Ask HN: Alternatives to app.domain.com - <AUTHOR> Hosting a marketing site on a different platform to an app forces the use of sub-domains to direct the user to the right place. (domain.com/dashboard is replace by app.domain.com/dashboard, for example)
We're not limited to using `app` for the sub-domain
A single function app could use things like: email.domain.com /Email provider trade.domain.com /Stock trading wallet.domain.com /Coin wallet
Have you seen any creative or fun names given to the sub-domain? <comment><USER2> Make www and the apex domain resolve to the app, not the marketing site. For non-logged-in users (or if you want to, everyone), the app proxies / to the marketing site. For all requests, it proxies the handful of other path prefixes you use (beginning with /about, /tour, /contact, etc.). The user only ever sees one hostname.</comment>


Ask HN: Add an option to disable karma count numbers in navbar? - <AUTHOR> I personally find it really distracting!
I can't seem to stop looking at it no matter how hard I try.
I know I could create a special CSS rule to cut it out which would be the HN way to do it... I'm just curious if others find it unnecessarily distracting as well, really. <comment><USER2> Simplest is to just log out. Doesn't really matter if you upvote or not.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why does it distract you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I keep looking at it when I do not wish to.

<comment><USER3> I'd say that's the how. Why do you look at it when you do not wish too? Habit? I'd suggest trying to be mindful of your body/subconscious/emotional feedback next time you have the urge to look. Try to figure out what feelings cue the urge. This is a meditation technic called a body scan which I find useful in figuring out why I have and how I can break a habit.

<comment><USER4> If all that meditation doesn't work I'd go with a CSS rule.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Arbitrage and Equilibrium in the Team Fortress 2 Economy (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/arbitrage-and-equilibrium-in-the-team-fortress-2-economy/ <comment><USER2> I see the images are _still_ broken...

Use the Internet Archive version: [https://web.archive.org/web/20121020031732/http://blogs.valv...](https://web.archive.org/web/20121020031732/http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/arbitrage- and-equilibrium-in-the-team-fortress-2-economy/) which I've also mirrored at [https://www.gwern.net/docs/economics/2012-varoufakis- teamfor...](https://www.gwern.net/docs/economics/2012-varoufakis- teamfortress2arbitrage.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Was looking into this recently. It's (currently) a complete non-starter:

1) For each item there are thousands of bids.

2) The fluctuations aren't enough to easily cover Steam's fees

3) The price of almost all items is declining, meaning holding inventory is a bad idea. See point 1

<comment><USER2> So, way too much inflation of items?

<comment><USER4> I would say a decrease in players. TF2 still had a strong playerbase but it isn't what it was 5 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Arb trading in games is fun. In the later part of my tf2 playing I was trading more than shooting. Not because I particularly wanted anything just because it was enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER6> I met with Yanis in 2013 and had the opportunity to briefly discuss the work he did there. Truly fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER7> there is someone in the comments that brings up a good point: Varoufakis hadn't recognized a currency developing and classified tf2 as a barter economy. But scrap metal/earbuds is/was effectively working as a currency.

>in that every exchange necessitates a double coincidence of wants (i.e. when Jack offers Jill some Team Fortress 2 hat in exchange for a couple of keys, the trade will go ahead if, at the same time, Jill also prefers that particular hat to her two keys).

>[...] throughout history, whenever the number of transactions (and 'assets') grew in number, one of those assets soon emerged as a numéraire – a basic form of money that is. Once the numéraire acquired currency, suddenly the prerequisite of some double coincidence of wants vanished and people could trade anything for the numéraire–asset which they could then use in order to buy whatever else tickled their fancy. In short, as economies grew in sophistication, they 'monetised' and ceased functioning on the basis of barter

>Initially, I had expected that a similar pattern would be replicated in digital economies, like Valve's. I was expecting to find that some item or asset would emerge as currency in the context of games such as Team Fortress 2. However, a close study of our Team Fortress 2 economy revealed a more complex picture; one in which barter still prevails even though the volume of trading is skyrocketing and the sophistication of the participants' economic behavior is progressing in leaps and bounds.

from a comment-er (brandon):

> i know that the trading system in TF2 his been in place for roughly a year > now but i don't know if i would call it a bartering system. as a player i've > seen scrap, reclaimed, and refined metal act more as our currency more than > anything. when people talk, on servers about buy or selling item the price > is usually is translated into an amount of metal. like keys having a selling > price of 2.66 (2 refined and 2 reclaimed worth of metal), although keys can > be bought with actual money, scrap metal and the likes is not something you > cannot buy in the store.

I'd like to hear Varoufakis talk more about his time at valve. I played 1000hrs+ (mostly idling) and got lucky when trading first started and got a few sam and max hats. Ended up accumulating ~3k$ for like 5 month's work lol.

</comment><comment><USER8> The author is the former Greece Minister of Finance.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps it's not clear.

Article was written in 2012 while the author was an economist in residence at Valve. He would later become Greece's Finance minister in 2015.</comment></comment>


How Einstein Learned Physics - <AUTHOR> https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2017/03/16/how-einstein-learned-physics/ <comment><USER2> The discussion is not complete without a reference to his first wife: [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the- forgotte...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-forgotten- life-of-einsteins-first-wife/)</comment>


Many criminals are intelligent people with good heads for business and healthy appetites for risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10880952

<comment><USER2> I once did some research into this whilst at university. Basically the criminal mindset is often very very close to an entrepreneurial one - if not the same. It comes down to value systems generally with the individual, although entrepreneurs are often found to bend or change the rules to suit themselves. For example Richard Branson, when he first started, ended up in trouble with the law as he exploited what an export-import system for records, ultimately ending up with a heavy fine, though no jail time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Right, lets take violent criminals and place them in upper management. I can see it now:

"I used to be a drug dealer; now I'm your boss. Now get to work bitch before I cap, I mean, fire your ass!"

...

In all seriousness, I see a danger in using people who have a demonstrated disregard for the lives and property of others. At least with the current individuals we have reasonable doubt as to whether they would kill or steal to get their way. In highering ex-conns we know.

<comment><USER2> Is it nature or nurture that makes people this way? The debate on that will go on forever, however it has been demonstrated that through good education people (not all I agree) can discover that they have a true worth and can make money whilst giving back to society. Its bringing these people back into society that they probably felt outside of. According to the story, the people who have been on the program have a very low potential for re-offending. This, combined with criminal -> entrepreneur I think is a positive step. Breaking the cycle and giving people a purpose in life, embracing them, can make a difference

<comment><USER4> "Breaking the cycle and giving people a purpose in life, embracing them, can make a difference"

This article doesn't remind me of the gang stuff in Freakonomics so much as it reminds me of a bonus feature on the "Sicko" DVD. Michael Moore goes to a prison in Norway that allows everyone, including murderers and rapists, the opportunity to work amongst the general population doing fulfilling work. [They mention a prisoner, for example, that killed two people with a chainsaw. He was allowed to finish his sentence by working in the forest freely with a chainsaw!] Norway doesn't have a death sentence, nor even a life sentence. The maximum prison sentence is 21 years. And, by the way, Norway usually has the lowest murder rate in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > She is particularly interested in people who have already demonstrated these > skills—for example by running a successful drug business or achieving a high > rank in a gang.

