Linux Kernel Developer Criticizes Intel for Meltdown, Spectre Response - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/security/linux-kernel-developer-criticizes-intel-for-meltdown-spectre-response <comment><USER2> I worked on the Meltdown mitigations, at Intel, during the embargo. I still work on Linux at Intel.

Intel told quite a few members of the Linux community about this well before late December. Some got told because they work for traditional distributions and others were contacted directly because they are community maintainers or subject matter experts.

Unfortunately, Greg was not one of those folks that was told early. It's pretty clear at this point that it would have been a _lot_ better had he and folks like him been involved earlier. This is especially true for Greg since he plays such a crucial role in stable kernel maintenance, which is how a lot of the world consumes their kernels (including distros like Debian).

I'm glad Greg thinks "Intel has gotten better at this." I'd like to think so too.

<comment><USER3> That does not address the stupid embargo on involved linux developers to speak about it to each other.

<comment><USER4> It shows that legal and marketing (PR spin) were prominent on the security decision tree rather than security minded individuals.

<comment><USER5> It's a real pity that _Company caught putting PR before customers ' interests_ so rarely causes a backlash, even when it's plain as day.

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I work on Linux at Intel.

FWIW, I don't think PR had anything to do with this. Without arguing the merits of embargoes, the goal of them is to give the good guys a head start before the bad guys. But, if you tell too many good guys, the assumption is that the bad guys find out. So, you try to tell as few good guys as possible.

This was (from my blatantly biased perspective) an honest, but imperfect attempt at keeping the bad guys from finding out. A lot of lessons have been learned since this, and the group of good guys involved in recent issues has been much more comprehensive than with the original Spectre/Meltdown bits. I think Greg was alluding to this when he said "Intel has gotten better at this."

<comment><USER6> The part that I find amazing about this is that Greg and Linus weren't at the top of the list of people contacted to ask 'this is a very sensitive issue and we'd like to work with you to figure out who we need to get involved in this' from a Linux standpoint. Intel has had people working on Linux support for many years now so it's not like they didn't have people on the payroll who knew the landscape and couldn't readily figure out who to contact. This reeks of incompetence at the senior management levels of Intel.

<comment><USER7> Greg and Linus are also some of the most visible participants, and as far as I understand, neither is considered particularly expert in the platform intricacies that would be involved in mitigating something like Spectre. Disclosing vulns to high-profile targets is a risky practice; their activity, both public and private, attracts a lot of attention. It makes sense to avoid that risk if possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >"The majority of the world runs Debian or they run their own kernel," Kroah- Hartman said. "Debian was not allowed to be part of the disclosure, so the majority of the world was caught with their pants down, and that's not good."

Is there any actual statistics to back this up? I feel like RHEL and to a lesser extent CentOS have a stranglehold on the big enterprise-y environments, and I see Ubuntu basically everywhere else, and Canonical does their own kernels.

Edit: To be clear, I am aware Ubunbtu is a Debian derivative, but since we're talking specifically about who was informed for kernel level mitigations, and Canonical does their own kernels, it seems weird to talk about how Debian wasn't informed and thus people were affected, when Ubuntu being updated wasn't reliant on Debian being updated.

<comment><USER9> I can speak to the companies I've worked for: US companies (and, this includes the UK because apparently we love to be like america) use CentOS predominantly, but mainland europe (Sweden, Germany, Finland) seem to prefer Debian.

I can say that I've personally administered roughly a 1:1 ratio of CentOS:Debian despite coming from a country that's servers tend to be CentOS.

Of course, this is anecdotal, but don't undersell debian.

<comment><USER10> Is SuSE still popular in Europe? (Apologies if I got the capitalization wrong)

<comment><USER11> Besides SAP deployments I guess not much.

Here in Germany it is mostly Red-Hat/CentOS or Ubuntu, on the projects I have been involved.

So anecdote data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > "That's a long time, and we only heard rumors because another very large > operating system vendor told Intel to get off their tails and tell us about > it."

I wonder which operating system vendor pressured Intel to tell the Linux dev community, especially because it sounds like it was a non Linux OS vendor. Whomever it was, good job!

But it seems like Intel has angered the Linux community as well as the various BSD operating systems. You would think Intel would be doing whatever it can to please all operating system vendors especially now that AMD is getting competitive again.

<comment><USER13> My guess is Microsoft seeing how recently they're pouring a lot of resources into the Linux subsystem and how they're trying to seem more "developer- oriented" overall in recent months.

<comment><USER12> That was my guess as well, also doesn't Microsoft run some Linux in their Azure cloud? So that adds yet another incentive for Microsoft to help Linux folks out.

Edit: I found a link confirming that Microsoft uses Linux for networking in their Azure data centers [1].

[1]: [https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/microsoft-runs- azure...](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/microsoft-runs-azure- networking-on-linux/)

<comment><USER14> I work for Microsoft. We build customer facing business applications on Linux, Java, Go, etc. Microsoft is Big!

<comment><USER12> I'm sure Microsoft is doing this now, but wasn't that frowned upon before Satya Nadella took over as CEO or was building on non Microsoft products okay before?

<comment><USER15> I worked for a Corel at the turn of the century (ha ha, feels weird saying that). We worked very closely with MS from about 2000 (when MS injected about $130 million into the company). While Corel had their Linux distro, when I worked there we were forbidden from using free software (and specifically GPL software) other than on the Linux code. I heard it was due to an agreement with MS (hearsay, but I believe it). I had my knuckles wrapped a few times for disobediently editing my code using Emacs -- eventually I got used to Visual Studio (and even learned to appreciate it to a certain degree).

Things started shifting around 2002 or 2003 and by the time Vector bought out Corel in 2004, I was happily using Emacs and SVN with nobody batting an eyelid. We also worked with MS to implement the shared source version of .Net, which probably nobody remembers. It was supposed to be an "open" reference implementation of .Net. Mono really took on that role, I think mainly because the shared source reference implementation had a completely useless license. You could see the wheels turning in the heads of the MS people on that project. They were actually doing _really_ good work, but everyone knew that the project was going to be meaningless.

IMHO, it was never a kind of binary switch from "open source is cancer" to "we can make money through open source". It was more of a slow internalisation that open source was a better business model for a lot of stuff that MS was doing. It may be that the switch in CEO helped that transition, but it was clear (at least from my perspective) that the wheels were already in motion for a long time prior to that.

I'm sure there are a lot of people still in MS that are rabid about having to control every last scrap of their "IP", but as MS starts to solve some of their revenue problems with open source solutions I think these people will lose relevance. I don't know if the corporate culture of MS (or even most large organisations) will ever get to the point of embracing free software ideals, but at least they seem to see the advantages of engineering collaboration in some circumstances.

<comment><USER16> It was a slow transition even before Satya - remember the Ms-PL license, and ASP.NET MVC being open sourced under that with great fanfare? Or IronPython and IronRuby? The difference before and after was that before, it felt like carefully controlled and _contained_ experiments, that were still treated as decidedly different and unusual on the inside, and on which the plug could be pulled at any moment.

After, it was like a flood with the gates opened. We went from spending a year to get approval to use Boost (and failing!), to a streamlined approval system for pretty much any piece of OSS out there. It's very visible in Visual Studio if you look closely at the files installed - compare, say, VS 2012 to VS 2015, and note how many more OSS bits are in the full install of the latter.

The same goes for releasing under OSS. You might notice that a lot more developer tools are OSS these days - even many new bits written for closed- source products like VS. Hell, I shipped some Microsoft code under GPLv2 a couple years ago - and it was easier to do than getting Boost approved under the old regime!

