The customer is always wrong: Tesla lets out self-driving car data when it suits - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/03/the-customer-is-always-wrong-tesla-lets-out-self-driving-car-data-when-it-suits <comment><USER2> Some of the "self driving" car companies fear objective evaluation. Uber especially doesn't like to test in California because they have to report accidents and disengagements to DMV. Tesla isn't quite as bad, but they report very few miles driven in California.

This is for real self-driving. Level 2 semi self driving systems like Tesla's old "autopilot" don't have to report, so we don't get data for production vehicles.

From the DMV reports, Google/Waymo is performing about two orders of magnitude better on self-driving disengagements than anybody else reporting.[1] They're up to 5000 miles between disengagements. No disengagements on freeways. That's one of the few objective measures we have in this business. Road and Track, and Top Gear, aren't getting self driving cars to test yet.

[1] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2016)

<comment><USER3> While I agree that Waymo is in the lead, I disagree they're two orders of magnitude ahead of the competition. If you look at Cruise, they are clearly making significant progress each month. If you look at their last month available, they have 6 disengagements for 2284.35 miles, or 2.62 disengagements per 1,000 miles.

Waymo reports 0.2 disengagements per 1,000 miles, which is clearly better - but only by 1 order of magnitude. And if you look at how quickly Cruise is making progress, I'd suspect (by as much data as we can glean from these reports, which is limited) that Cruise will be roughly on par with Waymo in <2 years.

<comment><USER4> > And if you look at how quickly Cruise is making progress, I'd suspect (by as > much data as we can glean from these reports, which is limited) that Cruise > will be roughly on par with Waymo in <2 years.

Assuming Waymo is standing still. The last 20% take a lot longer than initial 80% in the machine learning business. The last 2% literally takes a decade.

<comment><USER3> If Waymo stands still, I suspect Cruise will be there in ~1 year. And right now Waymo is in the throes of a managerial clusterfuck, which is why most people left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Tesla said it doesn't show anyone the logs themselves, only a description of the logs that it distributes to media when it feels the integrity of its product has been impugned.

>"Drivers don't have access to this data to defend themselves if they need it," the Swiss driver said. "So this data is 100% to the disadvantage of the drivers."

This is scary stuff and is one of the main things that spooks me about Elon's view of the future. He's pretty much the anti-Stallman. My devices log everything I do in a blackbox fashion and when I have a conflict with these companies they can use this logging against me. I can't get these logs and even if I could how could I properly interpret them for my defense. Look at how Toyota had teams of experts from all over the world going over their recent acceleration issues and still had a hard time making heads or tails of it.

How can a consumer like myself ever hope to have these kinds of resources if there's a conflict?

>The Guardian could not find a single case in which Tesla had sought the permission of a customer who had been involved in an accident before sharing detailed information from the customer's car with the press when its self- driving software was called into question.

This is inexcusable. Executitves at Tesla shouldn't be making these calls, the consumer should.

I think IoT and smarteverything is going to have us re-evaluate our relationships with the companies we buy from . There's a fairly major power inbalance in their favor and they are not shy about using it.

<comment><USER6> Personally, I'm okay with this _in the short term_. Electric vehicles are still at a fairly press-sensitive stage of development. And there's definitely skulldoggery that ICE competitors could manufacture if they wanted to.

Or even crazy customers. See: [https://www.tesla.com/blog/when-life-gives-you- lemons](https://www.tesla.com/blog/when-life-gives-you-lemons)

After they're accepted and the new normal? Absolutely agreed that the balance should be shifted toward the customer.

<comment><USER7> Wow. A friend of mine in china told me "What do we need civil rights for right now. It's more important that we become a world leader. We can always get our rights back later"

Once you set a new normal, it's the new normal, and people get used to it. Remember that time we went back to a strong 4th amendment? Or less surveillance? or ...

If electric cars can't survive with negative press, they shouldn't survive. Ends don't justify means.

<comment><USER8> Remember the time the United States was doing terrible damage to the environment (noon in Pittsburgh, strip mining, coal ash in the rivers), then we became a world superpower, then the EPA was given teeth to clean up the environment?

History suggests your friend might have a point. _Might._ There are likely good counter-examples to consider.

<comment><USER7> This is the usual argument. Here's the problem: There's always another thing. _always_. In the history of the world, we go from thing to thing to thing, always teetering on the edge.

So if you always say "hey, just doin it for this crisis, we'll go back to normal later", you'll be doing it forever.

EIther we make it without that, or truthfully, we aren't goign to make it as a species over time.

<comment><USER6> How would we have industrialized without massive amounts of coal and oil- fueled power?

Sometimes there are stages you _must_ go through in order to reach the other side (e.g. an excess energy future where we can afford to research and pump out solar panels).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This will have to change next year, at least for European customers, when the EU General Data Protection Regulation takes effect. The GDPR grants everybody a right to data portability for personal data:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDPR#Data_portability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDPR#Data_portability)

The mobility data they collect is regarded personal data because it indirectly allows to identify the driver.

<comment><USER8> Will they continue to have European customers once that regulation takes effect?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Summon incident certainly was rather sleazy. Tesla's press release made it sound like a long, complicated series of steps were involved that could only be triggered intentionally. In reality, all it took was the car thinking the user double-tapped Park rather than single-tapping it, and then them not noticing and cancelling in time. Not only that, according to other owners there was sometimes a several second lag before message and warning sound to appear, meaning he could well have been outside the car by then.

<comment><USER11> I really like my car's dashboard: there isn't a single touch screen. Everything is a physical button.

<comment><USER12> The Park button referred to above is also a physical button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This has bothered me. Tesla has all the data, but will only release it when it benefits them. It is easy to control the public debate when you are the gatekeeper of facts.

<comment><USER14> I just go surf youtube if I want to real results of AP2 and AP1 unfiltered. Some of them are downright scary. There is not going to be a sudden jump to good autonomous driving.

<comment><USER15> Also remember that AP1 wasn't even created by Tesla. That technology belonged to Mobileye, who is now owned by Intel. And it is public that Mobileye was the party who ended their relationship; Tesla was pushing their tech beyond what Mobileye deemed safe.

Thus, AP2 was born.

Tesla is a surprisingly scummy company when you start digging into some of their behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Elsewhere on HN, someone posted this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg)

This was my comment reply:

Wow. That guy is going nineteen miles per hour on a simple road in daylight and the car literally crossed to the wrong side of the road in nine seconds!

That's an absolute disaster.

<comment><USER17> As much as I would love to have a self-driving car(and I would!) I honestly shake my head at anyone saying that we will have fully autonomous vehicles in the next 5-10 years. Unless the roads are fully standardised and beacons placed every few meters, this is literally the image recognition problem all over again. In the 60s scientists thought that with the power of computers they will "solve" image recognition completely within a few months. It's 2017 and our best of the best algorithms and neural networks are stupidly bad at things they haven't been specifically trained to recognise, and even then they make catastrophic mistakes. And then we want to put essentially this tech on a car, where our roads are bad, signs are faded or straight up wrong, where you can have any sort of weather conditions obscuring the view and/or lidar, plus the whole thing has to be so reliable that you can put it on a consumer product......within 10 years? If anything, we will get a better version of Tesla Autopilot within 10 years, but full autonomy? Try 50 years.

<comment><USER18> Humans aren't all that great at driving safely and consistently either. Autonomous vehicles just have to be better than the average (not terrific) driver, not perfect; and progress recently beggars the progress in previous generations. I'm placing my money on sooner rather than later in this case.

<comment><USER17> You see, this is where I disagree. "better than a human" was never a valid defense against a machine failing and killing someone. Why would it be different with autonomous cars?

Let's say we have a fully 100% autonomous car, where you don't have to pay attention to the road. It crashes, injures or kills someone - who is responsible?

If a human did that, then we call it "an accident" and your insurance company foots the bill. With an autonomous car, sure, an insurance company will pay for the damages - but they will demand that a problem is fixed or they won't insure those cars anymore.

So anything less than 100% perfect is a huge liability for manufacturers, and we are very very far off 100% perfect.

I cannot imagine a world where autonomous cars have minor/major accidents but we just brush it off as "meh, whatever - humans have a higher rate of accidents so it's fine".

Or maybe think about it this way. Introduction of autopilot in airplanes resulted in a major improvement in safety, the number of plane crashes has literally plummeted(sorry) after its introduction. But it hasn't eliminated crashes entirely - and every time there is a crash, Boeing/Airbus will ground their entire fleets to investigate what went wrong, if there is a perceived fault then thousands of planes have to be updated before they are safe to fly.

Now bring that analogy over to cars - small, personal transportation vehicles, where profit margins really aren't that fantastic. Which manufacturer will risk releasing a product where they have to keep updating and maintaining the autopilot for the lifetime of the car, and for which they are liable every time it fails? Not to mention that planes are held to ridiculous safety standards, while cars are not(so far, I haven't heard an answer to what happens if a bird shits on the lidar and you don't clean it - it's an instrument with almost chirurgical precision which requires similar level of maintenance, and I know people who buy a car and then don't even wash it once in 3 years of owning it).

I'm not saying we won't get there. I'm saying that I don't see any chance that this technology will be ready in 5-10 years, and if anyone is foolish enough to sell an "autonomous" car in the next 10 years, they will set back our progress massively because the car _will_ fail, and there will be public and legislatory backlash.

