Video Games Satisfy Basic Human Needs - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/-how-video-games-satisfy-basic-human-needs <comment><USER2> > Except, of course, aside from its pre-set storyline, Grand Theft Auto > doesn't prescribe any of these things.

This is not a fair characterization of the game. Yes, you can avoid doing those morally reprehensible things but not if you actually want to play the game. In much the same way if you feel it's morally wrong to stomp goombas, you can avoid doing so in Super Mario Bros. But unlike the latter, you cannot proceed in GTAV without engaging in some of those undesirable actions.

The notion that we're making these choices independent of the game is disingenuous.

<comment> d--b Agreed about GTA, but not about Super Mario. At the very least you'll need to kill Bowser to finish the game.

<comment><USER3> Bowser always survives and shows up again in the sequels.

<comment><USER4> And GTA has a limited pool of pedestrians that repeat themselves and return over and over.

<comment><USER5> That's different. In Super Mario Bros., every Goomba in the game is an identical sprite, but story-wise - to the extent the game has a story, anyway - you're meeting a series of different creatures of the same species. This is evident if only from the fact that there are often multiple on screen at the same time. The more modern GTA has a variety of looks for pedestrians rather than just one, but the same principle applies: the NPC you just met might look identical to the one you killed the other day, but story-wise, we should assume they're two different people - because it makes more sense that way and the game hasn't told us otherwise.

Bowser, on the other hand, is a named character with a specific personality. Combined with supplementary materials and (in some Mario games, especially the RPGs) in-game dialogue, it's clear that he's meant to be a single character who Mario (also a single character) encounters repeatedly.

<comment><USER6> I'd almost suggest that discussing the morality of pixel manipulation is a bridge too far, but this is sort of why I come here.

I sort of now want a PETA for video game pixels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Eager to steal a bicycle from a 10-year-old boy?"

There have never been children in any GTA game.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure this isn't what they meant but I think technically you could steal a bike from a 10 year old _player_ in GTA Online now.

<comment><USER9> To be fair, the 10-year-old can probably curb-stomp you online, so the usual difference in power that makes 10-year-olds off-limits is not there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bartle's four quadrants is standard in gamification practise. Your assessment of its validity probably tracks with how effective you feel gamification can be in altering human behavior ;)

The more interesting modern use case is when people say: "there's this game on my phone I play a lot that helps me with my anxiety." And it's usually something trivial like a free Puzzle Bobble clone that was developed in a week at zero-budget. But for that player, its a lifeline, a coping mechanism.

That's very interesting to me. What is it about this gameplay mechanic that relieves stress? It can't just be escape. To me it seems it has to tap into something more intrinsic than archetypal "hunter-gatherer" era categories.

<comment><USER11> I cannot speak for everyone, but in my experience, it is the sense of efficacy and control. You may feel like you don't have any control over your life, but at least you can rule over those colorful bubbles, and be pretty good at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > For these researchers, incredibly, enjoyment is not the primary reason why > we play video games. Enjoyment is not the primary motivation—"it is rather," > they wrote, "the result of satisfaction of basic needs."

Isn't this just the definition of enjoyment? Satisfying basic needs is the only reason anybody does anything.

<comment><USER13> Its a good question, and I hope someone with more knowledge also responds to this, but I don't think they are the same thing. There is a difference between things that give you pleasure and things that you enjoy doing. e.g. you might not enjoy doing drugs if you're an addict but its almost always pleasurable.

So I think enjoying something is more long term, higher level aspect than pleasure, which seems more short term. Which explains a lot why people engage in activities which they may not really enjoy, but get the short term pleasure hit. e.g. binge eating, binge TV watching etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> To quote part of a recent Alan Kay post here:

"We are set up genetically to learn the environment/culture around us. If we have media that seems to our nervous systems as an environment, we will try to learn those ways of thinking and doing, and even our conception of reality."

</comment><comment><USER15> The STTNG Episode "The Game"[1] comes to mind :)

In the show, the device physically stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain to the point that players are highly addicted & easily manipulated.

I interpret it as allegory to the way "real" video games leverage variable rewards & other reinforcement to do something similar.

1\. [http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Game_(episode)](http://memory- alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Game_\(episode\))

</comment><comment><USER16> I am glad they took the time to mention Super Smash Bros Melee. That game took over my life for a time, and in hindsight it was because it was the medium that made me feel as if I was expressing myself honestly for the first time.

</comment><comment><USER17> Simon Parkin is a good writer. See also Coming Of Age With Video Games — [https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/coming-of-age- wi...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/coming-of-age-with-video- games)

</comment><comment><USER18> Risk and reward

</comment><comment><USER19> I think we as society have lost the ability to give the kids a creative space, that used to be a mile away from homes where they can play in the sand and bushes and water, and just be kids, without adult supervision. Video games let kids experience creation. Video games are satisfying an evolutionary need.

I think nautil.us should write an article on positive effects of mobile phone connectivity. The snobs are looking down on that just like they are on video games.

<comment><USER13> Urban centers through most of human history have lacked a lot of open spaces, and kids have grown up fine. Human brains are incredibly resilient, and you can raise healthy kids even in dense urban areas.

The problem seems to be more about the constant stimuli that comes from internet enabled devices and video games. I grew up without access to much video games or the internet but that made me dream up entire fantasy worlds as a kid, because I was bored. I don't think the current environment allows kids that kind of space to just be bored and create things via imagination.

I'm not a child specialist though so I might be totally wrong about this.

<comment><USER20> >Urban centers through most of human history have lacked a lot of open spaces

For most of human history transportation through urban centers was done primarily on foot and roads were designed to facilitate that. Contemporary urban planning is designed around speedily moving motorized vehicles through and the streets, such as they are, are rivers of traffic that pedestrians have to hurry themselves across during the short windows of time that cars aren't speeding by.

The invention of the automobile has been terrible for letting kids roam around. On the flip-side of the dangers they face in urban centers, the ones growing up in newer suburban areas lack the density to have an appreciable amount of kids of similar ages within walking/biking distance of each other. Many older style, "streetcar" suburbs do, but we haven't build many of those in the past 30 or so years.

<comment><USER21> "streetcar" density suburbs can and do function well with only cars. We just need to start building them again. Just sprinkle in a few multi-story parking lots behind street-level retail and they are great places to live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> e: To clear things up I'm not criticizing Bartle's work here.

<comment><USER15> I don't think your criticism is very obvious. Can you elaborate?

The Bartle Test is a pretty common tool / consideration in gaming psych & gamified interfaces.

<comment><USER22> I personally have no issue with the test. Players have different preferences when it comes to video games.

What I have a problem with is researchers attempting to drawn a relationship between video game preferences and basic needs. To me this reeks of Jack Thompson.

<comment><USER23> > Players have different preferences when it comes to video games.

The point is why they have these preferences, and what these preferences lead to in terms of how different people might approach the same game.

You could present a counter article instead of just telling us how much you don't like the premise of this one.

Anecdotally, I know blasting the crap out of demons in Doom does a pretty good job of channelling my anger. It's cathartic and not something society typically caters for.

A lot of games are about building efficient systems, which naturally would attract people that like solving problems with designs and creativity.

You are dismissing the entire premise of the article based on a dislike for one man that tried (and failed) to convince America that GTA was a murder simulator. A man that (if you bother to read up on what he is up to now) doesn't even believe any of the shit he said back then and actually apologised for it.

<comment><USER24> _> A man that (if you bother to read up on what he is up to now) doesn't even believe any of the shit he said back then and actually apologised for it._

Can you provide a pointer to that? I haven't found anything in that regard, either at Wikipedia nor searching at news sites.

<comment><USER23> I'm struggling to find the exact article I read (and Wikipedia is light on info about him for some reason) but it was an interview with Thompson himself about where he is and what he is doing now.

He is teaching prisoners civics in Florida now after suffering major stress/depression and marriage problems resulting from his crusade. He went into how the whole thing started because stores were selling violent games to under-age kids and even parents were buying them and that's what he took issue with.

Based on his medical background and knowledge of how entertainment affects the brain he believed that kids that young and also the mentally disabled should not have access to violent games, but because he was beaten in court (multiple times) he began to make tenuous links everywhere between violence and games, music and movies and began behaving very legally dubious in pursuing his cases like a fanatic to the point where he was calling for all-out bans and ridiculous punishments.

He was eventually disbarred and went through a few years of trying not to be such an angry asshole.

From the way the article ended it seemed like he had gone through a positive transformation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ZypMedia Is Hiring Lead Engineer for Low Latency C++ Role - <AUTHOR> Hiring a Lead Engineer who is proficient in C/C++ to write low latency code for ZypMedia's Real Time Bidding Platform. We are building a sophisticated platform that connects to various data APIs to show Ads and reject Fraudulent Traffic and developing online machine learning models. We are in SF. <comment><USER2> Right, high frequency con artistry.

