What the 1949 film Twelve O'Clock High still tells us about air combat - <AUTHOR> https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/twelve-oclock-high-180970369/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me this passage of "The name above the title", Frank Capra's autobiography (a great book everyone should read):

 _I was coming downstairs from Admiral "Bull" Halsey's office. I would have to pass right by Admiral Nimitz. Was he waiting for me? Would be renege on the all-important Special Film Coverage directive I had written for him, and he had signed? Had MacArthur nixed the order to integrate all combat photography? Had the Air Force? The Marines?_

 _I hesitated, then saluted, and walked by him._

 _" Oh, Capra! Can you spare a moment?"_

 _I went limp. "Of course, Admiral."_

 _Behind his desk, his back to me he faced a window that looked out over our sunken warships. "Sit down, please," he said, huskily. "I apologize for calling you in here. It"s just this --this --goddam sonofabitch of a _war _! "._ _His hands clasped and unclasped behind him as he rocked slowly back and forth on his heels. Then, out of the depths of an overwhelming hurt, he cried out: "They cheered me... Three thousand of them... Eighteen-year-olds... Legs gone, faces gone... They cheered me... I sent them there .... They cheered me...."._

 _Then he turned, sat heavily on his chair, and with tears streaming down his face, he beat the table with both fists: "GODDAM SONOFABITCH OF A WAR! GODDAM SONOFABITCH OF A WAR! What am I going to write to their parents? What can anybody write to their parents?..." He grabbed his wet face in both his hands. He was sobbing now. A father weeping for all the sons in the world. "Eighteen- year-olds... kids... boys... three thousand of them... They cheered me... I sent them there... they cheered me... GODDAM SONOFABITCH OF A WAR! goddam sonofa--" His handkerchief was out now. Not once had he looked at me, directly._

 _I sat as if transfixed. Tears had started down my cheeks. The white-thatched adminral blew his nose, composed himself, then looking at me with a shy little smile, he said pleasantly: "Thank you, Capra, Thank you."_

 _He had wanted to share his great pain with another human being -- someone that was not Navy. I rose to my feet, try to mumble something. I couldn 't. So I smiled back and walked out. I had witnessed something rare. Something awesome -- the inside of a tormented human soul._

<comment><USER3> >Had the Air Force?

There was no Air Force in WW2. This is probably an editing error, Capra or biographer likely referring to the USAAF (Army Air Force).

Pedantry Officer concludes report.

<comment><USER4> The USAAF split into a separate military service after the war, but it was still considered a separate unit within the army during the war.

My father was in the Army Air Force during WWII - and he always said he was in the Army Air Force and not the Army. They were also nick named the Air Corps during the war.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've read the article, but I can't seem to answer the question "what does the film still tell us about air combat?". It seems to be more of a history of the movie's production and the people involved.

<comment><USER6> Well, the air combat of that period represents an odd microcosm of behaviors never to be repeated again, by another human civilization. Even if we wanted to fight another war the same way, it wouldn't make sense to even try it.

The trajectory of technology, and the circumstances leading to the qualities of the arms race and adaptive conflict within the period, means it was it's own little golden era of truly curious nightmares.

Riding a piston engine, in an uncompressed cabin, all the way to the stratosphere, all with the intent of using optical telescopes in good weather, so that you can drop kilotons of dumb bombs blessed with prayers that might guide them to a decisive target nestled among civilians?

To learn from that is to arrive at the understanding that the pace of technology must be permitted to trend with a civilization's capacity for its rational utilization.

Moving the progressive sequential improvement of technology at speeds faster than the sophistication of those that might benefit from it can produce a malignancy that backfires, to the harm of all those it could possibly (or even impossibly, in a hypothetical sense) touch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I was in the Navy, they showed us that film as part of leadership training. Our instructors said the portrayal of discipline, leadership, and the burdens of command was perfect. Except for the very end, which they felt was a bad Hollywood ending.

<comment><USER8> Naturally they wouldn't want it seem like it was OK for commanders to "lose it".

<comment><USER7> It wasn't that he "lost it", just they way he did.

<comment><USER8> Ah the style of the time was heavy dramatics. A holdover from the stage where you needed exaggerated expression to make up for the distance of the audience.

Still I didn't find it nearly as bad as other examples from that era. "A Street Car Named Desire" for example takes it to another level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Twelve O 'Clock High_ is a masterclass on running a software project. The higher-ups can see that something is wrong with the team; it's not performing as well as it ought to. The outsider comes in, figures out what the problems are, and fixes them. Not an easy fix, not a quick one, and it takes an awful toll on several people. But the team ends up working well again.

I show this movie to everyone I can. It's full of lessons.

<comment><USER10> No, it's not. Pushing people that hard to finish some ad-supported web site / delivery service is not appropriate. Are you prepared to pay lifetime PTSD benefits?

Which is why we need unions.

<comment><USER9> You're right. Those people weren't working on a software project; they were in a fight for their lives—literally—with an enemy they just barely won against. It's not the same thing at all. But it is worth watching for the depiction of how hard humans can work, together, for a common objective when the ONLY thing that matters is getting through. I can't think of a single major character not damaged, broken, or killed by the end of the movie. I guess it resonated because that's the only kind of environment I've ever worked in. Yay, Lockheed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I haven't seem the film, but I will try to find it.

It's good that some historical remnant - the control tower -remains. In NE Australia, there were a huge number of airfields that many hundreds of B-25s and other aircraft flew out from on missions to distant Pacific islands and back again. There is almost nothing remaining of that history as landing strips became roads or crops were grown over them.

<comment><USER12> It's rare that these airfields have survived in the UK. Beaulieu Heath was an important airfield in WW2, but now it's almost invisible from the ground. Google Maps shows its layout quite clearly still:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-1.5015827,1429m/dat...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-1.5015827,1429m/data=!3m1!1e3)

Worse perhaps is we're graudally losing that sense of history, of courage and sacrifice. I wouldn't want to be jingoistic about it, but I think people are unaware of what the wartime generations went through.

<comment><USER13> > Worse perhaps is we're graudally losing that sense of history, of courage > and sacrifice. I wouldn't want to be jingoistic about it, but I think people > are unaware of what the wartime generations went through.

While it pains me as a ww2 buff to say this, I do think that as a society we have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with WW2.

And, it's not like it ever made sense to turn East Anglia into some kind of WW2 air war museum. After the war, people wanted their farmlands back, and wanted to continue their lives, and they had every right to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anybody interested in an excellent history of the WW II European bombing campaigns should pick up "Bomber Command" by Max Hastings. I covers everything from technology, to strategy, to ethics, and more. Top notch history book.

[https://www.amazon.com/Bomber-Command-Zenith-Military- Classi...](https://www.amazon.com/Bomber-Command-Zenith-Military- Classics/dp/0760345201)

<comment><USER15> Hastings is somewhat partisan on this. I recommend reading him but read others too. Like Solly Zuckerman 'from apes to warlords' or the recent books on P.M.S. Blackett and the birth of Operations Research

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I saw a copy of the novel at a used book sale this month, and was interested to find that one of the authors was Beirne Lay, Jr., whose piece on the Regensburg raid appears in a Library of America volume on reporting WW II. I'm not sure why I didn't put down my 50 cents when I saw it--the next day it was gone.

</comment><comment><USER17> ww2 buff here... whilst relatively accurate, this movie in no way explains why and how the daylight (and night) bombing campaigns over germany almost failed. i would strongly recommend watching this talk by steven blank @ the computer history museum: "the secret history of the silicon valley".

the talk even OPENS with clips from 12 o'clock high! :)

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

TL;DR: it was radar.

<comment><USER18> Hey, as an WW2 buff, do you where I can get a list of ALL the bomber nicknames (Picadilly Lilly, Memphis Belle, etc)? I'm trying to train a neural net on them for generation of new 'authentic' nicknames.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's a nice meditative film review, and a piece of history; but what does it actually tell us about air combat? It tells us that WW2 strategic bombing suffered appalling losses, and that this left the survivors with what we would now call PTSD. Also the lesson of _Catch-22_.

<comment><USER20> Excellent video describing why losses were so high.

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

<comment><USER21> I think that video over emphasizes technical side of things and under- emphasizes that everyone was flying by the seat of their pants. Literally nobody on earth had experience in strategic bombing, it didn't even exist until then. The tactics had to be figured out as they went along.

<comment><USER22> Contemporary accounts suggest that it was an almost intentional ignorance. People were addicted to the idea that heavy-bombers were strategically useful in Europe (when they just flattened civilian parts of cities, all the manufacturing was hardened); and that valiant gunners were doing something useful for their comrades (when data showed that stripping out the turrets + guns + gunners, and flying higher and faster would decrease losses).

Freeman Dyson complains that operational-research was intentionally nobbled in bomber-command, even after great successes had been shown in the navy + coastal command:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLBBI8Wnrfk&index=38&list=PL...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLBBI8Wnrfk&index=38&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzDA6mtmKQEgWfcIu49J4nN)

<comment><USER23> And the technology just wasn't up to snuff either.

The Norden bombsight was a technological marvel. An analog computer to figure out when to drop bombs based on speed, height, wind direction, etc. It worked fine in optimal conditions. But during wartime it wasn't that accurate in practice.