That's what you list under "Extracurricular Activiites" on your Harvard application! ;-)

<comment><USER6> There was actually a study at the University of Chicago that Steven Levitt writes about in "Freakonomics." A sociology student got really close with a gang in downtown chicago - and it turned out that the local gang leader had a business degree and kept fastidious records of the gang's income and expenditures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is a great idea and I can relate. I was a wayward youth. I never did anything serious but I was constantly on the wrong side of the law and my success / failure rate was pretty impressive. Though it's not as bad anymore think I was just allergic to authority. I eventually turned my need for risk and self determination to mountaineering and entrepreneurship. A life of crime is very dynamic and intense. Quite similar to startup life. I can see this program being successful and I wish these gentlemen luck.

As for the moral dilemma people are concerned about, I don't think it's such a problem. My rebellion was much more rooted in an inability to walk lockstep through a life of following directions than a rotten soul. I tended toward and environment that I thrived in, one of raw risk and raw reward. A program that recognizes these folks and steers them away from the brink sounds like a really good idea. The only laws I've broken in the last 8 years have been speeding and running stop signs. And I refuse to ever give that up.

</comment><comment><USER8> many people startoff in bad situations - may be hard to believe but not everyone gets pushed along the path of grad'ing from a good school. there is no excuse for hurting and stealing from others, but we must also recognize that the odds are so stacked against poor people that there options are very slim. poverty is a major problem in the US, currently the best solution the govt has come up with is build more prisons to house the poor when they get arrested in the projects.

according to pg, it all comes down to building something people want, many people in prison don't want to come back, and want to actually do something legit with their lives, building a business is the best way I know to change your life and make something of yourself. bravo. next step is too make sure they get a bit of tech skills with the biz classes.

<comment><USER9> This is from talks I've had with parole officers. Often, the prisons can merely act as Criminal U. Coming out it is hard to get a legitimate job, and they've learned more criminal skills while in prison. It's much easier to just go right back into the criminal lifestyle, a vicious cycle.

However, a concern I have with this program is that gang members can bring their criminal connections with them into business. In times of tough competition they may be tempted to use these connections.

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen YConbinator

</comment><comment><USER10> Somebody's been watching too much "The Wire" ...

</comment><comment><USER11> My main problem is that this is for people who got caught. If all criminals have something in common with entrepreneurs, then it seems logical to assume that this program isn't getting the cream of the crop (those who don't get caught). Though perhaps that group succeeds without any help or notoriety.

<comment><USER8> nice point - but just as failing does not make you a bad entrep., getting caught doesn't mean your a bad crook, repeat offenders my be the most determined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've always been fairly impressed with organized crime's ability to locate new areas to exploit.

Then again, how much of an advantage is it to use "illegal leverage"? I'm sure Movable Type would have a larger install base if they could send goons to the doorsteps of those using Wordpress.

</comment><comment><USER13> I want to know how she is managing to spend $3.2 million on just 39 prisioners ($82,051/prisioner).

</comment><comment><USER14> It sounds like it could be a promising program, but my question is:

Why do you have to go to prison to be offered a chance like that?

<comment><USER15> If you can afford a suit, have an idea, and can find a mentor, you're leagues ahead of the men with criminal records. This program provides a framework for people who have nothing and are likely to relapse, and it helps integrate them into normal society.

If you're already integrated (which I'll unfairly assume you are), then you probably wouldn't get much out of this program. You'd be better off joining the local rotary club.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The story about the drug-dealing gang in Freakonomics comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER17> This _really_ explains my previous boss.

</comment><comment><USER18> has anyone read The Demolished Man? :)

<comment><USER4> No. Summary?

<comment><USER18> a businessman plots to kill a rival in a Minority Report esque future where "peepers" (people with esp) are used to prevent crime.

it draws some interesting conclusions on the subject of this thread.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I just picked it up from the library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> yconfinorator</comment>


The challenge of developing a capability - <AUTHOR> http://rc3.org/2012/10/07/the-challenge-of-developing-a-capability/ <comment><USER2> An insightful post indeed. Working in a large organization, I agree that developing a new capability is difficult firm wide. What we prefer to do is developing it piece meal. I have tried this in one or two projects and it has worked well. The developers that initially develop the capability help bring other developers to speed. Building a robust knowledge repository is of utmost importance in such cases. Also, it won't hurt to designate a person as a single point of contact to implement the change (aka building a capability) across the organization.</comment>


Build your own summary tool - <AUTHOR> http://thetokenizer.com/2013/04/28/build-your-own-summary-tool/ <comment><USER2> Automatic summarization is my MS thesis. In my research, there are two types of summary: Abstraction & Extraction. I agree with the post, abstraction or paraphrasing the text is still a holy grail in automatic summarization. On the other hand, extraction which is just lifting of the most important sentences in the text is the method done by Summly, mentioned in the post, and also in my algorithm. The problem with extraction, is that the obtained text sometimes seems not connected with each other.

There are also some features that are considered in automatic summarization: title or headline, it is the title of the document. Sentence position or where the sentence is located in the text; introduction, body, or conclusion. Sentence length or how many words are in the sentence. Lastly, keyword frequency which is just how many the words appear in the text. There are also other features but I think those 4 are the most important.

The computation of those feature scores, stop words and some constants will affect the output.

Lastly, to evaluate your summary, you may want to use the ROUGE evaluation toolkit (<http://www.berouge.com>). It needs a reference summary created by a human as a comparison and determine the quality of your summary based on precision, recall, and F-score. ROUGE has different methods to evaluate the summary. There is ROUGE-L which considers the longest common subsequence. There is also ROUGE-W which adds weights. And many more which I don't remember.

That's it. I'm really a fan of automatic summarization and also hoping to create a good algorithm for abstraction.

Edit: sorry for the lack of links and references, it's hard to do those in mobile.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree! There is a huge gap between my naive algorithm and a real working one. The idea of this post was just to introduce the "automatic summarization world" to those who aren't familiar with it at all.

<comment><USER2> Yeah. But the intersection formula you used is not in my algorithm. Maybe I can use it to improve my algorithm. ;) Cheers!

Excellent post by the way. I'm really happy seeing posts about automatic summarization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why not use a well tested, fast, off the shelf summary api? <https://www.mashape.com/stremor/>

We do all the hard work. Even do the Content extraction from the page.

