Ask HN: why nobody talks about game development any more? - <AUTHOR>

I wonder why nobody is talking about game development in here? I am not complaining about that I am just trying to understand the social, technical and financial reasons for something like that. For example in the book Hackers by Levy a number of chapters were just devoted to game development. It seems that the big thing nowadays is the web apps and Iphone applications. What are your thoughts on that ? <comment><USER2> I'm writing my first game at the moment, inspired somewhat by the challenge put forward a few weeks ago to make $1 from a game by the end of October. I'm writing a very simple game, and it's taken _way_ longer than I expected.

I'm not using standard widgets, so I'm having to create a library of custom widgets.

Everything is 100% vector graphics (no images at all), so I've have to write a library of vector routines, (very) basic physics, etc

Transitions; Every non-game object (text, menus etc) has custom animate-in and animate-out transitions. nothing just 'appears' on the screen.

Games need sound, which I've never used in a desktop or web app before. This is a whole new world to me.

and so on...

I'm not entirely sure It'll be done by October 31, and when it is I fully expect to receive comments like "This is a very basic game, should be free, not worth $2". I'm pretty much doing it for the experience, but I'm also creating a game I (think) that I'd like to play.

<comment><USER3> Games also need

\- instructions

\- high scores

\- online high score boards

\- update mechanisms / announcements

\- options that can be turned on and off

\- methods for purchasing

\- a website

\- and more....

The idea and implementation is only the first step.

I've been in the game business for a while now, and one thing I've learned is, if I say "oh, that's a simple idea, I can do that in a week..." I should add 3 to 4 weeks, and that's for a simple indie game idea.

Good luck though. I feel like you're doing yourself a disservice going for the $1 from a game by the end of October however. Why not go for "significant additional income to your bottom line"?

<comment><USER2> I'm using the app store, so the purchasing side of things is not too bad, but yes, all the rest still apply. Haven't even started on a website yet, and I'm planning on making a simple video too as these seem like a good way to show off the game

 _Why not go for "significant additional income to your bottom line"?_

I'd love to, but you've got to learn to crawl before you can run, as they say

<comment><USER3> I have found the app marketplace to be mixed bag - it's somewhat of a marathon, but more of a slot machine.

You can put in the hours, but you also have to have a little luck. If your app hits, then all that work pays off, if not, then it can be very frustrating.

I have 1 big hit, 1 smaller hit, and 5 losers in the market. Some of my losers took a lot of time.

You're willing to put in the work, so I personally believe you are a step ahead.

I never had any intention of crawling - but I guess I did, so I see where you're coming from.

<comment><USER2> thanks. I'm getting there; things are finally starting to come together, which is nice to see.

if you ever read this comment (it's been a few days now since your reply) could you please email me as I wouldn't mind getting some feedback from you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I accept the premise that games are relatively undiscussed here. There are many fields that are more obscure.

But perhaps part of the answer is sitting there in your question. Younger tech is more exciting tech, and though _Hackers_ is an awesome book, it is also a historical document from thirty years ago, when personal gaming systems were in their infancy. Now it is thirty years later. Programmers have been exploring games for almost fifty years by now. (Spacewar will celebrate its fiftieth birthday in February 2012.) Computer games, as traditionally defined, are a relatively mature field.

By comparison, the web is a youngster, only in its teens. Social networking on the scale of Facebook is a handful of years old. The era of ubiquitous omnipresent wearable mobile networked computers -- we call them _smartphones_ for the moment -- is less than five years old, even if it can be said to have truly arrived yet. These things are _very_ exciting, because we have no idea how they will turn out, and because you can walk down the street and see opportunity _everywhere_. There are so many ground floors to get in on.

And, of course, many of the new opportunities will be games. But they may not all be _called_ games, at least not at first. For example, my understanding is that game critics are having quite the existential crisis about Zynga's work. Farmville certainly looks like a game, and it is sold like a game, but it isn't like the games that have come before. Which brings me back to my first point: Game genres which are decades old may not get as much press, but people talk about Zynga on HN all the time. Because they are new and different.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's not much innovation happening in game development today. In the past -

* The Wii brought [1] 3d motion to games

* The iPhone brought multitouch to games

* The rise of GPS aware phones created location based games

* Facebook brought about mindless social games that involve clicking a cow

The only new innovation I've seen is the 3ds, and it's yet to be determined whether it's actually innovative or just irritatingly headache inducing.

[1] Herein brought / created refers to the first major commercial success.

</comment><comment><USER6> As others have noted, it's not true that "nobody is talking about game development" on Hacker News; however, I think you're correct it is not a dominant topic. I can't speak for other's interests, but I know for myself that although game development is something I find somewhat interesting, it is not something I pursue, for a couple of reasons.

First, I don't spend much time playing games, because they don't hold my attention long and they're not the best use of my time (they're a pastime, literally, a way to pass time, but I don't need many of those). I know you don't need to play games to make them, but a deep love of games probably helps motivate you to make them, and I don't have that.

Second, I'm ultimately interested in creating things that change people's lives to some extent, whether by helping them solve problems, communicate more effectively, earn more money, etc. I think many people on HN feel similarly - they are interested in building things that enable people to get more out of life, in some way, and games don't always fit that description.

Of course these are just my personal opinions.

I'm still somewhat interested in developing games but more as a way to improve my skills in other areas, such as Javascript (I'd probably focus on HTML5 games if I got around to it) and challenging stuff like AI.

<comment><USER7> I guess if you're the kind of person who thinks that art can be a worthwhile and meaningful part of someone's life (and I do), and that games can be art (which hopefully most people recognize by now), then they can be seen as changing people's lives to some extent.

I can't argue that a game could be more effectual than something like Google, obviously, but I think games are a lot more than a way to pass or waste time, and definitely can provide a lot to people.

<comment><USER6> I agree on the value of art and that games can be art; however, I think the majority of time spent on games is entirely divorced from any kind of artistic appreciation or experience. Farmville and grinding for levels in WoW come to mind. A good parallel is television: some is art, much is garbage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Games is a hit-driven market, like releasing a CD or building the next social network. The top performers make a lot, but the losers just lose.

HN is for vertical niches (JOS fans), and people looking to build the next big web-app (pg fans). It's also good if you want to read about geeky stuff and general business. But there just isn't the space to discuss 2 winner-takes-all product lines. The two sub-communities would both find it too noisy.

<comment><USER9> I disagree with your analogies. Good games tend to do well. The catch is a truly good game is not an easy endeavor. But if you can pull it off, generally you can reap rewards from it. Gamers tend to be pretty educated on their hobby, especially if you compare them to your average music cd or dvd shopper. And gamers always have room for another game if it's good (just ask any gamer about their "backlog", a completely ubiquitous concept in the hobby). Most people have no need for more than one social network. I've challenged myself to find a truly excellent iOS game that didn't sell well, and despite a _lot_ of digging, I have yet to find one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm hoping to get funding to start a game development start-up, and I was wondering the same thing. I think there's plenty of room for indie game development. You can't compete with huge companies in terms of making a game that costs millions of dollars with a massive team, but there's plenty of other games to make. The game industry has gotten to a point where it takes so many years and massive amounts of money that they can scarcely try anything that's not a surefire hit, and companies get entrenched in continuing series of already popular games (instead of something new). So I think independent game developers might start to be more recognized as crucial to keeping things fresh and innovative.

Also, non-state-of-the-art games are getting more and more popular with the Wii and iPhone, while more and more people start to play games, people who don't demand hyper-realistic graphics and who want to try new ways of having fun.

To me we're still on the tip of the iceberg of game development; it has lots of potential and places to go for independent teams of hard-working, creative hackers.

<comment><USER6> > non-state-of-the-art games are getting more and more popular with the Wii > and iPhon

I think mobile platforms are the way to go for indie developers, because the technical standards are so much lower. The App Store's top charts frequently feature games that are no more complicated than many Flash games and are sometimes direct ports of them (e.g. Canabalt, Solipskier).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nobody talks about shrink-wrap or enterprise software either, presumably because they're mature markets that very large companies dominate.

<comment><USER11> There's quite a few startups in the game industry, but they aren't really startups in the scale-fund-and-exit sense that the web ones are, with the exception of a few mostly web- and mobile-focused ones like Zynga and ngmoco.

A lot of the small studios' commercial ambitions are more along the lines of "profitable small business that makes us a living while maintaining our artistic independence" rather than "looking for an IPO" or (god forbid) "sell to EA".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Web Apps and iOS/Mobile the popular platforms right now. While large commercial games require huge development teams and budgets, mobile/webapp games are commonly done with one or two people. Minecraft, for example was one guy for a long time and seems to be quite popular on here.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess it is rewarding to feel that you have developed something on your own. And feel that your skills is the limit, and not a whole company. But at the same time google or facebook are also quite big companies and they seem more attractive than the traditional game companies. An other issue that I am curious about: what about the tools that are used in the game industry? There is a lot of discussion about the web tools that are used in Web apps or iphone applications. I see that it quite difficult - close to impossible for somebody to compete with the big game companies. But at the same time I think that games will be with us for ever and technically seem more challenging. I am not 'devil's advocate' I am just curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I attended a facebook developer garage in my place recently, where a representative from a big social game developer confessed that very few social game developers are actually making money. Monetising social games is just hard. its a numbers game.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've personally found that game developers and "normal" developers are two pretty distinct set of people.

