Tesla and SpaceX Share More Than Musk - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/from-software-to-staffers-tesla-and-spacex-share-more-than-musk <comment><USER2> I think the quality of engineering talent at Space X is probably higher. Having lived with and met a couple of Tesla Engineers, they seem to optimize for ability to work insane hours and accept lower salaries. The result is that Tesla does not have as many people from top engineering schools. This probably doesn't apply to early Tesla employees who seems much more qualified.

I'm sure there is a reason for this and it might be a better approach for scaling production.

<comment><USER3> > top engineering schools

That is an elitist conceit that is irrelevant to the actual practice of engineering.

<comment><USER4> It represents kind of mindset. If early on in life(13-14 when grades start to matter)you wanted to excel in education and are willing to go to a top university where you are crushed with workload, it demonstrates a sense of drive and passion. You definitely can have that same drive and passion and go to a very mediocre school, but there are less of you statistically. you may even have more self-discipline since you must go above and beyond you peers, but from a recruiters perspective, when they are looking for top applicants it becomes a statistical game really fast.

<comment><USER5> I completely agree, the guys going to top universities worked hard in school and got good grades. They were high achieving children. They're good at exams. They were _probably_ also relatively smart, and _probably_ also somewhat privileged.

Now, to what extent that translates to "being good at the job you're trying to fill" \- that's the interesting question. It'll generally be relative to the biases of the people doing the interviewing and their personal experiences.

<comment><USER6> Right, that is why companies like google and Facebook who do a ton of research in hiring play such an emphasis on academic achievement, especially in younger employees.

I think saying that being good at achool doesn't make you good at your job is something we say to make ourselves better.

You can't be good at your job if and only if you do well in school, but if you do well in school, especially at tough universities, chances are you will be good at your job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you can send a building into space, land it on a postage stamp floating in an ocean... I have high-confidence you can solve production line scaling challenges.

<comment><USER8> Yes, that's why the Soviet Union's lead on space in the early 60s translated into abundant production of consumer goods. Ladas all over the place.

Making a spacecraft work and making a production line work are completely different problems, and there's little reason to think that an organisation good at one is necessarily good at the other. I'm not saying Tesla WON'T sort out their production difficulties, necessarily, just that it doesn't follow from SpaceX being good at space launch.

<comment><USER9> USSRs problems weren't that they couldn't make production lines work they were extremely good at manufacturing at scale.

The problem was that they were really bad at figuring out what needed to be made and at what amounts because of the worst kind of planned economy you can imagine (take aby soviet era product hammer, clock, lock, radio w/e and you'll see a very peculiar thing a physical price tag embedded on it, if you were a factory you were basically told you are making X now, price, profits and all economic decisions were taken out of your hands).

If anything their problem was that they produced way too much of pretty much everything on a whim.

Additionally there was all the wrong kinds of competition in which the establishment was the selective force rather than the market.

These aren't the problems Tesla is facing.

<comment><USER10> They also had problems enforcing quality requirements across different organizations. Aside from the military, it was impossible for a downstream organization to reject the output of an upstream supplier for low quality or non-conformance to spec. Hence each organization was incentivize to produce at as low a quality and at as cheap an interpretation of the central plan as possible, practical usefulness be damned.

Hence not just producing goods unsuitable to demands, but also shoddy build quality for anything that wasn't military supplies.

<comment><USER9> That was an outcome of having "factories" rather than companies you could have be making razor blades on Tuesday and radios on Friday.

Employment was also non selective you went to school, got your engineering degree did your thesis on jet engine blades and then sent to a factory across the country making mailboxes

Many of the design decisions of Soviet era engineering are becuase of these conditions stuff was designed with high tolerances because it will likely be produced on repurposed tooling not design for it by people who'll be trained every 2 weeks to make something else.

<comment><USER11> Which, as crazy as it sounds resulted in some products that were extremely durable _because_ of the huge tolerances allowed for in the design.

<comment><USER12> This isn't unique to the USSR however. There are similar weapons in the US arsenal (M2 Browning for example) that are so well designed that is still in service 84 years after initial introduction.

Back when engineers had to use slide rules, and metallurgy wasn't as sophisticated, designers had to over-engineer machinery (and buildings, and bridges).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My uncle, being in Mitsubishi car manufacturing, he is specifically responsible for sheet metal and paneling. Heard him mentioned ways for non- destructive damage detection, with Ultrasound, X-ray, and good'ol knock-and- listen being the prominent choices, I am quite surprised to hear Tesla needing to call in rocket scientists. I guess it must've be that specific context that prevented them seeing the solution.

<comment><USER14> It's marketing. "Tesla, made by rocket scientists" is the message they want to implant. Musk does a lot of that kind of thing, like the mock 3D gesture controlled CAD rig [1], or the Jetsons manned rocket [2].

It's smart and good salesmanship: Figure out the coolest announcement you could make, then work backwards from there and make it happen.

[1]: [https://venturebeat.com/2013/09/06/this-is-how-elon-musk- des...](https://venturebeat.com/2013/09/06/this-is-how-elon-musk-designs- rocket-in-immersive-3d-virtual-reality/) [2]: [https://www.engadget.com/2015/09/11/spacex-crew-dragon- first...](https://www.engadget.com/2015/09/11/spacex-crew-dragon-first- look/#/)

<comment><USER13> I understand the line of reasoning you presented. It reminds me of Stephen Covey's 2nd habit: begin with the end in mind.

Now to me personally this incident docked some points off of Tesla. I guess it is not the end they meant to justify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if all of Musk's enterprises (all of which seem in some way synergistic) will be formally grouped together a la an "Alphabet".

What are the pros/cons of doing this from a financial/legal/organizational perspective?

<comment><USER16> A company that is similar in practice is the giant Samsung. They make electronics, military equipment, ships, missiles, medical equipment, etc... they even make some basic technology for space rockets and cruise missiles. The only thing they don't or can't make is the stage 1 launch system which the US prohibits them from developing and they instead purchase it from Russia.

The Samsung family are geniuses at running complex operations, but their basic operations are heavily assisted by other companies and people from other nations.

Musk on the otherhand is kind of like the Trump of America's advanced technology industry with the illusion of a heavy liberal bent. His focus is on more of a "white" company, being South American and having escaped from the abolition of Apartheid, he fits in well with what the majority of Americans are looking for. However, the expectation of him being a "white US" friendly operation prevents him from adequately recruiting the needed personnel to run a conglomerate.

edit: I understand that some of you are finding it difficult to process how Musk can run companies that appear so attractive, yet ignore its cultural and political structure. It doesn't matter economically. Economically, all that matters is what you perceive of his image and thereby the company(s) whose image you believe-in from what you think you understand of Musk.

What works in the US and Europe is to develop a latent "white supremacist" image with a strong undertone, without any direct overtures. The only difference between Western liberalism/democracy/etc... and Western Fascism/Racism/Consveratism etc... is how the basis and execution of this idea of supremacy is viewed and communicated.

<comment><USER17> I'm gonna need some more clarification on this white company stuff. Those are big claims I've never heard before

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm as big a fan as the next guy, but did anyone find the breathless tone progressively harder to tolerate? Whatever happened to just stating the facts.

<comment><USER19> I'm kind of of the philosophy that you aught to train yourself to extract the facts on your own. You're unlikely to change the trend and it's a good ability to have in situations other than reading the news, like in conversations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I see Tesla, SpaceX, Boring, Solar companies as being quite synergistic over the medium term...and especially in application in space.

<comment><USER21> Going to need some pretty advanced AI to prefab human living spaces and life support as well. Not only would 480k ms ping be murder on anyone trying to drive ground vehicles but if you're going to be trying to build deep underground autonomous would probably be easier than laying cable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is largely the product of talent attracting talent more than anything. Having access to capital and connections also helps.

It's not quite a repeatable model for other companies as these business book style articles like to believe.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if this happens between other companies even less related.

Would two companies that did not compete in any way be willing to help each other other out because there CEO's were old-time buddies? Say some chemicals engineers from a big oil company going to help solve a problem faced by a baby food manufacturer?

</comment><comment><USER24> So when I told my daughter the Tesla X is a rocket ship car, I wasn't entirely lying?

</comment><comment><USER25> That crossover really showed up in the interior of the Dragon spacecraft.[1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjSb_b4TtxI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjSb_b4TtxI)

</comment><comment><USER20> Didn't see an example where SpaceX engineers reached out to Tesla. :)

<comment><USER26> The first thing I thought of was the Dragon 2 capsule.

