Sony Develops 4,032ppi OLED Micro-Display - <AUTHOR> https://tech.nikkeibp.co.jp/dm/atclen/news_en/15mk/062202182/?n_cid=nbptec_tecrs <comment><USER2> Out of all the improvement needed for OLED, higher PPI is like the last on the list?

And it seems Micro LED will be better fit for these type of application, where you have 0.5" of screen space.

<comment><USER3> MicroLED has been 5 years away for 5 years.

What improvements are needed to increase OLED sales? PPI is at the top of my list because it's a necessary condition for VR to go mainstream.

<comment><USER2> OLED can already 1000 +PPi, that is good enough for most VR. The Vive Pro is 615 PPI, and that is pretty damn good, if you do 4K on that it is still only 825 ppi. ( We likely run into Hardware Rendering problem with high framrate and high res before we hitting OLED limit )

>What improvements are needed to increase OLED sales?

Too expensive. Along with colour accuracy over time, burn in etc. All of them are not really solved ( yet )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Articles I just looked at say ~400ppi is "retina" density at 12" away. If these are for VR or viewfinders 3" from your eye, what PPI is needed? Still looking...

Here's one: _The US Air Force has estimated that a computer screen would require 10,300 pixels per inch to simulate these so called "hyper acuities"._ [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/16/human_limits_of_vr_...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/16/human_limits_of_vr_and_ar/)

Actually, that's a pretty interesting article, posting a bit more:

 _But in one respect VR still lags far behind our biological limits: we are nowhere near a pixel density that mimics real life._

 _In theory, in our fovea, we need about 120 pixels per degree of view to match reality (although Meese_ [Tim Meese, professor of vision science at Aston University] _says in practice, people generally can 't see in finer detail than around 80 pixels per degree). Currently, the best headsets manage about 10 pixels per degree horizontally. Given the need to scale up by a factor of about 10 – on both axes – the increase in resolution required is enormous. "I don't think the technology is there yet for those display pixel densities," says Bryan William Jones, a retinal neuroscientist at the University of Utah._

 _And for VR obsessives who will settle for nothing less than a perfect replica of reality, even 120 pixels per degree might not be enough. Put two lines above each other and move one slightly to the left or right, and it turns out we are "extraordinarily sensitive" to even the tiniest differences between them, says Meese, even to movements smaller than the width of a cone in the eye._

 _To match this sensitivity on a computer monitor would require a pixel density that "beggars belief", he says, and well beyond 120 pixels per degree. The US Air Force has estimated that a computer screen would require 10,300 pixels per inch to simulate these so called "hyper acuities". This is more than 30 times that of an iPhone 7 (and 12 times the density boasted by a new Samsung VR display, revealed in June, which has a display of around 850 pixels per inch)._

 _Such fine-grain vision is rarely used in the real world, says Meese. "The closest example you can think of is threading the eye of a needle, or something like that," he thinks. But it serves as a reminder that imitating the look of real life in VR remains a technological pipe dream – don't expect to do any VR sewing in the next decade or two._

<comment><USER5> This is talking about right at the fovea though. Thats a pretty small space.

I'm thinking we will see VR sewing in the next decade, because we'll find shortcuts to making it work. Sure hyper-acuity is hard, but its virtual reality, as long as you can make it look real it may as well be.

What I mean by that is - perhaps we could use tricks like stacking high- density screens which capture different portions of the pixels. Say you've got 3 high res screens _somewhere_ in the headset, and _somehow_ they are routing to the eye. With optics a high resolution screen can be made even higher resolution but smaller. It still is a very difficult problem to solve for sure, but I think if there are multiple difficult problems to choose from, chances are we'll find ways to partially solve some, combine that, and have something like a solution as a result.

With 3 screens you could have full scene for one, focused region on another, and fovea on another, and then optically stack that...somehow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't want this. I want a 100 inch OLED screen, so I can finally ditch my projector, and watch films with the lights on.

<comment><USER7> Being able to cram this amount in such a small space also helps improve a 'normal' density display as processes improve and fever dead pixels allow for larger displays.

The primary issue with large displays is the failure rates during manufacturing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This must have applications for VR as well.</comment>


In the Beginning was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson - <AUTHOR> http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html?

<comment><USER2> I have this essay as a book in hard copy. Now that Neal has released it, if you don't already have it you should definitely read it.

It strangely continues to be true. Maybe because the concept he talks about pervade the makeup of the operating systems he discusses so much.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the beginning, there were switches and lights....

And, "Bill Gates and Paul Allen came up with an idea even stranger and more fantastical: selling computer operating systems." is false. IBM had been selling operating systems for years, thanks to one of the consent decree. (This let Amdahl and the first clone makers concentrate on building hardware and ignore software.) Moreover, Gates almost certainly knew that IBM sold operating systems.

I doubt that IBM was the first to sell operating systems, and if it was, I seriously doubt that Microsoft was the second.

</comment><comment><USER4> I looked at the new Mac Pro the other day, and it seems to me that things are coming full circle. The advantage Mac gets by controlling the hardware _as well as_ the software is really putting them ahead of Microsoft in terms of what they can do and I would expect it to continue.

To be more clear, if you build for a maximum of 3 possible configurations you can make a much better experience than someone who has to deal with a virtually infinite amount. So, takes less resources to do and makes a better experience in the end. Sounds like a win-win to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ok, ok, it's a classic essay.

However, it's a classic. Not news.

Next thing you know there'll be a front-page article recommending "Godel, Escher, Bach", a trip through the Jargon file, a link to the Scary Devil Monastery group and, hey, did you read that thread where Linus gets into a flame-war with Tanenbaum?

Also, ED is the standard editor! Yeah!

<comment><AUTHOR> I know, it's even been posted, nearly a year ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95912>

Apologies to showing it to you twice. However, I think the benefit of showing it to those who haven't seen it outweighs the cost of seeing it twice (feel free to down-vote this to negate the karma).

<comment><USER5> Not to worry, I was just feeling cranky. Posting at 3 AM and all that :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interestingly since writing that Stephenson has stated in interviews that he exclusively uses OSX these days.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, he said in 2004:

      I embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never
      looked back. So a lot of "In the beginning was the command
      line" is now obsolete. I keep meaning to update it, but if
      I'm honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely.

[http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/15182...](http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/1518217)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the beginning was the punch card.

</comment><comment><USER9> great classic read. It should be posted once a year, holiday time seems about right :)</comment>


Ask HN: Would you hire a medical doctor? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
There is, rightfully so, a lot of hype on the future of health with AI, wearable, apps etc. And a lot of startups and big companies going into the sector.
But would they consider hiring medical doctors ? Would you ?
What representation techies have of doctors ? Useful? Not useful? A remnant of the past ? An essential or irreplaceable ally ?
Thanks :) <comment><USER2> I can't personally answer, but I did have someone contribute something on the topic on my website. [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/question-ask- hire...](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/question-ask-hire- healthcare-consultant-infographic/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ! Interesting read. Although I was more interested about full time jobs, not consulting. But I guess nobody is really thinking about it, since probably not many doctors are trying to get hired in tech companies...

<comment><USER2> It is interesting that you bring it up. I work for a huge media company... but there is no doctor there. People still get sick, however, and pay a fortune in health care costs. I am one to just avoid people and touching things (I use my sleeve to open up doors and touch inanimate objects in the office so _knock on wood_ I've been relatively healthy and not sick in regards to cold/flu like symptoms for the past 3 years. Though there really were times where I wish I could've gone to a doctor to ask for medical advice or get a checkup.

There is probably no incentives for companies [from the government] to hire doctors to work for their corporation to offset actual healthcare costs, therefore there is no motivation for these companies to hire a doctor full- time.

However, if there was a full-time doctor there, and it did offset my health insurance costs, I would probably go to the doctor more often, at least for a check-up. At the moment, I'm pretty much just throwing money away every month. Something like $150... the "health" tax.

I'd be willing to bet that companies would most likely be more willing to hire "nurse practitioners" and pay them much less than what doctors would probably charge though. The idea is to probably find some way to freelance your way in or offer part-time services to a company.

Then as well, you are right: A company is probably not going to pay the same thing to a doctor that a doctor in his/her own practice would be making. There is also the issue with insurance companies. Lots of background noise involved there!

Good luck though! It is really just about finding your place in society if not wanting to start your own practice or work with a bunch of other doctors in one office, and if it doesn't exist, than make it exist.

Long story short: I started off studying psychology because I wanted to help people better their lives. I ended up becoming a web developer. Fortunately, I use psychology everyday. Even started a website to help people, especially in the workplace! [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/)

If I couldn't do it professionally, I wasn't going to let that stop my passion! Can't say I can quit my day job to do it full time, but its a nice hobby that keeps me in check and maybe something I will use for research in the future in pursuit of a Masters degree.

Anything is possible!

<comment><AUTHOR> I dont really want to work as a doctor, but has a full time health specialist working with engineers in R&D.. and if that is not possible to work with other branch that need support of health prof like marketing and legal.

