Facebook leases 730k-square-foot office space in New York City - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/nyregion/facebook-nyc-office-farley-building.html <comment><AUTHOR> "With the 730,000-square-foot lease, Facebook has acquired more than 2.2 million square feet of office space in the city for thousands of employees in less than a year, all of it on Manhattan's West Side between Pennsylvania Station and the Hudson River."

"The timing of the deal's announcement was somewhat of a surprise because Facebook, which had expressed interest in the Farley Building for months, has given most of its employees the option of working from home during the pandemic. Even after the pandemic subsides, Facebook has said that within the next 10 years up to half of its roughly 52,200 employees across the country would work from home."</comment>


QuineDB – A quine that is also a key-value store - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gfredericks/quinedb <comment><USER2> This is one of those glorious "because I can" projects that I love to see on HN. It shows that in a world full of big data, VC, and startups, where tech is a big buisiness, we can still do something for the fun of it, without having a reason, or trying to provide value. In short, it shows that the hacker spirit isn't dead.

I wonder if we can create a sort of Y combinator for quines: A function called YQ, that, when called with any function X as an argument will pass X a value that, when printed, generates reproduces both X and YQ, and calls X with YQ. I suppose the problem is that it would be hard to reproduce all of the values X depends on. You could just hedge on this, but that's not really the Right Thing.

Also, I think this is the Most Functional database: it rebuilds the entire program every time state changes.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's also the Most Object-Oriented database: it combines the data and the procedures to access that data into a single encapsulated object. An exemplary design in all respects!

<comment><USER2> See? I know OO and FP weren't mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is totally awesome, and fun. Also it makes me remember a work I participated in when I was still an undergrad:

 _Can Code Polymorphism Limit Information Leakage?_ [https://pablo.rauzy.name/research.html#amarilli2011polymorph...](https://pablo.rauzy.name/research.html#amarilli2011polymorphism)

The idea is that based on a Quine with payload (similar to what QuineDB does) we are able to produce a different but equivalent version of the code, and replace it with this new version, so that each time it executes, the execution trace (e.g. power leakage) is different.

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazing. If you like this, you may also like Quine Relay, a quine program that cycles through 100 different languages:

[https://github.com/mame/quine-relay](https://github.com/mame/quine-relay)

</comment><comment><USER5> Love it!

quinedb can even store an 'extra' snapshot copy of quinedb, with "quinedb" as the key, inside quinedb:

      quinedb set quinedb `cat quinedb` | sponge quinedb

sponge, which is part of the moreutils package, soaks up standard input and then writes it to a file.

<comment><USER6> Why not cat > quinedb ?

<comment><USER7> Sponge delays the overwriting of the input file, so its not trying to read and write quinedb at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really clever. I am working through EOPL, and this seems pretty familiar; it's the procedural representation of a database!

Can't wait to deploy this with my next web app.

<comment><USER9> Whats EOPL?

<comment><USER8> Essentials of Programming Languages; an introduction to functional programming, as well as other concepts.

<comment><USER2> EPL isn't really about FP... it's more about programming languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the perfect storage solution for my beowulf cluster

</comment><comment><USER11> My favorite part of README.md:

Can I run a QuineDB cluster?

Well I mean, um.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's a Quine

<comment><USER3> It is a program that produces its own source code as output.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_%28computing%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_%28computing%29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Now that's what I call continuous deployment!

</comment><comment><USER14> In the company I'm working for I'm using a bash script that keeps track of my development builds, because I need to store multiple pieces of information for each one that are not readily available.

For this reason I am storing stuff in a small sqlite database. If I was ever to do this again, I would strongly consider using QuineDB instead.

</comment><comment><USER15> Love it, the Readme is hilarious. Looks like you could avoid some code duplication though with a little awk script run by the script on its own source.

</comment><comment><USER16> Will be a perfect backend for QuineWebFramework...</comment>


How Will the Universe End? - <AUTHOR> https://sparkonit.com/2019/02/26/how-will-universe-end/ <comment><USER2> Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.</comment>


Study: Teen Cannabis Users Have Poor Long-Term Memory in Adulthood - <AUTHOR> http://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/news/2015/03/Csernansky-teen-cannabis-use.html <comment><USER2> Ugh. I'm all for legalization, but the public discourse has skewed the risk perception of it. OK, it may not be as bas as alcohol, but that certainly doesn't make it harmless.

For people who have access, I highly recommend this review article from June 2014 in the New England Journal of Medicine, arguably the most respected scientific medical publication in the world, which goes over the published scientific litterature about Marijuana: bottom line, it's not as innofensive as some make it to be, and adolescents are most at risk. Caveat Emptor.

[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1402309](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1402309)

(personally, I do believe it should be legalized for policy and social reasons, but that doesn't mean I think it's biologically harmless)

<comment><USER3> The problem is: the USG _prevents_ research in the area. It is extremely hard to get permission from the DEA to research the effects of MJ.

I don't believe anyone is claiming that MJ is harmless; but that overall, MJ's harm is lesser than the harm caused by alcohol or tobacco. Teens are already known to be more susceptible to chemical substances because of their developing brains, so this study doesn't seem to be very surprising.

<comment><USER4> > tobacco

Why would cannabis be less harmful than tobacco? The smoke from each is roughly the same, with the obvious differences being nicotine in tobacco and cannbinoids in cannabis.

Maybe cannabis smokers smoke less frequently than cigarette smokers; but maybe they inhale the smoke deeper and hold it longer.

It's a bit frustrating that anyone who expresses any concern about cannabis is written off as a propagandist of an oppressive government.

(I'm pro legalisation)

<comment><USER5> Smoke for smoke, cannabis and tobacco are probably equally harmful. It's the combustion of plant matter and the inhalation of smoke, not the nicotine _per se_ , that makes tobacco so harmful. The same applies for smoked cannabis, and indeed, some studies have found cannabis smoke slightly more harmful in that regard, in so far as cannabis isn't usually smoked with a filter.

But unlike tobacco, cannabis does not contain a chemical as highly addictive as nicotine. Your average tobacco smoker probably smokes an order of magnitude more tobacco than your average cannabis smoker smokes cannabis. Evidently there _is_ a nonzero risk of physical or psychological dependency for marijuana, but it's nowhere near the risk profile of tobacco.

<comment><USER6>
        > Smoke for smoke, cannabis and tobacco are probably
        > equally harmful.

I feel like you're disagreeing with the article.

If you smoke heavily from 14 and quit at 18, your health risks from tobacco will normalise to that of a non-smoker after x years, but there's a suggestion here that if it's cannabis you're smoking, you've caused yourself irreparable harm

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Young adults who abused cannabis as teens performed about 18 percent worse > on long-term memory tests than young adults who never abused cannabis.

Wonderful. Another study with no basis for distinguishing causality from correlation.

I bet you can randomly select a subgroup of 18-percent poorer performers and find that they have all sorts of things in common, from diet to exercise to presence or absence of parents - as well as bizarre factors like who was born on a Tuesday.

There are probably dozens of markers that both correlate with these kinds of results and also plausibly suggest an explanation.

> "It is possible that the abnormal brain structures reveal a pre-existing > vulnerability to marijuana abuse," Smith said. "But evidence that the longer > the participants were abusing marijuana, the greater the differences in > hippocampus shape suggests marijuana may be the cause."

What?! No it doesn't. It suggests quite the opposite: that people with greater abnormality tend to use marijuana longer.

I suspect that, now that medical cannabis is widely available and somewhat widely used in the treatment of childhood maladies, we may begin to see, in the next decade or so, results based on much sounder science simply because of the availability of higher quality sample groups.

<comment><USER8> When people don't like the result of a study, the very existence of "causality" all of sudden turns into a point of contention.

<comment><USER7> It's true that I don't like the result of this study. My experience is that plenty of healthy, smart, motivated, effective people consume cannabis quite regularly. I have been smoking marijuana quite regularly since I was about 19 years old (which is 13 years ago now) and of course I don't like to think of myself as cognitively impaired.

However, I think that studies like this are particularly vulnerable to this critique of methodology. Any time you assess the performance of a large group and then divide that group into subgroups, you are going to find trends of varying levels of statistical significance.