<comment><USER27> Friction stir welding has been mentioned as a technology that was transferred from SpaceX to Tesla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls- Royce_Holdings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Holdings)

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if this happens for Square + Twitter as well.

</comment><comment><USER30> Another portion of meaningless revelations. Just shut up and do your work Tesla , your bragging about trivial stuff is an insult to normal business and engineering</comment>


FreeMind -- free mind mapping software - <AUTHOR> http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page <comment><USER2> Alex, have you been using this? I'm always looking for better tools for laying my thoughts out, but I have yet to find one that feels natural enough to beat a big sheet of paper and a pencil.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I'm currently working on two separate books in this application and a bunch of other things. I've found that it actually lets you have more complex ideas than you would be able to have by starting with an outline (or god forbid just freewriting). The idea is that writing should be about ideas, and words are only there to express your ideas. Because of this it doesn't make sense to start putting pen to paper until you figure out what you believe. And it's a lot easier to figure out what you believe what you can drag and drop pure ideas around instead of mucking around with text.

Concept maps are another tool that lets you do this, but since writing is fundamentally either flat or hierarchical in terms of how you express ideas, I think mindmaps work better. (Concept maps are essentially like thinking in 3D, which becomes a problem when you need to translate your 3D ideas into 2D writing. Also, a lot of concept maps end up with really murky causality, which kind of defeats the whole point which is to clean up your thinking.)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This software is useful for solving big problems, like writing a book or creating a business.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using this to map out ideas for my startup, too...</comment>


Ask HN: Someone has stolen my software and is selling it as their own - <AUTHOR>

I'm a solo entrepreneur with very limited resources. Should I hire a lawyer to send them a cease and desist letter, or should I draft one on my own? <comment><USER2> In addition to the suggestions already given to contact Google / Apple / Microsoft / servers / payment processors etc., here are a couple more tips:

First, many lawyers will be willing to enter into fee arrangements e.g. based on success or with deferred payments. It is worth getting the right lawyer as slightly greater expensive short term may save you a ton more money long term.

Second, preparing a cease and desist letter should not be too timely and therefore costly (particularly if you do the background of getting details of the breaching party and provide clear evidence of the breach etc). It will not require you to take further action if they ignore it (the letter should be sent without prejudice to your rights) but you should consider that if you don't follow-through, they may be emboldened.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> If it is an app, then I'd contact Google/Apple/Microsoft/etc.

If it is desktop software then I'd target the host and try to get it taken down. This might require a lawyer to write up a letter, or you can likely use the DMCA if the host is physically located in the US. If they're located abroad and hosted abroad, this all becomes tricky (since you'll be subject to their local laws, not yours).

I would immediately look at technical solutions to make it more expensive to steal future versions. You cannot make it impossible to steal, all you can do is make it hard enough to not be worth the small profits they'll make off of illegally selling it (these businesses operate on-mass, they don't make a ton each piece of software).

You can also target their payment processor. Just click "buy" until you go to a third party's website and then report the fraud.

</comment><comment><USER4> IANAL but when it comes to something as serious as your livelihood I would definitely get in touch with a lawyer. In my experience most lawyers are happy to sit down and hear your situation and make recommendations for free. At the very least this will help you understand what your options are.

</comment><comment><USER5> What are you expecting the result of the cease and desist to be? Is it likely that they thought they had the right to sell your software?

If it is literally your bits (not a clone), a DMCA request to the host is easier.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you want them to pay attention, then a letter from a lawyer is more impactful.</comment>


Australia's Offshore Cruelty - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/opinion/australias-offshore-cruelty.html <comment><USER2> Australians will take lecture from the New York Times after The USA perfects its record.

This article is full of bias-pushing, including the idea that what happens to the people on Nauru is mysterious or that they are in limbo, or that they are in some type of concentration camp.

The families on Nauru are free to leave and return to their country of origin any time they choose. They are free to participate in the local community and are not behind barbed wire.

The people who have self-harmed have been in contact with the legal industry inside Australia that prospers from their continued presence. These refugee advocates, in full knowledge of the state of the people in Nauru, don't seek to help them but seek to play them as pawns in their deadly game.

The undeniable facts of the matter was that when Australia temporarily relaxed the border protection laws, by the governments own statistics, at least 1,500 men, women and children drowned at sea. Most well known was when a timber fishing boat smashed into rocks in front of news cameras as people drowned.

Since the reinstatement of the laws, the only people who have been harmed are those that have self-harmed.

There is zero doubt that the laws save lives, and crucially, also provide the ability for people to support genuine refugee settlement, such as the processing of 12,000 Syrian refugees, more than the USA is doing, despite the USA having 14x the population of Australia.

The laws have broad support amongst Australian voters, including this voter. The advocates for open borders and a 'let them in' attitude are a small but noisy minority.

Australia still maintains a sizeable immigrant intake every year, drawing on people from around the world.

Frankly, the rest of the world can call me and fellow citizens as many names as they like but border protection is an important task for a Federal government, and I'm totally comfortable with it.

<comment><USER3> They call them refugees but a big point of contention is often they migrate half way across the world and pay for a people smuggler, when 25000 genuine refugees were accepted that didn't try to push their way in. This leaves a black mark against your name and takes away the chance from a genuine refugee that couldn't afford to migrate and pay a smuggler to get asylum.

Can we take more? probably.

Should we let people that can afford to migrate to Indonesia and pay a people smugger to jump the queue get preference? Hell no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I deplore the current policies that treat refugees as criminals. Dutton is engaging in the dog-whistle politics that got the former Prime Minister Abbott elected.

And during the current federal election campaign, the Labor opposition can't be seen as soft compared to the government (and is even claiming some credit for setting up elements of the "offshore processing").

But, I cannot condone restarting the people smuggling trade that puts so many in danger at sea (also in the Med). The bottom line is that we should be targeting the people smugglers, not the people.

<comment><USER5> It's worth noting that many, possibly even most, of these people are not actually refugees.

"refugee" is a rather well defined legal term.

<comment><USER6> Pretty pointless distinction, the issue is their treatment by the Australian government not the environment they're leaving.

<comment><USER7> It is an incredibly important distinction, those found not to be valid are asked to return to their country of origin, how many of the people in these centers have been processed and refuse to leave?

<comment><USER6> Their status is x or it's not. Regardless they must be afforded basic human rights including legal representation that could see their status changed.

<comment><USER7> Legal representation isnt a human right.

[http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human- rights/](http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/)

Additionally I haven't seen anything to suggest that the government is denying them from taking on their own legal council?

<comment><USER6> If you google "australia refugee camps" you will find allegations of rape, abuse, substandard living conditions, lack of medical treatment, indefinite detention and more, denounced by the UN who call it illegal, denounced by Amnesty International who have accused the government of violating ratified rights too. Three people have set themselves on fire to kill themselves, that's not a thing that happens where people are treated humanely.

It's also been made illegal to talk about the conditions of the camp if you work with the guests of the internment camps. That shouldn't even be possible, it's just basic oversight 101.

It's a bit sad that's not a human right yet but that document is a work in progress.

<comment><USER7> Citation needed, but I agree all those things are bad and have nothing to do with the concept of offshore processing, I agree that things should be more transparent but I do not think that would work in the favor of those who are detractors of the scheme. It should also be noted that Saudi Arabia is on the council for human rights with the UN, so I wouldn't hold their opinion very high.

<comment><USER6> You can google this stuff very easily, it's been reported a lot over the last couple of years.

I also posted a few links here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11766158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11766158)

Specific allegations of legal counsel being refused:

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/17/australia- refug...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/17/australia-refugees- legal-sri-lanka)

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/31/legal-aid- denie...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/31/legal-aid-denied- asylum-seekers-arrive-boat)

[http://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2015/oct/18/lawyer...](http://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2015/oct/18/lawyer-for-somali-refugee-raped-on-nauru-says-australia- ignored-her-pleas)

[http://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2016/may/02/widow-...](http://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2016/may/02/widow-of-refugee-who-set-himself-alight-being-kept-in-hotel- and-denied-a-lawyer)

<comment><USER7> Paid for legal counsel has been refused, you said its a human right to have council not to have someone else pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not just limited to refugees, see [http://www.smh.com.au/comment/australia-is- a-bad-neighbour-a...](http://www.smh.com.au/comment/australia-is-a-bad- neighbour-and-we-should-be-better-than- this-20160501-goj6c9.html#ixzz47R1OMtGR)

The attitude and actions against East Timor are especially egregious.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's been endless international accusations this program is illegal and that human rights are being grossly violated. Hopefully there'll be a lovely debate about it in the ICC one day.