So I think it's fair to say that Satya and his cadre of execs did drastically re-imagine the company in that regard, rather than just finalizing an existing process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> BTW

> Experts called for a new generation of secure-by-design computers at the Hot > Chips conference here. In small steps in that direction, Microsoft and > Google described their separate but similar hardware security architectures.

[https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333616](https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333616)

<comment> y-c-o-m-b I wonder how many NSA back-doors will go into those.

<comment><USER17> The vast majority of regular users would _voluntarely_ install a dozen of NSA backdoors on their computers if it guarantees them full protection from script kiddies, phishing, malware and ransomware.

<comment><USER18> I feel like you just described Google.

<comment><USER17> I feel that Apple would fit the description much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Greg's response is understandably frustrated, though seemingly less so than the OpenBSD devs. Why are they being repeatedly left out of the loop?

<comment><USER20> OpenBSD has been accused of breaking embargoes in the past. They are pretty open about their policy of pushing their fix as soon as it's ready and not doing anything to obfuscate what they're fixing and why.

<comment><USER21> > They are pretty open about their policy of pushing their fix as soon as it's > ready and not doing anything to obfuscate what they're fixing and why.

This isn't true at all. Please stop spreading misinformation.

<comment><USER22> Neither of you have provided citation or reasoning. You basically just said "nah uh"

<comment><USER23> Perhaps, but it rather behooves the one making the accusation to substantiate it with evidence. I don't see how the one claiming that they don't leak can provide evidence of not leaking!

<comment><USER24> What is the reason then? (And what has led people to have that perception?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "Intel has gotten better at this," he said.

Someone should let the BSD folks know and see what they think...

<comment><USER26> My understanding is that they've gotten better. FreeBSD has had advance notice of some issues. Last I heard they offered to let OpenBSD in too, but hadn't found anyone willing to sign an NDA.

<comment><USER27> I'm reasonably certain that OpenBSD has never agreed to any NDA from anyone as a matter of principle. It's one of the things that makes me love the project so much.

<comment><USER26> I don't know if "never" is accurate, but certainly they are very NDA-averse. That's their right, but it means they're going to get left out of things like this; it's simply not possible to organize _coordinated_ disclosure of issues if the participants don't agree to not blab ahead of the agreed disclosure date.

<comment><USER28> An NDA is a legal agreement. It's entirely possible to organise coordinated disclosures without a legal agreement. The folks pushing NDAs, however, don't seem to be interested in other sorts of agreements.

<comment><USER29> The alternative would be a "gentleman's agreement"? An NDA would seem to be much more transparent with everyone understanding what was agreed to rather than something agreed upon over cigars and cognac. Refusing to sign NDAs as a matter of principal doesn't seem like a very mature way to conduct business.

<comment><USER28> It doesn't have to be a handshake and a nod. Things can still be clearly written down. But formal contracts with consequences take it up a notch. And this isn't about how you "conduct business"; that's a very business-oriented view of what's going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> While I agree that Intel's response was far from ideal, I find it a bit rich for Linux kernel developers to be criticizing them. Remember, the completely uncoordinated disclosure happened because Linux kernel developers started discussing the vulnerability -- while under NDA -- on a public mailing list.

<comment><USER30> You sure those devs were under NDA?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Because Intel is _that_ good in security and hardening, why not use Intel's newly minted own special secure Linux distribution?

[https://01.org/blogs/imad/2018/letter- industry](https://01.org/blogs/imad/2018/letter-industry)

This is almost like satire.

<comment><USER32> Not sure what you mean. This just looks to me like they're admitting they're awful at security and they're pleading/threatening the global community to help secure their ecosystem or else you're all going to be in a ton of trouble because the robots/cars are going to kill you and your workers and what'll you do then?

<comment><USER21> > This just looks to me like they're admitting they're awful at security and > they're pleading/threatening the global community to help secure their > ecosystem

That post seems to make it pretty clear that they are trying to position themselves as the experts rather than the people asking for help. That is the part that is absurd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I was in the room. Greg specifically said "off the record".

<comment><USER34> That's not a magic phrase, it's something you negotiate with reporters in advance. You can't really make "off the record" comments in front of an audience at a conference.

<comment><USER33> Did I say it is a magic phrase? It used to say when you want something not reported. You should definitely get familiar with journalism terminology.

<comment><USER35> > Did I say it is a magic phrase?

Pretty much, yeah. You did. Pretending that declaring "off the record" during a presentation like that falls anywhere near normal journalistic practice is essentially the same thing as imputing magical properties to that phrase. Confidentiality needs to be negotiated ahead of time, usually with an NDA or embargo agreement before journalists are given any detail. When presenting at a conference that lets journalists attend for free, it's unreasonable to expect any confidentiality for the content of your presentation unless your presentation is part of a closed session that the free media passes don't grant access to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What is the current status of this? The last time I heard, the OS fixes would impact CPU performance by 30%. Is this still the case? Will new iterations of Intel CPUs be immune to this, or is this an ongoing issue going forward because it's inherent with the architecture?

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I work on Linux at Intel.

Future hardware will be mitigated against side-channel issues. There's a nice table showing how things are mitigated on future processors here:

[https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-cascade-lake- details...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-cascade-lake-details- spectre-meltdown,37674.html)

But, not everything is mitigated in the silicon or microcode. The mitigation for Spectre / Variant 1 / Bounds Check Bypass, for instance, will continue to be in software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > While there have been many patches made in Linux, he strongly advised users > to update with Intel's microcode fixes as well, as they provide an > additional layer of protection beyond what an operating system can provide.

I found this page explaining how to do it [https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/install-update-intel- microcode...](https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/install-update-intel-microcode- firmware-linux/)

I checked and my microcode is from 2018-01-21. Being on a 2014 laptop it means it got updated by the package manager.

</comment><comment><USER38> Any videos of the presentation?

<comment><USER39> No video as far as I know, but he did post the slides with some backup materials on his GitHub:

[https://github.com/gregkh/presentation- spectre](https://github.com/gregkh/presentation-spectre)

One note from his talk though, his slides say that Foreshadow was fixed in April -- but it's clearly supposed to be August. He mentioned he was fixing the updates even on the flight out to OSSNA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Does anyone honestly buy into the idea that this is something other than a back door, carefully plotted by certain nation-state actors?

For real.

<comment><USER41> The creators aren't always aware of the monsters they create. I think Intel was caught with their trousers down - AMD and ARM in many respects too. Hopefully this will lead to automated testing procedures for Intel, other processor manufacturers and security researchers.

The reason these flaws were found in the first place were because of security researchers, hopefully they can now make their cases to get large research grants and bring about a more secure future.

On the other hand, if you want to talk about tin-foil hat "CPUs working against users", only look so far as Intel ME and the equivalents on other processors. Closed-source and highly privileged code running all the time inside the CPU - it's not unthinkable that Intel would bend the knee to some state actors, especially if that leads to higher profits (i.e. a tax break or entry into a new market ( _cough_ China)). It's enough of a concern that a lot of reverse engineering effort has gone into preventing it from running.

<comment><USER42> > Hopefully this will lead to automated testing procedures for Intel, other > processor manufacturers and security researchers.

They have tons of testing already. The problem is that this is the kind of problem which is easy to miss with tests, especially automated ones, because everything worked correctly and no real code would ever have been affected by the side effects.

<comment><USER41> This is what I meant and didn't say - it should read:

Hopefully this will lead to _better_ automated testing procedures for Intel, other processor manufacturers and security researchers.

The emphasis on "better" as there is obviously automated testing in existence already.

