Why we transitioned from Medium back to our own blog - <AUTHOR> https://baremetrics.com/blog/medium-back-to-blog <comment><USER2> As someone who randomly highlights words and lines when they read, I can't stand sites like Medium that display that annoying toolbar with the Twitter icon every time you highlight something. Terrible UX in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> I've observed that behavior in others but never done it myself. As someone who doesn't randomly highlight as I read, I nevertheless agree that a toolbar that appears on highlight is obnoxious for a reading-oriented site. (Meanwhile, I can appreciate Microsoft Word's similar toolbar on highlight, which is especially useful in touch and pen-oriented workflows.)

I am idly wondering about the underlying reason people do random highlighting. I assume it's just a "tick" as they say. But I wonder if it has anything—even in small part—to do with the bad contrast on a lot of sites and the fact that browsers render highlighted text with good contrast. Even on high-contrast sites like Medium, the bright background combined with dark text can be tiresome on the eye, meaning that highlighted text will invert that yielding a more comfortable white text on blue. As someone who doesn't _randomly_ highlight text, I often _intentionally_ highlight text to quickly and nearly- effortlessly correct bad color selections by the site's designers. If I did this more often, I could see it developing into a habit.

<comment><USER4> I've been doing it since ~2006. Contrast was not an issue back then, and my very young eyes wouldn't have (and still don't) cared.

I think maybe it was a manifestation of ADHD. Highlighting what I read helped me keep track of where I was if I got distracted (e.g. by a thought, which happens a lot). It also helps me if I get distracted or fail to parse a sentence - I can easily go back to the last known good state and restart reading.

Websites doing weird things on highlight (or preventing highlighting) piss me off to no end.

Another tick possibly due to ADD: I consistently close my browser tabs. I've met a lot of people who need special extensions so they can have 100+ tabs open, and that drives me absolutely nuts. If I'm done using it, I close it and if I need to come back later I google(DuckDuckGo really) it.

<comment><USER5> I do the same exact thing. It drives me crazy that I can't highlight on an article without causing either a post to twitter box or the font size changing (I'm looking at you NYT). On a random note, do you know what that special extension that allows a user to have 100+ tabs open. I have a family member that always keeps _way_ to many tabs open (drives me nuts as well!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everytime there's a new "cool" blogging platform - people do this and then 2 years later, they write a blog post like the above one.

Own your own blog!

<comment><USER7> Funnily enough, an hour or so ago I was trying to track down a Python blog I used to enjoy and went on a "This blog has moved merry-go-round...

[http://sayspy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/moving-this-blog-to- med...](http://sayspy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/moving-this-blog-to-medium.html) [https://medium.com/coder-who-says-py/i-have-moved-over-to- sv...](https://medium.com/coder-who-says-py/i-have-moved-over-to- svbtle-564d52028a65) [https://nothingbutsnark.svbtle.com/moving-the-blog-to- silvrb...](https://nothingbutsnark.svbtle.com/moving-the-blog-to-silvrback) And eventually to [https://snarky.ca](https://snarky.ca)

<comment><USER8> Even snarky.ca has moved, from Silvrback to Ghost!

[https://snarky.ca/why-i-changed-my-blogging-platform-to- ghos...](https://snarky.ca/why-i-changed-my-blogging-platform-to-ghost-pro/)

<comment><USER5> You actually can run a Ghost blog on your own server: [https://docs.ghost.org/v1/docs/hosting](https://docs.ghost.org/v1/docs/hosting)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm currently setting up my blog and I didn't even hesitate to host it myself. Companies like Medium come and go (e.g. Geocities, Xanga, Myspace, Posterous), but your dot com is yours as long as you keep paying the domain fee. Guys like Scott Hanselman and Jeff Atwood are probably very happy they've kept their presence on their own dot coms over the last decade.

<comment><USER10> Wow! I never really thought of Medium in the same realm as Xanga or Livejournal but you're absolutely right. It's crazy to think that people are moving _to_ it. LiveJournal and Xanga were always kind of a stepping stone back in the day. You had your blog on their first then it started getting a lot of traffic and you moved it to your own domain. It's crazy to see the opposite happening now adays with Medium!

<comment><USER11> The big difference is that you can point your own custom domain at Medium, and if you want to leave, you can move your posts to your own site and maintain the canonical url structure.

<comment><USER12> They stopped offering that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Medium is one example of something that went from "nice" to "annoying" very quickly. (LinkedIn and Meetup are other examples.) Then it gets "improved" and customers just want to leave.

I don't know who these people are that just can't help themselves, stomping all over something that was nice the way it was. And it means we need to desperately revisit open platforms, since you should always have the option of forking from the pre-shark-jumping point.

<comment><USER14> If there's any site that has absolutely no need to nag me to log in before reading, it's Medium. Yet every time I visit, they pop up and say "You've read XX articles, time to make this official". Why? Why? What benefit do I get from signing in unless I'm writing a blog?

It's annoying when Quora does it, but at least Quora is a question and answers site. It's designed for a back and forth and user interaction. Stack Exchange proves you don't need to make people log in for that, but whatever. Quora does it. But Medium is not a chat site. It's not a forum. It's not Q&A. It's a blog site. I'm not writing a blog, I'm just trying to read.

Stop asking me to make an account.

<comment><USER15> The issue with Quora, on the other hand, is they want access to one of your accounts - like Gmail - in order to log you in. Nope.

<comment><USER16> They have big colorful [Continue with Gmail] and [Continue with Facebook] buttons, but there's a link below that to create an account via any email address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I remember once someone who posted their blog and it was just a listing of markdown files in a github repository. Not even a jekyllyzed version... just a folder with date prefixed markdown and rst files.

I have to say it hit me and I was like... damn I should just do that. Forget all this blogging platforms and getting caught up in look and feel. Just write text files.

Even with Jekyll (and its variants) I got caught up on making it potentially look nice but this person just said ... f-it... let google and github figure out how to organize the content.

<comment><USER18> You might be interested to know that this is how blogs got their start. For reference, see .plan files [0].

[0] [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/plan- file.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/plan-file.html)

<comment><USER19> See also: John Carmack's plan file updates. [https://github.com/ESWAT/john- carmack-plan-archive](https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> His stats for Medium views vs own-host views are the exact opposite of my experience. Everything I've ever written on Medium has way more views than anything I've ever published elsewhere, and we find the same happening for clients who make the switch too. We tend to recommend publishing on Medium to clients these days, both for the traffic and the inbound link SEO bonus.

There's tons wrong with Medium, but it still feels like a better option than a self-hosted system that nobody ever discovers.

<comment><USER20> The best practice (and what Baremetrics is doing) is to do both. Post your content first to your own domain and then later import it with the Medium article import tool.

<comment><USER21> The double content can be a hard negative hit on SEO, even with canonical links (it's not perfect).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Title: "Why we transitioned from Medium back to our own blog"

Closing paragraph:

>"Going forward, we are still going to publish to Medium, ...

A better title might have been "Why we are now using both our own blog AND Medium. I'm guessing that's a less click-baity title though.

</comment><comment><USER23> I rarely click on links when I see the source as medium.com. The quality of content there feels too much like blogspot back in the day.

<comment><USER22> Same. Quality issues aside, the experience of trying to read content on mediums miserable.

Their insistence on taking up an outsized proportion of screen real estate for a header and footer promoting medium.com is beyond obnoxious.

A platform for consuming content should not distract the reader from concentrating that content.

Also if I like a blog I'll bookmark it and check back. I do not need to sign up to "never miss a story from _____."

<comment><USER24> Yep, nailed it. For those of us who still read despite all that, here's the browser extension you've been looking for (Make Medium Readable Again): [https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA](https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA)

<comment><USER22> Ha, this is great. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This article has the same conclusion I came to...use Medium to syndicate[0] content, not originate content.

Medium is still very useful to get content to readers that would otherwise not visit your website.

Articles I wrote that were picked up by a "publisher" on Medium get way more views than anything on my own domain.