<comment><USER18> We get used to things that seem unsafe but are safe very quickly according to history. Elevators, for example. When I was young they generally had human operators, but now they're all autonomous, have been for a while, fail sometimes here and there but nobody seems hugely exercised about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The logging is also the primary reason why I'm not getting a Tesla.

<comment><USER20> Pretty much all new cars have it. They are hardly unique in that sense.

<comment><USER21> But only one company routinely releases it to embarrass their customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It seems like there's a large volume of information in the logs. I mean, if Tesla can tell whether the driver has his hands on the wheels there's probably a ton of other details.

It makes me wonder how practical it would be to use these logs. I hear about so-called "black boxes" in cars (not just Tesla), but where are the tools to decipher the data? How much can you trust that the logs reflect reality?

<comment><USER23> I'm skeptical of the "hands on the wheel" thing. They can't actually sense hands on the wheel, what they sense is torque on the steering wheel. I often have my car nag me to put my hands on the wheel when I already have them there, and I'm just not applying enough torque with them.

It's possible that the threshold for the nag is just higher, and that the torque sensor is so sensitive there's no way it could possibly have a false negative here. But we just don't know.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if there's enough play in the steering column that you could send generated micro torque amounts back up to the steering wheel, then see if they're resisted.

<comment><USER23> You might be able to do it just by using road vibration that comes through the steering column. I think it's quite possible to detect hands with pretty good sensitivity in this way, it's just that the evidence suggests it's not actually that sensitive.

<comment><USER6> Good idea. It's definitely an interesting problem and seems like it would be really relevant to the safety side of an autopilot.

E.g. if there are no hands on the wheel, autopilot should probably do whatever it can to prevent a likely accident it sees

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > The driver said he believed Tesla had violated Swiss data protection law by > declining to send the raw data

Raw data might not help anything if there are no instructions on how to interpret it. There are two ways of hiding data: by not showing at all and by showing it in a flood of useless data, where it can't be seeing except if you know what you are looking for (and when there is only raw data and no manual, well, you can't make a good use of it).

Yes, having some data is better than none, but I don't expect it to be that helpful for a while.

<comment><USER6> The other way to look at it is the difference between not having data, which makes it impossible to interpret, and having data, which makes it somewhere between easy and very difficult to interpret.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is the second story that's somehow made it on the front page of hn today that biasedly talks down Tesla and particularly autopilot. All this on the day that Tesla takes over Ford in marketcap. This is not a coincidence. I'm getting the feeling that there is definitely some astroturfing going on here. Instead of talking about this historic day for Tesla and the EV market in general, we're talking about an AP accident from a year ago and some nonsensical study navigant did. Seems like a concerted effort to steer the conversation

</comment><comment><USER26> "lets out data when it suits"

that is rich coming from a journalist.</comment>


How two students got a ride from Sir Richard Branson on his private jet - <AUTHOR> http://kbiri.blogspot.com/2009/01/lens-story-about-yesterday.html

<comment><USER2> Branson is well known for taking along hitchhikers, even when he's waterskiing.

<comment><USER3> I take it you're referring to the naked super model piggybacking along photo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> classic example of how taking the time (or growing the balls) to ask for something is 90% of the way to getting it.

<comment><USER5> Not really, I could see if they asked in person, but they just texted their question and Branson was asked it publically by someone else.

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because these students were thinking in a manner unlike anyone else in that large auditorium. Thinking about/looking for opportunities/taking advantage of the situation. Honestly, I do not think that thought would even cross my mind, had I been there. I believe this is an example of how some entrepreneurs think radically different.

I do not think they would have had access to Branson in person (security; someone from the conference organizers got them backstage)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The question came up on a huge screen, and was asked of him personally in front of a large audience. He would have been seen as a complete miser if he'd refused.

Now, if he'd been asked this in private, with no consequences for refusal and if he still let them fly with him, then I'd be impressed with his generosity.

As it is, what he did was just a prudent public relations decision.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a database of Linux commands and their flags - <AUTHOR> While the obvious answer is `man`, what I'm after is something parsable so I can convert the contents into a JSON format for a project I'm working on.<p>Also, same question but for Windows commands (not Powershell). <comment><USER2> You probably have to parse the man pages. Explainshell.com does that, you might be able to use some of their code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'll take a look at Explainshell.com.

It seems weird (to me at least) that there isn't already a modern, machine parsable, format for this.</comment></comment>


AWS US-EAST outage - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/search?q=aws%20east&src=typd&vertical=default&f=tweets <comment><USER2> My us-east boxes are up and accessible from Phoenix. I'm seeing reports of other places inaccessible as well, which suggests it's not AWS.

[http://internethealthreport.com/](http://internethealthreport.com/) shows Savvis/Level3 is showing 25% packet loss.</comment>


Linux local root exploit for CVE-2014-0038 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/saelo/cve-2014-0038 <comment><USER2> Original discussion of CVE-2014-0038: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7154618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7154618)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this a universal exploit? Which distros are unaffected?

If it's non-universal, why is it? E.g. if it only affects Ubuntu, then what is it about Ubuntu that allows this to work?

EDIT: This seems to be the answer: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7154922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7154922) ... Any distro using the x32 ABI is vulnerable, and Ubuntu just recently enabled the x32 ABI.

<comment><USER2> I believe only Ubuntu is affected, of the major distros. The bug affects kernels compiled with CONFIG_X86_X32, which enables the new-ish x32 ABI, a way for processes to use x86-64 features like the extended register set, while retaining the 32-bit pointer size. The more conventional approach to 32/64-bit code mixing (e.g. in Debian) is that 32-bit processes use the old x86 ABI, while 64-bit processes use the new x86-64 ABI. The x32 ABI was borne out of people noticing that the x86-64 architecture's improvements weren't all about 64-bitness, and that some of them were relevant to 32-bit programs too. So it keeps 32-bit pointers, but otherwise uses x86-64 features, so even 32-bit processes can take advantage of running on x86-64 chips (everything except the 64-bit part). Nothing inherently wrong with the idea, but it introduces some new critical codepaths into the kernel that have to be thoroughly tested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm...

      #define PAYLOADSIZE 0x2000
      code += PAYLOADSIZE - 1024;
      memcpy((void*)code, &kernel_payload, 1024);

Does anybody know if it's possible to find out the size of a function during run time? Could you like say, put a return at the end of the function then do a for-loop with memcpy() for each byte until you run into the OPCODE for RET? I guess I could do a test.

<comment><USER5> RET is 195 or C3 in hex which also corresponds to modrm operands "eax, ebx" or "ebx, eax" so there's a pretty good chance of say a MOV instruction e.g. 89 C3, "mov ebx, eax" or something else also having that byte inside it, not to mention constants and offsets. (If you work with x86 asm enough, you _will_ start memorising opcodes...)

<comment><USER4> Hmm... so after looking at [http://ref.x86asm.net/coder32.html](http://ref.x86asm.net/coder32.html) apparently 0xC2 and 0xC3 are RET. On my 32bit Linux machine, the following code printed _" Okay! c2 found @ 174"_ Is this code correct in any way??? I guess the fact that I'm assuming every byte is a whole instruction; not even accounting for the operands is already a problem. But am I even reading the bytes properly at all?

      #include <stdio.h>

      void rightmeow()
      {
          int q;
          for(q = 0; q < 10 ; q++)
              printf("It's new!\n");
          return;
      }

      int main(int argc, char** argv)
      {
        int i;
        unsigned char bytecode;
        for(i = 0; i < 9999 ; i++)
        {
            bytecode = (unsigned char)(**(rightmeow+i));//--- does this really work?
            if (bytecode == 0xC2 || bytecode == 0xC3)
                break;
        }
        if( i == 9999)
            printf("No good.\n");
        else
            printf("Okay! %x found @ %d\n",bytecode,i);

        return 0;
      }

<comment><USER5> You probably mean

         *(((unsigned char *)rightmeow)+i)

but just change the "q < 10" line to "q < 195" and you should see the output change, since that immediate constant is going to be present at least once before the final ret. For me, changing that changes the output from c3 being found at 47 to it being found at 25.

<comment><USER4> Nice! For me it changed from being found at 38, to 34. I wonder why you get C3 while I get C2.

<comment><USER5> C2 is RET iw, i.e. has 16-bit immediate value following the instruction, the # of bytes of parameters to pop from the stack. That should be 0 in this case so it could use C3 and save 2 bytes, but compilers aren't always really intelligent, although this is the first time I've seen that.

Then again, it could be something else and not the actual return you found.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You should clarify that it only applies to the x32 ABI.

Which is only used on the(already vastly irresponsibly-constructed) Ubuntu 13.10.

<comment><USER7> why is it "vastly irresponsibly-constructed" ? I mean major hosting providers like rackspace use it... so ??

<comment><USER8> Here's why the Fedora maintainers rejected request to enable it: [https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=854317](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=854317)

* It's new and unanalyzed for security flaws.

* It's useless without the right userland tools, which don't exist.

Ubuntu switched it on either because they have no clues, or because they wanted a checkbox to say "look, we have features no-one else does!!!!".

<comment><USER9> The main problem with Fedora is that it usually doesn't work. At all.

<comment><USER10> Is this a joke?

<comment><USER11> I wish.