But I guess I am aiming for something that does not really exists. ;) Thank you for your comments</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PICO-8 Lighting: Part 2 – Stitching Lines Together - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/lighting-by-hand-2-stitching-lines-together-24edc9f819bf#.50wa32ndm <comment><USER2> Light and shadows in 2D fascinates me. Even more than 3D. There are countless ways to optimizes stuff like this and, compared to 3D, you're actually able to get really atmospheric results even on low end devices. Stuff like soft shadows with shadow penumbra and antumbra are actually possible to implement with high quality without insane performance hits.

Thanks to the author for sharing the implementation step by step.

Here are some other fascinating examples of 2D light and shadow:

[http://ncase.me/sight-and-light/](http://ncase.me/sight-and-light/)

[http://nottutorials.blogspot.ch/2009/09/dynamic-2d-soft- shad...](http://nottutorials.blogspot.ch/2009/09/dynamic-2d-soft-shadows.html)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FZIKX1Y_8I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FZIKX1Y_8I)

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AslPHY2Bomc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AslPHY2Bomc)

</comment><comment><USER3> Your previous article made me remember about and subsequently purchase PICO-8. I've been hooked since then.

If anyone out there is considering buying PICO-8, go do it! It's so much fun.

</comment><comment><USER4> Really good read. Now, I am going to refresh the profile page until part 3 appears.

<comment><USER5> Author of the article here, glad you liked it!

To save on the wear-and-tear on your F5/Cmd+R keys, the plan is for that to happen next Thursday.

<comment><USER4> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> PICO-8 has 1MB of Lua RAM available, is this more efficient than precomputing the light levels/breakpoints and using it for each frame?

<comment><USER5> It was actually precomputed at one point, but there are two things that make it less appealing. They don't feature in the article until part #3, unfortunately.

The first is flexible range - the light has adjustable brightness which makes it bigger/smaller. The second is the flickering effect applied to each line. Both these things mean that any access to the precomputed table would have to be scaled anyway, which would remove most of its benefit - to the point where all it would save would be one subtraction (sqrt() is taken from a precalculated table in the final version).

<comment><USER6> Could you memoize the table for each brightness? (presumably flickering is +/\- brightness).

<comment><USER5> Sure, it's possible, and flickering is indeed the same as scaling the brightness (but randomly each line). I was under the impression that the table needed would be too big, but now that I actually calculated it (max_range^2*light_levels), it's nothing back-breaking.

I'm concentrating more on the game right now than on making the engine even faster, but I'll try to look into before writing the next part - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool demo. I remember RPGs on the SNES looking line this. I'm guessing that the colors on this are gamma corrected. Are you doing a linear conversion then going back to a gamma corrected palette when building the fills table?</comment>


DHH Wins 2014 Le Mans GTE-Am - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dhhracing

<comment><USER2> Seeing great software developers who have other major interests makes me depressed. Here I am devoting all my time to programming and I still can't achieve anything significant. How do they manage?

Oh, well... Congrats to DHH anyway! Very impressive.

<comment><USER3> He's known for 2 projects, rails and basecamp. Both are almost 10 years old now (if not older) and have armies of people who probably do most of the programming. I doubt he's doing 60 hour coding weeks any more, probably not even 40 hours. I bet that having large amounts of money also takes pressure off.</comment></comment>


BALLU: Buoyancy Assisted Lightweight Legged Unit (2016) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdSoUbXirVI&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> It looks cool, but would probably be better served with a propeller.

Fall recovery is great until you realize you can push it away by going _Boo!_.

Out of the applications, dancing looks most convincing to me. It could serve as a toy / decoration on dance floors and shop displays.

<comment><USER3> It's probably much more efficient with those kicking feet than a propeller. It's got both the buoyancy of a blimp and the low power use of a ground vehicle.

It's typical of researchers to play with concepts first and hope someone else will come up with applications later. Maybe that will never come or this isn't the right time for it. Perhaps if we have more lightweight screens and cameras, it could become a telepresence robot.</comment></comment>


Ask PG & HN: A quick hand with the open-source legal docs on Y Combinator  - <AUTHOR>

Pls, in few words, give your kind hand with explaining those open source legal documents on Ycombinator to a 15-year old child. <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone? My question again.</comment>


Raspberry Pi goes old school with OS designed for first ARM chips - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/raspberry-pi-goes-old-school-with-os-designed-for-first-arm-chips/ <comment><USER2> I just wish they'd bring back the old RISCPC hardware. It was awesome. You could extend the chassis. Someone even put a pizza oven in one:

<http://www.houseofmabel.com/puters/RPC/Medium/035.jpeg>

<comment><USER3> It may be apocryphal, but I remember hearing stories about ARM presenting a pizza oven using Intel chips as the heating element as a jab at x86 power usage at some early computer show.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Screenshot, courtesy Wikipedia:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RISCOS_4_scr.png>

<comment><USER5> Running on Raspberry Pi: [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tHeHPtlBCvk/UJe3gKJtn3I/AAAAAAAAAK...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tHeHPtlBCvk/UJe3gKJtn3I/AAAAAAAAAKA/pT3sXzaGD_8/s1600/IMG_1700.JPG)

<comment><USER6> hey you could have posted the link to my whole posting ;-)

[http://vincentsanders.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/another- netsurf...](http://vincentsanders.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/another-netsurf- developer-workshop.html)</comment></comment></comment>


How Bikes Steer Themselves - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201104154

<comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_and_motorcycle_dynamics> has all you need to know on the subject.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I agree with the section on countersteering. It says that "out- tracking", the fact that you steer the wheel out from under the bike, is more important than than gyroscopic precession. For motorcycles on highway speeds, I think this is incorrect. If you've ridden a motorcycle at high speed, you know that the handlebars are basically like buried in solid concrete. With normal steering force, I don't think I deflect the handlebars by anything noticeable. The key is that at high speed, the mere application of _torque_ on a spinning wheel, will make it precess, ie turn around the orthogonal axis. I'm convinced this is far more important (but I'm too lazy to do the numbers now).

<comment><USER4> A motorcycle can be turned at speed two ways. Out-tracking is only one of those ways. (Leaning is the other)

However, it is the way that lets you take a deep set most quickly, and can help a lot with tight lines.

You may think that you are not out-tracking when you turn at freeway speeds, but remember the amount of necessary out-track decreases as speed increases.

<comment><USER3> _You may think that you are not out-tracking when you turn at freeway speeds, but remember the amount of necessary out-track decreases as speed increases._

If you think that out-tracking is responsible for entering turns at speed, there's an experiment to test this: If the bike leaned by moving the wheels out from under it, the bike should pivot around the center of mass. If you actually look at a bunch of road racers in the twisties, it's abundantly clear that the bikes pivot almost completely around the _contact point_ , not around the center of mass. (Unlike bicycle racers which really do out-track.) Moving the COM without moving the contact point can _not_ be done through wheel forces on the pavement, because they act at the contact point. It's impossible for those forces to lean the bike _and_ move the COM is the same direction. The only thing that can accomplish such a motion is the precession resulting from applying the handlebar torque to the front wheel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm also not sure how this is going to help someone build a better bike... just because it's possible doesn't mean it's a good idea. bikes with steep head tube angles are jerky.

<comment><USER4> Rake is your friend.

This became patently obvious when I rode motorcycles that ran the whole gamut of rake angles. Even more obvious when I then remounted a bicycle, which has drastically less rake than even the most aggressive motorcycle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great example of not having to understand a phenomena in order to exploit. Of course, understanding will let us take it even further.

</comment><comment><USER7> See also: <http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh/gyrobike.htm>

</comment><comment><USER4> As best I can tell, it's a mix of forces.

Gyroscopic action helps keep the bike upright by slowing falls. (at 100mph on a motorcycle, you must apply significant force to lean over _quickly_ )

Rake (trail) makes it less likely the front wheel will be deflected by small bumps, and I suspect it also helps settle the bike back into neutral position. In other words, decreases the number of significant self-steering corrections that must be made.

Then, some third force does the wheel turning. I personally suspect it is tied to the way the front wheel falls to the right if you suspend the bike and lean it right.

Note: Honestly, from the diagram at 2:03 it looks like they did not eliminate gyroscopic action and trail. They merely greatly reduce gyroscopic action, reduce rake, and invert trail.

<comment><USER8> To turn/lean a bike at 100MPH you have to push the handlebars opposite of the direction you want to turn. If you need to swerve right, lean right and push the handlebars left. Not knowing this is probably related to many loss of control accidents among novice riders (speculation).

<comment><USER4> Of course. My point is, the gyroscopic forces of a pair of 20lb wheels spinning at nearly 1,000rpm are not trivial. It takes a noticeable amount of force to make the bike respond _quickly_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do people really not know a bike will steer itself? it's been called ghost riding for a long time... even before that ridiculous song.

<comment><USER3> know _that_ a bike will steer itself != know _how_ a bike steers itself. It's a pretty nontrivial coupling of geometry with conservation of momentum and angular momentum.

<comment><USER5> at 0:31 the guy says "I always have to tell people that bikes do stay up by themselves." I find that surprising... that people don't know.</comment></comment></comment>


John Chambers and a star team of ex-Cisco engineers launched Pensando Systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/john-chambers-pensando-systems-cisco-stars-amazon-2019-10 <comment><USER2> "Years ago, AWS developed something similar in Nitro, a system of dedicated integrated circuits and specialized software that offloads some of the heavy lifting from host machines provisioned through Amazon's next-generation C- and M-series of EC2 instances."