<comment><AUTHOR> This post is regarding hiring. I don't get your comment ild - where is the con artistry?</comment></comment>


Steve Jobs' View on Everyone Learning to Code - windy-topology https://twitter.com/LifeTechPsych/status/1293565797378465793 <comment><AUTHOR> Not J O B apostrophe S.

"Jobs' view."

<comment> windy-topology yikes. thanks for the catch</comment></comment>


Building a Weather Station - <AUTHOR> http://www.drbunsen.org/building-a-weather-station/

<comment><USER2> I have a Davis Vantage VP2 station and reverse engineered the serial connection to the back of the console, the datalogger interface, and the wireless communications from the outdoor unit [1]. Using something like a $20 Moteino [2] (an Arduino clone with an RFM69W RF transceiver), I can monitor its readings without even needing a console. The wxforum [3] is also a very active and helpful site for people getting into this kind of thing. Recent experiments are opening the door for homemade temperature / humidity sensors and the like. Fun stuff.

[1] [http://madscientistlabs.blogspot.ca/search/label/Davis%20VP2](http://madscientistlabs.blogspot.ca/search/label/Davis%20VP2)

[2] [http://lowpowerlab.com/moteino/](http://lowpowerlab.com/moteino/)

[3] [http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?board=59.0](http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?board=59.0)

</comment><comment><USER3> _" I first considered using various Arduino or Tessel configurations, but I soon came to the conclusion that the available hardware was not a good fit for my project. I needed weather resistant hardware that could operate in extreme conditions, preferably with low power consumption.

My research eventually lead me to purchase the Davis 6250 Vantage Vue for this project because it had several advantages compared to other solutions I considered."_

Hmm. He wanted an off-the-shelf weather station that he connected to a RaspberryPI. Otherwise, Arduino would be a good fit too, especially if one connects various weather sensors to it. It works also in extreme conditions and has real low power consumption.

I built a weather station myself, with an Arduino UNO, connected several sensors (temperature, wind speed, wind direction, rain meter, humanity, light intensity, etc) and wrote a small webserver (ethernet shield) - total hw costs about 120$. The Arduino run without maintenance outdoors (-25° to +45° Celsius) since 2011. I built a web app that runs on a RPi that fetches the data from the Arduino web server with REST API.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a writeup of what sensors you used and how you programmed it? I started to look into this topic but was overwhelmed by the choices. When I finally settled on a path I found out, that the combined wireless sensor devices described are no longer available.

Edit: The sensor was called S 300 TH, and it was mentioned in several writeups/tutorials for wireless weather stations with Raspberry Pi.

<comment><USER3> Wind & Rain Sensor: [https://www.argentdata.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=29](https://www.argentdata.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=29) or [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8942](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8942) ; related Arduino sketch: [http://code.google.com/p/pweatherstation/](http://code.google.com/p/pweatherstation/)

You want an RTC1307 real time clock, a humidity sensor and pressure & temperature sensor from Sparkfun/Adafruit/etc.

e.g. [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11824](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11824) . Good starting point on SF: [https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/152](https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/152)

Only buy sensors from vendors that provide you an up-to-date Arduino 1.2+ sketch for Uno/Mega or Due! I had to tune my sketch to fit it in Arduino Uno 32k memory (ethernet shield, various sensors code), so if it's your first project maybe use an Arduino Mega (more memory). Test every sketch on its own, then combine all sketches to one sketch. Cables are more reliable than wireless, especially if it should work years without maintenance. You can also use an RPi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a weather station device that lets me query it directly? I just wonder what happens if Weather Underground shuts down or starts charging for API access so I'd rather have one I can access myself.

<comment><USER6> The future is that your _phone_ is the device that you can query directly. Some phones have barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, or UV sensors, etc. Our smartphones are becoming weather stations, and the future-proofing in your scenario where WU shuts down is merely to startup your own mesh-network of weather sensors.

My startup PressureNet aims to be the go-to platform for accessing/collecting dense atmosphere measurements: [http://pressurenet.io/](http://pressurenet.io/)

<comment><USER2> "Our smartphones are becoming weather stations..."

Only to a very limited extent. A phone is not going to give me rainfall data nor wind information. A phone will also skew temperature readings because the phone itself heats up with usage and the fact that it is typically kept close to your body.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> AmatYr is a similar project, written in Lua and JS with Postgresql as a backing database: [https://github.com/torhve/Amatyr](https://github.com/torhve/Amatyr)

Live setup: [http://yr.hveem.no/](http://yr.hveem.no/)

I'm not the creator, but I set it up for my own weather station, and it has been working flawlessly.

</comment><comment><USER8> I backed a project on Kickstarter back in July '04 called BloomSky. It's a connected smart weather station with a sky facing camera. They haven't shipped yet but it looks pretty good!

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

<comment><USER9> Did you really mean 'July 2004' or is that a typo?

<comment><USER10> Kickstarter launched in 2009, so it's a typo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He mentions weatherunderground a couple of times ... great service. For me it has obviated the need to set up my own station, because the density and quality of weather data available in my area is excellent.</comment>


My hack for tonight: Made a script to convert vim themes to XCode4 format. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/krig/dotemacs/tree/master/xcode4themes

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the script, btw: [https://github.com/krig/dotemacs/blob/1460ad50750f305ff4b1bf...](https://github.com/krig/dotemacs/blob/1460ad50750f305ff4b1bf5cab7e726377925943/xcode4themes/vim2xcode4theme)

It needs rgb.txt from the vim source, untabified. It doesn't understand cterm codes, so console themes don't look good. And obviously not everything maps 1:1, so it's more of a process of creative interpretation that a port...</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my webapp: Da Button Factory - create shiny buttons - <AUTHOR> http://dabuttonfactory.com

<comment><AUTHOR> (Web) design is hard. For us programmers, it's a pain in the ass, and when it comes to create UI elements for a (web) app, we are stuck with two choices:

1\. create something very basic, or

2\. spend countless hours searching the web for Photoshop tutorials on how to create a bubble or depth effect, then spend even-more-countless hours fighting with Photoshop to implement it, and finally, maybe adapt the image with some external tools to make it be a CSS sprite or whatever)

Yes, 1. is not necessary a bad thing (HN is a good example :-)), but we all know that for most softwares, some attractive eye-candies are useful. Even GMail uses more than a simple _< input type="button">_ to display their buttons.

So here comes _Da Button Factory_. It aims at making it easier to create pretty buttons, which are one of the key elements of an user interface (especially on the web), in an quick and human-friendly way (not tons of options/menus/concepts like in an image processing program). And because using plain image files on the web often sucks, it (will) provide solutions that makes good use of CSS.

Currently it's just a beta. There is only a very simple CSS solution implemented. It may looks ugly in some browsers. Things are not polished.

But I would be very glad to hear any comments of yours on this "draft". Do you find it interesting? Do you have any critics/ideas about it? Did you notice any bugs or problems?

Oh, and I am french, so please excuse me for any grammar/spelling mistake in this post, and don't hesitate to correct me, of course :-)

<comment><USER2> If you're looking to improve the design of the site, you might be interested to know that the Chinese character for big is 大, pronounced "da4" (fourth or falling tone).

The character is simple enough it should be easy to work into any site logo, and the meaning works well with your URL ("Big Button Factory"). Mandarin is also cool.

<comment><USER3> It's definitely cool and nearly the first thing I noticed as well, but it'll confuse exactly everyone besides those with experience in both english and chinese.

<comment><USER4> True. Although I hope someday Mandarin will become second nature to lots of Americans, in the same way that Spanish "grande," "hola," etc., can be mixed with English to effect a certain attitude.

Let's start with 厉害. Easy to pronounce and sounds like its meaning (at least to me).

<comment><USER5> 我的汉语不太好, I needed to look up 厉害: [http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E5%8E%89%E5%AE%B3/130...](http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E5%8E%89%E5%AE%B3/1309342)

Pretty neat site, along with looking up characters by typing or cutting and pasting you can draw them and it tries to guess what character you're looking for.

What prompted you to start with 厉害?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let me compare you to <http://www.mycoolbutton.com/> which is what I used a few weeks ago when I needed a pretty image button.

What I like better there:

* Their button has a really sharp glossy look. Yours are nice, but not as nice (that I noticed, at least).

* They have more fonts than you do.

What I like better about yours:

* Lots more control over most of the details. Notably, the custom color gradients.

* The showcase of editable examples. Very nice.

* Less clutter on the page. Though I certainly would not blame you if you put up ads or a tip-me button.

Although I think your extensive options are good, it's sort of a power-user interface. You might consider a simpler interface for visitors who want something very quick and easy. Or, you could expand your gallery of examples, perhaps even add a sidebar of examples to the front page.

All in all, very well done. Congratulations and thank you.

