A framework for creating Python/C++ polyglots - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wmww/Python-plus-plus <comment><USER2> For anyone looking for a more usable version of C++/Python interop, I can't recommend Cppyy[0] highly enough. You can use any C++ code/libraries from Python without the need to write any bindings. I created an example project here to test it out[1].

0\. [https://cppyy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://cppyy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

1\. [https://github.com/jclay/cppyy-knearestneighbors- example](https://github.com/jclay/cppyy-knearestneighbors-example)

<comment><USER3> From your second link:

" Note: I'm using Python 2

This is because even the latest clang-python in Debian (for clang 6) provides Python 2 bindings only. "

Is this still true?

<comment><USER2> I believe it's no longer the case. The maintainer of Cppyy was cautioning that the Python 3 support was somewhat experimental at the time, but I believe it's officially supported now. Either way, it could have been solved by building from source, but I was feeling lazy :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The exact same Python++ file can be fed in unmodified to a stock C++ > compiler and a stock Python interpreter and you will get the same output. > The first version of Python++ was developed by William W Wold for the Stupid > Shit No One Needs and Terrible Ideas Hackathon 2017.

Sounds about right, but it is very impressive.

<comment><USER5> Came here for this. At least they are self aware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really clever! Here's a more traditional approach that I stumbled across:

[https://github.com/lukasmartinelli/py14](https://github.com/lukasmartinelli/py14)

It translates a small subset of Python to C++ 14.

I'm going to attempt this for real pretty soon on my shell project :) Although I'm using MyPy rather than relying on type inference.

MyPy is useful and solid now!

</comment><comment><USER7> If anyone seriously want to write a program that works equally in Python and C++, use Haxe, which compiles to a few more targets as well: JavaScript, Java, C#, C (HashLink), Lua etc.

Haxe isn't a polyglot, but a compiled language though.

</comment><comment><USER8> All I really want is a minimum effort way to map C++ libraries to Python in a way that supports Numpy and is not tied to a Python version. CFFI is close, but it could be even more ergonomic. Build scripts can generate everything else automatically, outside Numpy functions.

</comment><comment><USER9> I like Pybind.</comment>


Microsoft won't be open sourcing their new Python language server pylance - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-release/issues/4 <comment><USER2> Is it not common for companies with open source tools/engines to actually sell proprietary plugins to support "advanced" services?</comment>


The Last Analog Motion Graphics Machine [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wxc3mKqKTk <comment><USER2> I haven't watched the video yet, but there are definitely analog graphic synthesizers being made today, most notable those by [https://www.lzxindustries.net/](https://www.lzxindustries.net/)

There are also quite a few software packages that implement analog synthesis techniques, like [https://lumen-app.com/](https://lumen-app.com/) and [http://v002.info/about/](http://v002.info/about/)

<comment><USER3> was going to say this equipment is still used quite a bit and there are many working survivors left

<comment><USER4> You beat me to it. Much like vinyl, this stuff tends to maintain a pretty core following.

The eurorack modular synth boom is certainly introducing a lot of new people to analogue video synthesis. Exciting times!

<comment><USER5> > to analogue video synthesis

Video? Eurorack and modular synthesizers of other format and kinds are about audio, right?

<comment><USER6> Eurorack analogue video is a thing. If you're into learning more about modular synths I can highly recommend the docu-movie "I dream of Wires".

<comment><USER4> Yes, an excellent film!

It's all just voltage, but obviously with video oscillating at much higher rates.

You use most 'audio' modules with video modules and vice versa. All the typical logic works like divide, mult, add, etc.

It's a really fascinating format!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The instantaneous hands on control is enticing, I've played with analog audio and the immediacy of alterations and infinite resolution is palpable in comparison to their digital equivalents. He should live stream some 'art' pieces to music, I'd watch :)

Here's Scanimate + Moog; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=184&v=1Cywgoftv4...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=184&v=1Cywgoftv4o)

More at [http://www.scanimate.com/index.html](http://www.scanimate.com/index.html)

<comment><USER8> "I've played with analog audio and the immediacy of alterations and infinite resolution is palpable in comparison to their digital equivalents."

This kind of statements bother me because they are simply not true. You can have "tangible" controls (physical knobs and sliders) with digital signal processing back-end and I bet you that you can't tell the difference in a double blind test. This is the same bullshit that is thrown around by designers, artists and any kind of 'aficionados'\- cliches of romanticization of the analog.

Oscilloscopes went full digital in 90's not because they were worse than analog counterparts. These are precision instruments that benefit from digital processing. Don't get me wrong - I own an analog oscilloscope for different reasons, i.e. I was fascinated by how things were done back in the day which I believe is the central theme of this thread. These analog motion graphics machines are amazing - NOT because of 'infinite resolution' but the __process __of creating art: Oscillators, scan rates, amplification, etc.

<comment><USER9> Digital tends to have more latency by its nature. Parameter changes often produce zipper artifacts, stepping, etc. It's all solvable, but not uniformly solved.

<comment><USER8> >> "Digital tends to have more latency by its nature" \- So...GPS satellites, atomic clocks, operation of a modern processor are full of latency that humans can detect? Human reaction time is in the order of 100ms. This statement makes zero sense. I honestly don't understand and I'd love you to explain what specific areas you think where this happens.

<comment><USER7> "I said, 'No, that can't be so, Larry,' " Eno recalled. " 'We've all worked to that track, so it must be right.' But he said, 'Sorry, I just can't play to it.' " Eno eventually adjusted the click to Mullen's satisfaction, but he was just humoring him. It was only later, after the drummer had left, that Eno checked the original track again and realized that Mullen was right: the click was off by six milliseconds. "The thing is," Eno told me, "when we were adjusting it I once had it two milliseconds to the wrong side of the beat, and he said, 'No, you've got to come back a bit.' Which I think is absolutely staggering.""

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/25/the- possibilia...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/25/the-possibilian)

<comment><USER10> I play an online game (Overwatch) and I can tell the difference between a 20ms ping and a 40ms one, so I'm not surprised that an extremely proficient musician with a lifetime of practice can tell a difference of a few miliseconds.

In high school physics we were doing some experiments around pendulums and used metronomes to measure the period; I remember the teacher telling us about a former student of hers, a concert level musician, who could keep a beat in perfect timing without using a metronome at all.

<comment><USER11> You bet! A 20 ms diff makes a whole lot of difference also when you do high speed car racing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> TFW you grew up obsessed with video graphics but lived in middle-of-nowhere Appalachia, then find out this guy's studio was half an hour away the whole time.

</comment><comment><USER13> Of course it wouldn't be the same, but it would be great if someone made a software emulator for this. It's the sort of thing that would be a lot of fun to play around with in a web browser.

<comment><USER14> Or maybe a panel you could attach to a Raspberry Pi. Children would love this.

<comment><USER15> The truly amazing thing is that one can say that with a straight face (and not be wrong).

The notion that one could take a device that costs a few bucks and replicate a significant percentage of the capability (at least in terms of results, though not in terms of the creative process) that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and required a whole team to maintain and operate it effectively continues to be ridiculous to me.