To put some real numbers on it, one article I wrote this month got 92 hits on my personal website[1] but 429 hits on hackernoon[2].

That makes me motivated to write because people will actually read it :)

[0]: [https://medium.com/p/import](https://medium.com/p/import)

[1]: [https://www.ceriously.com/blog/post.php?id=2018-01-01-es6-pr...](https://www.ceriously.com/blog/post.php?id=2018-01-01-es6-proxy- localization.md)

[2]: [https://hackernoon.com/es6-proxy-and- localization-c1269bbc0a...](https://hackernoon.com/es6-proxy-and- localization-c1269bbc0a26)

</comment><comment><USER26> > _ultimately your takeaway is "I read this article on Medium", and that's not > what I wanted. I wanted to get back to people saying "I read this article on > Baremetrics"._

Is that what you'd be getting back to though, or would it be "I read this article on some blog I found on Google" (or didn't find, since—as he says—Medium is excellent at surfacing content).

He says his traffic has slumped since the Medium switch; it may be causal, or not.

</comment><comment><USER27> I run a small blogging platform ([https://blot.im](https://blot.im)) and get a steady stream of Medium-apostates who've made this realization. Medium is a deeply flawed product and is not designed in the best interests of its writers or its readers. I recommend _The Billionaire 's Typewriter_ by Matthew Butterick if you're interested in why this is so:

[https://practicaltypography.com/billionaires- typewriter.html](https://practicaltypography.com/billionaires-typewriter.html)

Medium's trendy design can be enticing but I'd try to steer people towards a platform over which they have control.

<comment><USER28> I'm getting a 404 here: [https://blot.im/guides](https://blot.im/guides)

<comment><USER27> Oops, I was working on the documentation earlier today. Will fix those broken links tomorrow. Thanks for letting me know!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > They've been fumbling left and right trying to figure out how to make Medium > sustainable, and I'm just not convinced they'll always do what's best for us > and our business.

This is the risk of becoming dependent on any outside service or company for _your_ critical business activities.

SaaS services make your life easier... until they stop working the way you want, go out of business, get acquired and shuttered, etc. etc.

Pick and choose wisely. And always have a backup plan!

</comment><comment><USER30> Medium seems to hate mobile users - always putting up a non-closable popup.

<comment><USER31> They want you to use the Medium app

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been meaning to blog more, and currently I have 2 posts on Medium. Part of the problem is the work it takes to make a solid post. But mostly, as Fred Wilson points out, it is the lack of control. Want to add a small image customly placed? Can't do it. Want to provide your non-logged in readers an experience where an annoying interstitial doesn't appear _every_ time they visit? Can't do it.

I have thought about syndication, and I'm glad to learn here about the import tool.

Edit: Incidentally, where is Dustin Curtis? There is opportunity here. Own your blog _and_ make it social. Must be a way.

</comment><comment><USER33> > _I realized Medium is really great about surfacing content, but it removes > the face of it. It neutralizes all content to basically be author-agnostic. > It's like Walmart or Amazon in that you can buy from thousands of different > brands, but you rarely actually know what brand you're buying…you just know > "I got it from Amazon."_

Medium has pretty much always pushed the stance that they're the "face" of the blogs on the site. You're not hosting your blog _on_ Medium, you're writing _for_ Medium. Heck, their "our story" section says right at the top:

> _Medium taps into the brains of the world's most insightful writers, > thinkers, and storytellers to bring you the smartest takes on topics that > matter. So whatever your interest, you can always find fresh thinking and > unique perspectives._

That's pretty clearly "Medium has great content", not "look at these excellent bloggers". They're a curator / reading platform, intentionally emphasizing the value you get _from Medium itself_.

Given that stance, loss of brand identity seems like a pretty natural outcome.

</comment><comment><USER34> I recently decided to move from Svtble elsewhere. I looked at medium briefly but wasn't super thrilled. I ended up with using Hugo and hosting it with Netlify.

Pushing to GitHub publishes my blog , it looks pretty nice and I have total control over it.

And most importantly, as the author notes, it's "my blog", hosted on my site with links to hire me.

Definitely way more enjoyable, and as a result I blog a lot more.

</comment><comment><USER35> > We'll publish new content two weeks later to Medium (so the initial > publishing of the content is able to get solidified as the primary source > from an SEO standpoint).

Hrm interesting, but if it's the same content, won't Google rank the copy Medium very poorly?

<comment><USER20> The general term for what Baremetrics is doing is called "content syndication" which is the fancy buzzword term for putting all your content on your own blog/domain first and then copying/importing it to other sites.

What makes Google not flip out and de-rank your content for duplication is two things:

1\. There is a specific rel=canonical tag that sites can add into their headers pointing at the URL of the source article.

Medium's import tool (which is hidden at [https://medium.com/p/import](https://medium.com/p/import) ) will add this header to the articles you import with it, pointing them back to your blog and not hurting you and maybe helping your SEO.

2\. There is a notion of timeliness - that if you post on your blog first, wait for Google to index your content there and then post to a place where there isn't a rel=canonical option (like Quora, Tumblr, etc.)

If you're trying to convince someone else that they shouldn't put all their eggs in the Medium basket, point them to this article which is the "nuke it from orbit" article on the subject:

[https://sendcheckit.com/blog/why-you-should-put-your- content...](https://sendcheckit.com/blog/why-you-should-put-your-content-on- medium-and-your-own-domain?rel=hn)

<comment><USER21> The problem is that rel=canonical isn't always effective. So you can still get the SEO hit. Esp. if Google reads which site posted first what wrong (it happens)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The less we patronize organizations that serve their own good as opposed to the general good, the better.

Medium took something wonderful -- elegant, self-service blog hosting -- and ruined it.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't understand why anyone posts on Medium. If you are an individual, a github blog is easy to set up and completely free. If you are a business, I don't understand relinquishing control and diminishing your brand. Whenever I visit Medium it asks me to create an account, which is mildly annoying. Id' be worried Medium will increase the annoyances to a point you'd have no choice but to move elsewhere, which is a hassle.

<comment><USER38> For people or businesses that don't have enough reach Medium is a reasonable tradeoff to get more reach on their network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Medium works great as an amplifier and as an aggregator. It can get you additional traffic for your blog, product or site. But yeah, own your own content.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm reading and re-reading the first sentence with the words "has becoming". And I'm totally stumped if that is proper or not, my mind says "is becoming". Certainly a new usage to me, but I'm not convinced its actually incorrect.

<comment><USER41> Haha, sorry, I've still got a bit of flu fog. Fixed. :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Along a similar note... anyone have suggestions on tooling to publish from markdown files with yml front matter to a github site? I took the time to convert my blog to a more generic format, but got lazy on building tooling.

<comment><USER43> Use the default GitHub site generator, Jekyll

[https://help.github.com/articles/using-jekyll-as-a-static- si...](https://help.github.com/articles/using-jekyll-as-a-static-site- generator-with-github-pages/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> All great reasons to leave. We really need to consider who's getting enriched when we put crucial parts of our businesses on certain platforms, and in Medium's case, it seems like they absorb most of the value (I always cringe when people say "check out my Medium post").

I've kept a _personal_ blog on Write.as for the past few years, and while it's still not self-hosting, I can at least get my data out, have a custom domain and syndicate to Medium when I'm really fiending for those claps (hint: I'm usually not).

</comment><comment><USER45> Viewing Medium as a content discovery / syndication tool instead of a blogging platform is pretty insightful. Now I have a reason to use Medium, where I previously did not.

</comment><comment><USER46> I have stopped reading anything in Medium because I cannot save the page for offline reading using the Evernote Webclip browser extension.

<comment><USER47> I encountered this problem on iOS where you have no control. On Firefox I managed to solve it with a lot of effort of scrolling to get the images to load and carefully selecting how to clip the page. It kind of works.