And yes I have ties to this product, I'm the CTO of Stremor.

No. that doesn't bias me against you building your own. I just know that we have 7.5 Million words in our code and I need more to get it perfect. Most people don't have time to assign traits to that many words. (Wordnet has about 350k)

Edit:

Also you have to deal with sentence disambiguation. That is hard. Which is why NLTK and Core NLP suck at it.

Polyword Nouns and pronouns mean that you can't just use tokens, because "the President", "President Obama" and "He" are all the same "token". you have to rectify that when summarizing.

<comment><USER4> As with most of the API services for text analytics, sending out confidential data to third parties is simply not acceptable. I run into this almost daily where I work. Contractually, we are neither allowed to send our clients' data to a fly-by-night startup nor a an established 800 pound gorilla.

The other part is that often in text analytics, the training corpus matters significantly (also this seems less so with summaries at first glance).

<comment><USER3> Then you license it for onsite.

The training corpus doesn't matter one bit. The type of document does. (Report, op-ed, News, thesis, Fiction, etc)

We even do summary based on query. Summarize a 1000 page report only looking at things related to surgeries, or IT.

We have hundreds of traits you can mix and match. Want to read the Snows of Kilimanjaro with only the parts that are directly about winter, or foreshadow winter themes? We can do that.

Lord of the Rings only when encountering evil. We can do that.

<comment><USER4> Licensing it runs into another hurdle. How much value does random feature give you? Is the feature valuable enough to justify custom licensing costs? Would 100 lines of Python/NLTK give you enough value for your target market?

I'm researching this right now for theme clustering. There are some products available for purchase/license that provide reasonable results. The question is if the difference between these reasonable results and 100 lines of Python/Clojure sitting ontop of Storm is enough to justify the cost of the license. That question relates to how much value our 100 line knockoff get our clients vs the extras that a full-feature solution would bring. In the few times I've done the comparison before, it has not been worth buying.

Edit: I want to make it clear I'm not saying build it yourself 100% or that building it yourself will give you a reasonable facsimile in all (maybe any instances) with NLTK/OpenNLP/etc. If summarizing is a core feature of your product, by all means, license away. What I'm specifically referencing are situations where maybe I'd like to add a feature, but it's highly unlikely that the single feature along is going to drive a sale. In these circumstances, build it yourself with NLTK or the like is extremely attractive.

<comment><USER3> The better question is if your clients care so much about privacy, is the risk that you shorten 3 sentences in such a way that

"My client, Mr. Smith would only kill in self-defense. On the other hand Mr. Jones is a cold blooded killer. He has killed dozens of people"

Becomes "My client, Mr. Jones is a cold blooded Killer" Because of sentence parsing.

Or

"Smith would only kill in self-defense. He has killed dozens of people." Because you used keyword density.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excellent post on the basics! As you mentioned in your post, the real work begins once you have the algorithm in place.

Scraping is a challenge as Readability, boiler pipe and so on are only so effective.

Sentence parsing is extremely tricky. Support for surnames, urls, ellipsis, quotations, and all the other weird language things.

This is the simplest implementation of textrank I've seen, and a lot of credit to the author for writing it in such a way. If anyone is interested, you can find out more about textrank from this academic paper which explains it quite nicely (<http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/acl2004/emnlp/pdf/Mihalcea.pdf>).

Note: just released <http://summary.io>

<comment><USER2> Hi, I just saw your <http://summary.io>. I also have a challenge in extracting the text from the website. I used boilerpipe, but it doens't perform well for me. I then changed it to Diffbot (<http://diffbot.com/>). It extracts the text way better but there is still some minor problems. May I know what you are using?

Additional question is how you extract the images in the text?

Btw, your <http://summary.io> is almost the same as my <http://readborg.com/> (sorry, login required and it's still invitation only).

<comment><AUTHOR> As I wrote in the post, I use Goose (<https://github.com/xgdlm/python-goose>) in my product. Goose also returns the URL of the main image! (sometimes it even includes its dimensions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I ported this to Node.js and created a module called node-summary. It doesn't quite bring back the same results, but it's still summarizing nicely.

Check it out on GitHub <https://github.com/jbrooksuk/node-summary> or NPM registry <https://npmjs.org/package/node-summary>

</comment><comment><USER7> Hi guys, I turned this into an API - [https://www.mashape.com/ismaelc/summarizer- tool#!documentati...](https://www.mashape.com/ismaelc/summarizer- tool#!documentation) I will blog about it tomorrow. There is also a list of 50 Machine Learning APIs here - <http://bit.ly/mlapis>

</comment><comment><USER8> Should the Intersection function not be "how many token 'in common'" rather than just 'how many tokens'? Otherwise I'm missing something. Going to read the code for that function now, but in the article, that wasn't clicking for me.

edit: code was easier than expected, yes, its how many in common as its just using the python 'intersection' function.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, You're right! I wrote "how many common tokens we have", maybe be it should be "how many tokens we have in common"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> i've been using libots - <http://libots.sourceforge.net/> \- for many years now in various projects and it suffices in many cases i encounter.

</comment><comment><USER10> "tl;dr" should do this until some human writes a summary :) (and then A/B test against the human version...)

Another idea would be to help humans write the summary by picking important phrases.</comment>


The Next Generation of Voting Systems May Be Open-Source - <AUTHOR> https://openstandard.mozilla.org/the-next-generation-of-voting-systems-may-be-open-source/

<comment><USER2> I'm appalled that the number 1 issue isn't even mentioned: Voting through machines doesn't work. It doesn't respect the fundamental needs for a vote ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot)):

\- It isn't anonymous, and therefore not secret

\- You have no guarantee your vote is taken into account (it can be modified, deleted, or even created in your name)

Open source doesn't solve any problem here, much like an Open source Facebook would still be able to know who you vote for and modify your vote.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps we need some sort of BitBallot? Distributed and cryptographically guranteed.

<comment><USER4> [https://raweb.inria.fr/rapportsactivite/RA2013/dice/uid32.ht...](https://raweb.inria.fr/rapportsactivite/RA2013/dice/uid32.html)

It's even called, "BitBallot."

[edit] Upon further searching, it's not clear what, if any, work is being done on this.</comment></comment></comment>


EC2 Container Service Update – Container Registry, ECS CLI, AZ-Aware Scheduling - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/ec2-container-service-update-container-registry-ecs-cli-az-aware-scheduling-and-more/ <comment><USER2> Nice!

I have to say that ECS (plus an autoscaler to manage a server pool) has proven to be a fairly painless way to run Docker containers in production. As usual, Docker volumes are hard to use effectively. But if all your app state lives in a separate data store somewhere, it's easy to set up the web and worker tiers on ECS.