<comment><USER24> I would argue that the primary value of the Norden was as propaganda. The Allies could pretend they were executing surgical bomb strikes rather than just indiscriminately bombing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Never promote your best salesperson - <AUTHOR> http://www.alaisterlow.com/never-promote-your-best-salesperson/

<comment><USER2> Here's an issue at hand: I hear a lot of people complaining at various conferences I attend that they are the best at their job at work, and put in overtime and extra effort, but can't seem to get promoted. They're not getting promoted, obviously, _because_ they're the best. Their company cannot afford to have them leave their current position.

The other side to that, though, is not that they necessarily _want_ to be promoted, they just want more compensation and/or new challenges. A maximum wage for a job isn't acceptable if it's going to drive your best employee out of your office. If you can't promote someone who deserves it, compensate based on skill, not job title. And if Joe is your go-to guy who is a wizard at Java but is bored, try delegating some of his easier work elsewhere (is it _really_ critical to have it tomorrow?) and encourage him to come up with some solutions on his own, to problems _he's_ facing at work.

"Never promote your best person" is a good idea, and certainly it looks like the numbers back it up. But if they want or deserve a promotion, look at the reason why they want or deserve a promotion, and give them more of that.</comment>


Windows 8 will support native mounting of ISO and VHD files - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/uncategorized/94370-windows-8-explorer-will-support-native-mounting-of-iso-and-vhd

<comment><USER2> The sad part is how the microsoft fanbois hype things like this as a great advance when all microsoft is finally doing is including a feature that has been available outside the microsoft world for a very long time. I have been able to natively mount iso files on Linux for as long as I can remember, and it is likely that the other Unix's also had the ability. The OS that was behind, feature wise, was microsoft's, yet instead of being reported as "microsoft finally catches up to the rest of the world" (the truth) it gets spun as something new and amazing.</comment>


How to build an Antifragile career and why we need a national entrepreneur day - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3003416/how-build-antifragile-career

<comment><AUTHOR> "Most of you will fail, disrespected, impoverished, but we are grateful for the risks you are taking and the sacrifices you are making for the sake of the economic growth of the planet and pulling others out of poverty. You are the source of our antifragility. Our nation thanks you."</comment>


Defenders think in lists. Attackers think in graphs - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.technet.com/b/johnla/archive/2015/04/26/defenders-think-in-lists-attackers-think-in-graphs-as-long-as-this-is-true-attackers-win.aspx <comment><USER2> The more I think about this, the less sense it makes. Defenders do not "think in lists" as if the lists represent their network connectivity, defenders keep lists because, like TODO lists, having a "list" of all their priorities helps them enforce them. Odds are that in a competent organization, the list's ordering will be based on the connectivity of the graph, with the critical nodes coming first. Or, at the very least, everyone's going to know which nodes are the critical ones, and given a power-scale graph distribution that's the vast bulk of what there _is_ to know, because there are generally very few critical nodes unless you've gone _way_ out of your way to somehow super- decentralize your network.

Assuming basic competence (i.e., neither blithering ignorance nor any sort of extreme skill), both sides are well aware that it's a graph. If the defenders have a list, well, it's because they have responsibility over all the things and the list is useful, because nobody is going to do something like "apply a patch" based on literally doing a depth-first traversal of the graph or something.

<comment><USER3> IOW, the problem is a graph, and the solution is a list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of these lists are compliance- driven.

       - Hosts which process credit cards (PCI)
       - Hosts which reconcile the general ledger (SOX)
       - Hosts with medical data (HIPAA)
       - Hosts with student data (FERPA)

The problem is that while the security of the enumerated hosts is taken quite seriously, systems which have security trust relationships which grant access to the enumerated hosts are not locked down.

       - PCI Payment Processing Application server: locked down.
       - CI system with deployment keys to said host: zero authentication.

<comment><USER5> If there was a PCI audit, that CI system would fall inside the audit's scope and thus held to the same rules as the app server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a meaningless buzzword clickbait. You can't denigrate "list thinking" and provide a 10-point list as your response and expect to be taken seriously.

The actual point Lambert seems to be making is, "Recognize the existence of security dependencies between your assets." I wouldn't be terribly surprised to learn that there are a number of security professionals who fail to do this, but I'm not surprised to learn there are well-paid programmers who can't do FizzBuzz either. It's not a useful thing to point out unless most of your audience isn't already aware.

</comment><comment><USER7> I play defense. The system owners I work with have to manage many systems with complies relationships. They keep a list, and report to management that they have patched, say 98% of machines against the latest vulnerability. Great!

The remaining 2% include the KDC, the build system, and the default shell servers for dev and ops. To catch this slip-up, I have to understand the dependencies that even the supervising managers don't. And I have to be able to explain such to management. Every time.

I sympathize greatly with the point the author's making. Like him, I don't have a fix in mind.

</comment><comment><USER8> relevant: [http://lowrekey.github.io/fourd.js/](http://lowrekey.github.io/fourd.js/)</comment>


Top reasons for writing with a fountain pen - <AUTHOR> http://scrively.org/my-top-5-reasons-for-writing-with-a-fountain-pen/ <comment><USER2> I kept finding myself thinking "yes, but..." to this article.

There are significant disadvantages to using a fountain pen: ink runs out faster than a ball point or roller ball; even quality pens have issues with the ink cartridge not seating well or "exploding" leaving you with a six inch diameter ink stain on your shirt; the ink feed can be inconsistent; the type of tip must really be matched to the type of paper; if you have less than perfect penmanship or mechanics (like me) then using a fountain pen yields worse-looking writing than a plain old Bic ball point.

Maybe those are just my issues; I will concede that if you can wright right a fountain pen can create a superior written product but I think it's more of an artist's tool than a practical implement for most people.

Furthermore, I consider that everyone should take a calligraphy class or two during their lifetime.</comment>


Want to Build a Cool Startup? Move to Morocco - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/11295288/Want-to-build-a-cool-start-up-Move-to-Morocco.html

<comment><USER2> Do you have a "Jobs" or "Careers" page?

Even if you're not hiring presently, you will someday!

If you have a Jobs page I can link to, I could give you an entry at [http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/](http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/)

My father visited Morocco when he was in the US Navy. I'd like to go there myself someday.

Best of luck to you.

</comment><comment><USER3> To ask a hard questions: How did you incorporate and how do you pay local taxes? Are you in the country on tourist or business visa? Do you have local bank accounts? Most articles about nomadic lifestyles/businesses seem to leave this part out and it truly interests me.

<comment><USER4> If you're a startup catering to international clients, it's better to be registered abroad (especially when you want to move to other countries, and change of scene in the long run). In most emerging economies countries, you can get by on a tourist visa.

<comment><USER3> They worked in Morocco 10 months ([https://medium.com/founder-stories/ten- things-we-believe-2c8...](https://medium.com/founder-stories/ten-things-we- believe-2c85c462d508)) but a tourist visa is only good for 90 days. I like the story and I'm glad the local authorities don't mind.</comment></comment></comment>


Sentiment Analysis using Apache Hive - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xebia.com/2012/05/15/sentiment-analysis-using-apache-hive/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure regexp matching smileys is really considered sentiment analysis</comment>


The Franklin Street Statement - <AUTHOR> http://autonomo.us/2008/07/franklin-street-statement/ <comment><USER2> Cool! Glad to see this hit HN</comment>


The Java type system is broken - <AUTHOR> http://wouter.coekaerts.be/2018/java-type-system-broken <comment><USER2> > Everything is broken. Everything is fine.

This is the correct conclusion. The people getting outraged over this are the same that will hold long and boring monologues about how everybody does REST wrong.

<comment><USER3> Had a client just last month that were doing SOAP wrong somehow...

Required a SOAP message, that contained no XML after the message tag, but instead the entire message body was to be a JSON, and responded with a JSON if something was wrong, and a fully formed SOAP message if things were Ok.

That and the guys that handle your money use the Http status code as their personal error messages. Except when the error is on their end, in which case they return 200 and a JSON with an error message.

There are plenty of ways to do REST wrong, so let's not lump that into the people that make blog posts complaining about X because X is broken, and working just fine...

<comment><USER4> _Had a client just last month that were doing SOAP wrong somehow..._

To be fair, I'm not sure there's any other way.

<comment><USER5> There are degrees, sort of like levels of hell. I think the universe implodes if you combine XML Encryption and SOAP SMTP binding. Actually that may explain things pretty well...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The mess that is the current Java type system makes me skeptical when proponents of languages like Go say not to worry, that generics can be added later.

If Java had generics in the beginning, it would look a lot different and the type system would be more powerful and safe.

<comment><USER7> Just use dynamic or better yet type-tag-free languages. Types are hard to get right and hard to reason about. Sure, there are some Sheldons out there who master it even under pasta applications, but most of us are not Sheldons. C# also bleeped up types by adding nullable types, making reflection into a scavenger hunt.