-Someone who just spent half of a perfectly good day wrestling with their buggy installer

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Manjaro has CONFIG_X86_X32=y for the kernel I'm running (3.12.8). I can't figure out PTMX_FOPS so I can't test whether it's affected by this. :/

<comment><USER12> Apparently affected ([http://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=10498.0](http://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=10498.0))

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tested on ubuntu 13.10 with latest updates.

Doesn't work, but DID crash the kernel, so it's vulnerable.

</comment><comment><USER13> tested on Ubuntu 13.10 with kernel 3.11.0-15-generic. CONFIG_X86_X32=y

the program did not get the root privilege. Kernel did not crash either. Strange.

</comment><comment><USER14> To make it work you need to patch exploit to your platform, like this (see defines section): [https://github.com/seletskiy/cve-2014-0038/commit/d8daf0ff41...](https://github.com/seletskiy/cve-2014-0038/commit/d8daf0ff41dfad72a0d59dcac4a61e8c2e291772)

Just patched it to 3.8 kernel and it works.</comment>


Getting rid of NULL - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibuildings.nl/blog/2016/01/programming-guidelines-php-developers-part-2-getting-rid-null <comment><USER2> Good article. Suggestion: When you post an article like this to hacker news it would help to include the programming language in the title, like "Getting rid of NULL (in PHP)". I wasn't aware that this is a PHP-related post until I've read the first bunch of paragraphs until you actually mention "PHP".

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure that's necessary, it's not a PHP specific post. The author is just using PHP to demonstrate his point. Most, if not all object oriented languages should be able to replicate this functionality.

<comment><USER4> I was expecting Java8 Optional...

<comment><USER5> Or Ruby 2.3's lonely operator (&.) or swift's optional chaining (?.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Null is simply a marker for non-value. Meaning the variable os initialized (ie not undefined) but the value hasn't been explicitly set.

To cheery-pick an example from the article.

> When your function usually returns an integer, return 0 instead of null.

0 carries a meaning that may be directly relevant to the context of where it's used.

Using that as a default state will eventually cause unexpected side effects

Look no further than the kerfuffle caused by c using true==1 & false==0 to see how this approach may cause unexpected bugs.

A more specific use case that wasn't mentioned is bool. I ran into this issue in one of the libraries I wrote. It contained inline hooks into a parser where user-defined code could be injected or returned false if the hook is unset.

Unfortunately, eventually I had a user that was using the hook that needed to return the value false. The only way to fix it with out breaking further edge cases would be to use null.

Null doesn't exist because of environments where the dev can easily reason about how the code will be used. It's used for code that will be used by others where it's not easy to reason about all of the possible use cases.

With that said, I think languages should have built-in null checking support of some form. Requiring if (val == null) checks everywhere makes its usage seem like an anti-pattern.

Null has a clearly defined and useful purpose. Even if most devs never have to explicitly set a value to set a value to null themselves.

</comment><comment><USER7> See also the null object pattern: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Object_pattern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Object_pattern)</comment>


October 4th – Google Hardware Event Live Stream - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YGoxbeSzLc <comment><USER2> _tinfoil hat on_

Use the Pixelbook Pen™ and let Google add even handwriting to their profile on you!

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone post the link to the recorded video once it is uploaded. Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw6rpTWrj0g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw6rpTWrj0g)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "This video is unavailable"

How fitting.</comment>


China formally protests North Korea nuclear test - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-conducts-fifth-nuclear-test-as-regime-celebrates-national-holiday/2016/09/08/9332c01d-6921-4fe3-8f68-c611dc59f5a9_story.html <comment><USER2> > "The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear > state," Obama said

Isn't this akin to plugging your ears and chanting "I can't hear you"? How would publicly acknowledging the situation be negative?

</comment><comment><USER3> Editorialized title, flagged.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was the original title.</comment></comment>


Why Do Lunar Satellites Eventually Crash into the Moon? [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EadClM4Y45A <comment><USER10> Even after watching the video I didn't really get it. One of the comments made it more clear though:

On Earth, the orbits decay because the satellite hits the atmosphere and slows down, losing energy to drag. On the moon, satellites don't lose energy, but their orbits change. The perturbations of the gravity field cause the satellite to be moving faster but lower on one side of the orbit and higher and slower on the other side. Taken far enough, the low side is lower than the mountain the satellite slams into.

</comment><comment><USER11> Mass concentrations ("mascons") perturb orbits of lunar satellites. The Lunar Orbiter is in a special "frozen" orbit in which the various perturbations cancel each other, with the tradeoff that this eccentric orbit is not optimal for photography.

EDIT: The auto-generated transcript feature enables one to read enough to decide whether or not to watch the video.

</comment><comment><USER12> TL;DW from the video

>Spacecraft orbiting the Earth have remained in space since the 1950's and may last for centuries more, but spacecraft orbiting close to the moon can crash within weeks. The reason for this is the lunar gravity field is lumpy, with geological features making the smooth orbits of space probes distort until they hit the surface.

</comment><comment><USER13> One of my favorite papers asks the opposite question: Why do Earth satellites stay up?

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.5244](https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.5244)

It turns out that the orbit of most satellites would be unstable were it not for the quadrupole moment of the Earth's gravitational field which detunes certain orbital resonances.

</comment><comment><USER14> GRACE is/was the Earth-centric counterpart. I believe there may be a more modern variant as well.

[https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/overview/index.html](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/overview/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Somehow I knew before clicking that this was going to be a Scott Manley video. I love that guys channel, it's always so good. Even his less good stuff is still good!

<comment><USER16> Yes it is so good along with :

2veritasium

3Blue1Brown

Academy of Ideas

Adam Beatty

AdamantMC

Ahoy

Alexander Bus

Applied Science

Art of the Problem

Arxiv Insights

Astronomy - <USER9>

Backyard Brains

BadMouseProductions

Ben Eater

Biographics

Biology - <USER9>

blackpenredpen

Bloomberg

Bob & Brad

Bozeman Science

Brian Will

Calle Svensson

Carnegie Mellon University

Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM)

CGP Grey

Cheddar

Chemistry - <USER9>

Clip'wreck

CNBC

CNN Business

Cody'sLab

Coffee Break

Cognitive Science - <USER9>

colinfurze

Computer Science - <USER9>

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</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's the guy who does quick time stuff at Apple</comment>


Unit Testing in PostgreSQL with PLV8 - <AUTHOR> https://legitimatesounding.com/blog/unit_testing_in_postgresql_with_plv8.html <comment><USER2> I'm the author, and am happy to answer any questions.</comment>


Architecture no one needs is server side templating - <AUTHOR> https://itnext.io/architecture-no-one-needs-is-server-side-templating-78331391274 <comment><USER3> This article is self-defeating based on its own content and the experience I have developed over the last 20 years.

I beg the author to deal with a typical real world application. Not low scope startup stuff but the thousands of 500+ endpoint typical enterprise stuff that 80% of the market actually comprises. This does scale out to the startup and web stuff as well.

This approach introduces a lot more pain from experience:

1\. Having to maintain and upgrade SPA type frameworks is hell and you have to do that sometimes (think Angular upgrade hell). Can't afford to start again every 5 years.

2\. The performance, and the article actually states it, is shitty at the best of times. All it takes is one client running mandatory IE11 on Citrix and you lose a customer.

3\. Most of the complexity is hard complexity that has to be there to process rules. Rules are way more complex than you want to run on a client in some cases.

4\. They are incredibly difficult to test. Go try testing a big SPA with selenium for example.

5\. Security boundaries are terribly difficult to enforce when half of your application isn't inside your control.

Having done desktop development for a number of years, the worst turds I've seen are in that space and the SPA brings them all to the web which is one of the most hacked up evolutionary disasters we have ever created.

Really our responsibility as engineers, architects, developers is to give the user the best experience and that means the fastest and most reliable one. SPAs are neither. KISS is a mentality we should be using and I can build a better user experience without SPAs.

Greg Navis knows what he's talking about.

<comment><USER4> 6\. Pre-rendering is a complete mess. Yes, if you try to pre-render Hello World application it will do fine. But in real world examples your main menu, for example needs to pre-render only the top links and not deep-links. Good luck doing that kind of stuff in Angular or React. Also Express on-premise pre-rendering of dynamic pages is terribly slow, 2 seconds to load an website if you have serious application.

<comment><USER5> It looks like you are either misguided or are doing something wrong.

This is not how React or Angular (or Express) works. Only the stuff that is required per-route (or whatever state) is "rendered" server-side. The rest is chunked away and retrieved when needed. From my experience, express rendered react apps never take longer than php / whatever rendered sites, given the data dependencies are retrieved from the same source (api, db e.g.).

<comment><USER4> > Only the stuff that is required per-route (or whatever state) is "rendered" > server-side

Yes, the whole page, which includes the header, footer, menus etc.. What's your point here? I don't get it.

<comment><USER5> Correct. The whole page is rendered on the server. The way it would be rendered by a PHP script. There is no need to pre-render anything else, it's a SPA. The concept of pre-rendering is usually redundant in the context of SPAs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Summary of the article: "Why do we need screwdrivers? I have a hammer, and everything looks like a nail to me!"

There is also the added irony of discussing this article on a site that follow the exact opposite of what the article says is the one true solution for the future of web development.

<comment><USER7> > _Summary of the article: "Why do we need screwdrivers? I have a hammer, and > everything looks like a nail to me!"_

Yeah, that plus actual reasoned arguments that go into detail to make their point.

