Fedora Modularity - <AUTHOR> https://docs.pagure.org/modularity/ <comment><USER2> I don't believe this page has been updated to note that it won't be released in F27 as hoped due to systemic problems in the beta: [https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/modularity-dead- long...](https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/modularity-dead-long-live- modularity/)

I'm looking forward to seeing what they're going to do with it next; this is a super tough problem to get right in a supportable way. I have a lot of faith in the Fedora team to put together something awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like they are reinventing a small chunk of Nix ([https://nixos.org/](https://nixos.org/)).

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a big fan of this. Modularity means control, and control is a good thing. That's what Free Software is all about, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER5> It'd be exciting to see RHEL 8 based on these concepts.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like the looks of this. Time to spin up a VM and test it.</comment>


Bike-share schemes improve safety; helmet laws do not - <AUTHOR> http://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k94/rr-2 <comment><USER2> > There was a substantially greater increase in bicycle commuting in the bike- > share cities, yet the total number of injuries decreased in bike-share (but > not control) cities, again showing that more cycling means safer cycling > [7].

... or that the cities built bike lanes next to the bike share stations.

> Individuals with documented helmet use had 2.2 times the odds of non–helmet > users of being involved in an injury-related accident

... perhaps because cyclists are more likely to wear helmets in areas with unsafe biking conditions.

<comment><USER3> Bike lanes (or, rather, just generally improved attitudes to municipal biking infrastructure) in cities that have adopted bike share schemes seems the most likely cause if safety gains in your first quote.

Helmet-wearing cyclists being more likely to cycle in unsafe areas seems far less plausible. Do you really believe this is the case. At least anecdotally, I would say the opposite.

<comment><USER4> I don't necessarily agree with op, but you rarely see cyclists with helmets in amsterdam and other dutch cities where a lot of people use cycling as their default transportation method, and where as a cyclist you have a priority over car drivers, whereas in places like berlin you have much more cyclists wearing helmets, and rightly so. Though I have to say that I myself only wore the helmet while working as a bike messenger, and rarely while not. So obviously on a day where I'll be biking for 6-8 hours I'm more likely to get into an accident, helmet or not.

<comment><USER3> Ah, ok, I'm starting to see a different perspective on helmet use: comparing cities rather than individuals in a city.

Perhaps the studies should differentiate these: i.e. comparing accident rates of helmets against non-helmets within each city individually, vs comparing e.g. non-helmet-users in Amsterdam against helmet-users in Berlin.

I live in Dublin which, as mentioned in the article, has recently seen marked improvements in cycle safety. Helmet usage here is high but under 50% and seems evenly distributed. I'd be curious to see the stats on what the means for accident rates local to here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The statistics shown on how helmet laws actually lead to an increase in cycling accidents is very interesting. I wonder what the correlation is on this? Is it because cyclists not wearing helmets generally bike in a safer manner? Or maybe if there are no helmet laws, then streets designed for bikes are designed with more safety in mind?

An interesting note about bike shares usage. I have seen some very effective bike sharing programs but also some very ineffective ones. In San Jose, there is a bike share program, but the bikes themselves cost $9 to ride, while in London the bike share cost 2p (~3-4$). The price point made all the difference to me.

<comment><USER6> Potential reasons for the surprising helmet-accident correlation:

(edit: inserted 0'th reason)

0) It could be true but irrelevant: We mainly want to reduce severe injuries, accident rate only peripherally interesting in relation to this.

1) Is the direction of causality estabilished? Is it possible that a trend of increasing accident rates results in lawmakers passing helmet laws?

2) But generally it stands to reason that cycling helmets can't actually reduce accidents, just reduce their impact. And it also sounds reasonable that helmets would give bikers a small amount of additional risk appetite.

3) Maybe helmet laws encourage casual or impaired cyclists (uncoordinated people, children, people with bad awareness, etc) to get on bikes, and/or repel the confident types who choose to do other exercise rather than wear sweaty and dorky looking helmets. So the bicycling acuity of the bicycler population is reduced.

4) Is there data picking at play? This cites only 2 studies reporting increased accident rates, and both of them were in USA, so the data is not very good for drawing general conclusions. Is there something in the local circumstances or bicyclist demography? How many studies can you find where this increased accident rate doesn't show?

<comment><USER7> Helmetless scares _car drivers_ into keeping a safe distance.

A helmet law wouldn't encourage a new biker who already had a helmet option.

<comment><USER8> It's not the first some time some one has thought this. Probably, one of earlier studies regarding that point: [http://www.drianwalker.com/overtaking/overtakingprobrief.pdf](http://www.drianwalker.com/overtaking/overtakingprobrief.pdf)

I think it would be interesting if conducted with multiple riders, and different areas. Combine this with the fact there are studies showing increase car and bicycle crashes with helmet wearers. It definitely plausible.

There is also an other study I remember seeing that noticed helmet wearers took more risks. So there could be more variables at play.

[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797615620784](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797615620784)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Could it be argued that enforcing helmets, and its effect of decreasing riding numbers, has helped reduce accident numbers? Because perhaps people who refuse to wear helmets shouldn't be on the road. If you were to still include the numbers of those people leaving bike riding, would numbers be in favour of helmets?

It's hard for me to face stats like these. I can't imagine a world without helmets, much like cars without seatbelts.

Why are people trying so hard to kill mandatory helmets, can they honestly do that much damage?

<comment><USER10> > Why are people trying so hard to kill mandatory helmets?

From the article it implies that helmet laws discourage casual cyclists or those wanting to use a hire bike. It seems silly to many people to have to don PPE just to pootle down the road to the shops.

No-one is trying to take away people's decision whether or not to wear a helmet, just the obligation.

You could also argue that if you're enforcing helmets for riding bicycles then you should also enforce it for other activities that suffer from the same or higher incidences of head-injury. E.g. being an occupant in a motor vehicle.

> Because perhaps people who refuse to wear helmets shouldn't be on the road.

Why shouldn't they be on the road? What danger to they present to anyone (expect, debatably, themselves) by not wearing one?

<comment><USER11> > You could also argue that if you're enforcing helmets for riding bicycles > then you should also enforce it for [...] being an occupant in a motor > vehicle.

Funny you mention that, because in my country a motocycle passenger is required to wear a helmet (the driver is required too, obviously). I cannot think of any sane reason why helmet would be required for the driver but not for the passenger (other than unintended omission in the law).</comment></comment></comment>


Making Disqus faster - <AUTHOR> http://blog.disqus.com/post/397517128/making-disqus-faster

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty amazed it wasn't architected this way from the beginning. Having to generate a monolithic JS file with every comment thread for every pageload for every user? Yikes.

<comment><USER3> Why optimize before they need to? They've done well so far with the current js loading and now they're optimizing b/c it's time.

<comment><USER4> Because it seems to use up a lot of bandwidth and slows the client.

I just looked at the JS in Firebug, and it's over 100kb for the static portion.

<comment><USER3> It was rhetorical question. Build your app fast. Then optimize later, when you have scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe unrelated, I just want to point out that what I don't like about Disqus is not it's speed, but that the whole display of their stuff is very cluttered.</comment>


Medtronic Shares Ventilation Design Specifications - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.medtronic.com/news-releases/news-release-details/medtronic-shares-ventilation-design-specifications-accelerate?sf120003550=1 <comment><USER2> Interesting, I've been helping with this project to crowdsource ventilator manuals ([https://www.ifixit.com/News/36354/help-us-crowdsource- repair...](https://www.ifixit.com/News/36354/help-us-crowdsource-repair- information-for-hospital-equipment)) and as of last night Medtronic was saying they that they're "not providing [service] manuals to third parties but will provide manuals directly to the end users on request during this time to assist them in supporting their Medtronic ventilators." Good for them for changing their minds.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but they are still collecting information to actually download the plans. What are they doing with that info?

<comment><USER4> Let's just say that I'm more informed than most about this and the most likely scenario is that they are collecting information so they can reach out with job offers to those that come up with novel improvements.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best PM/code hosting/bug tracking solutions for a RoR Startup? - <AUTHOR>

Specifically, a startup with a small number of coders using Ruby on Rails, Heroku, and Git.
The goal is for tools that get out of the way and naturally lend themselves to best practices such as Test-Driven-Development, Continuous Integration, and rapid Agile iteration.
Cost doesn't matter. Developer happiness and efficiency does. <comment><USER2> _Developer happiness and efficiency does._

Ever seen Field of Dreams?</comment>


What are some examples of software being used to solve major social problems? - <AUTHOR>

Title question really says it all.<p>The only caveat is that these technologies are being worked on right now, and it has to be software. <comment><USER2> What is a major social problem?

Any software that's used in such a way that more than one person is impacted by its use, has a social impact, and possibly solves a social problem (or could cause one).