I think the people of HN are not going to offer the type of feedback people writing games are looking for, so they post elsewhere.

<comment><USER15> Where would they post? Any links?

Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER14> <http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/> General help and discussion

International Game Developers Association: <http://www.igda.org/forum> A lot of activity on this one about entering the industry.

Not a discussion group like here but in case you didn't know it existed: <http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/>

<comment><USER15> Thanks. I will check these out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Big interesting games are put together by very large, not so entrepreneurial teams these days.

Hacker news is much about entrepreneurial things done by small teams. That is a much smaller intersection these days.

</comment><comment><USER17> I make games and my startup has lots of game developers using it. It's just not HN-worthy most of the time because my blog is for my users to read, not HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess the technical challenges that you face will be interesting and also the paths for visibility and success will be slightly different from the general use web-apps.

<comment><USER17> Yep. Although many of the challenges are much the same ... how do I get users, etc etc.

It's definitely fun solving a growing problem for developers - games aren't disconnected and audiences are massive, "I want high scores in my game" is not as simple as hacking together some php/mysql on your $8 hosting account when a popular game reaches 10s of millions of people.

I think the biggest difference ultimately is HN doesn't hold any marketing value for me or other gaming startups so none of us are making a play for it. The analytics side of my platform dwarfs many of the ones we talk about here - but the others are relevant for anyone with a registration form, so they write / submit more stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are many discussions about game development here. Why don't we have more? Probably because not as many game developers come here to post as other types of developers and startups

</comment><comment><USER19> Games programming is hard. Creating web sites is easy. Nobody wants to work hard any more. They'd rather create "art".

</comment><comment><USER20> Well, I'm guessing more people make web apps and other type of applications (like iPhone apps) more than people making games.

There is still plenty of good information to be found on game making at least though.

Making a game is quite an endeavor. There are just so many small things that have to be polished before it can be released.

Making a prototype can only take 2-3 weeks, but building up content is the real time consuming process.

I'm working on a MMORPG for Android and I wish I could speak more about it. It has some unique aspects due to the mobile nature of it.

I'm building a web app now that lets you create maps, quests, characters, etc for the game and anyone can play them on their Android device right away.

The idea is to offload at least some of the content creation to power users so I can continue to concentrate on polishing and adding features to the game.

In any case, it's ideas like these that are interesting to me and I guess like you, feel that they're not really talked about often. However, there are nugs here and there. I can understand that web apps are just more popular.

Anyway, you can find my dev blog here: <http://developingthedream.blogspot.com>

</comment><comment><USER21> Game developers are not aware of non-work. Also, if your game does not look like a 100 million dollars IT SUCKS! NDA, risk, OpenGL complexity == boring/dangerous, etc.

Games == Assets == IP == Millions of dollars == Risk.

<comment><USER22> That doesn't even make any sense.</comment></comment>


Should Satellite Map data be Uncensored for all to enjoy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-10/who-if-anyone-should-oversee-use-satellite-map-data

<comment><AUTHOR> (that was the headline in the article so I left it unchanged)

This article is one of many that raises (re-raises) the very interesting question about what is the morally correct thing to do with high resolution aerial imagery. Clearly its an intelligence asset in times of war, there was a big dust up that insurgents were getting imagery of American bases in Saudia Arabia from Google Earth, that seems pretty straight forward. But what about Area 51? What about Taiwan's radar site that monitors the space between the island and the mainland for supersonic cruise missiles that China is alleged to possess? All sorts of interesting questions.

The economics in this case work against privacy, in so much that many people are willing to pay to see something that one person doesn't want seen. Imagine that Google had a system where they could charge for viewing satellite tiles at the 1M resolution. And user's could 'bid' for access like advertisers bid for space on the search results. Now the people who are in the tile can bid for 'non access.' If 1000 people bid $1 to see Area 51 in the Nevada desert the Air Force has to bid $1001 to not show it? That wouldn't work (although it would make Google a ton of money :-)

I'm not sure what the answer is, although I know that it only gets worse with UAV's carrying 16MP digital cameras on them.

</comment><comment><USER2> Another tempest in a teacup. Taiwan and Turkey have, for different reasons, asked Apple to blur its map images of sensitive facilities. But Apple isn't revealing confidential or secret satellite data -- the database Apple uses is by definition publicly accessible.

Anyone who wanted to get a clear picture of Taiwan's radar facility, or Turkey's prison, could go to other sources to get the same, or better, imagery. It's a little disingenuous to imagine that Chinese authorities need to consult with Apple's iOS 6 map app to discover where Taiwan's radar facility is located.

These international powers need to accept what private citizens have already reluctantly accepted: privacy is dead.</comment>


Academics have found a way to access insanely expensive research papers–for free - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/528526/academics-have-found-a-way-to-access-insanely-expensive-research-papers-for-free/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10424276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10424276)</comment>


Companies hiring designers despite Covid-19 (200 open positions) - <AUTHOR> https://www.trybrandy.com/blog/great-companies-hiring-designers-despite-covid-19 <comment><USER2> This pandemic has disrupted lives, and everyone is instructed to stay at home unless it is essential to go outside. The recruitment industry has no exceptions, and HR professionals who want to remain productive and efficient should adopt the HR automation tool to get their work done quickly. More at [https://bit.ly/2YYtink](https://bit.ly/2YYtink)</comment>


My Half Workday as a Turker - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/posts/2014/half-workday-as-turker.html <comment><USER2> I think this is a perfect example of how money today is worth more or less than it actually is. Another way of saying that is that money is nonlinear or even non-constant.

For example, say you are broke and wandering the streets of a big city and really want to buy a bus ticket to another city for $20 or whatever. No matter how much your net worth is, you can't get that $20 easily. You could try asking various businesses to do some work for cash, you could try a song and dance routine, etc, but your choices all amount to various forms of begging.

Meanwhile you can be sitting in an office somewhere and make that money in less than 3 hours even at minimum wage, even if you do little or no work. You can even sell something on craigslist if you're home. I suppose in desperation you could sell blood plasma, but that's one of very few lifelines.

Nobody thinks $20 is worth much, but when you don't have it, it's very expensive indeed.

To me, the root of the problem is whether you are resource rich or resource poor. So the web, by virtue of being intangible, is almost quintessentially resourceless. The trend seems to be lower and lower wages for increasingly onerous labor. In other words, if you have money, you get a real world return greater than the value of your money. But if you don't have money, then getting it requires an expenditure of resources and effort larger than the value of the money itself.

At some point in the near future, acquiring money will be so expensive from a labor standpoint that it will be cheaper to simply do things yourself and live outside of mainstream society by bartering goods and services. This really bothers me, because that shouldn't be the goal of progress. The paradox is that even though every new fiverr and mturk create more jobs, they lower the value of work. Right now this is affecting developing countries by creating a race-to-the-bottom economy, but the futurist in me looks all the way to the end and sees how so many jobs today (especially the non-production ones like administrative/clerical work) will eventually be automated by technology and thereby make the purchase of capital through labor even more expensive.

Does anyone see a way out of this? Did I miss something fundamental?

<comment><USER3> In the aftermath of the Bubonic plague in Europe, the shortage of labor led to higher wages for serfs, eventually ending any semblance of what we'd call 'feudalism.'

I'm not advocating a mass die-off of human beings, but any other means of limiting the supply of low-quality labor would have the same effect. If some sort of back-to-the-land subsistence thing became popular among the youth, those who didn't partake might find that a McJob paid more by virtue of there being fewer people willing to do it. Sort of a "shrug" by the lower-class Atlas instead of the elite.

<comment><USER4> >If some sort of back-to-the-land subsistence thing became popular among the youth

This won't become popular because it means accepting a drastic decline in living standards: you lose Internet access, public transportation, access to a variety of goods, the rural area you move to might have a corrupt government or an underfunded police department -- why do you think gun ownership is so popular in small towns? -- you experience a lot of social isolation, etc.

This idea that people should move "back to the land" can only originate from the deepest misanthropy and ignorance of the plight of the lower classes -- or perhaps the most starry-eyed technocratic utopianism, if you think that society can somehow provide poor people in disparate areas with a modern lifestyle -- and I'm not holding my breath. Of course, we _could_ just kick poor people to the curb like this; it seems to be our policy already, city councils won't approve new housing for them, they won't approve the construction of a Wal-Mart, expansion of transit services is always opposed by a chorus of veiled racists, etc.

<comment><USER3> I am a gun owner from a small town. What do I know?

<comment><USER5> > _I am a gun owner from a small town._

That comment plus your handle ('presidentender) might get you a visit from the Secret Service ....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used MTurk off and on through my teens[0] (15-18) and found that the majority of my earnings came in through the 50 word or less summaries. You get to a point where you've read enough PR department press releases that you can write the entire summary (at least to the required standards, which in my experience, is "barely comprehensible English") by looking at the headline. I was able to finish 50 word summaries in under 30 seconds. They values range from .25-.50 and they seem to come from a lot of submitters.

I've had a theory that out in the world somewhere is someone selling a guide to using MTurk to create article summaries and the guide suggests the price range of $.25-.50 because for the entire time that I've been on MTurk (many years now), every time I come back the price range is the same with small fluctuation.

Past the relatively low amount of summaries that are posted daily, money can be made by watching the right forums where people post high paying HITs (the name of the most popular forum eludes me at the moment) that are typically 5-15 minute surveys that pay .5-3.00 each.