<comment><USER7> My opinion is that despite the extra options and control, the OP's site is much easier to use than mycoolbutton.com. Most of the options there are hidden by default, making piecing together their functionality pretty difficult. This is in addition to the clutter -- with my 'ad blinders' on, I can easily confuse some legitimate UI elements with ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You should export as a alpha-transparency PNG-8 not PNG-24. The reason for this is that IE6 won't render any PNG-24 transparency it just makes it all opaque. However with PNG-8 IE6 will make all alpha transparency transparent.

This means IE6 users get a slightly chunky rounded corner and users with better browsers (IE7, FF, Safari, etc) get a smooth alpha transparency.

My good friend, Nicole Sullivan, has a great presentation on this topic ([http://www.slideshare.net/stubbornella/designing-fast- websit...](http://www.slideshare.net/stubbornella/designing-fast-websites- presentation)) see slide 55 for PNG optimization.

Nicole also worked on a tool with another friend, Stoyan Stephanof, <http://smush.it> . Smush.it reduces the filesize of your images without losing quality by removing unnecessary bit data, and I think, metadata. For some of your buttons it was carving 14% off the filesize. It might be worth integrating that in for your users.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for all of your comments!

@brk: the method is pretty simple: the images are queried via Ajax to the server, which runs a Fast-CGI script, written in Perl, to generate the buttons. Javascript does the rest (visual effects, Ajax, CSS code generation...)

@zepolen: thanks for reporting the problem in Opera, I'll investigate ASAP!

@DXL: yes, color pickers and more powerful controllers in general (for picking the orientation maybe, for example) are in the roadmap :-)

@exalo: you are not the first one to tell me about a "randomize" feature. I'll think of it seriously. Thanks. For the vertical alignment: normally it should be centered, but the result of "vertical-align: middle;" vary between browsers. I'll make it better ASAP :-) For the non-clickable title: actually it's currently just a <h1> tag, but this will obviously change, you're right.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is really nicely done. I like it a lot. Branding is important; make a "Buttons by DaButtonFactory.com" button that people can use.

Others have already mentioned a colorwheel. Adding that would help usability. Unless I've been doing colors recently, I don't know #f00 from #0f0.

Even a simple popup-grid of colors, something like what makebutton.com has for color selection would help here.

Minor bugs I came across:

Undo does not work for swapping the two background colors.

If I hammer the 'Size +' (or any other) button, I get rate limited. I didn't look at the code, is there a query for every button press when I go from 200 -> 250 for the width?

The error message for non-integers could be better: Value "11.2" invalid for option text-size (number between 0 and 2000 expected). Actually, the error messages could be better all around, but it isn't a huge deal.

West/East only shadows don't work: Value "nonew" invalid for option shadow- orient (possible values: "n", "s", "e", "w", "ne", "no", "so", "se").

The top-left text for "Da Button Factory" should be an actual link. (Or just clear the button settings back to the default, or it could even be the 'randomize' link that others have asked for.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reporting all these things!

\- the undo is now ok with the "swap" buttotn

\- you can "hammer" the increment/decrement buttons

\- the error messages are a bit better ('integer expected' and not 'number expected'). What do you mean by "better all around", what do you think of?

\- west/east only shadows are possible

\- the title is now a link

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would love to be able to trivially make buttons that ape other UIs, especially in platforms that have a existing look and feel.

Examples:

Buttons that look "native in Facebook" for fb apps

Buttons that looks "right" in a Google Gadget.

Elements for Apple Dashboard widgets.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks great. Found a bug though. You've reversed the horizontal and vertical padding around the text. Adding vertical padding puts it to the left/right, when it should put it on the top/bottom.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the site, so it's kind of a shame for me that you called it "Da Button Factory". It just feels childish and cheesy.

Was there a reason for "Da" instead of "The"? Programming isn't "gangsta" rap, after all.

<comment><USER12> Cut him some slack; he's French :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's surprisingly hard to make buttons that look bad with this. I had to work hard to pervert it to make a 1997-style monstrosity. Good work on making pleasant design the default.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, looks pretty useful. Any thoughts about charging anything for it?

I'm a huge fan of Joe Krause's advice to beta test a business model while you beta test your product: How you make your money is equally relevant in how people perceive your product. [http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2006/04/30/joe-kraus- confe...](http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2006/04/30/joe-kraus-confessions- of-a-startup-addict/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, especially for the link! I don't think much of any serious "business-ization", but hey, we'll see ;-)...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great job. The buttons look great for such minimal effort. Suggestions for next steps:

1\. Add an easy way to get hover and pushed states for buttons. Basically, provide some clever defaults that allow the user to get all 3 at once with minimal work.

2\. Put in a paypal or tip jar link (it can't hurt, right?)

3\. Add a pretty attribution link, "Buttons by Da Button Factory" or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice.

1\. yes, it's in my mind, it will be the big step towards the "version 2"

2\. and 3. it may come ;-)

<comment><USER16> I don't know if he meant this too but I'd be great to add to the _Examples_ section, a PayPal "Donate" button.

I don't like the standard one, but I'd want users to know it's Paypal. But I don't know if using their logo is be infringement, but you could still use a PayPal-like logo.

I don't like the word "donate", but I'm not sure how that change would effect users actions; that's been the standard for a while. But I like "contribute" and "support".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like this! Great job. I'd include a small gallery of many great examples on the front page, and as soon as you click an example, it prepop's the settings. You've already got this feature, but it starts from another page. You could keep prepopulating this gallery with buttons that others are creating. :) Again, this is awesome and useful! And the button quality looks pretty good.

<comment><USER17> couple other things -- the layout looks a little weird on firefox on mac, and you definitely need color pickers (as I'm sure others have mentioned as well). ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really like this. I love programming but I hate photoshopping, and I'll probably use this all the time. It would be nice if I could upload my own font. Response time was quick and I like the history saving.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice! Creating image buttons really isn't _that_ difficult, but the gradients are very pretty. I can see how this could be massively convenient for some people.

P.S. I added your site to SU: <http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.dabuttonfactory.com/>

</comment><comment><USER20> This is really kind of cool.

Curious to know what method you're using to generate the actual buttons?

</comment><comment><USER21> Checked it yesterday, I like it. But I want to use it today, and it's down :( [http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.dabuttonfacory.co...](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.dabuttonfacory.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> it is up again. Sorry for the downtime, but I didn't expect such traffic!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone out there following the button factory!

First of all, thanks everyone for the big amount of -so- useful comments! It's really interesting and motivating!

Some have noticed, the server has been down, overloaded. I put some rules to guarantee its disponibility, but it may still be problems (it's a very small server and I just made dirty hacks to prevent it to die miserably, I hope).

I pushed a little update which corrects some of the bugs suggested:

* the 'swap' button is now usable with the history

* the vertical and horizontal padding are in the right order :-P

* "hammering" the increment/decrement buttons is now possible

* the shadow orientation now allows only east or west

* the site was totally broken in IE 6/7, now it should be usable (but terribly ugly!)

* the title "Da Button Factory" is now a link

* links have been added to download the button or bookmark the page

For the color pickers: I'm currently working on it. But it's a big job, and I want to make it well, so it will take a little time.

For browsers issues: thanks for the reports, It's very important, and I'll investigate, but not immediately (I've no easy access to the Internet in the week, even less access to Windows).

I'll certainly open a blog soon, so that interested people could follow the updates via RSS.

Once again, a big thanks to everyone for the help!

</comment><comment><USER22> Absolutely Genius! I've never wanted to pay for something more in my life. Why not use the ycombinator startup tipjoy? (<http://tipjoy.com>)

<comment><USER22> One thing I just noticed is that these fonts do not support Japanese. In earlier threads there was mention of adding more fonts so I'm sure you'll add them eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not bad.

1\. On a first glance the interface is a little overwhelming, and I am not sure where to go/what to change first. Have a single column of options that can be expanded/condensed accordion style (think the Mac MS Word formatting sidebar).

2\. Buttons produced are only a single image. It would be nice if multiple images/sprites were created (that is, a single image file, with multiple images). The additional images would enable hover and on click capabilities, providing a user with visual feedback that the image is indeed a button, and that it is working. That being said, you may also need to include the relevant CSS necessary for a user to select the correct sprite in each situation.

3\. Having the Undo/Redo on the top right seems a bit unnatural. (I didn't even notice these options at first; moving them to the top left may be better?) You might also consider using the standard arrow icons for these options with a text description on the bottom or on the right

4\. Other people have already mentioned this, but additional fonts and a color picker would be very useful.

5\. The site's layout requires a fairly wide screen. When I don't have my browser window maximized, the layout gets kinda messed up (input boxes flow to the next line abandoning their label).