For dynamic or tag-free languages, type indicators could be used to parse- check scalar (base) values to see if they are interpretable as the intended type:

       function foo(int a, date b) {...}

This would be equivalent to:

       function foo(a, b) {
         if (! parsableAsInt(a)) throwTypeError(...);
         if (! parsableAsDate(b)) throwTypeError(...);
       }

And don't overload operators, such as how some languages use "+" to mean both arithmetic addition and string concatenation. Use a different symbol for concatenation like PHP does.

<comment><USER8> I prefer my type errors at compile time.

You have to reason about types in any language because passing the wrong type to a function can result in errors. You have to do all of that mental work by yourself in a dynamic language because there isn't a system to do it for you.

<comment><USER7> There are tools roughly similar to C's "lint" that can warn you about suspicious-looking code. While compile-time checking can be nice, compiler- oriented languages often result in more verbose code. Verbosity introduces errors also. But the benefit weighing also depends on the kind of applications. I didn't mean to trigger a "holy war" of static versus dynamic languages.

<comment><USER9> > Verbosity introduces errors also.

The purpose of types is to introduce errors in the first place - at compile time, if you messed up.

Wrong code causes errors regardless. Annotating with types just moves this event from runtime to compile time.

<comment><USER7> I understand that, but I'm not sure the benefits exceed the drawbacks. In other words, verbosity introduces errors by making the code harder/longer to read. The type-related verbosity may reduce errors, but perhaps not enough to counter those caused by verbosity. In my experience, it's roughly a wash, but depends on a lot of other things, like frameworks used, skill of developers, QA techniques, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's pretty tragic how people respond to such criticism emotionally, instead of acknowledging the issues and working towards fixing them or educating others in the traps and compromises involved.

HN is less prone to toxicity, but this is reminiscent of Reddit and it drives away the people that want to help.

As a piece of advice, some type theory never harmed anyone ;-)

<comment><USER11> Application of type theory, or any theory, or any formal method, requires humility and patience.

To apply a formal method to your work requires to acknowledge that your intuition might me wrong, your past decisions incorrect, and your knowledge of the subject area deficient. Often you have to step back, rethink, and rework.

This is a normal mindset for a scientist, and a pretty common mindset for an experienced engineer.

But this view is not automatically acquired with an engineering diploma, with obvious coding skills, or even with a couple successful open-source projects. It has to be nurtured consciously—or rammed down your throat by unforgiving reality; the latter is pretty traumatic.

<comment><USER12> It is also tribalism.

When one is a polyglot developer, we are like mercenaries, a bag full of tools, each with its caveats, and we care about the solution less how we got there juggling those tools.

Developer X tend to keep searching for external confirmation that they did the right choice. Any attack on tool X triggers defensive attacks, as if they would be a personal attack.

Of course I am exaggerating here, just extrapolating from those that I know on my circle.

<comment><USER13> It is also really easy to look over flaws when you work around them everyday. I used to be on the java hate train but now after using it daily I can barely remember why I used t take issue with it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My favourite feature of Java's type system is that, because any object type also accepts null, the type system is unsound and you can convert anything to anything else:

[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/namin/unsound/master/doc/u...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/namin/unsound/master/doc/unsound- oopsla16.pdf)

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't that be a problem in most languages? Even Haskell allows for it through Data.Dynamic

If I can serialize to String, and then deserialize a String to any type of class, I can effectively "cast" anything to anything.

<comment><USER16> Data.Dynamic is type safe. It performs a run-time type check.

Haskell can be made to be unsound using 'unsafeCoerce', but as you'll note, there is a giant unsafe in front of it.

<comment><USER17> Haskell is unsound because of 'undefined :: a'. There you go - a proof of every proposition by the Curry-Howard isomorphism.

It's still safe, though, as it diverges at run time. Much like the ClassCastException coming from the JVM prevents the unsoundness in the original article from being a safety error.

'unsafeCoerce' (and things that can implement it, like creating a polymorphic mutable cell with 'unsafePerformIO') are worse than unsound - they are also unsafe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From the examples: "String s = gridWrapper.get(0).get(0).get(0);" \- Java type system is broken!

Java is not perfect, but this looks to me like a broken code indeed ".get(0).get(0).get(0)".

Could we rephrase the message of the article as "If you write really broken code in Java, you might be not guarded by the type system". And this is, well, uhm, well... acceptable?

<comment><USER19> Is a type system really worth that much if it can't help you in a situation where your code is ugly and hard to follow?

<comment><USER20> Unequivocally, yes.

Several new languages (eg Typescript, Dart) have _optional_ type systems that still bring significant value to the table.

Sure - all other things being equal, I'd much rather have a type system that is completely sound. Ceylon's type system is _beautiful_ and I'm happy to see its union + intersection types being adopted by Typescript. But honestly, I'm not going to lose much sleep over these particular issues in Java. Bad code gets refactored.

A bigger complaint should be made that generic type erasure makes libraries hard (eg, the number of places you have to pass around Class<?> or TypeReference objects to let the runtime know what to do). But that was a clearly a compromise decision and everyone knows about it.

<comment><USER21> > … Dart… have optional type systems…

 _fyi_ "Dart's type system is now sound" and "…types are mandatory".

[https://www.dartlang.org/guides/language/sound- dart](https://www.dartlang.org/guides/language/sound-dart)

<comment><USER20> Wow great news! That makes Flutter even more exciting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Welcome to the world of enterprise-ready complex applications. I agree that these cases should be covered by the compiler but man, there are mainstream languages that don't implement generics just because they're complex and pretend that they're not helpful.

It would be nice of you to compare Java generics with equivalents instead of just criticizing it. It doesn't help anyone writing "this is broken" not offering any alternatives or suggesting ways to fix the problem.

<comment><USER23> Clearly you didn't reach the conclusion. First, because the conclusion is not "Java sucks", but rather "Most of these things, while not kosher, are unlikely to happen in practice." Second, because the author didn't just leave it at criticising the language — he opened a bunch of bugs in the OpenJDK tracker.

<comment><USER10> People criticizing constructive criticism are often not constructive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here's another fun trick, though it's probably not a flaw in the type system: [https://twitter.com/joshbloch/status/1018987317489426432](https://twitter.com/joshbloch/status/1018987317489426432).

<comment><USER25> Another flaw we can abuse is Java's covariant array types:

        Object[] objects = new Integer[] {1, 2, 3};
        objects[0] = "hello";

Also compiles but fails at runtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Disagree with bullshit term: _heap pollution_.

Pollution is the proliferation of superfluous objects creating some sort of undesirable mixture. For instance "namespace pollution".

An inconsistency between the run-time type of an object in the heap, and the type of the expression in the program which refers to that object, isn't a good fit for the word "pollution".

Quit trying to pollute the computing lexicon with nonsense.

<comment><USER26> Looks like this is a thing in Java culture; good grief.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It missed my favorite: contravariant arrays (or is it covariant, I last did work on this more than a decade ago.

Specifically you can do (forgive syntax it's also been a long time since I wrote java)

X = new String[10] Ovject[] o = X

o[0] = 1; // this will auto box, and then fail at runtime

Note that this isn't a "bug" as it predates any version of generics so collection types especially are much saber if you support this. That said it does result in a logical error in which you can't assign something that looks like it should be fine.

.Net unfortunately picked up this design decision in order to support java on their vm.

</comment><comment><USER28> Website is struggling, here's a cache: [http://archive.is/k2YbA](http://archive.is/k2YbA)

</comment><comment><USER29> I was trying to justify the type safety of list in java to one of my senior, i am glad that i was right, it is indeed broken

</comment><comment><USER30> Java generics are broken? What else is new?

</comment><comment><USER31> Not broken. Working as intended.

<comment><USER32> Nonsense. There are four bug reports at the bottom of the article; all seem to have been accepted as bugs and one has already been fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> * The Java is broken

</comment><comment><USER34> Java is broken ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER35> This fact may be hacker but it is _not_ news.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh good, another opinion about how this one thing in this one language is the worst thing ever, and also works just fine.

Find something that bothers you, complain publicly, do absolutely nothing after that, repeat.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a way to sell my MVP? - <AUTHOR> I started working on a little web service startup idea with a colleague about two months ago. We managed to implement a minimum viable product which at this point is basically just a website with registration, payment and a nice domain. But we realized that our passion for this project currently isn't strong enough compared to the legal legwork that comes with going public in our jurisdiction while dealing with our full time day jobs.
So, we figured that we might try sell the MPV plus domain to somebody who's in a better position to get the business started.
Is this at all a realistic idea? Where should we advertise it? For how much money could we expect to sell something like that? <comment><USER2> You have correctly identified the problem, which is lack of passion. This is part of why experienced entrepreneurs tell noobs not to worry about somebody stealing your idea. It's rare enough that even one person cares about the idea enough to make it real. Most other entrepreneurs already have ideas that they like just fine.

As others say, you can try to sell it, although it sounds unlikely. But if you want to try, ask yourself two questions:

Who specifically would be passionate about this specific idea?

How much would that person have to pay to replicate what you have?

The first question gets to how to market this. Depending on the topic of your MVP, maybe there's a wannabe-entrepreneur somewhere who just couldn't come up with his own idea but has money in his pocket. You need to find that person.