When the chief of the tribe only had 30 people in his tribe, it was easy to keep tabs on them all. Nowadays, a tribe chief has on the order of 300 million peoples to keep tabs on, not counting the other tribes. Then software such as PRISM solves the social problem of helping the tribe chief keep tabs on his people.</comment>


My App Hit Number 1 on Product Hunt and Made $7,000 in 7 Days - <AUTHOR> http://zervaas.com.au/blog/streaks-producthunt.html

<comment><USER2> Wow. I understand why the app succeeded. 1) It has a simple and beautiful UI. 2) It uses a Skinner Box system effectively. Do task, get reward of seeing it completed on check box, miss once and you don't get as much of a reward (assuming I'm interpreting the app correctly). 3) People like to think that they are doing more than they are actually doing. For example, people would like to think that if they work on something every day for a year it has to get done, but if they are doing things so small (for example, 1 line of code a day) it won't get done. However, from a perspective of Streaks it "looks" like more work is getting done than what actually may be getting done

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

The real key is that you get stuff done when you don't feel like it. This rewards you for getting the smallest amount done to keep you on track.

The real progress is made when you do large amounts of work, but the small amounts keep you invested.

<comment><USER2> Yep, it is an awesome tool for keeping tasks from wandering off into time and never getting done...something I let happen a lot, so I may give the app a shot. Although most of my work is on desktop, so I may just use a desktop task list</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What to learn before Machine Learning? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys! I know there've been a lot of guides and answers (e.g. on quora), but none of them is what a newbie need. So, my situation is I am a CS student, a good coder, understand data structures, OSs and all the stuff, but almost forgot all the math (calculus, linear algebra, ...) needed for ML, I guess. So, could anyone please give a good roadmap of what math background is necessary for the ML. I'm going to do researches as well as just using algorithms, but what's important I want to have a really good understanding of ML, and next DL. Books, courses, ... anything. Thanks! <comment><USER2> My advice, learn about 'intelligent' agents. Machine learning is a way to implement parts of a system that achieve a specific goal. That system occurs at a higher level of abstraction.

For example, there's a higher level structure that plays Go and Google uses machine learning to handle the computation that informs that structure.

Good luck.</comment>


Wow Create Automatically a Voice over for Your YouTube Video - <AUTHOR> https://voiceovermaker.io/ <comment><USER2> I was looking at some of the text-to-speech offerings on platforms like aws recently, and this is way better. You can still tell its a robot, but it is more natural and doesn't sound like it is droning.

<comment><USER3> Google Wavenet sounds much more natural than this.

[https://cloud.google.com/text-to- speech#section-2](https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech#section-2)

<comment><USER2> Thanks. It's definitely very good, and might work well for my projects. Natural flow is more important for me than timeline (although I can see that as quite important most types of videos), and I was already hoping to use SSML for the granular control.

I quite like the fact that the examples use curl, since that closely matches how I'd rather feed it. I'll have to see what its maximum input length is. Most of the texts I'm working with are about 66,000 characters and up at a time (and then more if I use SSML).

Unsurprising that Google would have voices of that calibre. I was surprised that Amazon's voices sound so poor. And they weren't the worst that I found on my ways. My Mac's built-in voices are better than those.</comment></comment></comment>


Staff emails claim Boeing 777X 'shares Max problem' - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/01/18/staff-emails-claim-boeing-777x-shares-max-problem/ <comment><USER2> That's a disingenuous headline (I blame the Telegraph).

> In an email from June 2018, before the first Max crash, one Boeing worker > wrote: "Best part is we are re-starting this whole thing with the 777X with > the same supplier and have signed up to an even more aggressive schedule."

> Another member of staff warns about a relentless cost focus...

> Last September, the 777X suffered a setback when it failed a ground test of > its strength, suffering an explosive decompression that tore the fuselage > and blew off a passenger door.

None of those are what I would call the "Max problem," (I'd consider that to be MCAS) but there does seem to be a systemic problem off cost cutting and aggressive deadlines.

<comment> Brave-Steak I don't think it's a wrong characterization, imo. The problem with the MAX isn't necessarily the MCAS, but the culture and business/engineering processes that allowed MCAS to go all the way to production _and_ allowed the company to convince their customers not to implement pilot training. There are multiple levels of failure beyond just MCAS being a thing, and the emails might suggest that (some of?) these systemic issues are also affecting the design of the 777x.

<comment><USER3> the problem with the max is that it has a tendency to crash. everything else is just a cause or symptom of that problem. If the 777X isn't going to crash, then it doesn't share the same problem.

when planes operate properly, nobody cares what business or engineering practices allowed that.

<comment><USER4> Why are the causes of that problem not really problems in themselves? Crashing could have multiple different causes; crashing is just a symptom.

<comment><USER3> They are problems for the people working on solving the crashing. They aren't problems for anybody else.

for passengers, airlines, and anybody other than Boeing, the only problem is the crashing.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that a bit like saying the problem in medicine is dying, and other things like heart disease, cancer, etc. aren't really problems for the patients, as death is the only real problem?

<comment><USER3> if you had cancer but experienced no symptoms, died in a car crash at age 95, and the cancer wasn't discovered until your autopsy, would you say it was a problem?

<comment><USER4> Of course it was a problem. If a person has diabetes but then they get shot to death, that doesn't make the diabetes irrelevant.

If 40% of people walking on the earth got cancer today, and it was asymptomatic, it would definitely be a problem, even if nobody saw it as their personal problem in this moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> shadow-banned Please, anyone let this be a lesson: you can destroy a brand that took decades to build in a matter of months.

<comment><USER5> The decision to launch a product and the immediate after process take a few months, but the entire product development process took years likely.

Also....it makes me uncomfortable when news stations report "internal email says X". Like...a) if it's not a news outlet that's tech knowledgeable that's always scary b) let's say 5000 employees worked on this. 20x emails per day. 5 year period (10000 days). That is a lot of emails that went into discovery for the attorneys or forensic guys to parse. Theres probably a lot of knowledge in there but humans are smart about that they selectively email (I knew someone that interned in the Obama White House and a large email flow was "documenting for posterity what they wanted to be in the record" through emails to no one in particular, was what she said). The 777 could be messed up, but "staff emails" is such an uncomfortable source. Did the likely top tier law firm really leak email contents?

<comment><USER6> > documenting for posterity what they wanted to be in the record

The correct term is "re-iterate the talking points on the record to help shape the narrative". It's not for posterity, it's for ass covering.

If all corporate emails were to become a matter of public record, they would be filled with PR-speak as well.

<comment><USER7> It isn't PR speak when you just tell the truth in an email and don't let management bully you into not saying what needs to be said to prop up their take on it.

It can end up a bit dangerous, because they'll be more than happy to drag you through the mud in court to try to discredit you, but a lot of people kinda expect that anyway.

<comment><USER6> No, the whole culture around email changes when people know for certain it's part of the public record of the company. I've worked in environments where all emails are retained due to government contracts, and an unwritten rule immediately emerges that nothing that could be used against the company is said in emails. Backchannels emerge with IMs, SMS, etc where the real conversations happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If William Langeweische's NYT article from last September ([https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max- crashes.html)) is accurate, Boeing is scrambling to make a transition from selling airplanes requiring extremely high pilot skill ("airmanship", Langeweische calls it) to requiring medium pilot skill. They're trying to make the transition due to competition from Airbus. They're partly using public relations and market position to do it. "No transition training needed to fly this differently-shaped airplane!"

It's not terribly surprising this is causing all kinds of upheavals at Boeing.

Richard Feynman is right again. "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

Boeing changed my life. My family traveled a lot when I was a little kid. The advent of the 707 meant we no longer had to spend five days on a ship in the North Atlantic to get from Europe to New York or vice versa. I sure hope they can pull their company out of its present poorly controlled descent.

<comment> yc-kraln Oof. I have to assume your last sentence was intended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not just planes; I've noticed a lot of things seem to get better over time, then take a nosedive (pun not intended). I wonder if it's an inherent property of systems to do this, or if it's the result of some perverse incentives to have "progress" at all costs.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it's a type of evolutionary gradient descent: you see an entity get stuck in a locality-constrained hill-climb before it gets culled by another entity that climbed a different hill (of regulation).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have airlines cancelled orders of the 737 Max? If yes the will they be canceling orders of this one too?

<comment><USER12> > Have airlines cancelled orders of the 737 Max?

Yes. (Though IAG did agree a letter of intent—not an actual order, though—with Boeing for 200 aircraft. It was rumoured this was the biggest discount seen in the aviation world since Ryanair's large post-9/11 order.)

> If yes the will they be canceling orders of this one too?

Probably not? The 777X will be looked at incredibly closely prior to certification, and doesn't have the design oddities of the 737 MAX, so it probably is much lower risk, even with the cultural problems.

<comment><USER13> > The 777X will be looked at incredibly closely prior to certification

One would hope so...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Boeing is the stock with the biggest weight within the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Trump often uses this index as a public measure of his personal success.

Is it too much to assume that the government would try to figure out some rescue operations (whatever they may look like) to save Boeing financially in case that this is required? One reason for the trade dispute with the EU is Airbus.