</comment><comment><USER24> This is great, works very simply and the results look fantastic! I've just created a few to buttons to use on my latest project and they're perfect for my needs - all in less time than it would take to open up PS and create just one button! An awesome app and I wish you every success with it, I second the call for a PayPal link/contribute link, I think many a time-starved designer would happily drop a few $ your way in gratitude.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, it's so nice and grateful to see people enthusiast about it! The pleasure to serve :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Concept is good. I'd prefer to see a swiss army knife approach with the design. Keep it simple/stupid. Just because your application has various features and services, you don't have to overwhelm a new user by carpet bombing them (humor me;) with them. I'm sure there is plenty of feed back in this thread that will also help with the next revision. Best of luck to the team.

</comment><comment><USER26> It doesnt work in IE7 (stuck on this browser at the University Library, so no alternative). The progress indicator keeps going.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I didn't try with IE7 :-/ I could just put my hands on an old IE6 version to test the render. I'll definitely install a virtual machine or smthg :-) Thanks for the report.

<comment><USER27> Check out browsershots - <http://browsershots.org/> . I think you can submit a job to check how a page renders on a specific OS-browser combination. Otherwise you can download and check it out - it's open source.

<comment><USER28> Wow, where has that been all my life?

Thanks a lot for that tip - that's going to come in _really_ handy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Your background css option produces code that doesn't work in Opera.

Otherwise, it's nice and simple.

</comment><comment><USER7> One small criticism -- the 'Create' button is not immediately obvious, especially since it's up in the navigation section. Maybe make clicking the button do the same action and place the Create button more prominently by the options.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nice! I'd suggest adding a file input or url field to supply an icon image for the buttons. Better still, grab the FamFamFam icon set and let people use those.

(and add a color picker)

</comment><comment><USER31> Very nice. I don't presently have any suggestions that haven't already been made, but this is one of the most impressive developer tools I've seen recently. Thank you for your service.

</comment><comment><USER32> Nice and simple to use. I can certainly see myself using this a lot.

</comment><comment><USER33> 1\. Your logo is pretty plain. Maybe make your logo be one of your buttons.

2\. It would be cool to be able to replicate popular button styles of other companies, or at least similar to them.

3\. I didn't see the undo/redo links until I was done. Maybe move them somewhere else, like under the center button?

4\. Def need to make it easier to find colors you want. Plus more fonts like others suggested.

5\. Can you automatically have it generate a "button pressed down" version?

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://dabuttonfactory.com/edit?t=This%20is%20a%20startup%3F...](http://dabuttonfactory.com/edit?t=This%20is%20a%20startup%3F&fb=on&fi=on&ts=24&tc=white&tsh=on&tshs=3&tshc=45%2C35%2C25&c=10&bgc=%23fa0&ebgc=%23f30&be=on&bs=1&bc=red&sh=on&shs=1&shc=darkgray&w=200&h=40&hp=15&vp=12&f=serif&ot=image&it=png&s=round&bgt=pyramid&sho=s&sho- we=e&st=variable)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For the people who would like to follow the progress of Da Button Factory: there is now a development blog <http://dabuttonfactory.blogspot.com>. You can suscribe to its Atom feed to stay in touch, or whatever.

BTW, Da Button factory now have: color pickers, a few more fonts, a public API, a better handling of the Opera browser (but, sorry, still bad with IE), and a lot of minor improvements :-)

</comment><comment><USER35> This is really well done. I like the fact you put in examples and allow users to edit those examples. I will definitely use and recommend to others.

</comment><comment><USER36> I love this thing. I'm a designer and I always use Photoshop for these kinds of things, but this is so much quicker and nicer to use...

</comment><comment><USER37> Very nice indeed! I agree with yef that you need a simple method to create a hover and click versions for each of the buttons.

</comment><comment><USER21> Checked it yesterday, I like it. But I want to use it today, and it's down :( [http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.dabuttonfacory.co...](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.dabuttonfacory.com)

</comment><comment><USER38> I would like to pick the color rather than enter the RGB numbers or the name.

<comment><USER39> +1 for a colour picker

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've been waiting for this for so long...thank you so much.

</comment><comment><USER41> Remember my last settings when I return to the site. Provide a `reset to defaults' button if I want sanity to return.

</comment><comment><USER41> Either wrap long text to fit in fixed-width buttons, or let me specify \n and \\\ to break the lines manually.

</comment><comment><USER42> On the usability side, clarifying how to change the color of the button could be more intuitive.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've used it and found it easy and super helpful! Thanks for this!

</comment><comment><USER44> I love it

</comment><comment><USER45> Really nice, but I'd suggest adding a color picker to the color fields. Not everybody can calculate hex values from the top of their head.

</comment><comment><USER46> OK, I admit, I was expecting it to be super crummy, but you won me over.

The Examples section should be more prominent. I just assumed you could _only_ do glossy web 2.0 buttons at first glance. But your examples are impressive.

I think, in general, you need to a) add a color picker (as everyone else has said), and b) offer a clickable "playlist" of button settings. Take your examples, make them into recipes, and put them on the front page. I want to click the Apple-style button and have the button I'm working on turn _into_ that style.

Make sense?

BTW - do you know that song for kids about the button factory? "Hi, my name is Joe, and I work all day at the button factory. One day, my boss came up to me and said 'Hey Joe, are you busy?' I said 'no.' He said, 'So push this button with your right foot.'" etc.

</comment><comment><USER47> I actually happened to use a website Cooltext (<http://cooltext.com/Buttons>) recently, and it also created buttons for you. Comparatively, your website's interface is definitely much better (more dynamic - buttons reflect changes immediately), but in terms of features/options it would be a good idea to take a look at Cooltext and try to add in some of the features that they offer. (Like a wider set of fonts to choose from, button special effects, etc.)</comment>


Linux 3.0 Kernel to have new Microsoft Kinect driver - <AUTHOR> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/mchehab/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=6612155a1dce344fb609c9487a879c693150ebb1

<comment><USER2> Forgive me, but I fail to see how this is related to 3.0. Everyone creates their own branch but they don't always include everything in a pull request. I don't have a Kinect myself, but even so, wouldn't it be bigger news if Microsoft wrote the driver instead of $randomdev who based it off another $randomdev's work?

<comment><USER3> Better source: [http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/testing/ChangeLo...](http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/testing/ChangeLog-3.0-rc1) and grep for 6612155a1dce344fb609c9487a879c693150ebb1

This commit is actually included on the 3.0-rc1 changelog, so it's probably a safe bet that it'll make it into the final product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"The Kinect gspca subdriver just supports the video stream for now..."_

Works as only a webcam; no depth data.</comment>


Why Silicon Valley Shouldn't Work with the Pentagon - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/opinion/silicon-valley-military-contract.html <comment><USER3> > Yet we shouldn't forget that civil-military antagonism and the deep American > tradition of distrusting the state have been crucial to the United States' > ability to innovate. There are good reasons why defense-tech giants of the > 1960s, '70s and '80s like Raytheon and Grumman missed out on such major tech > advances as Web protocols, the smartphone, personal computers and various > types of encryption — all of which would eventually have great military > significance. The biggest reason was that none of these advances were > directed at waging war; indeed, many aimed at transcending the power of the > state.

This is a fairly cherry picked story to match a narrative that frankly does not really exist. Silicon valley is not a partner of the defense world, it's derivative of it. The vast majority of technological disruption has come from technologies emerging from the state, that are then popularized by Silicon Valley. Most of these came from the space race, and in many ways Silicon Valley is still "behind" the Pentagon.

Web protocols, smartphones, personal computers, encryption etc., _all_ of this came from the military into Silicon Valley, not the other way around.

The Pentagon doesn't need Silicon Valley, it's quite the opposite.

<comment><USER4> You know how the U.S. (and its Allies) beat Russia in the Cold War because they gradually developed a stronger electronics and high-tech sector, which became more and more important as e.g. precision weapons showed their worth? And as we started testing nukes in computers rather than in underground tests? The Russians' state-dominated model simply couldn't produce the kinds of innovations made by the Western commercial sector. It's a similar thing with Silicon Valley and the US govt.

The days where the govt seeded tech in the US are long gone. This is not to say there's no contribution, but when was the last time someone cared about govt or defense contractor involvement? Not many who are alive and still working in the Bay Area today.

The article is correct and there is a fear of being co-opted by the state. There is a question whether there is some middle ground. Traditionally that middle ground was held by defense contractors. Today there are tech-like companies that are increasingly filling that niche. Examples of such companies are Pivotal (which recently filed its S-1) and Palantir (which might never file its S-1). I would argue that Amazon and Google are getting into these DoD contracts because Pivotal, Redhat, etc. failed to build a compelling-enough PAAS solution that the government can deploy on its own. The government would love to own its own datacenters, but apparently that isn't working out, or there's still some need for agility that's not being fulfilled.