As an old-timer who studied and worked in tape-based analog audio recording studios and at a pre-digital television station (barely, I was there when the digital machines moved in, just before I quit), this utter transformation of all of the audiovisual industries within my lifetime has been nothing short of incredible. I've watched it happen, and my mind still boggles at what can be done "in the box", even on modest hardware, today vs. 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Every decade sees an order of magnitude drop in price and order of magnitude increase in capability, at least for the non-physical aspects of the job (cameras, microphones, lenses, speakers, monitors, lights, instruments, room treatment for absorption/diffusion, etc. still cost a lot and probably always will, though even many those things have dropped in price precipitously due to the steadily improving quality of low-end products...once upon a time, a $50 microphone was a joke, today you can make a pretty decent recording with a $50 MXL or similar).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> All good commentary! Glad my preservation efforts have gotten this group talking about Scanimate and analog. -Dave Sieg

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how much it costs to keep it running; I bet the comment "phew its got hot in here" is no coincidence, the equipment looks like it will draw some serious power.

Props to the guy for maintaining the equipment, it is definitely cool thing even if I struggle to think what I'd do with it.

<comment><USER18> I can imagine this having massive potential in music videos.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps more as cool equipment that appears in the video than for what it can produce. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The machine looks fascinating and I would've loved to learn more about the intricacies of how it worked (and that's the sort of content I come to HN for), but sadly, nearly the entire 5 minutes ended up being about this guy being nostalgic, saying how this old system was the best and how the new systems will never be as exciting.

<comment><USER21> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHjkMThH0aE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHjkMThH0aE) and the subsequent videos might be more interesting. I remember seeing a really good video explaining and demonstrating this system a few years ago, but can't find it again unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > It is very tangible. You can effect the image with your hands. You can > almost touch it. You can't touch any of this digital stuff, it is in the > computer somewhere.

My first camera was digital and my first exposure to photo editing was with photoshop in high school. When I took a B&W photography class as a senior in college it was eye opening. We were in the darkroom dodging and burning photographs on the enlarger with our hands; it was exhilarating. I may not see eye to eye with Dave Sieg on digital, but I completely agree with him on physicality of creation. There is a qualitatively different feel when you are working with physical controls and within constraints of a non digital system.

> You plugin in things to make your animation. That is really where the term > plugin came from.

Also this bit is also quite interesting. Is this etymology true?

</comment><comment><USER23> Background music sounds very modern and digital. They should have chosen something analog.

Go back in time even to early 1990s and any video editor would tell you they'd kill for what we have now with modern digital video including effects.

I recall editing on u-matic tape in the 90s, man that was painful. You couldn't quite grab a frame, it was hit or miss if you wanted frame accuracy. I did enjoy the ergonomics of big control panels, switches, dials, but not the leads and plugs, and not rewinding tapes or losing quality when copying; 4:3 ratio everywhere and the list goes on.

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSNwBgO5qVY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSNwBgO5qVY)

<comment><USER25> Sounds like the confessions of a heroin dealer!

5:21 "The true skill of the flying asshole wipe is in the timing."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Analog is amazing! I'm 3-bit & analog computers fan, but mobile VM platform much more better under control [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk58kWIAqMM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk58kWIAqMM)

</comment><comment><USER25> Nothing goes better with Scanimate graphics than Raymond Scott music!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stX3zM2oL8g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stX3zM2oL8g)

"Strict rules of conduct" \-- pff! How retro!

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHjkMThH0aE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHjkMThH0aE)

</comment><comment><USER25> For a great demo of an analog video graphics processor looking at itself, and a deep explanation of the chaos theory behind video feedback, to some cool mesmerizing boop boopity boop electronic music, check out Jim Crutchfield's video, "Space-Time Dynamics in Video Feedback":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Kn3djJMCE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Kn3djJMCE)

"Self-Organization and Pattern Formation in an Image Processing System"

"A video camera views its monitor: information flows in a closed optical- electronic loop"

Here is his paper about it that he published in Physica (1984):

[http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/papers/Crutchfield.PhysicaD1984....](http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/papers/Crutchfield.PhysicaD1984.pdf)

SPACE-TIME DYNAMICS IN VIDEO FEEDBACK

James P. Crutchfield

Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratories, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA

Video feedback provides a readily available experimental system to study complex spatial and temporal dynamics. This article outlines the use and modeling of video feedback systems. It includes a discussion of video physics and proposes two models for video feedback dynamics based on a discrete-time iterated functional equation and on a reaction-diffusion partial differential equation. Color photographs illustrate results from actual video experiments. Digital computer simulations of the models reproduce the basic spatio-temporal dynamics found in the experiments.

[http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~chaos/](http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~chaos/)

A great youtube comment on the video:

Ross Oldenburg

Crutchfield's paper is massively influential for video artists. I've done very similar things to this. The key is to have an image processing system in the feedback loop. In this case, he's using a Sandin IP (you can see it at 1:05), which is an early video synthesizer (that you had to build yourself. there weren't even kits. Just a manual). That's where the colors are coming from, and I would guess the black and white fields that are obscuring parts of the image at points. I would bet he's using a black and white camera, too. To pull of video feedback like this successfully, you need to have control over all aspects of the video signal and you need a camera that allows you to manually control the iris and focus. That said, it's amazing and a lot of fun. And LZX industries makes something similar to the Sandin IP today.

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qh6jRzjmcY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qh6jRzjmcY)

</comment><comment><USER27> Note: I haven't watched the video in full, so what I say below may already have been answered in it...

===

Part of me thinks this should be in the Computer History Museum and not in this guy's garage - simply from a preservation standpoint.

At the same time, I'm not sure if this could be considered "computer history" or not - though it certainly has elements of analog computing.

The Scanimate was one of those iconic machines that ultimately helped to lead us to where we are today with computer graphics - if this is really the only operating one in existence (I don't necessarily doubt it, from the history I have read about it and early graphics), then proper preservation should be paramount.

But I can understand if the guy didn't want to give it up.

On a side note - how many here have seen this?:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj9pbs- jjis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj9pbs-jjis)

Basically - computation of fractals using analog video feedback...kinda amazing that (in theory) something like could have been done in the 1950-60s using Eidophor projectors of the era (amazing analog tech in its own right)...

<comment><USER28> He addresses this at about 4:05 into the video. Basically he wants it working, not as a standing display

<comment><USER29> Thats probably my biggest complaint about CHM, is they have no living displays - thats what I love so much about the LCM in Seattle, its all living, breathing tech, that you can touch.

<comment><USER15> When did that happen? When I was living in the bay area, I'd visit every few months, and they always had scheduled demos of some of the big equipment. Hell, you could see the Babbage engine running every weekend.

But, they also had a working PDP-1 with Space War that you could play, demonstrated and described by some of the people who'd built some of the original software and the game itself.

Admittedly, most of the equipment was display-only, but I think that's reasonabe...given the cost and effort to restore even one such device of that complexity, in an era when parts have to be scavenged from NOS or from donor machines or built from scratch using spotty design docs, it's entirely reasonable to focus on the devices that are either of notable significance (the first of a thing, or whatever), or things that the most expertise is readily available for (a lot of the docents and people who work/volunteer at CHM are computing pioneers, usually with a history of working with specific devices).

I love CHM, and think they do a great job, and have always really enjoyed my visits. I used to drag every visitor I had out to the CHM even if they had no interest in computers. Most people still enjoyed it. There's something wonderful about seeing the scale and intricacy of early computers.

<comment><USER29> I've been twice, and they had nothing of note that was interactive when I visited.

<comment><USER15> They're scheduled events, so you have to sort of plan ahead.