<comment><USER42> I'm sure it will but I wouldn't underestimate the difficulty of finding significant unintended state changes in something on the order of complexity of a modern CPU.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Now that you have turned 22 can I please give you some advice... - <AUTHOR> http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010/11/what-not-to-do-in-life/ <comment><USER2> This is bullshit. Almost everything in here sounds great but is merely fluff.

I promise you that at many points, playing guitar felt like work to Jimmy Hendrix. Painting felt like work to Picasso. Muhammad Ali tried very hard to be the best. He also marketed the hell out of himself.

People who've never done something for a living that is a hobby for most participants think there's some clearly-defined line between work and passion. There's not. It's a continuum and you spend your life moving from one end to the other and back again if you're doing the right thing. If you're not you spend it all at one end.

Take advice, just don't view it as the gospel. Everyone here has probably been taking advice from PG, for instance, and is better off for it.

<comment><USER3> Almost everything is bullshit if you take it at face value. The point of the advice was to promote a certain mindset:

Endeavor to do things that you enjoy doing, and do them with feeling and quality. Chasing success, money, competition, or customer whims will not lead to happiness. Instead do things that you enjoy and do them in your own way that no one else can compete with. This will sidestep competition and lead to customers, money, and success. Think Apple.

Don't just absorb knowledge (reading, advice), but understand it from the author's point of view. His last point was to not blindly take advice, but to understand it and apply it to your own situation. To ignore and marginalize his advice as you have done is to ignore one of his most important points.

<comment><USER4> Really? Your response is "everything is bullshit"? What if chasing success makes me happy?

I'm not sure who this advice is targeted at. It's certainly not for ambitious people who want to build things people use.

"Do not market" and "do not try hard" is a surefire way to never being successful at anything.

This is universally bad advice, and I wonder about anyone who takes it seriously. Do you think Apple is successful because they don't worry about competition or marketing?

<comment><USER3> > Your response is "everything is bullshit"?

Nice job taking that statement out of context. I was saying that most advice taken 100% literally can be shown to be absurd. The submission itself reiterates that. Your (and mattmaroon's) comment reinforces it even more.

> What if chasing success makes me happy?

The point I took from the advice is to pursue your passion, as opposed to pursuing success for the sake of success. If your passion is pursuing success (if that's even meaningful or realistic), then chasing success would not be contrary to the advice.

> I'm not sure who this advice is targeted at. It's certainly not for > ambitious people who want to build things people use.

The submission says exactly who the advice is targeted at: the advisor's daughter. The man wants his daughter to be happy; it is intended to help someone on the path to a happy life. Ambition is not happiness, so of course it's not advice on how to be ambitious. Then again, the advice implicitly defines work as activity that is not "reenergizing and reinvigorating." If making other people happy does that for you, then you can make the advice apply to your situation.

> Do you think Apple is successful because they don't worry about competition > or marketing?

Yes, absolutely. The context of "do not market"* was "do not cater to other people's desires." Would you agree that the iPod was one of the biggest factors in elevating Apple to its current level? The iPod was designed to be a great MP3 player, with no concern for the competition or for what potential customers thought they wanted. Apple wasn't trying to compete with SanDisk (or whoever) by adding a few extra features or offering a lower-priced offering. They completely changed the game. They are a perfect example of:

      Quality has no competition. Only mediocrity has
      competition. If you do what you do at the highest quality
      you have no competition. Quality creates a moat around
      yourself.

      Create your own demand. People are always on the lookout
      for the good. People seek out winners. Therefore be a
      winner all the time.

"Do not try hard" is a follow-up to "do not ever work," and its effective thrust is to be yourself. Make your work your own. Do things your way instead of trying hard to fit the mold that others have created. Do things in a way that you enjoy so that you do not have to "try hard."

      Do not take advice
      Advice is what others did not take but wish to give. Your
      mind is your best guide. Certainly keep your eyes and ears
      open. Absorb everything but add your own pinch of salt.
      Filter out what does not suit you.

If you take the time to actually read the advice and determine if any of it helps you, then it is pretty easy to take most of it seriously. If you just skim the headlines and make snap judgments, of course it will seem bad. If you're just looking for the advice to confirm that you're doing the right thing, and you'd rather attack it than learn from it, then it will be worthless to you.

* A lot of people seem to conflate marketing with advertising. Marketing means to make a product to satisfy a market. Only recently (i.e. the last century or so) has its definition shifted to convincing the market to use your product. I suspect that, being from Bangladesh, the advisor is referring to the more traditional definition of marketing.

<comment><USER5> >Then you'll never be happy. Your definition of success will keep changing, and you'll never get there.

If chasing success is what makes him happy, then he'll alwys be happy, by your interpretation.

<comment><USER3> Good point. I had realized that as I was typing it, but I was trying to wrap it up and get back to work. I have now edited it to be more accurate and reflect my interpretation of the advice.

What it used to say was:

 _> What if chasing success makes me happy?

Then you'll never be happy. Your definition of success will keep changing, and you'll never get there. There's nothing inherently negative about success, but there's nothing inherently positive either. "Success" is a meaningless metric without a strict definition of what it means to be successful._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Let it simply flow. Jimmy Hendrix did not play guitar. He simply let his feelings flow unabated._

Could this be intentionally evil advice designed to prevent the recipient from ever amounting to anything? Infants let their feelings flow unabated. "Jimmy" worked his ass off.

<comment><USER7> Assuming he worked his ass off is speculating as much as assuming it all never felt like work to him. I can attest that I've done what people thought was working my ass off but really felt like nothing because it was enjoyable and came naturally.

<comment><USER8> I remember reading a few times in interviews with people that knew him, that Hendrix basically never put the guitar down. I think in the sense the author is trying to convey, he "never worked hard" and "it just flowed" because he must have truly loved what he did, and he was doing something that he had a gift for. But from what I have read, he dedicated _a lot_ of time to practicing.

<comment><USER7> The author is not trying to convey that he never worked hard. Believe it or not, you can both work hard _and_ enjoy it. The author is trying to say he enjoyed his work so it never felt like work, therefore it just flowed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This post reminds me of the old joke where a young woman wants to marry a religious man.

Her father asked him, "What will you do with your life?"

"Pray," he replied.

"And how do you intend to provide for my daughter?"

"God will provide for us."

Later, when the man's wife asked how his meeting with his prospective son-in- law went, he replied, "Very well. He already thinks I'm God.

<comment><USER3> It's a funny joke to be sure, but I think it's a far cry from the advice in the post. There's a big difference between relying on something external to make you happy and following your passion.

<comment><USER10> The difference being?

<comment><USER11> Happiness is a state of mind, you can't successfully induce it with external sources.

<comment><USER12> That's only true if you don't think your mind is a function of input from external sources.

<comment><USER11> I concur in your assessment; this is a premise. A fundamental one, too.

I declare being cought in the notion that your mind is a (pure) function of input to be self-deception, which will ultimately lead to a path of misery.

If this were not true, how come that many people experience a change in themselves when they meditate? If you haven't been exposed to Buddhism yet, for example Zen meditation (Zazen) has the ultimate goal just to sit and breathe. Thoughts and external input are to be dismissed during Zazen.

Telling from personal experience, this practice changes people. Without any external input whatsover. Hence: The human mind cannot be a pure function of external sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The "Don't try hard" + "Muhammad Ali" combination isn't accurate. He pushed "hard" beyond limits, both in the ring and out of it.

If you read one his biographies containing details of his bouts and you'll know what I mean.

<comment><USER14> Yeah a lot of this is terribly inaccurate and the fact that it's being used to sell questionable advice makes it even more so. For example...

Jimmy Hendrix might have loved to play the guitar but his gimmick was playing it competently with his teeth and I guarantee you that's something he had to work hard to be able to do right.

