Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account - <AUTHOR> http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2015/q2/194 <comment><USER2> This is the sort of behavior you get from a company that's lost, and is now trying to extract every penny they can from whatever shenanigans they can get away with.

If they have no future brand value to be concerned about, then, from a game- theoretic approach, it's actually a pretty rational profit seeking move. (As long as they don't incur any downstream liabilities from outright illegal activity for which they might be fined, or successfully sued - if there is any entity left to sue)

Of course, the game-theoretic response from the entire internet community is to make sure they never, ever, for any reasons whatsoever, ever click on a link that starts with "sourceforge.net"

<comment><USER3> Has Archiveteam, Internet Archive or anyone else taken a shot at mirroring Sourceforge, including binaries? Since its founding there have been a _hell_ of a lot of small projects hosted there whose sites have gone down since. 430,000 projects have been hosted on SourceForge at some point. At least a few tens of thousands of them represent the only remaining copy of a program needed to read a certain sort of data. Maintaining that capability in the face of a company circling the drain represents an _extreme_ historical utility.

Even if you now need a VM to handle the crapware, that's better than losing the apps entirely. If somebody maintained a time-diffed mirror of SourceForge, they could pinpoint the last version before the bundling event occurred in an automated fashion, as well.

EDIT: It seems there's a project to begin this - [http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=SourceForge](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=SourceForge) and an IRC channel, EFNet #coldstorage

<comment><USER4> Archiving SourceForge is indeed important. Just recently I needed it to hook up a printer: [http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp- print/files/usbtb%20-%2...](http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp- print/files/usbtb%20-%20Mac%20OS%20X%20ONLY%20usb/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just submitted the story to Slashdot [1].

Sharing the same owner as Sourceforge let's see if it gets "buried" [2] (or "late released due to an editor vacation" [3] as it was their explanation) or if they publish it in a timely manner and within the spirit of the submission.

[1] [http://slashdot.org/submission/4487045/sourceforge- hijacks-t...](http://slashdot.org/submission/4487045/sourceforge-hijacks-the- nmap-sourceforge-account)

[2] [http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/381q6r/slashdot_buryi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/381q6r/slashdot_burying_stories_about_slashdotmedia/)

[3] [http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/06/01/1241231/sourceforge-...](http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/06/01/1241231/sourceforge- and-gimp-updated)

<comment><USER6> This is all such a shame. GitHub is to Sourceforge what HN is to Slashdot.

<comment><USER7> That is unfair to GitHub.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If your old account is listed here, you getting fuxxored:

[http://sourceforge.net/u/sf-editor1/profile/](http://sourceforge.net/u/sf- editor1/profile/)

[http://sourceforge.net/u/sf-editor2/profile/](http://sourceforge.net/u/sf- editor2/profile/)

[http://sourceforge.net/u/sf-editor3/profile/](http://sourceforge.net/u/sf- editor3/profile/)

Edit: added [http://sourceforge.net/u/sf- editor/profile/](http://sourceforge.net/u/sf-editor/profile/) which includes MySQL and a few other high profile projects.

<comment><USER9> I didn't know they did this at this scale. I'm suprised by all the big names in the projects they've highjacked: I see apache, drupal, firefox, libreoffice, mysql, postgresql, redmine, sqlite, thunderbird, vlc, virtualbox and many, many others.

They're really going all in with that.

<comment><USER10> From what I remember, even though Firefox is open-source, you can't use the Firefox name on distributing it without getting approval from Mozilla. This is why Debian went at some point with the Iceweasel name. So Mozilla controls what gets distributed with the Firefox name and they could sue for trademark violations if they want to.

IMHO, all open-source projects should protect their name. For example last time I tried, VLC for iOS was banned from the iTunes Store, yet there were dozens of obscure apps using VLC's name or logo on iTunes Store (this was happening in January). Especially given that there is such a thing as an unregistered trademark, that is valid through usage. Even if you fork it, then authors should have the courtesy to use a different name.

<comment><USER11> (VLC is back: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vlc-for- ios/id650377962](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vlc-for-ios/id650377962))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> SourceForge was sold in 2012 to a conglomerate company named "DHI GROUP INC" or "Dice Holdings Inc" that owns the following companies:

      Dice
      Open Web
      The IT Job Board
      ClearanceJobs
      eFinancialCareers
      Rigzone
      HEALTHeCAREERS
      BioSpace
      Hcareers
      SourceForge
      Slashdot
      WorkDigital

<comment><USER13> I remember thinking "I guess they want to get more of the tech community's mindshare to promote their job board" when Dice bought Slashdot. With the way they've alienated the tech community by trashing Slashdot and SourceForge, I wonder how many tech people will use their job board now.

<comment><USER12> One problem is that people looking for jobs are usually inexperienced with it, so there is constantly an unusually large supply of "fresh meat".

There should be more regulation on the jobs market. It's a data-mining goldmine and fake job postings aren't illegal as far as I'm aware of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you didn't know sourceforge have back-pedalled 2 days ago and said they'll stop bundling the crapware in the mirrored projects:

[http://sourceforge.net/blog/third-party-offers-will-be- prese...](http://sourceforge.net/blog/third-party-offers-will-be-presented- with-opt-in-projects-only/)

The author, and a lot of the commentators here, don't seem to have seen that announcement.

<comment><USER15> We saw it, but why does it matter? They also claimed to never add adware without consent before. Even considering to bundle up malware with FOSS projects is offensive to me. They lost my trust and a simple blog post won't win it back.

The policy of taking over "abandoned" projects is super shady as well. That's what this mailing list post is about, isn't it?

<comment><USER14> Not "we" as the author of the post doesn't know about this announcement from sourceforge, as they say:

 _we haven 't caught them trojaning Nmap the way they did with GIMP_

So stop trying to speak for 100s of thousands of people at once.

<comment><USER15> This very mail also says

 _PPS: Sourceforge now claims they will stop trojaning software without the developer 's permission, but they've broken that exact promise before._

He _does_ know about the announcement, but he does not trust them anymore. That's fully understandable. Fool me twice, etc.

Additionally, _you_ addressed people posting in this thread. The Sourceforge announcement was all over HN and reddit and a lot of people following the whole issue knew about it. It's simply not enough to win back user's trust. But I already addressed that - Yet you chose to critize my way of wording, not the very content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The VLC account has also been hijacked but without wrapping the installer: [https://blog.l0cal.com/2015/06/02/what-happened-to- sourcefor...](https://blog.l0cal.com/2015/06/02/what-happened-to-sourceforge/)

</comment><comment><USER17> One should sue for trademark violation. I'll chip in if anyone is fundraising.

<comment><USER18> I suspect pointing Oracle's lawyers at their MySQL account that sf-editor "owns" might be worth more than collecting donations...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What about all the other websites?