Check the section labeled "Demonstrations": [http://www.computerhistory.org/hours/](http://www.computerhistory.org/hours/)

There's a PDP-1 lab, an IBM 1401 lab (that's new to me), and a RAMAC demonstration.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Total Horse Takeover - <AUTHOR> https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/Wa2hASzbxyvutHJff/total-horse-takeover <comment><USER2> This analogy does a surprisingly good job of highlighting what is wrong with robotics right now as well. Robots are hard to control at a low level, and typically you don't want to. But sometimes you have to. We don't have very good ways of specifying tasks or behaviors at different levels of granularity and having the robot figure out the right affordances to that tasking.

Huh. I may have just figured out my next research proposal.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean "Robots are hard to control at a low level"? That's the only level where they're easy!

At the lowest granularity, they have servomotors, encoders/resolvers, and kinematics that convert motor rotation to a motion in 3D space. Robot manufacturers have made the code to make a joint or linear move to a predefined X/Y/Z/i/j/k location in space using those tools really quite simple. Inputs and outputs to control grippers and other end-of-arm tools are also straightforward. As long as you keep the process low-level, they're incredibly reliable and easy to program: a clever maintenance technician can pick up a pendant for the first time and have a well-scoped task programmed in a week. A competent sales engineer can clamp a small robot to a conference room table and demonstrate picking up and putting together your product in a one-hour sales demo.

It's when you expand the scope when it gets really complicated: ask it to pick up a variety of objects, located by vision algorithms in arbitrary orientations and locations, that are moving in real time, in a changing environment, is simply a hard problem - and I think it always will be. Robots really only know how to move their tool center point from one location to another, and asking them to "do what I mean" and "pick up one of these and put it on one of those without making me worry about low-level stuff" is a level of simplification that has never really worked in any other domain.

<comment><USER2> It's hard in two senses: one, it's hard to translate low-level commanding into meaningful work in all but the most controlled of environments. That's why robots that are economically viable today are nearly all on factory floors: that's basically the only setting where you can control the environment well enough for them to be useful.

And two, for "advanced" robots (quadrupeds/humanoids) it's _very_ hard to get them to even balance, much less walk. Yes, there are robots that do this today — surprisingly well, in fact. But there is a tremendous amount going on algorithmically under the hood to make it happen. Figuring out how to make them work took decades of research in controls.

This is largely a restatement of what you said above, so I suppose it depends on what you mean by "low level". My intent above was low level in horse terms, which includes standing and walking. Things humans think of as atomic behaviors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure it's just because I've never owned one, but I have often thought horses were the first "self driving" vehicle, and could still have some features superior to automobiles. You can feed them hay, they occasional apple and sugar cube, and they are largely carbon neutral. Even producing natural fertilizer as a byproduct of combustion. Built in cruise control, obstacle avoidance, and voice control, and a limited ability to self navigate and self- park.

<comment><USER5> Cars took off because, among other things, they require considerably less maintenance (especially cleaning!) and are more reliable (horse illnesses can be a serious problem). While they are self-replicating, it takes human time to train a foal to usefulness, and bloodline maintenance can get complicated and expensive if you're after something more specific than just "a horse". The methane emissions aren't great for global warming either.

<comment><USER6> Not just methane. The automobile had the advantage of removing millions of pounds of horse manure from city streets.

<comment><USER7> Aside from the so-called "great horse manure crisis" story being somewhat vaguely sourced (horse manure was of value back then and was traded as such), even if it were true or at least becoming a growing problem, I feel this problem is likely overstated. If cars had not removed it, we would've solved this problem by other means.

Human "manure" was also as big a problem: sewers were relatively recent and still being build, and toilets were a brand new invention. Yet we've largely solved this issue without getting rid of people from cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> with horses in particular, you don't "control". You establish a relationship and negotiate. Goats are like this too, as are huskies and malamutes and some other dog breeds.

Relate and negotiate turns out to be a much healthier metaphor for getting shit done, too.

<comment><USER9> Every domesticated animal is like this. (I'm not including animals like e.g. goldfish because ISTM there important ways in which they are not domesticated.) The other important aspect is that members of any particular species or lineage within a species have largely the same behaviors. Training and experience might add useful behaviors, but they don't completely eliminate existing behaviors.

For instance, cattle have a way of existence in which they are comfortable. (They really don't like anyone directly behind them, but off the rear quarter is tolerable. Structure like a fence or a road makes it easier for them to walk in a straight line. A single animal might be comfortable in isolation most of the time, but will seek to join a group when stressed. A path that is comfortable at a given speed will not be followed at a higher speed. Etc.) One person who understands that way and is willing to work within it can move a large herd more quickly and easily than twenty ignorant people.

ISTM human beings are also "domesticated", although they display a broader range of interesting behaviors than other domesticated animals do.

<comment><USER10> > The other important aspect is that members of any particular species or > lineage within a species have largely the same behaviors

Re: Why we domesticate horses, but not zebras.

<comment><USER11> Zebras have a different herd mentality to Horses, pretty much they don't have one. They do move around in groups for mutual protection, but they live more as individuals and do not follow a single alpha male herd leader as horses do. So with horses you can set yourself up as the alpha leader and they will follow you, but that doesn't work with Zebras. This combined with their more aggressive nature has made them impossible to domesticate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _Flaccid horse mass isn't that helpful, not even if we throw in the horse's > physical strength to move itself according to your commands, and some sort > of magical ability for you to communicate muscle-level commands to it._

Flaccid Horse Mass is my new band name.

</comment><comment><USER13> Original link on Meteuphoric: [https://meteuphoric.com/2019/11/04/total-horse- takeover/](https://meteuphoric.com/2019/11/04/total-horse-takeover/)

I'm glad to see this blog active again after a year of quiet.

<comment><USER14> Thank you. Please read directly from the source instead of participating in anything to do with LessWrong.

<comment><USER15> Why?

<comment><USER9> For one thing, this page should have just linked to the original rather than replicating it in full. HN doesn't replicate work done by others, and is superior to "Greater Wrong" in that respect.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but the GP was asking to avoid linking LW altogether — not just when there's a better original source —- which seems ... overbroad (and flamebait).

Full disclosure: I organize for LW Austin group.

<comment><USER14> LessWrong can be reasonably characterized as a recruiting ground for pyramid schemes and/or a cult of personality. It is an attempt to reframe libertarianism as apolitical and as the only rational, correct course of action. Effective altruists are urged to donate to unaccountable AI research projects controlled by LW essayists.

For many reasons, I don't believe it's responsible to link people there.

Some starting points below, but please do your own research:

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong)

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Effective_altruism](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Effective_altruism)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised to see that there's no other commenters who read this as a metaphor for managing a company.

Communicating the main goals to engineers (take me to London) is essential. The engineers might not know where, or even what "London" is. Pointing the horse's head in the right direction and saying "go" is all you need to do to make progress in the right direction. Micromanaging every leg movement, or telling the horse to use a bicycle is counterproductive (Agile! Jira! Confluence! Monday! Whatever the latest trend is!) If the horse teaches itself to ride a bicycle (engineers choose a system because they need it) then that does reduce the control that management has. Is that a bad thing if it still gets you to London faster?

</comment><comment><USER18> Forget a horse, the same argument can be made on a person's own self. Our conscious mental efforts cannot even "total takeover" our own bodies.

</comment><comment><USER19> Horses (and other animals in training) are problem-solving agents. To teach it something, you pose problems to it that it can figure out.