It is incredibly easy to do. [http://www.tylervigen.com/](http://www.tylervigen.com/)

That is why, in every scope-and-methods class in every college across the country, the various methods for ascertaining causality are demonstrated and taught.

Reading only the linked article and not the study itself, I so far have the impression that none of these were seriously considered - presumably on the basis of ethical treatment of humans subjects. You can't just take a group of people with a particular set of desirable control features (perhaps, in this case, a typically shaped hippocampus) and force-feed them cannabis smoke for three years.

On the other hand, it's just as easy to read this study as meaning that people who performed poorly on the relatively specific requirements of this study seemed to prefer to smoke marijuana. If this study were about serious science, the conclusion might be the utterly uninteresting sky-is-blue headline, "absent-minded people likely to smoke weed."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> An excellent book on the topic of drug abuse is Gabor Mate's, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. He makes a convincing argument that the majority of drug users are struggling with severe early trauma. Given this study and Mate's book, it may just be that traumatized people are looking for ways to forget. They could be seeking the forgetfulness as exactly what they want. This is different from saying that memory loss is necessarily a bad, unintended consequence.

</comment><comment><USER10> The difference between a medicine and a poison is dosage.

"Binging Alcohol Abuse Leads To Loss Of Working Memory In Teens": [http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/231267.php](http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/231267.php)

<comment><USER11> Medicine dosage is critically important, but do you mean to imply any poison can be good for you in small enough amounts?

 _No safe blood lead level has been identified._

\-- [http://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Lead_FactSheet.html](http://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Lead_FactSheet.html)

Which, tangentially, reminds me of "Unsafe at any Speed"

<comment><USER12> > _Medicine dosage is critically important, but do you mean to imply any > poison can be good for you in small enough amounts?_

He said "the difference between a medicine and poison".

Not between "poison and a medicine".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This seems to be a simple correlational study with the added bonus that abnormal hippocampi is also correlated with pot usage.

There isn't even an attempt to establish any sort of causality here yet the article uses the word 'affects'.

<comment><USER14> "It is possible that the abnormal brain structures reveal a pre-existing vulnerability to marijuana abuse," Smith said. "But evidence that the longer the participants were abusing marijuana, the greater the differences in hippocampus shape suggests marijuana may be the cause."

Correlation, sure, but correlation with length of usage. Definitely a more interesting angle than simply usage <-> deformation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It will be great when this substance can be officially studied in a clinical setting but so long as its a schedule 1 substance at the federal level, well, its worse than methamphetamine (on paper).

<comment><USER16> [http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourc...](http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000884)

(Also, in what way is cannabis worse on paper than methamphetamine?)

<comment><USER17> In the US, methamphetamine is Schedule II, and legal to prescribe (indicated for use in ADHD or obesity, trade brand Desoxyn).

Pot is Schedule I, indicating no medical use and strictly prohibited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find it really interesting that this jumps to the top of Hacker News. I wonder if it's because:

\- This study is self-serving for people who are anti-marijuana or

\- Hacker News users tend to be interested in or users of marijuana and find this study concerning

I'd guess a bit of both but more the latter since the Hacker News community tends to be quite liberal.

<comment><USER19> I would guess it's an area ripe for start ups in each new state where it is legalized/decriminalized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not certain this paper I'm referencing is the same one referenced in this thread's article, but the doctor was a collaborator on this:

44 healthy controls, 10 subjects with a CUD history, 28 schizophrenia subjects with no history of substance use disorders, and 15 schizophrenia subjects with a CUD history

[http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/2...](http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/2/287)

I'm no scientist, but it seems a little presumptuous to me to say I've come to a general conclusion about anything when all I have to investigate are 25 people. To quote the above "10 subjects with a CUD (Cannabis Use Disorder) history,... and 15 schizophrenia subjects with a CUD history".

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not saying this to try to discredit this or any other study, but I think it would be appropriate for publications, universities, hospitals, doctors whose names are on studies to disclose affiliations. Especially with contentious issues like marijuana.

After a brief Google search I found other studies where this same doctor (John Csernansky, MD) has linked marijuana use to "Schizophrenia-like Brain Changes".

[http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/818082](http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/818082)

<comment><USER21> How is that an "affiliation". Isn't it natural that people tend to publish on the same topic?

<comment><USER20> Like I said in the original comment, I'm not trying to discredit anyone or even this particular study. I'm simply seeking a more deliberate model of transparency. That also goes for studies who may claim that marijuana is healthy or "less harmful" than other products.

This guy has over the course of several years come up with very damaging evidence that marijuana is irreversibly harmful to humans. To start with, to know who these studies are funded by would be helpful so I can know whether it deserves my attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sometimes I wonder what a booze/pot/acid/ecstasy free me would be like. Binged on all of them as a teenager. Would I be 10% smarter? 20%? More? Better moods?

<comment><USER23> "n of 1" story. One summer between semesters at university, my room mate and I really took up smoking weed. After about a month or two, I really noticed a difference in myself mentally. Took longer to think things through, many more "That was stupid moments" etc. I decided to stop then and it all seemed to go back to normal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> is this really news? :)

</comment><comment><USER25> This from the medical journal "Duh".

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm sorry what page am I on? What is this website?

</comment><comment><USER27> Exactly why it should be illegal for ADOLESCENTS. Not for adults over the age of 18.

<comment><USER28> I'm good with this, as long as you also don't expect the tax payers to pay for your medical bills when you have medical issues due to your long-term MJ usage.

<comment><USER29> _" I'm good with this, as long as you also don't expect the tax payers to pay for your medical bills when you have medical issues due to your long-term Sedentary Lifestyle."_

Fixed it for you. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yeah... being there, I'm like... Wait... about what we were talking??

</comment><comment><USER31> Prescription drug users also experience memory loss and poor long-term effects. Though I did smoke quite a bit when I was younger.... uh... forgot what I was gonna say ;)

</comment><comment><USER32> I think there needs to be more studies. I'm sure Cannabis does effect development of the brain during adolescence, but does the brain recover over a period of time or is it perm dramage.</comment>


Hipster Logo Generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.hipsterlogogenerator.com/ <comment><USER2> One of the very nice things about hipsterdom is that it has allowed us, by pretending to be ironic about it, to go back to the graphical language of the past, with roots as far back as heraldry.

<comment><USER3> This is less hipsterdom and more just postmodernism in general (of which hipsterdom is a manifestation)

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure of that, because I'm not sure it is possible to generalize about postmodernism. While most postmodern theorists would agree on doing away with the high-modern rejection of any classical, traditional or historical vernacular, there isn't a coherent positive direction they would recommend, and many post-modernisms would be as embarrassed by an earnestly traditional work as a high-modernist.

Perhaps I'm seeing what I'm looking for, but, in hipsterdom, I see an aggressive undercurrent of unabashed classicism and traditionalism, taken forward in meaning, but not necessarily in formalism, underlying a very shallow ironic shield that preserves just enough ambiguity to allow bailing out on full classicism when pressed by modernists and postmodernists.

It's a continuum, of course, but I would expect a postmodernist to make a logo with obviously absurd historical references, juxtaposed in a surprising manner, whereas a hipster would put the cool shit he or she likes today in a straight-forward reference to a historical style, letting the meaning supply the irony, rather than the form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to heavily use [http://cooltext.com/](http://cooltext.com/) to generate logos over 10 years ago, and amazingly it's still there. The site is a web interface to GIMP (or at least was). It basically converts text into any typeface/effect you want.

HipsterLogoGenerator is the modern day equivalent. Text as an image isn't very Web 2.0 (you're supposed to write an equivalent sized CSS file to create the same effect), but today's logos should be ambiguous in relation to the company or products purpose.

<comment><USER5> I think SVGs are emerging as the current standard, logos are naturally vector anyway and being able to reuse a cached version is useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hahaha, awesome I think I'll use this one day. The terms of use are pretty interesting. Looking like the PNGs you can download are unrestricted in terms of use. But they may plan to add a payment feature for SVG downloads:

"Hipster Logo Generator does not own, or sell to others any graphic generated by Hipster Logo Generator users. Anything created on Hipster Logo Generator may be used in your own or commercial projects. It is your responsibility to abide by any licensing regulations related to any design elements on this site, many of which are outlined in the "Resources" section. Hipster Logo Generator is not liable for any artwork / graphic created by its users.