</comment><comment><USER3> ECS CLI is written in Go, whereas Docker Compose is written in Python. Interesting that they chose to write it separately rather than try to expand upon Docker Compose, especially given that ECS CLI is compatible with docker- compose.yml files.

<comment><USER4> Docker Compose moved to Go a few months ago.

<comment><USER5> Still in Python. That's why I've always wondered why they acquired Fig [0] and not Crane [1].

[0] [http://www.fig.sh/](http://www.fig.sh/)

[1] [https://github.com/michaelsauter/crane](https://github.com/michaelsauter/crane)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was really hoping for a Chronos like job scheduler for tasks.

<comment><USER7> They just announced a cron-like scheduler for Lambda, so that may make for a decent alternative.</comment></comment>


Lockheed Pitching F-22/F-35 Hybrid to U.S. Air Force - <AUTHOR> https://www.defenseone.com/business/2018/08/lockheed-pitching-f-22f-35-hybrid-us-air-force/150943/ <comment><USER2> This article calls out the f-18 hornet to super hornet project as a potential risk but the super hornet was over 25% bigger than the hornet and contained completely new air intakes to reduce its radar cross section. If this new hybrid aircraft did keep the f-22 outer moldline like they claim, then it would be much less risky. However, changing the outer skin will almost certainly lead to someone having the bright idea of changing the moldline.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is anyone else annoyed by the "quietly" adjective that's crept into this kind of thing?

</comment><comment><USER4> F-5/7</comment>


AppScale: an open-source version of Google AppEngine - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/appscale/ <comment><USER2> From the home page: "AppScale is supported by Google and the National Science Foundation". Google? Wow.

<comment><USER3> The App Engine team has been very cognizant of the lock-in issue and how it may prevent developers from using App Engine as a platform. When asked about this, they usually mention (1) this project at UCSB, (2) using Django as some abstraction level, and (3) being aware of your SDK API use. Method #3 means the team pushes standard ways of interfacing with Google services like GData instead of rolling out App Engine-specific APIs that won't be as portable.

<comment><USER2> All good stuff. I think the best option IMHO is a drop-in replacement for AppEngine. This way a service can start easily on AppEngine and when it's big enough, can roll out on its own infrastructure.

Interestingly... this is the same play MS used to gain prominence: they controlled the API and the more code was written for it, the network effects kicked in with more force. Very interesting parallels here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could you theoretically take AppScale and Eucalyptus and create your own cloud startup?

<comment><USER5> No, because, theoretically, anyone could and several will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm confused: given the quota problems and serious constraints of the real App Engine, why would I want a clone of it that I also have to maintain and manage myself? Isn't the value-add here that I get SysOps and all that for free with GAE? Isn't the cost-savings of GAE coming from its scale, and if so, how could a private AppScale cloud running on Eucalyptus or similar garner the economies of scale to make it cheap enough to be viable? As well, don't you have to have the expectation of servicing a large number of applications of the type that work with GAE to even consider something like this? (something that a typically enterprise is not going to need)

In short, I'm really confused as to what the big deal is. Can someone elaborate on the above questions?

<comment><USER6> If you fear being trapped sharecropping on Google's land -- that they might arbitrarily change the GAE rules, or prices, or capabilities, or even cancel the service entirely -- this gives you the possibility to migrate elsewhere.

Migrating elsewhere might not be better along any single dimension (price, speed, reliability, etc.) at any particular point in time. You might never need to do it. But having the option is gigantic. It makes GAE a much, much, safer platform on which to develop. In a pinch, you could port elsewhere in short order without reengineering your service architecture.

This is a very impressive move by Google. It removes my number one fear of using GAE. I'll be watching AppScale closely.

<comment><USER7> "they might arbitrarily change the GAE rules, or prices, or capabilities, or even cancel the service entirely"

The risk of Google doing something to simply enrage GAE developers is very, very low. Is there any non-hypothetical reason why they would do this?

<comment><USER6> Google has killed a bunch of unprofitable projects recently. Lively died with 6 weeks' warning, and users who wanted to save their 3D handiwork were told to do so by "taking videos and screenshots of your rooms". I don't blame Google -- they don't owe anyone continued development of a money-losing business line -- but it happens.

And that's with Google still making barrels of money and not yet facing significant antitrust action for using profits from search to underprice products in other markets (like cloud services). With a few unprofitable quarters or lawsuits, what's the guarantee GAE will continue in an attractive form indefinitely? What if they decide they have to maximize revenue from developers locked-into the GAE platform? (Or what if the core team leaves to do their own startup?)

Even a tiny risk that another company could yank your platform out from under you on short notice, for arbitrary reasons having to do with their business needs (and not yours), may be unacceptable. AppScale mitigates that risk -- a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. Their homepage is here:<http://appscale.cs.ucsb.edu/> \-- Apparently they are supported by grants from Google and the NSF.

</comment><comment><USER9> Those interested in this might also want to check out Babble:

<http://www.babbleapp.org/>

It was created by 10gen as an AppEngine competitor and it's now released under an open source license.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome, it's one more burden off the AppEngine team's shoulders. When I talked to them 6months ago, they pointed at 'AppDrop' as their answer to this, and I could see the disingenuity in their eyes. Some dude spent a couple hours doing that, and probably spent more time writing the blog post than working on it.

Now they have a substantial option. I was surprised to see HyperTable support -- it's a solid piece of work, and plays to my biases a lot better than HBase.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow! Brilliant -- this could be huge.

This would essentially allow you to create one-click installable apps that could run on any service running AppScale.

<comment><USER12> Let's not get ahead of ourselves :) Nothing is ever one-click.

<comment><USER13> Except at Amazon right? Theirs is patented!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> persistence was definitely a problem that we have over come with some tricks.

I would definitely hold off for the next version until persistent storage is resolved.

<comment><USER15> I did some digging into their docs. It looks like it is peristent as long as the virtual disk for the virtual machine(s) are persistent.</comment></comment>


We Are Now In Command of the ISEE-3 Spacecraft - <AUTHOR> http://spacecollege.org/isee3/we-are-now-in-command-of-the-isee-3-spacecraft.html <comment><USER2> Are there any technical details available? It would be super interesting to see all the stuff that is re-developed from old specs, and to see how all the calculations and commands fit together to reach thw mission goals, or even what the received data and telemetry looks like.

Or is this kept confidential to try to prevent outsiders from going at it like in that xkcd posted in the comments here? Or is the only "protection" based on the requirement to have access to those huge observatories?

<comment><USER3> _only "protection"_

Arecibo isn't like a public library or something. You can't just go in and start hitting buttons! They used it as the climax of a Bond movie!

<comment><USER4> Not of Arecibo, of the satellite. Do you need to authenticate with the probe?