[http://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/may/18/australias- indefi...](http://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/may/18/australias-indefinite- detention-of-refugees-illegal-un-rules)

[http://refugeeaction.org/information/how-australia- violates-...](http://refugeeaction.org/information/how-australia-violates- human-rights/)

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-24/australias- immigration...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-24/australias-immigration- policies-violating-international-law/7195432)

</comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly, the company outsourced to run the two off-shore "processing centres" was started by an immigrant from Italy.

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Regional_Processing_Cent...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Regional_Processing_Centre)

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

</comment><comment><USER7> Because more liberal refugee policy is working so great for Europe right now. I have never seen any one who is for refugees/illegal immigrants (queue jumpers) explain how a better system would work, just that the current system is unjust and broken?

<comment><USER11> Refugees and illegal immigrants are _not the same_. Seeking asylum is a legal path to immigration in most countries - because most countries are signatories to international treaties which oblige them to accept requests for asylum by legitimate refugees. It is perfectly logical and sensible to be in favor of a humane asylum system and vehemently opposed to illegal immigration.

<comment><USER7> How do you tell the difference when everyone who comes by boat claims to be a refugee? Lets not forget they catch planes to Indonesia and then board boats, why not claim asylum in Indonesia?

Lets all get on the same page as well, this is how the United Nation defines an asylum seeker:

The United Nations 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees guides national legislation concerning political asylum. Under these agreements, a refugee (or for cases where repressing base means has been applied directly or environmentally to the defoulé refugee) is a person who is outside their own country's territory (or place of habitual residence if stateless) owing to fear of persecution on protected grounds. Protected grounds include race, caste, nationality, religion, political opinions and membership and/or participation in any particular social group or social activities.

Fleeing poor living conditions or a civil war, do not fall under this description.

<comment><USER11> Through a humane, fast, fair asylum request handling process. It is acceptable for the answer to "Can I claim asylum in your country?" to be "No". If that is the case, it's in your - and the asylum seeker's - interests to come to that conclusion as _quickly as possible_.

<comment><USER7> What if that is what is happening and the people in these detention centers just refuse to go home, I have never seen a single article sharing the stories of these refugees showing how they are actually legitimate refugees, just affectionate language aimed at making you feel sorry for them and angry at the government.

<comment><USER11> You've only seen "affectionate language aimed at making you feel sorry for them and angry at the government"? Which internet have you been using?

<comment><USER7> I am talking about the news/journalism, the avenue I would expect to actually drill into the facts, I feel like if there was a human story of a specific group of people who were legitimate Asylum Seekers it would have been written by now, the fact that it hasnt doesnt fill me with confidence.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


One World Trade Center named tallest US building - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/one-world-trade-center-named-tallest-us-building-230809612.html

<comment><USER2> TLDR: It's only the tallest US building if you include the antenna atop 1WTC in the measurement, and disqualify antennas atop many other tall buildings. No technical rationale exists for the unequal treatment.

The World Trade Center tragedy isn't respected by cheating in a penis- measuring contest, and the organization that made this decision should be forever embarrassed and discredited.

<comment><USER3> Poetry should trump technical reasons:

BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and has a soul. Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are poured out again back to the streets, prairies and valleys. It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and out all day that give the building a soul of dreams and thoughts and memories. (Dumped in the sea or fixed in a desert, who would care for the building or speak its name or ask a policeman the way to it?)

Elevators slide on their cables and tubes catch letters and parcels and iron pipes carry gas and water in and sewage out. Wires climb with secrets, carry light and carry words, and tell terrors and profits and loves--curses of men grappling plans of business and questions of women in plots of love.

Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the earth and hold the building to a turning planet. Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and hold together the stone walls and floors.

Hour by hour the hand of the mason and the stuff of the mortar clinch the pieces and parts to the shape an architect voted. Hour by hour the sun and the rain, the air and the rust, and the press of time running into centuries, play on the building inside and out and use it.

Men who sunk the pilings and mixed the mortar are laid in graves where the wind whistles a wild song without words And so are men who strung the wires and fixed the pipes and tubes and those who saw it rise floor by floor. Souls of them all are here, even the hod carrier begging at back doors hundreds of miles away and the brick- layer who went to state's prison for shooting another man while drunk. (One man fell from a girder and broke his neck at the end of a straight plunge--he is here--his soul has gone into the stones of the building.)

On the office doors from tier to tier--hundreds of names and each name standing for a face written across with a dead child, a passionate lover, a driving ambition for a million dollar business or a lobster's ease of life.

Behind the signs on the doors they work and the walls tell nothing from room to room. Ten-dollar-a-week stenographers take letters from corporation officers, lawyers, efficiency engineers, and tons of letters go bundled from the building to all ends of the earth. Smiles and tears of each office girl go into the soul of the building just the same as the master-men who rule the building.

Hands of clocks turn to noon hours and each floor empties its men and women who go away and eat and come back to work. Toward the end of the afternoon all work slackens and all jobs go slower as the people feel day closing on them. One by one the floors are emptied. . . The uniformed elevator men are gone. Pails clang. . . Scrubbers work, talking in foreign tongues. Broom and water and mop clean from the floors human dust and spit, and machine grime of the day. Spelled in electric fire on the roof are words telling miles of houses and people where to buy a thing for money. The sign speaks till midnight.

Darkness on the hallways. Voices echo. Silence holds. . . Watchmen walk slow from floor to floor and try the doors. Revolvers bulge from their hip pockets. . . Steel safes stand in corners. Money is stacked in them. A young watchman leans at a window and sees the lights of barges butting their way across a harbor, nets of red and white lanterns in a railroad yard, and a span of glooms splashed with lines of white and blurs of crosses and clusters over the sleeping city. By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul.

-Carl Sandburg (ironically writing about Chicago)

<comment><USER2> Poetry should trump technical reasons if we're judging a poetry contest. This is not a poetry contest, it is a technical contest.

If you want 1WTC to win a poetry contest, start a _Most Poetic Skyscraper In The United States_ competition, and let's see.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about a series of Haikus? Building size is not poetry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hair is often an artistic expression. Can we start including that in our height measurements? Might help Iman Shumpert:

[http://sinbapointforward.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/iman- sh...](http://sinbapointforward.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/iman-shumpert- knicks-1.jpg?w=600&h=400)

</comment><comment><USER5> Cheating! Its shorter than the Sears Tower without the antenna.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but that was the entire point of the councils decision. The tower on top counts as a core part of the building.</comment></comment>


Warren Buffett on the David Rubenstein Show - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7547XD7QUM <comment><AUTHOR> As someone who has followed Warren Buffett very closely for over ten years (as well as being a shareholder in Berkshire), this interview had some new tidbits of information about him and Berkshire that I hadn't heard before, which is honestly pretty rare these days.

Edit: I posted the wrong URL. Here's the right one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8ANHNU0Fng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8ANHNU0Fng)</comment>


Centaur Unveils Its New Server-Class x86 Core - <AUTHOR> https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/3099/centaur-unveils-its-new-server-class-x86-core-cns-adds-avx-512/ <comment><USER2> CentaurHauls!

I didn't even know they are still around. Still remember my VIA epia mini ITX board with 800 MHz. Must have been around 2004, before Intel tried the same with Atom. At the time AMD and Intel didn't really have anything to offer in that segment, so that was really a great solution for having a small 24/7 machine in your dorm room that's completely silent.

Cool to see they're still going.

<comment><USER3> > At the time AMD and Intel didn't really have anything to offer in that > segment

Didn't AMD have Geode for this segment?

<comment><USER4> Wasn't Geode actually Cyrix?

<comment><USER3> Mostly, but the NX Geode was Athlon based IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related discussion where this link was posted in the comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21789777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21789777)

</comment><comment><USER6> No uop cache is a very strange choice. They way they phrased it "we can meet our _current_ performance goals without it in _this generation_ " just sounds like they didn't manage to get it working in time.

<comment><USER7> That seems to be a very pessimistic interpretation.