By far, the biggest barrier to making a decent wage for me was the number of available HITs. The ones that pay over pennies each are few while the ones that are horrible time invests are everywhere. If I had an unlimited number of summary HITs, I could have made well over minimum wage.

[0] Made about $450 over the time, but this was sporadic, random working periods.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious, have you found the ability to write 50 word summaries in under 30 seconds to be a useful skill later in life?

It sounds like good practice in concise communication.

<comment><USER8> I'm surprised someone hasn't automated jobs like that, honestly.

<comment><USER9> Isn't that what Summly was supposed to be? The startup founded by the 17 year old that got acquired by Yahoo for a chunk of change?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I dabble on MTurk every now and then.

It might sound strange, but I find certain kinds of survey type simple tasks incredibly relaxing and some of the HITs clearly connect to what seems to be interesting research.

Pretty much everything the author says here is spot-on and has been for a long time.

MTurk is positively flooded with HITs for generating fake reviews for products and fake content for websites. The best paying HITs by far are translation tasks - transcribing Arabic and Farsi seems to pay the best ($0.30 or more per minute of transcription).

I aim for academic projects with preference for things which require qualification (simple math / reading comprehension tests usually) as they generally pay quite a bit more.

I've earned an average of $0.27 per HIT and have never had one rejected.

Some of the more interesting / unusual tasks I've seen:

* Pinpoint various joints (shoulder, elbow, knee) in each frame of a clip showing a baseball player swinging a bat.

* Drop a pin on an estimate map location based on scenery shown in a short video clip (This was long before MapCrunch/GeoGuessr).

* Manipulate the camera in a scene of flat-shaded objects to bring them into 'correct' perspective.

* Choose 'preferred' structure designs (little houses) which appear to have been created by some sort of genetic algorithm.

<comment><USER11> "Some of the more interesting tasks I've seen"

I get distracted by categorization jobs, like look at this blueprint and if there is a blueprint number in the title box, enter it. Well, I end up admiring the print. Oh look a giant gear for some kind of mining thing. Why, what an interesting looking architectural drawing.

Similar thing happens with categorize document numbers. Apparently some municipality decided to turn millions of paper scanned pages of contract bids into piles sorted by contract, so I'd end up sitting there reading all about bids to put in some drainage culvert. Who would ever have guessed theres so many steps and processes and backfill and compaction are critical and theres so many inspectors... I mean you can half A a drainage culvert in like one paragraph but if you want it done right its 50 pages of PDF.

These jobs are probably impossible without an excellent short term memory or dual (or more) monitors.

The ones that annoyed me the most were "leave blank if no number" so I'd scour the document for what seemed like forever just to make sure. Inevitably leading me to becoming fascinated by drainage culvert design.

Its very D+D like. Whats behind this dungeon door? Oh, I see, a blueprint of a giant gear from some mining equipment. Fascinating. Like archeology but I'm getting paid for it. Well, not much pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Jargon Alert - HITs (Human Intellegence Tasks) are simply the individual tasks (or units of work) that the worker is paid for completing.

<comment><USER13> Thank you! I had to ctrl-F down 75% of this thread because it wasn't explained in the article either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "At the time, I was hoping Dmitry would reject my HIT so I could go on a tirade about how unfair it was, and try to get him banned from MTurk or whatever."

I found this quite amusing. You know why this HIT was approved? Because requesters are also punished for rejecting too many HITs! He also would have been banned had Amazon discovered the scheme he was pulling.

<comment><USER15> This is a serious problem that requesters face. Often the workers who spam everyone with fake work will report anyone who rejects their work as retribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This was a great read. I found it particularly interesting that the author came into each encounter 'cold', which is to say without much in the way of additional tooling. They did install a word counter extension but much of their tools were ad-hoc or non-existent.

That suggested that there may be an interesting 'toolware' market for Turkers. For example, document editing; Lets say we build a simple document editing platform (copy editing not typesetting) which includes components that are dropbox like (shared storage), Google docs like etc. And design a workflow around that toolset. So pick a HIT, get a document id, it shows up in your shared storage, use the included tool to edit it, when you're done, click 'done', and have the whole thing resubmit back for evaluation. That might allow you to focus on editing and not get hung up on a bunch of getting it done issues.

Not sure how practical that is, but if there are common Turk workflows it might be useful to build some common tooling for them.

<comment><USER17> > That suggested that there may be an interesting 'toolware' market for > Turkers.

In the early days of Mechanical Turk (2005-06), when almost all the HITs were seeded by Amazon themselves and were of a few common types that kept being replenished, there were browser extensions to greatly improve the UI for the common tasks (the default UI is very bad). One of the more profitable tasks was fixing the location of addresses on the new-defunct A9 BlockView (a product similar to what Google would later introduce as Street View). They'd present you about 10 photos of a streetfront that were supposed to be near an address, and you were supposed to pick the one centered around the address (e.g. the store or house entrance). Or else indicate none of the above, if the alignment was seriously off so that the correct address was out of the frame. If you used the regular website UI, you could make maybe $3-4/hr, but most of this was tedious clicking: accept HIT, click a tiny radio button, scroll down, submit HIT, request next HIT, repeat. The browser extension implemented the obvious UI improvement: use the images instead of tiny radio buttons as click targets, and then auto-submit and request the next one on click. I think in one version you could also just hit a number 0-9 on the numpad instead of clicking. With that extension I was making $20-30/hr for a little bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've used MTurk to have interviews transcribed several times, and almost always had flawless results. (sometimes jargon or names trips them up.) I've always been incredibly impressed at the speed they get done, which is substantially better than I've ever achieved doing them myself. I usually aim to pay $10 for a 10 minute segment, which should amount to more than $10/hour for a good typist.

</comment><comment><USER19> An journal article I submitted a few years ago:

 _Amazon Mechanical Turk: Gold Mine or Coal Mine?_

[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/COLI_a_00057](http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/COLI_a_00057)

</comment><comment><USER20> Last time I looked at MTurk, it was offering money if I would complete some simple task, and, oh, by the way, download this crapware onto your computer and run it.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, those types of HITs are forbidden by the terms (often removed quickly) and, in my experience, tend to be rare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I checked Mechanical Turk as an example of how to _not_ to price for Newslines, my crowdsourced content site. It seems that most publishers use crowdsourcing as a way to save money, and while that may work for some tasks, you will not get consistent work done.

Rather than crowdsourcing being a way to find cheap writers, content business should see crowdsourcing as a way to find a diverse pool of writers who have different interests or knowledge, who can dip in and out of work, and then pay them fair money for their time.

I pay $1 per post for writers to write 50-100 word posts that follow a very specific format. We provide feedback to the writer to try to make them make money faster. The way I figure it is, if the writer makes money then I can make money. If they stick with you, you don't have to train new people. People won't leave after half a day.

We have already paid out thousands of dollars and our site is growing fast. Writer satisfaction is high. We currently have a waiting list of hundreds of writers wanting to sign up.

[http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/](http://newslines.org/newslines- rewards/)

<comment><USER22> Initially I found $1/[edit: item] strangely low as an example of "high pay". Having a look at what newslines is actually about, I still think it is low, but not as low as I intially thought (I'd assumed you wanted contribution from domain experts, who'd I guess you'd price at at least 100/hour).

I'd assume anyone that can write well, should be able to make at the very minimum 30/hour writing -- That leaves on average 2 minutes/newsline. I suppose the lesson is that there are many skilled poor people out there.

(Note, this isn't meant as negative criticism, just some observations)

<comment><USER23> You are dead wrong if you think any skilled writer can make $30 per hour. Only copywriters and technical writers can do that, and those are not easy jobs to get. Journalism, as an example, is one of the lowest paying professions. Writing jobs on Craigslist are almost always unpaid internships.

<comment><USER22> I suppose I'm rather out of touch with the not-cs hourly wages in the US. According to:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/04/26/is- journal...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/04/26/is-journalism- the-best-job-or-the-worst-job-heres-new-evidence/)

Journalists earn (for ~2000 hours/year) between 15 and 28 (without a graduate degree), while lower level CS started at around 25/hour. So I was clearly wrong, but it would also appear journalism isn't especially low paying either?

[http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/202644/gov- stat...](http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/202644/gov-stats-median- salary-for-reporters-35k-52k-for-editors/)

Seem to mostly agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Like Jeff, I'm a professor who works on crowdsourcing. For one of my current projects, I am working on a tool to make the Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace fairer for workers. I have developed a Chrome plugin that tracks the length of time it takes to complete a task, and a web site that aggregates the information across many workers. Crowd-Workers.com allows workers to discovery higher paying work by sorting tasks by estimated hourly rate.

Read more about the tool: [http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ccb/publications/crowd- workers-pos...](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ccb/publications/crowd-workers- poster.pdf)

Try out our Chrome plugin and our web site: [http://crowd- workers.com/landing](http://crowd-workers.com/landing)

</comment><comment><USER25> It's been over a year and a half since i've spent any serious time on Mechanical Turk trying to supplement low income, so some of my experience might be dated. With a bit of a learning curve it's plenty doable to find decently paying jobs in transcription, writing, etc. on MT, especially if you have a strong grasp of the English language. But even with higher-skilled, higher-paying jobs on that platform, the overall experience of working on MT can often end up being plenty demoralizing and unfair in many many ways, such as qualifying for skilled work and also being compensated for work performed.