Especially for dogs, you pose a problem in the form of "How do I get a reward from this Hooman?" And by adjusting the difficulty of the required solution a dog understands what you want.

</comment><comment><USER20> This article reminds of me of this game that demonstrates how difficult it is to operate a horse: [http://www.foddy.net/CLOP.html](http://www.foddy.net/CLOP.html) (enabling flash required)

</comment><comment><USER21> My read on this was that it's a useful metaphor for the economy, with the state as the rider and the horse as the industrial base. The original communist idea was to direct industrial output in some detail, which worked about as well as trying to control the individual muscles of a horse. The US, meanwhile, directs the economy by deciding "I want $X billion dollars worth of helicopters" and then letting the private sector figure out the low-level actions required to get there. The Chinese are probably an even better example in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://youtu.be/OnWolLQSZic](https://youtu.be/OnWolLQSZic)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is really the argument for abstraction</comment>


Realtime image processing in Python - <AUTHOR> http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2011/07/realtime-image-processing-in-python.html <comment><USER2> To run on OSX:

grab the archive [http://wyvern.cs.uni-duesseldorf.de/~antocuni/pypy-image- dem...](http://wyvern.cs.uni-duesseldorf.de/~antocuni/pypy-image-demo- full.tar.bz2)

      brew install pypy
      brew install mplayer

      pypy demo/magnify.py
      pypy demo/sobel.py

For me, 24 average fps on magnify.py, 34 average fps on sobel.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the issue with using OpenCV?

<comment><USER4> Try using it sometime. I work for a startup that is in computer vision and managing our OpenCV dependent code is the least favorite part of my job.

<comment><USER5> Sure the C interface is clunky and the error messages can be a little hard to trace their source, but it sure beats having to write all that code from scratch. Most projects I have seen that make heavy use of OpenCV use a few C++ wrapper classes to make the usage a little smoother.

<comment><USER6> I concur. It isn't feasible to use the python opencv bindings for nontrivial tasks.

we use a c++ wrapper around opencv as well.

opencv isn't valuable for its algorithms or its api. The opencv value proposition is tied up with painstaking optimization of the inner loops of several high level operations using SIMD intrinsics.

Advances in compiler technology seem to be pointing towards generated code with similar levels of optimization especially in JIT generated code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seriously, the benchmark says it's 590 times faster than regular python. So it's probably 59 times slower than optimized SIMD code?

<comment><USER8> Time to feed the troll:

First off, PyPy uses a JIT, so there's no obvious reason why it would _have_ to be slower than 'optimized SIMD code' (whatever that is). The actual performance all depends on the quality of the JIT and the quality of the input into the JIT.

Second, they clearly state in the blog post that the PyPy version of the algorithm is easier to write than the equivalent C++, because the JIT can transform their polymorphic Python into efficient native code - doing the same with C++ would require the use of template expansion or a code generator.

Third, if the idea of sacrificing a tiny amount of performance in order to reduce the cost of development and maintenance is that abhorrent to you, Python is almost certainly Not For You.

<comment><USER9> _First off, PyPy uses a JIT, so there's no obvious reason why it would have to be slower than 'optimized SIMD code' (whatever that is)._

If you don't know what SIMD is, you probably shouldn't even talking about high-performance image processing in the first place. The parent is correct that this is probably still at least a full order of magnitude slower than proper SIMD code.

But comparing this to good SIMD is not quite fair, as the intent of this sort of JIT is to be competitive with naive compiled C, _not_ to be competitive with optimized assembly routines. Neither is attempting to -- or has a chance of -- replacing proper hand-written SIMD for performance-critical code.

If you want to automatically generate SIMD code, you'd want something more along the lines of a special-purpose vector language, like _orc_.

<comment><USER10> It's completely reasonable to generate SIMD code based on idiomatic uses of arrays, without requiring the programmer to use a special purpose vector notation. It's also reasonable to do this in a JIT.

<comment><USER9> It sounds "reasonable", but no compiler in existence seems to be able to do it efficiently. This suggests to me that it isn't in fact reasonable, as that sounds like a more reasonable conclusion than "everyone writing compilers is incompetent".

<comment><USER11> I think differently. Normal C loop codes are hard to optimize using SIMD as the context and it's freedom can be the limiting factor.

But in python, the vector operations are normally programmed using simple array semantics. For example in NumPy:

      >>> a = array( [2,3,4] )
      >>> b = array( [2,3,4] )
      >>> a+b
      [4,6,8]

These can be easily converted into SIMD operations.

It's matter of time before PyPy's new NumPy implementation take traction and make simply beautiful optimizing JITs using that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why is nuclear fusion so hard? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sigfpe.com/2018/12/why-is-nuclear-fusion-so-hard.html <comment><USER2> This is somewhat tangential to the specific issue here, but I was surprised by this:

At the center of the Sun, fusion power is estimated by models to be about 276.5 watts/m3. Despite its intense temperature, the peak power generating density of the core overall is similar to an active compost heap, and is lower than the power density produced by the metabolism of an adult human.[1]

So practical fusion power requires producing much higher power densities than are found in the Sun.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_core#Energy_conversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_core#Energy_conversion)

<comment><USER3> It continues like this though:

> The low power outputs occurring inside the fusion core of the Sun may also > be surprising, considering the large power which might be predicted by a > simple application of the Stefan–Boltzmann law for temperatures of 10 to 15 > million kelvins. However, layers of the Sun are radiating to outer layers > only slightly lower in temperature, and it is this difference in radiation > powers between layers which determines net power generation and transfer in > the solar core.

So if a m^3 of sun core was moved to a powerplant it would generate a lot more energy.

<comment><USER4> > So if a m^3 of sun core was moved to a powerplant it would generate a lot > more energy.

Yes, for a tiny fraction of a second as it exploded. Its pressure would far beyond what any material could withstand (and magnetic confinement does that change that, as the outward pressure has to eventually be carried by the magnet support structure).

<comment><USER4> Just to expand on that: the kinetic energy of the particles in 1 m^3 of the material at the core of the Sun is equivalent to the yield of a 5 megaton bomb. So when I say "exploded" I really mean it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> QUOTE

"I took this fusion class when I was at Georgia Tech and I will never forget it. We started studying and I go, "Man, this is really hard." Charged particles don't want to get near each other. Bare nuclei are both charged, positive charged, they want to avoid each other.

And my professor had a really great way of putting it. "It's like going to the mini golf." He says, "You know how in mini golf you've got the volcano, and the volcano's got the hole at the very top, and you've got to putt your ball in a way that it goes all the way up the side of the volcano, and 'phwep!' falls in the hole." He goes, "OK. That's like fusion. The ball is like a nucleus, and the volcano is the scattering effect.

So any time you want to have a nucleus go to another nucleus, it scatters; it rolls up the mountain and it rolls down the side, it rolls over here, over there... and only when you just perfectly get it on the right angle does it go in the volcano." Now, the problem with fusion, he goes, "You can't steer the ball, you have to have enough temperature so that it can make it all the way up the side of the volcano and fall in, and then you have to have enough balls because you can't steer them there at the mini golf park", that's density, "and then because they're flying all over the place, you've got to make sure that there's a fence around the mini golf park so that they don't get away." That's confinement.

He said, "Those are your three things: density, temperature, and confinement, to make fusion happen."

I said, "Dude, that's really hard!" So, I came up with another analogy, "So, I guess fission would be like the mini golf park except now the volcano was flush, the hole was about this big around, the balls are going slow, and every time the ball goes in the hole, two more balls come out."