All use of the design elements offered on Hipster Logo Generator are AT YOUR OWN RISK. Prior to creating and using any Logo, Hipster Logo Generator encourages you to perform due diligence to determine that the use of all content within your generated logo is free of any adverse claims and is not subject to any third party rights. Hipster Logo Generator and its creator is not liable if this requirement is not met.

SVG Files Users must pay the amount set forth via credit card or other payment method in order to access this file format."

<comment><USER7> I find these terms strange. I have to pay for the high resolution and SVG but still have to check for right violations. For a payment of 5$ (compare stock photo prices), I expect the right to use it

<comment><USER8> He's obviously concerned about being sued by, for example, McDonald's because you made and used a logo having golden arches in the shape of an "M" with on a red background with text "McDonald's" at the bottom. There's no way he can detect or prevent every such possibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Meh - it's not an Artisanal Hipster Logo Generator

</comment><comment><USER10> I feel like I've just discovered the tool that the makers of all those "ironic t-shirts" use.

Iterate through this based on a random seed and you'd have instant profit by selling to freshmen.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure if you're serious, but I agree that random would be a better approach. For example, the page could generate 10 random logos, then you choose the one you prefer. Then, it generates 10 random logos based on that one, and repeat. This way, you literally just click three times, and you decided on the best logo for you out of 1,000 randomly generated ones.

Right now it's kind of clunky, and it takes a little while just to setup one concept. I think the target audience is looking for instant here, not a lot of customization.

<comment> florian-f I like your approach, even better if you had the option to customize your choice at each iteration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Terms of Service link doesn't work. I suppose that means I can do whatever I want with this? Cool!

I used this to make the logo for my kickass ninja rockstar get-the-girls get- the-boys HTTPDY/2 Wangular.js responsive Big Data™ Cloud dirty funky native HTML5 Node.php.rb.haml.sass Web 2.0 .com app! Look: [http://imgur.com/1OxBPKD](http://imgur.com/1OxBPKD)

<comment><USER13> pretty sure I just wasted 15 minutes [http://i.imgur.com/ZZBR1fu.png](http://i.imgur.com/ZZBR1fu.png)

<comment><USER14> Now add a "backend" and sell it for 10 billion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I only pay for cruelty-free SVG images, or possible, for free range PNGs.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cool but needs a way to go 'back'. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER17> This is really fun. Is there a way to go back to the previous section while designing? It would be nice to add it, or make that option more apparent. I also think the word hipster is a bit over-played and a turn-off to a lot of people these days. Besides that, cool toy.

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice concept and love the styles. Technical speaking, H5/Canvas would be a better solution to provide flexibility for what you want to create comparing with pure jQuery. Check this: [http://svg- edit.googlecode.com/svn/branches/stable/editor/sv...](http://svg- edit.googlecode.com/svn/branches/stable/editor/svg-editor.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> This is actually a pretty cool tool. The only thing I'm not so enamored with is that the loading times on the right panel are very long.

<comment><USER20> Probably a bit of hn hug, it went fast just now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty neat, but I wouldn't want to contaminate the integrity of my Handcrafted With Love™ footer banner

</comment><comment><USER21> Pretty cool. Has anyone created a logo from this website that they are currently using for a side project?

<comment><USER22> Forget about a side project, this is perfect for the enterprise!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Neat tool. I'd like if there were a way to share the logo via URL or edit it once it was created.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not bad, quite nifty interface as well. I'd use it for a quick site.

Perhaps the next step in the evolution of this logo would be to add some CSS selectors to the text (shadow, glow) for readability purposes against img. backgrounds.

</comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of printshop from 30 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's just a matter of time before someone reimplements Office 97 WordArt with JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER27> Very fun to play around with, but the UX could be improved upon!

</comment><comment><USER28> Nice. +1 for puttin together some sample logos in the blog.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice, does somebody know another solid logo generator?

<comment><USER22> Squarespace

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd love for there to be a hubot plugin for this.

</comment><comment><USER31> 60% of Behance.

</comment><comment><USER32> Seems buggy!

<comment><USER33> Yet minimally viable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> SADLY UNCANNY /caps

</comment><comment><USER35> I can't be the only one who sees this as yet another cue that it's time to stop using these played-out design elements. "Est. 2015", "Purveyors of fine...", etc. And yet, the comments here are full of people who seem to legitimately want to use this? To make real design elements for their real projects?

That said, this is a wonderful project. It'll be great to point this out the next time I need to talk someone out of leaning on this particular design language.

<comment><USER22> They're doing it ironically.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do some email clients track 'who read' the email? - <AUTHOR> This is puzzling me.
Even if there are multiple receivers, `to`, `cc`, `bcc` there are some companies that in their client tell you exactly who opened it.
How is it implemented? I always assume these trackers use some hidden pixel image when sending emails - but how can they trace the exact person who opened the email? <comment><USER2> In the good old days when one could telnet to SMTP servers, you could input several RCPT TO commands to define multiple recipients. I would guess all of the recipients would receive the exact same email.

This reference also shows [https://www.samlogic.net/articles/smtp-commands- reference.ht...](https://www.samlogic.net/articles/smtp-commands- reference.htm) that you can define a "To:" header field, so even though the client shows "This email was sent to the following people" (by parsing the "To:" header), there's technically nothing stopping the mail client to lie in the header about who the mail was sent to. Or that 2 recipient could get 2 different versions of the e-mail.

I guess the mail client crafts a unique email (with a unique tracking pixel URL) and addresses it (via RCPT TO) to a unique recipient, but in the "To:" header it will specify all the recipients, claiming "Each of the following people got an exact copy of the e-mail".

<comment><AUTHOR> very insightful, thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Embed some piece of HTML that calls back to the URL of an external server. Each recipient gets a slightly different URL. So when the email client parses <img src="server<dot>com/emailtracker.php?id=abcd"/> it connects to server<dot>com/emailtracker.php and passes your ID ( _abcd_ ) to the emailtracker.php page.

Then some code in emailtracker.php finds your ID in a table of ID's issued by sent emails and records your IP and browser fingerprint alongisde the ID they issued you when they sent the email.

<comment><USER4> Nowadays most email providers and clients like Thunderbird block non-local images for this reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I always assume these trackers use some hidden pixel image when sending > emails - but how can they trace the exact person who opened the email?

Apparently they use a hidden pixel, i.e. a separate tracking code, for each recipient. There was a discussion about this feature in Super Human: [https://blog.superhuman.com/read-statuses- bdf0cc34b6a5](https://blog.superhuman.com/read-statuses-bdf0cc34b6a5)

<comment><AUTHOR> how would that work? so every recipient would receive different email content with different pixel?

<comment><USER6> Yep. Each user gets an email unique to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> wouldn't then CC, BCC and TO headers not fit? and emails form different thread, i.e. in gmail?

<comment><USER7> The headers are totally irrelevant for the actual delivery of the mail. For delivery the so-called envelope is relevant (MAIL FROM, RCPT TO).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This should not work if your email client is configured to not load the images.

<comment><USER9> I read emails as raw text. I wrap mine so your eyes don't travel too much horizontally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Easiest way is a 1x1 tracking pixel that basically sends an ACK back to the sender when it loads. It can also resolve information about the recipient of the email from databases the mailer has from previous campaigns along with people intelligence search engines like Sparkpeople and Pipl.

However, that requires the client having HTML email enabled, which most of them do (since most don't care about that sort of stuff).

The other way is by using a BCC, since MTAs will route the email to them but do not display it back to the client. However, some email servers can filter based on bcc's, and I'm guessing that this is illegal.

</comment><comment><USER11> Email client generates a read receipt.</comment>


Hacker Dojos Aren't Factories for "Idea" People - <AUTHOR> http://danielmiessler.com/blog/notice-hacker-dojos-arent-factories-for-idea-people <comment><USER2> What I would do if I was on the receiving end of that conversation:

Get really excited and started coding on your laptop. Code the entire thing and do a great job. Make it really shine for the guy, follow up on his comments, tell him "excellent idea, why didn't I think of that". Do it all locally. After an hour or two of this, the idea guy should be smugly confident about how awesome he is and what a good idea coming to the dojo was. When it is all finished, start to walk away or start working on something else. The idea guy will probably ask something along the lines of "Wait, can I haz it?"