The most frustrating jobs i've ever performed on the platform were usually approx 5-10 minute tasks that seemed to be decently paying and straightforward, asking you to categorize items based on some arbitrary but seemingly simple system, but later all 5 or more submissions you might have made could be blanket denied / payment refused. In that case not only do you not get payed, but having HIT submissions rejected really seriously hurts your reputation and what jobs you're allowed to apply for on MT; often many more high paying jobs on the system use high acceptance rate and flawless work history as the lowest bar for entry, and so MT workers can be screwed over incredibly by having work rejected through no fault of their own.

To not get seriously screwed newcomers are somehow supposed to know which types of HIT's to definitely avoid that could kill their rating, but without enough information to actually make that judgement. A task might seem easy and give the illusion that it's okay to send 5 or 10 submissions in a row, only to later have them all rejected and serious reputation damage done.

I think it's interesting but also really sad how this mirrors a lot of the unfairness and power imbalance in the larger working world as well. Reputation is everything, but if you just happen to get unlucky to start out your career working for clueless bosses / clients with unrealistic expectations, there's a good chance future job and career prospects are going to be seriously hindered, if not completely derailed.

Transcription work was usually very well paying i found, but doing one long transcription task for a $30 payout is a huge risk the way things were set up. Never mind that you worked for 4 or 5 hours on it; whoever assigned the job can reject it for whatever random reason they want and you get nothing. As nice as it can be to earn a nice wage for more high-skilled tasks, the possibility of being denied any payment for a days work with little recourse is really frustrating and demoralizing; the way Mechanical Turk is structured if anyone's taking a negative financial hit for work done, it's almost without fail going to be the worker.

Though this CMU professor obviously put some work into this write-up, i don't see how somebody can possibly get an accurate picture of what it's like trying to earn an income on one of these platforms by just devoting 4 hours and extrapolating based on that really limited experience. It is really easy to miss all but the most obvious and glaring problems that way, just from not sticking around long enough to even run across them.

There are plenty of MT workers who have spent much more substantial amounts of time on the platform, that are much better able to communicate benefits and pitfalls for the everyday worker. They might not be professors at prestigious universities like CMU, but having a decent amount of hands-on experience should really be the low bar for discussing pros/cons of the platform seriously; just as one example assumptions about longer-term take-home pay in the write-up were pretty naive: many better paying tasks (especially web browsing tasks and surveys paying more than a pittance) are often in limited supply and cannot be repeated either at all, or only a few times per day / week, etc. Even the best employers providing the most decent fairly- compensated work come and go, making a steady healthy income sometimes very difficult to achieve even in the best of circumstances.

Mechanical Turk has experienced a lot of success from the start largely because they created a service that makes it so easy for virtually anybody with internet access and a basic computer, to work from home and perform simple tasks / other types of work when and wherever they want, and actually get paid for it.

By any decent standards of developed-world countries the pay is shit though, and worker protections and benefits are nonexistent; workers can be denied payment and even have their reputation ruined for no good reason, with little in the way of an appeals process. But even now services like MT are still a pretty new thing. Maybe in 10 or even 20 more years most of the bugs will get worked out, and workers of every skill level can be a on more equal footing when negotiating with employers, settling disputes etc.

<comment><USER26> If there's no real appeal process, what reason is there for any MT employer to make any payouts at all? Honesty and not realising this about the system?

<comment><USER27> There's an unofficial ratings system for those who post the jobs[1] that most people who use MT with any sort of regularity (including myself back in the day) use. If a requester consistently fails to pay out, they'll stop getting as many workers who are willing to work on their tasks.

[1]turkopticon.ucsd.edu

<comment><USER25> That's a great point! Though still really hoping the default experience has improved in the past year or so as well. Not every new or even semi- experienced user is going to be savvy and aware of external rating systems, or other peripheral tools to help improve the worker experience. I know i wasn't (first time hearing about turkopticon, sadly -_-), but that doesn't reflect at all on how qualified someone is to do the mostly very simple tasks available to work on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Kind of reminds me of the saying, "pay peanuts, get monkeys."

</comment><comment><USER29> What a dehumanizing experience.

<comment><USER30> Yes, working: how awful.

I hope you're trying to be on the workers side but either way this is a terrible thing to say. The way you look down upon people trying their very best to make a living is not helping them at all.

<comment><USER31> It's dehumanizing to work and get paid little or nothing at all. You seem to be reading much more in the comment you're replying to than was actually said.

<comment><USER32> Depends on the sort of tasks you're doing. Someone above mentioned receiving ~$0.27/min of translations. This is a relatively high figure in comparison to a lot of tasks, but if the task you're doing isn't entirely mind numbing then being a Turker isn't as bad as it sounds. $0.27/minute is something like ~$16/hr - if you're working at a gas station with a computer handy, you'd be able to more than double your wage. Are the tasks undervalued? Not sure it's fair for us to say. The HITs keep coming in and they continue to be completed, so something is working.

<comment><USER33> Depends what sort of gas station you're at, I guess. My sister worked at a gass station one summer. She was mostly alone on the job, kept an eye on everyone who filled gas, made fast food, made sure the shelves were well stocked with products and cleaned. Not much room for going to the toilet much less sitting at the computer, but then her wage was something like 30 USD/h.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> For those of you like me getting a white screen with no content, the direct link is [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jzipmLrMVIH_FfxK4Hlkadxv...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jzipmLrMVIH_FfxK4Hlkadxvz18Lv- ej8U9QXEgPlsg/pub?embedded=true)

<comment><USER35> FYI, Privacy badger is what caused my browser to whitescreen, as it was blocking the pass off to google docs

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Interesting article. One hears about MT, but not so much from this perspective.

It's also interesting that the linked page has two scroll bars (tried both Chrome & FF).

<comment><USER37> This page is just a container for a google doc in an iframe. Interesting CMS strategy.

<comment><USER38> It seems to work reasonably transparently most of the time. I was in one of the author's classes in ~2010 and I think the class schedule was put online in the same way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder what pays more? Panhandling on the street corner or working on mechanical turk?

</comment><comment><USER40> Very interesting. Has anyone used Mechanical Turk to get work done?

<comment><USER41> I've collected experimental data using Mechanical Turker. In my experience, you have to do a lot of validation to make sure the data you are getting is reasonable. You have to kick people out who aren't paying any attention at all and just want to click through your survey to get paid. (Similar techniques also have to be employed for undergraduate participants who just want to get done with your survey so they can earn their 10 points of extra credit).

If nothing else, Turkers are good at making sure your data collection instruments are working the way that they are supposed to.

<comment><USER42> > _In my experience, you have to do a lot of validation to make sure the data > you are getting is reasonable._

Do you ask any 'trick' questions that are the cognitive equivalent of a captcha?

<comment><USER41> I haven't found the need to use "tricks." Basic questions work pretty well. I've done a couple of things. 1) Ask, "Do you have any problems reading English?" Some people with poor English skills, or people being honest, or people not reading carefully enough will click "Yes" thinking that I'm asking them if they speak English. 2) If sound is required, I've played an audio clip and asked people what was playing. They have to be able to identify what was happening from a list of words. This makes sure that they have headphones and can speak English. 3) I sometimes will ask people an obvious question about something that was presented on the previous page to make sure people pay attention. For example, if they have to read an essay on baseball, and the word "baseball" is mentioned 20+ times in a paragraph, I might ask them what sport the essay was about. A surprising number of people miss questions like that. 4) As mentioned by another poster, tell them to select a specific choice (e.g. "Strongly disagree"). I try not to do anything too nitpicky out of respect for people's time and because people aren't perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Can anyone suggest any alternatives to Mechanical Turk that offer a better experience for the worker?

<comment><USER44> Check out CrowdFlower. The workers are mturk workers, but I believe that there's more attention placed on the worker.</comment></comment>


CNET asks: Is Facebook run by sociopaths? - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57367957-71/is-facebook-run-by-sociopaths/

<comment><USER2> Gibberish link-bait.</comment>


Bitcoin Rally Fuels Market in Crypto Derivatives - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-rally-fuels-market-in-crypto-derivatives-11562146202?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> All these articles try to add the illusion of sophistication of the this space full of scammers and questionable characters. I mean, what kind of mind will spend their limited amounts of life on something, which hides its main purpose - speculation and getting rich without actually doing anything but just HODL'ing. What a sad space!

<comment><USER3> At least with corn and soy futures there is an asset with intrinsic value and some unpredictability due to weather / disease / yield / etc.

In contrast, Bitcoin is only valuable because people assume others find it valuable. That seems like a currency, but most currencies have lower volatility and are used by a whole lot more people.

So, bitcoin trading really doesn't make any sense to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't want to come across as an advocate, so I won't name names, but does anyone know why Proof of Capacity-based cryptocurrency schemes haven't taken off? They seem strictly superior to the BTC mechanism and, honestly, the Proof of Stake mechanism envisioned for ETH.

Schemes vary on certain details, but the gist on PoC is that you precompute answers to puzzles that take up a bunch of space on a disk and miners search their disks for the best answers to mine a block. It's hard to compute the solutions during the window for the next block on the fly, so precomputation and storage are required. Everyone's answers are different because the miner's account identity is part of each solution. This approach seems strong from an efficiency, transaction rate, and decentralization standpoint, but it hasn't taken off, and I'm at a loss to why.

(Like I said, this space is full of scams, so it's hard to ask a question honestly without sounding like a shill. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered asking.)