He goes, "Yeah, that's pretty good."

ENDQUOTE

Watch the whole thing. It's good.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG1YjDdI_c8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG1YjDdI_c8)

<comment><USER6> What point in the video is this quote?

<comment><USER5> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG1YjDdI_c8&t=71m26s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG1YjDdI_c8&t=71m26s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Some kinds of instability are slow enough that we can control them. For > example bicycles are unstable, but many of us eventually learn to ride them.

Actually, bicycles are only unstable when they are moving slowly (or stopped), and most people never learn how to stabilize one in this unstable regime. It can be done, but it's very, very hard.

<comment><USER8> Now, what would be great is if that analogy could be stretched further. It would pretty wonderful if someone found a way to do fusion where, like a bike, it's stable once it gets going.

<comment><USER7> Well, that is actually possible. That's what happens in stars and hydrogen bombs. The problem, of course, is that "getting going" for fusion means getting very big. The reason fusion energy is hard is precisely because to be practical and safe we have to "ride slowly".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you understand German, trust me and listen to this podcast about Wendelstein 7-X O:) : [https://alternativlos.org/36/](https://alternativlos.org/36/)

<comment><USER10> This is a really excellent podcast. Very informative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is a thought experiment( no cats harmed or wetted). Show a cat how the toilet flushes, then try to flush the cat. You have two hands, the cat has 4 paws, with sharp claws as well as teeth. This will give you an idea....

Stars have gravity and mass- we do not, so we must try and compress the plasma, heat it AND stops the paws from grabbing the exterior. In truth magnetic confinement is a poor way to constrain a plasma that wants to leave at high speed = quenches the reaction. There have been many avenues tried and they are making incremental advances, year by year. They say we are 5-10 yearsaway? The ITER Tokamak is well advanced. [https://www.iter.org/mach/Tokamak](https://www.iter.org/mach/Tokamak) New approaches are being tried that might leap past the Tokamak.

<comment><USER12> Controlled fusion has always been 5 to 10 years away, just as we've always been at war with Eurasia.

<comment><USER13> I remember distinctly reading a popular science magazine article when I was young (it had that great plasma picture with all the plasma arcs fizzing over the floor of a giant lab) that stated that we could have fusion power plants in 25 to 50 years. That was 30 years ago.

<comment><USER12> It seems I was indeed wrong about the deadline but not about the "forever" part, see [1] and [2].

[1] [https://www.newstatesman.com/sci- tech/2014/11/forever-20-yea...](https://www.newstatesman.com/sci- tech/2014/11/forever-20-years-away-will-we-ever-have-working-nuclear-fusion- reactor)

[2] [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/03/23/nuclear- fu...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/03/23/nuclear-fusion- reactor-research/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Try making a compressed, spherical ball of water using your two hands.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Confining a plasma is like trying to keep water in an inverted cup by blowing on the water with fans."

That is fantastic analogizing right there.

</comment><comment><USER16> Plasma instability is just awful. See [1]. I thought he was going to go on about some approach to active stabilization of plasmas. But no. There's been work done on that, but it's been years. Anyone following that?

Then there's the first wall problem.[2] Fusion generates heat and neutrons. Lots of neutrons, which break atoms apart. Finding something which will stand up to that in an experimental machine has been tough. Finding something which will stand up to that in a long term production environment is really tough. In a fission reactor, you can use water to slow and stop the neutrons, and you just get some tritium as a byproduct. A fusion reactor's first wall faces a vacuum, so that's out.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_stability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_stability)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma- facing_material](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma-facing_material)

<comment><USER17> Yep, studied Nuclear Engineering at NC State, didn't stick around for the grad program. My friend did, for plasma physics, and is now working at ITER. Plasma confinement is still improving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This a totally ignorant question - can you add "something" to the plasma to achieve the "jello like" analogy to water?

<comment><USER7> That's actually a very reasonable question. The answer is: no, but explaining why is non-trivial. The short version is that at 10 million degrees, matter behaves so differently than it does at room temperature that none of your everyday intuitions apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would zero gravity be helpful in order to make it easier to get fusion working?

<comment><USER20> The particles in a fusion reactor are moving at 10 km/s. They don't particularly care about gravity.

For components of the reactor, gravity tends to be helpful. It's much harder to cool superconductors or generate steam if your liquids aren't flowing along the bottom. Turbines don't work nearly as well if their inlets are sputtering like a coffeemaker.

<comment><USER4> They are moving a lot faster than 10 km/s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is why I have little confidence that Tokamaks and similar will have much success.

Instead of trying to prevent the non-linear behaviour of plasma it should be utilized.

Look at (grossly underfinanced) attempts like focus fusion, where there is no attempt to confine the plasma, instead self-interacting nature of the plasma is used to focus high temperature regions to a small region where higher temperature fusion processes can occur.

Long time plasma confinement is a dead end.

<comment><USER22> I'm a fan of IEC, what happened to the Polywell?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_electrostatic_confi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_electrostatic_confinement)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is probably another ignorant question, but why can't we "aim" and shoot protons at each other to make them smack together without requiring all that heat and pressure?

<comment><USER24> I've wondered, aren't there any fusible elements that can be solids in vacuum? Then shoot pellets at each other at a sizable fraction of c. Way better density than a particle beam.

For instance, lithium-6 is a stable solid metal with the right nucleon composition and binding energy to fuse into carbon-12. I have no idea if it actually would to a useful degree.

<comment><USER25> Solid in a vacuum at what temperature?

<comment><USER24> Whatever's practical for your giant pea-shooter and reaction chamber. But lithium is a soft metal at room temperature, so this part doesn't seem too constraining.

<comment><USER25> If you want to sustain a fusion reaction for generating power through heat, you're not going to do it at room temperature, and there're not many materials that will remain solid at fusion temperatures.

<comment><USER24> I said "shoot pellets at each other at a sizable fraction of c". The point is to hold together before the splat, so that by high density enough nuclei actually hit each other. This is a bang-bang kind of thing, not a continuous reaction.

<comment><USER25> We don't have any trouble creating fusion explosions. The whole trouble of fusion is sustaining a reaction. Fusion bombs already exist, and what you're describing isn't that different from an Ulam-Teller device.

<comment><USER24> Existing fusion bombs need a fission bomb for ignition. This lower-bounds both the bang and the unpleasant byproducts. A smaller bang can be used much more practically. For example, 20th-century cars were also powered by explosions. Somehow they outcompeted the previous dominant technology of continuous reactors, steam engines.

To dismiss my half-assed idea by pointing to another, I'd bring up something more comparable, like inertial-confinement fusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe we just haven't tried hard enough.

While researching a comment for another thread I discovered an interesting fact: the US has now spent approximately as much money on fusion research _ever_ (since 1955) as it did on the Manhattan project, _alone_. Perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised that progress is so slow.

</comment><comment><USER27> Does fusion still have much of a role now that renewables are increasingly competetive? We can pretty much already harness infinite energy for all our needs from an already working fusion generator our planet happens to orbit around.

<comment><USER28> > now that renewables are increasingly competetive...

... with legacy energy sources.

When talking about fusion / nuclear vs renewables, think in terms of max energy produced per site, not cost per unit.

Similar to total thrust vs specific impulse.