<comment><USER3> I doubt it's more complicated than knowing the language and having the proper transmission hardware. 1978 seems a little early to be worrying about hacks of that variety. That said the hardware could also have some kind of encryption built in. I'll ask if I get a chance, though - I hope to get some details from the project soon.

<comment><USER5> > 1978 seems a little early to be worrying about hacks of that variety.

Interesting, then, that the scenario already appeared in fiction by 1950 (in the Tintin story _Objectif Lune_ / _Destination Moon_ )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If they do manage to fire the engines, it has to pass through the lunar shadow on the way back to Earth and as it's running off solar panels this means a total shutdown, which it's never done before (alas, the uptime!). Let's hope it comes back up!

<comment><USER7> I'd be surprised if the probe doesn't carry some batteries exactly for this kind of event...

<comment><USER8> After more than 30 years I'd have to consider any batteries suspect... Much less ones that spent their time in space.

Considering it was meant to spend its life at L1 it may not have any batteries. Then again it also doesn't have a computer so it should be fairly robust.

<comment><USER9> Damning praise on site populated by technorati.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> this guy's been places :)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ISEE3-ICE- trajectory.gif](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ISEE3-ICE-trajectory.gif)

<comment><USER11> There was an article linked here a while back on the guy who designed that trajectory. It was completely intentional that ISEE3 would eventually return for further usage.

<comment><USER12> Further, he would arrange it so that mission milestones happened on colleagues' birthdays or anniversaries, just because he could. What a guy.

<comment><USER13> "Sorry honey, we can't go out to dinner for our anniversary...I have to be at mission control."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whoa I did not know anything about this story until now ><

On a related note, I also just noticed that the "Arecibo Radio Observatory" was in Goldeneye!

<comment><USER15> The Arecibo observatory has the world's largest radio telescope. They're very well known -- while they've been involved with a lot of space research, they're particularly famous for being the transmit site for the Arecibo Message:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > We have successfully commanded both of ISEE-3's data multiplexers into > engineering telemetry mode. The current bitrate is 512 bits/sec.

BITS not even BYTES, let alone kilobytes.

<comment><USER16> [http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html](http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html) , you'll catch the DSN every now and then downlinking the voyager spacecrafts at about 160 bits/sec.

<comment><USER17> That's an awesome page, thanks!

I happen to see VGR1 pulling down data at "159.00 b/sec" right now.

<comment><USER18> I don't really understand why this page reports the received power in kW? This will inevitable result all reported power levels be some 10^-p with p > 3.

Also Watt is not a very useful unit here. You want something like dB(mW) which is much handier to work with. Good thing is, you just have to look at the exponent to get a rough dB(mW) figure: 10·log_10(m) - (p-6)·10, p being the exponent, m being the mantissa; for a quick estimate let m = 5, 10·log_10(5) =~= 7. So for the p = -23 this gives about -167dB(mW), which is accurate enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this the satellite NASA had given up because there was no communications equipment left?

<comment><USER20> Funding, as always, seems to have been the issue.

If NASA doesn't have the money for it (or thinks they have better things to do with the money), they can't do anything. The explanation of not having access to communications equipment is more about the cost of restoring that ability, not any claim that contacting the probe would in principle be impossible.

The message is more or less that they don't just have some device standing around they can flip on and sit some intern in front of it for a few hours to get this going. NASA wanted to express that substantially more effort would be required.

It seems that many people (including people at NASA) are donating a lot of resources, time and money to this project. That's why this can happen. But NASA can't budget with the expectation of receiving donations.

<comment><USER21> "Can't" is a bit simplistic.

Think of it like that old piece of software you wrote when you were young that you've since abandoned, because you know, about 20 years have passed, no one uses AppleII's anymore, 126 some odd other pieces of software that do exactly the same thing but better and faster have been released, and also mobile happened. Besides, you have a job now doing modern things for modern reasons that are actually valuable to people and the world and stuff, so really there's not even a reason to figure out how a 5 and a quarter floppy drive can possibly connect to your rMBP to have a look at the code and see if an emulator or whatever would make it run right.

But if someone wants to throw $151,000 in donations at it, sure kids, have a ball. And yeah, of course we'll reminisce and have some fun with it over a beer or two. Those were the good old days, after all, when we were real rocket scientists, and space probes Farquharing around the solar system on a perfectly choreographed dance of not just _one_ mission, but _three_ —no, not two, _three_ —what do you think it's doing right now? You think this kind of thing just happens by chance? Have fun—and bring her back in one piece, will ya?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Simply amazing.

</comment><comment><USER23> Twitch spacecraft anyone?

</comment><comment><USER24> The fact that this machine is still in operation is awesome. What a piece of engineering.

</comment><comment><USER25> Brilliantly impressive. Especially considering they're operating out of an old McDonalds on the NASA Ames campus.

<comment><USER17> A former McDonalds. At first I was thinking you meant they were using McDonalds' free wifi for connecting to the satellite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Another xkcd has come true! [http://xkcd.com/1337/](http://xkcd.com/1337/)

<comment><USER27> Just noticed the url is "LEET" too.

<comment><USER28> These things happen when people number things in sequence.

<comment><USER29> Computer hacking (I know, I know, "cracking") is not THAT common a topic in XKCD - I'm sure Randall knew 1337 was coming up and chose a relevant comic to use that day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow. This is an amazing achievement!

</comment><comment><USER31> Woo Hoo!</comment>


The Role of an Enterprise Architect in a Lean Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://martinfowler.com/articles/ea-in-lean-enterprise.html <comment><USER2> A lot of this applies to good security teams as well :) For example, reaching out to offer consulting services at an early stage in projects, building goodwill by advising instead of mandating (where possible), and constantly communicating best practices.</comment>


Custos is using Bitcoin to turn digital pirates against each other - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1028528/custos-startup-uses-bitcoin-bounties-to-make-pirates-rat-on-one-another/ <comment><USER2> > _Custos embeds imperceptible bitcoin private keys in the digital files, with > different keys for different advance copies of a movie or ebook. (...)

> At the same time, Custos makes a piece of free software that screens movie > files for these private keys and markets the screener to content pirates. > Pirates now have an incentive to check pirated movie files in case they > contain a key. If a key is detected, the pirate can claim the bitcoin > bounty—usually between $5 and $10—and is free to keep it. But once a bounty > is claimed, Custos is alerted, and can begin the process of figuring out the > origin of the leak._

This is really clever! A very interesting social experiment with some game theory dynamics on the way.

<comment><USER3> Seems pretty self-defeating. I'd just strip the keys and not claim the bounty. This whole system depends on pirates wanting $5 more than they want to pirate the thing, which from my 10 years around release and fxp groups in my younger days, I can say is barely ever the case.

<comment><USER4> I'm assuming the keys are embedded before it's leaked like a watermark of sorts. The leaker isn't the pirate in the scenario described _I think_.