<comment><USER8> He makes a defense of the SPA that boils down to "because it's easier to manage client side interactions that way."

The kicking point for server side is that the need for client side interaction is overblown. If you are building a tool that people will keep open for hours, by all means...SPA your heart out.

If you are building an open-check-close experience like most of the web, SPAs created more problems than they solve.

<comment><USER9> I'm thinking here of GitHub. GitHub's UI is not suffering for not being an SPA.

On the contrary, it's improved by not being an SPA. When I'm browsing a repository, I cmd-click new tabs out all the time, and I also copy/paste links to individual files as of specific commits to coworkers fairly regularly. All of that kind of stuff is very useful UI that you basically get for free with a decent multi-page app. It gets a lot trickier to get right with an SPA. (I'm not actually sure I've ever seen someone pull it off.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I admit I didn't finish reading this blog article because the author completely lost me when saying weird things like:

\- Templating language is basically string interpolation which builds the presentational layer at load time.

First of all, what is load time? There is compile time and runtime and then there is runtime on the server and runtime on the client. Load time is just fuzzy language and has no meaning IMHO. Also, what the blimming heck does he mean by string interpolation? Most server side templating engines are compiled, rarely string concatenated and even if that was true, how is that different on the client side? If JavaScript code dynamically creates HTML markup then it also (at some level) stitches string together or does it not?

> Client side code is developed separately and has to "pick up" the target > elements after it is loaded.

Huge news announcements! The client side code has to "PICK UP" the response which the server sends to the client! OMG!!! Thank god in a SPA the client code doesn't have to "pick up" server side generated objects, right? (NOT)

> Templating languages are basically smart string interpolators and have > quirky syntax.

Quirky syntax? First of all, pick an engine which isn't quirky if that's your problem, and secondly EVERY templating engine, regardless of server/client side has a "quirky syntax" if you wish. It's not like front end development is done without a framework or library which gives you more power than just rudimental HTML markup.

> One language (server side) is generating markup for a different language > which takes over on the client.

One language generates output of another language is his problem? So I guess he doesn't use anything but pure JavaScript, because anything on top of pure JavaScript is another language generating JavaScript, right? Also the "server somehow takes over on the client"? What does that even mean, seriously?

> If AJAX is used to dynamically alter the state of our app by means of > adding, ...

How did he transition from C# + Razor to AJAX. Did I miss something? Razor is not AJAX...

> Taking paradigms that work well for static documents and using them for > building software is simply inadequate.

OMFG. client-server communication is not a paradigm for static documents. PDF is static documents.

Honestly... I stop at this point.. I can't read anymore. It's painful.

<comment><USER11> No offense, but it sounds like you are not a native English speaker and had difficulty interpreting the article. It's not very clearly written, but it's not as incomprehensible as you make it out to be.

<comment><USER12> I'm a native English speaker and most of the criticisms above are valid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes, when your app is a highly interactive SPA it makes sense to do everything on the client and ignore server side rendering. But when you are just building simple dynamic admin/crm-style sites with some extra interactiveness sprinkled on top I still reach for my trusted Thymeleaf in Java or ERB in rails.

Thymeleaf and ERB are a lot more than "just string interpolation". Thymeleaf even uses valid xml attributes so it's not a completely different language.

My pages load and paint fast. Most pages don't need all that interactivity. In most projects I have 1 or 2 pages that are interaction-heavy and for those I usually shell out to Vue, and have my server-side templating inject the source JSON in the <script> tag so an extra request for fetching the data is not necessary.

</comment><comment><USER14> What happened to progressive enhancement ? Have a website that can be used with JavaScript disabled, then add client-side behavior that enhances the experience. It obviously isn't the best choice for everything, but surely there are many cases where server-generated HTML with a handful of JS enhancements is still the easiest to implement and maintain.

<comment><USER7> > _What happened to progressive enhancement ?_

Like Haley Joel Osment, it never got anywhere after the initial hoopla.

<comment><USER3> It's still there, being used and is popular.

However no one sells training, fads, marketing, conferences, buyouts, ideologies or frameworks based around it though so there's not a lot of fanfare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Flipping this round, as a user heavy use of Javascript _significantly_ reduces my enjoyment/increases my frustration of the web.

I get that some tools work better when written as SPAs, but most stuff, like my bank, news sites, most stuff really, is better without it IMO/IME.

<comment><USER16> You mean bad use of JavaScript. Modern websites can prefetch all possible links on the current page you're seeing. Then when you click on any link will render that page instantly. Check out some Gatsby blog generator, it's so fast.

<comment><USER15> Not really, no.

> Modern websites can prefetch all possible links on the current page you're > seeing.

I'm not sure I actually want that to happen.

> Then when you click on any link will render that page instantly. Check out > some Gatsby blog generator, it's so fast.

Most of the time I visit a single page on any given blog, usually found via Google. If I have to load any JS at all the chances are I've downloaded more code than I needed. If the content _requires_ downloading a framework _before_ viewing the content then it just adds to the frustration.

It's totally possible to serve HTML, some styles, and some feature-enhancing javscript /fast enough/, and my experience of the evolution of Javascript on web pages over the last 18 years has led to the opinion that Javascript has steadily made my experience of the web slower, more CPU intensive (my CPU fans being spun up by someone's attempt at improving the UI of a web page isn't appreciated), less reliable, less predictable and in general, worse.

There is the very real possibility that if you write and release a Javascript based web page then I will enjoy it less than if it was something "simpler".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why did this article get so high up? I was going to respond to it, but everyone here already told why this all is poorly written with no/poor foundations. So wondering who upvotes this kind of stuff.

<comment><USER18> I think a lot of people upvote for the discussion, which means they might upvote an article they disagree strongly with.

<comment><USER17> I routinely upvote things I do not agree with, but this is not that, imho, this is just bad. But yes, I see what you mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I tend to think of it in terms of horses for courses. In other words, let your requirements drive your architectural choices, rather than going in with the preconceived notion that there are architectures 'no one needs'.

I recently threw together a small blog engine and wouldn't even have thought of writing it as an SPA... there was no point. Then again, a blog is mostly static document service, so it shouldn't be a surprise that picking a document service architecture made sense.

For me at least, some of the specific reasons to pick an SPA might be this:

* I'd like my user to be able to make change to a document without disrupting where they've scrolled in the document.

* It's possible to build retry logic into the SPA to get a bit of offline capability if the network connection isn't great.

* There's a block of data on a page that takes an unmanageably long time to render and I'm okay with it showing up after the body of the page.

* There's a large volume of data that can be maintained and incrementally updated within the client, rather than reload every time.

* There's a need to automatically stream and update the page in real time (and meta refresh, etc. won't work.)

* The developers assigned to the project are more comfortable with SPA and associated tooling.

* There is a high likelihood of one of the above becoming true soon enough that we wouldn't be able to rewrite to an SPA to accommodate the requirement when it arises.

Not exhaustive, but a big list anyway.... so there are often good reasons to select an SPA design. But not always. As engineers/architects, we have to do the work of understanding the requirements and planning our design..

<comment><USER9> Many of those serve as great examples of times when you might want to add AJAX-y elements to your design.

I don't want to imply you were suggesting this, but it bears mentioning that a lot of the SPA vs MPA debate rests on a false dichotomy, where "MPA" is taken to imply that you're partying like it's 1999.

<comment><USER19> > I don't want to imply you were suggesting this

Actually, I kinda was.

Maybe a better way to put it is that I'm looking for more fluency of control in where the application code actually runs. I'm less interested in having 'an SPA' or 'an MPA' and more interested in tooling that makes it possible to more easily select between SPA and MPA characteristics for various parts of a given UI.

Edit: to make this a bit more real, here's a few thoughts on what that might look like:

* Same language on both client and server.

* Same templating on both client and server.

* Some sort of lightweight RPC-style mechanism for exposing server functionality up to the client. (Without a fully specified protocol/format/etc.)

* Framework provides an endpoint that serves up a JavaScript projection/transpile of some subset of the overall application code.

* Same thing for CSS.

* The usual automatic reload/refresh-on-change logic you get with modern client stacks.

* Setup is essentially 'add a plugin or maybe two to the project build script'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think SPAs can be a decent choice for certain classes of applications, but this article seems really weird to me.

> Templating languages are basically smart string interpolators and have > quirky syntax.

Well, yes, templating languages take a string + data and return another string. That's definitely true. What that actually means isn't clear. Especially when the followup "have a quirky syntax" doesn't have a particularly precise meaning (and may not be universally true) and also, the problem remains the same whether you address it on the server or in the client.

> We cannot use server side rendering any more — or can we? Let's write > endpoints that return HTML and not JSON.

I can't tell if that last part is sarcasm, or attempt to examine a potential avenue, or a complaint that one would have to multiply endpoints in order to return JSON or HTML instead of having a back-end that pays attention to the HTTP Accept header and has capabilities of returning different representations of the same resource.

> When to subscribe/unsubscribe from events. Otherwise we will run into memory > leaks.

This is also hard to decipher -- is he talking about event listeners on replaced portions of a document?

> How to name things — when everything is dynamic, naming becomes hard.

As the saying goes, naming is one of the two hard problems in software. The browser is itself a dynamic environment with a dynamic primary runtime. There are languages that'll help or hobble you in the browser or on the server but that's orthogonal to whether you're choosing an SPA.