Perhaps, they've been evaluating that as an architectural change, but recognize it would be a significant engineering effort. And they can already meet their current performance goals. Thus, they will wait until a future generation, when they cannot meet their _future_ performance goals. In _that future_ generation, they'll implement a uop cache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One aspect of the design that I like is not downclocking when using wide vector operations. That Intel chips cut their frequency if anything is using AVX-512 makes the instruction set practically unusable for general purpose software, since the whole core runs at that reduced frequency (across all processes and threads) whether or not it's doing vector work. Consequently, it only really makes sense to use these operations if you can dedicate a whole clock domain to them and nothing else --- and few systems are set up that way.

<comment><USER9> [deleted]

<comment><USER10> I don't think OP means throttling. AVX frequency scaling imposes different base and turbo in different types of scenarios.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I found out the other day there is a documentary called "The Rise of Centaur" that I haven't had a chance to watch yet but its on my list. [https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Centaur-Glenn- Henry/dp/B01FSZU6F...](https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Centaur-Glenn- Henry/dp/B01FSZU6FK)

Also surprised to see they're still a going concern.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if it'll be more secure than past VIA offerings ( [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/backdoor- mech...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/backdoor-mechanism- discovered-in-via-c3-x86-processors/) ) or Intel with the opaque, non-owner- controlled, and often vulnerable ME.

</comment><comment><USER13> What are we going to do with all these "AI coprocessors" once the AI bubble bursts? Are they at least well documented or flexible enough to be used for more general float crunching?

</comment><comment><USER14> It's hard to imagine how one gains confidence in this kind of product. How does this vendor have the resources to qualify this chip? Intel can already barely qualify theirs. The last seven generations of AMD parts shipped with serious defects that were discovered by customers in the field. Centaur and Via are far smaller. Is it really possible to be scrappy and scrappily produce a bug-free assembly of billions of transistors?

<comment><USER15> Centaur has already built several generations of x86 processors so you need to make a stronger argument than that.

<comment><USER14> Sure but what have they built that's this complicated? The recent AMD flaws have been things like frequency scaling doesn't work (zen). The more features you have, the harder it becomes to validate the product.</comment></comment></comment>


Raw Linux Threads via System Calls - <AUTHOR> http://nullprogram.com/blog/2015/05/15/ <comment><USER2> Very nice writeup!

Idea for improvement: Instead of directly jumping to the supplied function, jump to something that first _calls_ the user-supplied function, and then munmaps stack and syscalls exit.

</comment><comment><USER3> > (notice: a, b, c, d)

Either I am wrong or is the actual order a, c, b, d in x86 (I remember at least the 32bit GPRs being coded in the order EAX, ECX, EBX, EDX)? :D

<comment><USER4> The order is AX CX DX BX SP BP SI DI

<comment><USER5> The reason I've heard for this ordering (or why BX is out of alphabetic order) is that in 16-bit x86, it's the only "splittable" (into BH and BL) register that can be used to access memory, so it was grouped together with the last 4 (which can also be used to access memory) in order to simplify the logic.

<comment><USER4> All the first four registers are splittable and can be used in all addressing modes[1], apart from CISCy instructions like loop and jcx that implicitly use CX (count) register, string operations, xlat, imul etc.

My personal suspicion is that it's something to do with bit ordering. If you reverse the order of bits from LSB to MSB, then BX and CX switch places.

[1] Indexed addressing modes do need to use BX or BP as a base on 8086. Indexed modes are a bit CISCy though, considering they are often used with lea to do non-memory calculations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So you could use this to implement fork without sharing signal handlers and files? Given that the latter two seem like the biggest issue with fork why is - to my knowledge - nobody using this?

<comment><USER7> Numerous people are, though not via raw assembly. You can call clone() via glibc and pass all those same flags; you can also call unshare() from the child process. Take a look at the manpage for clone(), which discusses the difference between the raw syscall and the glibc wrapper. The former works like fork(), so if you use it to spawn a thread rather than a process, you need an assembly wrapper to handle running on a new stack and similar after it returns; the glibc wrapper handles that for you, calling a function pointer you provide:

        /* Prototype for the glibc wrapper function */

        #include <sched.h>

        int clone(int (*fn)(void *), void *child_stack,
                  int flags, void *arg, ...
                  /* pid_t *ptid, struct user_desc *tls, pid_t *ctid */ );

        /* Prototype for the raw system call */

        long clone(unsigned long flags, void *child_stack,
                  void *ptid, void *ctid,
                  struct pt_regs *regs);

clone() of a separate process with the various namespace flags (such as creating new network or filesystem namespaces) forms the basis of all Linux container solutions (including Docker and Rocket). clone() of a thread with unusual namespace flags is less common, but not unheard-of.

<comment><USER8> At least for files, it's also common to just open your files with O_CLOEXEC these days, which (if you're consistent about doing it) protects you in case one of your app's libraries forks, and allows you to avoid dropping down to clone().

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Linux approach is very fast, and convenient for most cases. The only regret I have (had) is that working in that way, it brings some problems like different behavior on signal() versus most POSIX implementations (e.g. signal handlers on a thread not being the main one, etc.). Not really a problem, but a bit annoying when porting UNIX code to Linux.

<comment><USER10> The signal behaviour required for POSIX threads is available by specifying the CLONE_SIGHAND flag to clone(2). This is what the glibc pthreads implementation does.

Linux _did_ once have a pthreads implementation that wasn't POSIX-conforming in these sorts of areas ("LinuxThreads"), but those days are long behind us. NPTL has been the standard for at least 10 years now.

<comment><USER9> Thank you. I'm glad that got fixed! (I dealt with that stuff more than 10 years ago) :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How can the thread free its own stack before calling exit? Doesn't it need a stack to call exit safely?

<comment><USER12> In general yes, but the code in this case appears to be supplying its own version of exit, that just does a SYSCALL instruction. The SYSCALL instruction doesn't need a stack.

<comment><USER11> Is there no risk of an interrupt or a signal happening in between un-mmap'ing and calling exit, that would cause stack pushes?

<comment><USER13> That is a risk, which is why you need to block all signals using the sigprocmask syscall before unmapping your stack.

<comment><USER14> Or you just don't have signal-handling functions. Signals only touch the stack if you handle them via functions. The default signal dispositions all either kill the process or do nothing, so they don't touch the stack.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


pH7Builder: An Open Source Social Dating CMS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pH7Software/pH7-Social-Dating-CMS <comment><USER2> Honest non-loaded question: What is the point of this? Assuming this open- source software and accompanying premium software ([https://ph7cms.com/pro/](https://ph7cms.com/pro/)) exist to meet some demand, why is there demand for more than a handful of dating sites? I would imagine that everyone wanting to get a date online would only try the most popular sites. Why would they try dating services created quickly with this software?

<comment><USER3> _why is there demand for more than a handful of dating sites?_

Dating sites are like programming languages. People have _very_ different ideas about what 'good' means, and often the popular ones are objectively terrible and you can't understand why people use them.

<comment><USER2> But (if I used dating sites) I wouldn't use them for the software, I'd use them because of the people. People use them because other people use them. My confusion is why anyone would use a newly created dating site with initially no people on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Feels like i traveled almost 20 years back in time

<comment><USER5> Really, and some of the killer features:

Hot or Not

Fake Profile Generator

Beautiful Code: Very thoroughly commented about what's happening throughout the PHP code

<comment><USER6> These sites are mostly maintained by webmasters who have a little grasp at programming. This does appeal to dating sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > How Powerful Your Social-Dating App Will Be?

> \- Fake Profile Generator

Just as shady as I expected it to be

<comment><USER8> Many 'dating sites' are scams. This has legitimate uses but this makes it also decidedly a tool for running such scams. Also, lol:

> \- Anti-Scam Tools

ETA: If a good organisation wants to run a dating site, they could use this legitimately. It's not going to force them into a scam, it seems.

Maybe the fake profiles are just for testing purposes.

Just unfortunate marketing copy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A GREAT social networkibg software. Have you launched your social (or dating) webapp?

</comment><comment><USER10> Are people still using the web for dating? I thought mobile was taking all the pie.

<comment><USER11> I've seen users to prefer web-based services because they can use them comfortably from both mobile and desktop.</comment></comment>


Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48380504 <comment><USER2> > "During that six-month period, Facebook removed more than three billion fake > accounts - more than ever before.

More than seven million "hate speech" posts were removed, also a record high."