Then quote an obscene hourly rate and ride out the storm. "Oh, you mean you actually want to have this? Sorry, I thought this was just a practice exercise or something. It will cost about $300 for me to send it to you." At the very least, he won't be so assuming anymore.

<comment><USER3> If you worked a few hours on it and it was good, I'd happily pay $300 for your labor.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, my response was fairly tongue in check, but it isn't hard to imagine a scenario where the idea guy starts grumbling and shells out whatever you ask.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> PS: Hacker Dojo is a hacker space in Mountain View. "Hacker space" is the word you're looking for.

<comment><USER5> And even then, not exactly. The Hacker Dojo is sortof unusual among hacker spaces in that it's almost entirely based in software, with a little electronics. Most of them include sewing, metal working, any sort of DIY stuff. Noisebridge in San Fran isn't far away and is more in line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think hackers by nature weed out non-technical people pretty quickly. I love hackerdojo and noisebridge. I think this post is great in that it highlights what it really comes down to: a misunderstanding on the person as to what a hackerspace is.

It's about educating those that come in that people pride themselves on getting stuff done.

Also I don't want to discourage any non-coders visiting these hackerspaces. Please come by! But keep in mind that if you are after someone to do work for you, you'll fail pretty bad. If you are here to learn, then by all means, take a seat, I'll even help you out.

</comment><comment><USER7> I see OP imagining himself doing some LOTR style "You Shall Not Pass" to one of these evil 'idea' types at a hacker space. Situation portrayed seems unlikely and somewhat contrived, i.e. I would hope that most hackers would be independently capable of fending off someone "...from Hollywood...".

<comment><AUTHOR> Not contrived. That was the actual dialog, as it happened, within like five minutes of it happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So far as I can tell, Hacker Dojo is one particular place in the Bay Area. Do others exist in other areas?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, perhaps "dojo" is a term for the Bay Area ones, but there are other groups across the country where people get together to code collaboratively.

<comment><USER9> Actually, the more common name is hackerspace (or hackspace), and they are quite common all over the world:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace#Notable_hackerspace...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace#Notable_hackerspaces)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can Vultr offer 100% uptime? - <AUTHOR> I was reading Vultr's SLA: https://www.vultr.com/sla/.
Although they require you to acknowledge the outage by submitting a support ticket while your server is down or it's not considered an outage (and that's not going to happen, specially for 9-minutes outages), they do say they offer 100% uptime.
How reliable is this? AWS went down many times, I doubt Vultr can actually do it, or I'm missing something? <comment><USER2> It's marketing.

They promise the 100% offer account credits if (read: when) they don't meet their promise. The cost of not meeting their promise, if caught, is minimal—if your $10/mo VPS is down for 59 minutes, they offer 24 hours worth of credit (which works out to about $0.33). Being able to make this claim is _very much_ worth the amount they expect to pay out in account credits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, also the fact that you have to find out that the server is down, and open a ticket or it won't count as an outage. I just thought it was weird they claimed 100%.

I guess everyone goes down. I'm building a GlusterFS cluster. I have 2 nodes with Digital Ocean, 2 with Vultr in Amsterdam, and 2 in Frankfurt. Hopefully the whole Vultr infrastructure won't go down for a long time or the 2 Digital Ocean servers will get a lot of load.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Swift Hex UIColor extension - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rajahafify/UIColorHex

<comment><USER2> Neat, but you should add a License file. Not useful to most without one...</comment>


Paper, the least terrible password management tool (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Passcode-Voices/2015/0619/Opinion-Paper-the-least-terrible-password-management-tool <comment><USER2> Paper is an awful medium for password management, for a host of reasons:

1\. It's vulnerable to phishing. The vast majority of sites still do not support U2F or similar, and typing in a password from paper means that a human is validating the domain, not a machine.

2\. It's not encrypted at rest. This means that leaving your wallet somewhere means all your passwords have been exposed. It also means in many legal cases (IANAL, US law, etc) the contents of that paper are a key to all the other encryption you might have. In particular, courts have held that the fifth amendment protects a defendant from being compelled to reveal passwords in many circumstances.

3\. It's difficult to keep in sync with new registrations, logins, and password changes - given the widespread use of mobile phones, it means that you are likely to take that piece of paper with you, compounding the risks in #2

5\. Paper isn't durable. Spill a drink on it and everything is basically gone.

6\. Paper isn't generally structured to obscure passwords - open your browser's password manager, and you'll see ________for each password unless you click to reveal it. With paper, you are much more vulnerable to shoulder surfing.

Edit:

7\. Any decent password manager will volunteer to generate passwords for you - if you're doing this on paper, it's much more likely that you'll try to come up with a password yourself, resulting in weaker passwords.

<comment><USER3> "5\. Paper isn't durable. Spill a drink on it and everything is basically gone."

Paper is more durable than any digital storage which all suffer from rot. They also rot faster than advertised. My documents stored in water- and fire- resistant containers will be readable even when my HD or discs fail. Just like the old books I find at thrift stores that were already older than some corrupted media I had.

<comment><USER4> Paper is certainly not more durable than digital storage. It may last longer at rest, but a disk under constant usage will outlast paper under constant usage any day.

Durable means able to resist wear. Lasting means persisting over an extended period of time. Paper, when stored properly, is long-lasting. It is _not_ durable.

<comment><USER5> A poster on a wall could last for decades to centuries of use after a HDD in constant use has died. So, really HDD win in a subset of cases and lose in others.

<comment><USER4> Is a poster on a wall considered "paper in constant use"? After all, that disk has been constantly, unceasingly physically manipulated for years, while the paper has just been merely subjected to light and a small amount of air movement. A poster on the wall is as much "in use" as a disk that is plugged in but not mounted.

Sticking with the original subject, write your password to your computer disk and write it to a piece of paper. Now change your password on your computer disk while changing it on the paper as well. Now change it again. And again. And again. See what is more durable, the disk being constantly erased and written over, or the paper being constantly erased and written over? A modern SSD can handle tens of petabytes being written before it dies. Can a piece of paper?

<comment><USER6> But that isn't at all relevant to the use case at hand. Using paper storage just means you can access and read the content of the paper.

<comment><USER4> So you just never change your passwords?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pro tip: If you use paper add the same prefix to all your passwords, but don't write down the prefix. This improves security if you misplace the paper.

For example, your paper might look like this:

 _Gmail: face method ruler

Facebook: rows bat likewise

Bank: hilltop skids lavender_

But your actual passwords are:

 _Gmail: apple face method ruler

Facebook: apple rows bat likewise

Bank: apple hilltop skids lavender_

Pro tip 2: Use random words instead of random characters. For sites you log into regularly you will soon memorise the password and won't need to pull out the paper.

</comment><comment><USER8> Password management has gotten completely out of hand. My dad, who is in his 60s but is pretty technologically savvy, has resorted to a master paper list of all his passwords (almost two dozen).

The situation has gotten worse in recent years. First, the unjustified worry about shoulder surfing means that password entry widgets make it impossible to figure out if you've entered the password correctly, especially on mobile where typing errors are common. Worse, some don't even have a "show what I'm typing" mode. Second, many sites totally confuse the password managers in Chrome/Safari because they get fancy with having separate pages for username and password.

And all for what? My passwords have been leaked dozens of times over in various security breaches anyway.

<comment><USER9> >Password management has gotten completely out of hand.

Sure, the industry is basically recreating public key crypto very, very badly. All the tech has been there to do away with passwords for ages but path dependency can be a very scary and depressing thing sometimes. Probably doesn't help that for a long time only users paid any of the cost.

Granted there is also this weird mindset even amongst lots of tech workers that authentication is some scary thing and should be manual too, as in this idiotic article. Perhaps that has also inhibited progress.

>And all for what? My passwords have been leaked dozens of times over in various security breaches anyway.