<comment><USER5> Proof-of-Work initiated an arms race to do more work. Proof-of-Capacity would initiate an arms race to have more capacity. And you still need to do work to prepare the proof that you have the capacity. On face value it doesn't seem to offer many benefits.

<comment><USER4> The main feature that attracts my attention is that PoC claims to require orders of magnitude less electricity per block than existing PoW solutions. That, to me, seems like a huge benefit that reduces the need for participants to locate themselves near hydroelectric power plants.

However, to your point, it does replace a dependence on ASICs with a dependency on the HDD supply chain.

<comment><USER6> The work done is a feature not a bug. The fact that a miner has to locate their equipment by a hydroelectric power plant is what makes the network so secure. That just shows that work is difficult to fake.

All these efforts to limit bitcoin's energy expenditure seem environmentally motivated, which is good. But the arguments seem equivalent to praising a safe's security but criticizing how hard it is to open. Those features are linked.

Yes proof of stake or some other algorithm may take over eventually but we don't know if they are as secure yet. Proof of work is the good idea that made the whole bubble possible and it remains to be seen if any of the other ideas can beat it.

<comment><USER4> Please don't misunderstand, I'm not suggesting that Bitcoin (or Proof-of-Work) is broken or bad or unsafe or even a bad investment.

Rather, my original question was why Proof-of-Capacity has not seen stronger adoption given that it appears to provide similar security guarantees with better decentralization properties due to a lower $/W/block cost profile.

<comment><USER7> The $/W/Block profile is where the security comes from. Insofar as a miner can spend dollars to increase their chance of getting the block, they will, until MR=MC. See this article which explains it very well, though it is talking about PoS: [http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow- cheapest/](http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This type of gambling is already risky on liquid, highly regulated markets. But doing it on heavily manipulated markets that are currently being propped up by billions of fake dollars is just baffling.

<comment><USER9> Sorry but this is simply not true. Derivatives markets can be/is used to hedge risk on the spot market (or take leveraged directional positions). The development of derivatives markets is a natural complement to the spot market, with derivatives markets usually providing a order of magnitude of liquidity compared to spot. If anything, having a liquid derivatives market increases the amount of capital required to manipulate the spot market.

>This type of gambling is already risky on liquid, highly regulated markets.

Risk is always balanced with return. No one is forcing you to trade nor is there any systemic risk. People who take the risk know what they are getting into.

>But doing it on heavily manipulated markets that are currently being propped up by billions of fake dollars is just baffling.

Didn't realise you were talking about SPX ;)

<comment><USER8> I don't see how that matters when cryptocurrency exchanges are able to print money and liquidate leveraged positions at will (Bitfinex/Binance/Bitmex + Tether). Couple that with miner fees of over 10 million dollars worth of cryptocurrency every day and the market feels like a giant black hole for any fiat going in.

<comment><USER9> >I don't see how that matters when cryptocurrency exchanges are able to print money and liquidate leveraged positions at will (Bitfinex/Binance/Bitmex + Tether)

If you start with a position as ridiculous as this then any further dialogue is futile. Goodbye.

<comment><USER8> Can you explain where I'm going wrong? The evidence of Tether not being backed 1:1 is pretty overwhelming by now and Bitfinex has printed nearly two billion new ones since the start of April.

<comment><USER10> Honestly the reply you got was sort of justified. I find that when HN discusses crypto almost nobody has any idea what they are talking about.

>The NYAG, in its original injunction, said they did not want to prevent Bitfinex or Tether from continuing operations, but did move to prevent Tether from lending any further funds to Bitfinex, a move Bitfinex opposed.

I am not sure what evidence you are talking about, but if NYAG is satisfied then I am too. Also in the grand scheme of things Tether is irrelevant. There are bunch of stablecoins available these days.

What is your complaint against binance? They are solvent, they don't liquidate people because they don't have margin trading enabled yet, they are opening a regulated US exchange in September. When they got hacked they've covered the loss themselves despite being unregulated.

Of course Bitmex automatically liquidates people, what other option do they have? Collect KYC info and hire an of army of international debt collectors? You know your liquidation price before you open a position. If your position gets anywhere near it's because you are being an overleveraged gambler rather than a disciplined trader. It's 100% your fault.

I've heard more complaints about Coinbase or Kraken not processing fiat withdrawals for months at a time, than I've heard about Binance or Bitmex doing anything wrong.

<comment><USER8> Nearly all trading volume occurs in Tether, compared to dollars or other stablecoins. Tether by their own admission says that they're only 74% backed by "cash and cash equivalents."

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/tether- sa...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/tether-says- stablecoin-is-only-backed-74-by-cash-securities)

I'm assuming that "cash equivalents" refers to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency that would crater the market if actually sold for fiat. Not to mention this was before nearly two billion tethers were dropped on the market. I have a hard time believing that institutional investors sent billions of dollars to an unregulated and unaudited institution that used this guy to move around its money:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-03/ex-nfl- ow...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-03/ex-nfl-owner-is- said-to-have-ties-to-850-million-crypto-mystery)

When Tether/Bitfinex blow up (either by indictment or by finally just running out of greater fools' money), so will the rest of the cryptocurrency market, particularly Tether-based exchanges like Binance. Mt Gox will look tiny by comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish we'd stop calling bitcoin "currency"— that is not remotely what it is. Currency has a number of important properties that allow it to fill its function, and cryptocurrency has basically none of them.

I wrote about this in 2017, but it is as relevant now as it was then: [https://www.bzarg.com/p/what-bitcoin-shows-us-about-how- mone...](https://www.bzarg.com/p/what-bitcoin-shows-us-about-how-money-works/)

<comment><USER12> After reading through your blog, I'm still unsure which properties Bitcoin lacks which nation sponsored currency has.

<comment><USER13> How about national sponsorship for one...

<comment><USER14> What exactly does it mean when people say that a currency is backed by a government? "Backed" to me implies, e.g., redeemable for gold which is clearly not the case for the US dollar. Is it that the government issue bonds denominated in that currency? But that has nothing to do with the money supply per se...?

Please explain.

<comment><USER15> The US dollar, if you live here, can be traded for a bit of freedom - pay off the IRS and avoid jail time. It's also good to settle a debt - the government will force the creditor to accept USD.

<comment><USER16> If I try to buy a macbook in cash in Portugal, that is illegal. I will be fined for it.

Does that mean the euro is not a currency?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-sex-biologists-find-new-explanations-20200423/ <comment><USER2> The article really highlights that there's likely not one single explanation for sex - increasing diversity, decreasing diversity through gene repairs. Same-sex behaviors potentially being something not just even worth being selected against, highlighting the "good enough" nature of natural selection where not everything needs a reason. A good read on the complexity behind explaining phenomena with natural selection - billions of years or random chance + selection pressures has no requirement to result in clean, neat, and easy explanations for complex phenomena.</comment>


DSLs expand the solution space, GUIs limit it to the creator's vision - <AUTHOR> http://www.windley.com/archives/2007/11/domain_specific_language.shtml

<comment><USER2> The article isn't too controversial, although it's a bit idealistic about DSLs -- In a previous job I've worked in an environment with a DSL (incidentally, it was wrapped in a really restrictive GUI that was the first to go) that was ok in the trivial case but was greatly restricted by the language designer's lack of forethought. For example, it was not possible to operate on certain things using the inbuilt looping construct. We ended up replacing the DSL with Perl for this and performance reasons.

Perhaps slightly off topic but vastly more interesting to me is the root of the trouble with GUIs. We saw that GUI demo in the 60s, nothing happened for 20 years until PARC and we've spent the next 30 years moving the close button around and deciding how to word the Save File dialog box. Where is the innovation here? Why are virtually all languages implemented in 7-bit ASCII and a monospaced font? Why is programmatic control or recording of GUI actions almost always an afterthought?

In a former employment life I saw mockups of brainstorming effort to envision the future of the command line. The team's efforts mostly looked like trivial window decoration changes -- the terminal window itself was still ASCII (utf8 or whatever probably), 80x25, and monochrome. Why?

Much as mankind's hand has spread invasive plant species to virtually all soil on the earth, rendering it largely similar on most continents, the curse of POSIX is that it has choked out a lot of computing/OS design. Mindless (or unambitious) mimicry of the Mac/Windows in the GUI world has given us beige on that once beautiful frontier as well.

I guess it's not a bad place to be, but you wonder how else it might have turned out.

</comment><comment><USER3> DSL's are great as long as you don't take them too far towards the "natural language" style of coding.

For example, I find RSpec's story runner uncomfortable to work with because of the overly English-like syntax it uses.

This blog post has some "before and after" code showing the same tests/specs implemented at unit tests, and as Rspec stories:

[http://evang.eli.st/blog/2007/9/1/user-stories-with- rspec-s-...](http://evang.eli.st/blog/2007/9/1/user-stories-with-rspec-s- story-runner)

To me the heavily DSL-oriented story code is easier to read as far as _intent,_ but as a programmer trying to figure out what the code is actually doing, it's sort of a big WTF.

Dave Thomas has an interesting writeup on "DSL's going too far" at:

[http://pragdave.blogs.pragprog.com/pragdave/2008/03/the- lang...](http://pragdave.blogs.pragprog.com/pragdave/2008/03/the-language- in.html)

<comment><USER4> Another example: Applescript

<comment><USER3> Bingo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just to be pedantic: a GUI can have exactly the same expressive power as a language, by implementing that language, i.e. allow nesting and iteration. I realize that by "GUI", the author refers to those GUIs that we usually see, that are limited to their creator's vision, but I just needed to get that off my chest. Whew.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds interesting. How?