Einstein did say Imagination is more important than Knowledge but he also said...

knowledge must continually be renewed by ceaseless effort, if it is not to be lost. It resembles a statue of marble which stands in the desert and is continually threatened with burial by the shifting sand. The hands of service must ever be at work, in order that the marble continue to lastingly shine in the sun. To these serving hands mine shall also belong.

So clearly he thought it important to "read what is written" too.

<comment><USER15> Hendrix also had the gimmick of leading a band that played excellent music, which is potentially a bigger explanatory factor in his success.

<comment><USER16> Was he not the songwriter? Is it not harder to lead than to follow?

Or are you just saying teeth aren't that important in the grand scheme of things?

<comment><USER15> "Gimmick" was meant to be sarcastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I liked it but somehow I think its because this advice sounds more like things I would like to believe to be true.

<comment><USER14> I'd argue that's what makes this type of thing insidious. Take one piece of advice he gives...

"Create your own demand. People are always on the lookout for the good. People seek out winners. Therefore be a winner all the time."

Now if I were giving advice on this sort of thing I'd say just the opposite. Here would be my advice.

"It's not enough to be good at what you do. George Washington was turned down when he requested a commission in the British army. Abraham Lincoln lost 2 elections before becoming President. Einstein was 40 before anyone recognized him as a leading scientist. So it is not enough to be a winner you must also work to get people to notice how good you are and that can take time."

Now if I'm right than his advice is irresponsible because he's setting people up for disappointment. People taking his advice will expect the world to form a line to their door. When that line doesn't form they'll have to assume they just aren't good enough and that's not the desired result.

<comment><USER17> Yes you picked one of the pieces that made me feel that way the most. Others are

Do not try hard -> for things to be easy (or look effortless) you have to try hard first for quite a while.

Do not ever work -> interest always fades at some point, some times permanently and other times temporarily, but sticking to it is often necessary and not doing it sounds like a recipe for a path littered with unfinished things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think there is one advice that is of questionable quality: the advice to "keep pushing for quality". "Make the highest quality". That sounds really good. But how easy that?

The problem is simply that you first have to be able to recognize what is quality and what is not. And that's the greatest difficulty of all. If you make something of really great quality that everyone thinks is quality, then it will work well. But what if it's really good for you, but not for anyone else?

Take for example all these YC companies. ALL of them are working on something they are constantly trying to make great. But a number of them just don't end up with something that people regard as being quality, and so they fail.

Before you can make something of great quality, you have to recognize what is of quality to other people. And that is an extremely difficult task that, dare I say this, _most_ people cannot do.

 _Most_ people cannot properly place themselves in another persons shoes. They cannot look at their products from the outside. And so long they cannot do that, they cannot guage when something is of high quality, and will forever be unable to take that advice.

<comment><USER19> Robert Pirsig has some words to say on this. If the idea of pursuing quality intrigues you it might be worth your time to take a read through his books, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and "Lila".

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> When I read this, I could not stop thinking about Harry Potter & The Methods of Rationality, and how HP calls out Dumbledore out for "pretending to be wise".

See <http://lesswrong.com/lw/yp/pretending_to_be_wise/> for an explanation -- the post above is a clever take on that. Instead of refusing to pass judgement, it's giving advice that, as the people who did think of it as wise said, "is bullshit if you take it at face value" -- it's meant to serve as a counter-balance to the exact opposites of those, which are obviously _also_ good advice, often given.

By saying a thing, and implying you also believe its opposite, you can never be wrong.

I don't really affiliate myself with the rationalist movement, but I think they have developed a number of useful tools to learn to call people out on trying to bullshit you.

</comment><comment><USER21> I stopped reading at "Do not read."

<comment><USER22> To be fair it goes on to say "Read not what is written but read into the writer's mind."

Not that I would pretend to know what that means!

<comment><USER23> I'm pretty sure that he means that you should read something in an effort to understand the author's thought process, so that you can formulate your own opinion. This is opposed to reading things as gospel and believing everything you read.

<comment><USER24> It also protects against overly-cynical literal interpretations—if you read something and think "no one would be stupid enough to write that," then—since you can understand that the author was clearly attempting to make a certain argument, whether or not they succeeded—you should assume they said what they were trying to say, instead of bailing out like a compiler. The Principle of Charity, in other words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are undoubtedly infinite mantras to live by that can help to produce a successful, happy, meaningful life. If this advice worked for the author, fantastic.

Interestingly, most people I personally know who've achieved any amount of "success" have all worked their asses off, tried harder than everyone around them, competed fiercely, marketed better than their competitors, read often, chased their dreams (whether it's money, happiness, adventure, "success," etc.), and were always open to advice (especially at 22).

Regardless of age, status, profession, passions, goals, or anything else - life can be a bitch and failure happens. Though I've never spoken to Picasso, Moore, Hendrix, or Ali, I'm almost positive they had struggles. They probably even had times when they wanted to leave it all and quit. They didn't have beautiful, easy, careers. But they kept fighting, continued their craft, and persevered.

This letter is a cute romanticization of life and work, but it's likely terrible, harmful advice.

</comment><comment><USER26> Do what you love and love what you do.

To live happily, you must understand what 'love' means to you and what you want to 'do' with your life.

Then do it with endless passion.

As a programmer, there is nothing that I like more than coding to solve a problem. I've spent 30 years of my life doing it and it still feels like my first love.

If I had enough money to cover all my worries I'd spend the rest of my life coding.

As I always say, I code to make money to be free to do what I want: coding.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think all of it is terrible advice (don't try hard? don't work? good luck with that), but others have already covered that below. I just wanted to point out that apparently the author still opens unsolicited Word documents from emails. Not a good idea: <http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/7/25/>

</comment><comment><USER28> Very true post, however, I disagree with the "Do not ever work" and "Do not ever try hard" parts. For everything you enjoy doing, there's always some work behind it. When Picasso went to paint, he had to spend time setting up his canvas and his palette, which I'm sure wasn't as fun as painting the picture itself.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Do not take advice"

OK, I won't take your advice. But you just said "do not take advice", so does that mean I should take your advice about not taking advice? (stack error, brain explodes)

<comment><USER30> My brain eliminates tail calls, so it's just an infinite loop :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hmm so according to Mr. Rabbani, Hacker News is a waste of time.

<comment><USER32> One can certainly use a lot of time reading Hacker News. Whether it is wasted or not depends on the reader I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Today is my 22nd birthday... weird.

</comment><comment><USER34> Great advices. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER35> alright, but... "no pain, no gain"

<comment><USER36> a friend of mine used to have a funny variant of this (more a jab at me when i would be leaving for the gym)

"no pain, no pain" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> 22 for women, 25 for men (since we don't really listen to advice until later on, if at all).

awesome advice!

<comment><USER37> whoa. was totally joking! no need to downvote.

<comment><USER38> I didn't downvote you, but jokes like that usually aren't well received here. Particularly from relatively new users like yourself.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Standing workstations - <AUTHOR>

To anyone with experience using a standing desk on a daily basis: do you recommend using a treadmill or simply standing in place? How did you go about making your workstation, or if you bought it, what did you buy and can you recommend it to others? <comment><USER2> Remember the hilarious Salli Saddle Chair ad that went viral? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HIt3D7Ivfc>

I've been obsessed with finding one of these ever since, but they seem to _start_ at $500 -- which is too much for a chair for me. If anyone can suggest an economical alternative, I'd love to hear it!

</comment><comment><USER3> When I wanted to try a standup desk, I just took my regular desk and jacked it up. I used 5-gallon plastic buckets attached to some wood, but you could use anything really.