The second gets at pricing. Most MVPs are throwaway code. And even if it was well written, most code without the original team gets thrown away, because it's expensive to find somebody who knows the domain and tech stack, get them up to speed, and clean up the tech debt. So the fair comparison is something like: how much would it cost a discount outsourcer to build a replica? That ceiling is probably pretty low.

Now you can do the math: fairly valuing your time, subtract your cost to find, sell, and close that prospect from your expected selling price. For most people, that estimated return is negative, especially once you weight for risk. Maybe you're different, but be sure you have a good understanding of why.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for writing out this response. I knew that I should not be worried about somebody stealing my idea, that's why I asked about selling the MVP, not the idea. But you are right: Even though I believe that the MVP is well written, I am effectively competing with the cheapest outsourcing shop.

<comment><USER2> Very welcome.

Agreed, and I'd be careful with thinking about it as "well written" in this context. An abstract notion of quality doesn't matter nearly as much as whether it suits the person taking over the code base. If you're selling to another developer, then they have to have similar language and framework tastes. If you're selling to a non-technical person, then it's more about whether they can find somebody who can more efficiently work with your code than build from scratch. So in a strictly commercial sense, a mediocre PHP site can be more valuable that a very smartly constructed Erlang site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Based on your description, you do not have an MVP, but an attempt to find an MVP; what you have is untested prototype or an MVP that for whatever reason failed to validate your assumptions.

Only potientally asset you have to sell is the domain, which in my opinion is a completely different question; that being, how do I value & sell a domain?

The hosting, design, payment & registration systems, etc. - are most likely are liabilities unless proven otherwise given the related technical debt[1]; basically, these are commodities which best acquired from scratch based on the needs of party acquiring them.

Lastly, as you likely know, the point of an MVP is to validate an idea is of value, since ideas generally speaking are worthless; I would actually argue that good, but unvalidated ideas, have on average a negative value, since resources are required to store/process them and most "good" ideas fail validation attempts.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess you are right, but damn...

<comment><USER3> Generally speaking, passionate users are much, much easier to find than a motivated buyer and there is a predictable correlation between the two.

As such, I would argue that if you are unable to find users it is highly unlikely you will find a buyer without knowingly materially misrepresenting the opportunity and/or exploiting a naive buyer.

It's a common problem, thanks for the opportunity to express my take on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have not launched the product yet. It isn't online. Therefore I can't say if we would have found passionate users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Easy things: 1\. Ideas 2\. Name 3\. Website with registration and payment

Hard things: 1\. Acquiring paying customers 2\. Keeping paying customers 2\. Product Management once you have customers

People will pay you more for hard things than they will for easy things (there are, of course, exceptions to this, but execution of "great ideas" is much harder than having those ideas).

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. I realize that. I know that an idea alone is worth very, very little. And an MVP is worth little more than nothing.

But even "little more than nothing" is _something_. That's why I am asking.

<comment><USER5> Tell us what the MVP is and we can give you more ideas. Without knowing anything about what it does, what do you want to hear ? let me give you an example. There is a framework called Spark [0] which is built on top of Laravel framework. It sells for $99 and comes with registration, auth, payments, admin dashboard all out of the box. Does your MVP beat that ?

[0] [http://spark.laravel.com](http://spark.laravel.com)

<comment><USER6> I kind of thrive on the harder stuff mentioned above. I may even be interested! Why not post us a link?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "registration, payment and a nice domain".

A minimum, VIABLE product? Does it do anything? Does it do anything that others can't easily replicate?

Explain the "viable" to me.

<comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product)

"is a product with just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development"

If people are willing to pay for something, even before it has any features, that seems like a pretty good MVP to me.

Assuming that people _are_ paying for it that is...

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I know what it is and I am up to my arse in people who believe this has value despite having actual _validated learning_ that overwhelmingly points to the opposite.

It turns out that when you fuck around with your customers and tell them that you have a product, only to have them find out that you have fuck-all and you are cobbling it together as they wait, your customers lose faith in you and think you are a douchebag.

And rightly so. Because pretending isn't doing.

Eric Ries has done untold damage to the tech and the business world. He is successful at one thing and one thing only: writing and marketing a book.

Generous people call his book a post-fact rationalization of success, but that would be overstating it grossly. Because he didn't have any success to rationalize post-fact.

It makes me angry that people think this horseshit has anything to do with creating value. Doing stuff and knowing how to do stuff has value. Yanking people around with smoke and mirrors does not. It mostly ends up wasting time and time is the one resource you can't get back.

<comment><USER9> Yes, maybe I'm missing something but from what I'm reading, he has a marketing website and a payment system to take payments for ?? what? Is there a product?

I've always understood a MVP to be a product to have just enough features to add core value immediately. Bells and whistles to add more value are not included, but core value is.

For example, if you are writing scheduling software, MVP would be able to schedule better than, say on pen and paper, or whatever is standard functionality in the current market space. Future value would be adding features to "cast a wider net," so to speak.

Do people seriously consider MVP a way to pay for vaporware? Am I misunderstanding the situation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://flippa.com/sell](https://flippa.com/sell)

<comment><USER11> This is the best place to sell it. Be aware that many of the products for sale are scams and your product will have to explain why it isn't also a scam to rise above the fold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So you wanna sell domain, website and untested idea without customers?

</comment><comment><USER13> The problem is "value" if your MVP makes NO money that what is it worth? I sold my MVP to a private company then they paid me to customize it for them. It was in healthcare. The MVP had value for them, they wanted to license it to others in the same niche industry ( i kinda had to "sell'em" on this platform approach) but did it back like 3-4 years ago. Same approach could work for you.

</comment><comment><USER6> Could we see it? It is really hard to sell something without a revenue stream. Its value is closer to the value of the domain than a business.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds difficult but why not give it a try? Have you identified a buyer for your web service startup idea? Once you´ve done it you could send some Linkedin messages, cold e-mails and even make some phone calls

I think that might work better than advertising an MVP

Best of lucks

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think you have an MVP. I think you have a domain and either an untested prototype OR an MVP that failed to validate your idea.

There are forums to sell your domain on, Flippa/the like, SEDO/the like. I won't list them here since they're just a Google search away.

My advice would be to do whatever it takes to spend 4 hours (each of you) trying to get your first customer, payment in hand. If after that, you don't have a customer, then I think it's a fair thing to either write it off as a learning experience or seek the "hey someone else take over this invalidated idea" route.

If you manage that first customer, that could potentially motivate you to get the legal stuff done. I'm not sure your locale, but usually a Delaware LLC and generic ToS/PP is acceptable. You'll know when you don't need the generics, and when that time comes, you'll know.

You could be the next Pied Piper, which is why it never hurts to try.

</comment><comment><USER16> You sure can sell it, but it won't be very valuable. Less than the cost of building it for sure. Probably the only spot that would work for that is Flippa, but you could try to contact a broker like FE International to see if they might be able to help you.

</comment><comment><USER17> The value goes up - sometimes way up - if you have even one paying customer. It isn't a "minimum viable product at all." It's a non revenue generating website with no users which makes it a hobby, not a product.

</comment><comment><USER18> Use flippa.com to sell your stuff.

I sold like 5-6 side projects which were abandoned for ages.

<comment><USER19> From the sound of it, it seems this would needs to have more development before it would make anything even on Flippa.

<comment><USER20> No, you can sell even bare domains on Flippa. There are also "starter sites", growing sites with 5 figures a month in revenue and pretty much everything in between.

<comment><USER19> I know you can, but it won't get you much these days.

Edit: aka if it is a good idea, it is probably better to find someone to take it over for a gentlemen's agreement of a % later than tossing it away for a few $. IMHO of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Your domain is at best worth a few hundred. Your code is worth an hourly rate x hours worked, discounted. (since there needs to be a reason to buy vs build)

Assuming you and your partner put in 20 hours a week, I'd guess $5000 for an untested business is the best you could hope for.

</comment><comment><USER22> Does the site actually _do_ anything or is it just a business idea and branding?

</comment><comment><USER23> You are from Germany, right? What kind of legal legwork do you mean, is it domain specific? Would love to hear more about the MVP, contact is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Elementary :)

I will send you an email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can you let us know about your MVP? A website? Maybe then we can tell you more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I want to keep this discussion generic to make it useful for others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We can only answer that if you disclose revenues and net income.

</comment><comment><USER26> What's the nice domain? What is the tech stack behind it?

</comment><comment><USER27> There are domain brokers you can sell.</comment>


Quibble – Custom Windows Bootloader - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maharmstone/quibble <comment><USER2> One use case that would be amazing is actually be able to get 64bit Windows on those 64bit atoms with no 64bit bootloaders :(

[https://superuser.com/questions/1055305/installing- windows-x...](https://superuser.com/questions/1055305/installing- windows-x64-on-32-bit-uefi-efi-ia32-via-grub)

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat. ReactOS has a similar piece of code called "freeldr".

[https://github.com/reactos/reactos/tree/master/boot/freeldr](https://github.com/reactos/reactos/tree/master/boot/freeldr)

<comment><USER4> I wonder if any of this code might be of use to ReactOS. Even just to extend its bootloader to cover other Windows versions, if it can't already.