There might be a kernel of a worthwhile argument in here about component testing and isolation being more difficult if you're doing it on _both_ the server and the client, but the rest of this seems thinly justified rather than reasonably explored.

<comment><USER18> > When to subscribe/unsubscribe from events. Otherwise we will run into memory > leaks.

This strikes me as a non-issue if you still use React or the like for the dynamic elements of your page. Furthermore, if anything, having full refreshes makes the problem of memory leaks _less_ of an issue!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The thing is that for most business web apps rendering on the server side and sprinkling in some JQuery validation is good enough, and a pretty solid approach. Frameworks like Ruby on Rails or ASP.NET MVC provide a lot of infrastructure to do this, and it is easy to find people skilled in maintaining this.

My last job was like this, my current job is more of a SPA but mostly because it needs to be, because of what it is. I always thing "horses for courses" when people make opinionated statements about what tech you should use.

</comment><comment><USER22> It is a poorly written article, with an unexpected conclusion. After all the - what feels like ranting and ignoring SPA problems at every opportunity - <USER2> ends with a conclusion that the only reason he is using SPA is because they tend to provide a component framework to organise client side code.

<comment><USER23> My biggest gain since last year has been react to render HTML on the server side. Using react with TypeScript you gain a very sane templating language, very good editing support with every ide which supports ts.

<comment><USER24> Agreed. Next.JS for example is a great and widely adopted tech for doing server-side rendered react. Add in typescript and you have a pretty serious best of both worlds combo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The basic problem with SPA is simple:

1) Request handling until you have a functional app in, say PHP:

GET Reply (page displays at this point)

So: 1 RT happens.

2) In an SPA

GET the html reply

Get the javascript reply

Get javascript dependencies (usually multiple) replies

Get the data to display (again usually multiple requests, because nobody does the call combining you should do (ie. don't have GetUserData(), GetFrontpageItems(), GetMessages(). Instead have GetAllStartupStuff() that returns all 3, to avoid the extra roundtrips) reply

So: 4 RT Minimum

Guess which is the overriding cost in any webapp ?

Yep, the roundtrip.

Guess why we do this SPA thing ?

Why, we do it because it's faster, of course ! (this is so ridiculous it's sad)

</comment><comment><USER26> Another thing that's slightly alluded to here is also having a backend technology that's different than your frontend technology.

While I'm not the biggest fan of JS or TS, I can tell you it's much easier to develop your entire application in JS if you need to do any server side rendering. Otherwise you need to maintain two codebases that do the same thing in slightly different ways.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been working with SPAs for the last 4 years and I must say I can't decide which approach is better. I believe SPAs provide better user experience, but the cost of that is significant. Also, not every component-based page must be an SPA. You can have multiple pages, each of them having some components.

Regarding the article, it feels like author is angry that someone prefers server-side approach instead of his favourite way of developing apps. I disagree with a bunch of arguments in the article:

> (about server-side templates) For any large application (by large I mean > more than 50 individually developed screens) this slowly becomes harder to > maintain.

50 server-side templates vs 50 stateful components, I really don't see why the former is harder to maintain

> (about server-side templates) How to name things — when everything is > dynamic, naming becomes hard.

Again, no idea why naming would be easier with SPAs

> Use runtime templating after AJAX call is done. We cannot use server side > rendering any more — or can we? Let's write endpoints that return HTML and > not JSON.

Or course we can do that, why not? Even more - when lazily loading templates in component framework like Angular, I need to not only download the template that's in HTML, but also Angular needs to compile that template.

> Let's be honest — the only way one can say developing SPA application is > costly is if they either don't know any SPA technology or if they don't want > to learn it.

I don't have any hard data, but neither does the author, so I guess we'll focus on personal experience. From my experience keeping state only in the backend is easier to maintain and therefore cheaper than keeping the state both in the backend and in the frontend.

> Knowing server side templating language. Also not being able to use the same > language for AJAX templating.

But to write client components I also need to learn some Angular templating syntax or JSX or some other stuff. And it's not simpler to learn than let's say PHP templating.

If I use PHP for my backend, then I don't need to learn template language, because I just use HTML + embedded PHP.

> If you have proper mobile app, an API has to be developed for that. Having > two layers accessing the same data in two different ways is not practical.

That's a fair point, however it doesn't make a big difference. Using SPA I need to develop JSON API + mobile views + SPA components Using multi page app, I need to develop JSON API + mobile views + server side templates

> State on the client — because that is where the state belongs to.

But why? The state does not need to belong to the client. The client might be a representation of the state that comes from the server.

</comment><comment><USER28> I love waiting for a website to load twice. Once for the placeholder graphics, then again the real data.

</comment><comment><USER29> I find SPAs much easier to work with, maintain, reason about, especially as the application grows. I have experience with both server side rendering with Java and with SPAs and for the majority of usecases I would prefer an SPA but maybe that is just me. There are a lot of resons for my preference, but as with everything, we must not be blinded with our choices and use the right tool for each job.

</comment><comment><USER30> All the front end devs are trying to protect their jobs hehe...</comment>


Maintaining Quality at Scale - <AUTHOR> http://nerds.airbnb.com/maintaining-quality-scale/

<comment><USER2> The textual content of this article is spot on. However i do have to wonder why they chose to show a photo with code that indents 11 levels deep at the top of an article about code quality.

I know it's hard to teach programmers how to avoid situations like that, and how to avoid or reduce duplication, because i struggle with this with most of my colleagues. However in a company where code is the bread and butter of everything the company does, i'd expect things like that to be addressed before tabs-vs-spaces.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. I chose that picture more to capture the spirit of collaboration than to highlight specific code. We still have a lot of legacy code that we're constantly trying to improve.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What stocks are you invested in? - <AUTHOR>

401K doesn't count <comment><USER2> Probably not really on topic here, but:

INTC and GOOG. Bought INTC years ago, it's trended slowly downward ever since. Bought GOOG just a couple of months ago at close to its current trading price.

Mostly, though I sold all my holdings and lived off of it while starting up my current company. That's proven a much better investment, more than doubling in value ever year.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thousands of them, via index funds.</comment>


Ask HN: Would it be OK to name an app that's similar to anothers? - <AUTHOR>

I just checked a domain name for an idea I had. It's taken and by a similar idea.<p>Would it be ok to go ahead but with the name spelt differently or would this cause a problem? <comment><USER2> Why not choose a name that is not necessarily specific to your idea? Pick anything. I used to own mankhool.com and mankool.com (just because I thought it was a cool name - it's a road in Dubai).

</comment><comment><USER3> I would strongly encourage you to choose a different name. There are examples of accidental name collisions that didn't really help either company (Pinweel and Pinwheel come to mind).</comment>


Hardiman I Exoskeleton - <AUTHOR> http://cyberneticzoo.com/man-amplifiers/1966-69-g-e-hardiman-i-ralph-mosher-american/ <comment><USER2> Made me think of Heinlein's story "Waldo" [1] which featured mechanical manipulators controlled by motions of the operator's hand and fingers. I thought, oho, this is where Heinlein got the idea! But no! "Waldo" was published in 1942. Perhaps inspiration ran the other way.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo_(short_story)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo_\(short_story\))

<comment><USER3> Ah, I had always assumed Waldo was an acronym or initialism of some kind; checking wikipedia shows they are named after the Heinlein story you mention!

</comment></comment><comment> gene-h Part of the problem was(and still is) that it didn't have very many good use cases. For the problem of moving heavy stuff around a forklifts, cranes, and carts performed much better. Not to mention the potential for serious injury to the user if they make a mistake or fall over.

<comment><USER4> An interesting thing to note WRT serious applications for exoskeletons is that they arguably offer greater potential as safety devices in the workplaces, essentially as a means to stop workers from over straining themselves, and also prevent repeated strain injuries.

I think realistically, heavy stuff will always be relegated to heavy machines. It'd be impractical in many cases to do otherwise. But to say that exoskeletons lack applications is a bit foolhardy (preventing workplace injury is a huge field waiting to be disrupted, for example).

Physical augmentation (via robotics) shouldn't just mean improving the physical condition, but also maintaining and promoting a healthy physical condition. This isn't something that is very well understood in the marketplace (both in the 60's, but also today). The biggest barrier for exoskeletons are still the exoskeletons themselves. I believe that until this idea is understood and reflected in the designs and implementation of exoskeletons, no progress will be made (in the field, and the market). Hopefully, this will soon change.

Disclosure: Work in the field (although currently for physically disabled patients, and not announced in the public domain).

<comment><USER5> Over the last 9 months I have gained a new perspective on the matter of lifting heavy things. I decided to take weight lifting seriously, hired a coach and went for it. I am now dead-lifting 200 lbs (90 Kg) and squatting the same. If you saw me walking down yhe street you'd have no idea. By the end of the year I should be at 315 for the deadlift.

Before doing this I never imagined someone could look "normal" and move this much weight. I thought this was the domain of guys with huge muscles.

Anyhow, a long way to say that workplace injury could probably be averted with training.

<comment><USER6> 90kg is not that heavy for a squat or deadlift. You need hardly any (visible) muscles for that (unless you are a very small woman).

I hope you keep up your progress! There's lots of it left.

<comment><USER7> As someone who got to a 90kg squat (and 100kg deadlift) in three months while still having the skinniest legs possible, I am amazed at how efficient muscles are while being tethered at the very end of a 1 meter lever.