<comment><USER15> Not just for that reason - Boeing are pretty important for the military for all sorts of reasons. They would never let them go bankrupt.

<comment><USER16> Well, they don't need to go bankrupt to tank the DJIA. Having said that, Trump would cite the Eurostoxx 50 if he felt it made him look good. It's more a case of selecting data that makes him look good than actually being committed to one understanding of success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't read the whole article because of the paywall.

But from the lead in it doesn't look like it really is 'the same issues' as in problems with a lack of redundant sensor and overly aggressive correction due to engines that are too big.

Anyone whose read the whole thing care to correct me?

<comment><USER17> The sensors and correction are a symptom of the issue at Boeing, which is an aggressive pursuit of profit over safety.

<comment><USER15> That's not the same as being the same issue. Issue implies something more specific.

<comment><USER17> Not at all. The 'issue' could be a technical issue, a cultural issue, a corporate issue, a documentation issue, a legislative issue, a personal issue.

If you stop diagnosing when you find a faulty part, you aren't diving deep enough. Ask why some more -- what allowed us to even ship a faulty part in the first place? The sensors in the plane are a faulty technical design, but what _systemic_ issues enabled that faulty design to be shipped at all? _Those_ are the root cause issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> On another note: I just wish if every website would charge based on pay-per- read (e.g. $0.50/article) instead of forcing me to register or start a free trial or pay for a monthly subscription.

<comment><USER19> It's all because of card fees. It's not economical to charge $0.5

<comment><USER20> That "problem" has been solved two decades ago. In the EU debt reins, with zero fees, and there are dozens of micro-payments systems operating all over the world. Isn't Venmo big in the US?

<comment><USER21> Venmo is far from ubiquitous. (None of my friends or family have a Venmo account, for instance. They prefer other apps like Square Cash / Google Pay / PayPal, or don't use payment apps at all.)

Debit cards are not popular here because they tend to lack robust fraud protection - and even if they did, your bank account could easily be zeroed for weeks while they work to reverse the fraudulent charges.

Also, debit cards still have an interchange fee here. It's cheaper than credit cards, but even for a small purchase there's usually a $0.20 minimum fee - which is too much for microtransactions.

<comment><USER20> > they tend to lack robust fraud protection

That's funny. Debit cards have always been PIN based and way safer than credit. I've never personally heard of a single case of fraud.

There is nothing stopping micropayments from happening as a technology, except political/market incentives. It's already a reality everywhere else, even north Africa. Rationalizing it just solidifies the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> These articles are getting a little tiresome. Private enterprise is about competition and cost reduction. That's what drives improvement, innovation, and efficiency, and it's what differentiates private enterprise from government spending, which is about justifying why things need to be so expensive.

Yes, Boeing was too aggressive about reducing cost to compete with Airbus and they need some major reform because hundreds of people are dead. But let's not forget that this drive towards cost reduction is what still allows you today fly across the country in perfect safety for $300. All these people saying "Of course Boeing should have designed a totally new plane from scratch with quadruple-redundant systems, only the most experienced factory workers to build it, all parts made out of unicorn tears for safety's sake, etc." have a misguided view of how engineering is done.

Perfectly reasonable decisions by Boeing to try to reduce costs for their customers and passengers are now being characterized negatively, merely because they are intended to reduce cost. People don't seem to realize that it's easy to build an expensive airplane - the hard part of engineering is not always choosing the easy, expensive option.

<comment><USER23> You probably are a developer, but engineering in life critical fields can't be reduced to cost efficiency.

<comment><USER22> I'm a developer and a pilot. I understand that cost is not the only factor. My frustration is, the attitude in the media today is to report negatively on every single instance they can find of Boeing trying to reduce costs as if that is a sin in itself, when it's actually the most fundamental driver of improvement in the entire economy!

<comment><USER24> While I would agree with you in general, I hope in this case you can see how Boeing's judgement can be called into question based on the terrible decisions they've made contemporary to the 777X development. And these are decisions that have cost lives. So I don't think it's unreasonable to assume they're just cheaping out and don't really care about passenger safety when they have a track record of cheaping out and not considering passenger safety on the 737 MAX.

<comment><USER6> The 737 MAX issue wasn't Boeing cheaping our though. It was Boeing trying to avoid recertification so it was a drop in for existing 737 customers. In other words, Boeing was trying to target the airlines that cheap out and did something stupid to get there.

This wasn't a quality problem. This is was a failure to recognize (or willful hiding) the importance of training pilots on MCAS.

<comment><USER24> Boeing knowingly misrepresented the handling characteristics of the 737 MAX rather than risk losing money by building a new airframe to accommodate larger engines. That's definitionally cheaping out. Rather than starting a development program and taking the business risk, potentially costing money, they chose to instead risk the lives of passengers by fixing an aerodynamic problem in software. For money. This calls into question their integrity as a company.

<comment><USER6> No, it's not cheaping out, it's just trying to target a very specific market. It's targeting cheap customers. Boeing had no problem paying whatever the costs to actually make the thing compatible with the 737. You're right that it's still a violation of integrity, but it's not being cheap by cutting their own costs inappropriately.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are any of you working on Cicada 3301? - <AUTHOR> Since this has become a recent hot topic again I was wondering if any HN people are actively working on this?<p>Or could it be that any of you worked on this but quit, or recently started? <comment><USER2> Not really. Just stumbled upon this very interesting high quality documentary. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20732957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20732957)</comment>


Show HN: Quire – Snap your ideas and accomplish them with your team - <AUTHOR> https://quire.io/blog/p/Snap-your-ideas-Introducing-Quire-for-iOS.html <comment><USER2> That's pretty neat UI. My #1 complaint with using trello for quick task list is inability to grab a photo and attaching to the card. I think it is much faster to achieve than writing it down. Especially given I live in foreign country and it is much easier to show a photo of an item to local vendors than trying to recall how to pronounce the name of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We see where you're coming from, and we couldn't emphasize more on how important it is to be able to instantly turn something into text or images and attach them to a task (or card in Trello's case).

It's like what people say, "A photo is worth 1000 words."

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Previous submission of Quire: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9459484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9459484)

Curious how the app has changed since then.

<comment><AUTHOR> Quire has changed a lot in the past year, not to mention its UI and functionality that were made simpler but richer, and the brand-new iOS app is one of our newest achievements.

You can follow us on Twitter ([https://twitter.com/quire_io](https://twitter.com/quire_io)) for more of our recent updates.

<comment><USER3> My apologies for not having a Twitter account.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if there is some email service that can follow accounts for you and give you updates without the need for a Twitter account.

<comment><AUTHOR> If there's such a service, Twitter, FaceBook and the like probably won't be this happy today. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting concept, I have never seen this before. I currently use another task management tool to manage my household tasks, being able to take a photo and turn it into a task would come in very useful.

Is it free?

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy to know it'd be helpful to you. It'd surely come in handy when you see something that's inspiring!

And yes, it is free.

Right now, our focus is on making Quire more awesome, rather than thinking about the pricing.

Even when we have a pricing plan, whatever you're still using will continue to be free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of Instagram that captures the images whenever I want wherever I want. Why bother use it when we've got it?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more than capturing the images at the moment. It's about turning your ideas, whether they're words or images, into tasks that are doable, and traceable.

Of course, it's great that you have ideas and have got them down. But that's not enough! Having your dreams come true still need plan and actions.</comment></comment>


Not buying the Silicon Valley hype? Get Funder, a social game for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/funder-a-silicon-valley-spoof/id1051940877 <comment><USER2> My cofounder and I are Stanford alums and our team has previously built several apps that were featured by Apple.

I'm excited to be revealing Funder. We describe it as "Startups are silly. Let's make fun of them." and I think you'll love it.

Funder is the first app from Lemonade.io, a team on a mission to measure and improve creativity. By playing this game, you are contributing to the world's largest research dataset for creativity assessment and education.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great!

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Please tell your friends if you like it :)</comment></comment>


Tesla Achieved the Accuracy of Lidar with Its Advanced Computer Vision Tech - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2020/04/24/tesla-achieved-the-accuracy-of-lidar-with-its-advanced-computer-vision-tech/ <comment><USER2> Claims like these are made Every 6 months. From personal experience I can say it's very easy to Overfit a huge CNN on a data set, and then observe it performs well on the test set drawn from the same distribution. This is Despite attempts to make the test set differ from training. Typically these models fail outright in the wild.

I have also spoken to autopilot engineers at TESLA Who confirm this suspicion. And this is a highly select team that work with Elon musk on a weekly basis.

The fact of the matter is robust depth estimation is not possible with just cameras. Especially ones mounted inside the windshield. Remember when it rains the distribution shifts completely. Tesla solves this issue by training two nets, so now you're just overfitting to two distributions.