Any sense of context here? For example, seven million might be a raw record high, but of how many total posts would be far more telling.

Same for fake accounts. Is that rate up? Down? Was there a time when FB wasn't as vigilant (perhaps to inflate its user base figures)? Is there a smoking gun for the SEC here?

<comment><USER3> I suspect a significant number of posts removed for "hate speech" could have been people sharing videos/documents related to the Christchurch terrorist attack. It depends on the definition of a post and whether the BBC interpretted Facebook's message correctly. The number 1.5 million gets thrown around a lot [1]. I also heard the value 4 million, but cannot find the source. If that's true, then I imagine the details of other such attacks were also suppressed.

[1] [https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/24/facebook-christchurch- vi...](https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/24/facebook-christchurch-videos-ai/)

<comment><USER4> I know family members who will report posts between each other as hate speech when they are fighting and calling each other names.

<comment><USER5> And sometimes you see something that is an obvious scam/spam, and you figure it will get reviewed faster if labelled "hate speech".

Just like needing technical support, so you call sales instead.

Or when you say you're going to cancel just so you "unlock" the retention deals.

Such is the MBA league game of modern life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They didn't catch the 3 fake profiles I set up on Facebook. I've not used them for five or more years, but I checked recently and they are still there and still let me log in without so much as a "where you been". They all have obviously fake names and were used only for testing advertising at various times in the past.

<comment><USER7> They did, however, "catch" my Instagram account, which was only used by a human (me).

Since posting is not possible without installing the app, I never posted anything, but I did have a profile picture, followed accounts, and commented on posts.

Then, one day, I tried to log in, and it was gone. Email address not recognized in password reset. No trace of any kind.

So long, Instagram.

<comment><USER8> > Since posting is not possible without installing the app, I never posted > anything

You can post from eg desktop Chrome, without using the app. I routinely do this since I don't like installing FB apps on my phone. I often edit photos on my desktop prior to uploading, so it's just plain convenient.

Sign in on the desktop with Chrome. Go to your default home page (the person body icon). Right mouse click -> inspect page.

At the top, change the page to responsive, and set something like eg 680x680 as the dimensions for the page (you can drag resize to different dimensions). Now reload the page. It will present the standard mobile interface bar at the bottom of the page, including the ability to upload images (the plus icon within a box).

<comment><USER4> Would resizing the window smaller do the same?

<comment><USER9> Haven't tested but moving to resposive might trigger a user agent change.

Can the same be done on FF?

<comment><USER10> Firefox has a mode where you can choose from a dropdown of phone/tablet types, and it will set your user agent and screen size appropriately. I believe it's called "Responsive Design Mode."

<comment><USER9> That worked, thanks.

Dev tools > Responsive Design Mode in the top right, then back on the main page, selected a phone model. I had to reload the page for it to show the phone version of the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I never knew how many fake profiles exist on facebook until I tried to buy a $10 amazon gift card with paypal in one of the groups I was joined. I missed all the red flags. First, the profile was an attractive female with little account activity. Second, when I tried to send the paypal payment it defaulted to PHP currency (Philippines money) even though the seller said they lived in the United States. Third, the account was non-us unverified. Then when the person actually did scam me, they immediately deleted the profile.

Needless to say, that was the last time I trusted random people on facebook.

<comment><USER12> What was this scam?

<comment><USER13> There are groups (on Discord, Facebook) where people sell Amazon gift card codes for less than the value of the gift card. Sometimes they are real codes that have been bought with accounts that have been hacked through email phishing, and sometimes they are completely fake.

<comment><USER14> Yup, buddy had his amazon account banned for using such cards. His gf, who orders 10 things a day from there, and shared the account, was not impressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the months prior to the Google+ shutdown, I took several pulls of the full listing of Communities on the site via sitemaps files. Though not the same level of detail as profiles, this produced interesting results.

The total net number of communities was increasing by about 1 percent per month (80,000 communites added). At the same time, about four thousand communities per day were being removed (unavailable when queried in the 24 hours following the sitemaps pull), or 120,000/mo. Total (gross, not net) new community creation rate was quite high: 200,000/mo.

This continued until new community creation was disabled in February 2019, in advance of the site shutdown. Total communities numbered over 8.1 million at final count.

[https://joindiaspora.com/posts/13767351](https://joindiaspora.com/posts/13767351)

A pretty considerable level of churn.

</comment><comment><USER16> The actual report:

[https://transparency.facebook.com/community-standards- enforc...](https://transparency.facebook.com/community-standards- enforcement#fake-accounts)

Fake accounts are estimated to represent 5% of all monthly active users.

<comment><USER17> Another important excerpt:

"The majority of these accounts were caught within minutes of registration, before they became a part of our monthly active user (MAU) population."

For MUA, recent news said "Facebook now serves 2.37 billion monthly active users". And 5% of that is "only" 120 million.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how I make my inactive account look fake so they will cull it properly...

<comment><USER19> Start a campaign to quit Facebook collectively, and they'll ban you. A first step could be to change your profile picture into a "quit facebook" icon.

<comment><USER14> Any proof this works?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To what degree are advertisers aware that the profiles which see their ads may not be genuine users?

I suspect they either don't know, or have no alternatives.

<comment><USER21> Advertisers simply don´t know. The reason most of them don´t know is because there are virtually no tools available that can distinguish between a real user and a fake user. Only FB can make that assessment with some degree of certainty and even that can´t be trusted. External partners have been given a choice: either advertise at the risk of it being some garbage traffic, or not advertise at all. And for obvious reasons, the latter is what people choose to do.

<comment><USER22> > either advertise at the risk of it being some garbage traffic, or not > advertise at all. And for obvious reasons, the latter is what people choose > to do.

Do you mean "the former"? 'Cause, you know, there are still ads.

<comment><USER21> yes sorry, I had a brain fart when I wrote that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I haven't got a Facebook account. If I did set one up it would probably be with a fake identity. I've sometimes been tempted because it would help with signing up in lots of other places. But Facebook (or Gavin as the Swype on my phone keeps calling it!) would probably figure out who I was anyway. And the thought of that creeps me out.

</comment><comment><USER24> Holy moly! I thought FB only had that many users to begin with. When FB announces user counts I assume they include bots to bolster the numbers and only a few years back the number was ~1 billion??

<comment><USER25> You might be confusing their reported numbers with total inactive accounts. They regularly report their Monthly Active Users which have been >1B recently.

<comment><USER9> I was confused in the same way and thought the 2B+ accounts figure usually reported was total accounts.

So how many accounts, active or inactive, bots or humans, are there in total?

<comment><USER25> Don't think they publicly reveal this as I'm not sure it's relevant or important to investors/advertisers.

<comment><USER14> It is very relevant. It just looks very bad when you see the actual numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well fortunately they didn't catch my account. And I'm happy they didn't. My fake account allows me to:

1\. Login to websites that I don't want to share my actual contacts to but just my real name (my fake account has my real name and my real account a fake-ish name so that I can't be Googled too easily).

2\. Disable that annoying wall by not having a lot of friends.

3\. Be part of meaningful groups (only 1 so far), because my friends know that I have this fake account with a real name.

4\. Amazing account for demo purposes when I was working at a coding school.

5\. My fake account is setup on auto login on my primary browser, so if I type "fa" and press enter, I feel bored by the empty wall and very tiny friends list, instead of engaged. My main account is auto-logged in to messenger, so that's where I go now.

<comment><USER23> I'd be betting that they are going after huge blocks of fake accounts that they can link together somehow. Someone like you with a single fake account, they'll live with. They probably know that's so and so's other account. He likes to use that one on his PC. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The CNN interview that aired today with some FB exec on this issue was such a cringe-worthy disaster. Could not answer why they made the decision to delete these profiles but would not delete a fake video of Pelosi slowed down meant to make her look drunk or stupid. It was wild.

</comment><comment><USER28> Did fb refund all of the ad money spend on these accounts? Let me guess: No.

</comment><comment><USER29> 0.02% of content viewed is terrorist propaganda or child sexual abuse. Multiply that by 100 pieces of content per day, and 365 days per year and you get 7 pieces of terrorist propaganda and child sex abuse per year. I wonder how focused it is on specific individuals or if it's broadly random. I also wonder if rates of terrorist propaganda are much higher among individuals the propaganda is trying to target.

Edit: that is, the base rate of 2 / 10000 pieces of content being terrorist propaganda is perhaps 0 / 10000 for 99% of users and 200 / 10000 for 1% of users.