I'm pretty sure that our quadriceps could lift a one-ton weight, if attached to it, if only a few cm. That's amazing to me.

<comment><USER8> The concept is as you hint, very much one of continued leverage to prevent reverse movement with constant micro gains in forward distance.

[https://youtu.be/0kFmbrRJq4w](https://youtu.be/0kFmbrRJq4w)

Very much a parallel process with the same kind of force multiplication as any gear ratio mechanical advantage. Quite marvelous what the simple ability to "stick" can be translated into. Tremendous static holds equals tremendous kinetic force :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why would they design it such that the human hand goes into the mechanized hand? Because then if something causes failure, say by lifting something too heavy, the human hand is also injured. I would want to see a design that keeps the human operator safe. Same comment on many existing exoskeleton designs.

<comment><USER10> I was going to write pretty much the same thing. How comfortable would any of us be reaching our arms deep into a large piece of operating hydraulic machinery? It would take only a small bug to contort your arm into a position that your bones won't allow, and anything capable of lifting 1.5 tonnes can easily rip your arm off. I wouldn't want to test drive v1.0 of the aliens power loader. Or any other version that ends with ".0"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see your powered exoskeleton, and raise you a walking truck:

[http://www.educatedearth.net/video.php?id=5000](http://www.educatedearth.net/video.php?id=5000)

</comment><comment><USER12> Looking at this, the one thing I see is a person "fighting" a machine that's encapsulating them.

If we're going to interpret and strengthen moves we make, it might be smarter and safer to leave the interpretation of movement _out_ of the suit. So wear a light, easy-to change into/out of suit with sensors, that controls a machine in front of you. Also saves space as you won't have to make space for a pesky, fleshy, squishy human.

(Just thinking out loud here)

<comment><USER13> This is definitely an application for VR. You are rigged up in a room somewhere, and you become a gigantic robot building a ship or a bridge or something elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wait, was the Aliens' exoskeleton used by Ripley and other Marines based on that prototype ? It looks very similar in some of the concept art. See: [http://www.mwctoys.com/images/review_loader_1.jpg](http://www.mwctoys.com/images/review_loader_1.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER15> Years before Sarcos corporation got bought, they had working haptic whole-arm interfaces attached to outsized hydraulic arms. There used to be Real video format files on their site of things like a teleoperated giant arm casually holding an anvil like it was a beer mug.

There was webpage of historical haptics research up somewhere. They've had research hardware since the 70's. I remember one discussion at the Houston hackerspace, where such devices were falsely "debunked" based on bandwidth/processing requirements. {facepalm}

</comment><comment><USER16> All I can think of when seeing this is that the animated gif looks exactly like a Power Fist from Warhammer 40k, and that the rest of this looks like some of the original e-frames from Exo-Squad when they show the scenes of how e-frames first originated.

Powered body suits can't come fast enough in my opinion. Outside of war, there are just so many uses for enhanced strength and the sheer flexibility something like that allows for tools, dexterity, working with electrical or extreme temperatures, etc.

<comment><USER17> I can wait for the kinks to be worked out, so that a software error doesn't result in my arm being yanked out of its socket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That "Walking Truck" is very similar to Big Dog, at least in appearance.

</comment><comment><USER19> [an error occurred while processing this directive] - Server getting overloaded? - A backup copy: [https://archive.is/HhXbI](https://archive.is/HhXbI)

</comment><comment><USER20> Exoskeletons will be huge, huge, huge as the baby boomer generation get older and more frail. This is why Japan is already far ahead in this.

</comment><comment><USER21> Would definitely not comb my hair or scratch my back with that thing... :p

<comment><USER22> Or pick your nose:

[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-03-14](http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-03-14)

<comment> martin-adams That made me laugh

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The HN hug of death strikes again</comment>


EU dropped plans for safer pesticides because of TTIP and pressure from US - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/05/eu-dropped-plans-for-safer-pesticides-because-of-ttip-and-pressure-from-us/ <comment><USER2> See also extensive discussion from 2 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9587772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9587772)

That was a submission from a different publication, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies, I completely missed that discussion.

<comment><USER3> No need to apologize, frankly this needs a lot more discussion than it's probably going to get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To me this whole TTIP feels like the US trying to bundle and export their most profitable corporate lobbying results through the corrupt and payed-for US politicians to the EU. Secret negotiations, state-investor dispute, all of this seems organized to help big corporations screw consumers further.

I simply hope the whole thing fails, I really don't see the benefit to me.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure the EU corporations are doing their share of lobbying, but I agree that all these trade agreements seem to be tailored for Big Business at the expense of consumers.

<comment><USER6> Yes, there's no need to make the US the bad guy.

The key point is the way in which a treaty like this puts a whole class of what would once have been domestic legislation beyond the reach of democratic decision-making. Both in the treaties themselves, and their transnational private courts.

<comment><USER7> Can't a democratic decision be made to get out of the treaty? Also - international obligations in general, by their nature, restrict democratic or any other kind of sovereign decision-making. Decisions such as waging war, defaulting on debt, etc. which are often made by sovereigns illustrate that restrictions on sovereigns aren't necessarily bad.

(Not saying that TTIP is a good thing, just that I'm a bit baffled by the framing of the problems with it as a conflict between democracy and corporations or such. I'm even more baffled by the framing of defaulting on sovereign debt as a "democratic right" \- again, regardless of the fact that a country's citizens might have gotten a raw deal because a corrupt government issued debt it shouldn't have, say, because it was bribed and needed liquidity to buy something useless/overpriced from whoever bribed it, etc.)

<comment><USER8> The lack of a sensible bankruptcy procedure for countries is a serious problem. Individuals can discharge debts in bankruptcy in order to get back on their feet. Companies have at least two different kinds of bankruptcy depending on whether they can be run as a going concern or not. But a FX- denominated debt is potentially an anchor on your country forever. Look at the Argentine "pari passu" fiasco for example.

Imposing an unpayable debt on a country that forces poverty on its citizens has a real and serious cost in human life. Wars have been fought over this; it's often argued that the reparations debt imposed on Germany after WW1 was a contributing factor to WW2.

<comment><USER7> I'm not saying I know what to do about unpayable sovereign debt, just that defaulting on such debt is not a sensible example of a democratic right. "We had a referendum and decided that you can all wipe your asses with our bonds" is probably not the "sensible bankruptcy procedure" that you mention. I did not claim anything beyond that.

Why do I think my point was worth making? Because there's a huge amount of issues boiling down to poor coordination between different states today, the nature of today's economy ensures this will become increasingly common, and I think it's worth pointing out that simply insisting on "democratic rights" interpreted as "doing whatever the citizens want, the rest of the world be damned" doesn't really cut it. And this "interference with democracy" theme is really really common these days, I bump into this sort of phrasing every other week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article uses numbers pretty dishonestly.

"[T]the health costs of EDCs to Europe are between £113 billion and £195 billion (between €160 and €277 billion) every year."

There is no mention that pesticides/herbicides are a very small percentage of that number. It doesn't matter whether it's "still bad" that it's a small percentage. Arstechnica willingly led me to believe that the impact of pesticides/herbicides was in the hundreds of billions of Euros.

These numbers also, notably, came out long after the 2013 negotiations mentioned. What was the scientific consensus on EDCs in 2013?

<comment><USER10> Further down the article there's an indirect reference:

"I would recommend that pregnant women and children eat organic fruits and vegetables and avoid using plastic containers and canned food, especially in the microwave, because containers are usually treated on the inside with substances and compounds that can leak into the tomato soup and may act as endocrine disruptors," he said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Chemicals Legislation [http://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/chemicals/legislation/ind...](http://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/chemicals/legislation/index_en.htm)

[http://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/european- standards/...](http://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/european- standards/harmonised-standards/pesticide-application-equipment/index_en.htm)

Measuring REACH and CLP Enforcement - new study Published on: 19/05/2015, Last update: 20/05/2015 [http://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools- databases/newsroom/cf/itemd...](http://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools- databases/newsroom/cf/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=8280&lang=en&title=Measuring- REACH-and-CLP-Enforcement---new-study)

src: [https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/eu- monitoring/...](https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/eu- monitoring/dg-environment-explains-delegated-acts-biocides)

[http://newsletter.echa.europa.eu/home/-/newsletter/entry/4_1...](http://newsletter.echa.europa.eu/home/-/newsletter/entry/4_12-bjorn- interview;jsessionid=FA3521FA977B29C9D750FBFC67D0605E.live2)

</comment><comment><USER12> While I'm against the TTIP, the "the health costs of EDCs to Europe are between £113 billion and £195 billion" mentioned in the Ars article seems to be from the Guaridan article "(£113bn-£195bn)" [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/06/health- co...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/06/health-costs- hormone-disrupting-chemicals-150bn-a-year-europe-says-study)

that says "Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the human hormone system, and can be found in food containers, plastics, furniture, toys, carpeting and cosmetics."

no mention of pesticides in their opening bit. I'm guessing the percentage exposure coming from pesticides is very small so the financial figures in the Ars article are misleading.

</comment><comment><USER13> How can you seriously defend the EU to the average European when you see things like this ? This kind of stories are not going to help to reduce the current distrust of everything related to the European union. All this corruption really does a disservice to the EU.

<comment><USER14> Honestly? Because my first thought was "there's no way the EU signed off on this". I challenge anyone to find a stauncher protector of consumer rights in history than the EU...