This way, I got to feel out a standup desk for no cost, and got to experiment with different heights and configurations before I invested in one. For example, I initially thought I'd want to get a tall stool for the times I was tired of standing. After a few days with my standup desk, it never even occurred to me to sit.

Once I knew I loved a standup desk, and knew what height I wanted, I found the Ikea UTBY desk to be just right and super cheap: <http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S49843462></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a (near) realtime API for the UK General Election results? - <AUTHOR> Ideally JSON, but not too fussed. I know http://lda.data.parliament.uk/elections.json exists but it seems too outdated (just shows a by-election in January) - anyone know if it'll be updated? <comment><USER2> [https://interactive.guim.co.uk/2017/06/ukelection2017-data/s...](https://interactive.guim.co.uk/2017/06/ukelection2017-data/snap/full.json) shows the results, not sure how long it'll live for, but it exists for now!</comment>


Just compile some Scala code to get an interview - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getgush.com/post/5132502649/hiring-great-scala-developers-or-happy-to-learn-for <comment><USER2> To all the naysayers here:

Please remember that the set of people who read HN is NOT representative of the set of people applying for programming jobs. Something that may seem trivial to the point of insulting here may be an effective way of filtering hundreds of really bad resumes out of the process.

For example, the very act of installing and properly running "Hello World" in your language is probably going to cut your pile of submissions by 50% or more. It's a fizz-buzz filter. It isn't meant to try to filter the top 50% of HN readers from the bottom 50% of HN readers, or to identify the Scala programmers but reject anyone who solves the "puzzle" in Python or PHP, it's meant to filter out the folks who can't get anything to work in _any_ language.

No big deal really, it's not like they're promising you a job if you solve the puzzle. They just want to cut the submissions down to a manageable number by eliminating the no-hopers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. We get resumes for PHP developers living in Bangladesh. We get resumes from outsourcing companies.

And indeed: we're not promising you the job. Just promising you we'll talk to you on Skype.

And finally: we've already gotten a few really good job applications with the attention this is getting :)

And finally finally: yes, I messed up the blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I haven't run this, but the code seems to have an error. As far as I can tell "k.size" will return 19 and you need to subtract 20 from the ASCII code to get the real thing. Otherwise you would get gibberish.

EDIT: I actually went and ran the thing, just to make sure I wasn't crazy. You definitely need to change "(c - k.size)" to "(c - k.size - 1)".

<comment><USER4> gWU`UAXYjT[ig\\\eBWca looks like 20 characters to me, why would k.size return 19?

<comment><USER3> Because \\\ is an escape for \\.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think they meant:

        val k = """gWU`UAXYjT[ig\\eBWca"""

Otherwise one backslash escapes the other and the string isn't the appropriate length.

<comment><USER3> Duh. Now I feel stupid. There was obviously an "H" missing in the e-mail address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, that took me only 5 minutes, a refreshing experience after getting a webstack up on OSX consisting of memcache, oursql, CherryPy and MySQL for the first time ever ;-)

      $ cd /usr/ports/lang/scala
      $ sudo make install clean
      $ rehash
      [fire up an editor and paste the code into test.scala]
      $ scalac test.scala
      $ scala ApplyTo
      firstname.lastname@example.com
      $ cat test.scala
      object ApplyTo extends Application {
          val k = "gWU`UAXYjT[ig\\\\eBWca"
          println(k map {c => (c - k.size).toChar toLower})
          }

Hmmm, do I get the job? ;-) Oh wait, I see I maybe should have saved the source code in ApplyTo.scala instead of test.scala.

I really should look into Scala some day Real Soon Now, interesting that it runs on the JVM, I was messing around a bit with Clojure, which also runs on the JVM. I haven't worked with Java recently, but I used it some years ago and I remember the interesting FileStreamBufferedReader class hierarchy which you needed to read a simple file. My personal blog is mentioned in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Hiring Great Scala Developers"? I translated your Scala into Python and got the answer, but I'm not a great Scala developer or even a good Python one. Seems quite a weak filter which risks flooding you with applications.

But I do want to hear more about _Digital pictures: We are building a product to solve real problems_

Are you willing to say any more about it, or is it all secret until you launch?

<comment><USER8> >> Seems quite a weak filter

That was only a small part of the filter:

      " Mention your github/HN/blog urls, if you have them. Mention personal projects. Mention startups. Mention open source."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Am I a loser because I didn't feel like downloading a Scala compiler or translating this to a language I do have an interpreter for, so I just got the table from man ascii, counted the characters in the string, and then did the transformation by hand?

<comment><USER10> If you don't feel like even downloading the Scala compiler, you definitively should not apply for a Scala developer position.

<comment><USER11> In his defence he never asked if he should still apply, he simply asked if he was a loser for using an ascii table to figure it out instead of compiling :P

Which no, that doesn't make you a loser. I think if anything it makes you part of the average HN population, hackers. You were curious, you thought of a solution to the problem presented, and you went ahead and figured it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those like me that were too curious to wait for an interview to know more about this startup : <http://nextmontreal.com/gush/>

</comment><comment><USER13> So, you are asking people to learn sbt?

[http://code.google.com/p/simple-build- tool/wiki/BuildConfigu...](http://code.google.com/p/simple-build- tool/wiki/BuildConfiguration)

</comment><comment><USER14> Why is the decoded mail address pointing to a server in china?

<comment><AUTHOR> Google apps.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (The code got indeed messed up in the formatting. I put it in the HTML source.)

</comment><comment><USER15> And by trying to get the code to compile I'm yet again reminded why I don't like Scala:

The compiler is slow as fuck to get started and the syntax of the language is such that whitespace appears to matter. No thanks.

But I wish y'all good luck anyway.

</comment><comment><USER16> >>> k = "gWU`UAXYjT[ig\\\eBWca"

>>> ''.join([chr(ord(c) - len(k) - 1) for c in k])

'firstname.lastname@example.com'

Can I get a job as a translator?

<comment><USER17> for($e="tdbmb.efwahvtir/dpn",$i=0;$i<strlen($e);$i++){$r=$e[$i];echo chr(ord($r)-1);}

Uh... can I get a job doing PHP?</comment></comment>


Digital ocean bandwidth actually free? - <AUTHOR> On the digital ocean pricing page they say they charge for bandwidth exceeding that allocated in the price tier. However for several years it has been stated by staff that this is never actually counted or enforced.
For example a link from 2016: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/extra-bandwidth-what-will-happen
My question is, is this still the case? Does digital ocean actually not charge? Has anyone gone over the cap without issue? Thanks! <comment><USER2> There is bandwidth pricing listed as you mentioned, but to date there are no bandwidth charges yet to any customers.</comment>


Phuby on Phails demo video from RubyConf - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWKjS6Vufw

<comment><USER2> Cool.

But why?

<comment><AUTHOR> To make ruby programmers feel uneasy. ;-)</comment></comment>


The Marriages of Power Couples Reinforce Income Inequality - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/upshot/marriages-of-power-couples-reinforce-income-inequality.html <comment><USER2> My two thoughts on this:

1\. I bet a large portion of this phenomenon is related to the current US divorce laws (basically a woman with a child can divorce a high-income husband and claim a large portion of his income for child support / maintenance).

Therefore marrying people of your 'social circle' is a certain way to mitigate this effect (ie if your spouse is a high-level attorney rather than a secretary, you have a much lower risk of it happening to you).

2\. Author kinda assumes the reader is an idiot in some places. For example: "As it becomes harder for many people to "marry up".