The largest respective power generation stations by source -- Three Gorges Dam / Itaipu Dam (Hydro, 22,500 MW capacity, ~100 TWh/yr), Kashiwazaki-Kariwa (Nuclear, 7,965 MW capacity, 60 TWh/yr, currently suspended for earthquake- proofing), Tengger Desert Solar Park (Solar, 1,547 MW capacity, ? TWh/yr), Alta Wind Energy Center (Onshore Wind, 1,547 MW capacity, 2.68 TWh/yr, Gansu not included due to utilization issues), Walney Wind Farm (Offshore Wind, ~1,000 MW capacity, >1.3 TWh/yr?).

And then realize that hydro & wind are both location-limited. And solar has a large footprint: Tengger is 43km^2.

Nuclear (and eventually fusion) scales footprint much more slowly with capacity. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is 4.2km^2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For most of my life fusion has been teased but not delivered. fission has been pimped for decades yet cannot get private funding, or build reactors in a decade, or provide solutions for the waste. Yet still the industries persist with their propaganda while renewables beat them in cost and time to operation. If I managed the funds I'd cut nuclear and redirect to wind and solar immediately.

<comment><USER30> > If I managed the funds I'd cut nuclear and redirect to wind and solar > immediately.

To make those a reasonable base you need to add enough storage to keep everything working even when your current weather does not meet the energy demand. I think setting up that storage is currently going to be the biggest cost factor.

<comment><USER31> When you factor in storage costs, how do solar and wind compare to alternatives?

<comment><USER32> Currently, solar that has 3-4 hours of output at 50% of peak primary solar outbut, is about $35-$40/MWh in Colorado, Nevada, and I think even Indiana had bids in that ballpark. This is between 1/5 to 1/2 the cost of nuclear, depending on who you believe for nuclear's costs. Storing a MWh probably costs around $80-$150 currently.

Why so little storage? It's not really needed at the scale of projects that are being planned, and storage gets cheaper every year.

So let's say we could start building a nuclear plant and get it done in 10 years (which is highly speculative, but let's give nuclear the benefit of the doubt). What are the costs going to be 10 years from now? Or more importantly, what are costs going to be 30 years from now? Because the storage lasts 10-15 years, so you get to replace it with cheaper tech at that point, whereas with nuclear you've locked in your costs for the next 60 years.

This is why no sane entity wants to build nuclear, unless they are ideologically motivated. There are some nuclear startups that may make nuclear cheaper, and less risky to build, but they are still startups without functioning prototypes or manufacturing facilities. By the time they start production, the utility will be ready to replace any batteries that get deployed on the grid today, so one may as well start deploying wind/solar + storage. And add more time of use rate plans so that energy is used efficiently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wrong title. Fusion is easy, plasma physics isn't.

<comment><USER4> Fusion is likely to be a nonstarter even if the plasma physics issues are completely solved. It has fundamental engineering and cost problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's hard now because we don't know how to do it well. In the future, we'll learn, then it will be easy. History tells us this.

</comment><comment><USER35> Mankind is currently in possession of a practical fusion technology.

It might be worthwhile to remember that Ivy-Mike fission-fusion technology worked the very first time it was tried in 1952. Mike technology was the basis of the first thermonuclear weapons in the US arsenal. Adapting Mike technology to be pure hybrid DT-DD fusion opens up many new applications in economical power generation.

In 60 years, no other fusion technology (Magnetic Confinement or Inertial Confinement) has ever produced any net energy (more energy out of the fusion reaction than it takes to get the fusion plasma to fusion conditions).

In 60 years, all existing MCF and ICF fusion systems have never worked (in the sense that they have not produced more energy from fusion than it took to get the fusion plasma to fusion conditions).

Mike fission-fusion technology worked the first time it was tried and produced huge amounts of net energy (and has never failed).

Rather than placing our faith in scaling laws while we build ever larger and more expensive Magnetic Confinement fusion experiments (tokamaks and stellarators) while trying to achieve break even energy generation - why not go back to the field and adapt technology that has never failed to finally find success in fusion?

<comment><USER4> They looked at this. It's grossly uneconomical as a power source.

"In a 1975 review of the various Plowshares efforts, the Gulf University Research Consortium (GURC) considered the economics of the PACER concept. They demonstrated that the cost of the nuclear explosives would be the equivalent of fuelling a conventional light-water reactor with uranium fuel at a price of $328 per pound."</comment></comment>


Struggling Six Apart Begged for $2M Loan - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/11/16/struggling-six-apart-begged-for-2m-loan/

<comment><USER2> This is actually really sad for me. Mena Trott and I were kind of bloggy friends back in the day when I ran "the tinyblog", and she ran "Dollarshort". We were two pretty darn early bloggers and it was still a small ecosystem.

One day she told me that Ben was going to turn the custom blogging tool he wrote for her into a product and wanted to know if I wanted to try installing it myself, with Ben supporting me over IM.

That installation (many times upgraded) is possibly the 2nd oldest Movable Type installation after Mena's.

I was overjoyed at their success and a little sad to see WordPress eventually eat their lunch and their other product fail to gain traction. I wish them success in all their future endeavors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sucks for Brad Fitzpatrick (LiveJournal). They bought his company for stock (I think) then sold it for $25M cash to a Russian company (which users hated I believe). Now he's probably got a pittance of stock in Say Media, which will also probably fail.

Lesson: get cash or public company stock.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hate to say this, but reading that article made me feel like I was reading Foursquare's obituary, 3 years from now.

<comment><USER5> So who is WordPress in this future vision?

<comment><USER6> Probably Facebook Places or Twitter Places

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazing, especially considering that during the early Web 2.0 days most people cited Six Apart as being the IPO candidate that will rejuvenate the tech market.

How did Six Apart screw up: <http://www.quora.com/How-did-Six-Apart-screw-up>

</comment><comment><USER8> I always wonder, in cases like this, about the role that the underlying technology plays. Wordpress's choice of PHP meant that installation was easy, theming/modification was easy, and it would work on your crappy shared host with FTP access. In fact, that's why I used Wordpress, back in '04 or '05. Because I couldn't get MT working properly on Powweb. For a platform that needs to be ubiquitous to succeed, I guess you really need a ubiquitous programming language.

I can't even guess how many tools I never investigated because they required language or library support that I didn't have installed. One failed "port install" in the whole dependency and I will probably have to give up.

Maybe MT's failure to catch on had nothing to do with Six Apart's failure to catch on. Still fun to think about.

</comment><comment><USER9> "One fifth of Six Apart's portion will go to executives Ben Trott (who founded the company with his wife, Mena), Andrew Anker and Jeff Ash. The rest is distributed among the rest of the Six Apart's shareholders."

If my math is correct, that means the founder gets $3.9M * 1/5 * 1/3 * 0.75 = roughly $200k post-tax.

Ouch.

<comment><USER7> I can't find the source right now, but I remember it being mentioned that the founders took some cash off the table during the first big funding round.

<comment><USER10> Sucks for the investors. $22M in and less than $3M out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> IIRC, the biggest reason people moved away from MT was the licensing issue. I know it's why I did. It's sad to see the downfall, though.

</comment><comment><USER12> That company would make an awesome case study. Where did they go wrong, exactly? My take: they tried to move (unsuccessfully) into social networking etc., and pretty much abandoned the blogging space into the hands of WP.

That, and just plain bad tech choices, like generating static pages which meant that your entire site had to be rebuilt after each blog post. And bad licensing choices.

</comment><comment><USER13> The sad part is MovableType is almost solely responsible for WordPress's dumbfounding success.