</comment><comment><USER30> Facebook has laughably weak moderation.

Twitter, despite having stricter moderation (which seldom seems to result in consequences), seems to have an even bigger problem. An election in a certain country (I'm wary of even mentioning the name of that country, lest I be bombarded) exposed a huge army of dubious accounts shutting down dissent.

In another country, a network of Twitter bots attempted to start a race war.

Then there are the 100k+ follower accounts that seem to get away with blatant incitement and rule-breaking, and Twitter is too afraid of a backlash to shut them down, even when they admit to having multiple admins (something that should disqualify them from the blue checkmark).

WhatsApp seems to be an even more pernicious vector of viral garbage...why it doesn't disable forwarding entirely (or forwarding to groups) remains a mystery.

It isn't an SV phenomenon: in another recent election, WeChat was used to spread fake electoral propaganda.

It may be time, for the sake of democracy, and stability in the world to "de- platform" the platforms entirely. The other option would be for remorseful founders to allow them to be swamped with spam (it might provide plausible deniability to shareholders), and be killed off that way.

<comment><USER31> Moderation is an extremely hard problem to deal with well. Have you ever attempted to manage a community?

<comment><USER32> There are over two billion people on there. How about paying their users for finding and reporting content? A reputation system to find and pay trustworthy people to clean up. Thereby delegating the task back to the scale where it belongs, some money and incentives too.

<comment><USER33> I've been thinking about a online bounty hunter service to do exactly this.

Next step - how to prevent Sybil accounts created by the bounty hunters from generating new mal-content on an industrial scale for bounty hunters to identify for reward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> During the recent Australian election there were a number of Facebook advertisements by political figures which were completely false e.g. Labor party imposing a death tax. And given that the election result was pretty close it could've easily have made a difference.

So I couldn't care less whether Facebook culled 3 billion profiles or not. What I need is for Facebook to make the hard choice and stop allowing political advertising on their platform. It's almost single handedly undermining democracy around the world.

<comment><USER35> Even without political advertising, the amount of fake news spread in Groups in the form of memes and images is absolutely fracking staggering.

If you go through the facebook feed of a conservative facebook user in their 50s+, you quite literally will see all lies and propaganda, and nothing real (for one ex: see the horribly faked Nancy Pelosi video that spread like wildfire yesterday, despite it's obvious fakeness). I'm not being hyperbolic, it's literally all "fake news". It's a completely shocking problem to have but the current state of politics is that there are a lot of people whose media diet consists of mainly of fake facebook group posts.

There is no viable solution either. If you democratize the printing press/mass media so far that every single person can print whatever they want whenever they want to, you will get this race to the bottom where absolute bullshit beats out hard truths every time. Lies getting around the world before the truth is out the door and all that. (Also the reality that this is clickbait x 1000, it's not a business picking articles that drive revenue, it's bad political actors picking stories that drive unrest).

Facebook isn't salvageable. It's destroying democracy around the world and there is nothing that can be done to fix it. I see not just correlation but causation between the rise of facebook and the rise of the fake news fueled far-right that is destroying modern democracy around the world.

(And it's no surprise that with each declassified DoJ report, we learn of yet- another-nation-state running these fake news groups with the explicit intention to subvert democracy and increase civil unrest).

Please delete Facebook before it's too late.

<comment><USER36> >> If you go through the facebook feed of a conservative facebook user in their 50s+, you quite literally will see all lies and propaganda,

There are no lies or fake memes for the left?

<comment><USER35> I didn't say that, but in order to prevent a "whatabout" or "false equivalence" attack, I will state up front: Conservatives are more likely to create, spread and fall for fake news than liberals.

[https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586)

"Conservatives were more likely to share articles from fake news domains, which in 2016 were largely pro-Trump in orientation, than liberals or moderates"

We can speculate as to why. In my opinion, anti-intellectualism is far more virulent on the right than left. Nearly every single left-leaning politician is pro-science and accepts the scientific consensus on a broad range of issues. Conversely, most conservative politicians are anti-science, reject scientific consensus on a broad array of subjects, and consistently parrot mythology in its place. In fact it has become extremely common for conservatives to dislike and distrust higher education, academia, and research all together. It is a common trope in conservative media to attack scientific research as "pointless" and "expensive" and to use religious leaders to discuss intellectual or scientific topics.

Any ideology which preaches anti-intellectualism and mythology over science, evidence, etc, is necessarily more vulnerable to being co-opted in other evidenceless subjects.

<comment><USER37> There is plenty of anti-science thinking in certain camps of the left as well.

Phone radiation, GMOs, nuclear power, dietary trends, mushrooms are conscious, the list of foo is pretty long if you look. Along with the anti-math, anti- logic, anti-historical evidence view of economics.

But I don't disagree there is a fair amount of right wing kookage spread about. Perhaps more than it's left wing counterpart.

For a long time I didn't really believe the "right wing" fake news thing was real. I'd never actually seen it. Then I visited my father in law who breathlessly informed us at dinner Obama was going to jail as they had proved his birth certificate was fake! Curious I looked at his facebook feed and almost fell over, it was almost all fake news right wing straight out of a parallel universe and really obviously nonsense for the most part. I don't know where he even found that stuff. So ya, it does happen. And I say that as a person who is very much not a leftist (nor a facebook user).

For whatever it's worth, I like to think of myself as a member of the "do what makes sense party". But we have few members and no groundswell and no formal organization it appears. Sadly.

<comment><USER38> Being anti-nuclear doesn't mean you're anti-science, nor does questioning the value/cost/results of GMO foods.

<comment><USER39> Indeed not, but I think maybe that's the point. There are lots of cases where you can disagree with the scientific consensus without being "anti-science", whatever that means.

Basically all scientific or logical analysis about power generation yields a pro-nuclear conclusion and thus anti-nuclear campaigners tend to make arguments about priorities rather than claim their opponents are anti-science; they argue the risks are underestimated, the costs of waste are too high etc.

As for GMO foods, again, the scientific consensus is there are no health problems with them, which is why the anti-GMO argument tends to be of the form "but what if they're just so super long term problems that we haven't seen them yet" (a.k.a. the EU's precautionary principle on blocking GMO foods from competing with EU farmers).

Look at it the other way around - lots of climate change skeptics make deeply scientific arguments, typically pointing out errors or mistakes in papers, cases of previous predictions that turned out to be false and so on. That doesn't make them anti-science, it arguably makes them campaigners for better science.

<comment><USER38> > Basically all scientific or logical analysis about power generation yields a > pro-nuclear conclusion

What's the scientific analysis that says power plants have on average cost a metric fuck ton more to clean up than was ever expected or planned for, or that there is still no effective plan to get rid of the waste they produce?

See this is my point. I can admit that _some_ scientists are no doubt pro- nuclear, and pro-GMO.

But you apparently can't admit that there are scientists who don't believe one or both of those things is net positive.

<comment><USER39> Remember that fossil fuel burning power plants also generate a ton of waste and nobody has a realistic plan to clean that up either (beyond CO2 extraction or geo-engineering, neither of which are more plausible than nuclear waste containment).

It's easy to argue nuclear power sucks when compared to a theoretical ideal. When compared to forms of power that dump their problematic waste into the atmosphere where it's nearly impossible to get back, having the nasty stuff conveniently packed into cylinders, ready for dropping into the continental shelf, doesn't seem like such a bad deal.

<comment><USER38> > when compared to a theoretical ideal.

Renewable energy is not theoretical.

> nasty stuff conveniently packed into cylinders, ready for dropping into the > continental shelf

Your plan for highly radioactive waste is to put it in canisters and drop them into the ocean.. sure, what could possibly go wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is a joke. The punchline is everybody's fake on social media.

<comment><USER41> true, doesn't make it any better though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> _" Facebook removed more than three billion fake accounts - more than ever before."_

Oy. How do you justify letting this issue fester that long / to that degree? How is that not an unprecedented mea culpa?

Edit: I'll risk the HN "downvoting not discussed mantra" for this. BILLIONS of active fake accounts is a core competency failure, full stop. World population is single digit billions...give me a break.

<comment><USER43> Facebook could be ~100% accurate at separating real and fake accounts if they exchanged data with the government to make sure that every user had a passport / social security number / other equivalent associated with their account. Is that the world we want to live in?