"Whereas Nitro is exclusive to AWS, Pensando will be available to the wider market, allowing enterprises to create "their own customized version of the cloud systems," Chambers said."

<comment><USER3> Gives me flashbacks to the days 20 years ago when a 32-bit/33MHz PCI interface crypto accelerator card, with dedicated ASIC, was a good way to speed up SSL page serving on your openbsd machines.

<comment><USER2> Hifn, Inc of Los Gatos, CA was one such company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Actually amazing part of this is MPLS phenomenon...

 _Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero, and Soni Jiandani (long known collectively at and around Cisco as MPLS) have played key roles in Cisco's "spin in" strategy under former CEO John Chambers._

while John Chambers was the CEO he I think bought four (!) companies that these folks had created.

[https://www.businessinsider.in/enterprise/mobile/why- cisco-h...](https://www.businessinsider.in/enterprise/mobile/why-cisco-has- showered-these-three-men-with-billions-of-dollars/articleshow/43088562.cms)

They beat most of 'serial entrepreneurs' hands down.

<comment><USER5> at the expense of killing innovation company wide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pensando?? Is that the best domain name left?

<comment><USER2> It's an Italian word. A couple of Chambers' deputies in MPLS are Italians.

<comment><USER7> Pensando == Spanish word that translates to: thinking

[https://www.google.com/search?q=translate%3A+pensando](https://www.google.com/search?q=translate%3A+pensando)

<comment><USER6> Thanks - goes to show how anglo centric I am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More than a few ex-Cisco staff would pour fuel on any fire under chambers' pyre. I never quite got why. Clearly he has loyalty and antipathy but in different proportion?

<comment><USER9> No one runs a big pseudocongolomerate like Cisco for 20 years without making friends and enemies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Pensando believes its tech will take on the mighty Amazon Web Services, the > leading cloud computing platform.

Ballsy. I wonder what services they will kick off with. I especially wonder what their Lambda service will be like.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like they are selling a server NIC optimized for high-throughput VM/Container traffic.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Speed up edge services" \-- not very descriptive.

<comment><USER13> I can imagine small services in hundreds of zones colocated near the clients, rather than clustered in a couple dozen regions. But whatever their story is, they will need to tell it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I still dont know what they do. Sounds like a CPU...

<comment><USER15> An overview of AWS Nitro, which they are trying to copy, is helpful:

[https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2019/02/aws-nitro- system/](https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2019/02/aws-nitro-system/)

Basically PCI cards to put into commodity servers. That do various types of hardware offload for routing, switching, storage, security, etc. Probably with out of the box hypervisors and management for those functions.

I imagine they want to sell direct to cloud providers like Digital Ocean and IBM. And perhaps through Dell, VMWare, etc, for Enterprise customers that want high end private clouds.</comment></comment>


The HTML5 drag and drop disaster - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/09/the_html5_drag.html

<comment><USER2> one of the gripes about the specification was the fact that you had to turn off default behaviour of some events.

While I agree that this might sound strange at first, if the default behaviour was to allow drag per default, how exactly would you select content in a webpage?

There needs to be some kind of toggle to enable or disable the beginning of a dragging operation. While there is this attribute in Mozilla (and a CSS style in Safari), right now, the formalized way to enable dragging is to disable the default operation (which is starting the text selection process).

I don't think this is such a problem.

Maybe I'll come back later and comment on other parts of this rant.

<comment><USER3> it seems sensible that "text selection" is default behaviour which is overridden when you add a drag event, as opposed to having to manually disable things.

I wish the text selection tools were more powerful in css/js as well, its reasonably problematic to make text unselectable.

<comment><USER2> that was _exactly_ my point.

If these events had "permit the drag & drop operation" as their default action, selecting text would be impossible.

<comment><USER3> thats a different point, being able to drag something (currently disabling text select events) doesnt mean text isnt selectable, if you drag over and entire page the text is still selected. its especially annoying if you have to support shift + arrow keyboard shortcuts.

<comment><USER2> if the default action of these drag & drop events was to enable drag & drop, then you would not be able to select anything on the page (using the mouse that is), because, wherever you push the button down and move the mouse, you will initiate a drag operation and not a select operation.

This is why drag & drop is disabled by default and the method in which it is disabled is by making the events fire but have their default action to not allow drag & drop which then leads to the selection action being used.

<comment><USER4> Isn't this solved by the "draggable" attribute? Why work at the events-level at all for this.

<comment><USER2> from an architecture standpoint, the solution using events is actually cleaner: Instead of having a flag that toggles some events default action, you have override the event default action where you need it changed.

If you need the attribute (or even a class="draggable" to achieve your goal without changing the standard), you can use libraries like jQuery.

What I'm saying is:

* I disagree with the author of the articles assumption that the default event action is wrongly set. If it was the other way around, selection of page elements would not be possible.

* The events is what we have in the standard. I would probably prefer the flag aswell, but from a architecture standpoint, using the events is probably much easier to implement.

* If I want to have that attribute, I can easily add it to my sites script code using one or two lines of jQuery-code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad I'm not the only one ripping my hair out over this.

I wouldn't expect much to be done about this however. Of the concerns I listed in my blog post, I chose the absolute most conservative one, which could be added in a completely backwards compatible way such that no existing browser implementation would break, and I was basically told to wait for HTML 6.

For the curious: [http://www.mail- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg18003...](http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg18003.html)

Here's lookin at 2015.

<comment><USER6> It sounds like W3C has been listening to usability critics about as sympathetically as MS did with IE6. [pops antidepressants]

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The HTML5 Working Group needs to reassess their rationale for choosing this API. The justification remains that this API originated with IE and is already implemented in both IE and Safari. Yet, between missing features and rampant bugs, the extant implementations are nowhere near the specified behavior. While specifying the correct behavior can help vendors fix their bugs, it's unclear why any vendor should invest their time and money into an API that is this complex, that no one likes, and that is missing required functionality.

In general, I think the HTML5 Working Group needs to be more aware of how standardization of deficient solutions can hurt the web. In this case, many people were blissfully ignorant of IE's awful drag and drop implementation until HTML5 threw a spotlight on it. It seems to me that the Working Group, then, has significantly raised the chances of this horrible API becoming further ingrained, rather than merely allowing it to die in deserved obscurity.

</comment><comment><USER8> that looks like it's modelled on how drag and drop works in desktop windows apps. Which is not a straightforward as it can be, but the "opt-in" nature of drag-drop is, I think, important. Even more so in a browser where the Ui is mostly selectable text and graphics anyway.I'm quite happy to have to specify that an element is dragable, and that elements can't be dragged otherwise.

It also makes sense that when you drag it over a potential target, that target gets to decide if you can drop that particular item or not. At least, that's what I'm used to. What's the alternative - having to turn off dropping on all other elements that might not want it?

<comment><USER9> The point here is that the current API is basically a double negative.

Rather than saying "I want to be a drag source" and "I want to be a drop target" you are saying "I don't want to not be a drag source" and "I don't want to not be a drop target".

It's bad design.

<comment><USER8> Negative flags are almost always a bad choice for a name. I'd rather see

if (obj.IsFoo) { ... }

than

if (! obj.IsNotFoo) { ... }

Still, changing a name is minor as far as design goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess I'm surprised that so much hand-holding is required. Ideally, web pages don't even have to _think_ about mouse events (which would also pave the way for concepts like assisted-devices that let drags be achieved without a mouse).

I suppose my ideal setup would be to have most events handled _entirely_ by the web browser. The page then only has to define the corner cases of interest, namely:

\- A single JavaScript event for drags, to retrieve the promised data.

\- A single JavaScript event for drops, where one of the arguments is the specific type of data (pulled from the property of the source).

\- A _single_ element property to indicate that the entire element is draggable. This property's value is a "type" (perhaps based on Apple's UTIs, e.g. "public.jpeg" or "public.xml") to indicate what kind of data is represented, e.g.
...
.

\- An element property to indicate that the entire element _accepts_ drops of one or more types, e.g.
...
.

\- New CSS classes, similar to :hover, to define presentation for the drag- and-drop cases, such as ":drag-source", ":drop-pending" and ":drop- disallowed". This allows elements to _automatically_ change appearance, without any JavaScript at all, as drags occur.

Not having implemented a web browser, I don't understand all the nuances, but I'm not sure why it can't be as simple as the above. I know that the above is what I would _want_ to have.

</comment><comment><USER11> Poorly written article with lots of F words.

<comment><USER12> This one threw me: "couldn't be arsed to specify"

That's an entirely new way of using arse for me, not that as an American, I ever use it much, but...

<comment><USER8> It's more common in British English. Substitute "bothered" or "bothered to get off my arse" for "arsed".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm pretty much of the opinion that anything PPK says about web development is likely to be of importance.

I like _"This is a strange inconsistency, especially since the spec is supposed to be based on the IE implementation."_

That kinda explains why it's counter-logical then, it's based on some voodoo from IE6 (!).

Thankfully when PPK works it all out he usually makes some lovely examples up and posts them to quirksmode, press on my friend, press on. [I guess that should be drag on]

</comment><comment><USER14> _In fact, it's so outrageously bad that I've gone on strike. I refuse to do any more research on drag and drop. Go do it yourself. Or don't bother. Whatever. I don't care._

Well, writing such an article shows he does care. Also, a good rule of thumb is: if you are not proposing something better you do not have the right to criticize!