<comment><USER3> > robust depth estimation is not possible with just cameras

I can believe this statement, and am definitely off put by the false promises and failed timelines of autonomy released by Tesla over the past 5 years, but the more important question would be "is the necessary amount of depth estimation to achieve autonomous vehicles possible with just cameras?", and intuitively the answer is yes, seeing as that is how humans achieve an acceptable level of depth perception for the same task.

<comment><USER4> Our eyes are less than 3" apart and we achieve "acceptable" depth perception (at least at close range).

What if we had two cameras 12" apart? What about 60" apart (opposite corners of windshield)? How much easier would that make the depth perception problem?

From a quick viewing of Tesla's autopilot info it doesn't seem like they are doing stereoscopic vision with their cameras. Why not? Too hard to do?

<comment><USER2> The distance between camera is really important. In the lab everything is fine tuned before each deployment. In the wild anything could happen, and if the distance changes (that's the base of the triangle ), all your calculations are off.

That's why monocular depth estimation is more robust. Skydio drones do it as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SimpleGeo puts 20 million places in the public domain. - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facts_should_be_free_simplegeo_puts_20_million_pla.php

<comment><USER2> I don't know if this is good news or bad news for my secret hobby project: an open-source, crowd-sourced version of Skyhook Wireless' or Google's geolocation services. Currently, all this geolocation data is locked away in proprietary databases behind non-free APIs.

Imagine if hostip.info used Wigle.net's Wi-Fi database instead of IP addresses. This service could be used to implement a Free geolocation provider for Firefox or freedesktop.org's GeoClue library. The Wi-Fi data (raw and "cooked"/pre-triangulated) would be available for download for other applications or data mining research.

Wigle.net has a crowd-sourced database of the GPS locations of 34 million unique Wi-Fi networks, collected over 10 years. Unfortunately, the Wiglers are extremely protective of their data. They do not share a data dump for download. They have a web service, but the API requires every client to register a username and password. The web service API is purposely undocumented and only serves a subset of their Wi-Fi data. Even though the data is crowd-sourced, they sell commercial licenses, but "will not comment on future, past, or hypothetical customers".

Will SimpleGeo post a tarball of 20 million places on a FTP server? Or does "open data" just mean that applications are free to do whatever they want with the place data returned from a SimpleGeo API call? Those 20 million places would provide a big boost to my current database of just 16,000 networks. <:)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Copyright does not protect facts..."

<http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html>

(But it's very nice of them to make this collection and make it available to all!)

<comment><USER4> Disclosure: I work at SimpleGeo.

You're right, copyright does not protect facts _in the United States_. Rules differ around the world. In the EU, for instance, there's a "sweat of the brow" criteria for database protection.

Even in the US, though, copyright law is largely irrelevant. When you sign up to use a web service you generally accept terms and conditions that lay out exactly how you're allowed to use the service and the data you consume. From that point on your interactions with the service are regulated by those terms under contract, tort, and other common law statutes. If the terms say you're not allowed to redistribute the data then doing so would be violation of contract and you would be liable for damages. Basically, things get really messy really fast.

I'm an engineer, not a lawyer. So, honestly, I'm not an expert on this stuff. But I think most engineers agree that the current situation is sort of stupid. Philosophically I agree with the copyright law as it stands. Facts should be free. So CC0ing the data is just an explicit, formal, contractual statement that we're not limiting how our data can be used anywhere in the world.

<comment><USER5> I have started to look into this as well. But it is not as simple, every country in the EU actually has different copyright laws. Also the situation in the US does not seem to be that clear either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Direct link:

<http://blog.simplegeo.com/2011/04/20/open-places-data/>

</comment><comment><USER7> SimpleGeo's places API made it really easy to extend <http://walksy.com> to generate walking tours on the fly for any US or Canadian city. The fact that places are categorized made it possible to guess about which things would be interesting points for a walking tour.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very cool! I didn't find the link to the data though.

How big are 20M worth of data points? I guess there is are two coordinates (or maybe box) and then a label. It could be several gigs.

I think if you are truly open and not just promoting your API you should allow for a direct download of the entire data dump.

Perhaps you can use "requester pays": [http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/index....](http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/index.html?ObjectsinRequesterPaysBuckets.html)

<comment><USER9> We were careful to make sure the emphasis was on the non-restrictive license on uses of the data. This isn't claiming to be a "open places database" but maybe that can exist with this data as the backbone.

We are interested in doing a dump, but have some things to overcome first. Beyond that, this isn't just promoting our API. To be clear, we were only clarifying the license of the data with a blog post since there wasn't a clear license before. The community has turned this into a bigger deal, so this is by no means a self-promotion thing on our end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In New Zealand we have a service called Zenbu (<http://www.zenbu.co.nz>) that is a CCBY database of POI's. It's great because we're able to dump a csv and integrate everything into our app. If that was available with this that would be seriously powerful and a great step in the right direction towards open POI DB's. There's no reason anymore for that sort of data to not be easily accessible.

</comment><comment><USER11> This definitely lowers the barrier for entry to the location based services sector for folks like us. We are very excited that SimpleGeo would do this. One less thing to worry. Actually, one less important thing to worry about. Thanks guys.

</comment><comment><USER12> So when can someone take this and make a site with linked mobile app that lets folks add to the data via checkins or something similar? Seems like this is a great starting place for a mobile-enabled, public domain "wikipedia" of geo info.

</comment><comment><USER13> I used the data at geonames.org some years ago for some odd-ball location queries. I don't know how the data sets compare, but it's always nice to have more freely-usable data out there.

</comment><comment><USER14> I hope OpenStreetMap heard the news. I'm assuming they can mass-import this stuff.

<comment><USER15> I would absolutely love to import this into OSM, but the data is locked behind their API (which has access restrictions).

<comment><USER14> ? So basically, the data is public domain, if you can get it?

<comment><USER9> Correct, for now. We're currently evaluating a dump method as well, but haven't been able to put much time on it as we've been busy working on our API :)

<comment><USER16> A snapshot would almost be infinitely more useful for me to start developing with your data!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MAMBO: A Low-Overhead Dynamic Binary Modification Tool for ARM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/beehive-lab/mambo <comment><USER2> I was wondering how come people suddenly started starring the repository.

I'm around to answer questions if there are any.</comment>


Facebook JavaScript authentication is down - <AUTHOR> https://developers.facebook.com/x/bugs/482108261888889/

<comment><USER2> An archive for those without a Facebook account — [http://archive.is/f5d58](http://archive.is/f5d58)

</comment><comment><USER3> Something about eggs and baskets.

<comment><USER4> M'eh. I don't think there is actually anything to be learned here unless you think you can put up better up time numbers than Facebook. And if you can then it would be logical to go with only home grown authentication in lieu of all social providers, in which case you still end up in the "one basket" scenario.

People will choose a single authentication scheme when joining a web property or app so not "putting all your eggs in one basket" doesn't really apply. If Facebook authentication is down I'm not going to hope that the website owner implemented multiple authenticators so I can create a brand new account tied to my Twitter identity, I'm just going to leave and come the next day. To users, the only ones that really matter, they don't care about all eggs and all baskets, they care about their one egg and one basket combination.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you play Chess? - <AUTHOR> if so, do you think chess skills translate into good programming skills? <comment><USER2> If you're asking this as a hardcore chess player interested in getting into programming, then you should just jump in and give it a try. If you are trying to play chess to increase your "programmer's IQ" then I would recommend passing.

I think the honest way to think of this is that: Playing chess is a really good way of figuring out who is good at playing chess.

But, the abilities and aptitudes that often help aid being good at chess can be valuable assets in becoming a good programmer. Strong sense of logic. Able to think multiple steps in advance and the consequences. A strong memory can be useful.

Where it might frustrate a chess player, is that chess lacks an element of imperfect information. Real world programming isn't a perfect self-contained world where everything is known. It is impossible to know every aspect of programming as well as the rules of chess. You'll write bugs, and bugs in other software will create unpredictable problems. Users will add a random element into how your software breaks. Malicious attackers will find holes in what you've written. Things will just break.

<comment><USER3> I've never understood the 'imperfect information' thing when discussing chess. Chess _as played by people_ is full of hunches, uncertainty, prejudice, intimidation. Just look at how Kasparov played or Lasker, to see how important psychology is to chess. Or go down to Washington Square Gardens and play under the glare of dozens of people tutting at your every move.

It's so much more than an abstract problem.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but the possible input to a chess game is strictly limited - one player cannot just change the way a piece moves or introduce a new piece, and thus, it is not taken into account in any strategy. These sorts things must be taken into account when programming.

<comment><USER3> This is how a chess player thinks. "Jesus, why did she play that? She must have seen something I've missed. Shit, if I had more time I'd be able to figure it out. Damnit, I'll just move my knight back, that way my king'll be safer. I'm sure there's a better move but I can't find it now, and I think my ass went to sleep."

Change a few words, and it's pretty much a typical thought process when coding for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes and No.

Chess is a lot of memorization once you understand the game. End Game/Open Game have to both be played prefectly at high end, or your opponenet will literally know how to defeat you.