[http://filehippo.com/download_nmap](http://filehippo.com/download_nmap)

[http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Misc- Networking-T...](http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Misc-Networking- Tools/Nmap.shtml)

[http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/nmap_security_scanne...](http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/nmap_security_scanner.html)

[http://www.chip.de/downloads/Nmap_13013407.html](http://www.chip.de/downloads/Nmap_13013407.html)

<comment><USER20> It feels a bit different here, at least to me. Nmap _had_ a Sourceforge account, but now it's been taken away from them -- "hijacked", as the post describes it. And Sourceforge at least used to be a reputable site and has (had?) some lingering aura of trust around it.

<comment><USER19> They had this "You Can Take Over Abandoned Projects" policy for years:

[https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/documentation/Abandoned%20Pr...](https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/documentation/Abandoned%20Projects/)

I took over APNG project in 2011, nice short name, it was really abandoned, and I don't feel bad about it:

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/apng/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/apng/)

<comment><USER20> Sure, but this is Sourceforge itself doing the taking over, and they're offering the same downloads (plus their wrappers and what-not) rather than reusing the name for a different project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >> _SourceForge.net is owned and operated by Slashdot Media. Slashdot Media is a DHI Group, Inc. company._

<comment><USER22> That explains why these kind of news have been entirely absent from slashdot (with the exception of that _one_ heavily castrated entry).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good job, Sourceforge.

      echo "127.0.0.1 sourceforge.net" >> /etc/hosts

</comment><comment><USER24> I just scraped Google for the indexed mirrors.

      site:sourceforge.net/projects/ inurl:mirror -inurl:files -inurl:reviews -inurl:compare -inurl:support

Gave me these[0] 253 indexed projects. Would be interesting to crawl the entire website to see if there's more.

[0] [http://git.io/vkb3N](http://git.io/vkb3N)

</comment><comment><USER25> In spite of account hijacking, GIMP was still downloaded by almost 15k people this week. Six days ago they took over Audacity project as well, which was downloaded by more than 150k this week[0].

[0] [http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/)

<comment><USER26> What will happen if I run Audacity installer from sourceforge?

I have done that an hour ago. Should I be concerned?

<comment><USER27> Well assume you now have some malware/spyware/adware on your pc now, and assume you need to clean it off. Or check the hash of the installer with some reference bin from a trusted source.

<comment><USER26> The hash matched the official installer. I doubt they are crazy enough to deliberately hide malware without prompting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hijacking the account of one of the security community's most loved and used tool. Yeah ... that seems to be a smart idea.

<comment><USER29> Yep how to fuckoff both the Black , Grey and White Hat communities.

<comment><USER18> I wonder how many copies of nmap are running against Sourceforge's servers right now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The only viable long term way for any open source project is to selfhost[1]

[1] [https://www.enalean.com/en/Open-source-community-host- yourse...](https://www.enalean.com/en/Open-source-community-host-yourself)

<comment><USER31> A site like Github that hosts open source projects brings a lot of value to the community. Great search, and the same UI when going from project to project. This would be much more cumbersome and time consuming if every project was on a different site with a different interface.

Also, many open source projects don't have the money to afford bandwidth costs of providing large software downloads.

<comment><USER30> I'm not saying GitHub doesn't help. SourceForge did help at time. But if you value your freedom, you need to understand that, if you don't have the keys of your infrastructure, you are locked to the good will of the provider (and its stakeholders).

I don't buy the money argument. If you have the chance to be a successful enough open source project, you will find hosting companies ready to help you with free VMs.

If you are not that successful, you can use github & co without fear, nobody will try to insert crapware in your packages. And if you want to selfhost, even a raspberry pi will have enough power to serve your site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is incredible.

We need end to end security without this https insanity as a bandage more than ever. Ubiquitous signing and audit logs more than ever. Tools that, for normal end users, refuse to work if integrity is broken. What sourceforge is doing should be universally seen as damage and systematized intolerance should make the attempt pancake so hard and so fast that nobody ever even tries it.

It's excellent that the nmap people distribute gpg sigs. Now we need socialize the fact that "https does not mean I'm getting want I wanted from the original authors", and start building (yes, we need to get past the [http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/gpg-and- me/](http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/gpg-and-me/) problems) and using tools that do better.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think this is the time to remind people some projects (ie filezilla) are willingly distributing the malware with their projects. The developers reaction is basically "there is nothing wrong with it"[1].

I feel like there is a niche service to provide installers that have been decrapified. I'm not talking about ninite (which is private/commercial) but an open source repository of installers that you can "apt-get" for Windows. I know people have tried that in the past - but the problem is that the builds that are posted manually go out of date pretty quickly so I think this process would have to be automated.

[1] [https://forum.filezilla- project.org/viewtopic.php?t=31127](https://forum.filezilla- project.org/viewtopic.php?t=31127)

</comment><comment><USER34> Yeah, sad that I at one point thougthey were trustworthy. Hell, at one point I thought CNET was safe...until I downloaded and installed a "BestMp4ToMp3 converter" from there that infected the corporate network. Scumbag city, those sites. That's a major reason I support FOSS like VLC financially.

<comment><USER35> "BestMp4ToMp3 converter" didn't give it away?

<comment><USER34> Right. Hopefully momentary iq lapse. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What I don't understand about any of this is why anyone wouldn't just either move their project to Github or self host. Why would you even still have your project hosted on SourceForge?

I understand the author's grief and anger. I feel bad for them really as this will hurt the NMap brand, but come on, avoid the whole situation and just remove the project from SourceForge completely.

<comment><USER19> >What I don't understand about any of this is why anyone wouldn't just either move their project to Github or self host.

Personally, I like their download stats:

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/apng/files/libpng/stats/tim...](https://sourceforge.net/projects/apng/files/libpng/stats/timeline)

But generally, why would I move if I never had problems with the service?

<comment><USER37> Because perhaps--just fucking perhaps--you don't want malware injected into any of your projects when they're downloaded?

<comment><USER19> I keep complete control over my projects, and I'll make sure it won't happen.

<comment><USER37> > I keep complete control over my projects

Until they take that control from you.

> I'll make sure it won't happen

 _How_?

<comment><USER19> > Until they take that control from you.

They won't because I'm not abandoning my projects.

People who complain have one thing in common - they abandoned their projects on SF. It's kinda like letting the domain name expired and then complaining that somebody took over. Always keep an eye on your hosting and your domain names, folks.

<comment><USER37> > They won't because I'm not abandoning my projects.

What makes you think that will make a difference? They'll hijack whatever they want that's hosted on their servers whenever they want to hijack it.

<comment><USER19> Devs who never abandoned their projects are doing fine. Not one of them complained about "hostile takeover".

<comment><USER37> And what makes you think that this couldn't change at literally any time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Should Sourceforge perhaps be added to Google's Safe Browsing blacklist?