Given how much space Palantir leases in downtown Palo Alto (and the fact that they seem to have no need or responsibility to ever exit or behave like any other tech company), I think the fear of being consumed by the government is not at all unfounded. Now you can argue that Pivotal and Palantir are nice companies (for vastly different reasons) but when you really take stock of it, no one can say they're really tech companies (and, that is fine). To Silicon Valley, they represent something else, something _bureaucratic._

On one hand Silicon Valley needs to be a bit more realistic about geopolitics. The government isn't going away. In practice, it's just the simple fact that we are more beholden to political stability than we think, and we tend to take it for granted. On the other hand, the government represents that side of society that forces things and pretty much can't get free-spirited commercial innovation right. And again, in practice, it's like trying to do anything interesting when you have your nanny mother (who has no real fiscal or creative responsibility) watching over your shoulder. The reality is more boring than people realize, but the tension is there and the problem is real.

<comment><USER3> There's a lot in here I agree with. I am not discounting the private sector's value in bringing state sponsored tech to market. This is huge. But what I am saying is that the state leads. Innovation has not traditionally been led by the private market, and again, the narrative that tech has flown from private markets to the military is just not correct, except maybe I guess when you consider the PAAS market bounded in the last 10 years? It really depends on where you draw your boundaries though: PAAS ultimately sits on 65 years of private sector innovation built on top of...a network created to monitor nuclear silos originally deployed by the military.

> The days where the govt seeded tech in the US are long gone. This is not to > say there's no contribution, but when was the last time someone cared about > govt or defense contractor involvement?

The entire self-driving car industry is build on top of DARPA experiments from the 90s.

This is the second time I've recommended this book on HN in as many weeks, but it's really quite good in going into the structure and history of the private market/govt dichotomy: [https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Capitalism-Innovation- Economy-S...](https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Capitalism-Innovation-Economy- Speculation/dp/1107031257)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree.

I have worked with DARPA and the Navy in the past. Now I'm in Silicon Valley. However my experience with the defense industry has shown me that unless Silicon Valley teams up with the Pentagon, the US will be destroyed.

We are very behind in terms of cyber warfare, and our position is incredibly weak in a post Snowden world, where all our defense strategies were leaked.

Our critical infrastructure is sorely in need of software updates - <USER2> devices don't have authentication so one can just shut down a power plant if they get onto the same network.

China has been slowly pulling ahead by installing black doors in all the hardware manufactured there. Russia is flexing their muscles with excursions against neighbors critical infrastructure. The US is falling behind rapidly.

Despite incessant talk about 'impact' and 'saving the world', Silicon Valley engineers build glorified slot machines for phones. Refusing to work with the Military sounds like something the ultra privileged would say - they don't care about the people in this country. When the lights go out because China has taken out power across the US, and Google is no longer working, I wonder then if those '3000' engineers will think twice about the importance of national defense, or if they will continue to sit in their ivory towers and lecture the rest of the world about how they are making the world a better place for selling digital cigarettes. If engineers want REAL impact, there is no where better than cyber defense.

<comment><USER6> This is silly. Silicon Valley doesn't need to team up with the DoD to resolve insecurity, and, in fact, the DoD has very few capabilities to improve the security of Silicon Valley products.

Based on what we know, along with pretty straightforward logical extrapolations, it's pretty reasonable to assume that the offensive CS capabilities of the DoD are a specialized subset of what the industry already has. The people staffing offensive operations at NSA are generally working their first job out of college. What we've seen of the quality of their tooling after leaks suggests mediocre software engineering and, if there's an edge to be found at NSA over the best industry offensive teams, it's in router, firewall, and middlebox security --- a consequence of the fact that industry doesn't spend much time working on these targets.

I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that foreign adversaries outclass us on any of this. The most elaborate, technically sophisticated computer attacks in the last 20 years have all been carried out either by the US or by allies (in other words: largely by US defense contractors).

What is the case is that the median target --- in the US or anywhere else in the world --- is so poorly secured that none of this matters. We are still working in an era where you can send someone an email with a blue-underlined link in it, and if a receptionist clicks that link, their entire network is owned up.

Despite the indisputably grave state of the US's computer security --- let's be clear, of _everyone 's_ computer security, here and abroad --- the US is at little risk of "destruction". Our adversaries also have the ability to conduct kinetic attacks anywhere in the country. Every adversary of ours worth of that name could blow up a US power plant. They don't, because the cost of attribution to them is essentially infinite.

People in Silicon Valley aren't great about computer security, but they know at least as much about it as the DoD does, and nobody should pretend they can spook the industry with the specter of "cyber warfare".

<comment><USER7> > the US is at little risk of "destruction"

Propaganda can destroy democracies. (And in most or all autocracies, propaganda is central to the regime's power)

Social media, and private data, and disclosure of private emails, and obtaining compromising info by hacking, can all be excellent propaganda tools.

So yes, computer security and hackers _can_ threaten the actual destruction of western society. Via propaganda and 'information warfare'.

[https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how- democrac...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies- die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/9781524762933/) [https://boingboing.net/2018/01/25/supercharged- dumdums.html](https://boingboing.net/2018/01/25/supercharged-dumdums.html) [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fascism/2017...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fascism/2017/03/how_nazi_propaganda_encouraged_the_masses_to_co_produce_a_false_reality.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it far fetched to think that the top technologists / developers in Russia / EU / China / etc. are working for their respective governments & Defense agencies?

From a pure game theory perspective, if you accept the premise above, then SV should absolutely work with the Pentagon so that the US doesn't fall behind competitively. Unless there was such a strong coalition of cooperation among the entire community globally to not contribute towards Defense initiatives - but even the most optimistic would say this is fantasy.

As one example, I've been warming up to supporting stronger collaboration between the US Tech Industry (because it's bigger than just Silicon Valley) and the NSA purely for the cybersecurity benefits that are going to be needed more and more over time. Cooperating with the best in the industry in the US is the only way to execute well.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. These 3000 engineers that protested in Google don't seem to live in reality. In the real world, China and Russia are doing government sponsored hacking against Western government/companies all the time, stealing IPs, strategies and bankrupting companies. I wonder how these engineers would respond when Google is hacked and its business is down, and engineers fired.

Case in point:

"Brian Shields, former Nortel security adviser, alleges Huawei hacked company for 10 years..."

"It was on behalf of Huawei and ZTE and other Chinese companies that could have used this information to compete against us in the marketplace. It gave them a strategic advantage. How can you survive when you have a competitor basically right there knowing all your moves, what you're doing, what you see as the future products?"

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns- aga...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-against- working-with-huawei-1.1137006)

<comment><USER10> Americans are generally pro-military, save for ultra left-leaning types. The fact that only 3000 people signed out of a population of ~100k(which already clearly trends leftwards), tells me that most people did not actually have a problem with that project.

<comment><USER11> The majority of people on either side also probably recognize that signing your name to an open letter opposing your employer's policies and decisions is a career-limiting move.

<comment><USER10> I really doubt that at google.

<comment><USER11> Google literally fired someone for that, so...

<comment><USER10> I'm speaking specifically about this situation, not about signing open letters in general. And James wasn't fired for signing a letter, he was fired for writing it in the first place.

<comment><USER11> But then he signed his name to it. Although, yes, you are technically correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At least Surveillance Valley's technology adopted by the government and military is nominally subject to the Constitution and judicial review, whereas the autocratic de facto government being built out by "private" companies is not even constrained by those traditions.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks to DARPA we have things such as the internet, GPS, Siri, and autonomous vehicles. Not to mention the DoD provides us with the security to pursue private ventures.

Go pound sand.

<comment><USER6> You don't even have to get 1/4 of the way through the article to see that 3,000 Google employees disagree with you about that. Do you think you can find 2,999 other people to share your "go pound sand" argument, or do you think you're an outlier?

<comment><USER11> I'll agree with him. Our industry was created by men like Alan Turing and John von Neumann who contributed their effort and intellect to the preservation of democracy against totalitarianism. When free people refuse to weaponize technology, tyrants will, and free people will be at a disadvantage.

<comment><USER14> Weapon inventors usually have no control once the weapon is sold. Richard Gatling thought he was making war more decisive and thus more necessary to avoid. He didn't anticipate machine guns being deployed against indigenous people defending against colonizers, nor did he anticipate the New York Times turning his gun on a riot.

<comment><USER15> Precisely. Also: Alfred Nobel, and many physicists who worked on the atomic bomb, including Oppenheimer.

Its a difficult question and its sad to see how technology created originally for benefiting humanity can sometimes be re purposed for its destruction. In a world where sovereign nations are not bound by arms restrictions though, its hard to see how this endless march of destruction can be stopped.

The SALT and other arms-reduction treaties b/w the US and erstwhile USSR where, IMO, a very good compromise. I find it hard to do something similar in the future if we continue to have dysfunctional administrations governing the US though.