It did more to make me re-assess why I'm paying for Evernote than make me avoid Medium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I agree with this a lot. I barely take note of the author or their site when I read stuff on Medium. So it makes a lot of sense if you want people to read the stuff you write but it seems to make much less sense from a marketing perspective assuming that I'm not alone in the way I use it. Though from the article that seems to not be the case.

</comment><comment><USER48> My wish: much more developers use github issues for blogging.

<comment><USER49> Github pages, sure. But Github _issues_? How/why would you blog through that?

<comment><USER50> I've been doing it for a while ([https://github.com/SSYGEN/blog](https://github.com/SSYGEN/blog)) and it works fine. It has markdown support and a commenting system, which is basically everything I need. Although it has its limitations depending on what kind of blogging you're doing, so it doesn't work for everyone.

<comment><USER51> Using GH issues for a blog doesn't seem like it could really work for most people. While you can get comments and discussions which is cool, GH isn't a great way to read long form content IMO. Plus if you want any time of analytics how can you find views/reads/etc. On side note you're current tutorial looks very neat, I've never used LUA so I'm going to try and follow along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Much like blogger before it, people are starting to figure out it's best to have your own digital home on the internet.

Medium echoes Blogger today, the downturn is coming.

</comment><comment><USER53> I have been waiting for a post like this for a while. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm thinking of building a blogging API as a Service (kind of like moltin but for blogging instead of ecommerce).

Would anyone be interested in that?

<comment><USER55> Would contentful be a similar idea?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Medium is banned in China.

<comment><USER57> And Egypt! Why, beats me though

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I applaud that. Medium makes it far harder to get a glimpse of the actual source of the article. Take this post, for example, HN lists (baremetrics.com) as the source. If it had been published on Medium it would have listed (medium.com) which is irrelevant.

<comment><USER59> > Medium makes it far harder to get a glimpse of the actual source of the > article

This is even more worse when it comes to pinterest and the source of the image. Seeing stuff like "image source: pinterest" in articles is disgusting.

<comment><USER60> Even worse: "Source: Google Images"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Wow, it's almost as if making free content for another company to capitalize on is not the brightest idea.

</comment><comment><USER62> Yea, I'm evaluating options to get off of medium also (I dislike the interface and I don't know how claps will make me money if at all). Right now I am evaluating [https://zarf.co](https://zarf.co) which allows you to put a paywall to your blog posts.

<comment><USER63> It's an interesting idea, but I think most people who publish on Medium are interested in self-promotion, rather than a direct cash payout. It would be lovely if writers could make a decent amount of money publishing to a small audience of dedicated followers who will pay, but the evidence is that advertising makes more money than direct payments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Good on them. Medium is Tumblr for people who are a bit too mature for purple hair and Steven Universe. The social currency earned through Medium can't be reliably exchanged for anything that matters.

<comment><USER65> I literally have no idea what you are banging on about; Medium appears to be a simple blogging site, and that's about the extent of it. I think you've probably just projected any other attributes you perceive.

<comment><USER64> Both Medium and Tumblr are simple blogging sites the way the popular kids' table at the cafeteria is a simple table. Both have a secondary function as markets for whuffie among a certain crowd, and it's that function which distinguishes them from other blog platforms. That's what I was getting at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I used to run my own blog, but I became disillusioned with the direction HTML/CSS/JavaScript was taking. I lost confidence that my content would continue to be readable in future browsers. I know I could have customised a solution that perfectly preserved the content, but it would have been a lot of work, plus ongoing maintenance.

Now I have a Medium blog and I export articles to PDF for safekeeping. Dead easy.

<comment><USER43> Why not just stick with basic HTML and CSS? Isn't it likely that Medium will fall out of favor faster? There are many static site generators out there that perform just fine for blogs, and are not hard to use.</comment></comment>


Arcade Games: Hacking, Emulation, Preservation - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiRIc0LDlu4

<comment><USER2> Heavy on retro nostalgia, but there are good hardcore hacking bits in the talk.

I found it interesting both Capcom and later Sega used custom security scheme that encrypted specific address ranges used for code, and how it was defeated. Very same method is used to this day* in Bluray drives, and is as "easy" to defeat.

* Micah Scott is working on reverse engineering USB bluray recorder firmware. She found encrypted procedures in firmware running on one of the processors inside the drive, and was able to decrypt it using similar trick(pushing own code after decryption, but before execution over jtag)

[http://vimeo.com/channels/coastermelt/111417458](http://vimeo.com/channels/coastermelt/111417458) talk about decrypting AACS DRM function starts at ~10:00 minutes.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if any of the web sites are still up, but King of Fighters 2000 was the first arcade game that I remember with both fairly difficult ROM encryption and a public, documented effort to crack it. The cart was being dumped by two groups, one based in Italy and one in Taiwan, that posted loads of pictures and a detailed technical explanation of what they had to do. The project deserved a book like Hacking The Xbox.

Worth a read if you can still find any of it. It also kind of marks the end of an era in arcade hardware -- that was the last major effort of a manufacturer to really lock down a game through this means; afterwards everyone switched to the more advanced disc-based systems that were hard/impossible to emulate instead of being hard to decrypt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was hugely interesting. And Ange was fantastic.</comment>


Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks - <AUTHOR> http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2012/06/security-warnings-for-suspected-state.html <comment><USER2> Too bad they are legally prohibited from doing this when the state-sponsored attack is a PATRIOT NSL from the US government.

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

China reading your mail: Big red flag.

USA reading your mail: Business as usual.

<comment><USER3> > USA reading your mail: Business as usual.

According to the first paragraph of the article you linked:

"NSLs can only request non-content information, such as transactional records, phone numbers dialed or email addresses mailed to and from."

According to the sample NSL from the article you linked:

"We are not directing that you provide, and you should not provide, information pursuant to this letter that would disclose the content of any electronic communication. [...] Subject lines of emails and message content are content information and should not be provided pursuant to this letter."

So NSL is not the USA "reading your email."

I'm not defending the NSL, but I am opposed to misinformation, as well as the frequent attempts to paint the USA as being just as bad as China.

<comment><USER2> > NSLs can only request non-content information

NSLs can't legally request ANYTHING. They are UNCONSTITUTIONAL. The government has NO AUTHORITY to issue them. The fact that they are presently limiting themselves to illegal request x instead of illegal request y is not relevant.

Let's skip the abuses of the FBI et al and talk about the government as a whole for a minute.

Are you aware that the NSA monitors _all_ traffic at major exchanges in the US?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy)

The USA reads your mail and messages at several different steps along the way.

See also: recent changes in Skype to allow for wiretapping at the request of the US government.

<comment><USER4> 'haberman's comment includes actual information. Can we not punish people for posting information? I doubt very much that 'haberman approves of NSLs, especially since he said as much.

Moreover, your comment may actually be incorrect; a good chunk of all the mail Gmail handles is never on the wire in a format that can be decrypted with any known attack without access to Google's (often pinned) secret keys. The NSA's ability to snarf it off the wire, stipulated, does not connote their ability to read it.

<comment><USER5> From a wired article: [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/al...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1)

"Before yottabytes of data from the deep web and elsewhere can begin piling up inside the servers of the NSA's new center, they must be collected. To better accomplish that, the agency has undergone the largest building boom in its history, including installing secret electronic monitoring rooms in major US telecom facilities. Controlled by the NSA, these highly secured spaces are where the agency taps into the US communications networks, a practice that came to light during the Bush years but was never acknowledged by the agency. The broad outlines of the so-called warrantless-wiretapping program have long been exposed—how the NSA secretly and illegally bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was supposed to oversee and authorize highly targeted domestic eavesdropping; how the program allowed wholesale monitoring of millions of American phone calls and email. In the wake of the program's exposure, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which largely made the practices legal. Telecoms that had agreed to participate in the illegal activity were granted immunity from prosecution and lawsuits. What wasn't revealed until now, however, was the enormity of this ongoing domestic spying program."

Its a recent article outlining what's ahead (and presently implemented) for the NSA. Given what is already known, the U.S. Govt already has access to your e-mail, and they have the capabilities to decrypt it should your e-mail become high priority.