Well, no. "People" never really married up. Women with looks had a chance to marry men of higher social standing. The reverse (man marrying a woman of higher social standing) was very much an exception.

So basically what this means is that men of today are not as interested in marrying women beneath their social status as they were in the past.

I guess that women's liberation had a lot to do with this phenomenon. If one is an intelligent woman, she can simply go to a good school and get a career - instead of her only choice in life being marriage to a rich man. So that actually sounds like a not terrible thing for such women.

<comment><USER3> _The reverse (man marrying a woman of higher social standing) was very much an exception._

I'd argue against that. There's precedence in older wealthy women marrying younger man of lower social standing.

Queen Victoria of the British Empire marrying Prince Albert is one example of a woman marrying a man of lower social standing (though they are of the same age).

 _in Albert 's own words, "I am very happy and contented; but the difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, not the master in the house."_

It may be uncomfortable for the man in question, but it has happened.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the quote - but I think you picked a rather peculiar example.

Queen Victoria simply could not marry ANYBODY in the world of equal social standing - because by English law, whoever married the Queen would still only be a Prince of Wales.

I think the only real example you can draw on would be aristocratic families who lost their fortune and had to marry off their offspring to a child of rich bourgeois. This way the two family combined pedigree and wealth - but they sort of came on equal footing due to the varying assets each brought to the table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some of the comments in this thread make me think if people actually date anymore.

People interact with other people that are close to them at any given time, childhood, college, career.

Marrying your sweetheart became rarer since people stopped marrying at the age of 18 in general. Marrying your college GF became more rare because people are now marrying in their late 20's to mid 30's rather than early 20's. When people move on with their life they usually replace their previous social circles with new ones.

So if you are a banker your social circle will be made mostly from your new coworkers and maybe maybe 1 or 2 childhood/college friends if they happen to still live near by. So you are much more likely to marry another banker, lawyer, trader and the likes simply because those are the people you interact with on your day to day, and those are the people you'll be more likely to see after work at less than official capacity.

It's not like people actively look for spouses who make as much as they do, is that they more likely to meet a spouse from the same social economic circle. Life isn't some feel good romcom, yes sometimes some one might fall in love with a maid, a waiter, or meet their soul mate in the park when their dogs decides to run through the sprinklers who just happens to be a teacher but the likelihood of that happening by chance is about the same as a romcom winning the Oscars.

I won't claim that some people don't do some due diligence and plan engagements with every potential mate to the point where they cover financial compatibility but I would dare to say this is rare. Other arrangements such as prenups are also much more likely to happen in such cases where there is financial inequality to begin with or when one of the partners has hereditary assets which they would like to protect.

P.S. It's a bit odd that not subsidizing some one these days will count as income inequality, also it's important to point out that financial inequality between partners leads to infidelity and divorce. Partners who make less money than their other partner are much more likely to cheat, especially if they become a full time or part time stay at home parent. Marriages in which one of the partners makes significantly more than the other also are 3 times more likely to end up in divorce.

<comment><USER5> Exactly my thoughts. Assortative mating has been happening all along, equality between the sexes is the only thing that has changed here.

Back then even if you didn't get married young, most men did not have options to marry a female doctor, banker, lawyer, etc. You would meet a nice secretary at work and probably use similar criteria to today (pretty, compatible personality wise, smart). In 2015 that smart secretary is a smart doctor, none of this is surprising.

<comment><USER6> It's been happening be geographic relocation and tools like online dating profiles make it easier. Most of my single Ivy friends filter on Ivy + Advanced Degree.

Previously might have try to pick the best from a pool of 20, now you can increase the pool by a couple orders of magnitude. That will have a qualitative effect.

<comment><USER4> I actually wonder how many people use online dating sites, and even then this is quite natural. You are most likely to find a compatible partner from a group of people similar to you, having a partner with a similar level of intelligence, interests, and world views is quite important as marriage is no longer seen as some right of passage and a baby factory.

Yes if you use some specific dating site for ivy league alumni you are lowering your selection pool but it's not that different from that service that matches 11 out of 10 on the hotness scale super models with rich men.

If you use a normal dating site the overall selection you'll get will be quite more substantial than 20 even if you filter the heck out of it I'll assume, but still It will most likely not match a maid with a banker. But there is nothing that stops it from matching a school teacher, a doctor that spent his or her life volunteering in Africa instead of getting rich in an LA private practice or a summa cum laude lawyer that decided to become a public defender instead of getting the likes of BP out of trouble.

Rich people tend to marry other rich people, attractive people tend to marry other attractive people, people in general tend to marry people who resemble them. Should we also run a piece about how attractive successful men marrying attractive successful women is now considered sexist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> More on this phenomenon in "Coming Apart: The State of White America".

My 2c: A guy or gal making $350K is not commended for reducing income inequality by marrying someone making $60K. Indeed, if things fall apart, the "equity courts" will divide the earnings spouse nicely between them. While I can understand you don't want someone on the street, these things just penalize people for being successful. So it is not a surprise that people are practicing self-preservation and selecting those spouses who have nothing to gain from a separation (besides their freedom.) Additionally, as alluded to in the book above, people who have university degrees have only a 20% chance of divorce and usually, higher income earners have said university degrees.

<comment><USER8> Wow, that's seriously jaded stuff... Selecting mates based on lowering the cost of eventual divorce!

I'd bet it has more to do with maintaining current (or expected) lifestyle. If you're used to a top-5% income, with the lifestyle that income enables, marrying "down" has a real impact. The effect would be even more noticeable in an expensive metropolitan area like NorCal, NYC, etc.

<comment><USER9> An event with >10% probability that will cut your quality of life by at least half forever, and guarantee that extended unemployment carries a prison sentence, is a pretty big deal.

We generally carry home/car/life/health insurance to manage risks that are drastically lower probability and consequence, yet no one calls that jaded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > These days, an investment banker may marry another investment banker rather > than a high school sweetheart, or a lawyer will marry another lawyer, or a > prestigious client, rather than a secretary.

I'm all for reducing income inequality, but I find the complaints about assortive marriage to be, frankly, sexist. Sandra Day O'Connor graduated third in her class at Stanford Law, and was only offered jobs as a legal secretary in private law firms. Back then, a lot of smart, ambitious women were relegated to jobs that didn't maximize their intellectual potential because of sexism in the workplace. Now that sexism is subsiding, and women are free to pursue traditionally male jobs, of course you're seeing more couples marrying within their educational and economic class.

<comment><USER6> True, one might also argue that our education system greatly suffered as it lost many of the best and brightest teachers (This comment is intended as an observation, not a value judgement).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is another in a long series of misdirections about income inequality by Tyler Cowen.

More details:

[http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/desperate-effort- by-t...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/desperate-effort-by-tyler- cowen-and-megan-mcardle-to-silence-discussion-about-income-inequality.html)

>Of all the causes behind growing income inequality, in the longer run this development may prove one of the most significant and also one of the hardest to counter.

Well, that's pretty much why you chose to invent this little story, isn't it Tyler?