<comment><USER11> > and many physicists who worked on the atomic bomb, including Oppenheimer

After 1945 (arguably 1953 at the latest), there were absolutely no direct wars between any two major powers. Nuclear weapons _did_ make war too destructive to ever risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the first thing Silicon Valley should do is to stop building total surveillance systems that can be used for advertising but also for controlling a population. The East Germany Stasi or Stalin would have loved to have Facebook data for finding their opposition and it's just a matter of time that their data is falling into the wrong hands.

Not working with the Pentagon would be just a symbolic action that doesn't address any real issues.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hate it when they group all of Silicon Valley together like this. Silicon Valley is pretty damn diverse...

</comment><comment><USER18> Just an aside that some east coast liberals ignore. Because of DARPA we have literally every successful technological innovation in the Valley.

Silicon Valley pompous, egotistical, man child billionaires mainly mine user data, advertise, and sell and improve products created by someone else. And how do they get market share? A fair percentage do due to laws and regulation loopholes making other companies unable to compete.

You think publically traded or privately backed VC companies will spend billions on R&D on a moonshot or just try to maximize profits as they should.

Silicon Valley today seems most interested in addicting people through cheap psychological tricks and owning/tracking/influencing every part of their lives, and then selling that information. Silicon Valley is what we in the Valley thought Wall Street was two decades ago. I would trust Wall Street, the Pentagon, and The Military before the holier than thou hypocracy prevalent everywhere in the Valley today

<comment><USER19> I think you struck a nerve.</comment></comment>


ML in medical school curriculum - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-018-0061-1 <comment><AUTHOR> "It is time for medical schools to consider including content focused on ML and its applications as part of their curriculum"

"healthcare has arguably one of the highest number of venture capital (VC) backed AI startups, and this figure is gradually increasing.... ...If this trend continues, then we may very well see a large number of AI-driven products and technologies integrated within the healthcare ecosystem in the coming decades. The question then remains as to whether a medical professional is willing to embrace these tools as part of their repertoire and if so, how they can get educated in terms of knowing the "art" as well as the "science" of the ML algorithms driving these technologies"</comment>


Can the Internet Be Archived? (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/cobweb?mbid=social_twitter <comment><USER2> The importance of archiving is huge taking in account the numerous times libraries have been burnt, footage being lost and others parts of history being buried into the ocean with shipwrecks.

But more importantly if one thinks of Orwell's 1984, were all printed records were manipulated on a daily basis to reflect a different state of reality while the events were changing, in the days of internet that is not just a tedious sci-fi process but one that can be performed in a fairly efficient and methodical manner to an extent that it cannot be told what was real or not.

<comment><USER3> To guard against manipulation is why we should have our own personal archives. Decentralisation. Also, cryptography to validate authorship. (Basically, I still want Xanadu.)

<comment><USER4> I personally think that HTTP should be gradually supplanted by things like IPFS, all documents would be content-addressable and both accessing an archiving would be done in a decentralized manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Should the internet be archived?

Seriously. It's a transient medium, somewhere between a beautifully illustrated book and a shopping list scrawled on the back of a napkin in crayon, recited down a megaphone by a drunk.

Let content live or die in its merit, rather than the desire to arbitrarily preserve it.

<comment><USER6> _" Should the internet be archived?"_

This would be a great question to ask researchers in archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, history, etc.

My own impression is that the more data there is, the better for researchers. They can always weed out what they don't need later, but there's no way to get back information that has been destroyed or lost.

Also, in the past people have made some horrible choices regarding what's valuable and what's not. For all sorts of reasons, from political to psychological to social, they've done things like burn, discard, or destroy texts and artwork we now consider valuable but they did not. Often, what was considered valuable (like sacred texts) was not really as revealing about their daily lives as things they did not value and discarded.

So I'd really think twice before we discard any records. If there's some kind of serious pressing need to be selective (such as lack of space) that's one thing. But if keeping it more would not be a huge burden, I'm much more of an inclusionist than a deletionist.

<comment><USER7> _Also, in the past people have made some horrible choices regarding what 's valuable and what's not. For all sorts of reasons, from political to psychological to social, they've done things like burn, discard, or destroy texts and artwork we now consider valuable but they did not._

Case in point:

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

<comment><USER8> Don't forget the original moon landing recordings. How could anyone have thought so little of those that we lost them?

<comment><USER9> That's because we never really landed on the moon!

<comment><USER10> I see what you did here: trying to start one of those flame wars that future anthropologists will be as excited about as when they found that village garbage!

<comment><USER11> We need ultra-HD-3D footage anyways, let's land on the moon again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Archived - maybe.

But it would be much more fun to _transcribe_ it.

You know, the way they used to copy books back in the days before the printing press.

Lock yourself in a cave with some (hemp) oil candles, paper and an iPad and ... you'd be doing humanity a huge favor.

When, in your monumental quest, you come across this message, know that somebody thought of this moment a long long time ago and hereby officially thanks you for your effort.

<comment><USER13> Possibly archiving the internet is, what transcribing was to speech and events in old times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Years ago, somebody asked me if i could copy the internet in a 3 1/2 floppy.

<comment><USER15> Well I sent an internet to my friend the other day and he just got it. How big can it really be?

<comment><USER16> Isn't it a little black box with a red light on top? I'm sure I saw it on an IT show...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Washington Post has published a yearly list of the most challenging schools in the nation since 2013. This year, they redirected all guys to the old lists to the 2017 version. They block Google from caching their content, and the internet archive caches only the front-end HTML and not the final DOM, which means the list, populated via JS, is not in the IA's cache.

I needed to reference that list and spent hours scouring the internet for individual mentions of awards and placements to piece together a partial view of the results for one state for some of the years. It was horrible, but the worst part of it was the realization that this is but a single example, that the impermanence of the internet it's going to lead to a very sad loss of some very important data that we will dearly regret in the years to come.

It's also no longer sufficient to cache text and HTML; sites like NYT and WaPo have put massive work and countless man-hours into web apps that contain valuable data that relies on the presence of a back end server to populate the front-end, and rich JS apps to portray that data. It's going to be a challenge.

</comment><comment><USER18> Let's submit HackerNews comments to the Library of Congress. Seriously!

<comment><USER19> IA is better! [https://archive.org/donate/](https://archive.org/donate/)

<comment><USER18> touché, but my comment was precipitated not by any particular practicalities but by the article's text: "Sites hosted by corporations tend to die with their hosts.... Twitter is a rare case: it has arranged to archive all of its tweets at the Library of Congress."

<comment><USER20> That was the intent, but I think it ended up being too big for the lack of budget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm interested in the the possibility of individual internet archives. Web browsers (or something like those) could automatically save all of a user's own stuff (article comments, blog posts, tweets, emails) and everything they're interested in (bookmarks, rss feeds). Users could connect p2p and make bigger, more public archives.

</comment><comment><USER21> (2015)

<comment><USER22> Why are you repeating a section of the linked title?

<comment><USER23> Likely it wasn't in the title when this poster posted it, 2 hours before you replied.

It's common on HN for older stories to get posted and get upvoted to the front page, and commenters will make a note in the comments that it is an older story and should be marked as such in the hopes that the mods will notice and add e.g. (2015) to the title.

The tersest way to do this is to simply post a top level comment with the year the article was written, surrounded by parentheses.

<comment><USER22> That makes perfect sense thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Archiving is a great tool against those who like to employ memory holes as strategy.

</comment><comment><USER16> Don't forget to do two separate backups...

<comment><USER25> The Archive Team (not affiliated with the Internet Archive) is working on it (and you can help): [http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK)</comment></comment>


Why You Keep Dreaming About Being Naked (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/20/creativity/why-you-keep-dreaming-about-being-naked <comment><USER2> TL;DR: ...

That is, it didn't answer the question at all.</comment>


Show HN: Breach Insider – Detect a data breach using realistic pseudo-users - <AUTHOR> https://breachinsider.com <comment><USER2> Dictionary makers used to do something similar. They would make up words to detect if a competitor was copying them. Map makers before the internet also did this- make up places to detect copying.

I don't know if they still do this. I haven't seen a physical dictionary in a while. Now with online maps and navigation I don't think map data providers can afford the risk of a navigation system misdirecting someone due to an imaginary place.

But it's possible some of these things took a life of their own. Say someone saw a made up word and started using it because they thought it was real. Or a made up park name for an open area led someone to start using it and others to start calling it that. I don't know if that actually happened but it's possible.

<comment><USER3> There was a story on here a while back about such a label actually spawning a small town.

<comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10324499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10324499)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's value here in detection of a breach that's already been monetized, but this isn't in the kill chain; it's long-after, so it appears reactive-only.