<comment><USER15> It is probably not that difficult to propose something better. The problem is that the current solution is implemented in IE, Mozilla and Webkit. A new solution, however much better, stands the risk of never being implemented in IE. And even if it is implemented, it will take years bere it is reliably supported.

This is the dilemma the HTML5 people have to deal with.

<comment><USER9> I think that is a particularly cowardly approach. 99% of the proposed spec is not implemented in IE. Has no plans to be implemented in IE even. To say, "Oh, but we'll look ineffectual if we don't have at least one thing that works in IE" is to say that you'd much rather appear to be a useful spec than to actually be a useful spec. Something that sucks this bad has no place being encouraged.

If the spec had been sane from the start, Firefox and Safari would probably already implement the sane version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd follow ppk to hell, but it seems he's already there.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think Thomas Broyer's comments in the post are a good rebuttal. It's also important to note that even ppk appears in a comment to consider writing a more constructive post, after further reflection.

</comment><comment> onreact-com I coded my first drag & drop in 1999 using DHTML. It worked on both major browsers, NS4 and IE5. It's sad to see that 10 years later it still is a problem to use drag & drop in web development.

<comment><USER6> I just hope that when PPK unwinds a bit that he presents the issues he experienced to appropriate W3C feedback channel... written in a more factual style. We _really need_ them to hear this.

<comment><USER18> Considering how popular PPK's site is and that the first person to reply is Hixie, the author of the HTML5 spec, I think they'll already know his feelings by now ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The author seems to be pissed off but nowadays web developers are more focusing on compatibility than on real design or user interface ...</comment>


Chess Move Compression - <AUTHOR> https://triplehappy.wordpress.com/2015/10/26/chess-move-compression/ <comment><USER2> Although I'm also not very familiar with the history of such schemes, I do recognize the (not quite) 12-bit one, which I believe was the first scheme proposed, by Claude Shannon in his 1950 article "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess" [1]. Perhaps because it's naturally the first scheme anyone would come up with, but nonetheless, here's what he had to say about it:

> A move (apart from castling and pawn promotion) can be specified by giving > the original and final squares occupied by the moved piece. each of these > squares is a choice from 64, thus 6 binary digits each is sufficient, a > total of 12 for the move. Thus the initial move P-K4 would be represented by > 1, 4; 3, 4. To represent pawn promotion on a set of three binary digits can > be added specifying the pieces that the pawn becomes. Castling is described > by the king move (this being the only way the king can move two squares). > Thus, a move is represented by (a, b, c) where a and b are squares and c > specifies a piece in case of promotion.

I'm actually slightly surprised Shannon didn't propose a more compact scheme using the lower entropy of legal chess moves, but I guess his purpose in this article was more to do a ballpark estimate of the feasibility of computer chess playing in general.

[1] [http://www.pi.infn.it/~carosi/chess/shannon.txt](http://www.pi.infn.it/~carosi/chess/shannon.txt)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool. I suspect that much better compression is possible in principle (not that I'd want to implement it) using an openings book or game database and an engine. The idea would be to first record the opening played in the game and the move number at which the game deviates. A lot of work would need to go into figuring out the optimal opening-book size. Then, use a deterministic chess engine with predefined parameters at each move, and record which move number on its suggested list was played (e.g. the top move, second move, third move, etc) with a fallback to manually encode the move if none of the top 8 or so moves are played.

A more sophisticated version would use arithmetic coding, with the predictions of the next move initially coming from an opening book / game database, then coming from the engine. The idea being that most games you want to compress are at a high enough level that the engine gives good predictions ... perhaps one could even tune the engine's parameters for better results. But again, like I said, it doesn't sound like fun to code.

A separate comment: I wonder if the time efficiency issues mentioned are really that severe? Since the problem is so small/finite.

<comment><USER4> Article author here: I do mention the idea of using a chess engine to improve compression. I propose a simple scheme and calculate/estimate my scheme would compress moves in a reasonably played game to about 3.9 bits each on average. I am sure it's possible to do better, but I suspect you'd hit diminishing returns before you get close to 3 bits.

I really should have included something about adding an opening book as I thought about that quite a lot. My conclusion was that an opening book is not going to be a really dramatic win. A simple scheme might encode say 64K opening sequences using 2 bytes, and save an average of perhaps 10 (half) moves. So a saving of 10*4 - 16 = 24 bits, spread over an average of 80 (half) moves. So about 0.3 bits per move.

You might question my estimate of 10 half moves max, but it's an educated guess. One thing I've discovered whilst working on my chess database is that the standard tabiya positions are reached by huge numbers of different transposition possibilities. See my blog post at

[https://triplehappy.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/statistics- and-...](https://triplehappy.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/statistics-and- transpositions/)

This means that the standard canonical way of reaching a well known position doesn't serve as a good proxy for the start of all the games that include that position.

<comment><USER5> In the "Checkers is solved" paper, they state "The complete 10-piece databases contain 39 trillion positions (Table 1). They are compressed into 237 gigabytes, an average of 154 positions per byte!"

Do you have any idea how this would be done? It seems crazy.

<comment><USER6> Probably just standard compression techniques - the linked article is mostly discussing a standalone move, but there are a lot more options available when working with large strings of text (dictionaries, BWT, arithmetic coding, ...).

The downside is a lack of individual byte accessing without a lot of surrounding decompression work, but it'd be appropriate for stream processing

In fact the best compressed size is probably found by reducing some of the clever tricks in the article in order to expose more structure to a general compressor. Similar to running `precomp` or `antiX` before solid-packing multiple already-compressed files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Chess move compression was an interesting topic back when the games were stored on 360k floppy disks. Nowadays every master chess game ever played in the history of chess fits easily on one DVD, uncompressed.

So it's not clear what the point of compressing the moves, especially since at some points the article is concerned about size and sometimes about speed. If it's just an intellectual exercise then consider the following scheme:

Generate the legal moves for a position, then sort them. However don't sort them using a naive method like alphabetical order. Instead sort them in order of likeliness of being played. For example moves that capture the last moved piece are at the top of the list. So for example 1.e4 d5, now the first move in the list would be exd5, capturing the last moved piece. So the move exd5 can be encoded in 1 bit. Now imagine a 40 move game where every move played was the first one on the sorted list. This takes 80 bits to store the entire game. Of course moves farther down the list take more bits to encode.

This is similar to one of the schemes in the article, but the article gets hung up with fixing bit sizes rather than just using the exact number of bits required for each move which results in variable bit lengths for each move.

This is, more or less, the scheme Chessbase first used for their data files almost 30 years ago.

<comment><USER8> > Nowadays every master chess game ever played in the history of chess fits > easily on one DVD, uncompressed.

If someone created a mobile app containing this database, I would certainly appreciate those multiple gigabytes of data being compressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That 8-bit code is clever.

At [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1831386/programmer- puzzle...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1831386/programmer-puzzle- encoding-a-chess-board-state-throughout-a-game/1838023#1838023) I suggested combining the sort-the-moves-by-their-evaluation scheme with arithmetic coding according to statistics from a database of games -- how often do people choose the move the engine picks as best? Etc. (It's always easy to propose work for someone else.) (The third paragraph of that answer is irrelevant to real games, which always start from the same configuration.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Related: 100TB of all the possible 7-piece chess board states and their solutions [http://tb7.chessok.com/about-site](http://tb7.chessok.com/about- site)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been doing some spare chess programming on a GUI myself (non-intensive on-off work for 1 year so far) and I decided to stay with the naive method (12 bits, straightforward src and dest squares) for compressing moves. It's obviously easier and faster to implement, I'm not hostage for some wacky bugs I could have done, and it's straightforward to parse and to format to long algebraic form (e2e4), which is the format UCI likes to receive (stockfish, for instance) and to store to a file.

Having said that, I might take a look into this 8 bit format :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Very interesting! But I don't quite see why you need to bother with tracking pieces and swapping them. Can't you just go by the convention that pawn 0 is the first pawn you find when scanning across from a1 to h8, pawn 1 is the second pawn, etc.? Similarly for the knights, bishops, and rooks? (obviously still using the fallback when necessary)

That would eliminate the need for computing swaps while still producing the same move code for a given move in a given position.

<comment><USER4> This would work but it requires a scan of the whole board for pawn (and knight and rook) moves. I wanted (and eventually got - after a lot of mistakes along the way) a system which would use negligible CPU cycles for almost all moves.

<comment><USER12> That makes sense. I'm probably underestimating the amount of cycles saved by your swap method.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd suggest a slight change. Code all the pawns into 2 'pieces' and have a special piece for promoting. The 16 moves for the special piece can be an index from a list of possible promotions which is easier to generate and canonicalise than the total move list. This frees up 5 pieces for promoted queens. You could special case the king into the spare entropy in the rooks and bishops to save one more piece.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that would work (but possibly I misunderstand!). The system cannot cope with (up to, if all 8 pawns stood on the 7th rank) 8 more pieces! The fact that the queen needs 1 more 'piece' already requires a certain amount of ingenuity to work around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "An amusing point is that some moves really would require zero bits – this happens when there is only one legal move in the position, there's no need to store anything at all in that case."