</comment><comment><USER39> So what decent release tarball storage services are there today if github's autogenerated release tarballs don't do it for you?

<comment><USER2> Given that a VPS like Digital Ocean will give you 1 Terabyte/month for $5/month, isn't it straightforward to hose your own tarball now?

I see the nmap tarball is 20 Megabytes = 50,000 downloads.

The cost of hosting should be easily covered by your user base.

<comment><USER40> The problem isn't really in the overall bandwidth usage though, it's the concurrency.

Would the $5/month droplet stand up to a surge of people coming in for a latest release, or a bit of press coverage? Would there be enough bandwidth that everyone gets the file fast or would they all slow to a crawl

<comment><USER41> What about providing a BitTorrent link? The main server could provide a backstop seed, and presumably enough other people would seed too for any decent-sized project.

<comment><USER42> P2P downloads would help cover some of the costs, but popular projects probably need a direct download link with load balancing as well.

If the project doesn't want to manage their own infrastructure, they're probably going to want a CDN or object storage provider. The most cost- friendly I've seen is OVH's RunAbove object storage, but I'd be interested to know if there is anything else comparable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm surprised the nmap.mirror site doesn't have hundreds of reviews telling people to not use it, and pointing them to the official site.

I'd be interested to see how sourceforge respond to DMCA requests.

<comment><USER43> MOZILLA: [http://sourceforge.net/projects/firefox](http://sourceforge.net/projects/firefox) points to "personal builds of Firefox"; [http://sourceforge.net/projects/firefox.mirror/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/firefox.mirror/) seems to describe legit Firefox. I haven't tried to download it to see what I get.

FEDORA: [http://sourceforge.net/projects/fedora/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/fedora/) points to some random software. [http://sourceforge.net/projects/fedora.mirror](http://sourceforge.net/projects/fedora.mirror) describes Fedora the OS.

Not only scummy, but semi-competant too.

<comment><USER15> 278 downloads for Fedora 17 32bit this week? Those poor souls trying to get into Linux ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> If I submit my resume to Dice.com, I fully expect them to mail me a baggie of white powder and a coupon for 25% off anthrax vaccines.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is it time to start publicly shaming their mirror partners?

I think it's pretty clear that DHI has no shame, but what about the mirrors?

</comment><comment><USER46> How to literally kill your company:

1\. this

<comment><USER47> The company is already dead. This is simply looting the corps.

<comment><USER48> Nice, hopefully intentional, typo ;)

However, are SF really making money from these mirrors? As I understand it from other comments here, you can still download the tarballs, and they seem more 'official' that the non mirror-suffixed accounts? When does mirroring become bad practice, what is the line you need to cross?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Sourceforge needs to call it a day. Its day of relevancy is over, once upon a time it filled a need but we have Github, Bitbucket and much better choices now. What we are seeing is a site that is lost and will never be able to earn back the respect that it once had.

<comment><USER50> _> Sourceforge needs to call it a day_

The world is calling it a day on Sourceforge - they are just hanging around to milk what they can out of past glories.

Of course they can't just turn off anyway: there would be outcry from people because their currently idle project that hasn't moved to being hosted elsewhere suddenly became unavailable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This bit is inaccurate:

"Of course this goes directly against Sourceforge CEO Michael Schumacher's promise less than two years ago:"

Michael Schumacher is not SourceForge's CEO, but a GIMP developer. The article quoted in the mail was written by Roberto Galoppini.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is not hijacking at all. They created a new account, the old one remains blank as the author says. Sure it's morally questionable and leads to having a very bad reputation. But it's not hijacking. GPL code can be forked, mirrored, bundled and distributed. As long as the terms of GPL are obeyed there's nothing technically wrong with what SF is doing.

Of course they've completely blown all trust and squandered their reputation.

<comment><USER53> They may well be GPL2/3 section 2a/5a (prominent notice that they have modified the program... in this case the installer) , and likely 2b/5b,c also (are they also providing the source code for the crapware?). If these are found not to apply (because the court finds it to be mere aggregation ) we may need a minor GPL update :-)

Alternately one could look into trademark law, perhaps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Sourceforge is now on my personal blocklist for Google search results. Along with expertsexchange which I added years ago, and Quora which may surprise some.

<comment><USER55> What is wrong with Quora. You may not like their business model, but I don't think they are doing anything terrible like source forge.

<comment><USER54> Unless it changed recently, but I used to click there through Google search results and still get some blurred out page, or only one answer, or a timeout that tried to make me register.

And quite frankly, I prefer the rather diverse universe of stackexchange sites.

<comment><USER26> I wouldn't mind hitting Quora through Google on occasion, but sometimes they actually have just a stub page, where the question isn't answered at all, so it shouldn't rank so high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I might be asking too late, but what's stopping someone from: 1\. Identifiying hijacked accounts 2\. Forking to GitHub 3\. Waiting for the inevitable ranking change 4\. Handing over the project to the owner when/if they are identified.

I realize there's a good deal of handwaving here--particularly at 3 and especially 4. But, is this a bad idea? Seems like 4 can be replaced simply by the owner reforking, too.

</comment><comment><USER57> The original nmap page in the article is back live now.

As much as I hate malware, can we confirm it was sourceforge that got rid of the old page? Maybe someone set up the mirror after a data problem or error rendered the old page blank and just wanted to get it up, or that person was nefarious? (Occasionally people can be "too helpful" on community sites by registering other people's projects).

I guess the question is really who owns sf-editor1/2/3/4.

The reason being I can't see a lot of bonus for someone doing it this way. I'd just put adware in the margins. The site looks sketchy anyway these days so it's not doing them a lot of good...

</comment><comment><USER58> Maybe we should all learn something from this and also the thing about RadioShack selling of all their customer data. What will Google do when it gets shaky?

</comment><comment><USER59> A reminder that this is just one of the consequences of open-source, free (as in libre) license software: It wouldn't be truly free otherwise.

I'm not saying I condone Sourceforge's actions, and this does deserve to be known widely, but what one person would consider privacy-invading malware could be another person's "helpful offers assistant" (or whatever)...

</comment><comment><USER60> average pay per install rates are around 0.2 - 0.5 $ per install. i wont be surprised if they make 10k-20k + / day

</comment><comment><USER61> > If you don't trust SSL by itself (and we don't blame you), you can also > check the GPG signatures: [https://nmap.org/book/install.html#inst- > integrity](https://nmap.org/book/install.html#inst-integrity)

Ironically linking to a page served via SSL

<comment><USER62> _Ironically..._

Not really. It's just a quick guide to using _gpg_ to verify a software distribution. Many people already know how to do this, or you could look at the manpage if you prefer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I just wish they'd give up their domain name to someone worthy. Source Forge. Conjures up Gandalf for me.

</comment><comment><USER64> I went to GIMP to get the latest version for Windows (Mine was 2+ years old)

Strange, it seems newer but the Windows version was the same as mine.