<comment><USER3> Ah! I read the references to pirates as referring to the person sharing the file online from an original source. But someone just torrenting it or something makes a lot more sense as the target here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I don't understand something?

John Doe, random employee working for Universal Studios leaks an advance copy of "The Revenge of the Avengers: The Revengers Strike Back" to their contact XPirateSepirothX for 250$ (or for free because they really want to get back at their boss for laughing at them).

XPirateSephirothX passes on the watermarked movie to their friendly neighbourhood reencoder IAmBecomeDeath who notices the watermark strips it, and reencodes the movie for general consumption.

The pirating public receives an unwatermarked copy and cannot claim any prize. IAmBecomeDeath, XPirateSephirothX and John Doe have no incentive to claim the prize because they will implicate themselves in copyright violation.

Are they implying the watermark is impossible to remove? That seems unlikely to me as pirates can be quite enterprising (and there may be some money on the line for them as well), so I'd expect them to reverse engineer the process and figure out how to strip it. Heck, this company is even offering an application that checks if the watermark is present or not which should at least give the pirates a measurement on whether their watermark removal method worked (on at least some version of the watermark detection logic).

Or maybe the plan is to play a constant game of cat and mouse, Custos will continually switch up their methods for watermarking and so the pirates will never be sure if they caught and successfully stripped the latest and greatest version of the watermark, preventing some piracy through uncaught watermarks and some piracy through fear?

<comment><USER6> > IAmBecomeDeath who notices the watermark strips it, and reencodes the movie > for general consumption.

Or wants the $$, so claims it, putting down a breadcrumb. (Atleast that's what the technology in the article is for.)

<comment><USER7> It's not lucrative enough. The product is worth far more than the measly bounty. Sure, claim that 15 dollars in bitcoin, and _never_ receive another pre-release copy again, or... strip it and continue business as usual.

This model really only works when most encoders are not aware the tag is there at all, and don't strip it.

Alternatively (as some other comments suggested) Custos buries additional tags without revealing them, in which case they act just like all sorts of other watermarking companies doing the same thing (not terribly effectively).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If it is possible to strip the private key, e.g. by re-encoding, then an intelligent and determined leaker would simply do that before distribution. They likely won't be tempted to take the reward for themselves, given the consequences, and by stripping the private key they can prevent anyone else from claiming it. I suppose this would catch less savvy leakers, though.

Edit: To be clear, I understand that digital watermarking techniques can be resilient to a simple re-encode, but since Custos is providing the tool to claim the reward for free to pirates, it should be possible to reverse- engineer the tool to identify and destroy the watermark.

<comment><USER9> Reading data out of an enclosed file is much less of a problem than altering that data without damaging the file. All you need for "screening" and "claiming" is to read out the keys and check if the funds have already been transferred out on the blockchain and, if not, transfer them out. There's no alteration to the file content involved.

Destroying the keys requires altering the file while leaving it functional, which requires more than reverse engineering the tool, because the tool doesn't need that capacity.

<comment><USER8> My point is that if you can identify how the private key is stored in the video, then it should be possible to develop a strategy to destroy that data without damaging the integrity of the file. Presumably the key will be hidden in such a way that it won't be obvious to viewers (that is, it won't be a _literal_ watermark). If that's true, then it should be possible to destroy the key without making the video quality noticeably worse, e.g. by selectively re-encoding certain parts of the video in a certain way that ensures destruction of the private key. Of course I'm speculating, because I don't know exactly how the private key is stored in the video, but video quality is a lot more robust to bit massaging than a hidden digital private key would be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is neat, but I can't help but feel it's not going to work.

It would work if you encounter a movie that you wanted to watch, decide you want the money instead, and you report to Custos.

This is not how piracy works.

Instead, a pirate knows the value of the good they have. They know it's worth more to their reputation in the community than $5-10 dollars. By setting a bounty on it, you'll just have others willing to pay more to leak it themselves. This is an experiment, not a business.

<comment><USER11> You don't "report" to CustOS directly, rather you simply move the money from one of the CustOS "bounty" private keys into one of your own.

Effectively it does the same thing but I think psychologically it's pretty different. For one thing you know that the bitcoin transaction will be very hard to trace (you can't be betrayed by your IP address or something like that) and you don't really rat anybody, you're just moving bitcoins. If you don't have any direct relationship with the original leaker (say, you downloaded the file through bittorent on some private tracker) there's really no incentive not to claim the bounty. It's free money.

I wonder what happens if a legitimate recipient of one of these copies decides to claim the bounty without actually leaking anything. Could they be in trouble? If people accuse them of leaking a copy and they show that they have control of the coins, will they be off the hook? Do they have to sign something that forbids them from using the key?

<comment><USER12> If I were a pirate/leaker/sharer, I would be very tempted to just paste the key on some completely unrelated forum to lay down a false trail.

<comment><USER13> What does that get you? If I understand correctly, I don't think the content owner finds out who uses the private key. They find out that the key has been used, which normally means that someone leaked the file to a pirate, and tells them who leaked.

<comment><USER11> Plausible deniability? Since there's an other way for somebody in the wild to have had access to the key without IP violation you could claim that you never leaked the file in the first place.

Of course it's one of these smartass "hacker technicalities" that may not hold much water in a court of law.

<comment><USER14> So your defense would be that you didn't leak the file but you did leak the key?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems like a good way to drive awareness of digital watermarking in the file sharing community.

</comment><comment><USER16> The big disadvantage with this scheme is that the publisher needs to pay the reward in advance for every copy they want to protect. That's why the rewards can't be big. (The publisher could of course keep the private keys and redeem unclaimed rewards themselves after some time, only risking currency fluctuations)

<comment><USER17> How much do they have to actually stock though? 50-100k USD ($5-10 over 10000 screeners) is a good bit of money but they'd probably only pay out a tiny portion of that and compared to the budgets of a large blockbuster it's not that large of an outlay.

If they can reliably embed multiple private keys into the screener DVDs they could get by with having fewer account and using the combination of accounts as the key. Though really if they're able to embed a whole private key in a way that survives encoding why bother with the bounty, though I guess that saves them the trouble of having to go find torrents/rips themselves.

<comment><USER16> This is a brilliant idea! Since we expect only a handful of leaks, each screener could contain lets say around 100 bounties of $10, with 200 bounties total. Then the first leak would be worth $1000, the second leak $500 (expected value) etc, and the studio only needs to pony up $2000 in total. We are guaranteed to be able to identify the first leak, I'm not sure if we can identify further leaks (there is probably some kind of trade-off between payout for the first leak, total amount of bounties, and probability of being able to identify further leaks, but the mathematics of this is probably not trivial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I looked around their web page but I couldn't find the "freely available bounty hunter tool" they are talking about. Does it exist somewhere or is this not actually launched yet? They are saying that individuals in pirate circles are already hunting bounties with this tool...?

