Venezuela President Maduro 'survives drone attack' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45073385 <comment><USER2> Did this even happen? Initial reports were that firefighters on the scene were disputing that a drone attack even happened, but rather a gas tank exploded in a kitchen in a building across the street. (You can see the building in the above link.) See at the 7:10 reporting mark in [https://apnews.com/db760dac560840309cd320648ba12c9a](https://apnews.com/db760dac560840309cd320648ba12c9a)

Also, there was a report that journalists were arrested immediately after the explosion. Which seems rather odd. [https://twitter.com/jake_hanrahan/status/1025905621646929920...](https://twitter.com/jake_hanrahan/status/1025905621646929920?s=21)

<comment><USER3> The confusion, uncertainty, deeniability, and allegations possible make such attacks, or claims of them, particularly destabilising.

The root of "war" is the German _verwirren_ :

 _" to confuse, perplex"), from PIE _ wers- (1) "to confuse, mix up". Cognates suggest the original sense was "to bring into confusion."*

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/war](https://www.etymonline.com/word/war)

Mission accomplished.

<comment><USER4> No, _verwirren_ comes from the same root, it's not the source of _war_. Your statement is the etymological equivalent of saying that humans descended from modern chimpanzees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can drones be stopped? They have the potential to wage campaigns of automated political violence.

I see companies trying to protect against them, like Dedrone [1] -- how effective are these?

I imagine most here have seen it, but if not, you must see the slaughterbots video. [2]

[1] [https://www.dedrone.com/](https://www.dedrone.com/)

[2] [https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA](https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA)

<comment><USER6> I am assuming you are talking about countering drones in a civilian, non-war setting. Because drones are no use in a war against any nation with any semblance of an air force at all.

<comment><USER7> Ummm all sides have been using quadcopters and RC planes in the Syrian Civil War for years now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The soldiers were probably not carrying live rounds and taking cover was the right thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems to be a fair amount of desinformation going on.

Why does the soldier in the right part of the picture fall, seemingly handlessly? I'm pretty sure gas explosions in a nearby house don't do that.

<comment><USER2> There's no point to that type of speculation. Maybe got pushed. Maybe he fainted. I was at a concert a couple of weeks ago, and the guy standing in front of me just suddenly fell over backwards unconscious. Things happen. You can't tell from either angle I've seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The media dramatically misinforms us about Venezuela:

[https://youtu.be/_fV-C1Ag5sI](https://youtu.be/_fV-C1Ag5sI)

And calls for war with "humour".

I must be old, but it looks similar to me as the "humour" that Germany had before invading Poland.

<comment><USER11> I was interested in whatever his point was, and I can see why including some video from the show is helpful since thats whats being referenced. However, it just takes too long for video to convey the info. Just not the right format to keep my attention.

EDIT:

And no, adding more "excitement" to the video is not going to help

<comment><USER12> YouTube pays more for longer videos, hence the format of making a point repeatedly and only adding new information as rarely as possible during the video.

<comment><USER11> This is very relevant, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm on Chrome 68, how do I prevent bbc.com from playing videos automatically?

Thanks.

<comment><USER14> settings/site settings/media/autoplay</comment></comment>


The Playboys of Tech (iminlikewithyou YC Summer 06) - <AUTHOR> http://men.style.com/details/features/full?id=content_7474 <comment><USER2> I read this article before it was posted and passed it up. Maybe I'm wrong. The flavour of the article smacked of _"Boy-band"_ web company. I didn't realise it was a YC Co. Maybe it's the style of the site it comes from but I would have pegged some of the insights I read as a good example of a bubble in action.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe I'm not cool enough for the tech scene but I'd rather be in the office working on my product than be at the nightclubs partying.</comment>


About Tagged Netstrings - <AUTHOR> http://tnetstrings.org/

<comment><USER2> How is it better/worse than BSON?

<comment><USER3> Far worse. As defined, you can't write a parser for "tagged netstrings" without:

* Infinite lookahead - the type for a tagged netstring doesn't appear until the END of up to 100 MB of contents.

* Large intermediate memory usage - a string of the form 9990:9985:9980:9975: <...> ]]]] may consume a very large amount of memory for substrings during parsing.

* An int() implementation which exactly matches Python's.

* Ambiguity.

Bencode (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bencode>) has been around much longer, and is considerably better thought out. There's no reason to not just use that instead.</comment></comment>


Dept of Veterans Affairs built most important medical computer system in history - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/03/vista-computer-history-va-conspiracy-000367 <comment><USER2> Note this is from 2017, and the contract had since been awarded to Cerner. Working at one of their competitors - Epic - myself, I can say I'm disappointed with that decison. I really do think that a Epic offers the best software in the industry, that it would have best-served the public, and that after the whole project is said and done would have been price-competitive with any alternative.</comment>


Some new cars at risk of theft by exploiting weaknesses in keyless entry systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49273028 <comment><USER2> A lot of new car "innovations" remind me of my issues with the newer iPhones and Macbook Pros (no headphone jack, thinness above all else, etc):

I like having a physical key to start the engine. There was never any confusion in our household about "who has the keys" like there is now.

I _despise_ the start-stop nonsense. Let me use the pedals to start and stop.

I don't need my car to broadcast a wifi signal.

Etc etc etc

Sometimes manufacturers should just "version-lock" their devices and keep going with it -- a lot of customers would be happier.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean by "the start-stop nonsense" as opposed to using pedals? I don't have a newer car.

<comment><USER4> OP is likely talking about the system that automatically shuts down and restarts the combustion engine when you come to a complete halt. This is meant to reduce emissions and fuel comsumption.

<comment><USER5> I don't get why people are so opposed to it, I love it and I drive a Mercedes- AMG. Fantastic feature in traffic.

<comment><USER6> Audi driver here, and I hate it. Especially hate that I have to push a button every time I start the car to disable it. What an awful feature. Then again, I live in rural America and traffic isn't a frequent thing I experience.

<comment><USER5> If you don't experience traffic frequently, then why would it bother you? It does nothing if you're just driving along. And I'm curious - what exactly makes you hate it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apple Watch Mac unlock uses time of flight to prevent relay attacks. Wouldn't that prevent this kind of thefts?

Here's a description of the Apple Watch Mac unlock process [https://networkingnerd.net/2016/09/21/apple-watch- unlock-802...](https://networkingnerd.net/2016/09/21/apple-watch- unlock-802-11ac-and-time/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Has there ever been a lot of friction as far as how quickly someone could get into a car?

Let's say it took someone 60 seconds in the past, is 10 seconds really that big of a change as far as committing the crime goes?

<comment><USER5> It's not the getting in part that's the problem, it's starting the car that is. When key-based immobilisers got introduced in the 90s the rate of car theft has dropped through the floor, because suddenly thieves couldn't start the car as easily as before. The keyless relay attack allows thieves not only to open but also to start the car within seconds, all of which without triggering the alarm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> On my Mercedes key I always double click the lock button which entirely disabled the keyless features until I use the key again.

Now the question is - is this actually safer? If some thieves arrive at my house to steal my car and their relay gadget doesn't work, are they going to give up, or are they going to break in and threaten me for the key? Now that's a question I don't like to think about too much.

<comment> hugh-avherald They're going to give up. It's opportunistic, they're not going to risk robbery, or they'll think it's not working.

<comment><USER9> You would give up, as would most rational people. Once you're committing felonies the primacy of rational thought could be called into question.

<comment><USER10> No. The typical person who is willing to steal a car is not willing to commit violent assault in order to take keys from you.

Someone whose logic is so flawed that they think "oh well, felony" is probably not just stealing cars. At that point they might as well break into your house, murder you for your stuff, and then do the same for every house on the block. "Because felony", right?

<comment><USER9> So 'No.' but then you go on to restate my point?

<comment><USER10> No. Your point seems to state that committing a felony implies that a criminal is automatically willing to escalate to any other crime, as if anything resembling rationality is impossible. I'm saying that's absurd.

Car thieves don't generally commit war crimes.

<comment><USER9> This is what i said:

>Once you're committing felonies the primacy of rational thought could be called into question.

This is what you're saying i said:

>Your point seems to state that committing a felony implies that a criminal is automatically willing to escalate to any other crime, as if anything resembling rationality is impossible.

See the difference?

<comment><USER10> No, I don't see the difference. You said that someone committing one felony will escalate to another felony because they can't think rationally.

The question was whether someone who's willing to break into a parked car to steal it is willing to break into a house to assault the car owner in order to take their keys to steal the same car. You said yes, or at least you implied "yes" extremely strongly. If you _don't_ believe the answer is "yes" then I don't know what the point of your comment was.

PS: The fact that you thought my absurd extrapolation of your statement was making _the same point_ tells me that you do indeed believe a car thief is likely to escalate to far worse crimes "because felony".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Both my neighbours either side of my house had their cars stolen by this on the same night. One was a Jaguar, think the other was an Audi.

They didn't touch my car even though it was newer, probably because it was a Kia. I am happy with my choice.

<comment><USER12> There's a common attack that boosts the wireless signal of proximity fob to trick the vehicle into unlocking & starting. Fob wireless systems should ideally redesigned such that the round trip time is precisely measured of only valid encrypted challenge responses that only the fob can answer.

Spending a bunch of money on a luxury vehicle is usually idiotic and most people who do so usually can't afford it in proportion to their income sheet and balance sheet. Plus, it advertises the owner and the vehicle as targets for all sorts of criminal intrigue.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I know the attack model, it was just amusing they took the cars that were worth less (at market value) over the newer car that was less cool but worth more.

We put our car keys in a metal tin near the door now which stops all this anyway.