Google what up, randomly saw the Sourceforge controversy for GIMP in the news.

Went to straight to SourceForge and got my update. Because they could be bothered.

If you want Sourceforge to be evil, get your shit together GIMP. (Windows users are people too, plus appreciate all the work, but it'd be nice if you remembered us)

PS And remember that if you're GPL or whatever then don't complain when someone follows the rules but doesn't do what you want. Is it GPL or not?

You can't say you're anti censorship, as long as it's what you want. You can't say you're GPL as long as it's what you want.

People are free to add malware to the product. Account hijacking not so much.

<comment><USER4> If I go to GIMP.org and click Downloads, I see this:

[http://www.gimp.org/downloads/](http://www.gimp.org/downloads/)

> GIMP for Windows

> Via HTTP (.exe)

> Download GIMP 2.8.14

If I go to SourceForge.org (clicking first SF link on Google for "GIMP download"), I see this:

[http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp- win/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-win/)

> Download

> gimp-2.8.6-setup.exe

> Browse All Files

SourceForge has 2.8.6, GIMP.org has 2.8.14.

SourceForge has an _older_ version. Where the hell did you go to?

(In fairness, SourceForge also has 2.8.14, but you have to go look at the file list rather than clicking the big green button. OTOH, GIMP.org's big button goes straight to the latest version.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Sourceforge is looking more like a goner every day.

It's time for github to step up and start offering projects download hosting and the whole slew of other things that sourceforge gives a project.

<comment><USER66> Github does have download hosting, though. Their "releases" feature has worked fine for my projects, at least:

[https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your- software](https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-software)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> For me the real question would be, why was/is anyone still using sourceforge? Inertia?

I hope everybody still hosting there will take this reminder to finally move their stuff to a different host.

<comment><USER68> For many there are many projects that were hosted here before dying, and because of that, SF is both the official place to download and also SF sees it as fair game to take over and wrap with malware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Why would they care about something that had 150 downloads since 2014? Seems like it may just have expired due to inactivity on the account.

<comment><USER50> Hoovering up the inactive accounts is probably in automated process. There would be little point putting in extra code to exclude less trafficked areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> You deserve all the ads and then some. Bunch of freeloaders...

</comment><comment><USER71> The BOFH in me is more upset with the software projects that abandonded those accounts without properly closing them.

<comment><USER47> The problem is that it is basically impossible to completely close and remove a software project from Sourceforge. The best you can do is tag it as "inactive" or "relocated" and provide a link to the new site, but the project site will still exist.

<comment><USER19> Let's say it becomes possible. Then what? If your project is popular, it would be on softpedia, filehippo, majorgeeks and many other "free software" aggregators. If your project license allows others to distribute your software, you can't stop them.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Science Broken? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/drkiki/status/511972737867587586

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a bit trite because it's a twitter discussion. My own interests are more along the lines of technological solutions opening things up in the way that open source opened up software.

</comment><comment><USER2> Quote: "My immediate thought is that financial professionals could audit the value of past "pure science" and measure ROI"

Wait -- the return on investment of "pure science"? That's a contradiction in terms. Pure science shouldn't be evaluated that way -- only applied science has anything resembling a return on investment.

I suspect the correspondent doesn't understand what pure science means.

Obviously I could quote examples in which pure science has shaped the modern world -- quantum and relativity theories, evolution, cosmology -- but that misses the point that pure science shouldn't have to show a return to justify itself.</comment>


Kevin Rose reflects on Digg, the dangers of outside investors, and his legacy - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/07/25/kevin-rose-reflects-on-digg-the-dangers-of-outside-investors-and-his-legacy/ <comment><USER2> My thoughts on why reddit won: [http://alexisohanian.com/how-reddit-became- reddit-the-smalle...](http://alexisohanian.com/how-reddit-became-reddit-the- smallest-biggest)

At the time, my open letter got me lambasted by the TechCrunch posse (badge of honor?), but I do hope all founders can learn from the digg story: <http://alexisohanian.com/an-open-letter-to-kevin-rose>

Since Steve and I first learned of digg (a couple weeks after we launched) all the way to right now (as a board member) -- I'm always reminding myself of how little there's to be gained from thinking about competition. Founders, regarding competitors, be aware but don't care!

Also: one probably shouldn't publicly blow your nose on a competitor's shirt. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyqe7A5ombA&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyqe7A5ombA&feature=player_detailpage#t=41s)

<comment><USER3> > Since Steve and I first learned of digg (a couple weeks after we launched) > all the way to right now (as a board member) -- I'm always reminding myself > of how little there's to be gained from thinking about competition. > Founders, regarding competitors, be aware but don't care!

I don't think people realize how rarely we talked about or looked at Digg in the reddit office. Every time I see founders who have a screen in their office dedicated to their competitors website I cry a little inside. Luckily it doesn't seem to happen often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As much as everyone loves to blame Digg v4 for Digg's failure I don't think that's entirely accurate. I definitely think that v4 sped up the demise, but Digg as a product was _not_ what the majority of people wanted.

If you compare Digg and reddit the differences are pretty big, beyond the basic premise ("links that people vote on") Digg had a very big focus on _news_ and "social" whereas reddit focuses on _content_ , whether that's farmed from elsewhere or created by reddit users. If you compare the top 100 links from r/all vs. digg.com/all you can see a clear difference in content.

A Digg type site definitely has a place on the internet, as it's been shown Digg _still_ has traffic now, I just think reddit was the _natural_ successor to Digg, regardless of the mistakes Digg made.

I think reddit vs. Digg can be compared to Twitter. Twitter would never have worked in 2001, the internet just wasn't ready for it, but in 2012 it's doing incredibly well. The internet wasn't ready for what reddit is now in 2004. Digg catered to what people in 2004 wanted, but it doesn't cater to what people want in 2012. reddit succeeded because reddit is more of a _platform_ than it is a website, it offers the basic framework for a community link sharing website but their focus was loose enough (with stuff like subreddits) that it was able to evolve with the internet. If that makes any sense...

<comment><USER5> I think the difference is that reddit can be exactly what you want it to be, to an extent. Or, rather, of the 100s of communities on reddit, you only have to belong to a select few of them if you so desire, and the kinds of communities you can find on reddit are vast, varied, and uniquely interesting.

<comment><USER6> This is exactly what makes reddit so great. I don't have to look at pictures of cats and rage comics if I only want to se stuff about programming/technology/etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find the whole we (investors, "founders")/they (non-generalists who can't move up and down the stack) kind of jarring, especially since I somehow managed to fall into the gap between founders and employees. Programmers are generally opinionated, especially about the domain they work in. My impression of Kevin's problems with programmers when I was there (inception to October 2007) is that they gave him too much shit, criticized his ideas, and generally created hassles for him (all good things, IMO), and he didn't really handle that well (IMO). Forget "moving up and down the stack," they wanted to _architect_ the stack.