I'm sorry, but the sky is falling.

<comment><USER6> NSA ability to sniff traffic at major telecom exchanges is real. NSA ability to break $cipher or $hash based on the hearsay journalism involving an interview of (ex-)NSA employees (who would certainly be barred from talking about any real non-public attacks) is not real [1]. It's possible the NSA is setting up real systems that will brute force or factor or find collisions for known borderline algorithms/keysizes. Maybe they have a collection of old DES- encrypted traffic and they are building enough computing resources to do large-scale cracking of DES keys.

The idea that they can create collisions for hashes or crack ciphers believed to be relatively secure in the near to mid future is paranoid speculation.

However, if you're going to be paranoid, direct your attention to RSA and DH (plain, not ECDH). In Suite B, which the NSA recommends for use by government, RSA and DH are absent. If the NSA knows of a weakness in anything currently believed to be secure (I think that's unlikely), I would bet that it's RSA and DH, because the NSA no longer recommends them. I think RSA and DH are superseded by ECDSA/ECDH simply because of speed at comparable key strengths, not because the NSA knows something the public doesn't. As an aside, it indicates that the NSA has a fair amount of confidence in ECDSA/ECDH.

I do not think the NSA is stupid enough to play chicken with the public crypto community by recommending encrypting classified information with ciphers NSA knows to be weak. The public could discover those weaknesses tomorrow. The most sensitive information inside the U.S. government and military is presumably protected by the NSA's Suite A algorithms, but other important information is not, notably military communications between U.S. allies, for which Suite B is recommended.

[1] [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/03/can_the_nsa_b...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/03/can_the_nsa_bre.html)

<comment><USER7> I heard a story somewhere that public key cryptography was known to the NSA long before the 70s. Maybe they are 30 years ahead in cryptographic number theory? Maybe prime factorization isn't actually hard? Maybe...

<comment><USER8> What was essentially RSA was known to Britain's GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in 1973. Is this what you were thinking of? Rivest, Shamir and Adleman rediscovered it in 1977.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google has stepped it up against China. First warning users about search terms that trigger the Great Firewall and now this. Very interesting.

(Of course China wouldn't be the only one, but they have a history hacking into people's Google accounts and I have to imagine are a major motivator in this feature.)

<comment><USER10> Another one that comes into mind is probably author or Flame and Stuxnet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if google will be just as open if the state sponsoring the attack was US.

<comment><USER9> The US doesn't need to attack, they can just use their legal backdoor.

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't that count as an attack vector?

<comment><USER9> Not as far as Google is concerned, you can't do anything to secure your account when the "attack" is utilizing Google's built-in snooping feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They should have included the words "if at all possible, format your compute and reinstall a new operating system with latest updates _immediately_.

If someone has a keylogger on your computer it is game over anyways. (Since they can "read" the mail you send just by recording the keystrokes)

<comment><USER14> I think this warning is referring to MITM hijacking attacks and things along those lines, not key loggers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Live from the scene: my partner just found that she wasn't able to log in to her Gmail account because her password was suddenly invalid. Luckily she was able to reset it quickly and regain control of the account. When she checked the recent activity, though, it showed that all logins in the past 12 hours came from her IP.

<comment><USER16> Sounds like a setup to a thriller movie, but the relevance to the article is lost on me. Am I just missing something?

<comment><USER15> Her account was affected this morning by the attack reported in the article.

<comment><USER16> So she saw the alert described in the article? You didn't really mention that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> People that have received this warning so far:

* @gesa, Obama campaign web developer says an infosec staff member got one: <https://twitter.com/gesa/status/210184075149979649>

* @dandrezner, international relations professor: <https://twitter.com/dandrezner/status/210103984881549312>

* @TomLasseter, Bejing Bureau Chief for McClatchy Newspapers: <https://twitter.com/tomlasseter/status/210210259019640835>

* @JeffreyCarr, CEO of Taia Global and author of Inside Cyber Warfare: <https://twitter.com/jeffreycarr/status/210227611912257537>

* @snowfl0w, malware analyst for Contagio Dump: <https://twitter.com/snowfl0w/status/210207958376779776>

* @w7voa, Voice of America Bureau Chief covering Korea and Japan: <https://twitter.com/w7voa/status/210194791479250946>

* @marcambinder, national security reporter for The Atlantic and GQ: <https://twitter.com/marcambinder/status/210184141180911617>

* @DDysart, web developer?: <https://twitter.com/DDysart/status/210183540535590912>

This is not looking good... some people on this list have gone and installed Google 2FA after realizing their computer might be compromised. Enabling two- factor auth WILL NOT resolve this issue if your computer has been compromised. If you get this warning, you need to bring your computer to someone with real security expertise and have it checked out. Strongly consider cleanly reinstalling your OS, then enable two-factor authentication.

EDIT: Here's the message that Google is giving to people that have been affected: [http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=m...](http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=2591015)

It looks like they're detecting exploit code sitting in people's accounts, mostly in the form of PDF and Office docs and inside RARs. This might explain why snowfl0w is on the list, since he handles a lot of this stuff daily and some of it likely goes through his e-mail (on purpose). It's unclear if this means that your account was successfully compromised. It's more likely that it means someone is _attempting_ to get into your account.

</comment><comment><USER18> Since New York Times recently reported that Stuxnet is a US State Sponsored Cyber virus - which if you recall was accidentally released into the wild and affected and attacked innocent end-user machines as collateral damage, and with the ongoing US-Israeli state sponsored cyber warfare weapons of mass destruction (operation Olympic Games) including the more recent releases of Duqu and Flame virus.... can Google clarify if through its detailed analysis as well as victim reports if Google will apply the same exacting standards and warn end-users (both in the US and abroad, example: Iranian users) of these domestic (US) state sponsored attacks as well? Even if Google was to choose to go the higher route, wouldn't this kind of undermining and subterfuge (however unintentional) really go unnoticed by its host nation? Or are exceptions of convenience made in these cases due to the close ties that Google has with the US intelligence agencies and the confirmed but secret and classified collaboration that the Google has with the CIA and NSA in regards to GMail and Google Accounts? No doubt there is a clear conflict of interest going on here. To me this smells more like Google catering to State Sponsored Propaganda than really caring about the security and privacy of their end-users.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why the emphasis on state sponsored attacks? (I am aware of stuxnet/flame/sanger's book) If google knows I am being targeted by a non- state actor are they choosing not to notify me? Are we going back to a cold war mentality where the only credible attacks are state sponsored?

<comment><USER20> Presumably if it's a serious attack by a non-state actor, Google's lawyers are on the job in the relevant state(s) getting police involved, for whatever that's worth.

In the state actor case, there's little or nothing they can do to make it stop happening, hence the special warning.

It's also a high-profile jab at the unnamed state actors, which is nice.

<comment><USER19> So its not worth letting me know I am 0wned because google's lawyers are on the case?

<comment><USER21> I assure you that the grandparent is misinformed, the chance of google's lawyers and/or the police being involved if some individual is sending you targeted malware (aka spear phishing) is essentially 0%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Since Google doesn't tell you why they're showing this warning to you, and only tell you to follow standard security guidelines ("don't get phished"), I suspect people will quickly be trained to ignore this message.

My girlfriend received the warning message today. She has already activated 2-factor auth, so I'm really not sure what she's supposed to do with this information.

</comment><comment><USER23> _groan_ so we live in /this/ era now, where politicians try to weaponize the Internet. Kill me now.

</comment><comment><USER24> How do we know this isn't state-sponsored propaganda!?

<comment><USER25> Because we already know that Gmail has been hacked by the Chinese in order to obtain information about their dissenters?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> aka China, right?

<comment><USER27> Mostly! I believe there's been some tampering noticed in various Middle Eastern countries (such as Iran and Syria) as well, and I suspect this warning is targeted at them too.

<comment><USER28> I guess so. A couple weeks ago I experienced something spooky (like session hijack) in Iran and contacted them...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think this is a great idea. I would be interested if it could tell you what state though, and/or what group.