<comment><USER10> Your car probably wasn't actually worth more to them. Even if your Kia was worth more according to the Blue Book, it's quite likely that Audis and Jaguars fetch more on the parts market, and many (most?) stolen cars are torn down for parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So can many old cars, with rockout keys[1].

[1] [https://www.sparrowslockpicks.com/product_p/ck13.htm](https://www.sparrowslockpicks.com/product_p/ck13.htm)

</comment><comment><USER14> I can break into an old or new car in 2 seconds with a hammer. Thankfully people don't break into your car just because they can.

<comment><USER15> But you can't start the car with a hammer and drive away, which is something the article talked about as well.

<comment><USER14> Good point. That is concerning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Stolen in 20 seconds, but could not drive away."

Isn't that the same as "not stolen"?

The definition of stolen seems fuzzy here.

</comment><comment><USER17> And here I am living in smalltown America and I don't lock the doors on my car in my driveway. For much of my life, I didn't even take the keys out of the ignition.

</comment><comment><USER18> Back in the 80s my aunt and uncle each owned the same car, though different model years. It didn't take them long to realize that both keys worked in both cars.

</comment><comment><USER19> A faraday car key bag costs about €20. And they work, I use one. But one has to be consistent and always put the key in the bag. Not a problem, really.

<comment><USER20> But... you shouldn't have to do this! It's an extra step, an inconvenience.

<comment><USER19> Yes, I agree. What's the point of keyless access when one has to always take the key out of the faraday bag...

And I blame car manufacturers and dealerships for this. For introducing and advertising these features without explaining to less saavy buyers what are the risks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article doesn't support the headline. I don't doubt there are vulnerabilities, but the article didn't deliver.

<comment><USER22> It is clear what the vulnerability is. A lot of these remotes are susceptible to relay attacks. The car's challenge is being relayed into the house so the fob can respond. This response is relayed back to the car. The door just opens and you can start it and drive away.

It is also trivial to be this attack by adding an accelerometer to the fob. If the fob isn't moving, don't respond to the broadcast from the car. You could also be more extreme and have the car check constantly. If fob disappears, kill the engine.

<comment><USER23> >It is also trivial to be this attack by adding an accelerometer to the fob. If the fob isn't moving, don't respond to the broadcast from the car. You could also be more extreme and have the car check constantly. If fob disappears, kill the engine.

That would have to be a pretty sensitive accelerometer but you'd still end up with voodoo stuff like "I have to shake my purse while starting the car". Killing the engine if the fob disappears means you need to be polling the fob. See the lawsuits over heavy keys wearing out the ignition lock and steering column locking up to see what happens when the polling fails. Probably not a good idea, IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How would the victims quoted here have _any_ idea if their cars were opened with a relay attack? Someone grabbed your bag? It's more likely that you forgot to lock your car than that you were a relay attack victim. Especially if you were in such a bad state that one of you literally passed out at the airport.

But also how are manufacturers still selling vulnerable cars? This seems like a class-action lawsuit waiting to happen. Relay attacks have been a known vulnerability with known solutions for years.

<comment><USER24> Leaving the car unlocked wouldn't explain how they were able to start the car and drive off with it.

Car missing + all keys accounted for in your house + no smashed glass = relay attack.

<comment><USER10> The people who have their bag stolen, did _not_ have their car driven away.

That's a valid question for the other victim, but I'm pretty sure cars are still occasionally stolen without the keys nearby by defeating the immobilizer.</comment></comment></comment>


Toronto Mayor: 'Yes, I Have Smoked Crack Cocaine' - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/11/05/243243656/toronto-mayor-yes-i-have-smoked-crack-cocaine <comment><USER2> His approval rating jumped 5% after the video was revealed? Why?</comment>


If Winklevoss tried to cash out, they'd probably crash the Bitcoin market - <AUTHOR> https://www.inverse.com/article/39576-the-winklevoss-twins-would-probably-struggle-to-cash-their-bitcoin-billion <comment><USER2> This seems to be inaccurate. The twins could choose to simply sell the private key in a private transaction. Assuming they didn't create one wallet with 50,000 bitcoin, they could even sell portions. This gets them paid AND puts the onus for moving the coins to a new address on the new owner. They could exit in 5 minutes if another billionaire wanted their coins bad enough.

<comment><USER3> > simply sell the private key in a private transaction

Then why not sell it three times to three separate parties? And also keep a copy of the key and engage in some spending from the wallet themselves?

I'm not saying that these particular people would engage in such trickery. But I would be very wary of any proposition to sell me bitcoins in an out-of-band transaction of this kind.

<comment><USER2> Agreed, not saying it is smart but it IS possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" Typical trading volumes across the major exchanges are only about $2 billion globally"_

Sounds like they could just sell ~$20M everyday, which would account for only 1% of the daily trading volume. After ~50 days, they would have cashed out $1B.

<comment><USER5> That depends on how much of the daily trading volume is wash trading. Bitfinex can just decide to give a couple accounts a pile of USDT on margin and self- trade to stir up a sense of FOMO and convince folks to buy in. It's pretty much free to do if you run the exchange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Same with buffet

</comment><comment><USER7> Winklevosses

<comment><USER8> Didn't you see "The Social Network?" Winklevi! ;-)

<comment><USER7> Touche (with an accent aigu) -- I had forgotten that. But I knew SOME kind of plural was called for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dont we know this by now?

</comment><comment><USER10> It's the same with Bill Gates but nobody's doubting he's rich.

<comment><USER11> No this is nothing like Bill Gates. He owns less than 2% of the shares.

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/bill-gates-stake-in- microsoft-i...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/bill-gates-stake-in-microsoft-is- now-just-1-3-percent/)

<comment><USER12> So, what percent of the BTC market cap do the the Winklevoss twins own? I haven't seen anything suggesting that they own more than 1%.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple to charge $99/year to publish Safari extensions (claims developer) - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/397bn6/apple_wants_me_to_pay_100_to_continue_publishing/

<comment><AUTHOR> You can read the email Apple sent out here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/397bn6/apple_wants_me...](http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/397bn6/apple_wants_me_to_pay_100_to_continue_publishing/cs0zx0t)</comment>


Ask HN: Why is repatriating iconic artifacts to Egypt a bad idea? - <AUTHOR> I'm sorry if this question is a bit out of context, I'd just really appreciate opinions of people who do not specialize in museology or any other related subject (archaeology, Egyptology, etc.). Although opinions of the professionals will be also very welcome! <comment><USER2> [http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/illicit- traffic-...](http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/illicit-traffic-of- cultural-property/emergency-actions/egypt/warning-looting-of-the-malawi- national-museum/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This article is from August,2013, right after the Egyptian coup d'état in July of the same year happened. The situation is not the same currently.

<comment><USER2> > currently

Museums should only be as safe as the current regime?

Priceless artifacts should be safe for millennia.

<comment><USER3> And on the scale of millennia why would they be safer in Europe or the US than Egypt? Heck, many of them _were_ safe in Egypt for millennia already.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


On being a woman linux kernel developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dro2v44wvs0 Linux developer Sarah Sharp shares her story about how she became a Linux kernel developer, as well as what it means to be a woman today in the open source software community. <comment><USER2> Cool, I saw her garden automation talk at osbridge!</comment>


New Shepard: Bezos claims success on second spaceship flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34909713 <comment><USER2> Elon's reaction (quoted from Twitter):

"Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster

It is, however, important to clear up the difference between "space" and "orbit", as described well by [https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/](https://what- if.xkcd.com/58/)

Getting to space needs ~Mach 3, but GTO orbit requires ~Mach 30. The energy needed is the square, i.e. 9 units for space and 900 for orbit."

<comment><USER3> I don't see Blue Origin claiming 'orbit' anywhere so I fail to see why that bit needed any clearing up. It is the L bit that SpaceX seems to have had some problems with to date. Musk could simply congratulate Blue Origin and leave it at that.

<comment><USER4> I'm guessing that Musk felt the need to do that because some of the early reports about Blue Origin's success were using it as a platform to trash SpaceX for failing to land on the barges. This Gizmodo article (before they changed it due to all the comments complaining) was a good example: [http://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-new-rocket-just-made-a- control...](http://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-new-rocket-just-made-a-controlled- vertical-l-1744370201)

It was significantly longer earlier today, but it contained a factually inaccurate comparison.

Here are a couple more examples:

Wired: "Jeff Bezos just accomplished the near impossible: one-upping Elon Musk"

Link: [http://www.wired.com/2015/11/jeff-bezos-brags-on-rocket- land...](http://www.wired.com/2015/11/jeff-bezos-brags-on-rocket-landing-with- mic-drop-first-tweet/)

Engadget: "Jeff Bezos beats Elon Musk's SpaceX in the reusable rocket race"

Link: [http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/24/blue-origin-reusable- rock...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/24/blue-origin-reusable-rocket- landing/)

<comment><USER5> That still has nothing to do with orbit, making Elon's tweet(s) a non- sequitor.

Edit: I see the Musk posse has arrived at this comment.

<comment><USER6> When stories with titles like "Your Move, SpaceX: Blue Origin Just Secretly Landed a Reusable Rocket"[0], "Blue Origin Beats SpaceX In Landing Reusable Rocket"[1], "Move over SpaceX! Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin successfully lands a reusable rocket in Texas beating Elon Musk's firm to it"[2], are the main articles about it for me on google news, I can understand how he might feel the need to make the point to the general public that they've not achieved the feat SpaceX is attempting.