<comment><USER44> That would only be 100% accurate if the government approved ID was perfectly secure, and no one ever leaked databases of those personal details. Tens of millions of passport and social security numbers are already out in the wild.

<comment><USER45> How to make it secure? Estonian and Scandinavian countries have chip on them that a computer can read, but it's for doing gov and banking stuff. You can always fake a photo, they don't have much to compare it against to. At some point FB started to verify profiles actively, I didn't use my own name or took part of any political/marketing mumbo jumbo, but I quickly photoshopped an id with the fake name using a sample ID as a blueprint and the human moderator left me alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Facebook = AOL + geocities. Long live Search.</comment>


Coca-Cola, U.S. State Dept to use blockchain to combat forced labor - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blockchain-coca-cola-labor/coca-cola-u-s-state-dept-to-use-blockchain-to-combat-forced-labor-idUSKCN1GS2PY <comment><USER2> I read the article, and I'm still wondering: How is a blockchain useful for this application?</comment>


Why use learning when you can fit? - <AUTHOR> http://databasearchitects.blogspot.com/2019/05/why-use-learning-when-you-can-fit.html <comment><USER2> I don't get this article? Fitting the polynomial is learning, right? (fancy machine learning methods are also not much more than curve fitting)

</comment><comment><USER3> This question makes no sense to me. Isn't learning a form of fitting?

<comment><USER4> In machine learning, a learned model should be able to generalize to unseen data. Curve fitting does not have that characteristic.

<comment><USER5> as long as you're interpolating, it should do just fine.

if you're extrapolating, it'll depend on whether you've assumed the right boundary conditions, but that's true for any model

<comment><USER3> The difference between interpolation and extrapolation is not that relevant in dimensions higher than 1.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: SMS alert you want? - <AUTHOR>

I made a small app for myself with SMS alerts. I'd like to make more apps like this.<p>Is there anything that you'd like to receive an SMS alert for that you're currently not able to? <comment><USER2> I'm sure it exists, but SMS of specific twitter keywords in a stream. Example, the police here tweet about accidents/delays on the roads, and I don't want every one of their tweets, but it would be nice to only get the ones that are for road xyz

</comment><comment><USER3> Not since the advent of twilio.com.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would like to know when friends are online, for example on skype.</comment>


Hey Twitter, buy Embedly - <AUTHOR> http://sachin.posterous.com/embedly-parrotfish-extension

<comment><USER2> A bit off topic, but it's nice to see someone advocating experience over pageviews!

An example of what not to do: I've been using svpply.com lately, and they recently changed the site so that the products in the "stream" aren't linked directly to the source. You have to click through to a detail page, and then click a link to the source. Totally killed the site for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is a natural extension from the content integration already on Twitter in the slide-out panel when there's a link to a supported pic/video hosting service like twitpic or Instagram. It does present some challenges such as:

1) Does twitter have the right to reproduce, even in a preview form, on their website. Sites like the NYTimes and other services with a paywall have a variety of distribution agreements on who can or can't see the content, would Twitter have to strike a similar deal?

2) A cottage industry of twitter/social-media analytics services rely on link shorteners and URL tagging to help clients/businesses track the engagement with their post and how many users get to their site. If the content is being consumed on Twitter, would you still be able to track it and more importantly, does it have the same value?

3) The site loses the pageview and may rely heavily on advertising to support the content.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use this for www.yourpane.com (to show links your friends sent you in a pane), and it works fantastically well. No more having to open five youtube windows to view five links, you just watch them on one page.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just a question:

Instead of buying, what stops somebody from submitting an url for each of emebed.ly's supported service, grabbing and analyzing the results, and then offering or using the same service?

<comment><USER6> Lawyers</comment></comment>


Amazon Boss Taught Me When To Quit - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2012/06/amazon-boss-taught-me-when-to-quit/

<comment><USER2> The version of this story appearing directly on the author's (Chris Harvey's) blog has been submitted and discussed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4160550></comment>


A startup is testing a subscription model for search engines - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/a-startup-is-testing-the-subscription-model-for-search-engines/ <comment><USER2> Count me out. I'm willing to pay for things that improve my life, but if anything, this is likely to be a downgrade in terms of user experience.

Google benefits from the fact that they have billions of users. The nominal cost of their overhead per user is very very low. A company like this is gonna struggle to get even a million users, let alone billions. So even if they charge, it's unlikely they can keep up with Google's infrastructure.

I care about my privacy a little, but less than the cost of a subscription + added hassle / downgraded user experience. I'm betting the the market of people for whom the tradeoff is worthwhile is low enough thast this company won't take off. But I support competition, so I hope i'm wrong.

<comment><USER3> It's actually using Bing under the hood so it doesn't need to get to Google- size on its own to get similar quality from user interactions.

If I had to bet, Neeva will go after business users and combine Bing's index of the public web with their index of internal business data to make a catered experience that's subscription worthy.

I mean it kind of makes sense. How is there not currently a company offering businesses a way to circumvent Google's ad machine and have customizable scope and indexes?

<comment><USER4> _> If I had to bet, Neeva will go after business users and combine Bing's index of the public web with their index of internal business data to make a catered experience that's subscription worthy._

Completely agree. There is much easier money to be made in a B2B premium search app than in the consumer space.

It is also a common path for search companies; for example FAROO went that direction.

<comment><USER5> Yep - there are already major players in that space: [https://www.algolia.com/](https://www.algolia.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm very interested in the idea, but I don't like:

"Like Neeva, Startpage sources search results externally—in its case, directly from Google"

I've been having a lot of trouble with Google search results lately. They seem to be getting worse all the time. I'd love to join a new search engine, but if the limit of their search quality is Google, I just can't get that excited.

I'd prefer to start using something that is 80% of the quality of Google and getting better, than something that is fixed to Google.

<comment><USER7> To me this isn't a problem with Google, but with SEO. Gaming the system to get a better ranking is an entire industry now, and that won't stop no matter which engine is the most popular.

<comment><USER6> One solution would be a good, but unpopular search engine. SEO wouldn't optimize for it because the returns wouldn't be there, and I could use it and get good results, because it would be good.

I can imagine paying a subscription to use it is one way to have a good and unpopular search engine.

<comment><USER8> Eventually that too will be subject to eternal September. You can't win, unless you make your own and never share it.

<comment><USER9> keep the secret!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems like some pretty good reporting-- I was particularly interested by the sections noting the difference between the marketing speech that is featured heavily on the site and the actual language used in the privacy policy and ToS.

Those kind of discrepancies really make it tough for me to get interested in a company, because despite the best intentions of people, function often follows form. If an organization doesn't take their mission seriously enough to modify their corporate structure to fundamentally align the two (I think a public benefit corporation with reporting requirements is an example of that), then I'm not sure why other people should either.

</comment><comment><USER11> Neeva is interesting. It might be worth having a premium search engine. The first pages of Google and Bing are now almost all ads. Often, badly chosen ads. Some people may pay $10 a month not to see that. But it's a niche. I don't see how this gets big. Maybe if it was sold to Comcast or AT&T and came bundled with Internet connectivity.

Anybody know anyone over at Neeva? I'd like to talk to them.

</comment><comment><USER4> It makes no sense that this article writes off DuckDuckGo as a similar offering and compares it more to Startpage.

DDG and Neeva are both based on Bing, and both integrate (or plan to integrate) many other search sources. Startpage only provides Google results supplemented by Wikipedia for some queries.

The one advantage Neeva might have is that it integrates personal services as search sources (like gmail and dropbox). Personally that has never been a pain point for me though.

A few months back I started working on a search engine (in my sig) based on the hypothesis that a better search engine can be built by curating vertical specific sources to provide higher relevance for niche search topics. I truly believe a federated data source search engine will be the future, but time will tell.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like this user-centric vision of the web where users are customers. We're trained so deeply that ad supported is free, when really it's just a deferment of costs. Companies always get you by adding marketing costs into their costs. Once Neeva cleans up their data policies, I'm al in with them.

</comment><comment><USER13> > If you want the most impact to help the most people with privacy, you have > to be free -- DDG CEO

This is true, but only relevant if your goal is to help the _most_ people.

Looking at companies like Superhuman (premium email client for business executives and investors), you can build a company that focusses on power users.

If a search engine were to be optimized for Programers, Product Managers, Team Leads, Directors, etc it could improve lot's of people's work.