What if a player decides to resign before making that move?

<comment><USER4> You would need to indicate the number of moves in the game at the start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why does every move have to occupy the same number of bits? That looks inefficient to me. Why not make the movement of pawns occupy fewer and the queen more bits?

<comment><USER4> In the worst case pawns can be quite demanding - because of underpromotion - there can be up to 12 moves available to a pawn - more than a knight or a king. Of course it is possible to design a scheme where moves take a variable number of bits - I discuss some promising methods in the article. But you will always need 8 bits for some moves (information theory says so) and the beauty of my "sweet spot" scheme is that it simple and quick, whilst still offering reasonable compression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting. What are the practical implications of using 8 vs 12 bits? Does using fewer bits allow chess engines compute more moves ahead?

<comment><USER4> No, chess engines use the simple highly performant "native" move representations. My 8 bit scheme approaches the performance of native representation, but is only (potentially) useful for other types of applications, particularly chess databases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Love the disclaimer at the start.

<comment><USER4> Article author here: Hope you are not being sarcastic/ironic. I thought the disclaimer was necessary and complete :-)

<comment><USER18> I think you are much more modest than necessary, not a bad thing though.</comment></comment></comment>


UK surveillance powers bill could force startups to bake in backdoors - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/10/uk-surveillance-powers-bill-could-force-startups-to-bake-in-backdoors/ <comment><USER2> "I am leaving it as I found it. Take over. It's yours." Ellis Wyatt

If you feel you're being compelled to act immorally, remember non-compliance — whatever the immediate consequences to yourself — is the only acceptable course of action. When we decide to spend our days building powerful tools, we enter into an implicit agreement not to let them fall into the wrong hands. If the government comes knocking, BURN IT DOWN. Make good on your debt to humanity.

<comment><USER3> > remember non-compliance — whatever the immediate consequences to yourself — > is the only acceptable course of action

Seriously, can we get away from these fine-sounding (but otherwise utterly useless) slogans and clarion calls? There has to be a better response than a scorched-earth policy.

I'm a software developer based in the UK currently working on an app which will probably be affected by this bill. Apart from destroying the product and/or risking jail-time, are there any sensible options? Can I incorporate somewhere else in the EU and run everything from overseas? What if I am not a UK company but a DE company and _everything_ happens from there?

I realise it's early days, but I'd hope HN could come up with some informed suggestions.

<comment> maze-le I think the only viable option would be to leave the UK. Not just you physically, all bank accounts and insurances too. When you have set up the company somewhere else (maybe netherlands, germany or sweden) you would have to renegotiate all contracts with all your clients, have new laywers, new accountants, etc...

I can not think of any way other than leaving, that will not compromise either your product, your customers or your integrity.

This is 'scrorched earth' if you will, without 'fine-sounding, useless slogans'. Consider this: If this crap becomes law, you certainly won't be alone when leaving. And when a critical amount of developers and entrepeneurs leave the UK permanently, the economy will suffer... greatly I think. And that, sad as it may sound, might be the only argument politicians would consider, when it comes to signing this bill.

<comment><USER4> > And that, sad as it may sound, might be the only argument politicians would > consider, when it comes to signing this bill.

Sorry to be this guy, but you do realize you're talking about UK, right??

IF you have pay attention to anything that comes out of UK politicians and being actually implemented in the law, you would have a hard time believing that UK citizens' disobedience, not matter how loud, will change ANYTHING AT ALL!

Sadly, they're doomed and I cannot find a friend who left years ago and never looked back.

<comment><USER5> > Sadly, they're doomed and I cannot find a friend who left years ago and > never looked back.  Is your double negative the right way round there? That > means your British emigrant friends _are_ looking to [move back to?] the UK.

I'm British, and recently left. I've met about 6-7 British people in my new country (I haven't been seeking them) and none have any intention of returning. Of course, they visit family and so on, but at present there's no reason not to.

<comment><USER6> Where did you go, out of interest?

I'm in the UK and weighing up options.

<comment><USER5> Denmark.

I wasn't particularly looking to move here, though it was a country I'd thought about. Then someone forwarded a job advert to me, and I ended up with an offer I couldn't refuse :-)

Anywhere in the EU is easy to move to, and easy to move away from if you don't like it. The big differences are probably the ease of getting a job, speaking the language (or not needing to) and meeting local people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if most of the politicians in the UK actually understand what they're doing here? Some research have shown that in order to recognize brilliance, you basically have to be brilliant yourself:

[http://www.livescience.com/18706-people-smart- democracy.html](http://www.livescience.com/18706-people-smart-democracy.html)

In another story on Hacker News today, I find the following: "She offers a sample math problem from the test: You go to the store and there's a sale. Buy one, get the second half off. So if you buy two, how much do you pay? "High school-credentialed adults, they can't do this task — on average," says Carr."

[http://wamc.org/post/americas-high-school-graduates-look- oth...](http://wamc.org/post/americas-high-school-graduates-look-other- countries-high-school-dropouts)

Clearly, the majority of the voters in a democracy aren't very intelligent. This probably means that most of the politicians in a democracy, such as the UK, aren't very intelligent either.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash This subject has received significant attention because as hard as it is to accept, it is all true. There has been a deliberate "Brave New World" effort to control the masses of democracies, under the assumption that leaving people to their own devices will ultimately result in chaos and destruction by someone else manipulating them (case in point: the Republican Party fiasco regarding Donald Trump)

If you are willing to see how your life and role as a passive consumer has been designed, watch the BBC documentary "Century of the Self," read Edward Bernays' "Crystallizing Public Opinion," and "Propaganda," and for an extra dose of depression, Noam Chomsky's "Profit Over People."

Sorry.

<comment><USER8> I haven't seen any of those yet, but I get the sneaking suspicion that they would all be preaching to the choir.

But I reached my current world view by extensive wearing of foil hats and painstaking calibration of handcrafted bullshit detectors, so it would be nice to see the analyses of those more reputable than my usual sources (by _many_ orders of magnitude), just in case they would ever be useful in an appeal to authority.

For instance, I could tell my spouse something for years, such as "chia seeds are a better source of omega-3s than flaxseed, because the chia seed coat is digestible, whereas the flax seed coat has to be cracked mechanically, which allows the oils inside to become rancid due to oxidation between milling and ingestion." And this is dismissed and forgotten, until Dr. Mehmet Oz features chia seeds on his television show. Afterward, I'm still the only one actually _eating_ the chia seeds, but at least I get less flak for it when I do.

The Cassandra Phenomenon: it's horribly demoralizing.

It's even worse with my homespun political analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Don't create start-ups based in the UK.

Register overseas (if possible). This is going to harm the UK economy a lot more than they think.

Founders will think twice and will only add to risk and burdens when you are already competing in an international, competitive, start-up space.

Remove the offending country from the equation by relinquishing legal responsibilities. I know a few founders who have talked about doing this so I hope the UK reverses this or never becomes a prolific start-up space (which would be a shame).

I hope avoidance becomes common practice, the UK is not the only country that incentivise start-ups. Others do and thankfully don't have draconian laws such as this.

<comment><USER10> It should be easier with Stripe's Atlas: [https://stripe.com/atlas](https://stripe.com/atlas)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If this gets approved and you're based in the UK, that's it. If you're based somewhere else are you safe or should you refuse to create accounts for people from the UK?

<comment><USER12> Piggybacking a bit here: would a startup based in the UK (as in, devs and managers live in the UK), but incorporated in the US (maybe through the new Stripe service), be held to this?

<comment><USER13> IANAL. International laws probably vary, but by having employees in a country, you may be subject to its laws.

For example, I am part owner of a Canadian company that sells an online service. If we hire US employees (developers), then we must collect sales tax and pay income tax for sales originating within the governing municipality.

Obviously, I am talking about US tax law, and your question is of a different nature, so the best thing to do is to contact a lawyer who has expertise in that area. I only offer my experience as evidence that the location of employees can impact the legal responsibilities of a foreign business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how people in the UK will respond if, for example, Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft all decide to no longer provide their internet services in the UK. How long would this bill last?

Also, it's quite concerning that four US based companies could influence a country's policies so much.

<comment><USER15> IBM managed to convince Pakistan and India not to go to war!!

<comment><USER16> Uhh ... some source on that please? I couldn't find anything related

<comment><USER17> Not sure why he credits only IBM but several large IT companies including IBM, Microsoft, HP, Dell and many others pressured the Indian government not to launch punitive strikes against Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks.

There was a very big fear that if India and Pakistan will go to war the global IT business would suffer greatly because of just how much of the global IT has been outsourced to India.

<comment><USER18> Any references for this please.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The list of "equipment interference agencies" includes "Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs" (HMRC). For those of you not in the UK, that's the people responsible for collecting tax.

Why would the tax department ever be allowed to do something like this directly? They seem incapable of fairly collecting the taxes of the country, what business do they have acting as an "equipment interference agency"?

<comment><USER20> They have an investigatory arm of their own and have been known to go after corporate data, particularly email, as part of looking into what they believe may be tax fraud.