 _"exactly the same expressive power"_

No, surely it would be less expressive in some cases, more in others.

<comment><USER5> Well, I said " _can_ have exactly the same expressive power", just meaning that a GUI is not more limited than a language just because it's a GUI. Perhaps misleadingly stated :-). Specific languages and specific GUIs naturally will vary in what they can express.

I was thinking mainly of buttons on a window that open instances of a window corresponding to the non-terminals on the RHS of a CFG production rule. That's the "nesting" (nesting can also represent iteration, or you can have explicit iteration in the form of lists). Extra constraints can be imposed on this CFG just as they are in a language.

Example of simple arithmetic expressions (a DSL): each window has a text field, and four buttons marked with the operators +,-,* and /. You can type in a number, or click a button which opens another window with the same format and labeled with the chosen operator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "When you develop a DSL, you lose the ability to leverage the checkers, IDEs, and other tools that exist for GPLs."

When I think of "other tools", I think of testing frameworks, remoting layers, threading, other language libraries, etc. Can anyone give me an example of a problem domain that is not well suited by a current major programming language, and yet simple enough that it doesn't require you to implement the other tools you get for free by using one?

</comment><comment><USER7> Really agree with the substance of this article - I'm always keen to jump to a DSL when looking at a problem.

Even if thinking about it is as far as I get, it invariably helps me clarify the solution (more than most techniques I've tried).

</comment><comment><USER8> Right on. This is where lisp shines. Since inbuilt special forms and added libraries are indistinguishable from each other and since advanced functionality like macros are available, it allows one to write a DSL _in lisp._

Its very nice.

PS. This is also why GUIs will never beat the terminal. Now if only someone would apply this to web services. ubiquity et al. are a nice start.

<comment><USER9> This is why Lisp programmers call "DSLs" libraries. ("And you should too, kids!")

To authors of DSLs for their special hardware or daemon or whatever -- I don't want to learn your retarded homegrown programming language. Give me a library for a language I already know. (Specific gripe -- lighttpd config files. It's not quite Lisp, it's not quite Perl... It's USELESS. Instead of doing what I want, I have to work around the author's idea of a programming language. Ick.)</comment></comment>


The first rule of Lua - <AUTHOR> http://www.goplexian.com/2010/02/first-rule-of-lua.html

<comment><USER2> I get a mention in this. It's clear that "the reason why I'm not using Lua," which is what I talked about, is not the same as a discussion of "the reason why Lua isn't talked about."

But I think I can weave my first comment into a comment on the second: The amount of discussion is dependent on the scale of useful projects. Bloggers, as a rule, try to fit everything into sound-bites. The big, complex projects where Lua gets used successfully are not easy to sound-bite, and the (hypothetical) average programmer can't relate to them; instead, blogs focus disproportionately on "tiny code-snippet hack" cases: take, for example, the "reddit in n lines of foo" meme. Those things are not particularly useful or informative, but they drive a lot of programmer traffic because they're just interesting enough to get attention without being difficult.

A project like Sqlite fits in great in the "code-snippet" case. It fills a certain application need - persistent storage and queries - and has lots of bindings so you can use it from most languages. It reuses well-known concepts from SQL databases, even if the actual implementation is different. So it's easy to talk about, and it's easy to include by default for a broad subset of projects.

Lua, being a "full" language, has some unique concepts and syntax, and an integration process requiring a little bit of thought and effort, which makes people feel uncomfortable. The benefits aren't immediately obvious. They'd need a bigger push to habitually include it in _most_ projects. So it fails the code-snippet test.

Rails is another good example. "Look at how easy it is to get a useful webapp running!" That was the original draw. It worked because, as it happened, when it came out, programmers were desperate for exactly that kind of solution. The people who bought into this soon generated additional waves of hype, because they realized that Ruby was more expressive than Java/C++/etc. that they had been using before, so you got a lot of "Why Ruby is better than x" follow-on posts from people who had never seen a dynamic-typed language in their life.

It is a case of "stupid gimmicks," of course. Sqlite would still be useful without using SQL query syntax, and Ruby would still be useful without Rails, But I think that's the kind of thing Lua needs to gain hype. A Lua-based project that, within a specific application domain, makes it easy to create cool, useful hacks.

(LÖVE seems like a pretty good example for this, honestly.)</comment>


Ask HN: What are some of the biggest pain points when deploying applications? - <AUTHOR> What are some of the biggest pain points that developers are experiencing when trying to deploy an application to production and what are some of the current tools that are being used to help alleviate some of these problems? <comment><USER2> One of the biggest problems I've seen is how much incorporating secret management complicates deployments. As soon as you add that, you need some sort of encrypted management store (Vault, etc) some workflow to add new secrets, and now you need more refined access control and a lot more work in automation. Simple git push/pull deployments are gone. Default Fabric, Capistrano scripts need to be heavily rewritten and most often this means limiting who can deploy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh man, where to start...

\- Environment Consistency

\- Secure Networking

\- Access Control

\- Load Balancing

\- Failover

\- CI/CD Setup

\- I could keep going...

There's a lot of services out there help to alleviate many of these. Companies like Heroku, Codeship, Engine Yard, etc. One of the newest services to hit the scene is Nanobox ([https://nanobox.io](https://nanobox.io)).

</comment><comment><USER4> The dependence upon dev ops who aren't always in sync with what apps need to thrive is a pain in the rear.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lot of things. Few things that hit me recently

* Security

* Backup and Restore

* Health and Performance Monitoring

* Load Balancing</comment>


Student ID Redesign  - <AUTHOR> http://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci2951-l/fya/redesign.html

<comment><USER2> This is a student's submission to redesign. Assignment link [PDF warning]: [http://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci2951-l/redesign_assignment.p...](http://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci2951-l/redesign_assignment.pdf)

> Submit your nal report by copying to > pro/web/web/courses/cs2951-l/[yourcsid]/redesign.html which becomes visible > online at > [http://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci2951-l/[yourcsid]/redesign.h...](http://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci2951-l/\[yourcsid\]/redesign.html). > Then share your redesign on a social news website sometime in the next two > weeks (e.g. Slashdot slashdot.org, Hacker News news.ycombinator.com, > Designer News news.layervault.com, Reddit reddit.com).

</comment><comment><USER3> Dear Course Instructor(s) (Everywhere),

Please refrain from requiring your undergraduates to spam their "design" assignments to social networks, particularly ill-suited ones like Hacker News.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this a joke?? Why does it have a random fish from Finding Nemo on it??

<comment><USER2> > Also a DIY zone was added to display more personality and make cards look > better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The icons used are ugly (1995 computer and low-res stick figures‽) and the rank is strange. The current ID cards don't look that bad; I'm not sure why they need a redesign.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think simple vertical strip(colored based on the grade) on one edge and just writing the Major in would have done the trick. Idea should be easy recall of information without needing to know too much prior information.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the idea!</comment>


AI Can Now Fix Your Grainy Photos by Only Looking at Grainy Photos - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp7HdI0-MIo <comment><AUTHOR> Noise2Noise paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.04189.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.04189.pdf)</comment>


Pure HTML Share Buttons - <AUTHOR> https://schier.co/blog/pure-html-share-buttons <comment><USER2> This is such a great simple resource. Most of these share urls are poorly documented compared to their JavaScript/tracker counterparts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Ya, it took a while to find them all but they're out there. Since they're needed for HTML emails, I'm hoping they'll continue working long-term too.

<comment><USER3> HN has HTML emails?

<comment><AUTHOR> HN is specifically because they offer a bookmarklet. For the others, it makes sense that they'd want you to be able to include share links in your newsletters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice try, where are the icons though? I can't find them, do I have to download anything else?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are no icons but you can add your own using SVG or something like [https://fontawesome.com](https://fontawesome.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's so sad that we need posts like this to get this information.

Thank you btw.</comment>


Things that happen at a lock-picking convention (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/crime/features/2013/the_lock_pickers/locksport_the_strange_things_that_happen_at_a_lock_picking_convention.html <comment><USER4> Favorite lock currently is the Bowley.

Demo animation: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jgekjfwphGc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jgekjfwphGc)

Here's great analysis of the lock with an attempt to pick it and an breakdown of the design after taking it apart: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b96pmWSArr4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b96pmWSArr4)

\----

EDIT: In case you want buy a Bowley Lock, they're now available for sale to the public here:

[http://www.bowleylockcompany.com/store/c1/Featured_Products....](http://www.bowleylockcompany.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html)

<comment><USER5> I keep seeing mention of how great this lock is, but all mentions go back to this same couple of videos. Makes me really suspicious of astroturfing, frankly.

IIRC, also wondered how this particular design prevents against bumping; none of its protections really seem aimed at that usecase. Not to mention the relative frailty of the key, and the general problem of an easily visible (and thus reproducible) secret.

<comment><USER4> Think if you believe you're able to pick it, then buy one, pick it, post the video to YouTube with ADs enabled - and you'll easily make back the cost of buying the lock.

As for bumping and the key strength, given those topics are covered in the second video, you're comment to me at best feels naive.

Lastly, no system is prefect. Even if the metal the lock is made of was unbreakable and as a result you could 't destroy the lock to bypass it, you could still build a robot that inserts a metal key to turn the lock and dynamically assembles and inserts every possible bidding for each pin.