I find Go translates more to programming since it forces you think about more abstract concepts like influence, when to/to not act. There aren't as many hard and fast rules in the meta-game like chess which allow more creativity and self expression.

\---

The idea a programmer _has_ to play Chess/Go is lot like the idea a programmer _has_ to study advanced math. Really you are just learning logical problem solving, and rational ways of analyzing the state of a system.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. I was into Chess in high school and college, but once I discovered Go, I never looked back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used to play chess somewhat seriously, though I focused on the Chess960 variant (I think it's a much more interesting game).

My opinion is that the only real predictor of how good someone is at chess is how much they have practiced, and conversely, the only thing that playing chess makes you better at is playing chess.

I've sunk a few hundred hours into playing chess, and the conclusion I arrived at was that the skills and mode of thinking cultivated by playing chess are largely non-transferable. Granted, playing chess has given me a few analogies for thinking about certain real-life situations, but I learned those in my first few hours of play.

Ultimately, I stopped playing chess. Perhaps this is an unorthodox opinion, but chess ended up being something I don't want to be extremely good at, simply because that requires a great deal of time investment, and I view the time I spent playing chess as largely wasted. I grew bored with the limited and mechanical nature of the game and quit. Haven't looked back. I think the reputation of chess as one of the greatest "thinking games" is severely undeserved. The vast majority of the game is about routine and mechanical/technical formalisms.

If you wish to practice your thinking or programming skills, there are much better ways for you to use your time (programming is one).

<comment><USER8> I felt the same way about poker. I can see the mechanics of poker a lot easier than I can see them with chess. But if I'm going to spend the time, effort, and money to become very proficient at poker, then why don't I spend a similar amount of time, effort, and money on starting a software company? That revelation was the beginning of end of me regularly playing games of any kind.

I still occasionally play video games, but I treat it more like watching a movie on Netflix. I usually only play through once on the medium setting, whereas in my early 20s I was very much a completionist, even for games I didn't much care for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I play Go a lot, and chess occasionally.

I think it's about mindset not skillset - games like these are about solving local problems ('tactics') to achieve a greater aim ('strategy'); people who are attracted to them are generally people who like the sort of problem solving that comes up in programming, hence the cross-over.

Your question, however was whether or not the _skills_ translate - I don't think that solving daily chess problems or tsumego will do as much for your programming than solving programming puzzles (e.g. codewars), but the discipline of thinking through all possible paths ('reading') definitely helps.

<comment><USER10> neil, are you on OGS?

<comment><USER9> Yeah :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I play online. There are worse vices.

I hack the game by playing crappy openings to get people off-book. If I could play nothing but Chess960[1], I'd be happier. Chess is buggy.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960) "... The random setup renders the prospect of obtaining an advantage through the memorization of opening lines impracticable, compelling players to rely on their talent and creativity."

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the idea of playing chess a lot more than the reality of it. I usually go through a period with games where I don't understand them, find them bewildering, spend a short time on my own to learn the rules, then I'm good to go and can quite enjoy the game. Even with watching pro sports, if I at least know the rules, I can follow the progression of play and know when good plays happen. With chess, I've tried to read about it and learn how to play more than just the basics of moving pieces and still, I still don't "see" the game.

I guess it's the memorization needed for the opening and end games. I memorize by exercise. The things I can rattle of the top of my head are usually facts and figures and formulas I've had to use frequently. With chess, it seems to require a significant amount of pre-memorization, the broader, the better. I have always resisted such memorization tasks, even as a little kid. I prefer understanding core principles and reasoning my way to the details on the fly.

Most people who know my work think of me as an excellent programmer, so if chess has an impact on programmer skill, it's at the very least not required.

</comment><comment><USER12> Translatable skills? No.

Improved brain function? Yes, I believe so.

It has been shown in various studies that learning and excelling at chess changes the way that your brain is wired in a way that improves your analytical thinking and problem solving abilities [0].

Kids who learn chess at an early age, do better at math, for example. Personally, I played competitive chess at a young age (achieved Master level at age 17, which is good but not spectacular, before quitting to focus on engineering studies) and I do believe that my above-average analytical thinking skills to this day can partially be credited to the changes in my brain from those years in my youth spent studying and playing chess for hours.

[0] [http://mic.com/articles/119332/how-chess-players-brains- are-...](http://mic.com/articles/119332/how-chess-players-brains-are- different-from-everybody-else-s)

</comment><comment><USER13> No.

[https://medium.com/message/why-chess-will-destroy-your- mind-...](https://medium.com/message/why-chess-will-destroy-your- mind-78ad1034521f)

Nice piece about "chess sickness" and Duchamp (and he created less art and became more consumed with Chess) that echoes this post: [http://thepointmag.com/2014/examined-life/exiles- game](http://thepointmag.com/2014/examined-life/exiles-game) "Much of an exile's life is taken up with compensating for disorienting loss by creating a new world to rule," wrote Edward Said. "It is not surprising that so many exiles seem to be novelists [and] chess players."

Additionally, I don't see the connection to programming.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd consider myself a good programmer but an absolutely terrible chess player, so no, I don't think they really have much bearing.

<comment><USER15> I second that. I never had much interest in learning to play chess well. In my case I guess it's about when programming I work towards a specific outcome I find interesting for some reason. Winning/losing isn't an interesting outcome for me.

<comment><USER14> I cannot for the life of me make it through a game of chess without making some catastrophic blunder.

If programming was that unforgiving I'd have to buy a new system every time I wrote a function.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I play chess. Bet that's a shocker when you look at my user name...

I don't think that chess skills transfer to programming skills - I wouldn't recommend someone play chess as a way to get better at programming or vice versa.

Do I think being good at one indicates possible proficiency at the other? Maybe, but probably not. They can be approached the same way, at least below the grand master level - you can see each one as a series of small tactical problems to be solved.

However, some of the best programmers I've known weren't good at chess and the best chess player I've personally known was a mediocre programmer. So, anecdotal evidence is that the two don't correlate.

<comment><USER3> See also my name :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yes, but it doesn't help me code better. How it _does_ help is using chess as a problem space. Chess is such a beautiful game to write code for because it's tightly constrained and strategically flexible. For example, one of my side projects is a chess game where each player is actually a team of players who're all playing the same game - everyone on Team White enters a move, and the most commonly entered move is the one that actually gets played, then Team Black do the same, and so on. There is so much you can do to mix coding and chess.

</comment><comment><USER18> I do play.

No, I don't think chess skills translate into anything - the only "real" skill I've learned is how to practice efficiently. It's a fun game and I play it for what it is.

</comment><comment><USER19> Directly? No.

Indirectly? Yes. Learning to think through the steps of an operation in terms of available and unavailable options is probably highly correlated to thinking about code flow. The major difference between a competent programmer and a non-programmer is that the programmer is used to specifying what is going on in a restrictive, typo-sensitive written language.

Would I advocate learning chess as a specific method to learn programming skills? No, not particularly.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why would you think that chess skills should translate into good programming skills?

<comment><USER21> I don't think he thought it through very well.. But if being generous because in chess you have to memorize lots of openings and if you want to know lots of languages there's a bit of memorization aswell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> To answer your question, some of the higher level skills may translate, but it isn't like a direct mapping of skills (i.e., a person who is good at TIG welding will almost definitely be good at soldering with little effort - it's all about heat management and metal flow).

Memorizing openings could mean that you will have an easier time learning standard libraries and syntax.

Realizing that some pieces can move certain ways that others cannot could make it easier to learn object-oriented programming.

Thinking several steps ahead and avoiding endgame stalemates could help you with loop-writing (or at least avoiding infinite loops).

But a lot of this is dependent on a particular language. I don't see chess being a lot of help with a functional language like Haskell. But an imperative language like C or an object oriented language like Java, sure. A good chess player will still have to study and learn like the rest of the world, but I'd put their chances of becoming a competent programmer above the middle of the general population.

</comment><comment><USER23> I stopped playing chess years ago. It's an interesting game but newer games are more interesting. It's essentially an ancient form of the "Tactics" game type.

Other games, like Robo Rally, translate to computer programming much more directly. Create a set of instructions to do what you want, sure. Then watch as chaos from others causes those instructions to do something totally unexpected. Then you have to figure out how to recover from it.

Or the Collectible Card Game model created by Magic: The Gathering. Each player takes turns having their instructions loaded and processed. And each player puts instructions on the stack, which are processed in order and can be interrupted.

</comment><comment><USER24> I do, but I don't think chess translates into programming.

I recently found lichess.org, which I heartily endorse because it's free software:

[https://github.com/ornicar/lila](https://github.com/ornicar/lila)

</comment><comment><USER25> I do enjoy chess: [http://www.chess.com/members/view/play2draw](http://www.chess.com/members/view/play2draw)

There really isn't much overlap between chess and programming. Programming is closer to an artisan craft than a sport.