</comment><comment><USER30> What kind of productive, actionable result can this notification lead to for a regular user? "Oh, my government may-or-may-not be attacking me, I'm not even sure because it doesn't say, in any case I better just push this magic fix-it- all-up button I have right here."

I can't see how this can be differentiated from simple underhanded FUD-driven political activism.

<comment><USER31> How about the steps noted in the post? Make sure you have a good password, use two-factor authentication, and be careful about clicking on any login links? It could also be incentive to change accounts, or change to a different communication mechanism. As long as this warning is triggered by actual data, I am not sure how you could categorize it as "FUD" or even political activism. Hacking into accounts should not be political - it should be criminal.

<comment><USER30> > Here are some things you should do immediately: create a unique password > that has a good mix of capital and lowercase letters, as well punctuation > marks and numbers; enable 2-step verification as additional security; and > update your browser, operating system, plugins, and document editors. > Attackers often send links to fake sign-in pages to try to steal your > password, so be careful about where you sign in to Google and look for > <https://accounts.google.com/> in your browser bar. These _warnings are not > being shown because Google's internal systems have been compromised or > because of a particular attack._

How does _any_ of this differ from regular user advice? And note the last sentence, they are explicitly admitting the warning relates to nothing in reality beyond the normal environment. Do we suppose that people in China aren't aware their government spies on them? Do you suppose your own government does not?

I don't understand why this banner isn't shown to all users - China or otherwise, or why show it at all. Do something actionable and meaningful - introduce password complexity requirements, mandatory 2 factor authentication, require use of a signed browser with pinned SSL certificates - anything but non-specific nonsense that does little but promote unactionable fear in the hearts of thousands of users.

<comment><USER32> Don't forget that _government officials_ , _defense contractors_ , etc. also use Google products. Not all hacking is criminal or local. Some of it is geopolitical in nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if anyone on HN has gotten this warning yet.

</comment><comment><USER34> I like how "state-sponsored" is pretty much an euphemism for "we're pretty confident it was the Chinese who did it but we can't say so on our official blog".</comment>


Of Course It's Already Been Taxed - <AUTHOR> http://matthodges.com/2014/07/of-course-its-already-been-taxed/

<comment><USER2> Not all taxes have this effect. A land value tax, a poll tax, a value added tax, or a wealth tax do nothing of the sort.

Income tax, corporate tax, capital gain taxes are some of the worst, most distortive taxation schemes. But taxation isn't just about raising revenue, it needs to have some popular support, and so it caters to a strange vision of fairness.

To get an idea of how distortive an income tax can be consider the following scenario.

You do your own housework and cooking, but while you're a great cook you suck at cleaning up. Your neighbor is the opposite, terrible cook, but great with a mop.

So you'd like to hire your neighbor as house cleaner, and they hire you as a cook, but now, both of you are paying taxes.

In this specific example, you could probably find an arrangement where money doesn't change hands, and the transaction would be small enough for the IRS not to really care. However, scale that up to an entire economy, and you see the gigantic friction that it introduces in exchanging labor.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is wrong in a few ways from my understanding. Gifts are not automatically taxed. You can give up to $10.96M dollars tax free over a lifetime to a specific reciever. Also every year you can give up to $14K without it counting against the $10.96M; else you just need to keep track of the running total. source: IRS forms (709)

Furthermore, one thing the author has missed is that all of listed taxable instances are economic transactions aka doing business. Inheritance is no such thing, it is a simply transfer of title. Whether that should be taxed is a completely different discussion.

<comment><USER4> Then surely it should fall into the same category as a other gifts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Makes me wonder if a sustainable world could exist where government spending was financed solely through the issue of new currency. I doubt that you'd avoid hyper inflation for long, but hey, no taxes!</comment>


DOA: The Galaxy Gear reportedly has a 30% return rate at Best Buy - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/doa-the-galaxy-gear-reportedly-has-a-30-percent-return-rate-at-best-buy/ <comment><USER2> I can't wait for the next iteration of the Gear. The first Note was rather awful, but the Note 2 turned out to be one of my favorite machines. Let's hope this works out that way.

<comment><USER3> What in particular didn't you like about it?

I know it wasn't a perfect device, but most people seemed to love it when it was originally released.

<comment><USER2> I just remember it surprising me with how slow and clumsy it felt, even though it was a significant upgrade compared to my phone at the time. And then the processor had all sorts of issues with AOSP, so you couldn't really run cyanogen comfortably on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why does the storyline around smart watches ignore the Moto Active and Sony devices (plural)?

Instead Samsung is supposed to have created the "first" one in a sleazy attempt to gain reflected glory from the rumored Apple watch.

</comment><comment><USER5> Its sounds like the issues are software based. I still have hope for the Gear and I am sure we will see a standardized framework for these type of devices built into android with in the next few releases.</comment>


Home Routers Under Attack via Malvertising on Windows, Android Devices - <AUTHOR> https://www.proofpoint.com/us/threat-insight/post/home-routers-under-attack-malvertising-windows-android-devices <comment><AUTHOR> How can anyone even try to defend Ad-networks in this day and age is beyond my understanding.

Tl:dr "This malware changes DNS settings on the router and effectively becomes in control of your internet traffic."

How can one disable STUN server requests in webRTC (i.e Chrome)?</comment>


Groupon Valuation Sinking to $12 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/10/groupons-sinking-valuation-now-down-12-billion/43895/

<comment><USER2> Back when Google was bidding on Groupon, a friend of mine is a finance exec at Google and he said even at $6B, Google thought Groupon was overpriced.

<comment><USER2> also, when you have a business model that's not based on any real technology or a strong user base, it's hard to compete long term. Groupon could win in the short term only.</comment></comment>


Sorry - have to ask: how do you post things to the ask section? - <AUTHOR>

I posted a couple of things without urls and they went into the new section. <comment><USER2> I think you need a minimum of four upvotes to be listed in the Ask section. Also, they are not mutually exclusive, your thread could be on the newest page, the ask page and the homepage at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER3> If your URL-less item gets voted up, it will appear in the ask section. It works like the home page except items with URLs are filtered out.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!</comment></comment>


Steel worker reveals blocking view of U.S. aircraft on day of atomic bombing - <AUTHOR> http://mainichi.jp/english/english/features/news/20140726p2a00m0na014000c.html <comment><USER3> I wanted to know if this was plausible, so I located the Yawata Steel Works (the source of the smoke screen) and the Kokura Arsenal (the aiming point for the bomb) on a map. They were about 4.4km apart.

[http://i.imgur.com/nJaJtH7.png](http://i.imgur.com/nJaJtH7.png) (the site of the Steel Works is on the left)

Interesting, but I still don't know if it's true.

edit: Wikipedia's page on Smokescreens says "One 50 gallon drum of fog oil can obscure 60 miles (97 km) of land in 15 minutes", so I suppose it was easily possible for them to have hidden the target if the wind direction was right

Google Maps link: [https://www.google.com/maps/place/%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%96%E7%82%8...](https://email@example.com,130.8525735,13z/data=!4m7!1m4!3m3!1s0x0:0x0!2zMzPCsDU0JzEwLjAiTiAxMzDCsDQ5JzQ4LjAiRQ!3b1!3m1!1s0x0:0x6a522cb4a3d20415?hl=en)

<comment><USER4> 97 _square_ kilometers? 97 kilometer _radius_? tsk tsk Wikipedia…

<comment><USER5> So I read this as "within 15 minutes, land up to 60 miles downwind of the generator is obscured."

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't that require 240mph winds, though?

<comment><USER5> ... yeah. Oops. Guess that reading's out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A couple of photos of what a smokescreen covering a city looks like [http://449th.org/ploesti.php](http://449th.org/ploesti.php)

It's for a German city, but it is the same idea.