Feel free to post a lock you like, locks to me are more about simplicity vs security - not some overly complex system will never be used in mass production.

<comment><USER6> You didn't respond to the first point about astroturfing.

<comment><USER7> The first sentence argues that buying the lock and posting a video of cracking the lock would be financially positive.

It's also not astroturfing if the company itself is advertising the product. The video's linked from Bowley's youtube channel.

<comment><USER8> So is wonderous working for this company?

<comment><USER7> What's your point/argument?

<comment><USER9> In Hacker News it's considered to be good form to disclose financial associations. Do you also work for the company?

<comment><USER7> _> Do you also work for the company?_

I submit that your statement relies on an unfounded premise (at least from my scan of this thread) that wonderous works for the company.

Also, by your standard, if wonderous doesn't work for said company, he's still complying with your "standard." Yet, you're still making an implicit accusation.

The purpose of my initial comment was to address the potshot accusation of astroturfing after, IMHO, wonderous had responded in good faith.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Read Feynman's book "Surely your joking Dr. Feynman", he's got an entire chapter on safe cracking.

Yep, I remember in high school, in fact it was in Pasadena not far from Cal Tech, I don't remember who, but somehow I learned from somebody how to open the high-school lockers by 'feel', in a fairly short-time I could open any locker quicker than my own knowing the combo.

Locks are fairly amazing when you think about it the locksmiths and the criminals all know how to crack any lock, yet the people in the middle think they're secure.

Years later as a landlord I got to know my locksmith fairly well, one day by offhand he told me that the master-key ( So I could have one key to rule them all ) I was using could open 1/2 the units in the city.

<comment><USER11> (1) I love your book recommendation; however, it dedicates maybe one or two pages to safe-cracking, so I would not recommend it for this purpose.

Instead, I would read the material that Deviant Ollam has published ([http://deviating.net/lockpicking/resources.html](http://deviating.net/lockpicking/resources.html)) or look for an upcoming TOOOL meetup ([http://toool.us/](http://toool.us/)).

(2) I don't intend to be pedantic – and perhaps I'm mistaking hyperbole for fact – but how could you are opening a combination lock with an secret unbeknownst to you more quickly than your a combination lock with a secret known to you? Unless, you're shimming the new lock and avoiding dialing the correct combination altogether, in which case you would solve them all locks in the same span of time, this is unlikely. However, you said you're opening the lock by 'feel,' so I assume that's not the case.

<comment><USER12> With respect to #2 -- "more quickly" could be a bit much, but there are quite a few combination locks (of the sort commonly found on cheap-ass high-school lockers) wherein getting within 2-3 digits of each digit in the combination is sufficient to open them.

Given that, I could easily see how "feeling" that you'd hit the right digit (give or take) might be faster than focussing on visually _actually_ hitting the right digits.

<comment><USER13> when i was in high school, the school issued old master combination padlocks to everybody and they had a very obvious audible and tactile "thunk" when the dial hit the right number, if you pulled down on them the right amount while spinning the dial.

and yes, it actually was quicker to open them by feel than by looking at the numbers on the dial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I came to work early once and forgot my keys. I decided to just sit on the ground and go through commits [pathetic]. A newer dev, recently hired came by next. I explained the situation. He then grabbed a weird small set of tools out of his bag. After about 3 minutes he opened the door. I was totally horrified. I am not sure if i was more upset he had the tools on him, the tools WERE LEGAL, or how easy it was to steal all our cool hipster monitors. He went on to explain how he couldn't get into various types of locks and which locks he was training on -- like some type of club or sport.

<comment><USER15> Why should a toolkit be illegal, and why should you not carry your tools with you? Picking a lock is usually the slowest way in, if you are trying to increase security, paying a premium for a better lock while retaining windows and unreinforced walls is a poor decision.

<comment><USER16> In the UK posession of a lockpicking kit in public is very much illegal, unless you have a professional reason to carry one. Same with a knife - <USER2> you are literally bringing one back from the store to your home, you can be arrested for having one.

<comment><USER17> > same with a knife

Any knife? You can't carry a pocket knife in the UK? That's ridiculous. Knives were nearly the first tool proto-man ever made, and they're still the most useful general purpose tool you can have.

<comment><USER18> No.

> Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 prohibits having with you, in a > public place of any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed, > (including a folding pocket knife if the cutting edge of its blade exceeds > 7.62cm/3 inches) (Archbold 24-125).

[http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/l_to_o/offensive_weapons_knives_...](http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/l_to_o/offensive_weapons_knives_bladed_and_pointed_articles/)

<comment><USER19> A 3-inch blade length restriction is reasonable. For instance, it was illegal until 2014 in my state to carry a blade longer than 4 inches. (There is now no limit.) During the majority of my life that it was illegal to have a longer blade, most people I knew still carried pocket knives that were legal to carry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is a restriction of 3 inches reasonable again? Why not 4 inches or 2.5 inches or some other length?

<comment><USER20> 3 inches is no more reasonable than 70 mph as a speed limit. But if you accept that some limit should exist, it has to have _some_ value, even if all the choices are equally arbitrary

<comment><AUTHOR> If any speed limit and any knife length is equally arbitrary, then a nation- wide speed limit of 1 mph and a legal knife length of 100 inches should be perfectly acceptable to everyone. Yet it's quite likely many people would object to both.

<comment><USER21> I don't see that cabaalis said that _any_ limit is equally arbitrary, and I doubt s/he thinks that.

Some limits are more reasonable than others. Saying "you can have knives but the blade must be no more than 5mm long" would be stupid; so would saying "you can drive a car but no faster than 1mph". (Because in either case you might as well, and should in preference, just say "you may not"). Likewise for a limit of 10m or 500mph (because then you might as well, and should in preference, just not bother with the limits).

If you're going to have a limit on the length of a knife blade, presumably for the sake of a small reduction in knife crime, you want a limit long enough that some (non-criminally) useful knives are shorter and short enough that the restriction, if it reduces the number of long knives in circulation, would actually do something to impede crime.

It seems plausible that a 3-inch limit would do that. Maybe a 4-inch limit too. The exact choice of limit isn't completely arbitrary: some choices are better than others. But really, the only answer to "why 3 inches rather than 4?" is "that's where we happened to make the tradeoff".

I'm guessing (not least because the above all seems kinda obvious) that your actual objection is to having any limit at all. (Perhaps on the grounds of some more general libertarian principle?) That's a reasonable objection, but I don't think "why 3 inches rather than 4?" is a good way to make it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't trying to make an objection. I was just trying to understand what the argument was for making the limit 3".

As for the "criminally useful" argument, I struggle to imagine what crimes could be committed with a 4" knife that couldn't be committed with a 3" knife.

You say it's plausible to you that a 3" or 4" limit would reduce knife crime. What makes you think that?

<comment><USER21> It seems plausible to me -- I don't claim any more than that, and I am no expert on this stuff -- that:

1\. If possession (in public places) of knives above (say) 3" is illegal, fewer people will go about carrying knives above (say) 3". It probably won't make any difference to someone _planning_ to get into a knife fight, of course.

2\. If fewer people are casually carrying big knives, then there will be fewer opportunities for conflicts to escalate to fights involving big knives. For instance, a bar fight is less likely to end up fatal if fewer people in it are carrying serious knives. A burglary is less likely to end up fatal if the burglar isn't. Some muggers may choose to make do with musclepower rather than knives (so they're less likely to get into serious trouble if a policeman thinks they look suspicious). Etc.

3\. Fights involving big knives are less dangerous than fights involving smaller knives, e.g. because a bigger knife is more likely to end up doing serious damage to internal organs. (If an expert fighter is specifically trying to do you serious harm, I'm sure they can do it with a small knife. Or a toothpick. But in cases where the goal is "establish dominance" or "get away safely from the house I just burgled" or "make my victim sorry he didn't just hand over his wallet" and there isn't serious intent to kill, I expect smaller knives to do less harm on average.)

Astute readers will notice that I'm now talking about knife _fights_ rather than knife _crime_. My guess is that premeditated crime-with-knives probably wouldn't be much affected by this sort of ban. So, though I'm sure all the things I'm hoping would be reduced would technically be knife crimes (i.e., crimes committed using a knife), I think my use of that term was unhelpful. Sorry about that.

<comment><USER16> Well, same arguments as with guns, really. Smartly, UK police has figured out that a policeman can't shoot anyone by mistake if they don't have a gun - <USER3> UK policemen don't carry them at all. If you reduce a number of people carrying long knives, you reduce the number of people stabbed with long knives. Obviously, just like with guns - people who want to have a knife and use it to commit crime, are still going to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I never learned "real" lockpicking, but I'm puzzled at how trivial it is to bypass some lock systems. For instance, the Kensington laptop lock, which was purchased in bulk for all the laptops of a large utility I worked for some years back.

I once misplaced my key, and managed to pick the lock with a small strip of plastic used to bind boxes of printer paper. The longest part of the endeavor was finding a pair of scissors to cut the plastic to the right size.

The lock/cable in question retails for about $40. Assuming we paid half that, we still dumped thousands of dollars on presenting only an image of security.

<comment><USER23> Those things aren't designed for the dedicated guy who can pick it, they're designed for someone who breaks in and just grabs laptops as they go.