</comment><comment><USER14> > However, DuckDuckGo may not be the most relevant comparison to Neeva. The > new search engine is planned to be a second-tier provider, with public > results sourced from Bing, Weather.com, Intrinio, and Apple.

DDG is also a second-tier provider that is sourcing its results from Bing.

> We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which > we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and > none from Google).

Source: [https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help- pages/results/so...](https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help- pages/results/sources/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I would like to pay for web search, but per usage. I hate subscriptions because they are a pain to keep track of and I end up paying for stuff I don't use, like Netflix.

<comment><USER16> Per usage pricing will result in misaligned incentives. It will be in the interest of the search engine provider to provide worse results, so you have to make multiple searches and some trial and errors with keywords until you get the result you were looking for.

In the end, the company notices that when they make improvements to their algorithms, their revenue goes down. So they stop making improvements.

<comment><USER17> Counterpoint: If they gave me terrible results I would just go to another service.

If it's pay-per-search there is zero friction for me to go to another provider.

It's probably not a practical charging mechanism, but it's an interesting thought. I also don't believe a monthly charging subscription is the right model but this is a tough one to get right.

<comment><USER16> > _Counterpoint: If they gave me terrible results I would just go to another > service._

There would be an optimum point where the results are good enough that people won't leave the service en masse, but bad enough that they spend way more than necessary on it. The optimum point is where the profits will be maximized for the search provider. Thanks to the advances is AI/ML/Data Science methods and tools, a savvy company will find this point and stays there until the point moves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Like Neeva, Startpage sources search results externally—in its case, > directly from Google. Unlike Neeva, Startpage still shows Google ads and > collects a cut of the proceeds

anyone know how this works? can any startup just proxy Google like that, or do you need to be some sort of official search partner of Google? just curious bc I have often wondered if I myself could attempt a modified search system as a side project.

</comment><comment><USER19> The positioning is confusing, but could be a potential FYI[1] competitor. Their goal is to provide unified search across Dropbox, Google Docs, Google Drive, etc which businesses would happily pay for.

Or perhaps a vertical search engine for B2B...

If it is truly a general B2C search engine play, I think ignoring DDG as a datapoint is a misstep.

[1] [https://usefyi.com/](https://usefyi.com/)

</comment><comment><USER20> The biggest problem with Google currently is: monetization.

Try searching for a commercial term. For example: say you want to buy an OLED TV, and want to see what it looks like wall-mounted. So try "OLED65CXPUA wallmount" in Google, and you're barraged with ads and ads-disguised-as- content. Even the Google Image Search page is littered with ads (both overt and covert).

</comment><comment><USER21> I have this dream of an alternate search engine:

* Aggressively prune bad actors (spammy, zero-value, etc.) with ML.

* I am ok with rated-E only content (no porn, etc).

* Zero ads, I am fine with paying premium subscription price / month.

This dream search engine should have a considerably small index size, thus low operational costs.

</comment><comment><USER22> How it would fit the market with services like DuckDuckGo, Startpage and SearX? All these services provide internet search for free. DuckDuckGo has its own engine, Startpage and SearX are meta-engines, reusing existing services.

<comment><USER23> I hate to be the eleventh person to say this, but it bares repeating if it gets lost: DuckDuckGo primarily uses the Bing index and search engine for most results. There isn't any set of branding that says this plainly, but that's where most results are coming from. Startpage is pretty different because it uses Google under the hood, but I definitely get different results from Google, Startpage, and DuckDuckGo with regular frequency. Whatever the secret sauce is on top matters a lot in terms of presentation. Any engine that puts in effort for a target audience will be able to acquire users.

For me, DuckDuckHack has always returned really awesome results on top of what I consider to be a fairly lackluster set of results for some searches that bing provides. If another provider wanted to step it up with extra sauce on top, I'd be more than happy to try if it makes my day to day better.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the insight, however, would you provide some source, explaining how DuckDuckGo-Bing "hack" is implemented.

> but I definitely get different results from Google, Startpage, and > DuckDuckGo

Different results from Google and Startpage are expected, because Google offers personalized search adjustment. Even if you're not logged in, Google uses Ubercookies and fingerprinting techniques to identify you as a unique user

<comment><USER14> [https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help- pages/results/so...](https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help- pages/results/sources/)

> > We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which > we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and > none from Google).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It would be great if the subscription money went to automatically unlocking pay walled content so we don't have to individually sign up to all these sites we would rather not share our details with.

</comment><comment><USER25> What does this solve that DuckDuckGo hasn't?

</comment><comment><USER26> It may work for enterprises that want to search the web via an API. But for normal people? I extremely doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Count me signed up.

</comment><comment><USER28> Off-topic, but what did ever happen to Cuil?

<comment><USER11> Failed to get another round of funding and shut down very suddenly. Founders were hired by Google to keep them from trying again.

<comment><USER28> Ah. Damn, that's a shame

<comment><USER11> I talked to them. They wanted to undercut Google on cost. If you don't do personalization, running a search engine isn't that expensive. I asked what the business model was. They didn't have a revenue plan. That was a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why would I use this when DuckDuckGo exists?

</comment><comment><USER30> Never in a million years. No matter the price tag. I refuse to be billed for 95 different things in life</comment>


Evolving the Dropbox Brand – Dropbox Design - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dropbox-design/evolving-the-dropbox-brand-9c30e53373a4 <comment><USER2> Personally, I find this to be hideous, like a "worst of 1980's magazines" theme. Twitter has a bunch of people pointing out that it performs poorly on many devices and abuses HTML, among other offenses[1].

Beyond personally, it's absolutely absurd for a major web company to ignore accessibility in 2017. Many of the color variations are low-contrast and will be difficult for people with vision impairments, like low sight and problems with colors.

What an absolute disaster. Dropbox is a utility -- I don't want it to be edgy and novel. I want it to be solid and functional. Imagine if Microsoft Office re-branded this way.

1\. [https://twitter.com/DropboxDesign/status/915249755906727936](https://twitter.com/DropboxDesign/status/915249755906727936)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not really loving the new branding if I'm being honest but I hope it will grow on me.

The [https://dropbox.design](https://dropbox.design) site is terrible, my main gripe being it completely destroys scrolling. The complete mishmash of moving parts also makes it a pain to get into a flow of reading it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I read through it and I still don't even know what the new logo is, or if there is one, or what has changed. Someone got paid for this?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty bad...

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought they were using the new "parametric" font scaling technology but they just swap the fonts at different breakpoints.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not a huge fan, but will keep an open mind</comment>


Alphabet Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2015 Results - <AUTHOR> https://abc.xyz/investor/news/earnings/2015/Q4_google_earnings/index.html <comment><USER2> Interesting note: they just surpassed Apple in market cap, so are now the most valuable (publicly-traded) company in the world. We'll see if it lasts, but it's a notable accomplishment even if not.

<comment><USER3> I'm seeing AAPL at 540 and GOOG at 517, which leaves Apple on top for now. That said its a good report for them.

Interesting note from the Register[1] that according to Oracle's attorneys they earned $31B from Android over 5 years (so call it $6B/year) which is much better than I expected.

[1] [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/21/oracle_java_google_s...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/21/oracle_java_google_spat_latest/)

<comment><USER4> The after-hours trading is what puts GOOG over. Up $38+ as of this comment.</comment></comment></comment>


Tarski's undefinability theorem - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarskis_indefinability_theorem

<comment><USER2> The link you give doesn't work for me - the apostrophe goes missing. Here's an alternative:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_undefinability_theor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_undefinability_theorem)

<comment><USER3> The Right Thing To Do would have been to created a redirect page on WP.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you think it'd be a good idea to fold comment threads? - <AUTHOR>

Lately I've found myself following deep threads of a discussion more and more distracting and/or derailing a conversation. I think folding threads out-of-sight could really improve the readability of the comments section.<p>What do you think? <comment><USER2> Folding threads similarly to how they are done on Slashdot.org would indeed be a good idea.

And better than having paginated comments, as noted here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2132568>

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree, folding comments does improve the readability of the thread. This Chrome extension does exactly that:

[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dibillbafbngeilo...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dibillbafbngeiloehmhhibhjhipeoig)

</comment><comment><USER4> On my laptop, I just scroll through quickly and it isn't a problem. Where this would be useful is on my iPod touch - which often doesn't re-render the contents of the screen when scrolling quickly.

</comment><comment><USER5> I do usually skim over the outter-most comments in busy threads. I don't really mind, as it is, though.</comment>