backs down, scamming or just hung over.

Never had a genuine food poisoning case at anywhere I've worked or failed an inspection or anything of that sort...we know what we're doing better than you do at home after all

<comment><USER3> From a customer's perspective, it's really hard to prove, so I have rarely done anything when I have gotten ill.

Most of the cases it's been rather mild symptoms and I have suspected the canteen at work for serving leftovers that probably hadn't been chilled fast enough. I've simply stopped eating things that I recognize from the past...

I have also gotten sick from moules marinières where I suspect that they used the same tools for fresh and cooked mussels as it must have been some kind of virus that knocked out both me and my friend with a high fever and rather alarming symptoms for 24 hours. I just decided to never go there again...

However, I once called the health and sanity inspectors when I was served a incorrectly cooked Escolar served as "butterfish" at a lunch restaurant, which led to an interesting night for everyone in the same company. The restaurant offered a free meal but I just wanted them to stop serving shit they didn't know how to cook.

<comment><USER4> There is no correct way to cook escolar aka butterfish aka olestrafish. It's banned for sale in some places, should be banned everywhere.

<comment><USER3> Theoretically, you can grill it, and hope that most wax esters will melt, but I wouldn't want to bet my underpants on that again.

I'm told that it also develops histamines in a much higher rate than other fish so there is also a risk for a severe reaction in general.

<comment><USER5> I can't imagine that most of the fats would melt off without it ruining the fish anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since last August, when I had a severe GERD issue that took six months to go away, I keep a very detailed daily journal of everything I eat, the time I eat it and any kind of symptoms it might be causing me even hours later. It's the best way, and probably the only one, to isolate foods that make my stomach upset. Now I can correlate symptoms with foods/hours and draw conclusions based on hard data. It has helped me a lot to fight GERD, even more than the drugs my gastroenterologist prescribed. So I guess I've hacked my own health in a way.

<comment><USER7> Hey, how do you track your meals?

I'm working on an app (Bitesnap) to help people keep track of their diet. At some point we'd like to add more features to help users figure out what's causing their dietary issues.

<comment><USER6> I'm using a simple Excel worksheet to record everything and once a month I move the data to an SQL Server table for easier correlations.

BTW, make sure you also give the ability to record beverages because in many cases they're the root of stomach problems. And you could add some social functionality so users could correlate with others who have similar dietary habits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my younger days, I used to get my normal share of cold and flu and gastric upsets. Since instigating a few basic precautionary behaviors and no-gos, I haven't had a sick day for more than ten years.

I _never_ stick fingers in my mouth or nose, and I only rub my eyes when reasonably satisfied that it is safe to do so.

I take care not uncritically to touch exposed things and surfaces in public areas. And only use trolleys or baskets in supermarkets if absolutely forced to. I'm aware that anything conveyed by the check-out conveyoer belt is potentially contaminated.

I wash my hands, of course, though I am by no means fanatical about it.

<comment><USER9> Curiously, I do all those things without a second thought -- as well as my daily habit of picking up at least one piece of trash from the street and putting it in a trash can, putting my bare hands on subway poles and in dirt when gardening -- and have also not had a sick day in as long as I can remember, at least a decade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> And if your goal is to be productive as a programmer: any faint headache will make you feel as if you are not motivated. These barely noticeable headaches may come from bad water, bad food, no water, no food, you stayed in wind, you are about to get sick, you stayed in hot sun, you didn't rest well (too cold, too hot, not enough sleep) and so on.

<comment><USER11> This probably explains why I'm often tempted to binge eat instead of working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gastrointestinal issues are almost never due to the last thing you ate, unless you're living in a third world country. It's usually the highly contagious norovirus, which you typically get from shared bathrooms and door handles. Most people just call it food poisoning because that's just how our brains work, as a protective bias.

<comment><USER13> Citation needed

<comment><USER12> See outbreaks:

[https://www.cdc.gov/norovirus/trends- outbreaks.html](https://www.cdc.gov/norovirus/trends-outbreaks.html)

50% of food borne illnesses are already caused by norovirus. Now look at the graph above, and notice that non-food based transmission of norovirus is almost 8x higher.

Differentiating between norovirus from actual food poisoning is not too difficult either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This strikes me as an interesting case if the credit assignment problem from reinforcement learning[0] (Think of the reward in this case being negative, you get sick)

[0] [http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Reinforcement_learning#....](http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Reinforcement_learning#.28Temporal.29_Credit_Assignment_Problem)

</comment><comment><USER15> When people say they have "food poisoning" and blame it on something in particular I always point out that it's almost _never_ what you think it is.

However, even knowing that doesn't help a whole lot with the queasiness that one associates with that food item. I've had a few GI bugs which have caused me to never be able to eat at the "offending" establishment ever again, even though I now the likelihood that the mental connection is correct is near 0

<comment><USER16> I got sick drinking a bit too much limoncello once day. Now I can't stomach lemon flavored seltzer. I taste it and feel like I'm going to vomit.

<comment><USER17> That's called taste aversion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My family used to own a restaurant. We used to get occasional calls from people claiming to be sick. People would be dumb enough to call us screaming, with an indignant attitude, blaming something they ate at our establishment an hour ago.

Foodborne illness usually takes longer to set in, and in most cases, is something they prepared for themselves at home. Not all restaurants are perfect of course, but most take precautions, not risks, when it comes to their livelihoods.

</comment><comment><USER19> It surprises me that the article doesn't mention the idea that intentional maintainence and nourishment of ones own intestinal flora is one way to help defend against unpleasant intestinal events.

<comment><USER20> Because it's still unproven. And your friendly intestinal flora is gonna get it's asses kicked if a load of salmonella or e-coli comes a-callin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article reeks of Germ-o-phobia.</comment>