If you're non-technical and come back from some conference and say we're now rearchitecting in Rails/Node/Brainfuck/whatever cool new tech you just heard about, you're probably going to get some pushback. And that pushback, from the other side's perspective, could be presented as "you're just a non-generalist who can't move up and down the stack."

Its important to remember that Kevin isn't really technical.

<comment><USER8> I know little to nothing about Digg and even less about Kevin Rose, internal drama, et al... however, hiring people who are locked into certain technologies, especially non-optimal ones like PHP, seems to be a bad idea.

<comment><USER7> My point was that nobody was locked into any language. But if you have a large complex website with hundreds of thousands of lines of code, the company is somewhat locked in to the language. When some non-technical executive mandates that we're all switching to language X and everything is going to be rebuilt from scratch, you will get some pushback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "We ran into these huge problems, and didn't have generalists who could go up and down the stack,"

I'm sure this is a cherry picked quote, but it surprises me that he thought the technologists he hired had to do with any of their problems other then performance. Sites like Reddit/Digg/HN live and die by the community they frame. The communities seem to accept an unusually high down time. As Reddit started becoming more mainstream it benefited from segmentation. HN, has benefited from a foundation of considerate users, which are given more privileges then newer users. Digg allowed bad users to dilute good users until good users broke down and decided to seek refuge outside of the site.

<comment><USER10> This just feels like blame shifting to anyone but himself.

If they needed generalists, why didn't _he_ hire generalists? My understanding is V4 was a mishmash of numerous technologies and all along, it sounded like there wasn't a vision for how the pieces would work together.. just a vague goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Rose also said that Digg hired individuals with very niche skills, like > developers who only knew PHP and were not as useful once PHP went out of > use.

"v4 would have worked out if only my employees were smarter" is a pretty classless and delusional assessment of what went wrong.

<comment><USER12> Really? He touches on 1 of the problems he encountered with digg and you interpret this as Kevin throwing his employees under the bus?

<comment><USER13> He's been throwing his employees under the bus for over a year now. The site was written in PHP by PHP developers. Somehow that wasn't good enough so he pivoted and replaced them with C++ developers.

Anyway, I liked Digg. Then then newer users got involved and stories they didn't like got buried. The first time I used it the articles were technical and really interesting. Then it got political, stupid memes, etc. In its default state I think it was better than Reddit. Reddit is great but you have to work on it. Clean your browser cache and look at reddit like you're going their for the first time. What do you see? Crap from r/AWW, r/atheism, and r/politics take up all or most of the frontpage.

<comment><USER14> Then unsubscribe from those subreddits and subscribe to those that appeal to your interests. Manicure your own content a little bit.

<comment><USER15> As a new user, how do you know that it's good enough to be worth logging in and investing the effort? The default front page is your initial impression, and it does not appear like it is likely to attract interesting people to talk to in its current state.

<comment><USER16> Depends on how they got there. If they just typed in reddit.com in the location bar, you may be right. But I bet a lot of people find the site via a deep link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > ...news they'd seen on Twitter, rather than news they might have previously > seen on Digg.

Reddit, for the most part, does not have this problem - reddit is about the community and the discussion, not about the MLP. Maybe Rose still doesn't understand (or maybe doesn't want to admit) why Digg failed.

> Rose also said that Digg hired individuals with very niche skills, like > developers who only knew PHP and were not as useful once PHP went out of > use.

If you own a startup, and you're hiring the kind of programmer that only knows one language, you're already making some pretty big mistakes.

<comment><USER17> (MLP: Mindless Link Passing, a term that I think originates from kuro5hin)

<comment><USER5> Propagation, but yes I should have defined my abbreviation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like Rose. In a lot of ways he represents the best of my generation of entrepreneurs more than Zuckerberg and anyone else in that era. The fact that he keeps working, and seems to always have something new, is inspiring and in a way, motivates me to do the same.

Pownce was ahead of its time. Had it been released in 2011, it would be a viable twitter alternative. I guess that's what he was getting at with how he wants his legacy to be seen.

<comment><USER19> How can he possibly be the best when everyone one of his projects have failed? I also admire him, but lately he seems better at angel investing and spotting other peoples successes than building his own.

<comment><USER18> Is being an entrepreneur more about winning or persevering?

<comment><USER20> Surely most people want to be a _successful_ entrepreneur...

<comment><USER18> And Kevin Rose hasn't been successful? How long does a company you started need to live on after you've left for it to be considered successful (Digg)? Was Digg not the go-to, poster-site, of web2.0 a time? Is that not a success?

<comment><USER8> Generally, a company's purpose is to make money. Digg lost $40 million. How is that a success?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The way I see it, what went wrong with Digg was the amount of influence "superstar" users had on the stories that make the front page. The fact that they kept and displayed the "ranking" of users just shows how this culture of superstardom is ingrained within Digg mechanics itself. It may not have effected the traffic or growth at the time, but it did affect the quality of stories highlighted. Digg knew its system was being gamed and I think that is what pushed them to make the changes they did on v4 (apart from the money), where publishers were given priority over individually submitted stories.

</comment><comment><USER22> To be honest, I think at some point the user-base and comment section just became too much for me. There was a certain strain of conversation that everything inevitably devolved into, and I left and I know a lot of other people left when that became too much.

<comment><USER8> This applies to every social community once it gets popular, though. The front page of Reddit used to be tolerable, for instance.

<comment><USER22> Although I've never really been a reddit user, I can see your point. It's an interesting question: how do you actively maintain a culture of respect, thoughtfulness and two-way dialog?

This is one of the few spots I've ever seen it on. As a newcomer to HN, I find it very unique. Great resource.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _" ... when we sort of put out a word that this was up for sale [...] there were spam sites wanted to make it a link farm, and a bunch of properties that would have really screwed things up"_

Yeah, that would've been terrible compared to what actually happened.</comment>


Why we can't stop birds downing aircraft - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16438-comment-why-we-cant-stop-birds-downing-aircraft.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news <comment><USER2> I wonder if selectable inertial separator would work on turbofans. (They are installed on single-engine PT-6 turboprops.) Imagine a system that requires air to make a sharp turn, but anything with significant mass (water, ice, birds) would pass through, or get ground up against something other fan blades. I couldn't find a good diagram online.

You would want them to be selectable (engaged during low-altitude flight, stowed during cruise flight) so as to hopefully not unduly hurt range, other than via the increased weight.

The problem though is that there are significant one-engine-out climb performance targets that must be met for Part 21 certification, and inertial separators have power penalties on top of the weight penalty. Taking performance away from a one-engine-out scenario would further restrict max take-off weights, increase balanced field lengths (meaning some airports would need to make improvements to serve some aircraft, etc), increase the time from roll to V1 (the takeoff commit speed) and at the end of the day, taking performance away may represent a higher risk than birds currently represent.