One could reasonably question why this isn't a department or division of another agency, perhaps NCA, but I think it's a fair statement that forensic accounting and investigation is a somewhat specialised skill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You wouldn't know from reading the TC article (which is almost criminally poor), but yes, this is very, very bad.

Read the actual proposal instead, it's written in natural language and perfectly readable: [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/504238/Equipment_interference_draft_code_of_practice.PDF) \-- Chapter 7, begins at page 57.

<comment><AUTHOR> All these new US & UK laws literally _scream_ "Snowden is a traitor!".

Who wants to live in such a society?

<comment><USER22> Would I want to? Hell no.

Unfortunately the sands are shifting under me and since we are about two steps back from full idiocracy I can't see it changing.

We have an electorate is willfully almost gleefully uninformed, ruled over by politicians who are venal and rarely if ever held to account.

The whole system is bullshit from council to ministers.

The interesting question for me is more "has it always been this bad and we didn't know or are things actually worse now", I'm leaning towards the former as if you look at the history of government (in this country and most countries tbh) it's a litany of abuse after abuse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think it's safe to say that if this passes, UK security companies will no longer exist for all intents and purposes. I'm not saying they'll immediately go out of business, but I can't imagine anyone in their right mind trusting any UK business again, especially companies outside the UK. I'm not simply talking about companies whose main line of business is security, but essentially every technology company that even has an SSL'd website. Considering the wide variety of global competition, how could a serious CTO allow his company to do business with any UK company knowing he's exposing his own company to risks that could shut it down? No one in their right mind would do that.

The same can be said if the FBI wins the Apple case. I cannot see how this will not destroy at the very least the country's technology infrastructure. I'm not sure about the UK, but certainly in the US such actions would lead to a recession or worse considering that technology is pretty much the only sector to have recovered since the on-going recession. I suspect similar consequences for any country whose economy relies so heavily on technology, however.

</comment><comment><USER24> People who can enter a back door:

      1. people with a key
      2. people with the skill to open the door (burglar)

It's strange the UK thinks number 2 will never happen.

<comment><USER13> #3. People who receive the key from #1 (in the future).

This may be next year's elected official, or the official elected in 10 years, or the spy who will work in the office 7 years and 2 months from now. Can you guarantee the intentions and actions of every single future government employee and official? This, in my opinion, is the biggest threat!

<comment><USER25> You can't even guarantee the intentions and actions of the government in its entirety, good governments have historically been succeeded by bad ones in roughly the same way that rain eventually follows sunshine and the other way around. To assume infinite stability of government is a major mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As a UK-based founder (of a service with more than 10,000 users, which I guess could be targeted): what real steps could I take to make it _technically impossible_ to comply with an order like this?

I would sooner leave the UK than sell out on our users and be forced to _keep quiet and carry on_.

<comment><USER27> Use your imagination.

The key tool in the box, I think, is to give people orders that you expressly state can't be later revoked. You can use this to construct something like the human equivalent of an HSM. (An HSM, after all, is something that you give orders that in general can't later be superceded, namely about how to control access to cryptographic keys, thus allowing you to reason strongly about the security it provides.)

These people will need to be outside the UK, and be people you trust doubly: firstly to secure whatever cryptographic materials you escrow with them, and secondly because they can by virtue of that escrow hold your company hostage.

Some possibilities include setting things up so they have to review all source code changes (making it impossible for you to sneak anything by them); and some manner of non-duress verification protocol. One possibility off the top of my head for such a protocol is to declare that a failure to state a certain password in any conversation constitutes a duress indication. Obviously for this to work all such conversations must be secure. The idea is that when you're the subject of a notice and are asking them to backdoor things with the government breathing down your neck (possibly literally), the person on the other end starts acting oddly mutinous, but you appear to be doing everything you can to get them to comply. So long as the government can't prove you've done anything to be unhelpful - can't prove the existence of the non-duress password - it seems like it would be hard to find a case to prosecute you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Am I mistaken or is the UK moving more towards authoritarianism every time its politics hit the news? Disgusting.

<comment><USER29> It's moving towards a kind of Daily Mail fantasy land, in which there are peedos and brown-skinned terrorists everywhere, simultaneously wanting to live their lives taking advantage of the country, and also destroy it.

I see my tax bill going down, knowing that the few hundred quid extra I have per year (which is basically lost in the financial noise for me - meaningless) means that somewhere someone who really needed that money or the service it paid for is now being fucked over. I don't even know who; Cameron and chums (I go sailing sometimes with a chap who used to share a house with Dave Cameron; apparently he was a self-entitled tosser then as well) are fucking poor people over on my behalf, presumably thinking that this is what I want. Or maybe they don't even think it's what I want; maybe they're on some bizarre Randian kick, living in the Westminster bubble in which poor people simply don't deserve any help, and this is some kind of moral crusade from their messed-up Westminster bubble. The benefit to me; zero. The cost to the people at the bottom; devastating.

I see our "leaders" acting as absolute cowards; these are the people who should be inspiring us, but instead they rush to surrender our freedoms as fast as they can. Again, presumably because the Daily Mail tells them that this is what we want. The other lot aren't any better. Remember when Harman wanted to introduce compulsory ID cards? She had a long record of voting in favour of more government power and fewer civil liberties. Intellectual and moral cowards, the lot of them.

<comment><USER30> This is what I struggle with. Are they evil, blind, or both? The Conservatives are firmly in power now. Labour, the Lib Dems and even UKIP have been neutered. Corbyn is not going to lead Labour to victory in 2020.

You would _think_ that they could relax. They no longer need to pander to the tabloids. If they liked, they could dismantle the media and rebuild it in their image. They could build a gigantic statue of Theresa May. They could go to war. The potential for evil doings is endless.

Instead they spend their time fucking over disabled people. I mean... _why_? What's in it for them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Would you accept a bill to force TSA locks on all houses ?

<comment><USER20> This is a slightly different situation since it's within the realm of possibility for companies to implement security measures which make it difficult (or impossible) for interception of data by LEO.

That isn't really true in the case of houses so there's no need to legislate for "TSA locks" (master key system). Obtaining a warrant is still required but once you have authority, you can bash in the door, drill the lock, etc.

<comment><USER32> > This is a slightly different situation since it's within the realm of > possibility for companies to implement security measures which make it > difficult (or impossible) for interception of data by LEO.

I don't understand why people imagine this to be a novel situation. LEOs can't get documents if the suspect always destroys them immediately after reading them. If you keep your secrets in a box in a hole in the middle of the desert, a warrant isn't going to find it or even prove it exists.

That has never been an excuse to ban paper shredders or track everyone's movements 24/7 in case they ever went to a secret place to do a secret thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> That's not different from what has always happened with telephone companies in many countries, maybe worldwide. And nobody was ever shocked about it!

</comment><comment><USER34> What stops rich evil people from buying or incorporating a small town (with its own police force) just to get access to these powers nationwide ?

</comment><comment><USER35> I was wondering how I might be affected as a non-UK app user? It sounds like any company which has employees in the UK could be compelled to install a backdoor if this legislation becomes law. I'm not sure how this would play out but I'm hoping that if this becomes law it isn't essentially a law forcing a backdoor into all the apps that I use on a daily basis. My guess is that the companies would release geo-targeted versions of their backdoored apps for UK users downloading them from the various app stores and non-UK users would still be downloading the non-backdoored versions. But maybe not?

</comment><comment><USER36> So simply if someone hacks into that startup company they can use all those backdoors to spy on what the government employees do with their phones.

People need to think of the consequences of getting what you want.

</comment><comment><USER37> I believe that whilst a CSP (small IT company with >10K users) cannot directly publish details about a warrant, they are able to publish things like "We have responded to 2 warrants in the first quarter".

7.21 in the notes pdf about section 115 in the Bill

"This includes provision for CSPs to be able to publish information in relation to the number of warrants they have given effect to. In order to ensure that this does not reveal sensitive information that could undermine the ability of the security and intelligence and law enforcement agencies to do their job, further information on the way in which this information can be published is set out in regulations. The regulations make clear that statistical information can be published on the number of warrants that a CSP has given effect to within a specified range rather than the exact number. "

So a company can both disclose the number of warrants and are authorized to disclose information about warrants in general and not particular ones.

For example, a company would be allowed to publish how much warrants have cost them and taxpayers.

</comment><comment><USER38> Meanwhile in the UK: "Fingerprints and DNA of at least 45 terrorist suspects must be destroyed after police forces failed to complete paperwork which would have allowed them to be stored indefinitely in anti-terror databases, a watchdog has disclosed. The error means potentially vital forensic evidence will be lost at a time when Britain is in a high state of terror alert. "

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the- uk/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the- uk/12190961/Fingerprints-and-DNA-of-at-least-45-terror-suspects-must-be- destroyed-report-reveals.html)

</comment><comment><USER39> Better wording of a back door is donwgraded security. For an institution whose sole purpose is to engender security, they do the opposite. It's like saying they have better, more expensive guns than the rest of us.

Which collectively if you think about it, and round up all the PCs in each home, and all the security that goes into them, it's (collectively) the most militarized group of computers there is, and they obviously don't feel outgunned.

<comment><USER40> >For an institution whose sole purpose is to engender security, they do the opposite.