[0] - [http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/your-move-spacex- blue...](http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/your-move-spacex-blue-origin- just-secretly-landed-a-reusable-rocket) [1] - [http://www.popsci.com/blue- origin-beats-spacex-in-landing-re...](http://www.popsci.com/blue-origin-beats- spacex-in-landing-reusable-rocket) [2] - [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3331885/Move-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3331885/Move- Space-X-Jeff-Bezos-Blue-Origin-successfully-lands-reusable-rocket-Texas- beating-Elon-Musk-s-firm-it.html)

<comment><USER5> Through all the ads on those sites, I still saw nothing about orbit.

The reusable part of a Falcon (assuming it actually lands undamaged)[0] doesn't go into orbit either.

Edit: Stay classy HN.

[0] "I don't expect the Falcon 9 to have a reusable upper stage" [http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-at-mits- aeroast...](http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-at-mits-aeroastro- centennial-part-1-of-6-2014-10-24)

<comment><USER7> You are focusing on the word 'orbit' and not the overall meaning. The forest for the trees. You are being downvoted for arguing about something completely pointless.

<comment><USER5> If my comments are pointless arguing, so are Elon's.

Worse, Elon's are just factually incorrect (e.g. "The energy needed is the square, i.e. 9 units for space and 900 for orbit.") [and, yet, it remains, uncontested, at the top of this thread].

>It is, however, important to clear up the difference between "space" and "orbit", as described well by [https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/](https://what- if.xkcd.com/58/)

is a non-sequitor because no one seems to have confused space and orbit. Additionally, the comparable part of SpaceX's machines (the first stage of the Falcon 9) doesn't go into orbit (it is supposed to land not far from the launch site and _does not_ loop around the Earth to do it).

What is the import of "orbit"? Elon is the one that brought the word into the conversation, not me.

>You are focusing on the word 'orbit' and not the overall meaning.

Then, please, what is the overall meaning of those tweets?

<comment><USER6> Regarding the factually incorrect bit, could you elaborate? I was under the impression that the energy required was proportional to the square of the velocity, so a 10x increase in velocity (from ~Mach 3 to ~Mach 30) would result in a 100x increase in energy required, which seems to be what he's saying.

Is my understanding inaccurate?

<comment><USER5> Well, if you take the sentence:

>The energy needed is the square, i.e. 9 units for space and 900 for orbit.

at face value. It is either claiming that 9^2 = 900 or, it either mistated the units for space or mistated the units for orbit. This is incorrect.

If you take into account the context of the prior sentence:

>Getting to space needs ~Mach 3, but GTO orbit requires ~Mach 30.

you can probably work out 3^2 = 9 and 30^2 = 900. However, as InclinedPlane said, that's only in an idealized number, in reality, you must expend even more energy than that to achieve Mach 30 from the surface of the Earth.

We can check back to the prior contexts:

>Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster

>It is, however, important to clear up the difference between "space" and "orbit", as described well by [https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/](https://what- if.xkcd.com/58/)

To be short: you'd need to find where Jeff Bezos or the BO team claimed anything about "orbit".

Since others have already given up on this conversation, I probably will too.

<comment><USER8> You simply misunderstand the "square" statement. It is factually correct.

You seem to understand it later, where you say that 3^2 = 9 and 30^2 = 900, so what's the deal?

<comment><USER5> >so what's the deal?

I assume you stopped reading mid-sentence.

Getting to orbit from the surface of the earth requires more energy expenditure than "the square" of getting to space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The same thing is being mentioned in several places elsewhere, but to put some numbers on it:

Orbital velocity is in the vicinity of 7500 to 8000 m/s. At that speed your KE is 1/2.m.v^2 which is about 32e6 Joules/kg.

Orbits are, conveniently, at about 320 km, so your PE is m.g.h, or about about 3.2e6 Joules/kg.

In other words, the energy to get to orbit is ten times the energy to get to the altitude of orbit, and this exercise only got to 1/3 of that. So the energy involved was about 1/30 of that required to put something in orbit.

It's still a fantastic achievement, and an important - nay, critical - step on the way to properly reusable rockets, but it does lend some perspective to it.

<comment><USER10> That's neat.

But what I see on video is Bezos landing a rocket and Musk blowing up a rocket.

I understand the technical differences, but in terms of media, this is a pure win.

<comment><USER11> What I see is Musk supplying the ISS, and Bezos doing a PR stunt.

Let's try comparing those on more than just media, shall we ?

<comment><USER12> Perhaps, perhaps not.

Financially speaking, between the two goals, there's enough money concentrated in private individuals' hands that you might be able to find six people willing to shell out for space tourism.

Government funding supplies the ISS. A laudable goals, but there's a grim realpolitik view that suggests it's not as guaranteed sustainable of a market as space tourism.

On the other hand, SpaceX's goals also allow for deployment of orbital payloads... Now _that 's_ lucrative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I noticed a major difference in the landing sequences of the New Shepard and Falcon 9 first stage.

The Falcon 9 first stage, if I recall correctly, is incapable of either hovering or slowly decending. The engine has simply too much power. A Falcon 9 first stage, stopped mid air has two choices, keep the motor on and go up, or turn the motor off and fall - and I don't think the motor has too many extra restarts available.

Because of this inability to hover the Falcon 9 first stage, SpaceX is attempting to have the rocket's vertical velocity reach zero at the exact moment the rocket reaches the pad. This is why when you watch the grasshopper or other SpaceX landing videos, you always wonder for a split second if the rocket has just smashed into the ground. In order for this to work, all nine axis (three each of position, rotation, and velocity) must be brought to zero at exactly the same fixed time. This is insane level control theory here.

Now this type of landing is theoretically possible - and I think it has been tested on the grasshopper at lower speeds, but it scares the willies out of me. There's almost no room for error nor for the chaos of the universe.

New Shepard on the other hand, comes to a hover about 100? feet above the pad, moves horizontally to be above the pad, stops, then lowers itself down. This is tremendously simpler since the rocket only really cares about one or two set of axis at a time, it does not have to be nearly as precise, and you have time to fix anything that's not lined up.

I'm still curious to see if SpaceX can pull off their landing style, or will instead change so that their first stages will be able to hover.

<comment><USER14> Hovering is also an insane balancing act for a rocket. At speed a rocket can use aerodynamic forces to keep everything lined up. In a hover everything literally turns on the engine gimbals. So there is something to be said for coming to an abrupt halt and landing immediately, before things start getting tipsy.

<comment><USER13> The hardware and engineering to make a hovering a rocket is amazing. But the control theory behind the hover is just not that tricky - It's very similar to hovering a quad copter.

If you had a JavaScript rocket simulator, with clean position, rotation, and velocity data, you could probably code a hover in five or six lines. Now it's not quite that easy in practice, but the theory is still simple.

The Apollo lunar modules were capable of hovering, using only a portion of a 0.001Ghz 16 bit computer.

<comment><USER15> Hovering in 1.622 m/s² gravity in a vacuum is significantly simpler than hovering in 9.807 m/s² gravity plus wind.

That said, it's clearly possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So this was just a vertical hop?

It would seem that SpaceX remains in a totally different league. By only going vertical, this is a very limited "spacecraft", more akin to the Virgin spaceplane than SpaceX's launch vehicles. For proper access to space, rather than tourist hops, everyone wants to see a reusable launch vehicle --> a craft to actually boost something towards orbit rather than an altitude record. That means returning to some sort of landing after huge downrange progress. So while this is an impressive achievement for space tourism (roller-coasters for billionaires) I still see SpaceX's efforts as the more revolutionary.

<comment><USER16> Highest altitude followed by a powered landing by SpaceX: 1,000 m

Highest altitude followed by a powered landing by Blue Origin: 100,500 m

Moreover, SpaceX has gotten close to a powered landing from space a half dozen times, but has mostly failed in the last 100m. You could argue that Blue Origin just did the hard part that SpaceX hasn't been able to do. Obviously the difficulty doesn't really scale linearly like that, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this accomplishment.

<comment><USER14> What Kerbal does teach users is that altitude is irrelevant for space travel. Speed is what matters. The "hard part" is pushing something to a useful velocity before attempting a landing. Returning a booster from to near-zero velocity from a near-orbital velocity is far more of an accomplishment than returning from altitude.

<comment><USER16> As far as I know, the Falcon 9 first stage has never gotten close to orbital velocity. 2km/s is better than 0 km/s, but is a long way from 7 km/s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is super cool, in case any of their engineers read this thread congratulations.

To jump in with the inevitable SpaceX comparison. Worth noting is you see the Blue Origin booster: fall, slow, hover, correct any drift, descend then land. The SpaceX booster cannot hover, it has more thrust than it weighs.

<comment><USER18> Further point of clarification, the SpaceX booster has more thrust than it weighs because it is capable of delivering payloads to orbit, which the Blue Origin booster cannot do.

<comment><USER19> All rockets have more thrust than their weight, otherwise they would not get off the ground.

Hover ability comes from having a rocket engine that can throttle down enough to match the weight of the almost-empty rocket. Blue Origin's BE-3 can throttle down to 20% of its design thrust, possibly lower.[1] SpaceX's Merlin 1D can throttle down to 70%.[2] Apparently, even with only one of the nine engines firing, it's enough to lift the almost-empty Falcon 9 first stage.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BE-3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BE-3)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine_family)#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_\(rocket_engine_family\)#Merlin_1D)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm sure SpaceX will land their Falcon 9 sooner or later but I think this goes to show that being able to hover makes things a lot easier. Real rockets can't be set to any throttle like in Kerbal Space Program, most can't throttle at all. The Merlin's ability to throttle down to 70% is impressive, and the BE-3's ability to throttle down to 25% is _very_ impressive.

<comment><USER14> "Throttle" is a term for rocket engines, not rockets. Being able to throttle a single engine to 25% doesn't matter so much if you can instead shut down 3 of 4 engines and throttle the remaining.