In 700 hours or so of single-engine piston flight, I've struck two (small) birds, and had close calls with half-dozen more. I've never had a close call with a bird over 2000 feet AGL, so cruise flight could surely be done without brid protection.

<comment><USER3> Taking performance away also directly impacts the bottom line of airlines and airplane manufacturers, so highly unlikely.

<comment><USER2> So does dunking a $60mm jet in the Hudson River. :)

<comment><USER4> If the airlines have heavier (but safer) planes their costs go up. If they lose a plane it's probably their insurance company that pays for it, I'd think. Maybe their premium goes up though? Wouldn't be the first time people's lives were on the bad end of a cost/benefit analysis.

<comment><USER2> Hypothesize two airlines, one flying current airliners and the other flying airliners that are 0.5% safer and whose tickets are 5-10% more expensive.

Who do you think gets all the business on competing routes? Filling even 5% more seats on average dramatically improves airlines P&L statements.

I'm not saying it's rational, but big businesses have been built on the inability of the average person to do math. (Airport insurance kiosks, lotteries, pachinko parlors, or Las Vegas/Macao.)

(I'm also not suggesting that there's an easy way to get that 1 in 200 improvement in safety, even at a 10% cost penalty, but if your airline gets a reputation for bad safety, you're all but done, even if you come up on the top of Expedia/Travelocity/ITA searches when sorted by price...)

<comment><USER5> Which is one of the reasons the FAA exists. It's probably not the best idea to let airline safety get sorted out by market forces.

<comment><USER6> If market forces increased the number of deaths from air travel by .5% for 10% off ticket prices, I don't think that would necessarily be a bad thing. There's value in cheaper travel, and it might even be value that saves a life -- granted, the kid in Africa who died this morning of starvation because his mother is unemployed because his country is not a tourist destination because it costs too much to go there did not die in a photo-friendly fireball, but is his death any less meaningful?

LOTS of very useful things will kill far more people this year than commercial air travel. Water buckets. Bicycles. Doctors. Cars, in about the first two hours of the year.

(If you took a Boeing 747 full of American patients to a doctor's office, more than one would die due to medical error. Remember that checklists article from yesterday?)

Air travel gets the evil eye because the deaths are very visible. The same factor would make market-regulated air travel very safe.

<comment><USER3> Bonus points for explaining how market forces would encourage surgeons to use checklists.

<comment><USER6> "This is your malpractice insurance company. We just read an interesting article in the newspaper about how using checklists cuts fatalities by 50%. So we checked our data, and found this is accurate. Great news!

If you don't use checklists, your premium next year will triple."

<comment><USER3> Cool. Now, what are the pitfalls?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why don't we just outfit aircraft with a miniature Phalanx system that calculates the trajectory of an incoming bird and the probability of an engine strike and then fires up a Gatling gun to neutralize the threat :)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS>

In all seriousness, I wonder if some kind of laser-based defense system could be used as a last resort.

<comment><USER8> I'd say it's a ways off considering how many years they've spent trying to shoot down much larger missiles with lasers. A missile moves much faster than a bird, but the small size of a bird is going to make it extremely difficult. There's also the issue of how to deal with a flock of birds. This, of course, is assuming you've figured out how to cost-effectively equip hundreds of passenger jets with lasers and the necessary tracking systems given the space constraints. I understand power is also an issue when shooting down missiles. I'm not sure how significantly this requirement is reduced when shooting down birds.

There's also the issue of using a weapon over heavily populated areas and at low altitude. Shooting down a missile will probably take place at high altitude. It's also possible, or even likely, that it will take place over a sparsely populated area or war zone. It could even be over an ocean. The laser might even be fired upwards. If you're shooting down birds from a plane there's a good chance you're going to be firing a laser outward or downward. What if you miss and start blasting holes through nearby buildings?

Bird strikes tend to be a problem most often during takeoff and landing-- usually at either end of the runway. Planes gain altitude so quickly that it's rarely a problem outside of a couple short windows as the plane is approaching or leaving the runway area. I remember reading about an airport with an especially bad bird problem that had success using dogs to keep birds away from the runways.

I think there is a simple solution to this. It might even be possible to put plants or grass around the runway that birds don't like. What about something with thorns that will be difficult for a bird to perch on? Or maybe something with a particular scent that birds will stay away from?

<comment><USER9> I suggest using predator birds and (directable) loud noise, either high- pitched or predator birdcalls.

<comment><USER10> That could be a perfect solution, but given the high relative speeds it's probably not possible. I take it must be pretty difficult to detect even a flock of birds at the the necessary distance.

<comment><USER8> It could be effective on the ground around the runway where the birds hang out until a plane flies into them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >International Civil Aviation Organisation regulations say that jet engines must be able to ingest a small bird without problems. But for large birds, the rules say only that the engine must not explode.

This is probably the best passage I've read all week.

<comment><USER12> Do we need to list all the contingencies when an engine must not explode? Can't that be just a general requirement of engines?

Edit: On second thought, I suppose jet engines are generally in a constant state of exploding. Maybe the rule should be "Upon ingestion of a large bird, _keep_ exploding".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _"Interestingly, the Smithsonian Institution's Feather Identification Laboratory has worked out which species causes the most costly birdstrike damage. It's the turkey vulture - the bird that originally inspired the Wright brothers."_

Irony strikes again!

<comment><USER14> Irony is coincidentally the name of the turkey vulture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If I were any kind of ornithologist, I'd devise a sensory device (human- inaudible sound, most likely) that would frighten the birds away, possible via mimicry of a predator.

Note that this is an excerpt of a comment I made on the news article page.

<comment><USER16> they do this at JFK all the time

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This makes me extremely weary of flying, as you can deter birds on take off through sound deterrents on the ground, but not while in the sky. Birds may have even become conditioned to the sound of our noisy flight, thus not deterring them away from airplanes.

There is a entrepreneurial/engineer solution needed here! They rule out adding grilles due to fuel inefficiency, but what about rigging airplanes with the sound deterrents used on the ground - bird radar triggers these sounds? Just a thought...they'd probably have to be crazy insane loud.

I hope someone creates a solution soon! I dont want to land my next flight in the Hudson (chances are slim but still)!

<comment><USER14> Talk about misplacing your fears.. Airplanes typically cruise at around 33,000 feet; there are no birds that high. All bird-related accidents happen upon take-off and landing, but even then they are _barely_ a threat. The numbers I heard, in the last twenty years or so, there have been about two hundred deaths _world-wide_ due to birds colliding with airplanes and I'm not sure what percentage of that is for commercial airliners versus general aviation. Birds hitting airplanes is probably the least-likely way you can perish.

I'll even bet $5,000 of my own money that neither you, nor anyone you personally know will be killed by a bird colliding with an aircraft, ever.