I mean, sure, you can probably find a few strands which connect the two somehow, but really you could probably draw other weak connections to things like swimming or football or weight lifting, or for that matter even other unrelated subjects like painting or singing.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yup, I love playing chess, I play most weeks against a friend.

I guess chess involves visualising moves and developing tactics to force checkmate.

I'm not sure how much cross-over there is with programming skills though.

I once tried to write a simple chess bot, which was enjoyable, despite not getting very far, learning how to represent the board as a sequence of bits etc.

</comment><comment><USER27> In general no. Learning/playing chess however requires being able to focus on a specific problem for long periods of time (2-4 hours), which is a good skill to have. I remember spending entire mornings studying the game as a kid.

I'm unsure if chess gave me the skill or if having be ability to focus made me enjoy the game.

</comment><comment><USER28> I occasionally play, and I'd like to play more. I don't think it specifically helps programming, but it does get me to concentrate on one thing only for an extended period of time (or lose!). Plus, you never know when you'll need to beat someone at chess to prove that you're the alpha nerd :P

</comment><comment><USER29> I used to play chess competitively (rating 1900+ fide), and play on internet sometimes. I think playing chess will not help to improve someone's programming skills (except if he specializes in building chess engines), but chess tends to attract the same kind of persons who go into programming.

</comment><comment><USER30> Yes and No.

I'm a fairly terrible player, I played for a local team when I was younger and had the time (bottom series, sub).

I'm certainly a better programmer than a chess player.

That said I follow the game, love to play and the surrounding community of players so there is that aspect to it.

</comment><comment><USER31> I suspect that the factors which would bias some people toward chess might also predict better programming ability, so I doubt a chess intervention would be useful, at least no more useful than some other activity like basketball or drawing.

Math might be different.

</comment><comment><USER32> I enjoy chess (though I haven't played much recently). I definitely see similar skills in both cases (lining up multiple steps to achieve my desired goal). But it's hard to tell whether or not playing chess makes me a better programmer.

</comment><comment><USER33> I play chess regularly, and while I don't think chess skills translate into programming skills, I do think there is a moderately high incidence of good chess players being good programmers. However, I believe this to be because you've got thorough minds that "see" lots of possibilities, and those minds are good at both chess and programming.

From my experience in coding as well as hiring coders, I've actually found that the best programmers are those that can make deductive arguments quickly. Most argumentative people argue inductively with anecdotes, references to studies, analogies, etc. But when you find someone who argues deductively by slipping in premises for tacit or explicit agreement and then lowering the boom with an axiomatic conclusion, this person usually creates good code for me.

For computers, chess games are deductive problems where all (or almost all) possible moves (arguments) are examined to choose the best one, which is only made possible by binary brains. For humans, chess is extremely inductive - analogies, patterns, general underlying strategies albeit with changing particulars, etc. The best human chess players deductively analyze multiple possibilities of these inductive patterns (read Bobby Fischer - who I have not played, Tal Shaked - who I have played, and others on the amazing way they do this). So while the skill is not transferable, there are some similar aptitudes in good programmers and good chess players.

I know there's a holy grail out there of the ultimate programming skills assessment test, and I don't have it. But what I do is this: I give two programming problems (no language or syntax required at all, just the problem basically in comments). They have to solve it in a robust way (and every now and then someone comes up with a brilliant solution I haven't seen yet, although most people suggest the same stuff over and over again), and then they have to defend why the solution is good while I time them.

Most people can learn to think (and argue) deductively, but very, very few that I have found do this instinctively (and can thereby do it 10x faster than the average person). When I find someone who can even do it 2x faster than the average bear, I hire that person. It's just so rare.

I know that's not a perfect test, but as someone who both plays chess and also is constantly looking for a good indicators for programming skills, this is what I do. I've had pretty decent success this way. So who knows, according to my methods, maybe the best lawyers and philosphers are actually the best programmers.

</comment><comment><USER34> Only when I implement the n-queens problem in Haskell ;)

That being said, I would probably be around 1000 elo (that is, absolutely terrible) but I am a halfway decent programmer so I think there's barely any correlation, if any at all.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've 1841 Elo in Blitz on Lichess, would be happy to play with dear HNers there: [http://en.lichess.org/@/kushti](http://en.lichess.org/@/kushti)

</comment><comment><USER36> I do play, though not as much in the past year or so.

I think there's intersection between chess and programming skill sets, but not significantly more or less than anything else using logic and attention to detail.

</comment><comment><USER37> Maybe indirectly, in that you probably get better at Hard Activity A if you get out of it often and focus on Hard Activity B. Sort of like dreaming to sort out your brain for the next day.

</comment><comment><USER38> from the first google result for "chess programming skills", this article ([http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-can-chess-tea...](http://sam- koblenski.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-can-chess-teach-us-about.html)) gives a few thoughts on why chess skills can translate into good programming skills.

</comment><comment><USER39> I play Chess and Go. I also write programs to play.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'am programmer, no time for games.

</comment><comment><USER41> No, I play Android: Netrunner.

</comment><comment><USER42> What about poker, then?

</comment><comment><USER43> No, not really.</comment>


Sourcing U.S. government projects to pair with people in tech for Covid response - <AUTHOR> https://www.usdigitalresponse.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> feel like should be noted this is unofficial, put together by a bunch of tech and digital government experts sure, but unofficial.</comment>


CES Letter – My Search for Answers to Mormon Doubts - <AUTHOR> https://read.cesletter.org/ <comment><USER2> The attempted or purported scholarship in this letter is extremely poor. It's very clear that the author has an agenda and is not really seeking clarification or truth.

<comment><USER3> Please give a few examples? I went straight to the conclusion (I'm not Mormon). It says reasonable things like when he discovered the founder was a polygamist and didn't actually translate golden tablets from angels he went into despair and questioned his believe - that sounds reasonable to me.</comment></comment>


Former Army Green Beret Charged in Russian Espionage Conspiracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/former-army-green-beret-charged-russian-espionage-conspiracy <comment><USER2> As a former member of the Army I consider his actions to be treason and if he is proven to be guilty I would like to see him shot. It is a insult to all those that served that it is not an option. If guilty this man has broken his solemn vow as a member of the armed forces and betrayed the oath taken as an officer and trashed his sacred duty as an officer - responsibility for his fellow soldiers lives. I am expressing my very strong feelings on this subject based on my own life experience and a rich history of family service back to the revolution. This include family members on both sides during the civil war and I have the same disposition to those that fought for the confederacy (treason and firing squad). I have no doubt that others here will disagree. May I suggest that a disagreement or a difference of opinion on this is a good thing allowed in a free society and something for discussion and not a blind down vote?</comment>


Final Ruling for Air Travel with Musical Instruments - <AUTHOR> http://www.bmi.com/news/entry/final_ruling_for_air_travel_with_musical_instruments <comment><USER2> Interesting, but the ruling happened in January of 2015.</comment>


Scientists to nudge asteroid off course as practice for protecting Earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/end-of-the-world-plan-scientists-to-nudge-asteroid-off-course-as-practice-for-protecting-the-earth-a6675041.html <comment><USER2> If this were an episode of any TV series, we know how it's going to end ...

It seems a sensible idea, but everyone must be thinking it right?</comment>


Use git push to deploy to AWS Beanstalk, FTP and SFTP - <AUTHOR> http://deploy.phpfog.com/

<comment><USER2> frikking love this. Thank you. Can we only get this if we have the beta sign up at PHPFog or can we do it otherwise?

<comment><AUTHOR> You do not need to be signed up in the beta, you can use it today for free.</comment></comment>


The Das Keyboard 4 Is The Hacker's Choice - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/12/the-das-keyboard-4-is-the-hackers-choice/ <comment><USER2> Quote: "That's why the Das Keyboard 4 is so exciting."

Less grating translation: "That's why Das Keyboard 4 is so exciting."

</comment><comment><USER3> TKL/60% keyboard or nothing. Full size keyboard is so clunky.</comment>


The Slow Climb of Postgres and the Value of Persistence - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/the-slow-climb-of-postgres-and-the-value-of-persistence/ <comment><USER2> From the article: "Postgres is the currently fourth most widely-used database system, according to the DB-Engines Ranking."

If popularity is measured by presence on computational devices, SQLite is easily the most widely-used DB. No contest.

<comment><USER3> The DB-Engines ranking is here. [https://db- engines.com/en/ranking](https://db-engines.com/en/ranking)

1\. Oracle 2\. Mysql 3\. MSsql 4\. Postgres

And it claims to be up to date. But there is absolutely no way that Oracle is the number 1 most widely used system. They have mysql trailing closely behind but oracle actually gaining momentum. SQLite does not appear to be included.

There is a link to their ranking criteria which includes mentions on twitter, search engine results, and mentions in job sites like indeed and upwork.

I tested out each of the criteria and Oracle was less than one-third the level of mysql in every single criteria. And in most cases, not even close to that high.

So I'm not sure why it is so incorrect. Perhaps Oracle owns the site.