In unrelated news, robots are totally going to steal your job, which may prove one of the most significant and also one of the hardest causes of income inequality to counter:

[https://www.aei.org/publication/will-robots-terminate-the- us...](https://www.aei.org/publication/will-robots-terminate-the-us-middle- class-a-qa-with-tyler-cowen-author-of-average-is-over/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You might be right about an attempt at misdirection (I wouldn't speculate one way or another, but obviously EPI agrees with you), but I don't think that invalidates the case about income inequality being partially (among many other sources) caused by AM. It seems fairly well-supported by the evidence from NBER, which Cowen wasn't involved in: [http://www.economist.com/news/united- states/21595972-how-sex...](http://www.economist.com/news/united- states/21595972-how-sexual-equality-increases-gap-between-rich-and-poor- households-sex-brains-and)

The (also liberal) Brookings institution also seems to support it, so I don't think the opposition case is exactly ironclad: [http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility- memos/posts/2...](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility- memos/posts/2014/02/10-opposites-dont-attract-assortative-mating-reeves)

Another thing to consider is that income inequality is increasing via second- order AM effects, via propagation across generations, rather than directly due to the marriages ([http://www.economist.com/node/21640316](http://www.economist.com/node/21640316))

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article is missing important info:

(1) This is much less interesting if the effect doesn't propogate, i.e. if income levels only lasts one generation. This is a _crucial_ part of eugenics -- which the articles compares the effect to -- and yet nothing in the article suggests that income transfers generations. (I'm not saying it does or doesn't; just that the article doesn't address this at all.)

(2) The same is probably true for good looks, culture, athletic ability, hobbies, education, geography, race, IQ, and wealth. I suspect there are a number of confounding variables. Omitting any mention of them doesn't invalidate the reported results, but does make misinterpreting the results of the article much easier.

<comment><USER13> The benefits of high income levels tend to compound across generations.

<comment><USER12> Can you cite a source? I'm not saying you or the article are wrong, just that there are some big gaps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try [http://www.economist.com/node/21640316](http://www.economist.com/node/21640316)

<comment><USER12> Unless I am reading the article wrong, that says that children of high income earners do better on the SAT, and that high income parents spend a lot on education.

I don't see anything about the correlation between parent income and child income.

<comment><AUTHOR> High earning parents are able to pay for prep schools, tutoring, materials. Those children get into elite schools. Those graduates of elites schools go on to elite, well-paid jobs.

"On graduation, many members of America's future elite will head for the law firms, banks and consultancies where starting salaries are highest."

Here are some more explicit articles on the phenomenon:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/rich- peo...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/rich-people-raise- kids-family-wealth/399809/)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11763836/Wealthy- pare...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11763836/Wealthy-parents- create-glass-floor-to-ensure-children-succeed-regardless-of-talent.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children- and-p...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-and-poor- ones-are-raised-very-differently.html?_r=0)

If you'd like to read a study on it ("Poor Little Rich Kids? The Determinants of the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth"), you can do so here:

[http://ftp.iza.org/dp9227.pdf](http://ftp.iza.org/dp9227.pdf)

Here's another from Pew:

[http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/07/fsm-irs- repo...](http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/07/fsm-irs- report_artfinal.pdf?la=en)

If you want more information, google "social mobility united states", "intergenerational mobility united states", and read "Twilight of the Elites" and "The Son also Rises."

<comment><USER12> The problem with that bit from the Economist is that it no data were presented to back it up. When it comes to these topics, there's pretty sloppy journalism all around, including the original NY Times article.

The Atlantic article just quotes the IZA article, which is about wealth transfer in Sweden, not income. Wealth is heavily affected by spending habits; income less so. And t Telegraph and NY Times articles don't offer anything concrete on the subject.

The Pew source _does_ address the subject. The key part is:

> Approximately half of parental income advantages are passed on to children. > The IGE [intergenerational elasticity], when averaged across all levels of > parental income, is estimated at 0.52 for men and 0.47 for women.

(That means that if someone earns $40k above average, their children can be expected to earn $20k above average.)

In comparison, IGE in UK is 0.5, France is 0.41, and Denmark is 0.15. [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Intergen...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Intergenerational_mobility_graph-1.jpg)

IGE studies are somewhat scarce, but that's no excuse for the original NY Times making a bunch of unsubstantiated implications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you marry someone who is dissimilar to you in curiosity, interests, aspirations, and experiences (i.e. not someone in a similar place in society to you), then what the heck are you supposed to talk about for forty to sixty years?

<comment><USER15> That sounds like enough time to get bored of talking shop with the same person outside of work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In Evolutionary theory, Population Generics typically assumes random mating. But because of both assortative mating AND a secular trend toward geographical re-distribution across political, social, and economic factors (bankers in NY, techies in SF, etc) you have the potential makings of speciation: Homo Fund Manager, Homo Engineer? And which proto-species who would the first Mars colonists likely come from? Will a long family of engineers shun a potential husband because he stems from a long family of bankers?

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh look! Journalists have opinions on other people's lives.

<comment><USER17> Are they not allowed to? The Upshot seems more like a column than regular news journalism, and they do cite studies and information from other people.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Supreme – a very productive todo app for Mac - <AUTHOR> https://www.supreme.li <comment><USER2> Really good! I'm building a similar thing (actually, very similar), main difference is that yours is a native app, whereas I'm trying to incorporate mine as a new-tab extension to chrome (as I need to be it much more prominent throughout the day. Any chance you can do it as an extension as well? Because then I can simply use yours :-)

If you need help, let me know

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Cross-platform sync is an obvious next step and I'm not sure what would be a good way to do so while keeping data in the user's posession through an extension. Got suggestions? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love the simplicity. I am currently using Google Calendar in a very similar way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Calendar sync is going to be one of the trickier parts, but hopefully in a few releases we'll figure out a _useful_ solution for it.</comment></comment>


When Undercover Credit Card Buys Go Bad - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/12/when-undercover-credit-card-buys-go-bad/ <comment><USER2> I propose that a few fake credit card numbers and names be issued to different companies and that they place them in their records. If there is a breach, finding those fakes will identify where the breach came from. Each set of fakes would only be given to a specific company.

This is similar to how dictionaries (before the internet) would post fake entries to discover if competitors were copying them. Or how (some claim) map makers would plant fake places to identify similar copying. In the credit card case though, it wouldn't harm innocent users who may mistakenly think the fake is real.

<comment><USER3> That wouldn't work.

Your assumption is that these retail companies are storing full credit card information in some large database somewhere, that is not the case at all. Most large retailers only store the full credit card information for seconds while they process the transaction, when the transaction is complete it is discarded.

What the criminals are targeting is the card terminals themselves. Meaning when you swipe your card, as the transaction is being conducted they take a copy of the information and re-transmit it to a host somewhere they control (or to a C&C machine on that network, which they then exfiltrate somehow).

Plus even if you could get your "gotcha" credit cards into the criminal's hands, the chance of law enforcement buying one back is tiny, since the stolen batch is mixed with other cards, and only then a small sub-set is sold (since they verify if the card is still active, and meets other conditions).

My point is, it just won't work with the situation we're dealing with today. Chip & Pin may help reduce retail card theft as it is harder to reproduce a physical card to later use, and internet transactions should require the CSC which a brick and mortar store won't record (even momentarily).

<comment><USER4> Not downvoting, but the number of corporations storing credit card information would terrify you.

Seen it at former jobs as a dba, helped to change that at some, and its among the top ten list of things to check when I start at new one.

<comment><USER3> If they got caught doing that, both VISA and Mastercard will essentially ban them. At least if it is an insecure as you make it sound and they haven't met PCI DSS.

So instead of storing known gotcha cards in these databases, a likely better solution would be to discontinue the use of these databases.

Most major retailers don't store credit card numbers. The full information never leaves the terminal, and is discarded when the transaction is complete.

PS - Thanks for "Not downvoting" but why would you anyway? Nothing I said contradicts anything you've said. I said large retailers aren't storing CC information. Are you claiming they do? If so, name names.

<comment><USER5> There are plenty of small "mom & pop" sites out there that store full credit card info, in plain text, in unsecured databases, in blatant disregard of card company policies. They go with the thinking that it costs to much to implement security and nothing will ever happen to us. We hear about the big breaches on the news, but I would bet for every big breach we hear about on the news there are thousands of smaller breaches that don't get recognized.