Well the security they engender is mostly physical security i.e. not getting blown up by terrorists while the security they want to breach is information security. I could see why some people would not mind trading privacy for reducing the chance of getting blown up, all else being unconsidered.

<comment><USER41> The problem is that some privacy is essential for democracy to function: you can't have the secret police going around bugging political parties and feeding information to their preferred candidates. Breaching encryption is like _Watergate_ but without all the tedious need to physically break into a hotel.

<comment><USER33> > Breaching encryption is like Watergate but without all the tedious need to > physically break into a hotel.

I don't agree. When I'm in a hotel room, I'm supposed to enjoy some privacy. If this bill passes, you will know _a priori_ that electronic communication is under judiciary control. As I said before, it will be the same as it has always been with telephone.

Really, absolutely-private remote communication didn't even exist before the advent of computers. And now it looks like it's a fundamental human right and no discussion is possible. I don't think that such a bill should be forced on UK (or any other) people, but fighting criminality is at least as important, and I'm not shocked that compromises are being proposed and discussed.

<comment><USER41> Remote communication other than by courier didn't exist at all prior to the 19th century and the telegraph. That's why it was left out of the construction of the 4th Amendment.

You can make an argument for crimefighting, but then you have to stay within the judicial boundaries: limited access, requiring a warrant, limited _use_ , requirement for basis for suspicion. The crimefighting process is there to produce _evidence_ which is then presented to a _court_ in _public_.

The problem with the IPbill is that it comes from the military intelligence point of view instead. The process produces _intelligence_ which is then _classified_ and is illegal for the public to see. There are warrants to be issued under the IP bill: it is a criminal offence for the people on whom the warrant is served to "to disclose to any person, without reasonable excuse, the existence or contents of the warrant." This provision does not come with a time limit. You can be ordered to hack activists or opposition parties or human rights lawyers and not allowed to whistleblow, ever.

There are some extraordinary little subclauses like 154.(9):

"Any conduct which is carried out in accordance with a bulk equipment interference warrant is lawful for all purposes"

<comment><USER33> You make a sensible point against this particular bill.

I just can't understand why any resemblance of a limitation of the privacy over electronic communication is greeted with such outrage. I do understand that encryption can be either controllable XOR secure. But my point is that secure encryption has never been a right: actually, the discussion has just started, due to the recent spread of its usage.

Again, telephone and (thanks for reminding) courier have always been controllable, thus not secure. Deciding whether a non-controllable medium of remote communication should exist, and who may use it, is a social and political question (like, for example, cloning: it is technically possible, but drastically controlled by laws). I understand it's quite natural for us HN-ers to stand on one side, but the world is bigger that HN.

<comment><USER41> _the discussion has just started_

I'm afraid it's been going on for decades: [https://www.epic.org/crypto/clipper/](https://www.epic.org/crypto/clipper/)

And that's partly why the mistrust exists. Law enforcement agencies are not given the benefit of the doubt on this because of previous abuses. There's a history here which is too long to #include every time the subject comes up.

 _Deciding whether a non-controllable medium of remote communication should exist, and who may use it, is a social and political question_

"Controllable" is a word shift from "secret", and that's what the US 1st Amendment guarantees: the existence of non-controllable means of remote communication. After all, one of the founding heroes of the US was a ""terrorist"" who brought messages to the other members of his anti-government cell.

The UK situation is much worse, and a full discussion would have to involve the abuses of the last generation of antiterrorist police and military action in Northern Ireland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I suspect that there will be a massive drive from early adopters, such as HN readers, to shift toward FOSS and decentralised services, where such laws wouldn't apply (I'd have thought), in order to avoid state intrusion on their private affairs.

Others would then follow, and although a lucrative industry might suffer, in the long run we may all be better off.

</comment><comment><USER43> After reading this article, news about this scares me. What happens when we leave a governments power unchecked? There have been too many times throughout history where unchecked power can lead to disastrous consequences. We need our voices to be heard, not silenced by the government.

</comment><comment><USER44> One option could be to introduce a third party user driven based end-2-end encryption on the data. This would mean, you can say "Man i am happy to cooperate but i have nothing in my control".

</comment><comment><USER45> I think tech crunch is panicking Given that this is for CSP ie ISP or Telco to facilitate tapping (as all ready happens)

It looks likely that 95% of the startups in the UK wont be covered

<comment><USER46> No - because the definition of CSP is vague enough to include _any_ professional provider of online content and/or services.

So it's more likely that 100% of UK startups (with at least 10,000 users) will be covered.

This doesn't mean that startups have to build in backdoors now. But it does mean that if someone from the Ministry of Something or Other or MI5/6 or the Police turns up and demands a backdoor and/or access to records, the startup has to comply.

I have no idea where this leaves Apple, providers of VPNs, or startups trying to provide secure communications.

At a guess it means they'll probably try to stay outside of UK jurisdiction. And I won't be even slightly surprised if banning VPNs is the next step.

It's obvious this is going to collide head-on with the Apple vs FBI case in the US. But this time we won't be able to follow it, because the legislation includes a press and reporting gag.

The UK's Home Office is notorious for being stuffed full of authoritarian paranoiacs, and they're always doing stupid shit like this. You can't even blame the current gov because it was the same story with the previous crowd - although the authoritarian paranoiacs in power now seem to be trying to take things to the next few levels.

<comment><USER45> The definition of CSC is key and I suspect will need to be defined in law quitly lobbying a few Lords or sympathetic MP's to ammend the bill would be better - praying Apples very weak case against the FBI in aid wont help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> How will this impact operating systems like Ubuntu? Will they be forced to put a back door into anything that connects to the internet?

</comment><comment><USER48> it mandates providing capability for interception, interference, and acquisition.

I wonder if we're going to see companies making increased efforts to make as much customer information completely unavailable to themselves to make these warrants not worth applying for? Unfortunately most businesses cannot operate in this manner fully, obviously.

</comment><comment><USER49> >"Small companies (with under 10,000 users) will not be obligated to provide a permanent technical capability, although they may be obligated to give effect to a warrant."

I can imagine someone getting creative and redefining what they call a user… though I can imagine this devolving into if you have under x page views… and then x time spent on site… how much bandwidth over the wire… etc.

Such a joke, I hope everyone is enjoying their view of the circus lol

</comment><comment><USER50> Please, I urge you to put backdoors in all your startup apps.

Sincerely, Russia & China

</comment><comment><USER51> People are missing the point a lot here. I have good reason to believe that this is being pushed and supported by those seeking punitive enforcement of copyright laws. Combine this with recent internet tracking laws and you have a serious problem

</comment><comment><USER52> I think there was this idea that crypto nerds could just ignore politics and seek liberty via technological solutions and live in their own little make believe geek data haven wonderland. Wrong.

</comment><comment><USER53> Little by little, month by month, our privacy is going out the window.

It's similar to how they are making smoking less and less popular by making new laws, increasing prices, and raising the legal smoking age.

</comment><comment><USER54> admit it, we live in a fu __* up world.

</comment><comment><USER55> Lie to the machines !

Under the spreading chesnut tree, I sold you and you sold me.

Be Vigilant. Be Pure. Behave.

</comment><comment><USER56> >UK Does something evil

No way!

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm creating my own startup at the moment. I haven't got a front door, let alone a back door...

</comment><comment><USER58> I looked through the draft bill a few months ago and I couldn't find the "we will force you to put backdoors in your software" anywhere in the bill.

Most of it seems like bureaucrats trying to get access to information after they have obtained warrants. It all seems a lot more boring and a lot less cloak and dagger if you actually dredge through the bill here:

[https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473770/Draft_Investigatory_Powers_Bill.pdf)

The document mentions encryption four times and backdoors no times. One of those times is to say that the bill does not change anything about encryption that isn't already in law under this bill, RIPA: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Po...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000)

Really actually more scared of RIPA (which is already law) than this:

"In October 2014, it was revealed that RIPA had been used by UK police forces to obtain information about journalists' sources in at least two cases. These related to the so-called Plebgate inquiry and the prosecution of Chris Huhne for perversion of the course of justice."

It's amazing to me that the first two cases are absolute abuses of power; I thought we were still being told that these laws were to stop terrorists and paedophiles, not find out journalists sources...

<comment><USER59> Section 189(4)(c) of the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill places "obligations relating to the removal of electronic protection applied by a relevant operator to any communications or data".

A relevant operator includes telecommunications services, defined in s193(11) as "any service that consists in the provision of access to, and of facilities for making use of, any telecommunication system (whether or not one provided by the person providing the service)"

This has been slightly changed, now that the IP bill is no longer a draft: [http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2015-20...](http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2015-2016/0143/16143.pdf)

The above draft is now re-written as:

s217(4)(c): "obligations relating to the removal by a relevant operator of electronic protection applied by or on behalf of that operator to any communications or data".

There's an appeals process, but the gist is that they're not outright banning backdoors. But if they come knocking, you better find a way to remove any protection that's there. Which is rather chilling.

<comment><USER58> If the government goes to a judge and gets a court order to access information this is what I consider reasonable and in fact a good thing!

It seems to suggest that technical feasibility and cost needs to be taken into account as well. If it's technically impossible due to Spider Oak style end to end encryption or for example the new iPhones (6+6s) having some very advanced encryption features I'm not certain that there is a requirement to insert a backdoor.