For a single-engine booster, 25% is still way too much thrust if you are shooting for orbit. A modern booster is 90+% fuel. So the empty or near empty returning booster will need an engine running at around 10% of launch thrust at the moment of landing. That's pretty much what SpaceX is doing by shutting down 8 of 9 engines and throttling the last to 80ish%.

<comment><USER21> It's not pretty much what SpaceX is doing. Even down to 1 of 9 engines and throttled as far as they can (they can go to about 70%), it has too much thrust to hover. So the amount a single engine can throttle is indeed important.

SpaceX plans to solve it by extremely accurate timing so they don't need to hover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Direct link to video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo)

The landing footage begins at 1:40.

<comment><USER23> The video speaks volumes about this accomplishment. The landing is spectacular.

<comment><USER24> The landing IS spectacular. The girl at the end trying desperately (and unsuccessfully) to get her champagne bottle to pop is irony at its finest.

<comment><USER24> Her gender is irrelevant to the irony.

<comment><USER25> In the English language we generally do not use genderless pronouns to refer to humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Video I think is from yesterday... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo)

</comment><comment><USER27> Amazon Prime next-day deliveries to the International Space Station just got one step closer...

<comment><USER28> That would be amazing given that a (orbital) day on the ISS is about 90 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I find it quite amusing that Bezos does this and what's everyone's first reaction? Let's find out what Elon has to say!

<comment><USER30> Two billionaires trying to revolutionize space flight - it's pretty damn fascinating

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Just watched the video....I think it's pretty lame that Jeff Bezos has no idea how to spray champagne out of a bottle.

<comment><USER32> spraying champagne out of bottle is lame, anyway.

someone did that at my wedding, it got on my hair and my suit. it was on me all day. it's sticky.

<comment><USER31> It's certainly lame if someone does it to you at your own wedding without you asking for it! I'd be pissed too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Looks like they'll be taking passengers soon. Expected ticket price? Waiting list time?

<comment><USER34> By the looks of the capsule hitting the ground I'm not emptying my checking account just yet.

<comment><USER6> What about it hitting the ground bothered you? It apparently touched down at 4.4 mph which is a little slower than if you stepped off an 8in. platform. Basically find a standard staircase and slip off the bottom step and that's a touch less jolt.

<comment><USER35> The rocket touched down at 4.4 mph. The capsule looked like it came down much harder than that.

<comment><USER36> Maybe they didn't really need the capsule to touch down at a lower speed since it can withstand this, so they save a bit on cost with smaller parachutes?

Not really sure if this item alone would make any difference, but if they do plan on putting humans instead, I too would hope it doesn't land as hard as the capsule seemed to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm far from being an expert on such matters, but why doesn't SpaceX attempt to lasso the upper part of the rocket on landing? How about a super big soft pillow? At the very least spread out some huge arms to aid stability?

<comment><USER38> They're trying to build a system that will work for a mars landing where there will be zero infrastructure on the ground.

<comment><USER37> Wow, that is crazy ambitious. Why aim for the problems of today when you can solve the problems of tomorrow.

SpaceX, by now, should have enough people with strong applied math backgrounds to tell them, given a formal specification of the control systems on the rocket, whether what they're even trying to do is possible (within probability bounds).

I'd be interested in seeing their calculations. I just hope they're not throwing more computation at a problem that's totally dependent on how fine they can a) sense their position and momentum, and b) do something to adjust it.

<comment><USER39> They are very happy with the calculations - they've given presentations to this effect already, and they've successfully landed the "grasshopper" test vehicle. The issues with their previous attempts have all been mechanical problems (running out of hydraulic fluid the first time, stuck valve the second time, a structural failure earlier in flight the third time).

<comment><USER40> From that description, it sounds like there's barely enough rocket there to succeed. A sample size of 4, no statistics yet possible about whether its getting better or not? Anyway, its amazing how many stuck valves have derailed grand plans. The rover rocket static test had that problem (nuclear engine for Mars mission back in the 60s(?)) and killed that program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The Delta Clipper was historic. This has been a followon. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X)

<comment><USER42> Still historic. But incrementally so. The DC-X flew to 3km, the New Shepard launched its capsule to 100km.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is this is the first attempt by Blue Origin? The first one turned to be successful?

<comment><USER44> Second attempt, I believe. Last time they recovered the crew capsule as planned but lost the rocket.

<comment><USER43> Thank you. It's interesting to look into this statistics with all the players out there (SpaceX; Blue Origin; Virgin)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos competing with each other? That's great!

</comment><comment><USER46> I used to be enough to get lots of big boats:

Larry Ellison; Oracle: [http://www.superyachtfan.com/larry_ellison.html](http://www.superyachtfan.com/larry_ellison.html) (including his Americas Cup yachts)

James (Jim) Clark; Silicon Graphics, Netscape: [http://www.superyachtfan.com/sailing_yacht_athena.html](http://www.superyachtfan.com/sailing_yacht_athena.html)

Paul Allen; Microsoft: [http://www.superyachtfan.com/paul_allen.html](http://www.superyachtfan.com/paul_allen.html) (3 very large vessels)

And more recently:

Larry Page; Google: [http://www.superyachttimes.com/yachts/details/333](http://www.superyachttimes.com/yachts/details/333)

Now you need a rocket! OK, Paul Allen did go there first, as far as I can tell.

</comment><comment><USER47> /r/spacex discussion:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3u2gwm/apparently_b...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3u2gwm/apparently_blue_origin_flew_a_rocket_up_to_100_km/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Is this what happens when an Engineering company decides to go to space? The video ([https://www.blueorigin.com/news/blog/historic-rocket- landing...](https://www.blueorigin.com/news/blog/historic-rocket- landing#youtube9pillaOxGCo)) of the booster coming down like a freight train, igniting, arresting velocity and correcting for yaw, then landing on a dime was absolutely uncanny. This thing reeks of technical competence and flawless execution.

<comment><USER20> The New Shepard is just getting up to space rather than all the way to orbit. If you'll recall SpaceS's Grasshopper was just as uncanny in it's landings. Now, the New Shepard has a harder job since it's going to space so it's much more impressive than Grasshopper that they succeeded. But by the same token a Falcon 9 first stage has much thinner mass fractions to work with and has to deal with horizontal velocity so landing one of those is much more impressive still.

<comment><USER48> This illustrates the almost unfathomable scope involved here. Each accomplishment is at least an order of magnitude or more harder than the last, and each one is truly impressive on their own. Yet each shadows the last!

Pretty cool times for space; I'm stoked for what comes next!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Does anyone know why it is 5x the effect of gravity for reentry? I would think it would just fall back into the Earth's gravitational pull after its thrusters are turned off. Or is it because it has an arcing path, and thrusters are deliberately not turned off during reentry so that the rocket spends less time burning up in the atmosphere? Anyone know? It's not clear to me why it would be 5x the effect of gravity on reentry.

<comment><USER50> Someone else can provide the math, but if due to the tanks being mostly empty you can burn anything from practically 0 to 5 G thrust, intuitively you burn the least total fuel by flooring it to 5G at the last minute.

Consider the alternative of burning less than 1G of acceleration, you'll fail to slow down although you'll descent acceleration will be somewhat lower. At exactly 1 G it'll keep falling at a constant speed till it runs out of fuel, then impact.

Or if you're asking why performance is so much more spritely at the end of mission, unlike boats or cars the fuel in the tanks is like 95% of the mass of the rocket, so something that barely waddles off the launch pad with full tanks weighs practically nothing at landing when the tanks are nearly empty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Investing in space is great for humanity in general but what's gonna stop this industry from going the way of the airlines?

Is this gonna turn into a price war ?

<comment><USER52> New Shepard does not compete with Falcon 9 (or any 'real' launcher). It made a vertical hop to 100km, with a very light payload. It didn't come anywhere close to orbit (which is what Falcon 9 does).

Obligatory: [https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Between SpaceX, Blue Origin and co it is great to finally see such competition and progress in the space sector.

As the great philosopher Mike Tyson once said: _I 'm a dreamer. I have to dream and reach for the stars, and if I miss a star then I grab a handful of clouds._

</comment><comment><USER54> The video was really exciting to watch. It does appear they come back much more rapidly than Space X but this might be due to video editing. I also did not notice visible attitude thrusters, was it all done via that main motor gimbal?

<comment><USER55> They talked about brakes, I'm assuming its a combination of some gimballing and some brake modulation. Brakes can't be terribly effective at low speeds however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Space noob here: why is it that just after liftoff, the rocket swings out to the right, and corrects. Is this intentional?

[https://youtu.be/9pillaOxGCo?t=55](https://youtu.be/9pillaOxGCo?t=55)

<comment><USER57> shooting from the hip... a) gust of wind; b) planned engine gimbal

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Elon's Grasshopper from 2 years ago:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4)

The New Shepard went much higher though (100.5km vs 744m).

</comment><comment><USER59> That landing was pretty amazing! I was expecting parachutes.

<comment><USER60> It came in so fast though! With the fuel it still has on board it's one malfunction away from a cruise missile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> The spacecraft did not exit the atmosphere, but this is certainly a prepossessing feat. Congratulations to Bezos and Blue Origin.

</comment><comment><USER27> Check the latest Elon Musk's tweets about that.

<comment><USER62> I think the big advancement here is the "reusable space rocket landing" part, not the "getting to space" part.

<comment><USER63> Yes, but if your rocket is smaller and nimbler because you only designed it to go to an altitude of 100km, isn't it easier to land?

<comment><USER64> Probably. SpaceX clearly have a huge lead, but in either case we have _competition_. We've got a good old fashion biggest dick contest for rockets and space. Look what that did in the 1960s!