<comment><USER8> correction: for a Romanian city - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploie%C8%99ti](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploie%C8%99ti)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does the Trolley problem apply here? (i.e. diverting the enemy from your town, if you know it is likely they will just attack the next town over) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem)

<comment><USER3> Maybe we can see it as a type of market in which participants simply tried to keep bombers away from their own city, without considering the effects on other cities? Over time, competition within this macabre market would produce increasingly efficient and effective means of repelling bombers. If the cities had cooperated, rather than competing, maybe they would have not evolved such efficient countermeasures?

A competitive strategy could produce a net benefit for all the cities, because diverted bombers might be less likely to carry out an effective attack on their secondary target.

In fact, that's what happened in this case (assuming the smokescreen had an effect). By the time the bomber diverted from Kokura to Nagasaki, it was so short of fuel that it could only attempt one bombing run. Visibility was poor, and the bomb detonated off target above a valley, with the result that parts of the city were shielded. The death toll of 40-80,000 was 'only' about half that of Hiroshima, despite the bomb being more powerful

edit: The outcome could have been even better, because the orders for the mission stated that they had to clearly see the target. If not, they were to return with the bomb. Really, it sounds like they ignored these orders, perhaps because they didn't have enough fuel to carry the bomb back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How much coal tar would you need to burn to block an airplane's view?

<comment><USER11> Not sure, but it seems a little bit unlikely that the smoke could be enough to obstruct the vision of a plane cruising at 30000+ feet.

<comment><USER3> They only had to obscure the target zone, which was a very small area (a single factory complex, the Kokura Arsenal), and by chance it happened to be obscured during the 30 minutes or so that the plane was overhead.

This wasn't a normal bombing run. It had elements of an experiment - <USER2> wanted to understand how the bomb worked, so they wanted to control the drop precisely and be able to observe the effects.

The aiming points were very precise (a bridge in the case of Hiroshima), and they were chosen well in advance, and the mission orders were quite rigid. If the crew couldn't see the target clearly after several attempts, they didn't have the authority to randomly drop the bomb somewhere else - they had to go on to the next city.

Ironically, after all that, I think they eventually missed the aiming point in Nagasaki by 2 km or so, because it was also obscured. By then, the plane was low on fuel though, so I guess they were forced to do the best they could. I've read that they weren't supposed to do that, according to the mission rules. The plane came very close to running out of fuel, which I guess might have made them drop the bomb to reduce weight.

edit: This is Field Order 13 - for the attack on Hiroshima. It includes Kokura and Nagasaki as secondary targets, so you can see how precise they were about the aiming points. I'm pretty sure the target details would be exactly the same for the Nagasaki attack (Field Order 17, which I can't find online).

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/kafaikan/6693719785/sizes/l](https://www.flickr.com/photos/kafaikan/6693719785/sizes/l)

edit2: Bomber crew member's diary which explains what happened over Kokura - [http://www.mphpa.org/classic/COLLECTIONS/CG- ASPI/01/Pages/CG...](http://www.mphpa.org/classic/COLLECTIONS/CG- ASPI/01/Pages/CGP-ASPI-024.htm)

<comment><USER12> That diary is a fantastic read. The language, the drama, the bird's eye view of one of the most pivotal moments in world history. Beats fiction any day.

<comment><USER13> I'm reading this page here: [http://www.mphpa.org/classic/COLLECTIONS/CG- ASPI/01/Pages/CG...](http://www.mphpa.org/classic/COLLECTIONS/CG- ASPI/01/Pages/CGP-ASPI-030.htm)

Just thought I'd share some of my puzzlement here; but it sounded as if they'd dropped a third atomic bomb. I though this unlikely, unless the diary is revealing a secret kept (the drop sounds as if it'd failed), but then I came across this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin_bomb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin_bomb)

So, in addition to the nuclear models, they dropped identical conventional bombs of that type as well. Never knew that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting to read Wikipedia's entry on this matter (claiming it was caused by a huge firebombing raid):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki)

"The delay at the rendezvous had resulted in clouds and drifting smoke from fires started by a major firebombing raid by 224 B-29s on nearby Yahata the previous day covering 70% of the area over Kokura, obscuring the aiming point."

<comment><USER15> Yep, one of the reasons Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected as targets was because they were one of the few major Japanese cities that /hadn't/ been firebombed in the preceding weeks. People forget that the deadliest 24 hours in the Second World War was not either of the atomic bombings (which killed c. 120,000 people), but the firebombing of Tokyo, which burned down 12 square miles of a city which had average population density of 100,000 people per square mile.

<comment><USER16> Also, Kyoto was one of the original targets but because of its cultural significance it was replaced with Nagasaki.

<comment><USER17> Thank goodness, though. The bombings were a bad idea, but at least they didn't bomb Kyoto!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ok, so the target area was blocked. So what? This was not a precision ammo, it was an a-bomb! Even those early designs could just be detonated in the general area and still destroy the target and everything else.

Why did the bombers have to switch targets then?

<comment><USER15> This is not quite true; the Nagasaki bomb missed its target by almost two miles because of cloud cover, and as a result only half the number of people were killed compared to Hiroshima. Even with an atomic bomb you had to be /relatively/ precise. (Source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYphE841lfY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYphE841lfY))</comment></comment>


Neutrino Particles May Be a Link to the Dark Sector - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hidden-neutrino-particles-may-be-a-link-to-the-dark-sector/ <comment><USER2> "Dark Sector" \- the next big thing in sciency stuff?

<comment><USER3> It's just shorthand for stuff that we cannot detect but ordinary (electromagnetic) means. In theory everything 'feels' gravity and anything with mass contributes to it. The left-handed neutrino is unusual in that it experiences only gravity and the extremely weak (though far stronger than gravity) "weak nuclear force" (and their right-handed brethren, if they even exist, might not exist en experience that).

The "dark sector" is that 95% or so of the entire universe we infer must exist for either gravitational reasons (stronger gravity leads us to infer unseen mass, which we term "dark matter" though "transparent and apparently frictionless" would be a better term, or to infer unseen energy (dark energy that seems to be driving the accelerating rate of the universe).

<comment><USER4> > 95% or so of the entire universe we infer must exist

Isn't the reason we infer dark matter exists, is our observations of the spin of galaxies? In other words there must be a lot more gravity produced by matter we aren't observing (dark matter) to explain large scale observations?

Aren't there competing theories to dark matter, which haven't been ruled out, from Einstein's theories of gravity being wrong; or in the same way Einstein's theory of gravity breaks down/is incomplete on the quantum scale his theories may breakdown at the scale of galaxies; and even more simply our observations not be accurate?

<comment><USER5> There are many independent lines of evidence: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evidence)

Contrarian theories have outsized popularity here on hnews, and this tends to get fed by garbage articles from the usual sources (glances at quanta with mild disdain). Modified gravity theories are not some alternate path we just didn't explore. We explored them. They fail to explain the observational evidence. In particular the way stuff moves in galactic collisions makes very clear there's dark matter distinct from some modified version of gravity interacting with visible matter.

It ends up that the consensus view of thousands of Phds that study this stuff is actually not trivially mistaken.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't implying mistaken by any means, I understand is the leading theory (not the only theory), I didn't realize everything else had been ruled out or considered junk science (I just understood no one wants to be the person saying Einstein's theories/equations for gravity need modification...even though that happens to be the consensus at the quantum level.

But the galaxy collision observations is something I want to read more about (I've obviously seen simulations), thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So it seems like this may have a link to dark matter but not energy. I have no expertise in physics but it seems like dark is a bad term as it only reflects our ignorance and inability to detect through normal electromagnetic means.

<comment><USER7> Astronomers work through photons obtained and scientific inference on those photons. Lots and lots of inference. "Light" matter simply means "we can see it through a telescope because it gives off light," which means stars at a great distance, or closer up, light from a star reflected off of a surface.

Dark, therefore, means "we know it is there but it isn't directly observable by gathering photons with a telescope."