If the security services were monitoring a person who was genuinely planning to kill people and they asked you to put in a limited back door?

Most services remember do not have encrypted backend systems and it'll probably always be this way.

Mass surveillance is the complete opposite of this and is a totally unreasonable intrusion.

<comment><USER50> Except if you put in the back door it's not limited to that one person planning to kill people. It would be for everyone, in which case it is potentially mass surveillance.

Not to mention that the "someone planning to kill a bunch of people" scenario never actually happens. Typically these tools are used when prosecuting regular people for regular crimes, or looking for information after an attack has already happened (San Bernadino). Nobody has yet been able to point to a case of consequence where this type of surveillance was ever used for someone actively planning an attack.

<comment><USER58> I like that you pointed out it never prevents the attack, always worth remembering. Does finding connections from an attack work either?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't there an awesome mobile personal health experience? - <AUTHOR> I want to be able to see easy to understand analytics combining my lab results, checkup information, sleep & exercise data, and genetic information into actionable, preventative and predictive results. If someone works to connect all the EHR systems, this seems like a purely UX + Data/ML issue. What do you think? <comment><USER2> Basically every application is "purely a UX + data" issue. ML is only sometimes a good solution. In this context, the "UX + data" issue is terribly hard.

The reason why you don't have an all-in-one solution is because it's incredibly challenging and expensive. Where do you start? If you try to aggregate by provider you're looking at everything from modern applications for EHR to paper record keeping. If you try at the insurer level you're looking at entrenched players who have a profit motivated interest to explicitly not have such a product, long lags between service date and the data being available, and terrible data quality. Self reporting? Good luck with quality or consistency. This doesn't even begin to cover the regulatory issues and monetization.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well said. What if you go to the consumer first, and build a beautiful, gamified experience that deals with non regulated data: i.e. fitness, sleep, and genetics. I imagine if you get to a critical enough mass of consumers, you could gain leverage over the incumbents and incentivize providers to help you integrate?

<comment><USER3> The experience you propose sounds like Fitbit + 23andMe, which sounds great, personally. Unfortunately, I don't think providers would want to dig their own grave. sidlls is also right - regulatory issues would be a huge headache.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I agree that an all-in-one platform for this is sorely needed! It would be great to keep track of health without hopping from system to system AND use data from genetics, for example, to complement data from a physical to support a diagnosis.

The first possible issue I think of is privacy and HIPAA.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel the same way!

Quick q: Is this the sort of thing you would pay for, ex $5 a month? Or would you expect it for free?

<comment><USER3> A platform that integrates labs, records, patient-provided data, etc. would definitely be worth over $5 a month. A platform that is smart enough to interpret the data and offer lifestyle adjustments (treatments/drugs could be trickier) might approach the role of a health coach or doctor. I'm imagining EMRs with a Fitbit interface on steroids. I don't believe it would or should replace doctors, but such a system that gives the patient so much information would change the patient-provider relationship.

TLDR; yes, I would pay a $5 subscription for something so powerful. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Y Combinator Ad - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/ad.html <comment><USER2> Hmm, didn't know this file was still there. This was the landing page for an ad we ran on Reddit, way back. It was later than that print ad in the _Stanford Daily_.

<comment><USER3> here is the stanford daily article ad

[http://ketankhairnar.blogspot.com/2007/11/message-from- paul-...](http://ketankhairnar.blogspot.com/2007/11/message-from-paul-graham- in-stanford.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Earlier discussion with pg's comments : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75776>

</comment><comment><USER5> For kicks, a slightly darker orange: <http://ycombinator.com/ad2.html>

<comment><USER6> Huh. How'd you find that, and why is it there?

<comment><USER5> I just put an ad2.html at the end of the URL on a hunch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This ad is funny. Who wrote it? Paul?

</comment><comment><USER8> Why Sergey and Larry? Might as well go with Jobs.

<comment><USER9> I think Sergry and Larry symbolize hackers that became bosses while Jobs symbolizes just a 'great boss' ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very witty and very true. Direct and to the point, I like it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like it. Clean, focused and no-nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice ad, certainly caught my eye!

</comment><comment><USER13> Will it be put in a newspaper?

<comment><USER14> It's run in the Stanford Daily before.</comment></comment>


Facebook has a 'black people problem,' says former employee who quit this month - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/27/facebook-has-black-people-problem-mark-luckie-former-employee.html <comment><USER2> I disagree with this person's opinion:

        You can build something that works, that people want to use,
        but you can't actually make all the right decisions if among
        the builders there's not enough diversity and perspective

I thought the point of diversity was about giving equalty of opportunities to all folks indepndently of gender, race, ideas, etc, not about achieving some sort of colorful mastermind.

And why can't the current staff make all the right decissions? Is the current staff flawed in some aspect that only diversity can fix? I thought empathy is a common human trait, and actually many decissions at facbook are data-driven or CEO driven (and a CEO is just a corporative authority).

        In some buildings, there are more 'Black Lives Matter'
        posters than there are actual black people...

Is even this politcal organization even representative of that community? Perhaps enforced diversity politics instead of meritocracy is the reason why Facebook has been lacking recently.

I have no data on diversity beign good or bad; although I think this "diversity" topic is an opinable political posture. I hope everyone understands that my point is that there are several claims repeated over and over without any justification...

<comment><USER3> >I thought the point of diversity was about giving equalty of opportunities to all folks indepndently of gender, race, ideas, etc, not about achieving some sort of colorful mastermind.

There can be more than one reason to do something. Yes, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives are often attempting to extend opportunities to groups that are currently denied that opportunity. But there is also an element of D&I that is motivated by the belief that people with different perspectives and backgrounds can bring new and different ideas to the table and that the more ideas you bring to the table the more likely you are to find the best ideas.

Empathy is absolutely a common human trait, but let's be honest, but this isn't about understanding other people's feelings, it's about being exposed to other people's feelings. You can have the most empathetic person in the world, but if they're living in a 99.99% white, gated community in the US and you ask them about race relations they're not going to have an informed view. Not because they lack empathy, they lack experience.

Facebook has lots of users, and of those users it's not difficult to imagine different people use facebook in different ways. If you don't have an organisation that atleast to some extent reflects those perspectives then they're not truly going to do a good job building products for them.

There's a good reason that when you look at successful start ups they're generally founded by people who have experience in the customer base that they're building their product for. It's because they have experience and true understanding for how their customers behave and think. I could say 'Well, surely anyone could use empathy to achieve the same thing' but we don't see that.

<comment><USER4> > There's a good reason that when you look at successful start ups they're > generally founded by people who have experience in the customer base that > they're building their product for.

I have no trouble believing this, but I don't think this transfers to the OP. Facebook is not a startup anymore, and end users are not even Facebook's direct customers (they sell ads, not accounts).

But more tellingly, why stop at race (and other protected classes)? Why not optimize for the right balance of first spoken language, political party affiliation, age, family net worth, educational background, number of children?

I think we're overanalyzing what is essentially a fluffy slogan from a person whose sole job it is to widen Facebook's candidate pool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "In some buildings, there are more 'Black Lives Matter' posters than there are actual black people..."

      Those posters are divisive in and of themselves.

Best to have no racially themed posters at all.

<comment><USER6> You know that wasn't his point, at all.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "On a personal note, at least two or three times a day, every day, a colleague at MPK [Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park] will look directly at me and tap or hold their wallet or shove their hands down their pocket to clutch it tightly until I pass," Luckie wrote.

<comment><USER7> I don't believe this for a minute given what I have heard from FB employees about the place.

<comment><USER8> Why not? I staunchly believe that race and gender are not indicators of value, capability, or personality...but my subconscious acts on biases it has learned over decades from everyone around me, and it will take more than rational thought to alter who I find threatening, "slow", smug, timid or other decisions based on ephemeral qualities. These biases are difficult to identify in the moment when you are the one doing them rarely, but far more noticeable if they are directed towards you by many.

That doesnt mean the author is correct, but I certainly find the issue plausible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know what he is going through. I have experienced a lot of this during my tenure working in technology (Entertainment).

It's unfortunate that a company like that still hasn't been able to figure this out. As someone who studied computer science it is hard for me to recommend to the younger kids (Children of color... ok Black.) to get into technology when the prospects of them working in that sector are so low.

<comment><USER9> How representative do things seem to you? I seem to recall that black people were 13% of the U.S. population, so you'd expect (all other things being equal) about 1 in every 10 employees to be black. On the other hand, Asians are about 5% of the U.S. population, so you'd expect to see about 1 in 20, but everywhere I've ever worked it's been more like 18 or 19 in 20. I've never assumed that's due to prejudice, though.

<comment><USER10> Shouldn't it be more about mirroring general workforce demographics than population demographics?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Facebook has a white people problem too. Among US employees white people are grossly underrepresented at only 47.6%[1] while they are 72.4% of the population according to the latest census[2]. If these numbers were for any other race it would be front page news.

[1][https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity- report](https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-report)

[2][https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...](https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk)

<comment><USER3> To do the comparison you're attempting to do, surely you need to get data that excludes employees who are currently here on a visa. It would seem insane to criticize facebook for not reflecting US demographics when quite simply it's not hire from the US.</comment></comment>