<comment><USER5> If so it goes both ways, because some files have referances to ReactOS. Like peloaddef.h

<comment><USER6> And the configuration file is freeldr.ini

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One interesting use for this could be signing it with your own secure boot keys. This could let you lock a machine to only boot your system image and not others.

<comment><USER8> Standard Windows bootloader already does that, it's part of supported deployment flow in highest security setting - in fact part of why MS _requires_ that computers with certain Windows-related branding (the part about stickers "designed for windows" etc., I just don't remember which one) have to enable end users to replace platform keys.

<comment><USER9> Except the same keys have been used to sign some EFI loaders from other vendors, namely Kaspersky Rescue Disk 18, so it isn't really as locked down as they would have us believe.

[https://habr.com/en/post/446238/](https://habr.com/en/post/446238/)

<comment><USER8> There are two keys distributed by MS - one for Windows, one for third party applications. The latter one is used by Linux shim bootloader and the like. MS also requires that all devices that are supposed to be "full featured" support replacing _all_ keys and loading user keys, and the highest security deployment setup for Windows Enterprise requires that you sign windows bootloader (or, more likely, sign the hash of the specific binary you are using) yourself.

<comment><USER7> > the highest security deployment setup for Windows Enterprise requires that > you sign windows bootloader (or, more likely, sign the hash of the specific > binary you are using) yourself.

To my knowledge that's not possible with the Microsoft bootloader, you need to use Microsoft's keys, hence why I am suggesting that this open source bootloader could be useful. Can you provide some more information about such a setup?

<comment><USER10> This document is aimed at OEMs, but they specifically say that high-security environments can generate Secure Boot keys and use them on their devices in conjunction with their own Windows image. (I'd imagine that you need the Windows SDK and some know how/MS consulting to get it working, though)

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- hardware/manufactur...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- hardware/manufacture/desktop/windows-secure-boot-key-creation-and-management- guidance#2-key-management-solutions)

<comment><USER7> This document is about generating the platform key, but changing the platform key alone doesn't allow you to do what I'm suggesting. Even after setting your own platform key you would still need to trust the key for Microsoft's bootloader. See section 1.4.1:

> The Microsoft Windows Production PCA 2011 with a SHA-1 Cert Hash of 58 0a 6f > 4c c4 e4 b6 69 b9 eb dc 1b 2b 3e 08 7b 80 d0 67 8d must be included in db in > order to allow the Windows OS Loader to load.

<comment><USER8> For OEM to allow reinstall done "normally", yes.

But DB entries can also contain SHA-256 hashes of the image to load (with the image stripped of the signature, which btw allows you to also resign it).

[https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/the-meaning-of-all-the- ue...](https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/the-meaning-of-all-the-uefi-keys/)

[https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/what-we- do/cybersec...](https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/what-we- do/cybersecurity/professional-resources/csi-uefi-lockdown.pdf)

<comment><USER7> > which btw allows you to also resign it

Are you sure? I havent tried, but this disagrees: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous- versions/windows/i...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous- versions/windows/it- pro/windows-8.1-and-8/dn747883\(v=win.10\)?redirectedfrom=MSDN)

"Windows boot components: BootMgr, WinLoad, Windows Kernel Startup. Windows boot components verify the signature on each component. Any non-trusted components will not be loaded and instead will trigger Secure Boot remediation. "

> DB entries can also contain SHA-256 hashes

OK, fair enough, but it still doesn't really solve the problem because an attacker could just copy your modified bootmgr to be able to steal and use your workstation. In order for this to work you'd also have to add some kind of additional checks which we can now do with an open source version of the bootloader.

<comment><USER8> The signatures are, IIRC, checked in order, so a resigned BootMgr won't impact verification of WinLoad, etc.

As for abusing signed bootloader, the full process depends on verifying that the signed bootloader appropriately handles TPM, which is then also coupled with an encrypted disk, which in turn works to prevent loading unsanctioned code.

Of course, it's possible to defeat this, but the idea is to frustrate the efforts and raise the cost of an attack, as well as give you a longer timeframe to deal with an attack.

<comment><USER7> Those mechanisms only prevent an attacker from decrypting the disk. The scenario I'm envisioning is where the attacker steals your workstation, wipes the disk and reinstalls Windows.

<comment><USER8> That's not part of the threat model - the encrypted data is lost, the point of the defences are to prevent damage to things accessible from that specific machine, not to prevent stealing the machine.

<comment><USER7> That's not part of _Microsoft 's_ threat model. Which is exactly the problem! It could be done, if only Microsoft supported that use case. But with an open source bootloader, we could make the necessary changes ourselves.

<comment><USER8> No, that's the threat model that most clients that require high security have (the machine is often nigh-infinitely cheaper than the data and access rights), and MS, surprise, explicitly insists (in difference to secure boot spec) that owner of the physical machine is, well, it's owner and can reinstall, resell, etc.

<comment><USER7> I don't see how any of this is relevant. All I said was that it's an interesting possibility which has now been made feasible. Who cares about the _threat model that most high security clients have_? If they don't want it then I'm not talking about those clients.

Besides: the prevalence of terrible software like Lojack/CompuTrace in the enterprise just goes to show that many clients actually do care about physical theft scenarios. Also consider how basically every modern mobile device now provides factory reset protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's super cool. I would be much more likely to keep windows around if it could boot from a btrfs volume.

<comment><USER12> I thought about that too, but looking through the README, there are some considerable complications (and funny bugs). The author has tested this on a lot of Windows versions!

I feel like this was a toy/thought experiment that turned into learning a lot about Windows, EFI, bootstraping, etc.

<comment><USER13> Most of funny bugs arise from not-really-exact filesystem copying during install. But making a perfect duplication tool seems to be out of scope of this project.

Nice experiment, anyway.

<comment><USER14> Issues would be solved as soon as you'd be able to install a WIM image directly, which should actually be possible.

<comment><USER9> I thought about that as well, can't we just load the WinBtrfs driver from the installer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks like an awesome project; if the author is here: well done!

</comment><comment><USER16> How do you prevent Windows Update from replacing it?</comment>


We almost sold Gridspy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/2010/11/almost-sold-gridspy.html

<comment><USER2> We just went through something similar this past summer, where a large company approached us about purchasing our technology and team. At first, we were extremely excited and we worked our butts off to get a couple of new features that were in the works out the door and had a second meeting with them to demo the new features and then spoke to their head guy about terms and numbers.

They kept delaying and hemming and hawing and the intent to acquire cooled off a bit leaving us a little disheartened and wondering what happened.

Like you guys, we had to go and continue working on our product but at the same time, allocate time to replenish our coffers as you said but we're still trying to figure out what happened.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious to hear more about what you learned from the offer, aside from the emotional repercussions of putting a price on your baby. Going forward, do you intend to set a minimum threshold above which you'll sell the company? (You say you have a real sense of the company's value - is it the price you named or something else?) Have you been able to identify characteristics of the offer that will be red flags in the future, e.g. symptoms of a quick pull out? You seem to have answered these for yourself, but I'd be curious to hear more about the process and outcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome questions!

 _Will we set a minimum price threshold?_

Probably the major reason why we are considering selling the company at this point is because we are great at creating products but pretty poor at selling them. Stephen and I are both concerned that we'll fail to sell our product ourselves.

This is THE major issue that we will have to face over the coming few months. Once we have a repeatable sales model, I doubt we will want to sell the business unless the offer is very attractive for us.

There is definitely a price point at which we would just go "sure, its yours!" and a lesser point where we have to get the terms we want. Stephen and I love making things, so we're more likely to go where the interesting challenges are.

Did that answer your question?

 _How did you get a sense of your value?_

Once we realized how central our device was to our potential investor's plans, it started to feel like we really could be a BIG THING on our own. Facing the potential of dropping Gridspy made us really think about how much it meant to us, how much it had cost to develop and how much it could potentially be worth.

There is a certain value to Gridspy that is our contracting rate multiplied by the number of hours that we have worked. Add on to that the investments we have made in R+D, external contractors, hardware, etc. That is the "Cost Price" of the company. We know exactly how many dollars this is.

Somewhere between cost price and "LOTS" is a realistic price for Gridspy. Stephen and I set a price that I still believe is too low, a price that is increasing every day while we lower the company's risk and gain traction.

 _Characteristics of the offer that are red flags_

This is a dangerous question to answer because it goes into more detail about the offer than I would like to go.

However, I can say that our purchaser was expecting things to move extremely fast after the purchase, essentially a death-march from day one. I wasn't looking forward to that particularly much.

Just like getting VC, you need to choose someone you will be happy working with for some time.

Now that we are back into the swing of things with Gridspy, I imagine that we'd ask for more from our next potential purchaser. We have built a pretty cool platform and I believe that we have a lot to offer the market over the next couple of years. Life is really good right now.</comment></comment>


The Security Behind the Birth of Zcash - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/the-crazy-security-behind-the-birth-of-zcash#.WWt_NS1uwR8.hackernews <comment><USER2> Related recent radiolab episode: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/ceremony/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/ceremony/)

<comment><USER3> Very well told story, but it was a little frustrating to not hear why the reporter's iPhone was feeding back into the hangout.