</comment><comment><USER19> tl;dr: Scenario: Studio sends 10ks advanced copies of their film to reviewers before screening. One of them gets leaked. They want to know who leaked it. Custos embeds a "watermark" in the copies that contains a private key of a bitcoin wallet containing 5$. Each copy has a different wallet. When anyone down the pirate chain decides to take the money, Custos knows who the leaking source was. Benefit over traditional watermarks is that they only have to monitor the wallets.

IMO this is quite a clever idea because even after pirates start scrubbing the key off, there will always be an incentive to claim the money, perhaps much later when someone can get many of them at once. It will seed distrust that'll be hard to weed out.

<comment><USER20> If cashing out were delayed well past the statute of limitations, it'd be interesting to see the repercussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I see no advantage over traditional invisiblee watermarks.

A movie usually just leaks once or twice, these leaks get replicate everywhere. So if you are looking for a specific movie, just get a pirated copy from anywhere and check the watermark yourself. It's trivial to check if there is a leak at all and also trivial to find that leaked version and test it. No need to throw 15 bucks per copy on it, just let the intern monitor some torrent trackers.

<comment><USER22> I think the difference is that the person who spreads the movie over the trackers, who is not necessarily the original leaker, now has an incentive to report it, whereas with regular watermarks they'd simply remove it before distributing over those public channels.

Of course, it's hard to see such person being in a position to receive many leaks in the future, after burning the original leaker, so the incentive seems quite small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Calling "Insider gets the master private key list, steals all the bounties" as the way this turns out.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't get it. Any 'damage' to the studio happens when the movie is publicly leaked, at that point just download the copy yourself and check for a watermark, telling you where the leak originated without ponying up $5-$10 (which is a paltry sum to begin with).

<comment><USER25> For this, the company has to first find the leak version. This means they need people to monitor all kind of sites for this material. With the bitcoin method, the company only needs to monitor a bunch of bitcoin wallets and, as soon as a transfer is made, the are aware of the leak immediately (with much less men power. Furthermore they also don't need people who have access to those "private" torrent exchanges).

Furthermore, their response times are pretty awesome (if they are in fact true):

> Van Rooyen claims once a leaked copy containing a bounty hits the dark web, > it takes just five minutes on average for the bounty to be claimed and > Custos and its client to be alerted. On social networks it takes 42 seconds; > and offline, like if a movie is copied or shared on a DVD or USB drive, it's > 28 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "You just need a single rotten apple in that group," he says.

Reminds me of my Primary school teacher :)

Custos did it masterfully.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hah, now some pirate is going to try and figure out how to get all of the private keys :P

<comment><USER17> Beyond just hacking into Custos and stealing them or Custos using a somehow predictable keygen (not even sure that's really a thing?), in doing that they'd be tracking down all the leaks which is exactly what Custos and their customers are wanting.

In reality only a few screeners seem to leak for any given movie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What's to stop the intended recipient of the movie from intentionally and unabashedly claiming the bitcoins for themselves.

<comment><USER29> 1) It marks them as a "leaker" 2) If you keep claiming the bitcoins, you are going to stop getting videos sent to you. This could have professional implications.

<comment><USER12> You can claim the bounty without leaking the film, though as you point out, this could prevent you from being sent films in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's a great idea from a game theory perspective, but I think an adversarial neural network plugin built into vlc as a preencoding step would probably defeat it pretty quickly with minimal quality loss.

You just can't effectively watermark data intended for human consumption, our tolerance for intentionally induced noise is too high.

<comment><USER8> I don't want to be confrontational, but I really don't understand the point you're trying to make. Why a neural network, why VLC? I understand that you are suggesting it would be possible to strip the watermark, but the way you've said it sounds a lot like "create a GUI interface using visual basic, see if I can track an IP address"[0]. Which is to say, you've not said what you would do to defeat it, but how you think it would be implemented... which doesn't really tell us anything about HOW you think it could be defeated.

>You just can't effectively watermark data intended for human consumption, our tolerance for intentionally induced noise is too high.

If this were true, steganography[1] would be useless in practice (it isn't).

I would suggest reading up on digital watermarking[2].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking)

<comment><USER30> > I don't intend to be confrontational

Of course you do, or you wouldn't end the comment with "I suggest you read up on."

Stenography is only useful when it's unknown or impractical to investigate possible payloads, either do to volume of possible hits or lack of knowledge how to decode the payload out of the source. If you tell an opponent: here is the decode technique and here is where the message is likely to be, you've basically defeated your own stenography.

<comment><USER8> It is true that my intention was not to be rude. My "I suggest you read up on" comment was in response to your claim:

>You just can't effectively watermark data intended for human consumption, our tolerance for intentionally induced noise is too high.

Which is simply not true! That kind of misunderstanding suggests that you are unfamiliar with the kinds of digital watermarking that are used TODAY, hence my suggestion that you read up on it. If the comment came off as rude, I certainly apologize, but I stand by the point I was trying to make.

>If you tell an opponent: here is the decode technique and here is where the message is likely to be, you've basically defeated your own stenography.

I agree with you on this point 100%. I also made a post to that effect elsewhere. But that is not the same argument you made in your previous post!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Simpsons go live - <AUTHOR> http://www.provideocoalition.com/simpsons-go-live-exclusive-inside-look/ <comment><USER2> I am surprised how much work went into this because to be frank it was bloody horrible. However, I don't think the tech is to blame. It's rather that the Simpsons guys didn't know how to put it to good use. Think Jurassic Park: They knew exactly when to use CGI and when to use mechanics to get a result that is stunning.

The various cameos looked like a cheap flash cartoon and totally killed the ... for lack of a better word .. realism. It was a totally unnecessary gimmick. Something low key like a ticker with fake but thoughtful twitter reactions might would have worked. Also, Dan Castellaneta did a poor job. His sentences and even his voice were totally out of character. Finally, the selected questions were really boring.

To conclude: Doing a live segment is a great idea if you a) use the underlying technology in a deft way and b) the voice actor is actually able to deliver a compelling improvisation.

<comment><USER3> Also, in episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes that same rib twice in succession yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe? That this is some sort of a magic xylophone or something? I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

<comment><USER4> Let me ask _you_ a question... Why does someone with the username GeniusAtWork spend all of his time watching a children's cartoon show?

<comment><USER5> You think it's a children's cartoon show. Oh dear.