Well, that's the major reason behind password managers isn't it? It's precisely because we're not using real crypto for authentication that what 3rd parties do and whether they get breached actually matters, and in turn creates the necessity to use a different good password for every single service and have the ability to change them to a new good one at will. For most humans at any significant scale that rapidly becomes impossible to manager so naturally the right thing to do at an individual level is turn to a computer to handle it.

<comment><USER10> It's exactly the sort of thing a computer should be doing, too.

Automating an administrative task is basically what they're for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It obviously depends on your threat model. If you don't have any accounts with too sensitive information and you can stash the paper somewhere reasonably safe, then sure. My big issues with this are:

1) People suck at making their own passwords and this encourages bad passwords and password reuse. 2) The article admits that paper alone isn't good enough, but suggests that having "four password storage methods" is the optimal solution. That seems... unwieldy. Storing the most important (banking info, email) passwords in your head is a recipe for password reuse or getting locked out of your account.

<comment><USER12> Threat modeling is the most important part of this discussion, but will fall by the wayside in this discussion as well. Normal folks are really bad at risk analysis. I personally use a paper storage system and diceware ( [http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html](http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html) ) - because, at the end of the day - low tech is the best tech.

<edit> \- also am a CISSP

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If your concern is third-party reliability but you'd still like a password manager, I'd say your best bet would be pass + git. pass uses gpg to encrypt each password separately in a file structure, and works very well with any sort of git repository making it accessible across devices. Depending on how you set it up it can be 100% in your control with minimal configuration (in my case though I've been lazy and just hooked it up to a private GitHub repository).

<comment><USER14> 1+ for pass. It does one thing and does it well. Zero bloat. I use a simple emacs helm plugin to quickly copy the password to clipboard. Very happy with this setup.

<comment><USER15> How do you sync to mobile browsers with pass + git?

<comment><USER14> I don't, sorry. My previous password manager, while it did have a mobile app, was painful to use so I don't miss that too much. For my most important stuff I use rememberable passwords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's really that difficult to use KeePass? It's offline, cross-platform, with password generation, secure session for entering the master password, could type passwords without using the clipboard and if you want to sync you can save the encrypted db on dropbox, git or wherever yout want.

The only problem I see is when I need a password but I can't access database, which is almost never since Keepass has a port for Android. But in those (few) cases I can write down a few notes which I can use to create a not easy to guess password for that specific use case.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've never been a fan of password managers, but I've found a much better way than paper:

1\. Create a complex password to re-use everywhere. Memorize it and don't write it down.

2\. Create individual simple passwords when you need one. Write them down

3\. Create a method to combine the complex password and the simple password. Memorize it and don't write it down.

I figure there are two main attack vectors: online and offline. Online attack vectors are either a dictionary attack, which requirement 1 solves with a complex password, or using hacked passwords in one site to gain access to other sites, which requirement 2 solves with different passwords for each site. Offline attack vectors are someone discovering your written passwords, which requirements 1 and 3 solve by memorizing pieces of it.

The only weakness to this scheme is if someone is A. deliberately targeting you as opposed to a mass attack, and B. gains access to two or more of your passwords, allowing them to figure out your password system.

<comment><USER18> > 3\. Create a method to combine the complex password and the simple password.

So what happens when a site / service limits the length? Do you truncate your complex password? And what about cases where only a certain subset of characters is accepted? Do you now need to memorize multiple variations of the complex password?

I used to do something similar to your proposed method, but the number of exceptional cases and work simply made if not worth the effort compared to a real password manager.

<comment><USER19> How often are you running into length-limited password fields these days? I usually take it an organization is not attentive to or is outright uninterested in security, and either I shouldn't use their service (if it's optional), or I should publicly shame them.

<comment><USER20> Passwords with character restrictions are still pretty common, AFAICT. Yahoo, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article and some posts suggest keeping certain passwords only in your head.

Be sure you do that only when it would be Ok if the account became very difficult to access in case you die or become incapacitated. There are remedies for your survivors, but it is generally a big pain in the ass you don't want to leave behind.

</comment><comment><USER22> In an imperfect world this is the optimal combination of security and convenience.

A google drive spreadsheet full of passwords. The gmail account is U2F. Memorize the (long) account password and then copy and paste from the spreadsheet.

Benefits: * is not a honey pot target like a password manager * easily accommodates long random passwords * convenient access * cannot be misplaced * account password very likely to remain secured

<comment><USER23> What is "U2F"?

<comment><USER22> It's a hardware key that provides 2 factor authentication for GMail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The great thing about paper is that even my grandma can understand it. For 80% of people that makes it superior to any other password manager.

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting suggestion that a pad of paper is just as safe as your house. Problem is, much like corporate security, when it comes to passwords I actually figure that the biggest threat comes from the very people who already either live in my house or have relatively easy access to it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Password managers seem to have the essential flaw of using the clipboard.

What prevents a random npm/rubygems/... dependency from running `pbcopy` every second, storing interesting-looking results and relaying them to some server once in a while?

<comment><USER26> This assumes the machine is already pwned - at which point why wouldn't they just use a keylogger? In that case, typing the password in without the use of a password manager instead of copy/pasting from a password manager wouldn't be any more secure.

<comment><USER27> This suggests a related question. There's no inherent reason why programs other than your desktop shell and the current focused window (for window based DEs) need to have access to keyboard input. In practice, how good are existing DEs at controlling this access? I know, for example, that the slow move from X to Wayland has removed _some_ of the methods a program might use to access inputs or the clipboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm surprised no one ever talks about invisible ink for this purpose.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd use an air gapped device to replace paper.

</comment><comment><USER30> Non-AMP link

[https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Passcode- Voices/201...](https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Passcode- Voices/2015/0619/Opinion-Paper-the-least-terrible-password-management-tool)

<comment><USER31> Thanks, changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Needs a 2015 in the title?

</comment><comment><USER33> It wasn't a very good idea in 2015, and it still isn't a good idea today. It may not be "least terrible" when you have 20 - 50 passwords or so, but I'm at 5000+, and wherever possible, my logins are also random strings.

<comment><USER34> I agree it doesn't scale, but holy cow, 5000+! That is a _lot_!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> My personal method is passphrase + first three characters of domain + number + !

Eg foobarYCO2018!

Easy to remember, unique and doesn't rely on third-party services.

<comment><USER36> It's not good to reveal your scheme, or for your scheme to be so simple. If a HN database ends up in the open, your accounts on other sites become vulnerable.

<comment><USER27> Ideally your passphrase would be secure enough that it couldn't be bruteforced from a (hashed) HN database. But in case a non-hashed database gets leaked, what sort of scheme could one use that couldn't be revealed from a single known password? I suppose one could use a system like

      bcrypt(passphrase + "domain.com")[:32]

But anything requiring a calculation step seems to lose a lot of the advantages of a single-passphrase system.</comment></comment></comment>


Does Anne Hathaway News Drive Berkshire Hathaway's Stock? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/does-anne-hathaway-news-drive-berkshire-hathaways-stock/72661/ <comment><USER3> Well, correlation certainly isn't causation, but being a data-nerd, I had to take a look. I grabbed Anne Hathaway's web presence from Google Trends, and Berkshire-Hathaway's performance from Google Finance. After a little massaging, I dumped the numbers in to R, and there is indeed a reliable correlation between Anne's (per-week) web presence and B-H's weekly average close (or closest preceding close).

data: hath$AnneTrend and hath$BerkClose t = 4.6739, df = 373, p-value = 4.135e-06 alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0 95 percent confidence interval: 0.1372140 0.3286587 sample estimates: cor 0.2352165

It's an R^2 of 0.23, which isn't much, but it's not completely spurious; Scarlett Johansson doesn't show the same pattern (there's a weak correlation, but not reliable at p < 0.05).

Pearson's product-moment correlation

data: hath$ScarlettTrend and hath$BerkClose t = 1.7687, df = 373, p-value = 0.07775 alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0 95 percent confidence interval: -0.01016440 0.19071018 sample estimates: cor 0.09120053

However, Scarlett's career hasn't mirrored Anne's all that well. What about someone a little closer to Anne, say, her Oscar co-host, James Franco? Note that apart from that, the two haven't really done anything together (<http://imdb.to/g6vwbp>), although I'd say they've both come to fame recently.

data: hath$JamesTrend and hath$BerkClose t = 4.5991, df = 372, p-value = 5.826e-06 alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0 95 percent confidence interval: 0.1336854 0.3256934 sample estimates: cor 0.2319475

And that might be the clincher. James's little ups and downs shouldn't match Anne's, and yet his recent rise to prominence seems to share the same, slight relationship to B-K's stock value. Thanks for reading!