If MT had not suddenly decided to go pay-only for version 3, it would not have made tens of thousands of people start looking for an alternative and there was WP 2.0 alpha/beta, a fork of b2/cafelog, one of the few open-source programs ready to take them on. MT went open-source for version 4 but it was too late.

Otherwise WP would have been just one of the many PHP based blog programs out there today with a small following, and many of us might still be struggling to code in Perl for MT instead of PHP.

I for one do not miss Perl at all, but believe it or not there is at least one website out there I made still running MT 2.66 from 2003!

</comment><comment><USER14> What do think the role of Fantastico and other easy-install scripts had? Given a choice of a one-click install or download-upload-untar I usually chose the easy path myself anytime I would be setting up a quickie blog or site.

</comment><comment><USER15> What if Pownce hadn't sold and stayed open...

</comment><comment><USER16> In the 2003 to 2007 period, a couple of blogs I follow (whatever.scalzi.com , Brad Delong) all had constant technical problems with MT.

<http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/004350.html>

<http://whatever.scalzi.com/2008/03/15/>

Or BradD, who has no fewer than _EIGHT_ MT installs to try to get their shit software to work. <http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/housekeeping-mo.html>

Wordpress won because, reason 0, it actually worked and didn't break all the fucking time. Particularly for enduser software, people severely underrate code that isn't brittle shit that breaks if you look at it cross eyed.

<comment><USER5> I'm not that familiar with MT–does it break because of it's code or because of how it's setup/deployed with Perl?

I agree with your point, but I think being built on PHP was also a big factor in WP winning.

<comment><USER17> From my own experience in trying to set it up, the hardest part for me was setting it up to correctly generate all the static HTML pages and get them to correctly post to Perl CGI forms for things like comments that would then trigger a regeneration of the static HTML. It always struck me as an extremely fragile setup.

Oh, and the theming ecosystem was non-existent compared to Wordpress.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you take in consideration before submitting to HN? - <AUTHOR> I've recently joined HN and I've posted once since then, in the Show HN category. I didn't receive any feedback which I find normal considering that I am really new here.<p>This made me wonder: what makes something succeed in HN? I'm sure the quality of the link surely matters a lot (probably the most), but there's other variables that matter a lot too. Things like:<p>- Title<p>- Just link vs text with a link<p>- Time to post<p>- Karma? (I don't know if it's important for submitting)<p>- and many others that I don't know of but you surely do! <comment><USER2> I usually post something if I don't see it posted before and want to say something or think it's techie/cool.

I hear that time of day and day of post make a lot of impact if you want the most exposure.

For show/ask HN I don't need it to take off and be #1, just a few comments is usually enough to get many insights.

</comment><comment><USER3> Too meta

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it? I'm really interested in knowing why.

Do you call this meta because the question comes from a previous experience of mine?

I've never understood the word meta as it can have a lot of different meanings depending of the contest.</comment></comment>


Orange Livebox ADSL modems are leaking their WiFi credentials - <AUTHOR> https://badpackets.net/over-19000-orange-livebox-adsl-modems-are-leaking-their-wifi-credentials/ <comment><USER2> Archive: [https://web.archive.org/web/20181223120225/https://badpacket...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181223120225/https://badpackets.net/over-19000-orange- livebox-adsl-modems-are-leaking-their-wifi-credentials/)

I have one of these routers, excuse me while I panic/check the vulnerability.

Edit: Checked. It sure leaks the password in plaintext to a simple curl call. I have no words.

<comment><USER3> Any patch available beyond making your box unavailable to the internet?

<comment><USER4> OpenWRT seems to be an option if it's Livebox 2.1 or earlier.

<comment><USER5> Well, an option if you don't mind losing ADSL(1) and wifi from your ADSL router.

(1) It's not clear: the docs mention an Annex working but it's not the same as the one the hardware provides?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apparently, not really news. Here's a blog post from 2015: [http://tecnicaquilmes.fullblog.com.ar/analizando-el- livebox-...](http://tecnicaquilmes.fullblog.com.ar/analizando-el- livebox-21-de-orange.html)

 _" get_getnetworkconf.cgi -> Another very funny one that gives us the WIFI password without the need for authentication."_

It lists several other issues, as well as the default admin login.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but that was in Mexican... noone cared about reading that.

/sarcasm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Remember when completely open WiFi everywhere (no password, just connect and get Internet) was the norm? One of the famous professionals in the security industry even bragged about it:

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirel...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html)

Too bad everything seems to be locked down in the name of security these days, and even the slightest gaps seem to cause a lot of panic. I miss those days of essentially free Internet everywhere...

<comment><USER4> I suspect copyright craziness has hindered this as well. Even if you have a separate VLAN for your open WiFi, I can torrent a movie and get the RIAA/MPAA chasing you.

<comment><USER8> In fact, the primary motivation of locking down an AP with a WPA password, from an infosec perspective, was NOT ABOUT stop people from using free Internet connection, BUT to harden against the technical limitation of WPA/WPA2 - the protocol, by design, CANNOT offer encryption on an open network, widespread usage of SSL/TLS was only a recently development, it used to be that you cannot run a open AP without COMPLETELY COMPROMISE EVERYONE's security and privacy on your network, INCLUDING YOUR OWN. The better way of doing it, is creating a separate AP, setting up a password and showing it publicly, then the attacker at least needs to intercept an individual handshake before being able to decrypt a portion of traffic. The even better way is WPA-Enterprise, but... In short, the Wi-Fi standard itself unnecessarily forces everyone to make a hard choice between security and openness.

Fortunately, and hopefully, the awakened situation is going to be solved, WPA3 supports encryption on an open AP. Also, WPA3 offers forward secrecy, the traffic cannot be decrypted by passive monitoring unless the attacker is also a Man-in-the-Middle.

BTW, as tyingq said, copyright is a factor, but I think laws in generally are a bigger problem. Under the laws of many jurisdictions, the Wi-Fi user may be responsible for all the legal consequences of other people who is using his/her Wi-Fi. Routing the guest AP over an anonymous VPN connected via Tor may be a solution to the legal challenge, but a legal issue needs a real legal solution.

If you are interested in sharing your Wi-Fi, read [https://openwireless.org/](https://openwireless.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's quite interesting to me to see something like this here. A few years back (turn of the decade) I discovered a similar problem in the equipment of a fairly large ISP, albeit a little bit more serious (think root access). Their fix was to put that port behind a whitelist, with the only IP address able to access it remotely belonging to the ISP.

The problem is, this is one of those ISPs that have an extra SSID on their CPEs for "free" internet, think Xfinity, but this wasn't Comcast, and this vulnerability stems from an HTTPd misconfiguration, so if you can access the equipment's HTTPd (all you need to do is a single, unauthenticated request, so, really any access will do), you've got full access.

I went through some trouble to contact, via third parties, an insider at this ISP with the power to get things fixed - they did fix the remote part (via the aforementioned firewall whitelisting), but I was told, in no uncertain terms, that they didn't care enough to fix the root of the issue, as long as it wasn't massively exploitable, and it wasn't public.

I like my freedom/money too much to publicize details, and so it's still there, all these years later. I wonder how many vulnerabilities like this are out there, fully known by the vendors/providers, but nothing gets done about them because people are too scared to disclose, until eventually someone comes along and blows the whistle, or the equipment is obsoleted?