<comment><USER4> Android, but yes, I agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Regardless of the secure computation done during the ceremony at the end of the day there is a degree of trust in the founding participants of Zcash. I think given the people involved, and that they are all essentially security zealots with provable records. messing this up doesn't seem likely. There is no monetary incentive to make a mistake in the trusted setup, and there is significant personal reputation damage to the participants if it was provably hijacked.

Further, the founder's reward despite having a slight smell is really not an unfair way to structure something like this. Significant resources were put into Zcash well before it was deployed, are the founder's supposed to just eat that cost? Why shouldn't their success be tied to the success of the coin they created over a period of time? Would a Satoshi style pre-mine be more fair? These questions are complicated, but without an ICO driving the development, this doesn't seem like the worse case scenario for a commercial entity.

<comment><USER6> > I think given the people involved, and that they are all essentially > security zealots with provable records. messing this up doesn't seem likely.

Speaking as one of those people, even with driving ~2000km across Canada with the compute laptop in a faraday cage, I can assure you there's a lot of ways we could have screwed it up... See [https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk- desert-bus-zcash-trust...](https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus- zcash-trusted-setup-ceremony) for some of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I appreciate the research of zcash, but trusted-setup is still just a very sophisticated security theater. The least they should have done is have constructed an open participation.

<comment><USER8> At the time, the multi-party computation protocol could not scale to a large number of participants.

<comment><USER9> Define large. In any case, I would rather have a protocol in which only one of the participants need successfully discard their local state for total security than n participants.

<comment><USER10> That was the case. If one of the 6 people completed the computation and discarded the results, the paramaters are secure.

Ideally it would have been more than 6 people, but that protocol really didn't scale to more than a handful of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I do not like 20% founders tax. I do not like "trusted" setup. I do like Zooko trying to make fungibility stronger. I do like zero knowledge proofs making their way into the wild.

<comment><USER12> isn't it 10%? Main site says 10%, but I hear people complaining about 20%. I'm not sure what's going on here.

<comment><USER13> I don't know what website you are reading, but the Zcash website says it is 20% now but after 4 years drops to nothing, and when you account for the dropping rewards given to minors, after ten years (when mining will end) the result will be 10% went to the founders: so people saying "a 20% tax" are correct today even if the tax rate will amortize a long time from now to only be 10%.

> At first, 50 ZEC will be created every ten minutes. 80% of the newly created > ZEC will go to the miners, and 20% ZEC to the founders.

[https://z.cash/blog/funding.html](https://z.cash/blog/funding.html)

> Every four years, the rate of ZEC being created will halve (again, just like > in Bitcoin). After the first four years the ZEC created per ten minutes will > drop to 25ⓩ, but after the first four years, 100% of it goes to the miners.

> The end result (as shown in the diagram) is that there will ultimately be 21 > million ⓩ, and 10% of it, or 2.1 million ⓩ, will have been initially > distributed to the founders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://twitter.com/zooko/status/863202798883577856](https://twitter.com/zooko/status/863202798883577856)

<comment><USER15> Zooko was talking about doing KYC/AML at the exchange level. He did _not_ suggest to weaken the Zcash protocol:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/zooko/status/863506504518914050](https://mobile.twitter.com/zooko/status/863506504518914050)

<comment><USER16> Just like _actual_ cash!

The bank doesn't scan the serial numbers on the money I deposit and yet they somehow correctly credit my account.

<comment><USER17> Cash counting machines in banks scan and record numbers to find bills that have already been flagged (such as those stolen from banks/ATMs), but that process is unrelated to the crediting of money to your account. General cash tracking is hypothetically possible, but it would not be trivial to implement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's interesting and definitely worth the read, but if anyone is interested in a cryptocurrency with privacy, Monero is a better choice.

(Monero doesn't require a trusted setup, doesn't have a founder's tax, isn't run by a US company, and address balances are private.)

<comment><USER19> Too many of these alt-coins are premined cashgrabs.

<comment><USER18> Okay, that doesn't have anything to do with Monero though as it's fairly mined (no premine or dev tax).

Monero has very good and active dev team that has fixed and disclosed bugs instead of exploiting them for free coins like other alt-coins.

<comment><USER19> Apologies, I should have clarified that Monero was a rare exception to the pre-mining get rich quick schemes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> FYI, this is from December 2016.

</comment><comment><USER21> Curious to know the complete story of the phone after this article. Does someone know about it?

</comment><comment><USER22> BitCoin developer Peter Todd's part in this story:

[https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash- trust...](https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trusted- setup-ceremony)

</comment><comment><USER23> ok why does the URL change after it's loaded in such a way that I can't reload, it seems like it cuts off the last part of the path

</comment><comment><USER24> If you put almost any HP RPN calculator right up to your ear, you can hear computation via capacitors.

</comment><comment><USER25> alt [https://github.com/z-classic/zclassic](https://github.com/z-classic/zclassic) [http://zclassic.org/](http://zclassic.org/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Wait, but what about block sizes, mining costs and all that? Zcash will suffer as much as Bitcoin and everything will be lost forever.</comment>


Over 70% of 12- to 14-year-olds in China are short-sighted - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/china/2020/01/18/over-70-of-12-to-14-year-olds-in-china-are-short-sighted <comment><USER2> I didn't bother registering to view the rest of the article, but am I right that it is screen time as the cause?

<comment><USER3> I was in senior high school in China there were only 4 classmates out of 35-ish including me don't wear glasses. This was like 2007, before the smartphone took off in China.

I have no idea how come did this happen but one of my assumptions is the ruthless study plan for young kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> sounds like they need to better plan for the future

</comment><comment><USER5> I always thought the term was _near-sighted_. "Short-sighted" means "done without consideration for the future."

<comment><USER6> In the US, most people do say "near-sighted", but in the UK "short-sighted" is common. For example, on the NHS website: [https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Short- sightedness/](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Short-sightedness/)

The reason you can use "short-sighted" as an adjective to suggest that someone isn't thinking about the future is by analogy to this condition. The same thing is true for "myopic".</comment></comment>


Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy, and How to End That Threat [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Testimony.pdf <comment><USER2> Dr. Robert Epstein might very well have a valid complaint, but it seems like he has had an ax to grind with Google going back years. His site was hacked in 2012 and Google put up a warning as a result and he was not happy about it [1]. Maybe coincidentally, later that year Epstein started publicly criticizing Google and calling for them to be regulated [2]. He also started sounding the alarm about election interference years before the 2016 election [3]. If Dr Epstein is leading a conversation about Google's biases, I think it is only fair to also discuss whether Dr Epstein's himself is biased against Google.

[1] - [https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/readers-and- expert...](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/readers-and-experts- weigh-in-on-a-site-owner-vs-google/)

[2] - [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/google- privacy_b_1962827](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/google-privacy_b_1962827)

[3] - [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/15/google- di...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/15/google-did-not-rig- indian-elections)

<comment><USER3> Does Dr. Epstein stake any of his claims on his personal credibility in his article? Why not attack the substance of the article instead of going with the the classic "slander the opposition" play that all kinds of disingenuous actors regularly employ? This post sounds like something I used to hear from Lance Armstrong's camp or from authoritarian propaganda.

For all I know you're part of a FUD campaign from Google. Dr. Epstein's paper may well be nonsense for all I know but this post adds nothing to the discussion.

<comment><USER4> The entire basis of his testimony is his personal credibility. He literally only references his own research and the core evidence he relies on is his research findings. Some of which looks questionable to my not-very- knowledgeable eyes, so it's very useful to know about Epstein's past relationship with Google.

Lines that stand out are:

\- "Google has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections worldwide since at least 2015"

\- "In the weeks leading up to the 2018 election, bias in Google's search results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes" (that would be 70% of the 113 million people who voted in the election)

\- "Google's "Go Vote" prompt was not a public service; it was a vote manipulation"

\- "To let Big Tech companies get away with invisible manipulation on this scale would be to abandon the free-and-fair election. It would make democracy meaningless, even if your chosen candidate prevailed."

<comment><USER2> >"In the weeks leading up to the 2018 election, bias in Google's search results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes" (that would be 70% of the 113 million people who voted in the election)

You are misinterpreting what he is saying there. That same thing tripped me up too on first glance because the 78.2 million number seemed ridiculously high. He is referring to votes and not people who voted. If there were 10 items on your ballet and he thinks Google may have influence you, he is counting that as 10 votes and not 1 person voting. There is nothing technically wrong with displaying the number that way, but it seems so misleading that it makes me question if it was intentionally chosen to make the problem sound worse. It is decisions like that which make me doubt his neutrality in presenting the data.

<comment><USER4> You're right, thanks for clarifying.

I agree - it doesn't feel like the most honest way to represent that data and I doubt that subtlety came through in his testimony for congress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is such garbage. If you clickthrough on this guy's "research", you'll find that he objects to Google's "Go Vote Today" reminder is unfair politically because:

\- It increases voter turnout across the board (which favors Democrats marginally) \- Google users tend to be younger (and hence more left-leaning)

Google has many questionable practices, but simply reminding people when it is an election day is not one of them

<comment><USER6> To play devil's advocate: What role does a for-profit advertising company have in encouraging people to vote? And what are their motives in doing so?