<comment><USER18> I'll take that bet, please.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recall very, very old news footage of raptor eye like structures being attached to jet engines.

I guess those didn't work.

What about doing a good job of keeping the airports and areas around them free or large flocks?

How much would it cost to have trained hawks patrol the area.

NY already has wild raptors living in the city.

<comment><USER20> I don't think the problem are flocks of large geese living in the area, it's them migrating through. Hawks probably couldn't solve that problem, and if you have any ideas as to how to keep Canada Geese away, you should consider doing it as a startup. They're a common pest in my area of the country.

<comment><USER19> That's actually a good idea.

I bet even migrating flocks would scatter if a raptor buzzes them.

So perhaps I should get into falconry and charge airports to have my falcon fly through any migrating flocks.

It would be almost like being a super villain.

<comment><USER20> I don't know. They might just keep flying. What does a flock do when a predator comes and snags one?

Also, if they're in a flock you can probably avoid them more easily than if they scatter.

Keeping raptors around permanently would be problematic. For one, they're probably just as rough on an engine. And for another, how do you feed them for the other 11 months of the year? And do they even eat birds that big?

<comment><USER21> How about fireworks?

A firework gun that can set at what altitude the fireworks go off and then launch them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The US and Israelis are working on lasers to take out mortars. They are radar based, which would make hitting birds harder. But a vision system tied to the lasers could probably drop a bird before it gets sucked into the turbines.

</comment><comment><USER23> I thought the a380 has flexible engine blades that bend temporarily upon a bird strike. I wonder if its engines would have shut down with a similar bird strike as the one that occurred yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER24> Cool, I was wondering that exact thing yesterday: why no jet engine grill? Not all engineering problems are solvable! (Or should be solved.)

<comment><USER7> I wonder if anyone has looked at doing a cone-shaped grill that extends forward some distance beyond the front of the engine. It would look goofy as hell, but it would only have to be strong enough to survive a glancing impact, rather than a direct hit like a flat grill. Air resistance might be an issue though...

<comment><USER25> Are we playing 20 questions or something? Just come out with it; the name you are looking for is cow catcher.</comment></comment></comment>


Ebola: learn from the past - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/ebola-learn-from-the-past-1.16117 <comment><USER2> Past performance may not be indicative of future results.

Obviously, we should heed the lessons of the past, but a virus like Ebola is not a static phenomenon and it's concerning that so many seem to have developed strongly-held assumptions. The number of medical personnel infected in this current outbreak is particularly worrisome and we don't yet understand the exact causes of this.

We do know that the strain in the current outbreak is different from those seen before, and that it's mutating[1]. Filoviruses have a rapid rate of mutation, and the longer the outbreak lasts, the more opportunity the virus has to mutate into a form that makes it harder to defeat. The speed with which Ebola kills those it infects is actually disadvantageous to the virus. Natural selection would logically favor a strain of the virus that didn't kill its hosts so quickly.

While a lot of speculation revolves around the possibility that the virus could become more easily transmissible, it would be just as worrisome if there were mutations that affected incubation time or the onset symptoms. These types of mutations could significantly complicate some the strategies we're relying on today, if not render them useless.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/ebola-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/ebola-virus-has-mutated-during-course-of- outbreak/2014/08/28/98235aaa-2ecb-11e4-bb9b-997ae96fad33_story.html)

<comment><USER3> There are three large differences with this outbreak than all previous outbreaks

1\. The size and the number of people infected.

2\. The geographical scale. No outbreak has ever been anything other than localised.

3\. It is spreading in urban areas. All previous outbreaks of Ebola have been rural.

If any of these differences are important then we can't really look to past outbreaks to know what is going to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If we want to learn from the past maybe we should look at the Plague of Athens [1]. These were the symptoms:

"As a rule, however, there was no ostensible cause; but people in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath. These symptoms were followed by sneezing and hoarseness, after which the pain soon reached the chest, and produced a hard cough. When it fixed in the stomach, it upset it; and discharges of bile of every kind named by physicians ensued, accompanied by very great distress. In most cases also an ineffectual retching followed, producing violent spasms, which in some cases ceased soon after, in others much later."

I wonder what this sounds like? The good news was it only killed between 1/3 and 2/3rds of the population.

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

</comment><comment> bra-ket Ebola evolves. Each outbreak carries a number of distinct genetic changes [1] and there is a risk of a mutation (or a chain of mutations) that would accelerate transmission in unpredictable ways by interacting with new hosts.

This happened in the past with Yersinia Pestis that wiped out half of the world population through fleas.

I'm not sure sure why there is no centralized effort to accelerate research but rather top virologists focus on logistics of moving dead bodies.

[1] [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6202/1369.full](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6202/1369.full)

<comment><USER3> >I'm not sure sure why there is no centralized effort to accelerate research

Your answer is right at the bottom of the science article.

"In memoriam: Tragically, five co-authors, who contributed greatly to public health and research efforts in Sierra Leone, contracted EVD and lost their battle with the disease before this manuscript could be published: Mohamed Fullah, Mbalu Fonnie, Alex Moigboi, Alice Kovoma, and S. Humarr Khan. We wish to honor their memory."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder why governments haven't dictated a 21+ day quarantine on any population center where someone is positive for Ebola. That should stop propagation on its tracks.

<comment><USER3> The reason why is the countries where the outbreak has occurred do not have the policing or military capacity to do this. A couple of the countries tried to enforce 3 days quarantines to slow down the spread but the population just ignored it, either through lack of care or lack of ability (when you are living day to day you don't have much choice about working or not - don't work, don't eat).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope the author isn't being naive in assuming that this outbreak will pass.

<comment><USER6> For whatever people say, Ebola is still a fairly difficult disease to spread. True, it has jumped borders (even oceans).

However, patient's don't become infectious until they start showing visible symptoms. Not only that, the symptoms are pretty obvious. Compounding all of that, the vector by which the virus travels is one of the "slowest" routes available.

What I think this outbreak does show however, is that we as a global peoples, need to really rethink how we treat and handle the spread of disease.

<comment><USER7> Why do people keep saying it's a fairly difficult disease to spread, when a health worker in the US contracted Ebola, even while wearing protective gear.

If a health worker with protective gear can contract Ebola, imagine how easy it is for someone infected with Ebola to transmit the disease on an airplane or a restaurant. If they start vomiting around people, and splatter the people around them, will those people not get infected? Will the workers who try to clean up the mess not get exposed as well?

The symptoms are obvious, but they are obvious symptoms for much more innocuous diseases as well, so it's easy to miss.

<comment><USER8> Ebola is fairly difficult to spread, it is not very contagious, no matter what you might believe based on news reports. If you want to look at a contagious disease, look at flu. The 2009 flu pandemic lead to hospitalization of ~200,000 people in the US alone within a few weeks [1]. Talking about the flu, you can somewhat guess the number of infected people to be much much higher. The current Ebola outbreak lead to ~8,000 infected persons since its outbreak more than half a year ago in March. As you see, Ebola is not very contagious when compared to the flu. Yet flu pandemics are usually restricted fairly well once they take off and people are aware.