<comment><USER10> Doing some anonymous disclosure wouldn't be an option? All their users should know about how their provider treats security issues. We cannot choose with our wallets if we don't have the information to make an informed decision...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> ISP provided modem/router is a joke, they just order from cheap vendors in China and make brand names for themselves. Usually it's so bad at firmware and software, and no security practices in mind.

<comment><USER8> A pure DSL/cable/fiber-optics modem is relatively okay, assuming it's a sane unit, it only does modulation-demodulation on Layer-1/2 with little attack surface. The bad thing is nowadays they usually came from the ISP as a modem/router combined unit, and neither the performance nor security is ideal.

I always see an ISP-provided router as a hazardous & untrusted device. If it offers bridged PPPoE, I would configure it so it works as a pure modem, even it means breaking into the telnet console. Otherwise, I would rather put my own router behind it, double-NAT and firewall it out of my own network.

In Germany, the _Choice and Connection of Telecommunication Terminal Devices Act_ have been passed with the support of free and open source community, which ensure a user can use their own router to connect a broadband network.

[https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/timeline.en.html](https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/timeline.en.html)

<comment><USER12> If you live in/know about Germany, could you suggest a good alternative to the Kabel Deutschland basic CBN router? I have no clue how the registration to the network would work if I buy a third party router connected directly to my cable input.

<comment><USER13> You can register the modem via a web portal during the first connection. After a few days you get the activation code via snail mail. But third party cable modems are expensive in Germany. You can also use the provided modem in bridge mode and use a better router behind hit.

<comment><USER14> That works with KD? F __king unitymedia removed bridge mode from their firmware. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Though not technically a leak, Verizon's FiOS routers report your current WIFI password to Verizon (not just the default the router ships with), presumably for customer support reasons.

I didn't expect it to do that, so that was a bit of a surprise.

<comment><USER16> That is pretty standard for any ISP that uses ACS. It allows a tech op to manage the router remotely, which is something most customers both demand and hate.

<comment><USER17> Why would the tech need the local WiFi password in order to remotely manage the router?

<comment><USER18> One of the most common problems in ISP customer support is customers changing their default WiFi password (good) but forgetting it (bad). Then their laptop crashes and they need their replacement laptop to connect to the WiFi.

This is also the moment a customer will straight up deny the existence of ethernet cables or claim to have never heard of any Internet-related device that does not use WiFi.

To satisfy these customers, you need to be able to either read out the WiFi password or have some way to push a new one. As it's just plain easier to just allow full-on access to the modem GUI for their customer service agents, it's often possible to read any passwords or settings from the help desk.

<comment><USER19> I would not expect my ISP to have access to my plaintext WIFI password. The ISP agent should either be able to push a new WIFI password via the internet link (in a secure authenticated manner) or ask the customer to hold a button on the device to reset it to its default password.

<comment><USER20> You have high expectations. I would never run a WiFi hotspot configured by my ISP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I found a pretty bad exploit of the Livebox 1.1 back in 2012. I was trying to find a way to replace the shipped firmware by OpenWRT. Never heard back from Sagem/Orange but the vuln was quietly fixed in a later release. I never knew if they never acknowledged it on purpose or fixed it by accident! Funny to see this on HN. Brings back good memories.

<comment><USER2> Searching for the vulnerability address one can find this from 2012 in fact: [https://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20120905&keit...](https://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20120905&keitai=0)

<comment><USER21> Cool find! But this for the Livebox 2 (newer version), my "work" was on the Livebox 1.1 (:

I shall write something about it one day, just to immortalize it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is why you should always put a reputable router+WAP in front of the ISP supplied modem.

<comment><USER23> Additionally, buy your own modem and save (a lot of) money by not leasing it forever from the ISP.

<comment><USER14> See the point is, going for pure modem means you have to deal with all the VoIP crap too. I'm on VDSL currently and after checking the prices of VDSL modems and reading up on what I'd need to get VoIP running with my DECT phone I went like "screw this" and decided to rent their shitty device for two bucks a month.

<comment><USER23> Ah, I only use their internet/tv services so I only needed to worry about the cablemodem and dvr (a free cablecard from them decrypts tv so you can use your own "tivo like device"). I purchased my equipment about 5 years ago for about $100 and don't rent/lease any of their gear. It's saved quite a bit over the years.

<comment><USER14> I change plans every two years. It's ridiculous how much of a discount you get if you are a new customer and sign up for two years. Currently I'm paying 15€ for 25m/7m. After two years it would increase to 25 iirc. That's on VDSL. Before that I was on cable (120m/6m) for 18€ and it would have been 39€ after those two years. It's not that I'm that poor but it just feels like they shit on their customers once they've been acquired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Related issue: my ISP uses as default wifi password part of the router's MAC address... It could be the kind of problem described in the article - but the site seems down.

</comment><comment><USER25> A little bit off topic. I find out about this because I set up some Google alerts some time ago for the brands of my network hardware. I'm now at my parents for the holidays and I would miss this news if I hadn't received the email alert.

</comment><comment><USER26> I remember supporting these modems in The Netherlands in 2010, when some of them were already 5 years old. So basically, it's an almost 14 year old design...I'm really surprised people still have these things in active use.

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone able to access the site? DDoSd for me. Perhaps post a text snapshot here until they get it back up? I tweeted Troy to let them know.

<comment><USER28> [https://twitter.com/bad_packets/status/1076797149524811777](https://twitter.com/bad_packets/status/1076797149524811777)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This would be completely mitigated by rolling out CG-NAT for all customers. Orange Espana has been working on this for their fibre customers (I think almost all of them are behind CG-NAT already), but ADSL customers are still waiting for it.

<comment><USER30> Well, except for attackers behind the CG-NAT.

Also, CG-Nat is a HORRIBLE technology that causes lots of problems for subscribers all fo the sake of allowing an ISP to sell their IPV4 space off at a premium and pump up their numbers if a quarter demands it.

I'm with Virgin cable in the UK and they are going to IPv6 soon ... but with DS-Lite, so CG-NAT for IPv4 (yay, I can't connect back to my home VPN if I'm on an IPv4 only network) but native IPv6 (sort of yay).

You then also have the issues with online services, IP bans etc. etc. etc.

CG-NAT is nothing to be cheered on, and is worse than useless for "security".

<comment><USER31> Is that definite on Virgin? Seems uncertain still...

<comment><USER30> It's the method LG have decided on for all their cable networks, and according to this presentation from earlier this month, it's still the plan (and let's face it, if they changed to dual stack now it would take them another 4+ years to get it rolled out ... snails have NOTHING on the LG network operations team): [https://www.ipv6.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/LG- Virgin...](https://www.ipv6.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/LG-Virgin- IPv6-Rollout-UK-IPv6-Council.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Leaks UEFI Secure Boot "backdoor" Keys. Whoops - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/microsoft-secure-boot-firmware-snafu-leaks-golden-key/ <comment><AUTHOR> Another fine example of US intelligence putting their hands where they don't belong, and ultimately putting the entire planet in jeopardy.</comment>


The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil - <AUTHOR> http://km-515.livejournal.com/1042.html

<comment><USER2> Seems unlikely. More likely, he is actually a physical manifestation of Eru, in his playful (Loki) personality.</comment>


Telegram bot to register and manage your appliances - <AUTHOR> https://telegram.me/ThinglyBot <comment><AUTHOR> Just found an "interesting side-application" for this bot: reminding me to review every year the electricity contract/supplier

</comment><comment><USER2> Great job!!!</comment>