<comment><USER2> Not sure if this was meant to be sarcastic but mjklin was simply completing the dialogue GeniusAtWork was quoting.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701245/quotes?item=qt1464595](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701245/quotes?item=qt1464595)

However, if you really didn't get it let me assure you that you're in good company. Simpsons Director Mark Kirkland recently didn't understand the question when one redditor "asked" it in his AMA

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4i267z/hi_reddit_its_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4i267z/hi_reddit_its_simpsons_director_and_filmmaker/d2ufy1y)

<comment><USER5> Well there you are, I apologise to mjklin! I love the Simpson's but that was rather obscure :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a terrible strain on the animator's wrist.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like a Simpson CD-ROM game from the 90s =P

</comment><comment><USER8> It was wonderful! Adobe is miles ahead of any competition. Apple has essentially given up in this space.</comment>


Show HN: Where is my web stuff? A tool for clients to track web-related accounts - <AUTHOR> https://whereismywebstuff.com <comment><USER2> Interesting idea. I had actually thought about putting together a similar service for clients. Especially like the "guess for me" options.

Some feedback:

\- You offer a trial, but that wasn't clear to me looking at your marketing/home page.

\- It's nice to be able to see if not a full demo, at least screenshots of the product without having to register. This combined with the first point could deter some potential customers.

\- Your payment form is very sparse. That's nice, but personally I want to know why I should trust you with my payment info. If you're using a third party processor such as stripe you might indicate that.

</comment><comment><USER3> You provide zero information about how this very sensitive information is stored, and how its protected.

So not only do I have to worry about who you are (because I'd essentially be giving you the ability to access any number of services that may not yet have 2FA options) I also have to worry about if that data can be access by someone else who attacks you.</comment>


Fan of Pokémon Go? Read this before you vote on Nov. 8 - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/01/fan-of-pokemon-go-read-this-before-you-vote-on-nov-8/ <comment><USER2> I don't buy this. Too much of a leap to connect one and the other directly. Yes, the campaign has been one of hate and fear, no, I don't think Pokemon Go wouldn't exist or would have been restricted by a Trump presidency.</comment>


Facebook ads still slipping past Adblock Plus via stripped-down code - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/18/faceblock/ <comment><USER2> Facebook Purity does the job you want

[http://www.fbpurity.com/](http://www.fbpurity.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> uBlock Origin still catches all perfectly IME.

<comment><USER4> uBlock also doesn't engage in the shady practise of selling spots on it's whitelist, as I recall.</comment></comment>


ISEC Completes TrueCrypt Audit - <AUTHOR> https://isecpartners.github.io/news/2014/04/14/iSEC-Completes-Truecrypt-Audit.html

<comment><USER2> FTA:

 _> "iSEC did not identify any issues considered "high severity" during this testing. iSEC found no evidence of backdoors or intentional flaws. Several weaknesses and common kernel vulnerabilities were identified, including kernel pointer disclosure, but none of them appeared to present immediate exploitation vectors. All identified findings appeared accidental."_

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands "...while TrueCrypt does not have the most polished programming style, there is nothing immediately dangerous to report."

Classic. Taking a dig at the developers while telling the rest of the world TrueCrypt is ok to use.

<comment><USER3> ?

This seems matter-of-factish to me as long as they can defend it. (Hey, some of the code tha I've written to save people time and money does not have a very polished style, -that is a matter of fact and I'm fine with that.)

<comment> at-fates-hands I was just pointing it out since it wasn't really necessary to even include in the report. I agree though. I've written some God awful code that gets the job done, but would be hell to try and refactor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ISEC Complete PHASE I of the TrueCrypt Audit, this is just of the driver and loading software, phase II is cryptanalysis.

</comment><comment><USER5> This might be my tinfoil hat speaking, but _could this be disinfo_?

<comment><USER6> Couldn't ANY security audit performed by ANYONE be disinfo?

Couldn't your pointing out that it might be disinfo also be disinfo in itself?

Oh crap, infinite loop!</comment></comment>


Coinbase and Shift Payments Release First US-Issued Bitcoin Visa Card - <AUTHOR> https://www.zapchain.com/a/l/i-just-ordered-the-first-us-issued-bitcoin-debit-card-with-my-coinbase-account/16NNqud1fO <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm missing something but what's the point of Bitcoin if all of your payments are going through a credit card company?</comment>


3D Print with Sand (2011) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptUj8JRAYu8

<comment><USER2> Nice! Reminds me of this very relaxing video:

[http://vimeo.com/9498805](http://vimeo.com/9498805)

<comment><USER3> For context, Both Max and Marcus were studying at the Royal College of Art in London at the time. Not sure about the stool, but the Solar Sinter was Marcus' graduation project, and it was quite a hit when it went public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's more interesting is how much energy there is in just that screen's surface area of sunlight. Enough to turn sand molten in under a second. Thinking of just how far away that is from the sun, and how much more surface area there is in a sphere with a radius that size..

<comment><USER5> I believe you can get around a kilowatt per square meter, obviously depending on latitude, weather, and other factors. That lens looks about like a square meter.

<comment><USER6> *Kilowatt/m^2

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that's the prefix I was looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really cool, although leaving that size of fresnel lens uncovered makes me nervous.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do you love the USA? - <AUTHOR> We're surrounded by much negativity and criticism of the USA. Admittedly, some of that criticism is valid. Whether you live here in the US or not, what are some things that you are proud of or admire about the US, it's culture, history, attributes, or people?<p>For example, I'm not sure the source, but I read or heard a neat tribute once to one of the US pilgrims'/founders' valuable legacies - the entrepreneurial spirit and the drive to continually improve -  something that has motivated me and (I'd guess) lots of people on HN. <comment><USER2> "When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."

—Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom From the Known, Chapter 6.

Having quoted Jiddu, and living in New York, what I admire about the United States is the variety of people living together in relative harmony.

<comment><USER3> A good introduction to J. Krishnamurti is provided by Clive James. [http://www.clivejames.com/books/glued/them](http://www.clivejames.com/books/glued/them)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That it's not a place where citizens are continually expected to take part in the adult equivalent of pep rallies and declare their undying and unquestioning school spirit.

Oh, wait, I must be thinking of Canada.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the entertainment value it does for the world. In the recent years nothing was as funny to watch in the news like trump was and still is.</comment>


Project San Dimas: Cleaning Up eBay's UI - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/16/projectsandimas-public-beta-cleaning-up-ebays-ui/ <comment><USER2> eBay is definitely in desperate need of a UI update. The Apollo project looks pretty slick from the demonstration (<http://www.adobe.com/devnet/videos/apollo_demo07/index.html> ), though I'm curious about performance issues in something as time sensitive as live auctions.

<comment><USER3> Interesting you mention performance, because I would imagine that most power buyers (target users for this app) use "Buy It Now" as opposed to traditional live auctions.</comment></comment>


[GatesNotes] How a billion+ people are living in the dark - <AUTHOR> https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Life-in-the-Dark <comment><USER2> At least you're better off with a chicken in the dark than without a chicken.</comment>