(edit: Ugh, awful formatting! Apologies.)

<comment><USER4> So cotemporanrous correlation isn't enough to trade on. You need to look for a leading signal. You might also want to compare the actors to the SP500.

You can make money even with a fairly low rsq if you have a good portfolio construction and cheap execution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there life on Mars? I talked to an employee at NASA, and he said, "Probably not, but I guess its not out of the question". Then I wrote a story about it.

<comment><USER6> Dang! by just reading the headline, I was about to change my name to Goldman Sachs. Heck I'll do it anyways. With name like Goldman you can't go wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> He used 6 dates:

Oct. 3, 2008 - Rachel Getting Married opens: BRK.A up .44% Jan. 5, 2009 - Bride Wars opens: BRK.A up 2.61% Feb. 8, 2010 - Valentine's Day opens: BRK.A up 1.01% March 5, 2010 - Alice in Wonderland opens: BRK.A up .74% Nov. 24, 2010 - Love and Other Drugs opens: BRK.A up 1.62% Nov. 29, 2010 - <USER2> announced as co-host of the Oscars: BRK.A up .25%

I'm not a statistician, but 6 dates could hardly be considered a correlation. I would also think that no Anne Hathaway news should result in no positive price changes for a correlation to exist.

Seems like the article confuses correlation with "funny coincidence".

And it certainly doesn't "drive" the stock, as the headline states. That implies a causation, which is even stronger than a correlation.

<comment><USER8> _I would also think that no Anne Hathaway news should result in no positive price changes for a correlation to exist_

That's not correct. Imagine the stock price can be derived from two factors A and B such that price = A + B. A is correlated with the price, but a positive price change could also happen caused by B. So no change in A does not guarantee no change in price. And in the case of BRK.A there would be many such factors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> No it does not. The linked article relies on a naive assumption about NLP and is devoid of any content.

To substantiate: entity resolution [1] is a widely studied research area in NLP, and it's fair to say that researchers aren't as naive in their methods as the linked article would suggest.

But even if naive "NLP" methods were being used, it would be silly not to mine the link structure of news articles (or sources) to disambiguate Anne Hathaway and Berkshire Hathaway [2]: there aren't too many news sources that mention both in the same article, and are outweighed by the ones that mention only one or the other (e.g., Us weekly vs. WSJ).

But even if there were some habitual false positives, no researcher or programmer worth their salt would unleash their mining algorithm on the whole web. More likely, you would target low-latency news sources like Bloomberg's financial feed.

So I would say, no -- anne hathaway news almost certainly does not drive berkshire's stock if text mining and NLP are the methods, and shame on the Atlantic.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_resolution#Name_resolution...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_resolution#Name_resolution_in_semantics_and_text_extraction) [2] (PDF) [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.66....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.66.3235&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

<comment><USER10> It doesn't have to be NLP gone wrong. It could be a bad algorithm based on web traffic, picking up accidental clicks from Anne Hathaway fans (or some similar shared metric).

It's also possible that this is a natural effect of the market -- that people seeing Anne Hathaway headlines are subconciously reminded to do something about their stock holdings. In which case, bad NLP would actually work better than good NLP. :)

<comment><USER11> Most algo trading is going to use Bloomberg or Reuters data, since they are very "clean" datasources that tend to be more focused on finance sectors, and not a ton of hollywood gossip. Generally they are tagged with the actual stocks in the articles, so you would have to be doing it on purpose.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, I mean an algorithm based, for example, on the number of clicks on Berkshire Hathaway articles on a financial site being influenced by Anne H. fans clicking on the wrong search result.

<comment><USER9> I get your point, but doesn't that seem a tad contrived?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anne Hathaway in the news == no news of importance.

News of importance == bad news == shares in general go down.

...but really, if you have a good theory, don't jawbone on it; open a brokerage account and make your fortune.

</comment><comment><USER13> The headline case seems highly unlikely, but there is a fund in London that trades on Twitter sentiment, an idea which sounds like something out of a Bruce Sterling satire. You can always sell shovels to traders and the media, though - hire a few PhDs and a graphic designer and crank out some infographics and popular attention is assured. Emphasize risk and caution regularly and sooner or later events will prove you to be a genius, at which point you can do an IPO.

</comment><comment><USER14> BRK has a market cap of over 200 billion. To make price move significantly, there would need to be pretty big trades, no? If huge trades are made on the basis of random names mentioned online, that could explain a lot of our troubles with capital allocation...

<comment><USER15> One word: leverage. In other words, tiny movements in that much stock can big effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems to me that if one algorithm did this, other algorithms would start to notice a correlation between Anne Hathaway news and BRK stock, so they would also want to buy when there is Anne Hathaway news. Something like this could easily "infect" large portions of NLP that way if there is insufficient damping in the system.

</comment><comment><USER17> These are pretty dumb traders if this article is true. Bigrams are not hard, and who the hell refers to Berkshire Hathaway as just "Hathaway".

More likely explanation: there're spurious correlations wherever you look, and The Atlantic just happened to run across one.

<comment><USER18> My favorite example of this <http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ci700332k>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/10/ua_bankruptcy_farce/> Suggests that this sort of automated text mining happens. Of course, it is from The Register...

</comment><comment><USER20> File this one under "stupid data mining tricks."

</comment><comment><USER21> Oops, I always thought Anne Hathaway's father's name was Berkshire Hathaway

</comment><comment><USER22> Coincidence strikes again. Someone should convince journalists that correlation is not causation; not even when some other random fact happens to suggest a connection to our overly enthusiastic pattern-seeking minds.</comment>


Millennials heed the siren call of socialism - <AUTHOR> http://www.ocregister.com/articles/millennials-703013-capitalism-people.html <comment><USER2> When Republicans label any kind of government regulation as socialism they might want to look in the mirror when young people get the term confused.</comment>


Remote First Capital - shreyas-satish https://www.remotefirstcapital.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Saw this yesterday on Twitter. Love the concept/premise.</comment>


Show HN: Sia, a User-Owned Amazon S3 Challenger - <AUTHOR> https://thecontrol.co/meet-sia-a-user-owned-amazon-s3-challenger-that-lets-you-rent-out-your-extra-disk-space-fa9da6ff9223#.y5p789t1s <comment><USER2> Good follow-up about some concerns that came through on Twitter after article was published: [https://blog.sia.tech/addressing-thoughtful-concerns- about-s...](https://blog.sia.tech/addressing-thoughtful-concerns-about-sias- security-viability-103ccfff5e92#.g029tncx2)

</comment><comment><USER3> Whoa. Why isn't anyone talking about this? It seems to be huge!

<comment><USER2> We've honestly been way more focused on engineering than marketing.

<comment><USER4> Are you a startup?

<comment><USER2> Yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Files are encrypted when sent and you need that key and metadata to retrieve the file. So how do you back that up if you are trying to prevent catastrophic data loss?

You need a particular file to retrieve data, what do you do about that file?

</comment><comment><USER3> Filecoin promises, Siacoin delivers. Is that what we should conclude?