<comment><USER24> I think his point is: it takes little skill (because I figured out how to do it on the fly) and little equipment (ziptie). Implicitly: anyone with any interest in grabbing laptops could spend 5 minutes on youtube and 5 minutes prepping a ziptie, and maybe 20 minutes practicing, and be as capable of walking around grabbing laptops as he was before the security locks were purchased.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've spoken to a private investigator in 2015 who told me that bump keys made lockpicking disappointingly easy. Their downside for a criminal is that the application is rather loud, compared to the classic pin-by-pin lockpicking.

That was the state for 2015, things might have changed.

<comment><USER26> Bump keys make lockpicking disappointingly easy _for locks that are easy to pick_. They take something that's a nice challenge for a beginner and make it easy for anyone.

However, a good lock that's difficult to pick for anyone, with or without bump keys or comprehensive experience, is pretty easy to come by. That said, the hard thing is often knowing the difference: expensive and heavy are not necessarily good hints.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not actually true.

From around the 35 minute mark in the _" What The Bump"_ talk, security researcher, TOOOL founder and President Barry Wels said:

 _" It [bumping] also works on these high security locks: multiple rows with dimples, keys that look really dangerous thinking if I have these on my door I'm really safe. The thing is, they open just as easy as the other locks, as far as we've seen. The only problem is getting bump keys. We really had some help from some of the state of the art Dutch locksmiths, with very advanced tools to make these keys. But once you have these keys, they're just as easy to open as the other locks. One of the statements which is my favorite is: I think you can teach this to a monkey to open locks like this. I'm still looking for somebody with a monkey to actually shoot some video. If you know somebody with a monkey that we could train to do this, that would be fun._

 _" It also works with locks with moving parts in it. The ball offers no protection because you take the original key, it has all the information already in it. The ball is always in the same position or there are two different spacings of the ball. It all works the same, because there are a lot of locks with protective measurements that are standard for all the locks. So once you have a key that is cut to the deepest, these mechanisms are still in place. The ball is still there, for instance, and it will still open._

 _" We opened some some pin-in-pin locks. The brand name is Mul-T-Lock. They were not happy that we opened them, and they were not happy that they were being mentioned in a white paper, and they more or less demanded a public test to show that it wouldn't work. So when the guy was at our place I explained to him how the technique actually worked, because he had no clue. So then he demanded a closed test where the results were kept secret. I said I'm willing to do that. He also put a time limit of four days or something ridiculous like that. So I said I'm willing to do that but it will be on a commercial basis because I can not use the information for my website, you want to keep it private. When I told him my price just to keep it friendly -- I wasn't asking a lot of money -- he ran away and never seen again. I do hear he's still very angry. But if Mul-T-Lock wants a serious test, they can always contact me directly, but not through this Dutch sub-dealer of them._

 _" We opened some impossible locks. By impossible, I mean I opened some locks, and you can see it on the other video, it's available online if you go to the toool.nl website. I opened some locks that I would never open without damaging it ever, because the mechanism is so well designed. There's only one flaw, which is that the part that makes it secure stays the same in all the keys, and only the variation pins change. I'm talking now about the Assa Twin lock. It's a lock with two rows of pins, and the secure row of pins is always the same in a certain region, which makes it very vulnerable for this attack. Talking about the Assa Twin, another reason that I thought I would never be able to open a lock like that is that it was so well engineered, the tolerances are so small, if the pin is half of a millimeter or a tenth of a millimeter too high or two low, the whole lock does not work any more._

 _" This is also something that we found, that the tighter the lock is made, the more engineering is put in to the lock, the better this technique works. If the key that slides in to the lock wiggles too much because the key has got a lot of space in between, the energy transferred is a little bit lost. If the pins in the chamber have a lot of tolerance and are not straight in the house, but a little angled or a little bit left-right, the energy is not transferred ideally. So the more expensive and the more engineering is put in to a lock, we found most of our favorite locks opened within a few blows because they are so well designed that they are perfect impact energy transmitters that allow smooth transmission of this energy."_[1]

That said, since the technique of bumping made a big splash in the mainstream media, lock manufacturers have experimented with and released locks with "anti-bump" features. Those locks might not be as susceptible as the locks that were the subject of Wels' talk. On the other hand, there are and will continue to be plenty of locks in use that don't have any anti-bump features at all.

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRv_JN5oedE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRv_JN5oedE)

<comment><USER26> His opener about the monkeys refers to "these high security locks", but the description that follows seems to describe locks that are big and heavy and look intimidating, but don't actually deliver any challenging security. This is, in my experience, quite common.

He does then go on to describe bumping more challenging locks, but I'm not convinced these would be as easy. Especially for a monkey...

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't hear him mention the size or weight of the locks they tested anywhere. Please point out where he says that.

If you are skeptical of their results, I urge you to try the technique yourself on some locks you consider to be worthy of the challenge and publish your results.

<comment><USER26> He doesn't mention size or weight, but I was extrapolating from this line:

> _that look really dangerous thinking if I have these on my door I 'm really > safe. The thing is, they open just as easy as the other locks_

which makes it sound like he's describing locks that _seem_ secure, rather than locks that _are_ secure (e.g. because of their look, advertising, weight, size, colour, whatever).

I could be misreading him. I'm not contradicting the text, just interpreting it. If he genuinely means that very secure locks can be opened by a monkey/beginner with a bump key then I'd take his word for it. I'm just not sure that that is what he's saying.

<comment><AUTHOR> My takeaway from his talk was a wide range of locks were vulnerable to bumping, including locks that were highly resistant to other attacks, including _" some locks that I would never open without damaging it ever"_ and _" most of our favorite locks"_ (ie. otherwise truly excellent locks).

So to claim that locks that are difficult to pick are necessarily difficult to bump runs counter to the findings expressed in this talk. In fact, the findings are quite the opposite, as many locks that are difficult to pick because of the tight tolerances and high quality engineering are actually easier to bump than locks which are easy to pick.

<comment><USER26> I haven't listened to the talk, just read your transcription, so I'll take some time to give it a listen. It does sound very interesting in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What makes a lock strong?

I think if it's the amount of metal that is inaccessible to the outside. Something like the Haven lock that is bolted to the floor, makes a lot of sense.

That of course requires a way of opening that is digital.

I'll think of the pros of digital locks:

\+ The proliferation of protocols makes master keys almost impossible.

\+ Faster update cycles when encryption gets cracked.

\+ Keys that are handed out to household members or visitors with potential losses can be easily retracted.

\+ The above separation of concerns. The way to keep someone out should be separate from the way to ask for permission to enter.

\+ The easier integration with other security layers such as face recognition, voice recognition, etc.

<comment><USER28> I wouldn't put too much faith in competence of digital lock manufacturers.

[https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8019-lockpicking_in_the_iot](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8019-lockpicking_in_the_iot)

<comment><USER27> Sure, but we've heard all the arguments against digital locks many times. I've never encountered a list with arguments in favor of them.

Sorry, if the above was off-topic. Downvotes humbly accepted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I remember when I learned how to open up high school locker room lockers...quite the rush when the first one opened. good times.

<comment><USER30> I, on the other hand, got kicked out of algebra class because someone stole my book from my locker. The school tried to tell me that it was obviously my fault because the locker wouldn't have been able to be opened had I only closed it correctly.

<comment><USER12> My natural reaction to that would've been to leave the school and every locker in it unlocked over the course of a weekend.

Not claiming any responsibility for it, naturally, simply observing that it had happened.

<comment><USER30> My father was the business manager for the school system - stuff like that was a bit difficult for me to get away with without weird consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So what were these strange things promised in the title?

Looked like a perfectly normal lock-picking convention to me.

<comment><USER32> Yes. It's just lock-picking art. I was expecting stories like the organizers finding the party "reversed" (=while organizers are in the main room, most attendants found their way into the backstage) or the parking emptied of all its cars after the first hour of the conference. Defcon seems funnier ;) [https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/4x47ss/share_your_f...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/4x47ss/share_your_funny_defcon_stories/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> For anyone interested in this, I recommend the Bosnian Bill YouTube channel: [https://www.youtube.com/user/bosnianbill](https://www.youtube.com/user/bosnianbill)

He picks a ton of locks and has a few recommendation videos if you're looking to buy.

</comment><comment><USER34> If you see these guys at security conferences, buy cash, don't have it linked to your personal cc, I'm probably overly sensitive but whatever...

<comment><AUTHOR> What are you afraid of?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Standard answer to "if you have nothing to hide..."; someone, somewhere, can assume the worst from that information, and sometimes that person is legally empowered to make your life miserable based on their conclusion. So the logical choice is often to take measures to protect your privacy even when it shouldn't be necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So do any automated lock picking devices exist?

<comment><USER4> All automation requires some action.

Bump keys are a simple "automated" way to pick a lock: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_bumping](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_bumping)

If you feel like tapping a bump key with a hammer is to much effort, you could attach the bump key to a vibrating toothbrush; aka a "SonicBump": [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rDlZbQ20aLI](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rDlZbQ20aLI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> (2013)

<comment><USER37> I did wonder why Slate had a interesting article like this. They really lost the plot in the last few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Free hotel accommodation, for one.

</comment><comment><USER39> _/|_/|_/|_/|_/|_

;)</comment>


Israeli startup Everything.me shuts down, despite raising $35M in funding - <AUTHOR> http://tech.eu/brief/israeli-startup-everythingme-shuts-down/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately this is a problem with Israeli companies that look for quick exits and don't really invest in businesses (sales/marketing/business & marketing strategy)</comment>