Disclaimer: I haven't read the pdf (only responding to your comment) and don't really hold a strong position on this question, other than being sceptical of Google's participation in any political process.

<comment><USER7> To devil's advocate your devil's advocacy: let's just assume Google is encouraging people to vote because they know that more democrats will see that message, that they want democrats to win, and that's the only reason for them doing so.

What is wrong with that, and how would you propose to fix it via a mechanism that didn't also e.g. outlaw FOX News?

<comment><USER8> To play devil's advocate to your advocacy of the devil's advocate, what if Exxon or a right-leaning org offered discounts to people who "promise to vote Republican". Nothing binding, simply an unenforceable promise (gentleman's or lady's agreement) to vote for a party in exchange for a 20% discount on your fuel.

<comment><USER7> > what if Exxon or a right-leaning org offered discounts to people who > "promise to vote Republican"

Vote selling is election fraud, which is a crime. Anyone who took those discounts would go to jail. Sounds fair to me.

I don't see how "Please vote" is remotely comparable to vote buying. Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER9> A better example would be what if Google gave out 'I Voted!' awards that, upon proof that you voted, gave you access to special Google features.

<comment><USER7> OK, I guess. But... they don't. So what's the argument here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a serious and concerted effort to disparage the large tech companies lately on this platform and others. It isn't about anti-trust, or any benefit to the consumer either, although it may be dressed up that way. It's about forcing private companies to be platforms for radical views, and to self- censor and be disallowed from having their own political opinions and operating policies.

The government should be hands-off here. Look only to the fact that they're not investigating Microsoft, Walmart, or the ISPs, to realize that this is targeted political harassment.

<comment><USER11> How is this related to forcing private companies to be platforms for radical views?

Should the private gas company be forced to be platforms for radical views?

<comment><USER12> The accusation is that _only_ private companies _with platforms for speech_ are being targeted.

<comment><USER13> How is that an accusation? That's the whole point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "On January 31, 2009, Google blocked access to virtually the entire internet for 40 minutes." \- Please explain how Google created a denial of service attack on the entire internet for 40 minutes. Clearly, Dr. Epstein believes that the only way to access the internet is through a search engine.

<comment><USER15> BGP misconfiguration?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > On Election Day in 2018, the "Go Vote" reminder Google displayed on its home > page gave one political party between 800,000 and 4.6 million more votes > than it gave the other party

Interesting. I assumed they displayed those for everyone. Did any whistleblowers come up saying how they decided who to show that and who to not show that message? Because if they only picked out voters they assumed would vote Democrat that would be troubling. Though, I guess it is tempting to say, they are using their resources however they see fit, but even then I'd at least hope they are transparent and clear were they stand, and not try to pretend to be unbiased.

> A growing body of evidence suggests that Google employees deliberately > engineer ephemeral experiences to change people's thinking.

Does anyone from Google here even knows about or heard the phrase "ephemeral experiences"? Search suggestions I guess could change people's opinions, but I am not sure about the deliberate manipulation part, and that it's concerted internal effort.

<comment><USER17> Google did show it to everyone. If you follow the link and read his "analysis", his argument boils down to the assertion that Google users overall are left of center so reminding Google users to vote unfairly benefits Democrats. Furthermore, he argues that Google could theoretically remind only subsections of the population and in doing so skew the vote more significantly at some point in the future.

Frankly the whole letter and article is quite conspiratorial and backed up only by references to his own equally bombastic claims.

<comment><USER11> It is quite conspiratorial. It's really hard for Google to prove they didn't do this as it's proving a negative.

I think the argument boils down to since they are capable of doing so, and no one would be able to tell if they did; therefore search must be open to prevent such potential actions.

Google has been caught doing things like favoring inferior shopping searches to point to their own products. So maybe it is possible to detect and not as much of a risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Google search has gone down the proverbial shithole in the last 2 years, and has been struggling long before that. Even for non political searches it returns horrible results. It's a threat in the short-term, and then it will be replaced since the algorithm is falling apart.

<comment><USER13> It's been getting worse for way more than 2 years. Remember when google would honor quotes and the plus sign to force those terms to appear in the results?

<comment><USER19> Can I have an example where quotes are not honored?

To force a certain spelling even for a single word, enclose it in quotes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >A worldwide network of passive monitoring systems must be built to protect humanity and democracy from manipulations by today's Google and the Googles of tomorrow.

Yeah no thanks.

<comment><USER21> Right. Feral cats are a problem, so let's release tigers to take care of them.

"Monitoring systems" are exactly why Google and similar companies are a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If even a fraction of the allegations in the PDF are true, wouldn't Google be exposed to a campaign finance compliance issue?

Or, to put it in another way, since these corporations are just giant buckets of money sloshing around, wouldn't it be true that pretty much any political activism they incorporate into their business operations would have the potential to be considered an election-influencing political contribution?

</comment><comment><USER23> It seems to me that Epstein is far more annoyed that bad things are working against things he cares about, than that bad things are happening.

Many people have been very concerned with Google's monopolistic power over the economy.

Literally the difference in these two auto completes, can mean a make or break most businesses: brand name is... scam brand name is... great

Add to that google has been unjustly pushing it's own sites to the top and you have blatant market manipulation, even if it doesn't conform to the legal definition of this term, it definitively conforms to the spirit of the law.

That never bothered Mr Epstein.

But as soon as he can give it a political spin, all of a sudden this power and its abuse are an issue.

And even then it is so narrow and in a space so rife with bias that it's hard to take seriously. I mean, the major networks don't even feature 3rd party candidates in the debate. And yet I don't hear him crying bias. I'm pretty sure media bias is way more pervasive and swings more elections than google or Facebook has ever done.

The issue at hand should be Google's monopoly on search, it's blatant bias and the oversize power that gives them. If you pick up on specifics and not address the wider issue, I'm going to have to wonder why.

</comment><comment><USER24> >In 2016, biased search results generated by Google's search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton.

This is the most important claim that he makes, and as far as I can tell, he gives zero backing for it.

He has two citations. The first citation is a paper showing that re-ordering search results to show links to articles that favor candidate A will cause readers to favor candidate A. The second citation does not give any explanation for the 2.6 million figure.

\----

Let's take a look at the second citation: [https://www.theepochtimes.com/10-ways-big-tech-can-shift- mil...](https://www.theepochtimes.com/10-ways-big-tech-can-shift-millions-of- votes-in-the-november-elections-without-anyone-knowing_2671195.html)

>I found pro-Clinton bias in all 10 search positions on the first page of Google's search results. [...] Because, as I noted earlier, Google's search algorithm is not constrained by equal-time rules, it almost certainly ends up favoring one candidate over another in most political races, and that shifts opinions and votes.

This is literally true but realistically meaningless. Suppose that there are two candidates for office, A and B. Days before the election, it is revealed that candidate A fucks dogs. The news publishes many articles about candidate A fucking dogs. Google places those articles highly in search results, and many voters see them.

Has Google shown pro-candidate B bias by showing those articles? Obviously not. Unless Epstein can show that a viewpoint-neutral ranking would have produced a different result, what he has is meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER25> Full disclosure: I work on cryptography for Google, nothing related to this particular article.

These claims are a bit...much. In the 2016 election, which was characterized by media manipulation and fake news stories, Google's results, according to his analysis, seemed to skew favorably toward Clinton. How do you even control for all the confounding factors here? Maybe Google is just better at weeding out misinformation than Bing, resulting in fewer negative stories about Clinton (or fewer positive stories about Trump).

Then in 2018 Google _threatened democracy_ by telling people to go out and vote, which _clearly_ is an act of voter manipulation by Google in Dr. Epstein's view. In that same election, Dr. Epstein claims that Google's results were biased in favor of one party; yet in that same election, one party's talking points were divorced from reality, so any search algorithm than favors truthfulness would have to favor the other party.

<comment><USER26> An algorithm cannot favor truthfulness but only a certain definition of truthfulness. And that definition is not the thing itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Robert Epstein - the self citing author of that testimony - had his website flagged as a security threat by Google a few yeas back and he's been on a vendetta ever since.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Epstein#Criticism_of_Go...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Epstein#Criticism_of_Google)

</comment><comment><USER28> I really like his idea for making Google's search index a public commons. Google search is by far their most popular product in terms of traffic, it's one of the most controversial and easily abused, and it's not even their main revenue stream. Google can survive without search, and the internet would be better off if there was more competition.

The only issue I see is how would you make sure other smaller companies aren't providing biased search results too? His idea for having a monitoring system sounds like a privacy nightmare for users. At least you can regulate the hell out of Google and have actual audits. Doing the same for thousands of search engines isn't easy.

<comment><USER29> The index isn't the hard part, it is the ranking. The proposal also makes basically all forms of anti abuse impossible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Epstein's argument seems to assume that any information which shifts an undecided person's view is biased. Basic chemistry lessons make the claims of homeopaths seem downright silly. Does that mean that teaching chemistry is biased against homeopathy, or is homeopathy just not all that great an idea?

Well, perhaps that definition of bias is specific to strictly political topics rather than questions about the observable effects of various actions. Even so, by the standard of shifting views a certain direction, does Google present as much of a threat to democracy as higher education does?