<comment><USER65> Maybe we'll get the BFR sooner!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Great Job! Amazing rocket that 'LANDS'.

</comment><comment><USER29> So.. they beat spacex?

<comment><USER67> As Elon Musk wrote [1]:

      It is, however, important to clear up the difference between "space" and "orbit", as described well by https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/

      Getting to space needs ~Mach 3, but GTO orbit requires ~Mach 30. The energy needed is the square, i.e. 9 units for space and 900 for orbit.

1 - [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/669129655597731841](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/669129655597731841)

<comment><USER68> Of course, going slower means less acceleration, which means less high-G discomfort for paying passengers. A vertical hop makes perfect sense for meerkat-mission tourism.</comment></comment></comment>


Let's build a browser engine Part 3: CSS - <AUTHOR> http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2014/08/13/toy-layout-engine-3-css.html <comment><USER2> Part 1 of this series contains a link to an article called "How browsers work" ([http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowsers...](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork/)), which I read a while back. The epiphany for me was how browsers combine the DOM with style information into a render tree which can be traversed to do the actual drawing. While I won't be writing a commercial browser any time soon, that was the concept that was missing in mind, and once it was there I felt that I truly did understand the fundamental workings of a web browser and would be able to sit down and write one.

This reminds me of the famous Torvalds quote:

        "Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships."

As I have advanced in skill as a programmer, I'm continuously reminded of how true that is. The canonical example at this point is obviously git - which has a mind-blowingly simple albeit clever structure - but I've found it to be the case in almost everything.

I'm currently working on a compact DSL for performing a certain type of aggregations across streams of JSON objects. To me, the workings of programming languages used to be a black box with a lot of magic going on. Once I understood the concepts of lexing, parsing, using a visitor to traverse the AST and stack machines, it was went from being out of my reach to a simple but slightly time consuming excercise.

There are many other examples -- raytracers, databases, rendering html and css as per the article and so on - but the point is that once you've found a convenient abstraction and a good way to represent the data, tasks that seem complex can become rather easy. A good chunk of what defines a good programmer seems to be the ability/intuition to find those magic abstractions which obliterates the problem.

<comment><USER3> There is a similar statement in _The Mythical Man-Month_ :

 _" Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious."_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man- Month](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month)

<comment><USER4> It also reminds me of the military quote, "Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who has been rather disappointed in the direction in which mainstream browsers are going especially most recently, I'm very happy to see articles like this. With WebKit and Gecko being used by the majority of open- source browsers, all with increasingly converging UIs and features (or lack thereof), there's really not much "choice" in browsers anymore. The assumption that browsers need to be extremely complex - maybe this is only partly true - discourages many people from trying to write their own, but it's encouraging to see these attempts at questioning the status quo and writing a minimal browser, because maybe others will also follow.

I've also been toying with designing and writing bits of code for a minimal (but still HTML/CSS compliant) rendering engine, although my goal was more to explore the limits of how simple a rendering engine can be while still being useful.

<comment><USER6> I can't stress enough how discouraging is the fact that browsers rely on so complex standard body. And current way they evolve leave little hope. It definitely benefits web in a way, but rising complexity makes for a security nightmare and i wonder how close it brings browsers as a kind of software to limits of sanity and comprehension.

<comment><USER7> > It definitely benefits web in a way, but rising complexity makes for a > security nightmare and i wonder how close it brings browsers as a kind of > software to limits of sanity and comprehension.

Note that this is much of the idea behind Rust (which is used by this series): browsers are too large and difficult for humans to guard against the presence of vulnerabilities, so we use software (i.e. compilers) to do it. Compilers have a much longer attention span than humans do.

Sandboxing can also achieve this, although at a much more coarse-grained level.

<comment><USER8> I am excited to hear "sandboxing" in this context. Does rust have sandboxing by any chance on the roadmap?

<comment><USER7> Servo does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Instead of writing your own parser wouldn't you rather want to use a lexer like flex and and a parser generator like bison?

<comment><USER10> I know the author. I asked him a similar question and he replied saying that he wanted it to be a learning experience for himself so he chose to write several components from scratch over bringing in pre-existing libraries.</comment></comment>


The force vectors on a skateboard during an Ollie - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/10/skateboard-physics-empzeal/ <comment><USER2> If you like this and you haven't seen 1000fps flatland tricks:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHrn3-Cb3iM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHrn3-Cb3iM)

<comment><USER3> I was a decent skateboarder in my day but these tricks are an order of magnitude harder than anything that was happening in my day/era... the exception was rodney mullen. he was the only pro doing anything like that

<comment><USER4> Well Rodney Mullen invented almost all of the tricks. (Including the more famous ones like the kickflip and such)

<comment><USER5> Witness: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEm- wjPkegE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEm-wjPkegE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like the overlay of physics information in the video. It is so much easier to explain to students what acceleration is by _showing_ it rather than asking students to imagine "the second derivative of the position function r(t)=(x(t),y(t))."

Check out the software they used: [http://www.cabrillo.edu/~dbrown/tracker/](http://www.cabrillo.edu/~dbrown/tracker/)

</comment><comment><USER7> For anyone trying to learn how to do an ollie for the first time, the one thing that really helped me was this: do it on grass. I spent ages on concrete, and it is a lot harder. On grass the board doesn't roll and you don't get hurt if you fall.

A bit like learning to walk on your hands - start in a shallow pool. Once you get comfortable with the motion translating it to a different surface is not that hard.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's how I did it. Grass is helpful until you can get the board to come up close to level and land on it.

For some reason it took me much longer to learn how to drop in on a ramp. I built an 8-foot ramp in high school (no vertical) and it took me ages (weeks, IIRC) to drop in without immediately planting a foot and running or falling down the ramp.

When I finally nailed it I was so happy. Damn, I miss skateboarding.

<comment><USER7> I remember the first time I dropped in too. It is another one of those things where if you don't commit all the way, you fail. Once you get it you have it for life. I think having my friends get it first helped me with that one!

I'm impressed you built a ramp! Luckily there was a nice new outdoor skateboard park near my friend's house, we didn't have to build anything :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm less impressed by the skateboarding tricks and more impressed by the physics software that can derive all this from a video.

<comment><USER10> Well tracking software has been around for a while. I did something like this for a highschool project...

<comment><USER9> I guess it's just something I'd never seen before, impressive at first sight! I did all my physics quite a few years ago and don't remember video analysis like this, although I guess it wasn't really my focus anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I never got any good ollies in high school. Watching the vids and reading the article I think I realized something I never understood. It looks like most of the skater's upward body acceleration is coming from using the the _left_ leg, with the right foot going along for the ride (and smacking the tail down). I always tried to get the major jumping lift from my right leg, while also somehow smacking the tail at the same time. I think I've always had it backwards!

<comment><USER12> The highest ollies come from jumping with both legs, and using the ankle of the foot on the tail (right if you're regular-footed) to flick the tail down and pop the board.

It's basically a two-foot jump; the hard part is getting the board to stay with your feet.

<comment><USER13> Jumping on a bike is also basically a two-foot jump, where you pull the whole bike up after yourself using the handlebars. There is no special _" pull up the front first and then push forward"_ as many people believe. The initial jerk is just to get the handle bars above the COG so that you can actually lift the bike from there and to put your pedals above the balance point of the rear wheel so you can push down hard for the actual jump. This might seem strange at first but when you think of it, apart from the legs what parts of the body have enough force to jump yourself that high, it's not like you can magically jump higher just because you are standing on some weird contraption.

On a bike you do get some help from preloading the tyres to give you a bit of bounce but that's minor compared to the rest of the movement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You don't actually need any fancy software to see what's going on if you've mastered the fine art of free body diagrams: [http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1374](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1374) (not related to skateboards, but those damned wobbly suitcases).

And the advantage of simple free body diagrams is they are amenable to relatively simple models, frequently involving simple harmonic motion: [http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1410](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1410)

These are teachable skills, and while it's great we have software to help us out, I'm a sufficiently aged crustacean to see the value in learning to do these sorts of analyses formally, by observation and inference.

</comment><comment><USER15> It looks like the skater drags his shoes against the "lip" of the skateboard to get a bit more "forward" direction on takeoff, pulling it upwards.

<comment><USER16> Ollie is the hardest thing to learn in skateboarding. It took me and my friends a long time. I think it's hard to explain it, so it's hard to teach.

It's rather that the initial smack or pop of the tail against the floor makes the board fly upward, which you can reproduce by just by stamping on the tail of your board. That was my first insight.

You can do a standing Ollie with one foot: stamp it and as the board starts going up you shove your same foot to the right to stabilize it. After mastering that, a two-foot Ollie was just a matter of practice. Also, the longer you delay putting any downward force in the nose, the more air you get. I feel like I should make a video of a standing single foot Ollie, as two feet complicate demonstration, I think.

The moving forward of the foot isn't for adding more forward velocity, a standing Ollie can get really high and land in the same place. A moving Ollie relies on your existing velocity, which should be pretty high.

I've not skated for about 10 years, but I got a board recently to see if I still had it. Ollie'ing is like riding a bike, never forget how to do it. :)

<comment><USER17> > I've not skated for about 10 years, but I got a board recently to see if I > still had it. Ollie'ing is like riding a bike, never forget how to do it. :)

It's tough for me. I skated nearly every day of high school and not much since then. I got on a board a few months back and it was like starting all over again. The biggest difference that I noticed was my diminishing flexibility. I need to start managing that--my wife, a physical therapist, says that lack of flexibility in our 30's and 40's is highly correlated with likelihood of falls when we are elderly.