<comment><USER4> No. Oracle is at #1 because more money is spent on Oracle licenses, DBAs, and (less so, lately) hardware to run it, than for anybody else's.

The costs for the others are mainly for administration, so are less. Any not administered, as such, don't count at all.

<comment><USER3> No, read my comment and the link. There aren't using money spent as a criteria at all for their rankings.

But were it a ranking of most money spent on databases, rather than "most used" databases, I would agree. Probably with MSsql in number 2.

<comment><USER4> Several of their criteria are proxies for money, most particularly "Number of job offers". People employed to support use of a database naturally write much more about it than people who have other work to do.

<comment><USER3> But also, as I mentioned, Oracle is not in the lead on any of those. Much fewer job offers for Oracle than MySQL.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The war on baby girls: Gendercide - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15606229 <comment><USER2> Already discussed at great length here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1172803>

Found by a trivial search: <http://searchyc.com/gendercide></comment>


Check out my new sports startup Chestbumpp - <AUTHOR> http://chestbumpp.com Chestbumpp allows you to create and join sports groups to compete with athletes in your area. Each group will be for a specific sport and it will have an overall skill level and time/location where the group usually meets. I'm also thinking about giving players a rep or allowing other players to give each other "props" to keep the community competitive. What do you think of the idea? I'd really appreciate your feedback since this will be my first startup. Thanks. <comment><AUTHOR> I'm hoping to launch by the end of the year. I'm a student as well, so I want to give myself enough time so that I can still focus on school. We're really excited about it though. It seemed to get a good response on betali.st

<comment><AUTHOR> Accidentally commented instead of replying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Quite like the idea if this. How long till its available?</comment>


Internet stats and facts for 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://hostingfacts.com/internet-facts-stats-2016/ <comment><USER2> <China has the highest percentage of internet users (21.97%), followed by the U.S. (9.58%) and India (8.33%)>

This seems less than credible to me. _Less than 10%_ for the U.S.?

<comment><USER3> The "percentage of internet users" is (World Total Internet Users/Internet Users in < _Nation_ >) not (< _Nation_ > Population/Internet Users in < _Nation_ >) -- that latter calculation would be the "internet penetration" (the figure Bermuda leads with 97.75% and the US is #25 with 86.75%.)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does YC interview twice a year? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I'm just interested in hearing about when YC does interviews? Do they only do this once a year - every winter? Or do they do this twice year?
Thank you <comment><USER2> Twice a year. <http://ycombinator.com/about.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes.</comment>


Show HN: PMOcean.com; Instant collaboration for MS Project plans - <AUTHOR> https://www.pmocean.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN team would love your feedback; any & all welcome.

Built this to solve a capacity issue in a small team w/in a F100 company. People didn't hate it, which ends up one of the biggest compliments project collaboration software can earn. It's a niche within a niche in a some ways, but I got perm to put it online for others to use.

AngularJS, Django15, RabbitMQ, lots more.

I need to fix the upload limit but for now it's basically XML edition MPP files < 1Mb if memory serves.

<comment><USER2> This looks like a cool idea.

Demo Link You should put a sample Project Plan XML with some demo data alongwith a demo link. This way, someone with MS Project can download the XML and see how it "feels" in MPP and compare it with the online version.

Copyediting > PMOcean can remove one FTE analyst role from your staffing plan on larger projects. Please don't scare your potential users, :) Every product has a positive impact, while creating an adverse situation for someone. E.g. how E-mail impacted the postal departments.The offering should be put in a positive context.

Viral Why not offer a Sign up with LinkedIn account?

Disclaimer: I'm probably not your customer, but will be happy to see this idea take off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback thank you. A few points I'll jump on and will repost HN at a more sane time including a demo link (demo/demo username/password should work now if you're interested)!

Thanks again

<comment><USER2> You're welcome. How do I reach you? I tried to login using Firefox, but had few hiccups. It will be easier to send you an e-mail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Use email@example.com, awesome!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Transparent Statistics Guidelines - <AUTHOR> https://transparentstats.github.io/guidelines/ <comment><AUTHOR> This document grew out of a Special Interest Group and Workshop to develop guidelines for transparent statistical communication in Human-Computer Interaction research. The recommendations in this guideline are chosen to encourage transparency in the practice of statistics.</comment>


How to make a book with Pollen - <AUTHOR> http://pollenpub.com/ <comment><USER2> I have no idea what Pollen does. The homepage really doesn't explain anything, and even after skimming the tutorials and the quick tour I still don't know.

Is it a static site generator? A blogging engine? Does it create PDFs? Epub? I have no idea.

<comment><USER3> The first sentence of the documentation tells you:

"Pollen is a publishing system that helps authors create beautiful and functional web-based books."

I think it might be good to get something like that on that introductory page, though, you're right.

<comment><USER4> Which could be, as the GP said, a static site generator, blogging engine, ePubs, etc.

If your one-line intro for anything includes the word "system", stop and rewrite. For example:

 _Pollen helps authors create beautiful and functional web-based books that are written as programs that generate HTML._

Never-have-I-ever seen anything that confuses "feature" and "benefit" so much as this project. _Why_ do I want my next book to be a program? A 20-minute video explaining it is almost condescending.

<comment><USER5> _If your one-line intro for anything includes the word "system", stop and rewrite._

Or "solution", for that matter; regardless of whether "enterprise" is also present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think I can forgive the use of ◊ as an escape character, though. It is not on any commonly used keyboard, so unless the intent was to make users avoid it as much as possible, it's just too awful to put up with.

<comment><USER7> You can define the command character to be anything you like by setting a single variable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there any written discussion of advantages that Pollen has over racket Scribble? It sounds extremely similar.

<comment><USER9> In the documentation.

It's built on top of Scribble.

<comment><USER8> I knew it was built on top of scribble, I was looking for a concise description of why it was built at all (instead of just using scribble directly).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please note that on OSX you have to manually add the Racket binaries to your path. If you use zsh and Racket v6.2 for instance you could add the following to your .zshrc: export PATH=$PATH:/Applications/Racket\ v6.2/bin

</comment><comment><USER11> Man, I feel out of touch. Dr. Scheme is now called Racket?

I'll crawl back under my rock. . . .

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been thinking about Pollen a little bit lately after reading about it when I was researching Racket and domain specific languages (DSL's).

Would it be wrong to call Pollen a DSL?

<comment><USER9> It's absolutely a DSL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's web based book

here's an book published by the author/developer to get the idea.

[http://practicaltypography.com](http://practicaltypography.com)

</comment><comment><USER14> It needs a front end. If this is the web version of TeX, it needs LaTeX and TeXshop or Kile. You're not suggesting that text be originally written in Pollen, are you?

</comment><comment><USER15> How is this better or different from Pandoc?

<comment><USER16> Different.

Pandoc is about reading lots of formats (eg Markdown) and writing lots of formats (eg epub, pdf, html). It has enough config options that you can reasonably produce books with it.

Pollen is like TeX. It has one input format, which is a Turing-complete programming language. It can output a limited number of formats. You have much more control about the output than with Pandoc, so can do visually pleasing typography.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there any way to include a good amount of mathematical text?

<comment><USER18> I developed this: [http://andreimikhailov.com/slides/bystroTeX/slides- manual/in...](http://andreimikhailov.com/slides/bystroTeX/slides- manual/index.html) and it seems to work, for example: [http://andreimikhailov.com/teaching/gdmc/exterior- calculus/i...](http://andreimikhailov.com/teaching/gdmc/exterior- calculus/index.html) I wish I had time to polish it more. It is also Scribble, but unrelated to Pollen.</comment></comment>


Coding Horror: A Visual Explanation of SQL Joins - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000976.html <comment><USER2> Nice tutorial. I was already fairly SQL proficient, but that's a handy link to send to someone trying to expand their SQL knowledge beyond simple DML commands.</comment>


Hard Drive of Hearing: Disks That Eavesdrop with a Synthesized Microphone [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://spqr.eecs.umich.edu/papers/Kwong-HDDphone-IEEE-SP-2019.pdf <comment><USER4> Pasting relevant abstract section:

> Our research demonstrates that the mechanical components in magnetic hard > disk drives behave as microphones with sufficient precision to extract and > parse human speech. These unintentional microphones sense speech with high > enough fidelity for the Shazam service to recognize a song recorded through > the hard drive. This proof of concept attack sheds light on the possibility > of invasion of privacy even in absence of traditional sensors. We also > present defense mechanisms, such as the use of ultrasonic aliasing, that can > mitigate acoustic eavesdropping by synthesized microphones in hard disk > drives.

So this attack is for magnetic HDDs, not SSDs or flash media.

<comment><USER5> Waiting for a day to be able to mod SSD into SDR /s

<comment><USER6> I bet there's already a MEMS accelerometer in there somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those now questioning hard drives in their security arenas.

The 'researchers' (again, it's Wenyuan Xu, she's the clickbait of security research) took computer speakers on nearly max volume onto either side of a hard drive. Shazam barely recognizes the song (more often recognizes it as something else).