Why should a non-massive company implement this rather than boosting and refining centralized logging and monitoring which can, if done right, provide far more immediate (even real time) notification of a breach? Your Wells Fargos of the world might do it because they can spare the change, and in your position I'd target the whales for initial revenue, certainly, but why should any mid-sized SaaS firm do it?

Not asking cynically. I want you to sell me on it.

<comment><USER6> Any measures can miss the breach.

For example disgruntled insider admin quietly stole all users data on his last day at work.

<comment><USER5> Properly calibrated monitoring should catch that scenario with near certainty though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool. Like canary passwords but for identities.

Not enough use of canary passwords people!

<comment><USER8> A quick Google didn't yield much for "canary passwords", but it sounds like monitoring for passwords as opposed to user email/details as described in the OP.

Care to shed a bit more light on what you mean here and how to effectively use them?

<comment><USER9> I think he's referring to the idea of having fake users in your database whose passwords should never be used to sign in. Someone successfully signing in with one of those accounts indicates that your user account credentials have been compromised.

<comment><USER7> Yep. It's either fake users, or weak passwords for existing users.

<comment><USER10> Another name for that is backdoor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Somewhat related, but anyone have any best practices or can recommend a service to protect your users who have been pwned in another sites data breach?

Rate limiting login attempts for an email address or ip address is all well and good for protecting against brute force attacks, but when the attacker has the correct email and password combination already for the user, and access to massively distributed botnets, how do you block those logins?

<comment><USER12> I've read something about a method used by online banking services some time ago: They tracked the way the customer moves their mouse, calculated their arm lenghts etc. and when the movements were suspiciously different, the system assumes it's a fraud and logs them out.

<comment><USER6> I did similar project with Tensorflow. Mouse movements were captured then converted to images and DL model was trained to classify user or not user.

It can also classify classes of users I.e. new portal users are moving mouse differently from users who are familiar with portal.

To add - by itself it's not a reliable indicator of yes/no.

But rather another risk scoring input to overall identity detection system.

<comment><USER13> This is actually clever. Thanks for sharing the technique!

<comment><USER6> Pleasure :) Here's writeup:

[https://www.splunk.com/blog/2017/04/18/deep-learning-with- sp...](https://www.splunk.com/blog/2017/04/18/deep-learning-with-splunk-and- tensorflow-for-security-catching-the-fraudster-in-neural-networks-with- behavioral-biometrics.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This service is great, I just wish it was about half the price. $600/yr (for something that doesn't increase sales) is just slightly too expensive, for me, for a small-time solo software business.

</comment><comment><USER15> Any integration with Troy Hunt's haveibeenpwned to get notice from him?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's on the roadmap, as Troy sometimes get breaches personally handed to him. Ideally I'd like to be the one detecting the first of course :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any email or mobile number can and will receive spam.

So you need your system to check every spam email, call and text and decide whether it's a breach or spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree, and that's why our email addresses are formed in a way which shouldn't be bruteforced/guessed to help reduce this. We've purchased a handful of our own domains that we monitor, rather than relying on any other suppliers.

In terms of mobile numbers, they are definitely prone to this, and that is why we make them optional - depends if you want to risk any false positive alarms. Some countries are more prone than others - US mobile get reused a lot it seems!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I did a similar implementation in production using DigitalShadows. We basically created "honeywords" in the database at random, and then had DS monitor for those out in the wild. That included random lines in the source code that didn't do anything other than be used as IoCs.

<comment><USER17> This seems miserable to maintain. I feel like maintaining a code base with code in it that is simply there to be grepped in the wild would make it incredibly messy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, that is actually a clever service.

<comment><USER19> Clever for sure. But I wonder how they can identify the leaked account even if they actively scan web / deep web. I mean it's not because Carlos Sanchez is for sale somewhere that it's my "insider".

<comment><AUTHOR> Creator here – There are a few ways we can detect a breach/leak using our Insiders.

1\. The unique email address assigned to the Insider is contacted. We gather forensic evidence of the email along with any attachments. Useful to identify specific attacks against your users too.

2\. An optional real mobile number assigned to your Insider is contacted. Again, we store all of the details, including the original SMS details or even call recordings.

3\. Your Insider shows up on the Internet or dark web somewhere - we check a number of common sources for dumps, such as Pastebin for any references to the Insider. We currently keep a copy of the contents of the paste, as the original details could be removed at any time. However, we are working on better captures (full page screenshots, entire copy of the DOM etc.)

We are working a few more detection methods too, which we shall reveal soon...

<comment><USER20> Any plans to work with credit bureaus? I just mentioned last week[0] that credit checks against canary records could be an effective way to combat identity theft.

[0] [https://twitter.com/JimDabell/status/935433996787384320](https://twitter.com/JimDabell/status/935433996787384320)

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love to – We have quite a few cool features and interesting link ups that we would love to do, and this is certainly one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pretty cool idea. How long does it normally take for an alarm to happen after an email is sent to the insider's email address? I just emailed my insider about 5min ago and there is no alarm yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> It should alert as soon as it hits our mail servers - let check its route and see what happened for you.. apologies.

Edit: Bug fixed, really sorry about that! I've sent an email to the insiders address, to give you an example alert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a good idea. My only suggestion would be to whitelist addresses only, not domains, since it is sadly not uncommon that an email account is compromised, especially at large orgs.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very valid point - whitelisting DKIM domains was the quickest option as it is easily parsed and verified. Will certainly look into this.</comment></comment>


How Spending $162,301.42 on Clothes Made Me $692,500 - <AUTHOR> http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/12/10/how-spending-162301-42-on-clothes-made-me-692500/

<comment><USER2> _" Nonetheless, I have a closet full of nice clothes that I try to wear whenever I leave the house. I receive compliments from random strangers almost every time I walk out of my door. And some of those people ask me what I do for work."_

That's an apt description of me. I'd be mildly surprised if I'd spent more than $10k on clothing over the past 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dress to impress will be a more appropriate title. I can see how this guy does so well in marketing.

</comment><comment><USER4> time for me to dress nice while coding in the storeroom

<comment><USER5> "No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to [code in the storeroom]."

<comment><USER6> [dress nice]</comment></comment></comment>


Why does punching the Sonic 3D cartridge trigger a Secret Level Select? [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9bkKw32dGw&feature=youtu.be <comment><AUTHOR> Posted because it's a games developer confessing to an interesting trick to work around errors under pressure.. and such tales tend to be well liked here :)</comment>


Juno wants to woo Uber drivers with a more ethical ride-sharing app - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/29/11301076/juno-uber-drivers-ride-hail-app-talmon-marco <comment><AUTHOR> I found this interesting because ride-sharing is often characterized as a winner-takes-all market. Most of the insanely high valuations seem to be based on that as well. Juno seems to think there's opportunity to enter this market quite late in the game by focusing on the driver. Their approach to pay drivers just to have the app open is an interesting way to bootstrap a driver base before opening up to customers. It also suggests Juno, like Uber, must have quite deep pockets themselves.</comment>


The Grim Future of Adobe Flash - <AUTHOR> http://dominiek.com/363-the-grim-future-of-adobe-flash

<comment><USER2> Good article, but I don't agree with many points there - like JS with CSS can do UI wonders. I think the same can be done in Flex/Flash for a fraction of code. Adobe AIR is not 'yet another UI toolkit', you have to learn, it can very well become an ancillary tool to Flex. In fact, the idea there is you can keep the same UI, same components, and changing the container from web to AIR. Of course, you may have to switch how it talks to your backend, but its a great way to create an online/offline version of the same app, reusing most of the same flex codebase.</comment>


Start-up as commodity, start-up as nine-to-five - <AUTHOR> http://virtualeconomics.typepad.com/virtualeconomics/2007/10/start-up-as-com.html For my money, the lower barrier to entry won't create a problem for VCs because fewer and fewer of these start-ups are going to need the VC stage. <comment><USER2> "It just doesn't cost VC-scale capital for one guy (plus perhaps a handful of mechanical turks) to create a website that makes enough money for that one guy to live on."

vc's don't care about companies on that scale - it doesn't fit the vc model of needing one massive hit to cover the losses across the portfolio so they don't lose anything by missing out on that kind of deal.

launching a web app doesn't need vc money but building one of those massive hits does. since those companies (yahoo/google/facebook/etc) have the biggest economic impact, there'll always be a need for VC's, even if the standard terms of deals changes.

<comment><USER3> I personally think the reason a 'massive hit' needs a lot of money (and therefore VC) is for the hardware/bandwidth/infrastructure costs. Those costs have not come down per the proportions that software costs have.

However, services such as AWS should help for all apps right below the 'massive" threshold, which is the vast majority of apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately, most companies (Amazon and Facebook, for example) need investors. The differences between what you can do with investment and what you'd have to do without investment are pretty huge, and it seems like you might not win at all without the capital that your competitors enjoy.

Have any YC companies gotten by without investment?