<comment><USER18> > my wife, a physical therapist, says that lack of flexibility in our 30's and > 40's is highly correlated with likelihood of falls when we are elderly.

I think this is why a lot of people get injured as they get older. You just don't realize how much less time you're putting into something you used to be able to do really well, then you try something that used to be easy with less flexibility and bam. problems, heh.

I ran an obstacle course recently after having not done it in awhile. I was actually pretty surprised at how coordinated I still was (I'm 31, so I don't have all the issues I could yet), but I felt the tightness during and was sooooo sore the next day

I really need to start doing consistent balance drills and flexibility training

<comment><USER19> _I really need to start doing consistent balance drills and flexibility training_

If that's your aim, I can't recommend a regular yoga practice highly enough.

<comment><USER18> This seems absurdly obvious now that you've mentioned it :)

I'll have to seriously look into that

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The motion capture shown is kind of limited. The wheels are tracked, but not the CG of the rider. Also, the video doesn't show the beginning of the ollie. It looks like, in this one, the rider did this entirely by loading up the springs in the trucks to get a bounce, rather than dragging the tail of the board.

It's a good physical simulation problem. Now that Gazebo has a real physics engine (by Mike Sherman from Stanford) rather than ones from video games, it should be possible to do an ollie in a robot simulation. (The game-type physics engines use an impulse/constraint model for contacts, which is unrealistic when you have a collision followed by sliding.)

<comment><USER21> > by loading up the springs in the trucks to get a bounce

There are no springs in skateboard trucks. The force comes from pushing down on the tail and then shifting your front foot up the nose.

<comment><USER22> There are bushings which will provide a small amount of spring, but your general points stands that the force comes from pushing down on the tail and shifting the front foot up to the nose to pull the skateboard up.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a video or recording of 'screaming' a 300 baud sound? - <AUTHOR>

I've read in various corners of the internet (including on HackerNews, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3224897) that, at some point in history, people used to be able to "scream" a sound into a telephone handset such as to cause a 300 baud modem to respond.
However, I can find no actual recording of this.
Does one exist?
If not, can one among you make one? <comment><USER2> Well I can't say for sure its 300 baud or not but this article has the sound of a modem handshake. Having actually used a 300 baud back in the day this sounds to me as if it is pre 10K, I know the later ones were a little different sounding.

[http://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup- pictured...](http://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup- pictured.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry if I was unclear - I'm looking for a recording of someone actually screaming the sound with their vocal chords and completing a handshake with a modem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been able to get old 300 and 1200 baud modems to detect carrier by whistling, but never by screaming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Video? :-)

<comment><USER3> I'll see if any of my currently-accessible modems can even do 300 baud. If one of them can I'll get you some audio. >smile<

<comment><AUTHOR> At this point, since I can find no actual media depicting this, I kinda want to try it myself. :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can't code for hours since it became a job - <AUTHOR> I used to be able to code for hours in school.
Since I started working for money, this ability is gone.
The other day we played World of Warcraft in the office, and I realized I spent 4 hours in it without even noticing. It was perfectly easy.
Coding used to be like that. It's not anymore.
One thing that changed is that I was completely careless in school. It really didn't matter to me if I didn't do anything useful all week.
What do you think I should do? Try and change my perception of coding? Should I try and focus less on the reward? <comment><USER2> Perspective: You are complaining about a job that somehow let you play 4 hours of WoW while at work.

<comment><USER3> Perspective: That complaint sounds totally reasonable to someone like me who gets bored easily.

If my work can't capture my attention and use wisely the time I allocate to my group, it's going to be a negative experience for me.

As alluring the prospect, as someone who has been paid to twiddle their thumbs for a few hours -- it's not fun. It's boring and it feels wasteful.

In other words : I'd rather be at my own house doing nothing than sharing the experience with co-workers, cold lighting, and substantially less alcohol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What you're facing is resistance. The reason you code has changed, but you're not motivated by the new reason.

Identify what matters to you in life, what you need to do to do it, and then do that. If programming is part of that, move through it. If it's not, do something else.

But don't wait till you "feel like it". that's a crappy driver. Stephen king writes every day, no matter how he feels. That's what separates the amateur from the professional.

A good book on this, is "the war of art" [http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the- war-of-art/](http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/)

</comment><comment><USER5> As someone who started writing code not that long ago, i remember pretty vividly the first time I heard about programming "in anger". That phrase immediately clicked with me. Working in an environment where expectations matter just feels categorically different.

It took me a while to learn how much distance there is between "it works" and "it doesn't break". When i was first learning to code the goal was "it works". When i started getting paid to write software the goal became "it doesn't break", which slowed down my velocity a lot, which was discouraging.

Eventually "it doesn't break" becomes the norm and you get faster and more comfortable. It just takes time.

</comment><comment><USER6> _" Son, there's a reason they call it 'work' and not 'blowjob'."_

And that quote is both flippant, and exactly correct.

\---

1) anxiety, impostor syndrome, uncertainty, vagueness, complexity, open loops, etc etc all conspire to create some analysis paralysis and the general sensation of everything else being more fun that we all know too well [0].

2) Be honest and figure out exactly what it is that is making your focus fall off

3) Start doing Test Driven Development. It's a decent enough habit in general, but for you specific problem it is golden because it a) forces you to define your problems better _up front_ thereby decreasing your anxiety, and b) contains problems requiring less overall focus to complete your tasks.

\--

[0] [http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/the- intern...](http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/the-internet- research-paper.jpg)

<comment><USER7> It feels like this is about motivation/interest rather than anxiety. Your 2) sounds useful but I doubt TDD would help regain lost interest.

<comment><USER6> Anxiety is a broad word: what is causing the continued disruption, what is it that is causing his brain to seek entertainment elsewhere, why is he taking coding breaks? Genuine disinterest articulates itself a little differently, but misplaced anxiety about solutions will come up as break, break, break, breaks to flow.

For newer devs TDD is about removing obstacles to flow and clarifying action as much as the design/testing benefits. It won't solve genuine disinterest, but look at this threads title... it doesn't say "I find code boring" it says "I can't persist with coding any more".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just force yourself to get started, without making excuses, and then you'll find yourself in the thick of it again.

I have to do this every Monday.

</comment><comment><USER9> People change over time. Relationships with activities evolve and change. Over the time span of a decade, there will be periods of more interest and engagement with an activity and periods of less. Life happens and programming or reading or gaming doesn't occur in a vacuum. Some days/weeks/months there's more to be gained from doing, others from not doing.

Vacations, sabbaticals, breaks are good. Though taking one is a luxury not afforded to many people in the world, it is not wrong to grasp an opportunity to do so when it presents itself. Doubling down on burnout doesn't make it go away.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER10> Not every fun hobby is fun as a job. You mentioned the exact reason: when it was just a hobby, it didn't matter if you accomplished anything _and_ you got to decide what you worked on.

I can't tell you how to like something more, but I can tell you that most people don't have fun or fulfilling jobs, and that's OK. The rest of your life might be enjoyable enough that it doesn't matter.

It's also OK if you look for a career change. Just because you loved coding and used to be easily absorbed by it doesn't mean it should be your career.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've come to the realization the key difference is working code needs to be an order of magnitude more robust than hobby projects. There is a major difference in energy needed to get there. Spending this energy costs and there comes a point where programming becomes taxing instead of recharging.

Take care of your recovery, have outside interests to programming and realize as you age your ability to recover slows down even more, but your abilities also change. Wisdom accumulated along the way make you able to use your energy wisely.

</comment><comment><USER12> Coding at work is very different than coding for yourself. At work, you need to create code that solves somebody else's problem (that, usually, matters little or not at all to you) and by modyfing an existing code base, using preexisting build tools etc. There's a ton of external constraints and less than ideal circumstances that you need to adhere to.

To me, coding by myself can feel like tending to my own beautiful garden, while coding at a job feels more like working at a landfill.

<comment><USER13> This, exactly. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This might be a controversial answer, but one of the symptoms of adult ADD is the inability to focus on things that don't interest you, even though you may hyperfocus on a specific task or project that you are interested in "like WoW".

The currently available prescriptions for add are extremely effective and even help you take pride and get focus in even menial tasks that previously were nearly impossible.

If it's affecting your work, it's probably worth talking to a psychiatrist.

</comment><comment><USER15> Given that rewards kill intrinsic motivation, it's a good idea that you focus on coding for its sake.

</comment><comment><USER16> I had a short period where I had trouble being productive. It was a combination of technology that I was no longer interested and lack of product vision of the company.

You need to find your drive/motivation. Some programmes are excited by technology - specific programming language or tech like ML/Cloud/OS. Others are creators that want to build things, deliver new features and seeing others benefiting from their work. There are people that code for money, selling their craft for as much as possible. There are even people that are more interested in teaching/mentoring.

When you find out what motivate you. Then it is "just" matter of finding a right place.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds like the overjustification effect ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect)).

</comment><comment><USER18> It's clear in my opinion that you don't like what you do. If you were gratified and enjoyed it you would not have these opinions. I recommend you look into Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And determine why you chose this path. Determine if it is indeed gratification that is lacking or something else.

It seems to me you may have never really hit rock bottom and known what it's like to lack basic requirements.

This seems to me like an existential problem - you find world of Warcraft fun and passable but not Your work. Ask yourself why - not how to fix it. When you know why the action will be clear.

</comment><comment><USER19> A friend of mine covered a scientific study with a solution to this problem. What it comes down to, is that you shouldn't program for money. Instead, look at it how the money enables you to be a programmer.