I'm constantly reading people being afraid of Ebola mutating to make people survive longer so the virus can spread better. Influenza (Flu) is very good with that, yet not even the very contagious flu was able to cause a significant thread to mankind in the recent history.

Ebola is the cause for a humanitarian crisis in West Africa and we should put all our efforts to helping the people who are affected by it, rather than worrying about ourselves for no good reason.

1) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic)

<comment><USER7> Just because something's growth rate does reach the flu's growth rate doesn't mean that it's not contagious. The flu just happens to be extremely contagious. Ebola is still growing at an exponential rate, the rate just so happens to not be as steep as the flu's.

Even the CDC has predicted 1.4M people infected with Ebola in West Africa alone, at its current rate of increase. Who knows what the infection rate will be outside of West Africa. That doesn't sounds like something that is 'not very contagious'.

<comment><USER8> 1\. Ebola's rate of infection is ~1.5 - 2 new infections per infected persons [1] Even though this is an exponential rate, it does nowhere get near the rates of many other viruses. As such it is easier to restrict further infections than it is for most other infectious diseases.

2\. The 1.4M people prediction from the CDS assumed no intervention or help from other countries and a collapse of the local healthcare systems. That's why I am saying that we should focus our efforts on helping the healthcare workers in West Africa.

> Who knows what the infection rate will be outside of West Africa Way lower > than the rate in West Africa, that is for sure. Ebola doesn't spread through > the air, you have to get in direct contact with body fluids. You don't get > infected by sitting in a bus or plane with someone, who is infected. Most of > the infected people are healthworkers in a setting without protective > clothing, even gloves are rare to come by. Others are direct relatives who > don't know much about ebola and who have burial rituals that are very > different to the ones most of us are used to. It is very common in West > Africa to wash out the mouth of dead persons and to kiss them goodbye. I am > pretty sure this would not happen in the US or Europe, especially not if the > deceased person died by bleeding out of all body openings.

A very large majority of ebola infected people in West Africa can't go to a hospital - there are no free beds at the moment. So they go back home to their families. THIS is how ebola spreads.

That's why we have to act, but not by panicking, but rather by sending well trained medical staff to help.

[1] [http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1411100#t=article](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1411100#t=article)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What kind of projects do you use Django for? - <AUTHOR> Hola!
In which of the following contexts do you use the Django web framework?
1. Bootstrapped business websites (e.g. eCommerce, SaaS, etc)
2. Personal pages (e.g. blog, portfolio, etc)
3. Developing 3rd party websites (freelancer / company)
4. Embedded development (e.g. deployed on a Rpi for IoT, etc)
5. Something else?
Appreciate your answers much! <comment><USER2> I'm using it now to build an in-house replacement for FreePBX that does less of everything and more of what we want.

So a frontend for asterisk that interfaces with some voip/sms APIs/trunks.</comment>


PC gaming has 24 billion dollars estimated yearly revenue - <AUTHOR> http://gizmorati.com/2014/04/13/pc-gaming-24-billion-dollars-estimated-yearly-revenue/

<comment><USER2> I have a feeling, that in the future, gaming is going to either see a complete revolution or another crash (and then a renaissance).

Traditional consoles will go out of fashion, and console manufacturers will either 1. fall under, or 2. continue generating a lot of money, but fall out of relevancy in the public eye (much like IBM, Oracle, some would say Microsoft, etc.). People are starting to see consoles for what they are : overpriced PCs with really shitty OSes and very limited software opportunities. Why spend $300 on a gadget that can play games when I have already spent $300 on a different, more powerful and capable gadget that can also play games, but also a lot of other stuff? Why lug around another portable when my smartphone already has a bunch of awesome games/spend my money on a device sitting on a shelf that basically can only do a fraction of what my PC already does, in a shitty way, too (poorer graphics,more expensive games, no mods, not upgradeable, etc.)?

Before it used to be that consoles had the best library of games, but as the indie scene explodes, we're seeing the best games coming from developers who simply can't afford the inefficient and restrictive console publishing system when they can reach a much larger/much more devoted market by just putting their work on the App Store/Greenlight -> Steam, and then giving Apple/Valve 30% of their sales. Why get in a whole fuss with publishers and console manufacturers and retailers and what-not? Sony and Microsoft are trying to retaliate by being relatively more open about indie/digital publishing, but it's too little, too late.

Gaming will then split into 2 main platforms : Mobile for 'casual', and PC for 'hardcore'. Hardcore gaming isn't going to go out of fashion, no, it's just going to move to a different platform : instead of consoles, the desktop -- fully equipped with keyboard, mouse, and Oculus Rift (that's another thing I see will happen - VR is going to replace the TV for gaming). As PC gaming gets more and more popular and PC-building gets more and more widespread and Valve gets more and more accessible/approachable in terms of the Steambox, Big Picture, etc., people will go to PC whenever they want multiple hours-long sessions of gaming instead of the quick, easy, addictive, instant gratification of the Flappy Birds they play on the subway. And the VR will just enhance their experience 100-fold.</comment>


The most amazing theoretical result in computer science (you will find it hard to believe!) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/25200/nature06 <comment><USER2> <http://www.scribd.com/doc/25200/nature06>

scribd link, via slurping (www.scribd.com/slurp?url=...)

<comment><USER3> The slurping is very cool. But flash isn't any less annoying than a pdf viewer.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. Flash is much leaner and doesn't insist on searching online for udates every time it's run.

<comment><USER3> You don't need to use Acrobat to view pdfs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could this have any practical application to software testing?

If there is any analogy here, perhaps one could transmute a program into something that crashed or failed more immediately if it was buggy. Of course even if that worked, one might not be able to trace the failure back to an actual line of code; it's not clear that this "smearing" process preserves information like that.

</comment><comment><USER6> I watched too much TV as a child and now I have a really short attention span. Could you summarize this, please?

<comment><USER7> Basically, given a proof P of a statement expressed in n bits, you can in polynomial time with respect to n create a new PCP proof Q which spreads out (somehow?) P, including the errors in P. Since the errors are spread out, with high probability, you'll catch an error choosing a very small number of bits of Q.

It's like MAGIC... Especially since they don't explain it at all in the article.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCP_theorem>

<comment><USER8> Hmm. According to that, the theorem applies to propositional logic. Propositional logic is a very weak system; I don't think it can state the Riemann hypothesis.

Edit: I take that back: propositional logic _definitely can't_ state the Riemann hypothesis. PropLog is complete, which means that by Goedel's incompleteness theorem it can't even model the natural numbers, much less the complexes.</comment></comment></comment>