<comment><USER8> Crucially we can show it's there by examining how it affects the light from bright background sources passing through it: there is a spectral shift without the imposition of new emission or absorption lines, and there is Einstein lensing [ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens) ]. We can see this in the large by observing the [http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/Lyman-alpha- forest.html](http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/Lyman-alpha-forest.html) on lines of sight through and near galaxy clusters. For example, [presentation abstract] [https://depts.washington.edu/astron/event/tba-liang- dai/](https://depts.washington.edu/astron/event/tba-liang-dai/) [related paper [https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03149v2](https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03149v2) ] or [https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.07870](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.07870)

The tl;dr is that distant light sources (distance obtained by among other things comparing the angular diameter and brightness on the sky of spiral galaxies containing common bright sources within them such as supernovae or molecular clouds lit by quasars) are redshifted in a way that is very hard to explain without an accelerating expansion of space (which in the equations of the Standard Cosmology we represent as dark energy), and are lensed by luminous galaxy clusters in such a way that is very hard to explain without mass that doesn't emit or absorb light.

"Hard to explain" because (just as one example) the Lyman-alpha line and its relativistic behaviour is extremely well studied in controlled laboratory conditions in various places in our solar system (notably sensitive experiments carried in various spacecraft probing other bodies in our solar system). In a number of spacecraft, Lyman-alpha photometry testing is used to determine the Hydrogen-Deuterium ratio of planetary atmospheres, since cells of those two gasses form practically ideal narrow-band rejection filters, and over time a mixture of cells reveals the atomic ratio of those isotopes in the atmosphere. People who observe Mars have used this technique to study the rate at which Mars is outgassing water vapour, in particular. As it is useful to planetary scientists to look through varying depths of a given planetary atmosphere backlit by distant luminous objects, in practice the cosmological Lyman-alpha forest can be sampled by orbiting Ly-a photometers "for free". You can't really reject the resulting Ly-a data without _also_ rejecting the Deuterium/Hydrogen ratio obtained from probes on the surface of Mars, which happen to match. And the data typically also encodes other spectral lines principally from the intergalactic medium, and those lines are similarly redshifted and amplified by relativistic -- including general relativistic -- effects. Both dark matter and dark energy induce matching general relativistic effects, and nobody has figured out how to produce the same spectral features without including dark matter and dark energy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The idea that our experiments might be detecting a fourth neutrino remains > controversial, however, because the Standard Model of particle physics is > one of the most tested and thoroughly confirmed theoretical frameworks in > history—and it allows for only three neutrinos.

I am frustrated with how the "Standard Model" has become a veil with which a priestly particle physicist class hides sacred knowledge of how the universe works from plebeians like myself.

Why does the Standard Model only allow for three neutrinos? Is it because the math says so? Is it because some other maths only work if this number is three? Does it come from some fascinating group-theory or symmetry groups that nobody teaches at a highschool math level? I can't be the only one who wants to learn more about this stuff.

I don't believe that the Particle Physicist or the broader Physics community is at fault here. I blame our approach to school education.

If we accept that it's ok for a 14 year to be bewildered at quadratic equations and is expected to accept the "Don't worry, it'll all make sense later" line, it should also be possible for the same student to learn about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the basics of non-Euclidean geometry and symmetry groups.

Our society today has several cohorts of adults who do not have the necessary foundations to understand the Standard Model. We don't plan to educate children in schools today to be able to understand this stuff. It will take a highly motivated adult several years of self study to reach a point where the Standard Model becomes approachable. Do we really want to live in the world where an attempt to understand fundamental truths about the universe can only be an extremely ambitious goal?

History shows us how the world changed when the first translations of the Bible became widely available. We need to think hard about what lessons we can learn and how to apply it to the comprehension-inequality that plagues our world today.

I wonder if the stagnation in Particle Physics after 2012 needs a second renaissance led by a generation who grew up never hearing the phrase "Nobody understands Quantum Mechanics".

<comment><USER10> I get what you're saying. I studied physics in undergrad but decided not to go to grad school. I kept hearing stuff like that well into my junior and senior years. I ended up doing internships on two HEP experiments, one at Brookhaven National Lab and the other at Jefferson Lab. It was enormously frustrating to hear that something was allowed/not allowed because "the Great and Powerful Standard Model says so". If there's one thing I picked up from my program and being on experiment teams, it's that effectively communicating science is extremely hard. It's not fair to characterize it as malicious ("priestly particle physicist class hides sacred knowledge") when it's really just people not knowing how to simplify concepts accurately. I don't know a single physicist who wouldn't dearly have loved to be able to explain this stuff to laypeople more easily. People are scared to use metaphors or other rough answers. In the least bad case they can result in misunderstanding or confusion. In the worst case they can lead to perpetual motion machine people.

This is extremely niche knowledge and there's a lot more stuff that should be explained first. I went to grade school in Virginia in the 90s and early 2000s. We were taught that the American Civil War was about states rights, and that it was the War of Northern Aggression. I'd much rather we focus broad educational efforts on making people understand their fellow humans and try to prevent repeating the atrocities of the past than get people to understand quantum flavordynamics or chromodynamics.

<comment><USER9> > It's not fair to characterize it as malicious ("priestly particle physicist > class hides sacred knowledge") when it's really just people not knowing how > to simplify concepts accurately. I don't know a single physicist who > wouldn't dearly have loved to be able to explain this stuff to laypeople > more easily.

You are right - I spoke out of frustration. I understand that one of the greatest joys of pure science is being able to share it with the world. I'm sure the Physics community is just as frustrated at how difficult it is to spread this knowledge accurately to a broader audience.

<comment><USER11> Explaining the Standard Model clearly and correctly is just really hard! I've tried, a lot. Costless simplification is impossible, because the mathematical form it's usually written in is _already_ the simplest, clearest, and most concise way we know to describe it. (If there were a better way, we'd be using that instead!)

Anything simpler necessarily sacrifices correctness. Metaphors are great, but it's clunky to explain when the metaphor stops working or becomes actively harmful to understanding. For example, adding a 4th neutrino that is otherwise identical to the other 3 would break the Standard Model would violate anomaly cancellation, making the model mathematically inconsistent. But explaining from scratch what an anomaly is or why they need to cancel would require a ton of vague, fragile metaphors layered on top of each other, at which point I'm not sure what value it would provide.

Imagine explaining how a CPU works on the silicon level to somebody from the 18th century. It's the same problem -- it's hard to say anything that isn't the length of a full textbook, or completely misleading, or bordering on woo. I've written and then thrown away a lot of attempted explanations because of this.

<comment><USER12> > Anything simpler necessarily sacrifices correctness.

But not _clarity_.

This is the crux of the problem. Mathematicians, and by extension, theoretical physicists are under the impression that the most terse, most technical, most "correct" (by some abitrary definition!) definition is the only one that matters, and that nothing else should ever stain their lips.

Take a tour of any abstract mathematical topic on Wikipedia. It's a _travesty_.

Nothing at all can ever be understood from those pages by even an extremely intelligent person who _doesn 't already know the topic_.

Do you see the issue? You have to already understand to gain understanding... err... of a thing you don't understand, hence the need for a Wikipedia page. If you understood it, then as a "quick reminder reference" the Wikipedia page might be useful, but then the audience is a few hundred people.

There is absolutely no difference between this idiotic behaviour of mathematicians, and the _insistence_ of English priests in the middle ages of sticking to Latin for theology. NONE.

If you argue this point, first explain to me why physics is done with Greek letters.

I bet whatever you say will be indistinguishable from the arguments made by those priests.

> Imagine explaining how a CPU works on the silicon level to somebody from the > 18th century

I could do this, no problem. It would take about 20-30 hours of talking and something to scribble on, but I could do it.

I would use analogies with things they already understand, such as the hydraulic control lines of steam-powered machinery, and explain that electronic transistors (called 'valves' back in the day!) are _just_ like the hydraulically or pneumatically controlled valves they use every day in industry. Just more of them, faster, and smaller.

See, it's not that hard.

> I've written and then thrown away a lot of attempted explanations because of > this.