[https://medium.com/@robwolfpetersen/the-passion-problem- and-...](https://medium.com/@robwolfpetersen/the-passion-problem-and-what-to- do-about-it-9f12d162e498)

</comment><comment><USER20> You can work on your side project, or contribute to open source project(s) that you may use personally or at work. You're lucky to have enough time to play WoW, but you can use that time wisely. Appreciate it and use it for your personal development to help you contribute back to the company!

</comment><comment><USER21> Find an industry that interests you. Focus on the delivery of your projects. There's more to finishing than just churning out code. You'll get the same reward you used get from hobby coding. Make the financial reward is a side benefit.

</comment><comment> zupa-hu There is nothing wrong with you. Your primary motivator is not money, which is actually great for you. You should be involved in something that interests you. Maybe starting a startup would be your thing.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think the problem is you're just looking at the faraway deadline and getting demotivated. One book that helped me is _One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way_ by Robert Maurer.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's called work for a reason!

</comment><comment><USER24> Be a programmer because you like to write code. The reward is the running software. The salary is the compensation for your time spent working for a company.

Time is much more valuable than money, but society needs you to want money, appreciation and things so you feel it's a reward. :)</comment>


Tolls are the solution to Los Angeles' traffic - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/opinion/livable-city/la-ol-traffic-toll-lane-freeway-20170303-story.html <comment><USER2> This would probably work. But the outcry would be huge. People don't like paying for things they used to get for free. $2 to $2.10 for gas in lamentable, but ultimately only a 5% raise. 0 to anything is outrageous and a mathematically "impossible" to represent as a percentage.</comment>


A Small Rocket Maker Is Running a Different Kind of Space Race - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-astra-rocket/ <comment><USER2> "Astra's founders say that their goal is to become the 'FedEx of space,' a company that will deploy smallsats into low-Earth orbit daily and for as little as $1 million."</comment>


Huawei's HQ Campus in Shenzhen - <AUTHOR> https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/06/article/inside-huaweis-huge-hq-campus-in-shenzhen/ <comment><USER2> Looks cool but this caught my eye.

> The campus also features a replica of the White House that is used as a lab > and testing building

Lol, wtf?

I mean, Apple's spaceship isn't any less crazy but the sheer wierdness of these big tech campuses is beyond me

<comment><USER3> The white house is pictured at [https://static.asiatimes.com/uploads/2019/06/Screenshot-2019...](https://static.asiatimes.com/uploads/2019/06/Screenshot-2019-06-27-at-5.54.27-PM.png). I agree that is a kind of weird choice.

<comment><USER4> Its warped idolization of the west. Very weird, but likely caused by the far reaching effects of US cultural influence.

<comment><USER2> I'm sure the builders understood the irony. Reminds me of "Los Arzamas", one of the less terrifying jokes of the cold war.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few months ago I had the chance to tour their "Ox Horn" R&D campus in Dongguan. It's imposing, amazing and decadently western. [https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/05/photos-of- huaweis-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/05/photos-of-huaweis- european-themed-campus-in-china/589342/)

</comment><comment><USER6> No pictures of the working space?

<comment><USER7> Vice[0] visited a (can't recall if it was Shenzhen or not and can't re-watch the video now) campus in May and took footage of the campus. It's a little strange, but descriptions of it make it sound stranger than normal I think. It definitely doesn't help that the trip was meant to show foreign press that Huawei wasn't copying foreign companies or spying on foreign nations.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxR0dNR7qrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxR0dNR7qrw)

<comment><USER8> 4:11

Reporter: It's nice to meet you. Thanks for taking the time. Official: You look quite young.

Me: Oh yeah? That is what you going to say when you met a Reporter? Huawei? (Young could also imply "inexperienced")

Also, Huawei already know the age of the reporter, saying he was born in 1997. Is this normal? To speak somebody's age out loud and laugh like that?

Plus, she can't even pronounce Chinese correctly. At 5:01, she said Li'Shen' _Zi_ 'Ben, it should be Li'Shen' _Zhi_ 'Ben (立身之本).

Plus plus: [https://youtu.be/QxR0dNR7qrw?t=372](https://youtu.be/QxR0dNR7qrw?t=372). She can't answer that? I guess she is expecting the reporter to come here just for walking the park.

My conclusion: This woman should not be qualified for she's job. I guess you could only hire this level of workers (and probably force them to work 996) if your company don't have the spirit.

BTW: It seems somebody is down voting negative comments against Huawei. For those, one lesson here is, Karma means nothing to me, take more than just that to change my opinion.

<comment><USER9> The Vice reporter is too amateurish and unprofessional for this interview, I'm already surprised Huawei took him as seriously as they did. His whole shtick seems to be "this is a high school field trip where I prank the hosts". Would be more impressed if he asked actual insightful questions re tech transfer claims.

<comment><USER8> The video also points out that Vice was the only media there. I kind curious about how many people Huawei had chance to "took seriously".

Also, "amateurish and unprofessional" is kind weird word choice. What "professional" thing the reporter should do? Grow a beard? Wear a suit at all time?

Relax, a clever report won't waste their time there, because they knew what exactly Huawei was going to put out that day.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Has anyone noticed this before? HN: Best Of - <AUTHOR> http://news.ycombinator.com/best

<comment><USER2> More links here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/lists>

<comment><USER3> Anyone aware of "easter egg" links on HN - something not listed in the "lists"?

<comment><USER4> the lists page is not listed on the lists page

<comment><USER5> I actually caught myself checking your username to see if it was "Russell" (ref: Russell's paradox, regarding the set of all sets containing itself :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All the articles listed there have been in the last few weeks. It would be nice to see an all time best of list.

Maybe look at the upvotes vs registered users at the time? That way an article way back with 100 upvotes would be able to compete with a current one with 500.

<comment><USER7> All-time top-vote list for submissions: <http://top.searchyc.com/submissions_by_points>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this link gets upvoted enough it will be on the best of list, and then we won't forget about it...

</comment><comment><USER9> This is nice, but it would be _really_ nice if the scores could be normalized against the mean of the top 10 front page scores on the date submitted (or some such). pg, would this be possible?

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't remember what the "over=value" filter was, and haven't had much luck in guessing it. Anyone know it off-hand? It's not on the lists page.

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100>

More info: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998376>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to use news.ycombinator.com/best , but I now follow HN using Jeff Miller's RSS feed: <http://feeds.feedburner.com/newsyc100>

Pros: I never miss anything. Google Reader keeps track of what I already read.

Cons: It's hard to keep up with all the articles!

Jeff created RSS and Twitter feeds for 20+, 50+, 100+, and 150+ karma submissions.

More info: [http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news- overlo...](http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-overload) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1547998>

</comment><comment><USER12> Meh... It's really just "recent popular hn articles."

</comment><comment><USER13> I use this script: <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/58915>

Thanks to pwlin for making this script

</comment><comment><USER14> It's been there for about a week IIRC.

Edit: well, it looks like the link is not always present. Is it being A/B tested or something?

<comment><USER15> It's always been there. well, for many months at least.

I suspect it's easier for pg to implement features than to introduce and document them, and there's not really an obvious place to find them. That is, not unless you want to dive into the source.

I'm surprised there aren't more 'hidden features of HN' blogposts floating around. If anybody wants a quick and honest way to slurp up some karma, they should write one.

<comment><USER16> Actually, this is really old[1] but gets reported all the time by noobs.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> why there's no menu link for this?

<comment><USER14> There is. Look at the top of the main page.

<comment> mkr-hn The link is only there when you're on the page. It's not much use if you need to know the page URL in advance for the link to appear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> great!</comment>


Linting Prose in Emacs with ProseLinter - <AUTHOR> http://unconj.ca/blog/linting-prose-in-emacs.html <comment><USER2> Proselint is neat! I've wanted something like this forever.

The other thing I want: someone to build an Emacs mode out of Garner's usage dictionary. That book is begging to be a software tool.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of my current micro-hobbies is to dissidently post vim alternatives in emacs-spruiking threads, so here you go:

[https://github.com/amperser/proselint/tree/master/plugins/vi...](https://github.com/amperser/proselint/tree/master/plugins/vim)

</comment><comment><USER4> Proselinter looks pretty cool, it is python and can be installed with pip as a command-line tool. Doesn't need Emacs!

I just ran it on some reStructuredText files and it looks that it supports them as well as markdown! It's going to be very helpful for a book in sphinx I'm working on, thank you.

<comment><USER5> > Proselinter looks pretty cool, it is python and can be installed with pip as > a command-line tool. Doesn't need Emacs!

True enough, but everything's better with emacs!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really cool, It would be nice for adhering to style guides such as [http://www.economist.com/styleguide/introduction/](http://www.economist.com/styleguide/introduction/)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is very cool. You had me at David Foster Wallace.

I'll be trying this out:

1\. As a sublime plugin for my next blog post. 2\. As plain old Python as part of a mass scrape-spellcheck-stylecheck of the corporate website.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would love an Atom package for ProseLinter!

<comment><USER9> Multiple ProseLint plugins for text editors, including Atom, are available: [https://github.com/amperser/proselint#available-plugins- for-...](https://github.com/amperser/proselint#available-plugins-for-text- editors). Here is a direct link to the one for Atom: [https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter- proselint](https://github.com/AtomLinter/linter-proselint).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a plugin for ms word?</comment>


Outage in Atlassian Cloud Services [dupe] - <AUTHOR> https://status.atlassian.com/ <comment><USER2> Discussion here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16501731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16501731)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, didn't see that since it's linking to a different page</comment></comment>


Despite numerous commitments to India, Apple is performing poorly there - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/29/why-apple-sells-just-2-point-5-percent-of-indias-smartphones.html?amp=1 <comment><USER2> Wow, that's really bad.