<comment><USER5> Startups become YC companies to get investment. If they weren't looking for investment, they'd have no need to talk to VCs, micro or not.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: UCLA or Rose-Hulman - <AUTHOR>

Hey folks, I am a senior in high school. I got accepted into both UCLA and Rose-Hulman, into the Computer Science program. I am not a US citizen, but may have the opportunity to get a green card the next year. I am interested in computer security and embedded systems. I cannot decide whether to go to RHIT or UCLA, or study CompSci or Electrical Engineering. What are the relative merits, costs, difficulties of each?<p>Thank you. <comment><USER2> Go for Rose-Hulman, it may be less expensive now but the way the California economy is going, UCLA may catch up. I have a friend in the honors program at UCLA for econ and he had hard time even getting into the intro econ class last year because there were too many people vying for a spot (something that being in the honors program is 'supposed' to help with).

UCLA may be more well known all around, but if you want to study any discipline of engineering, Rose-Hulman is the way to go. And in fact, RHIT probably has a better reputation when it comes to engineering anyways.

</comment><comment><USER3> One minor point: Los Angeles is a large cosmopolitan city, Terre Haute a small, Midwestern city. Nothing against RHIT--a grandfather went there (before the Hulman)--or Terre Haute, where I have relatives. But if you are new to the US, and particularly if you are from outside of Europe, you might well find LA more congenial.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know much about Rose-Hulman, but I can give input on UCLA if you like. username at gmail</comment>


I feel fine: fans of world-ending films 'coping better with pandemic' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jul/01/end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-fans-of-apocalyptic-films <comment><USER2> The underlying scientific article is linked here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23721672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23721672)</comment>


Beginner-Friendly Vulkan Tutorials - <AUTHOR> http://stephaniehurlburt.com/blog/2017/7/14/beginner-friendly-vulkan-tutorials <comment><USER2> Honestly thought this was for learning a language from star-trek.

it's actually a graphics API.

<comment><USER3> Me too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Aesthetically, this is entirely beautiful. It's rare to come across something so well thought out.</comment>


One Star Over, There Might Be Another Earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/science/one-star-over-there-might-be-another-earth.html <comment><USER2> I guess it's nice to see it's official now.</comment>


Cadence – a game of creating music using logic - <AUTHOR> http://madewithmonsterlove.itch.io/cadence-demo

<comment><USER2> Wow, very nice.

The difference between the spheres and the cones is not quite obvious, but it doesn't appear to matter.</comment>


SICP distilled (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.programming-musings.org/2009/12/29/sicp-distilled <comment><USER2> _The truth is that Lisp is not the right language for any particular problem. Rather, Lisp encourages one to attack a new problem by implementing new languages tailored to that problem. Such a language might embody an alternative computational paradigm [...]_

This is pretty much _the_ reason I choose not to use lisp in my projects. I choose languages that have common programming idologies built into them because (a) I am not a language paradigm designer and don't have time for that and (b) I want other people to be able to quickly look at my code and using their pre-existing knowledge of the language idologies be able to make sense of it.

I write code for people to read (in a format machines can parse and run), and idiots (like myself) are my target platform.

You _could_ use Lisp for everything, just like you could walk anywhere or build a bike yourself, but why would you when you could just pick out a car and just accept the limitations and dangers of driving on the roads? At least with a car you have the years of engineering and research under the hood, and mechanics that have worked on machines like yours before.

<comment><USER3> You have taken a statement that essentially means "Lisp is a pretty good _general purpous_ language" and interpreted it as "If I use lisp I have to create the universe from scratch in order to make an apple pie, and others will have to rediscover all of physics to exist in my universe".

Common Lisp, Clojure and Racket all have at the very least a descent set of libraries. And if you use clojure or ABCL, you get all of the jvm libraries too. With FFI you can use any C library from Common Lisp or Racket too. On top of that you get to use languages designed for extensibility, which means that there are actual best practices and examples of how to extend a language without painting yourself into a corner with an unmaintainable mess. Lispers have been doing stuff like this for decades, some of it is very well understood in the various lisp communities.

My favorite example of this power are the various sql DSLs, I can write in lisp something like (query (:select :* :from 'some-table :where ...)) without having to concatenate strings and worry about injections. Yes, I have to learn a new language on top of Common Lisp to use it, but if you know SQL and Lisp, you already know 90% of it. Now I have all the power of lisp in my queries, isn't that cool?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After I read Abelson & Sussman's article I asked a bookstore to order their book. It took a month to arrive (this was the 80s) and I'm thankful for that month, because that period of trying to develop their themes further for myself made the book a richer experience. Anyone else here encountered a textbook first in distilled form?

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. LISP is an ideal language for code generation.

For example, producing high quality C code (e.g., arthur whitney or djb's, imo); this is difficult or tedious when done "by hand" but can be made easier by using code generation. There is a beautiful conciseness and consistency to the "model" C code I prefer (e.g. by the above authors). It is well-suited to being generated by a "custom interpreters" and a "DSL". Next to Flex, LISP is my personal favorite for constructing such a code generation system.

Python devotees already follow a similar path when they use Cython. But what do you think the quality of the generated C code is like? Have a look at it.

2\. LISP is also a great prototyping language. The final application may not be written in LISP. Or at least parts of it might be in other languages.

Selecting from a limited collection of libraries written (perhaps poorly) by others, as is done with many popular languages, strikes me as a "top-down" approach, not building from the ground up. The collection of libraries defines what you can and cannot do. Now, if you just want to do what everyone else is already doing, this is perfectly acceptable. However if you want to break new ground, you will likely have to write some functions yourself. And, personally, I'd rather do this in LISP.

Maybe it's better to learn to use SWIG or a similar codegen tool and wrap any C library function of your choosing for use in LISP, or Lua, or another language that lacks "batteries"? It's encouraging to me when I see programmers express dislike for LISP in online forums. Because I take it as a sign that this is a worthwhile language to master. I've seen similar expressed distaste for what I know to be good quality C code. It goes something like this: Programmer at large in online forum can't understand [insert code/language], therefore [said code/language] is somehow defective.

</comment><comment><USER6> "The truth is that Lisp is not the right language for any particular problem. Rather, Lisp encourages one to attack a new problem by implementing new languages tailored to that problem."

This is why I don't use LISP. It is the case that math is closely related to language, so those with an overdeveloped math functional unit in the brain also have an overdeveloped linguistical unit. This leads to treating every problem as a linguisic problem, because that is what their brain is best equipped to solve.

While this works for them, it doesn't for me--my brain attacks problems completely differently, and so language centric toolbox is not what I prefer to use.

I don't have a problem converting my solutions into any given language. In fact, I prefer to translate them into a representation closer to the machine for better performance.

<comment><USER7> >> "so those with an overdeveloped math functional unit in the brain also have an overdeveloped linguistical unit. This leads to treating every problem as a linguisic problem, because that is what their brain is best equipped to solve."

Seriously, math envy much? Where is it that people formulate these absurd conjectures about mathematics and people who understand mathematics, because every time I hear one it sounds more like defensive attempts to disarm one's feelings of inadequacy by making another group seem inferior or "different" in some way. Furthermore, mathematical capacity and linguistic capacity have no strong links that I know of, so I'm going to need a citation before I swallow that claim, sir.

<comment><USER6> "The Math Gene" goes into some of the links between math and language--but that's not really central to my argument, which is that some people are not predisposed to attack problems linguistically. I only mention it to explain why there are so many linguistic connections to computer science.

I don't mean to sound defensive; and, indeed, I'm not sure I'm terribly bad at math (perfect scores on math achievements, AP Calculus BC, diff eq. modeling experience) or have terribly low verbal ability (perfect score on verbal SAT). But I do know that, of the tools I would use to attack a CS problem, linguistic is low on the list. And once I have a solution, my correctness proofs are not linguistic, either.

<comment><USER7> a) OP had nothing to do with linguistics or math; it was simply pointing out that Lisp's approach to being general purpose was interesting in that you could take basic rules and restructure them to fit your domain.

b) I have read "The Math Gene" and many claims made vis-a-vis maths and linguistics are dubious, at best.

c) There is no "linguistic" way to attack anything, unless what you're attacking is a linguistic problem.

Is your rationale that when given a problem "mathematically overdeveloped" - by the way, if you were wondering about your perceived defensiveness, saying someone is "overdeveloped" in something you claim to not have ample ability in is a dead giveaway - people will first parse it for nouns and gerunds? Because most people think about the problem and only consider your diction if it is relevant to the problem itself.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kim Jong II Signs up for Launch today - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=415338455241179&set=a.397415313700160.1073741829.377401332368225&type=1&theater Kim Jong II Signs decides to Sign up prior to Launch today <comment><USER2> This is garbage--a dumb image meme without context or value. Flagged.</comment>