Try using geometric algebra instead of the mishmash that is vector algebra. Try avoiding complex numbers. Try to avoid Greek letters. Try to avoid mixing ten branches of mathematics just to shave off a few letters in an equation somewhere. Try using an analogy with things the audience might already be familiar with.

Try harder.

<comment><USER13> And then you end up with explanations like "Gravity is like a deformation of a rubber sheet". Completely misleading. In a similar case (not physics), I literally wasted years on trying to understand something correctly because I wriggled from analogy to analogy instead of putting effort into learning it correctly.

> I would use analogies with things they already understand, such as the > hydraulic control lines of steam-powered machinery

How many people from the 18th century knew how those worked? You would be talking to an elite engineer. And even then you would first have to explain to them how you can represent numbers and numerical operations with those valves. I am pretty sure that if you take a today's elite engineer and take the time to explain him the basics correctly, he would be able to understand theoretical physics. That's what's happening in universities every day.

> If you argue this point, first explain to me why physics is done with Greek > letters.

There are probably some historical reasons for that, but today it's just because you are quickly running out of latin letters in complex equations, at least that's my opinion :)

<comment><USER14> > And then you end up with explanations like "Gravity is like a deformation of > a rubber sheet".

If you haven't read Eistein's "Relativity : the Special and General Theory", I strongly recommend you do.

It's a book aimed at laypeople, that requires only a basic (1st undergrad semester) understanding of calculus and vectors (not vector calculus, not linear algebra, just vectors). Yet, it's precise and correct, sacrificing conciseness to get easiness to understand - like every teaching book should.

So, no. It's perfectly possible to explain it without the bad analogies.

<comment><USER11> Special relativity is well-known for having the least prerequisites of any modern physics subject. Yes, you can explain it with just calculus and vectors. That's precisely what we already do in university courses.

But the complaint that started this whole thread is "why can't physicists explain why it's hard to add in extra neutrinos to the Standard Model?" Understanding the reason requires 2-3 semesters of relativistic quantum field theory, a subject which in turn requires relativity, quantum mechanics, and classical field theory.

Seriously, any resource that legitimately explains all of this, without bad analogies, and assuming no prerequisites, would end up precisely as hard to read (or likely harder) than the ~10,000 pages of textbook people currently study. The textbooks have already been optimized for ease of learning, there is no magic way to make a hard thing easy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


It's a fact: Robots replace humans nearly in every professional field - <AUTHOR> http://failedevolution.blogspot.com/2015/09/its-fact-robots-replace-humans-nearly.html <comment><USER2> Excepting programming robots _O_</comment>


Interactive Git Cheatsheet - <AUTHOR> https://ndpsoftware.com/git-cheatsheet.html#loc=workspace; <comment><USER2> I'm not criticizing the cheatsheet and can see how it can help but if I may point out 2 possible points of confusion for Git novices:

If the conceptual boxes of "stash", "workspace",...,"upstream repo" represent a left-to-right _timeline_ of workflow, having "stash" being on the left of "workspace" is somewhat misleading. A stash point-in-time usage can be thought of in the same vertical time-alignment as "index" or "local repository".

If the conceptual boxes represent a _storage model_ , then stash being a separate isolated box is somewhat misleading. The stashes are actually _stored in_ the "local repository". (E.g. an alternative diagram would show "index" and "stash" as nested boxes _inside_ of "local repository".)

I readily admit that spatially rearranging how "stash" is diagrammed complicates the arrows illustrating the git commands. Therefore, maybe the way the cheatsheet did it is the best compromise.

</comment><comment><USER3> I understand why everyone wants git cheatsheets (there are a lot of commands), but I have yet to see a cheatsheet/etc that does little more than become a crutch.

For better or for worse, git really demands that you learn the concepts and fundamentals. It has a steep learning curve, but it's one that easily pays dividends.

Do I wish it were easier to learn? Of course.

Can you substitute actually learning how git and its workflows are used with cheatsheets and quick primers? Not remotely.

That being said, I think this one is a step in the right direction by being interactive. Something like a "git simulator" could be incredibly powerful in teaching people git.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that git has terrible U/X.

The commands are unintuitive, have defaults that nobody uses, and use names that are prone to misinterpretation because they have completely different meanings from what you'd expect.

It's not only difficult to learn; it's difficult to remember the commands and the switches you have to add every single time (why?), and all the extra commands you have to throw in just to get from a checkout to a complete working tree.

Git's UI really needs an overhaul. Unfortunately, I fear it is already too late.

<comment><USER5> This is it exactly.

I'm really kind of tired of the "git demands you understand the concepts and the model" excuse because that really isn't what's going on. It's just a poor interface with an un-intuitive set of commands that are organized according to what makes sense to the person who developed the software rather than what makes sense to a person using the software.

Lots of systems demand that you learn the underlying concepts and structures. Indeed, nearly _all_ computer systems demand that when you get to a developer, operations, or admin level. It's actually kind of condescending to keep seeing people repeating that over and over. It's not difficult to understand that git is basically a repository of a repository. If you already understand branching and merging from SVN, it's easy to explain git with a single image[0]. It's still difficult _to learn to use git_ and absolutely nothing about the software eases that transition. Claiming the problem must be with the user and their inability to learn the system should clearly have been incorrect somewhere around 8 years ago when people were still struggling to learn it after it had been out for 5 years.

I imagine some day we'll run into a situation that's similar to apt vs apt-get vs aptitude where there are multiple clients that do the same thing, but it's not clear to me if someone will just create a better product before that time comes along (that product is probably the GitHub client).

[0]: [https://images.osteele.com/2008/git- transport.png](https://images.osteele.com/2008/git-transport.png)

<comment><USER6> Another comparison: iptables with its hard-to-remember syntax, vs ufw.

As UFW is just a wrapper for iptables, I wonder if there's a real possibly of a Git replacement just being a wrapper that simplifies the syntax and maybe some of the conceptual model.

<comment><USER7> gitflow is just that

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This cheatsheet has been around for years. Nothing has helped me grok git better than this cheatsheet.

Here is its Github repo: [https://github.com/ndp/git- cheatsheet](https://github.com/ndp/git-cheatsheet)

<comment><USER9> What really helped me grok git was [https://git-man-page- generator.lokaltog.net/](https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net/) which taught me that the commands and the documentation of git really are pure nonsense, which relieved me from the feeling that I just wasn't seeing the underlying beauty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think they've been HN'ed. I'm guessing a stylesheet failed altogether in my browser because it's unreadable.

wget [https://ndpsoftware.com/git- cheatsheet.html#loc=workspace](https://ndpsoftware.com/git- cheatsheet.html#loc=workspace) 0.05s user 0.01s system 0% cpu 51.874 total

</comment><comment><USER11> this one is pretty funny:

[http://justinhileman.info/article/git-pretty/git- pretty.png](http://justinhileman.info/article/git-pretty/git-pretty.png)

</comment><comment><USER12> Am I missing something or is there no `git push`?

<comment><USER13> Click on the "Local Repository" column

<comment><USER12> Ahhhh. I had no idea this thing was interactive. That's not intuitive at all. The only that that indicates that is the "Interaction" in the title and I skipped over that part and just start reading the commands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like the site is struggling at the moment, cached version here: [http://web.archive.org/web/20180914141513/https://ndpsoftwar...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180914141513/https://ndpsoftware.com/git- cheatsheet.html)

<comment><USER15> Looks like that is down too now . . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I only recently started using 'git stash', thanks to this quick script: [https://gist.github.com/Ovid/e7ddc56c4710c1baae228b7e4dd3cf7...](https://gist.github.com/Ovid/e7ddc56c4710c1baae228b7e4dd3cf77)

</comment><comment><USER11> nobody has mentioned the other popular cheatsheet called github desktop?

</comment><comment><USER17> it's missing git fetch and bunch of other stuff

<comment><USER18> I've mentioned this on another comment. Click on either "Local Repository" or "Upstream Repository" to see the repo-related commands.

Edit: Had "Remote Repository" instead of "Upstream Repository".</comment></comment>