<comment><USER6> As much as i love IPFS, it's a shame to me how slow IPFS and Filecoin appear to be developing.. from the outside, at least.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I hate school, and got offered employment after an internship. - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
So, I'll try and keep this as short as I can while still getting my points across. My internship is coming to a "close". It was at an absolutely amazing company/startup (~150 employees, but still very startup-like culturally) that I've wanted to work at for a couple of years now. They're a fairly big company, and I literally landed in this internship. It's a highly sought-after company by both potentia employees and interns, and they draw people from all over, and happen to be located in my city.
There was no interview, I didn't formally apply, they didn't look at my grades (thank God!), and I didn't pull any sort of strings. I just sent an e-mail offering my (free) services for the experience, and they offered me a paid internship. This still blows my mind, as there's no reason I should have been picked out of the large pool of applicants they have.
Anyways, I'm only one year in to a three year program at a community college. I now have to decide what I'm going to do. I've been offered employment full time at this company, and they seem to genuinely love the work that I put out. I am willing to drop out of school for it, but I really just want advice. I really struggled through my first year of classes. I battle depression and hated every minute. I finished with a very low GPA and got put on "academic probation".
There were other causes of my depression besides school, but I do think it was a large factor and I've been significantly happier since doing this internship and not going to school. My depression was never bad enough that I genuinely wanted to commit suicide, but there were times that I thought "Well, I probably won't do it, but man, it sure would be nice to just have it over with." These feelings have almost completely subsided since the internship.
So, I guess (TL;DR) what I'm asking is... I hated school so much that I believe it contributed to problems with depression. I'm only 33% done, and offered employment in the position I've always wanted at the company I've always wanted. Is going back to school at a (frankly quite terrible) community college worth giving up this opportunity? I can expect to be making about $60,000/year if I take the job.
I really appreciate any advice you can offer. <comment><USER2> No question, take the job.

I quit school after one year simply because I wasn't focused on school at that time. After 5 years of ski-bumming/ bartending, I went back to the University clearly ready to spend the time required without distractions.

</comment><comment><USER3> every year you don't go to school makes it much harder to go back. if you don't have a degree and varied training - and the demonstrated ability to learn - you'll get harder to employ as time goes on.

sounds like a great opportunity, but i encourage you to think long term. you've just been validated, in part, but i worry that the kind of work you're doing will be equivalent to a factory job in a couple of decades, and you'll be in a similar position for job prospects.

</comment><comment><USER4> this is not even close. sounds like the experience will be prestigious enough to get you a much better chance of getting hired anyways vs finishing your school.

you can always go back to school (heh though few do). Opportunities like yours won't be waiting there for you as school will.

p.s) ohyeah if it also helps reverse depressive symptoms...um why are we still discussing this... listen to your heart.</comment>


Digitactix – Your Digital Anchor - <AUTHOR> We are a full digital marketing agency. Our social media experts can help you establish your business objectives, identify your target audience, create engaging and share-worthy content and finally integrate your social media with all other aspects of your online presence. For More Info visit : firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><AUTHOR> We are a full digital marketing agency. Our social media experts can help you establish your business objectives, identify your target audience, create engaging and share-worthy content and finally integrate your social media with all other aspects of your online presence.</comment>


So Microsoft Is Leading in Advancing JavaScript (see Edge 14) - <AUTHOR> http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/esnext/#edge-experimental-flag-note <comment><AUTHOR> I've been keeping a close eye on who is implementing features in the "Next" tab and today I was surprised to see Microsoft's Edge 14 be the earliest to have their column start to turn green

</comment><comment><USER2> Too bad Edge is the slowest web browser you can possibly use for any meaningful web app.</comment>


Whiteboard problems in pure Lambda Calculus - <AUTHOR> http://www.jtolds.com/writing/2017/03/whiteboard-problems-in-pure-lambda-calculus/ <comment><USER2> Very interesting......... Thanks for link</comment>


TrueCrypt Volumes are Indistinguishable from Random Data - <AUTHOR> http://16s.us/software/TCHunt/diff.txt <comment><USER2> It is true that any strong symmetric encryption generates data that it is indistinguishable from random for any (efficiently computable) statistical test, but these tests are extremely weak and don't prove anything.

All but the last two only look at distribution of the bytes, meaning that the string "\0\1\2...\255" repeated many times would give the same values, but it doesn't look random at all. The Monte Carlo computation of Pi also ignores the order (sums are commutative).

The serial correlation coefficient only looks at the correlation between the sequence and itself shifted by one, ignoring higher-distance correlations, so it almost as easy to produce very regular sequences that have give very small coefficients.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's heartening that TrueCrypt encrypted volumes pass statistical randomness tests, but it's important to remember that this says essentially nothing about its cryptographic security.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. The output of a noncryptographic generator like the Mersenne Twister would also pass those same tests, and would be not secure at all. This is not how indistinguishability works.

The 'correct' to make this point would be to analyze the volume format, and reduce distinguishing the container to distinguishing the underlying block cipher from a pseudorandom permutation. That is, distinguishing a TC volume implies distinguishing AES (or whichever block cipher combo TC supports).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In doing volume forensics it is exceedingly rare to find a full volume of random data and when one is found one can be fairly certain that someone is using TrueCrypt or had a lot of time on their hands when destroying evidence by using dd to write dev/random to disk. Depending on the technical capacity of the forensics lab this observation could be sufficient enough evidence in itself to back additional search warrants or court orders. Remember, it is absolutely possible to stand out simply by being off the curve of normal, whether when using HD encryption or anonymizing services.

</comment><comment><USER6> The question is, do people usually keep large areas of random data on their hard disks?

<comment><USER7> It would be nice if the default filesystem on an unsuspicious and relatively popular operating system (Linux?) normally overwrote erased data with random data, and worked to maintain a large contiguous area at one "end" of the drive. You would need to be careful not to fill up your drive to the point that it overwrote part of your hidden volume, of course.

I think this would allow for true deniability.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't FAT do that? Although maybe a Linux user choosing to use FAT for some other reason isn't that plausible in itself…

<comment><USER9> Don't be so quick to judge, I've got a small FAT partition on my boot drive right now for the EFI system partition. That partition also doesn't frequently have data written to it, you could in theory hide a small encrypted volume in the free space and so long as Grub wasn't updated nothing would touch that free space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hypothetical scenario:

      $iv = rnd();
      $encrypted_header = byte[256];
      $checksum = sha1($iv + $encrypted header);

      disk layout: $iv + $encrypted_header + $checksum

This would look like random data to any generic statistical test and yet be easily identifiable for a specific pattern matcher simply by doing the hash based on the visible data and checking if it matches. Of course this can be easily prevented, but a statistical test is insufficient to prove that.

</comment><comment><USER11> That is why I created a service that will securely delete your data if you don't remind it every day. Just say that is where you keep your passwords (and maybe add it to your bookmark bar to be more convincing) It's the only service you don't have to use to be useful!

<comment><USER12> What if you end up in hospital or have a power cut?

<comment><USER9> I think the idea is just that you say that you used some dead man switch to store your real password. You could even have it actually overwrite some 1 MB random file and claim that it was the keyfile for the volume. In reality you wouldn't use it at all and just memorize the password like normal, no one would be able to prove if that really was a keyfile or just a decoy and you couldn't be in contempt of court if you can plausibly claim that you don't have the information to open the volume anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> iirc there was an article few days ago about tools to detect trucrypt encryption types in use. The article mentioned the presence of some files cached by OSes, sometimes disclosing the presence, the type or even part of the content of TC volumes. Personally that is the most scaring part, having cached data leftover in the system, which is much more indicative than some pseudorandomness of TC strings.

</comment><comment><USER14> This has to be false, no? If there is data encoded there, that is non-random, then there is also non-randomness encoded there.

<comment><USER15> One of the primary goals of encryption is to make the result random, such that no structure can be determined. However you are correct, there is structure there, but it's encoded with so much randomness that the structure is effectively hidden. It's the whole point of encryption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> there are a lot of people who know something that 99.9% of the population does not.

<comment><USER17> 99.9999999% * 7.14 billion implies seven people and maybe a parrot knows something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does this mean that TrueCrypt encryption also works as near-perfect compression?

<comment><USER15> No, quite the opposite, it takes your once compressible data and makes it uncompressible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> that means you are using truecrypt and now please give us the private key or...

<comment><USER20> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueCrypt#Plausible_deniability](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueCrypt#Plausible_deniability)

<comment><USER21> I can just image someone getting tortured for access to a hidden volume that they can't prove to not to exist.

<comment><USER22> [http://xkcd.com/538/](http://xkcd.com/538/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Upgrades Windows 10 Powers of Control - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2016/02/11/microsoft-makes-windows-10-u-turn/ <comment><USER2> Forbes won't let me in unless I whitelist forbes.com on my ad blocker. Not. Going. To. Happen.</comment>


How Many Flight Attendants Are Men? - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/dear-mona-how-many-flight-attendants-are-men/

<comment><AUTHOR> Scroll down to find a gender breakdown of job functions by gender.