</comment><comment><USER31> Recent and related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20440079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20440079)

</comment><comment><USER32> There's no threat to our democracy, if that's the case then that means it's a weak mindset and that the only truth, because it's a dangerous deadly and downright demonic ideology. So abort democracy in order to avoid the sixth birthing of feminism. They both gotta go and get with Islam, just read Quran and Sunnah. What has DeMoCracy actual achieve if not causing confusion and delay???

</comment><comment><USER33> Google doesn't pose more threat than any other big recognized brands that people trust.

It's all about trust. If people trust more Google or Apple than the legacy system, then maybe these brands earned people trust by also doing good things (sometime) ? Of course they have now a great responsability.

</comment><comment><USER34> What kind of scholar doesn't have any references to something he didn't write? Surely Epstein's not the only scholar in the field of search engine effects.

</comment><comment><USER35> The electoral system in the US has so many other gigantic flaws. It is only wracked by such controversies because it so bad at representing the interests of the voters.

<comment><USER36> In this case there is zero such interest. It's just a focused shakedown of companies that contribute to the opposing party at an equal or greater rate than the ruling party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Youtube "recommendations"? Sure. Facebook? Absolutely.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why is Google in particular an issue and not, say, Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER38> Someone call Jaron.

</comment><comment><USER39> what an odd endorsement of Google

</comment><comment><USER40> Frankly, a lot of this is worrisome. I lean libertarian/centrist/classic- liberal in terms of my views. Lately I feel that even trying to engage with anyone to the left is an effort in futility. Especially in Pacific-Coast tech companies. Reason doesn't seem to matter, only feelings.

I was blocked on twitter for nearly a week, while they reviewed my challenge and judged against me, for posting anti-violence messages of all things.

I can't help but feel if the likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook are censoring otherwise legal and non-violent content in favor of a political ideology, they deserve to lose section 230 protections.

<comment><USER41> Google/Twitter/Facebook are the ultimate stage in media consolidation. 3 mega- corporations controlling the information feeds for the vast majority of people in the world. Even with the best intentions, I can't see how this arrangement can fare well. The amount of power wielded is just astonishing.

In historical context, US media has been undergoing a unabated consolidation for the past 3 decades. "In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by 50 companies; as of 2011, 90% was controlled by just 6 companies and in 2017 the number was 5.", [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownersh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership#Recent_media_mergers_in_the_United_States).

<comment><USER42> I don't think they are exercising their power like they should be. Google and YouTube should delist Foxnews.com for promoting hate content, same with Facebook.

<comment><USER40> Should CNN be delisted for hosting a racist Nazi last week?

<comment><USER42> Maybe they should practice what was the equal time rule / coverage.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Airpal: web-based query execution tool - <AUTHOR> http://nerds.airbnb.com/airpal/

<comment><USER2> Congrats, @andykram - it's been a long road to release. Nice work =)</comment>


One Kings Lane sold for less than $30M after being valued at $900M - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/8/23/12588428/one-kings-lane-flash-sales-acquisition-price-bed-bath-beyond <comment><USER2> If anyone has details on the transaction, it would be cool to know how this went down.</comment>


Seriously, Don't Use Icon Fonts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudfour.com/seriously-dont-use-icon-fonts/ <comment><USER2> What are some serious counter-arguments to using SVG's instead of Icon Fonts? I'm not a front-end developer but given projects like Electron I may soon be drafted into it.

Edit:

I ask because the poster (Tyler) has made some great valid points for SVG icons vs. Icon Fonts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are there any good SVG alternatives to Font Awesome?</comment>


Case Study: Real Time SMS polls at Zappos All Hands Meeting - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wedgi.es/post/17628212361/zapposrealtimevoting

<comment><USER2> Zappos' LV downtown redevelopment has the perfect timing. Real estate investment could be very lucrative if bought at the right time. Real estate is at the bottom now in the States. LV was especially hardhit. Zappos has the opportunity to reshape things on the cheap. Great timing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good Gigaom article about downtown Vegas and the startups there today in Gigaom [http://gigaom.com/2012/02/16/an-inside-look-at-the-high- tech...](http://gigaom.com/2012/02/16/an-inside-look-at-the-high-tech- awakening-in-las-vegas/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 5500 acres / 302 shipping containers = 18.2 acres per shipping container?</comment>


Show HN: a html5 tool to help colorblind people read maps and charts - <AUTHOR> http://colorblindhelper.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Code source : [https://github.com/olgstein/ColorblindHelper](https://github.com/olgstein/ColorblindHelper)</comment>


What free stuff on the Internet should everyone be taking advantage of? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2ngpqo/what_free_stuff_on_the_internet_should_everyone/

<comment><USER2> are we directly linking from reddit now on hacker news ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Useful information can be extracted from it, so I thought it would be worth something for others. You should be happy I'm not posting links to,say, Perez Hilton's site :D</comment></comment>


NASA tests Linux for spacecraft control - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5714800202.html

<comment><AUTHOR> More on Dependable Multiprocessor: <http://nmp.nasa.gov/st8/tech/eaftc_tech1.html>

The Problem

radiation hardened electronics are extremely expensive and generally are several generations behind the state of the art of their commercial equivalents. Since a spacecraft's most precious commodities are mass (weight), volume, and power, it is difficult to build a modern, powerful, space-going computer system within acceptable mass, volume and power constraints.

Dependable Multiprocessor experiment is to use a redundant-hardware architecture and advanced-technology, fault-tolerant software to provide a computing system able to operate in the space environment.

</comment><comment><USER2> Linux is already really common at Nasa. This is cool though.</comment>


Welcome in the social streaming music era - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504943_162-20083774-10391715.html <comment><USER2> Odd that they're making the case for (potentially paid) streaming versus illegal downloading. The more interesting debate, in my mind, is whether consumers are ready to shift from an ownership model to a subscription model, not whether consumers should switch from illegal to legal behavior.</comment>


Generals sway Trump on Afghan policy using pictures of Kabul women in miniskirts - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/22/donald-trump-changed-mind-afghanistan-seeing-picture-women-miniskirts/ <comment><USER2> Whatever the reason, I am glad he allowed his mind to be changed about such an important issue. Exiting Afghanistan now would throw away whatever little progress the previous two administrations made in the region. It would be a repeat of Iraq, hell it would be a repeat of post Cold War Afghanistan.

I long for the day I can return to the land of my father and help rebuild it.</comment>


Ask HN: Could we build a long-life probe like Voyager today? - <AUTHOR> Voyagers 1 & 2 were launched more than 40 years ago and next year will be operating 40 years beyond their mission schedule.
Given the technology of the early 70s (very large feature size, very low level of integration, wide traces, probably not CMOS, etc) it's been possible to understand them well enough to keep them running and repurpose them.  The more modern mars rovers also exceeded their mission lifespans by several times, but had ultimate lifetimes of about 15 years.  And I note that one of the probes had an early failure of flash memory, something that didn't even exist in 1975.  So while they exceeded their mission by more than 30X, in absolute time it was much shorter than Voyager.
But outside that kind of almost unlimited budget environment are we still building things with unanticipated lifespans?    Everything from electronics to housing is optimized for cost of manufacture, not long term operating value.  And that extends far enough through the stack (from semiconductor to UI) that I wonder if design for the long term is even possible.
Sure, a few hackers can reflash an old phone to be a TV remote, but the bulk of the population can't or can't be bothered.  More dangerously, in a few years people will be scattering IoT devices willy-nilly in fields, over provisioning because it's OK if a few fail if you have enough running.  When they stop working they'll just drop more, newer ones in; it won't be worth picking up the old ones which will just become e-waste in situ.
Is it even reasonable to want active devices to be designed with long lifetimes?  Outside space programs do we even have the skills and technologies? <comment><USER2> If they were built by thoughtful engineers with a huge nerd-on for historical methods and not much care for the budget, then yes it's very likely.

If it were built by the same rote as every other probe with short term life and cost as a high priority, probably not.

</comment><comment><USER3> Aside from trace size, a big problem here is that devices nowadays are just so complicated. There is a ton of cruft and bloat; thanks to computers used in the creation of things, every new car is its own Godel Escher Bach.

</comment><comment><USER4> You probably want to use older tech. I don't know how electromigration will work on 7nm chips. You also want to make software simple so its easier to test.

</comment><comment><USER5> i think the hardware will not be the problem, but the software. i do not believe the level of scruitiny that has been set in the past, where multiple people went over PRINTED code line after line, multiple times, is something that would be done these days.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, no. The mars rovers lasted quite longer than expected but not that long.

<comment><USER7> They were exposed to more unpredictable situations too.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's meeting room of the future - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/7/17327596/microsoft-meeting-room-demo-build-2018 <comment><USER2> The one thing that's improved conference rooms the most in the time I was there was the switch to TVs from projectors. Because projectors have a lag time before they turn on, and when switched off need a full cooling cycle any mistakes would waste up to 15 minutes. That said even with the change getting an image on screen still dominated the initial few minutes.

</comment><comment><USER3> The conferencing prototype seems very similar to [https://www.owllabs.com/](https://www.owllabs.com/)</comment>