Wenyuan does this every time.

<comment><USER8> Isn't that what security researchers are supposed to do? Find the most implausible-sounding attacks, get them to work at least some of the time?

I would not be reassured by someone telling me "well, most of the time, there's too much noise to get a reliable side channel out of Spectre."

<comment><USER9> The main trait of a top researcher is skepticism -- the willingness to doubt results. You learn to be skeptical as part of the training during your Ph.D.

Unfortunately, the standards have fallen. The security community is one of the worst instances of the lack of skepticism in the science arena. The community has started to reward clickbaity papers because they "sell". It's a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER10> Security is tough because you a mix of complete idiots trolling for attention, business, or jobs, vendors seeking fud to drive sales, and incredibly talented people reverse engineering and discovering things.

I suspect that some the worst are seeded and encouraged by parties who benefit from a lack of trust in research and maximum chaos.

<comment><USER9> Great point.

But there should be a distinction between academic conferences where professors from U. Mich are publishing and practitioner conferences aimed at industry (including sales, etc.).

My criticism is about academic conferences -- there's little skepticism left when reviewing papers describing attacks. As long as it's cool, it's in.

Look at the title above: "Hard Drive of Hearing: Disks that Eavesdrop...". It's not far off from the headlines on CNN or Fox News. At this rate, I predict by 2025 we'll have Breaking News red banners on academic conferences sites.

Let me re-assure everyone out there ... No, your disks are _not_ eavesdropping. Disks eavesdropping should be the least of your worries security-wise.

<comment><USER11> >Let me re-assure everyone out there ... No, your disks are not eavesdropping. Disks eavesdropping should be the least of your worries security-wise.

Sure, but think about how many people will refuse your statement and - <USER2> to the article - will start to believe that aliens use hard disk recordings before abducting them.

The damage has alas already been done, on - quite frankly - a very thin basis, your general criticism is very well founded, a "reputable" institution would (should) never accept those clickbaity titles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of a similar article many years ago about reading network packet content from the light of the led in network cards.

It is another example of how things are safer in practice than in theory. Entropy helps to keep things safe by introducing noise. All these measures are easier in a lab than in the wild.

<comment><USER13> I guess you might mean this paper which is very cool - [http://applied- math.org/optical_tempest.pdf](http://applied-math.org/optical_tempest.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm kind of surprised to learn this wasn't obvious or already known. People have been hacking old hard drives into crappy speakers for a long time there are countless examples of this on Youtube. Perhaps the most artistic is a rendition of Radio Head's, Big Ideas (Don't Get Any) played on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum attached to an array of hard drives. [0] I always just assumed that any thing that acts like a speaker could also be made to act like a Mic.

[0] [https://vimeo.com/1109226](https://vimeo.com/1109226)

</comment><comment><USER13> There's also the interesting talk on it here - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvoOP6iKYMQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvoOP6iKYMQ)

</comment><comment><USER15> Only slightly tangential but every time I see another story about a new way to conduct surveillance I can't help wondering if Rockwell had seen the future and was trying to warn us with his song "I feel like someone is watching me."

[https://youtu.be/7YvAYIJSSZY](https://youtu.be/7YvAYIJSSZY)

</comment><comment><USER16> Summarization from The Register:

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/07/hard_drive_eavesdro...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/07/hard_drive_eavesdropping/)

</comment><comment><USER17> A stretch, yes. But gone from "ludicrous & delusional" to "proof of concept".

Now apply government intelligence service funding, plus no limiting accountability, plus motivation/target.

</comment><comment><USER18> Classic clip from 2008 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4)

</comment><comment><USER19> i think the other direction it would work too - generating HDD head movements in a way to encode info in the resulting noise - taken together with the OP it means that one can cross the air gap in both directions (the Cuban sounds look more and more like an electronic attack with humans being just an unfortunate collateral). Similar things can probably be done with the CPU/case fans - <USER3> for example a "bad" motherboard can talk and listen to the world.

<comment><USER20> _generating HDD head movements in a way to encode info in the resulting noise_

That's not so interesting, as anyone who has used a machine with an audible hard drive knows --- you can tell whether the system is idle, working, or doing something strange ("I'm not doing anything that would write to the disk, why is it still grinding?") just by the sound.

<comment><USER19> you can encode it into a normally working mode - say by slightly varying timings of head movements during legit disk ops, kind of frequency coding.

<comment><USER21> That would be an interesting advancement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Their setup it's arguably contrived. HHD is in an external enclosure with a fan. While they turn the fan too max power in an attempt to get a more typical or "worst case" setup, it seems to me that is far from a common setup of a hard drive inside a computer chassis with associated mounting hardware between the HHD and source of speech.</comment>


Virgin Hyperloop One Sets a New Speed Record - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/hyperloop-speed-record-video/ <comment><USER2> I've heard so many solid engineering reasons why this wouldn't work on the scale that musk originally put out.

Other than the response of "we will figure that out." Has anyone resolved issues like track expansion and catastrophic vacuum collapse and such?

I would love to see high speed rail or similar but I just don't feel that this is the most efficient way to get it.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure, but I'm pretty excited to see private companies trying to tackle the issue. Plus, when you look at the relative amounts of funds being spent right now (the linked article mentions Virgin Hyperloop One raising $50 million), it's still a relatively small number compared to the billions spent on social media and advertising companies and the defense industry.

If these private early companies can prove the concept is viable, there's plenty of money out there to implement it and work through the problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aah Still selling this snake oil?</comment>


Who Runs Curl on What - <AUTHOR> https://who-runs-curl-on-what.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> I don't think these numbers are accurate. Every time I run the command, the number of GNU/Linux users doubles.

Edit: HN stripped out my "face with tears of joy" emoji.

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone is running command in a loop? My laptop battery died. Will fight the hackers when I get home in 30 min :)

<comment><USER3> They're not, you have a small bug that actually doubles the counter each time:

[https://github.com/amorphid/who-runs-curl-on- what/blob/maste...](https://github.com/amorphid/who-runs-curl-on- what/blob/master/app/models/curl_request.rb#L3)

<comment><AUTHOR> Danke. Will fix in a bit. Or submit a pull request to this prestigious app that was totally not rushed into production ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed the counting bug. Updated the counts to the correct totals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Perhaps if you're _really_ bored you could make Who Runs Wget on What as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is an amazing idea! I might do that :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just threw this together for fun :) Feedback welcome!</comment>


A Charge of Bots – The Tech World as We Know It Is About to Be Rewritten - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@plibin/a-charge-of-bots-9ee33bb3b868 <comment><USER2> Man, that begin homepage - the white on yellow background. Do bots mean that we won't have to worry about accessibility any more. I could actually read the page, but I felt like I was being assaulted in making the effort.</comment>


Coronavirus detected in air 4 meters from patients - <AUTHOR> https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885_article <comment><USER2> > Our study has 2 limitations. First, the results of the nucleic acid test do > not indicate the amount of viable virus. Second, for the unknown minimal > infectious dose, the aerosol transmission distance cannot be strictly > determined.

Until these are figured out we know little new and old baselines apply. If you get within 2 meters there is risk of getting minimal infectious dose from droplets.

<comment><AUTHOR> 27 foot range in this study: [https://archive.is/JlhPw](https://archive.is/JlhPw)

<comment><USER2> That study has the same weaknesses as the linked one.

It just discusses models of the spread of the virus in the air and does not measure the distance where you get minimal dose for infection.

Covid-19 infection spreads mostly with droplets and significantly less with aerosols and the dose received is important.</comment></comment></comment>


Beware the fluffy story - the hidden influence of PR agencies - <AUTHOR> http://www.butireaditinthepaper.co.uk/2010/06/15/beware-the-fluffy-story/

<comment><USER2> It's not just the fluffy stories either: <http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html>

From the section "Suffer the Little Children": "...the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."84

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A nice reinforcement of pg's 2005 article on the PR agencies behind the 'news': <http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

Even human interest stories aren't immune.

</comment><comment><USER3> "And remember, this 'fluffy' little story about the cute little pig we'd all love to cuddle ended up with a 30% increase in the sales of sausages…"

I love the irony.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm an in-house PR specialist (i.e. not a contractor/PR agency employee).

Half the fight of getting your story in the press is finding the outlet and reporter whose beat/publication matches up with the story.

Just because a concept comes from PR doesn't make it a lie, or untrue. Where I work, there are regularly compelling stories that make excellent human interest features. I make sure those stories get attention. What is the harm?

Packaging a company's story into a journalist-friendly format doesn't strip the story of all merit automatically.

<comment><USER5> Lying about it does, or at least it should.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but lying about it is a great way to not get published.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The press is incredibly lazy. It isn't limited to just PR fiction that gets repeated as fact, it's just gross sloppiness that multiplies as each layer of the press cites the other as a source or an authority.

Shilling, but related - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1958746></comment>