The most gender-equal job in the country seems to be "computer and peripheral equipment operators" (anyone know what this is specifically?) at 50.2 gender split.</comment>


Homebrew 1.7.0 - <AUTHOR> https://brew.sh/2018/07/15/homebrew-1.7.0/ <comment><USER2> Damn this page loads fast.

I thought it was amp but it's just clean, minimalist design. Very nice.

<comment><USER3> It is incredible, and sad, how much bloat is in the common webpage these days.</comment></comment>


How Yahoo (or Facebook) Could Really Kill Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-yahoo-or-facebook-could-really-kill-google <comment><USER2> Knowledge search is cool and all, and Naver shows how powerful a force it can be when the entire nation's using it, but so far it's not fulfilled its promise of being _the_ way to search.

Both Yahoo and Microsoft developed QA products (Y! Answers and Live QnA, respectively) hoping to have a semblance of Naver's success, meanwhile piping the answers into the mainstream search, enhancing their Google competitors. So far, though, beyond being somewhat popular, they're sort of glorified forums. The people answering questions aren't supplying good enough answers to be worthwhile most of the time. And the fact that the sites encourage high volume over high quality doesn't help matters either.

Even worse (for a would-be Google killer), Google's still the king of indexing content, so if you open up your question-answer pages, which you almost certainly would, Google's going to be serving it up for you and getting ad revenue for it. I think this is not the right vector for killing Google at all.

<comment><USER3> And it sucks that Google Answers was closed because of those other services.

<comment><USER2> Google Answers wasn't knowledge search, it was a paid answers service. The focus there was lower volume, higher quality regulated by a financial marketplace rather than community features. Not really even in the same class of product.

It was shut down not because of competition but instead because it wasn't worth anything to Google, really, at least relative to their search product.

<comment><USER3> Ah, ok. I remember reading that it couldn't compete with the lame Yahoo! equivalent for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How (wormy) apples really kill pears :)</comment>


Apply HN – LACKII - <AUTHOR> LACKII's mission is to save startups time and money so that they can get back to changing the world. LACKII provides on-demand personal assistants and semi-skilled workers to startups working in co-working spaces. Co-working spaces contract with LACKII to have teams of Lackiis stationed at the co-working space. These Lackiis are available on-demand as an amenity for the member startups, or available to the startups for a slight increase in the membership fee (totally up to the co-working space). <comment><USER2> What is the size of the coworking space market?

How will Lackii avoid the personal service agency problem of coworking spaces or their tenants just hiring Lackii's staff directly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome questions.

There are approximately 1000 co-working spaces in the US (not counting multiple locations).

As for folks hiring Lackiis as permanent employees -that is something that is actually totally cool by us. We want startups to turn to LACKII as a source for reliable permanent employees building out the recruiting structure is a tomorrow problem that is very important to us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How do you solve the problem of who is the boss? What happens when two or more startups want the assistant to do something at the same time? Who is supervising the assistant you or the startups? How do you ensure that the assistant is a good match to the need of the startups?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great questions. Let's start from the beginning.

1) Lackii's goal is to give startups the benefit of full or part-time employers without the cost. Thus, while Lackiis are employed by LACKII, the "boss" for all intents and purposes is the startup that has given the LACKII assignments.

2) Multiple requests: We address this in a couple of ways -1) when negotiating the contract with the co-working space, co-working spaces must contract a minimum of two LACKIIs, 2) some work may be rerouted to a remote Lackii, so that the Lackiis at the co-working space have their hands free to do things that require them to be on-site.

3) One of the Lackii's stationed at each site is a manager in charge of supervision and quality control.

4) Our focus is primarily on work that you would have a personal assistant or entry-level worker do, e.g. data entry, simple design work, basic research. We ensure that each Lackii is able to carry out these tasks when they are hired on our end. Startups also rate the Lackiis that complete tasks for them, and can request the same Lackii in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would love to use something like this at the coworking spaces I work from, given that it's affordable. I spend waaay too much of my time doing things that can be easily passed onto an entry level helper.

<comment><AUTHOR> We hear a lot of the same from folks at many co-working spaces. Which are your favorite spaces to work from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a member of 1871 and WeWork co-working spaces, having an on-demand personal assistant would add a huge benefit, dramatically reducing the time spent on administrative tasks, and increase the time one can commit to growing their business. The biggest secret of highly productive people isn't in any way ground breaking, but it is most often forgotten: They don't try and do everything themselves. Great idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> We would love to work with 1871 (especially since we're currently working out of Chicago). Let's talk about how to make that happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What are the rates and how are the rates negotiated? Is it between the startups or the co-working spaces?

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent question. The rates are between LACKII and the co-working space. Because co-working spaces vary in size, rates are negotiated based on a couple of factors, including the total number of members which affects the total number of Lackiis needed, and the total number of hours the co-working space would like the Lackii team available per week (e.g. 40 hours a week, or 24/7)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome concept, this would be helpful!!

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds great, and I'm surprised this doesn't exist widely yet!

<comment><AUTHOR> We're super psyched to see that folks (especially founders) are very excited about the idea and can't wait to make the service widely available!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love the idea, but double ended markets are also tricky to match. What are incentives for Lackiis to join that they can't get from other semi-skilled jobs that perhaps offer? Who else are you competing with for this labor?

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome question. As I'm sure you're aware, one of the big problems that folks are dealing with in the gig economy is the status of contract workers. One big incentive for Lackiis to join us rather than another "gig site" is that Lackiis are employees that would receive benefits, so they're not left out in the wild like many 1099 workers. Another advantage of working with LACKII is flexibility and the ability to work with a multitude of different businesses. Since many of the folks that we are targeting to become LACKIIs are current or recent college grads and folks like new parents who may be looking for some kind of flexible employment, LACKII is an excellent place for those folks to work to develop new skills and learn about new and emerging trends in the business world. These are people who might otherwise be looking for inconsistent work on sites like TaskRabbit and FancyHands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome startup!!</comment>


First eukaryotes found without a normal cellular power supply - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/first-eukaryotes-found-without-normal-cellular-power-supply <comment><USER2> I'm a little surprised they were afraid to say "mitochondria" in the headline. No more obscure than "eukaryote".

<comment><AUTHOR> It's probably intentional. From skimming the paper[1] they basically sequenced the organism and failed to find traditional mitochondrial DNA protein-coding sequences. They found a separate mechanism, but this alone doesn't prove the non-existance of a mitochondria, just that the typical machinery isn't there. As they say,

"In principle, we cannot exclude the possibility that a mitochondrion exists in Monocercomonoides sp. whose protein composition has been altered entirely. However, such a hypothetical organelle could not be recognized as a mitochondrion homolog by any available means. Without any positive evidence for the latter scenario, we suggest that the complete absence of mitochondrial markers and pathways points to the bona fide absence of the organelle."

Science probably could've gotten away with "First eukaryotes found without normal mitochondria" but that may be fudging a little too much.

1: [http://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2816...](http://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2816%2930263-9)</comment></comment>


Neon artificial humans at CES behave, converse, and sympathize just like people - <AUTHOR> https://www.designboom.com/technology/neon-artificial-human-ces-01-08-2020/ <comment><USER2> I'm really interested in the technology behind this. Can someone point me to related papers? I know magic leap has something similar [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBd- egUFV_4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBd-egUFV_4)

</comment><comment><USER3> Conversing like a human is not solved, and will likely not be solved with today's deep net.

The key missing part here is NLU, not a nice human face.</comment>


Ask HN: Contextual ads for web-apps like todo-lists or mail? - <AUTHOR>

Hi again,
I'm creating a webapp that will deal with user-generated data in a one-to-one interaction behind a login and a password. I'm creating something that can go into a niche of todo-lists.
I don't think charging people is a good idea but ads should be pretty non-intrusive.
Is this ethical (granted I explicitly say what I do)? From what I know, GMail parses my private data for ad purposes.
Can the "default ad-network" -- AdSense do this automatically? From what I understand, it crawls webpages very very rarely and even authorizing it to access protected pages isn't going to speed up the process.
Is there any other solution for fast, document-based advertisiment? <comment><USER2> We do that, and June 1st is our release date :-) you really should leave an email address in your profile.</comment>