<comment><USER15> This is the strange thing about the EU, it is almost as barmy as the BBC but like them somehow largely manages to do the right thing. It's amazing that most of our politicians believe with a kind of religious faith that big business and the free market is the solution when it seems fairly clear the psychopathic behaviour and the free market has bankrupted government and ruined the economy. Instead of saying let's put in further more stringent regulations the neocons have got more of their policies through. I think this is largely due to an obedient and corporate controlled media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Do people want TTIP? Nope.([http://goo.gl/FD145h](http://goo.gl/FD145h)) Do people want pesticides? Nope. ([https://goo.gl/AQNdZv](https://goo.gl/AQNdZv))

So what is the problem?

<comment><USER17> _Do people want TTIP? Nope._

That's (sadly) (possibly) not true. I thought it would be scandalous if Europeans didn't want TTIP and they just ignored the people and continued negotiating. But then I found this chart [1] and in almost every country the majority is for a trade agreement. I don't know if the numbers are wrong, if people are uninformed or if they just don't care, but if the numbers are correct then it all is just democratic, the majority wins, whether I or you like it or not.

[1] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/29/is-europe- on...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/29/is-europe-on-board-for- a-new-trade-deal-with-the-u-s/)

<comment><USER18> Those survey results show people who are "for a free trade and investment agreement between the EU and the USA" \-- not those who are for _this_ trade agreement; the objections to TTIP are arguably _not about the freedom of trade and investment_.

<comment><USER19> Exactly. How am I supposed to say whether I like it or not when I don't know what "it" is? Lets leave surprises for company pot luck lunches.

Would any elected official dare ask the same about the legislative process? Isn't a trade agreement that sets precedent as legislation the opposite of a participatory democracy? It just makes no sense. How can they have things like TPP and TTIP and still complain about the lack of involvement in politics by ordinary folks?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Parliamentary democracies are often deeply flawed and in need of reform. That much is obvious (in the UK at any rate).

The problem with the EU is that is is _even less_ democratic and hence less accountable than the pre-existing system of national governments.

Furthermore, as this article shows, the EU makes it easier for large companies and trading blocks to pull-off greater subversions and abuses of power via lobbying and corruption, since power is concentrated in a much smaller number of people.

The founders and implementors of the EU "project" used the term "ever tighter integration" in their founding documents, where they laid out their vision for a United States of Europe.

They even describe how they intended to implement this via a technique called "gradualism". The idea being that big sweeping reforms would be rejected by the individual polities, but that more gradual, subtle changes spread over time could achieve the same effect without the same resitance. And we have seen this in action over the past forty years.

A bit like the apochryphal boiling of a frog.

The problem is that this is in some sense subversive and in another, presumptious that the EU project is desired and/or sensible. At some point the frog metaphor breaks down and people begin to realize what is happening and what has happened.

And in the UK at least, finally, we are beginning to see a debate being held on the desirability of the EU being a _political_ union (rather than the more prosaic free-trade area).

<comment><USER21> All democratic republics are in dire need of an overhaul for the 21st century. However, US and UK tend to be worse than many because of the first past the post voting system.

<comment><USER19> I feel bad for the voters in the UK. LD got trounced in this election but in the previous two elections they had 22 and 23 percentage of votes.

In 2010, Conservatives had 47% of the seats with 36 percent of votes. Labor had almost 40% with 29% of the votes. LD had 8% with 23% of votes. Even in 2015, they had 1.2% of seats with 7.9% of votes.

If you have almost a quarter of the population voting for you, you'd think you can make things happen. What went wrong with the referendum? What could the YES proponents have done differently? More importantly, has the damage been done? How long do UK nationals have to be quiet about alternative voting now?

<comment><USER22> We already had a referendum about it four years ago - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum,_2011) \- and it was overwhelmingly in favour of the status quo.

<comment><USER19> I am very convinced that a full proportional representation would be very much better than the status quo. Can we have a referendum again? When would be an optimal time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> ``EU plans to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals found in pesticides have been dropped because of threats from the US that this would adversely affect negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)''

They shouldn't drop them, we should regulate freely and be removed from TTIP. Being involved in TTIP isn't a privilege or in any way desirable, it's an undemocratic exercise in futility. So, to me, being ejected is a win-win scenario.

</comment><comment><USER24> The do-nothing-congress better crash and burn that thing in the House.

It's going to be crazy if this is one of the few things they pass this year.

</comment><comment><USER25> The problem about "TTIP" and "free trade treaties" is, that they are continuously used to support the interests of big corporations -- and thus, lowering health, environmental and other standards is one of the big targets of those treaties.

I lately saw a documentation about the trade treaty of the US with Mexico. They said, that standards where lowered in both countries.

Take two or more countries and make today a "free trade treaty" between them, you get the lowest common denominator, since the big corporations are at the head of the table.

TTIP starts to reduce standards even _before_ it is signed.

</comment><comment><USER26> Collectively the EU bloc represents the larges global economy (18tr GDP). It should be the US forced to accept EU regulations to participate in the EU economy, not the other way around.

<comment><USER27> The US economy is about $1.8 trillion larger than the EU economy presently.

The EU economy is roughly $15.7 trillion (€14.3 trillion), and hasn't grown in seven years. During that time, the US retook the lead in size and added around ~$2.5 trillion to its GDP. The dollar run in the prior year has also lifted the value of the US economy at the expense of the EU economy, by about ~13%.

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

<comment><USER26> thanks for updating my outdated data :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > EU regulations would have banned 31 pesticides containing endocrine > disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that have been linked to testicular cancer and > male infertility.

Obvious criticism of sweeping trade treaties aside, this is another blatant case where the health and well-being of males takes a back seat to political considerations.

I'll bet my bottom dollar that if these chemicals caused, say, ovarian cancer, Governments on both sides of the Atlantic would be racing to ban them and get political brownie points.

</comment><comment><USER29> _Just after the official launch of the TTIP negotiations on 13 June 2013, a US business delegation visited EU officials to demand that the proposed regulations governing EDCs should be thrown out in favour of a further "impact study."_

May I please know the names of those scumbags, or at least how can I find out? I want to know more about those brainacs, perhaps place a few phonecalls, express my disgust.

</comment><comment><USER30> And what can be done now?

<comment><USER21> Write to your MEPs.

[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is the EC in charge of the EU? Couldn't they just say no?

<comment><USER32> and they are unelected

<comment><USER33> Neither are Merkel, Cameron, Tsipras and probably about 50% of the heads of government. I doubt there is a country where the Secretary of Defense is elected.

There's nothing wrong with an elected parliament choosing the executive, and the EU actually moved to a more direct election with the 'Spitzenkandidat' system. People still didn't care to vote for the EU parliament.

<comment><USER20> Your comment re Merkel, Cameron et al is a strawman: just because the existing system of parliamentary democracy is deeply flawed, it does not follow that another even less democratic system is acceptable.

You point out that Cameron (for example) is not directly elected as PM. He does however have to be elected to parliament via a democratic vote. Unlike the European Commission, where commissioners have no democratic mandate to speak of and yet they hold immense power.

34% of those eligible voted in the UK European elections (i.e. for the European Parliament). Your comment re people not caring is overly simplistic. People will not vote for a wide variety of reasons. Only one of which is that they "don't care".

Edit: please explain your downvote, so that I may improve my comment or respond.

<comment><USER34> >He does however have to be elected to parliament via a democratic vote. Unlike the European Commission, where commissioners have no democratic mandate to speak of and yet they hold immense power.

You are incorrect. Since the Lisbon treaty at least, the commission is proposed by the council and then has to be voted on by the parliament.

If anything that gives it even more democratic legitimacy than Cameron, as in his case only he himself, not his cabinet is voted on by parliament.

You are of course within your right to criticize the parliamentary democratic system within it self. However a claim that the processes by which the commission is put in place are less democratic than the processes by which Cameron or Merkel came to power are just outright false.

<comment><USER20> @germanier and @babatong No, you are both wrong.

The democratic mandate for EU commissioners is less strong than for directly elected officials.

@matt4077 called out that even Cameron is not elected directly as PM, and that is correct. The problems with the existing parliamentary democracy in the UK are well understood.

So having a "somewhat undemocratically elected official" Cameron, nominate a person for the commission who has not been directly elected _at all_ by the populous, is less democratic because it is one step further removed from direct election.

This is how we have all these "unknown faces" wielding immense power in Brussels - like Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council.

The democratically elected European Parliament then vote for the nominees, but at this point the nominees already have less mandate (for reasons given above) than the members of national parliaments (and the EU parliament). And, I might add, more power.

This is one of the main problems with the EU as a political union. It is a move away from grass-roots democracy towards a centralized monolith that disenfranchises millions and millions of people.

<comment><USER35> You seem to miss that the vote in parliament adds and doesn't remove mandate from the candidates. The MEPs have a very strong opinion on who is a suitable candidate and who isn't. They used their power to refuse candidates and demand others in the past and will do so in the future.

By your standards the European Commission has a mandate that is at least as strong as the one of any European country's government.

<comment><USER20> Not at all.

The question at hand is: do the EU commissioners have a stronger or weaker democratic mandate than national MPs?

When considering this question, the vote in the EU parliament is neither here nor there, because the person being voted for by them has not been directly elected by a single member of the public, possibly ever.