"Even in the premium smartphone segment where Apple operates, it is losing share to Samsung and OnePlus, Counterpoint said. Apple's share in the premium smartphone market (handsets priced above $470) dropped from 59 percent in the holiday season of 2016 to 35 percent during the same period last year, Counterpoint estimates. The OnePlus 5 was the most popular premium smartphone to ship during that quarter, the research firm added."

</comment><comment><USER3> They should probably purchase some local firms.</comment>


Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen Steps Down - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/kickstarter-ceo-perry-chen-steps-down/ <comment><USER2> Hopefully the next CEO will make a proper attempt to crack down on the amount of nonsense scam kickstarters, that often even claim to break thermodynamics.

It's a pretty bad look for the platform that none of their review staff seem to remember highschool physics class.

<comment><USER3> Not being snide here but after raising $10MM you do nothing that slows revenue.

The root cause of crap projects is not a poor understanding of physics by reviewers but the objective of growth above all else, despite a lot of hand waving about being not in it for the money.

<comment><USER2> I guess at the end of the day, becoming a household name with a mediocre to shitty reputation, like craigslist or ebay, is still the kind of success most people dream about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this in some way related to the unionization efforts around what they see as Kickstarter failing to fully live up to the ideals of "inclusion and solidarity, transparency and accountability"

<comment><USER5> Reading the article it seems like this has been in motion for some time. He's staying on as chairman.

<comment><USER6> 0% chance this is a coincidence. Wild speculation but guessing he is getting pushed out as a concession to the people that want the union in a last-ditch attempt by the board to avoid the union forming.

<comment><USER7> Maybe they're bringing in one of those old-fashioned union-busting CEOs?

<comment><USER8> Old-fashioned? Union busting has never gone out of style.

<comment><USER9> I think the parent commenter means "practiced."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What is "at-will employment"? - <AUTHOR> http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/what-is-at-will-employment/

<comment><USER2> This is one of those topics that, I think, will affect many people, even though it's poorly understood. The less successful will be on the barrel end of the gun, and the more successful will probably try management at least once.

People often think, in big companies, that managers can unilaterally fire them. Actually, if they play the angles, they can usually work out a transfer because any communication that might inhibit their ability to reinvent themselves on a new team can be construed as harassment. (If transfer isn't possible because the company is small, the only way to win is to get out.)

The solution, for an employer, is not to let reviews be part of the transfer packet. Managers should have the unconditional right to require someone leave the team, but not to block transfer.</comment>


Show HN: Simple logger and debugger for Go programs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/apsdehal/go-logger

<comment><USER2> Colorized output by default will make for messy logs that can't be used. Sure you can turn it off (with an integer, why not a bool?), but that shouldn't be something compiled in your program. Also there are no means to `printf` strings from the logger.

Finally, there are already a plethora of loggers for Go. I'd recommend logrus for structured logs:

[https://github.com/Sirupsen/logrus](https://github.com/Sirupsen/logrus)

Or glog otherwise.

And a note: a logger isn't a debugger. GDB is a debugger for Go, see [https://golang.org/doc/gdb](https://golang.org/doc/gdb)

Sorry if I come across as heartless, it's nice to see new people coming to Go. But I don't think this is novel or news worthy.

</comment><comment><USER3> A wise gopher would use Rob Pikes glog package instead [https://github.com/golang/glog](https://github.com/golang/glog)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been trying to find a small logger program for Go and haven't had time to write my own. Looks great and may start using it :)

The one minor issue is there is a syntax error in the readme. Should be import "github.com/apsdehal/go-logger", not "go get github.com/apsdehal/go-logger"

</comment><comment><USER5> This looks interesting - I'll take a closer look.

You might want to check out the logrus package - which I'm using and pretty happy with. [https://github.com/sirupsen/logrus](https://github.com/sirupsen/logrus)

Logrus lets you add structured k,v fields so you do have to mess around with fmt and also has hooks to support things like sending logs to syslog or remote exception handling services.

<comment><USER6> That's pretty interesting too, I'm going to play with it. Thanks!

I recently stumbled across the standard expvar package[1] which lets me debug memory usage and annotated metrics. Similar concept from a different angle I guess.

1\. [http://golang.org/pkg/expvar/](http://golang.org/pkg/expvar/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does this only output to stdout? It would be useful if it took an io.Writer so you could write to a file or something else, too.

</comment><comment><USER7> Btw, anyone interested in loggers should check out my log rolling package gopkg.in/natefinch/lumberjack.v2

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a shame there's no basic interface in the go's log package.

</comment><comment><USER9> package =/= repo name

Don't do that

<comment><USER4> I'm still new to Go... why wouldn't you want to do that? What should the repo name be?

<comment><USER10> By convention, the package and repo name should be the same. In this case, that means your repo should be called logger.

<comment><USER11> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Sues Data Geek, but That Doesn't Solve Its Privacy Problem  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1603925/facebook-sues-data-geek-but-still-doesnt-solve-problem

<comment><USER2> The 'innocent data compiler' is actually a HN semi-regular. _waves hello_

I've got lots of thoughts on all this, obviously, but I'm trying to collect them all into a considered blog post. I'm happy to answer any questions I can though.

And if you're interested in related code, you can check out my Google Profile crawler over at GitHub:

<http://github.com/petewarden/buzzprofilecrawl>

<comment><USER3> _"... Facebook doesn't look totally evil though. According to Warden: 'From my conversations with technical folks at Facebook, there seems to be a real commitment to figuring out safeguards around the widespread availability of this data.' ..."_

Hi Pete, I've been following your threads [0] with interest seeing how the social graph can be interpreted in code. The above quote in particular stood out though. I'm not sure if the _"no evil"_ tag applies where you can access the official Fb API and developer program then expect good to come out of it. [1], [2]

      "That pulls the rug out from a whole policy &
       technology perspective that the point is to give
       you control over your information - because you
       don't have control over your information."

       Hal Abelson

It appears that while Fb is trying to tighten up public leaked information, at the same time they allow access to the social graph API which is just as potentially more damaging to individuals.

[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1199821> & <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1106859>

[1] PJF, "Dark Stalking on Facebook", <http://pjf.id.au/blog/?position=590>

[2] [http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/20/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/20/project_gaydar_an_mit_experiment_raises_new_questions_about_online_privacy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TOS != legal right to block access to public data. _Especially_ when it's crawled, where one is not expected to read the TOS. It's equivalent to having a document posted in the bathroom of a restaurant that says that by walking into the building you forfeit your right to see.

Too bad it didn't go to court, he could've countersued then. There could be _definite_ personal damages because of all this, and because FB is flexing legal-might it doesn't have.

And I cry bullshit on FB trying to protect privacy. Why then is everything public by default when a new feature comes out? At _every_ step of the embiggening process, FB has royally screwed over their users' privacy.

<comment><USER5> "And I cry bullshit on FB trying to protect privacy."

Absolutely. That's why I rarely use it; I've read their privacy policy (especially the privacy policy concerning facebook applications) and realized that if I wanted something to be just between me and my friends, facebook is not the place to do that.

<comment><USER6> I too am dubious of Facebook and avoid posting anything especially private there.

But being on Facebook, I also know that most of my friends are much less careful about this and I am happy that Facebook makes _some_ effort to protect their rather foolish trust. It would be better for them to protect themselves but still...

<comment><USER4> By picking something interesting, which anyone can _still_ do (and far more invasive uses as well), and making a big deal of it? This is a publicity stunt, more likely, because his work spread quickly, and _normal_ people started to notice that this said things about them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, because making _him_ delete the data definitely makes the problem go away.

<comment><USER8> Well it might make the problem go away if the problem is well-intentioned research whose results are made available publicly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't have the complete answer to this problem, but no discussion of Facebook opening up their data set is complete without mentioning that there has been a lot of work done on uniquely fingerprinting people on stunningly small amounts of data. In Facebook's position, I would in all seriousness say that I see no _reliable_ way for Facebook to release this data in any form with the reasonable certainty (by legal standards) that the data will not be used in a privacy-infringing manner. I can imagine some ways, but I sure wouldn't be willing to guarantee any of them. It is possible and in some sense perhaps even likely that it is not possible to have both a nontrially-useful data set, and a privacy-respecting data set. Information theory is a harsh mistress.

<comment><USER10> If it is from public profiles though it doesn't matter, you could just go break privacy already by visiting a persons public profile.

<comment><USER9> A sufficiently large convenient aggregation of otherwise not-easily-obtainable public data becomes a privacy hazard. (I choose the word "hazard" with care.) Knowing that theoretically one could go find all fans of $PERSON_OF_INTEREST with enough work is one thing, being able to type one query into your data set and get the answer back in two seconds is another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Meta: can we change the title? It is different than the title of the actual article, and "does evil" is a pretty subjective term.

<comment><AUTHOR> Am sad to have seen this fulfilled.

Original headline was "Facebook does evil to innocent data compiler".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Whenever I do crawling, I do it from AWS and I set the User-Agent to Google's.

Also, if you're up against someone that threatens to sue, the latency introduced by Tor might not be too harmful.

<comment><USER6> If you're trying publish your data in a scholarly work, you aren't going to be able to conceal your identity or the origin of your data...

<comment><USER12> And after you publish you work, Facebook can't threaten to sue you if you don't delete your data. They just have to do it, which they probably won't. (And if they do, the world benefited from your work already, so the damage they can inflict is minimal.)

The idea is to keep Facebook from knowing what's going on until the last possible moment, so they can't interrupt you in the middle of something. Once you've published your paper, then they can know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Where does it say they actually sued him? It just says they _threatened_ to, and he complied with their requests.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's possible that Facebook shut this guy down because they don't want competition when selling their data. The notion that this information is publicly and legally accessible may take away a revenue stream from them.</comment>