If a person is directly elected by the people he represents, then he has a stronger mandate than another who has not been directly elected. Mandate gets weaker the farther you are from direct election by the people.

<comment><USER35> Comparing commissioners to national members of parliament isn't fair, they are doing completely different jobs.

A member of the European parliament is one degree removed from public vote, just as a member of a national parliament. A European commissioner is two degree removed from the public, just like a European head of government. A minister in most member states is three degrees removed.

If you don't consider the vote in the EP for commissioners as a real vote because they can't pick their own candidate then it's three degrees removed as the candidates are picked by the heads of governments.

In any case I can't see how it's less democratic than the election system of any member state. The commissioners are as far away from the public vote as almost any member of government in the member states.

<comment><USER20> Both national MPs and EU commissioners are public officials who form public policy that affects citizens' lives. In that much they are comparable. Both procedurally and in scope of effect there will be differences of course (commissioners are much more powerful, and therfore should be held to a higher level of scrutiny).

In any case, similarity of jobs is orthogonal to the narrow question - who has the stronger mandate?

Take Person A who via an elected representative would like to effect legislative change in their nation. Who has the stronger mandate to take action?

In other words, which representative would be closer to the truth in saying that "they were acting in Person A's name"?

1\. For the sake of argument, let's take the UK Prime Minister. He is voted for by a party consisting of members of the public via an open process to represent a specific platform; is elected directly by a constituency numbering in the low tens of thousands of people who happen to live in a geographical area of the nation under representation.

Furthermore, the representative is a widely known public figurehead with a well-known platform meaning that although members of the public in other constituencies cannot affect his election to parliament directly, they can affect the amount of power he wields. The election covers 70 million people.

2\. For an EU Commissioner a shortlist of representatives are chosen _in secret_ by a team of people, each of whom is a proxy, elected via a process similar to (1). One of the shortlist is chosen by a vote from members of a directly elected parliament. The election takes into consideration the views of 3/4 billion people.

The EU commissioner shortlist process is secret (and thus open to nefarious influence - go on: tell me this will not happen), the final vote is diluted by the views of an order of magnitude more people, spread over a much greater geographic area (meaning a much wider range of concerns need be taken into consideration), and the commissioner need not have been elected directly by anyone from the population he represents (other than via proxy).

Based on this, it is clear that the representative in scenario (1) has a stronger claim to be said to be acting in the name of Person A than the person elected via process (2).

The EU is hence less democratic than the institutions is is replacing, and is in some sense democratically regressive.

(And this is before any discussion about the differences in the legislative path between Westminster and the EU).

<comment><USER32> I agree. Thank you for the expanded explanation of the reasons behind my above brief comment. I just note in passing with wry bemusement, that my comment that sparked such illuminating discussion apparently deserves only 0 points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> You know, if EU countries were genuinely concerned about their beloved citizens coming into contact with damaging chemicals, they could warn them on the evening news or something.

        Hey there Dear Citizens, these products have been found
        to cause cancer. Please avoid using them, and tell your
        friends to avoid them too!

        Best Regards,
        Your Benevolent, Caring Overlords

Do you think that just _might_ have an effect on the companies producing the toxic crap they force on us?

        "Those naughty companies haven't stopped putting cancer-causing
        chemicals in their products. You should still boycott them."

If they really cared, they could just keep informing the citizenry until they were safe.

<comment><USER37> Uh-huh, right, because EU governments have editorial control of the evening news, and also have bigger marketing budgets than the companies producing such chemicals.

Sure.

 _If they really cared, they could just keep informing the citizenry until they were safe._

No, if they really cared they would ban or strictly regulate the use of such chemicals.

<comment><USER36> > _Uh-huh, right, because EU governments have editorial control of the evening > news_

Well yeah, they largely do: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98)

But even if they didn't, surely news organizations would co-operate for a noble cause, yes?

> _No, if they really cared they would ban or strictly regulate the use of > such chemicals._

Sure, and if they _really cared_ , they could do that even despite the TTIP, or they could reject or re-negotiate the TTIP. There's no way around that, regardless of whether you trust that governments are operating with _our_ best interests at heart.

<comment><USER37> > But even if they didn't, surely news organizations would co-operate for a > noble cause, yes?

As privately run corporations, news organizations go where the money is and I trust them even less than I trust the government. The number of _ignoble_ causes they have cooperated on in the recent past leaves them with a very large credibility gap in my mind.

And while the government is not perfect, at least I live in a country where lobbying (aka bribery) is no where near as institutionalised and prevalent as you see in the U.S.

So while my government might not always have _my_ best interests at heart, they are definitely more concerned and more trustworthy than a news organisation.

<comment><USER38> Didn't the 911 conspiracy theory video link make you think that maybe it's not worth speaking to silly goose?

<comment><USER37> To be honest, I didn't even click through to the video.

Your point has been noted.

<comment><USER36> He didn't have a point. He just signaled that he can't think independently.

The video is a summary of _what we were told happened_ , through the mainstream media. The story is _absurd_ , which means _it 's not actually true_! That, in turn, means that there was, in fact, a conspiracy!

Here's a few videos of an invisible plane hitting a building, which then collapses seemingly on its own: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWorDrTC0Qg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWorDrTC0Qg) .. but it wasn't on its own, of course, because an invisible plane hit it!

Feel free to start thinking for yourself any time now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I hate to say this, and I don't think it's justified, but that's the kind of stuff al-qaeda would fight against.

Someday having anti-american opinions might equate with being a terrorist.

<comment><USER15> Someday! Funny that you should say this but David Cameron wants us to never be left alone by the state and anti terror laws are regularly used against people who are not terrorists. The police are being militarised and the human rights act is being removed from law here in the UK. Someday looks like tomorrow to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Opening up trade is bad by default... to those that benefit from the barriers that are in place. I am always suspicious of a lot of emotive campaigning in response to trade agreements that opens up trade.

<comment><USER41> Did you by chance read the article? This has little to do with opening up trade and much to do with providing ridiculous amount of power to any major corporation.

EDIT:

Suppose I'm a producer of bottled water from Germany. I bottle a lot of water in California. The Californians vote to move to heavy water rationing and regulation due to the threat of continuous draught. This hurts my business, so should I be allowed, as a corporation, to sue the state of California, have any possible trials and hearings within a closed courtroom and possibly overrule the vote?

<comment><USER42> Agree, the motivation of all this is, at least, worrisome.

You should be allowed, as a corporation, to sue the state of California... in California. But this is not what we are talking about here.

We are talking about the creation of new special courtrooms above the laws of California, staffed by people that worked for corporations and when they left the job are going to work for corporations again.

If this is not worrisome, you tell me what it is.</comment></comment></comment>


Who's (Still) Hiring? - <AUTHOR> https://www.levels.fyi/still-hiring/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for this. This could be really useful.</comment>


Meet the gaming headset that "overclocks" your brain by electrocuting it - <AUTHOR> http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/meet-that-gaming-headset-that-overclocks-your-brain-by-electrocuting-it/0118222

<comment><USER2> This scares the hell out of me. The idea of "overclocking" our brains by electrical stimulation is very new and we have no idea of the long-term effects of this. People who are desperate for an edge are the likely market and I suspect they'll be less likely to consider the risks.

Are there side-effects? Is there a small percentage of the population who will react badly? Are there long-term effects? I don't believe we yet know the answer to any of these things.

I'm all for the advance of technology, but this seems wrong.

<comment><USER3> Studies using TDCS for neuroscience research in human subjects are relatively common and current research suggests TDCS is safe. The long-term effects of TDCS are somewhat less well-known, although there are several studies of TDCS for depression that suggest that it is effective and well-tolerated. OTOH, manufacture of TDCS devices for non-clinical purposes is unregulated AFAIK, and a poorly designed device could deliver more current than it claims to.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone else thinks this look somewhat dangerous?</comment>


Ask YC: How does News.YC figure out domains for a story? - <AUTHOR>

Does anybody know how PG/YC figures out the domain name for a story?
Is it as simple as: Take the first occurrence of "/" and then count backwards till the 2nd ".".
Therefore: www.wordpress.com/12345-65758 = wordpress.com john.wordpress.com/12345-65758 = wordpress.com 123.john.wordpress.com/12345-65758 = wordpress.com
<comment></comment><comment> If that is the case, quite a few blogs (wordpress, tumblr, posterous etc...) would only show by the blog hosting service domains (e.g. tumblr.com, posterous.com, wordpress.com etc...)
</comment><comment>=
But this doesn't always seem to be the case: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=592268
Is there white list of domains to count to the 3rd "." ? </comment><comment><USER2> I've only skimmed the arc code, but there is a list of exceptions for domains. The major blogs are on this list.

OK, I checked:

      (= long-domains* '("blogspot" "wordpress" "livejournal" "blogs" "typepad"
                       "weebly" "blog-city"
                       ; "sampasite"  "multiply" "wetpaint" ; let's just try banning
                       "eurekster" "blogsome" "edogo" "blog" "com"))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. This is great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It seems to have changed recently, as it always used to just show domain.tld, cutting off the subdomain even when it was meaningful. I would imagine that it shows the subdomain if it's not www.</comment>


How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist - <AUTHOR> https://www.goodtheorist.science <comment><AUTHOR> I am trying to learning physics at home and want to know how valid is this path? I mean man has a Nobel prize.</comment>