For example, about two years ago I had a property management company ask me to build out a site to handle rent payments for them. They wanted to store and have access to the full credit card numbers to manually process transactions for failed or late payments. When I told them they were not allowed to do that they terminated the contract with me. I know they went on to hire a developer to build out a site for them and store credit card numbers. While I don't know if they are still doing it, it did happen for an extensive period of time.

<comment><USER6> I prefer to put consequences in terms of money.

That said, on the flip side, because of things like "Dual Control" the PCI DSS is physically impossible for some small companies to abide by. In the past we dealt with credit cards and had a few audits, and they admitted that many of the points are aimed at companies that don't consist of just two people.

Also, look at it from their POV. In a normal course of business a lot of these mom and pops probably already are storing credit card information on paper and/or in word documents. So you're saying the system you build for them is going to be, in some ways, less useful than their current ad-hoc system.

My mom & pop tax guy emails me my tax return as an encrypted pdf, with the password being... the last 4 digits of my SSN.

<comment><USER5> Oh there is no question if you bring paper records in to the mix there are enormous opportunities. I worked at a mom & pop restaurant for several years. In the attic of the restaurant were stacks of boxes with credit card receipts dating back to the mid-80s at least. While the chances of many of these cards being valid now are significantly reduced, there is always that slight chance. I have a credit card from the early 90s that the number has not changed (kind of nice in a way as I can recite the number by memory now).

On the flip side though, to some extent, I would consider these records safer than a website. At least to gain access to these records you would have to physically enter the building, climb in the attic, sift through hundreds of boxes, gather the info you want, and then leave. This would also require you be in the general location of the building and have knowledge of the records being there. Hacking a website database from across the globe is a whole lot easier, so you I would say that their existing paper system is more secure to a degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pig notice only on checkout? That doesn't necessarily point to some issue with his payment method. The checkout server is likely different than the content server and may be subject to different protections.

Imho they are running the standard 'enemy IP' blocklists used by p2p filesharers for may years. Where one sees law enforcement using computers, one must first assume incompetence. In all likelihood he/she was using a machine at a known cop shop (Windows) without any sort of IP masking.

Some cops are highly trained IT specialists, but many investigators are actually just senior traffic enforcers who have been promoted into "technology crime" units. They have training and paper certifications, but lack any deep knowledge re technology. They make lots of mistakes. Think flowers by irene.

<comment><USER8> You missed an important point: if they wait until checkout then the payment process will complete and they'll get to walk away with law enforcement's money.

They have every incentive to wait until the very end to tip their hand.

<comment><USER9> These fraud shops make you deposit first then you go shopping much like how silk rd worked, so at anytime could have seized the coins.

For all we know this screen upon checkout is random, and whoever doesn't complain to get their money back is the cop. Most fraud outfits have major customers they deal with or cashout teams they offer specific BINs over chat, the online store is for bottom tier thieves on public sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You would think that law enforcement would already be using a VPN or Tor for stuff like this.

<comment><USER11> I would think they'd block any IP that wasn't from a known VPN or Tor exit as a noob filter.

<comment><USER3> If criminals stopped selling to stupid people, they wouldn't have much of a market.

Smart crooks don't break the law. Stupid ones do.

Breaking the law isn't cost effective, and I am not talking about morals, I am saying that the additional overhead involved in covering your tracks and the potential liabilities (years of $0 or negative dollars income, legal fees) doesn't make sense.

Only rarely do you get a legitimately intelligent criminal, and that is often the result of personality issues/emotional problems.

<comment><USER12> This is nonsense. Without writing an essay here, you are apparently focusing on the criminals in jail.

There are plenty of very successful and intelligent criminals that have long, prosperous careers in theft.

Bernie Madoff ran a very successful, very illegal Ponzi scheme until he was nearly 80.

And that's not even to touch on the internet ability to let you violate the laws of counties you aren't physically in against citizens your gov doesn't care about (eg Russia to US), and therefore greatly reduce the risk for punishment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why are we still using Credit Cards as payment processing? Why can't we have something with a "Push" mechanism, instead of the "Pull" with the CCs.

</comment><comment><USER14> I went to Rescator mentioned in the article and noticed they are using ICQ for contact..

Anyone know why?? Seems like an odd choice.

<comment><USER9> Tradition, all the Russian/CIS carders have always used jabber or ICQ mainly because they aren't worried about being caught and don't care about the security of their customers either. The bigger fraud outfits like Rescator are likely politically protected being a nephew to a cabinet minister or son of a Novosibirsk police captain. If you are a non connected Russian and try to run a fraud superstore the US feds can bribe lower level police agencies there to go make your life hell.

<comment><USER15> Your first sentence insinuates that Jabber is insecure. Could you elaborate on that? Just genuinely curious, since I used jabber/otr for a while to communicate with friends.

<comment><USER9> They seldom use OTR, I think infraud (in fraud we trust) still uses a group server in Azerbaijan to cleartext chat on none of these guys really care, some of the boards still use cloudflare.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've never actually heard of successful anti-fraud busts.

Does law enforcement have any achievements or are they wasting time?

These don't even know to use vpn exit points and not use government ip addresses? Seriously?

<comment><USER17> They have lots of success, you just don't usually hear about it. Here is one of the few that actually got press: [http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/abblog/blog.pl?/pl/2011/11/1...](http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/abblog/blog.pl?/pl/2011/11/1320261605.html)

<comment><USER16> That's a really poor example of success.

 _The Romanian court handed down [a] suspended sentence_

<comment><USER17> Because he already spent two years in prison.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing the Web Audio Editor in Firefox Developer Tools - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/06/introducing-the-web-audio-editor-in-firefox-developer-tools/

<comment><USER2> A little over five years ago, when a whole lot of people were telling me that Javascript could do anything that Flash could do, whenever I brought up anything related to audio, I'd get silence. Writing something like [http://www.audiotool.com/](http://www.audiotool.com/) to operate in the browser was just not possible without Flash (or maybe Java)

The continued envelope-pushing going on at Mozilla with regards to audio in the browser has been great to watch unfold. Part of what made the web browser so interesting to me was that I could easily build things in it using a text editor. I didn't need to buy a compiler or a textbook, because I could look at an interesting website and peek under the hood. It's been a gateway into other more complicated realms of software production for me, and it's exciting to see audio signal processing tools coming into the fold as well.

<comment><USER3> > . Writing something like > [http://www.audiotool.com/](http://www.audiotool.com/) to operate

Sorry but in terms of holding the tempo the browser is still not accurate.Audio Synthesis is only one part of the problem.Flash is bloody accurate in term of sequencing and playing sounds at the right time.The browser is just not.that's why Flash sequencers are possible,but WebAPI ones arent.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. I made a drum machine that, while has a few bugs (the beat url), tempo isn't one of them. Even when switching tabs.

[http://beatpetite.com](http://beatpetite.com)

As an aside, the drum sounds themselves are generate using the web audio api.

<comment><USER2> I don't think I can edit my other comment, so here's a new reply: The tempo's jittery for me, and the audio's dropping here and there, just with a single row of 16th note hihats. It also totally destroys the back button, flooding the browser history. I'm running Windows 8.1, Firefox 30, 16gb RAM, firstname.lastname@example.com (it's my HD video & multitrack audio editing machine)

I'm not even switching tabs.

Doesn't appear to even display in IE11, although to be fair, I just opened my DR-110 up and, while it renders, and most of the buttons are functional, the knobs are not, and no audio plays back.

Playback of beatpetite seems steadier in Chrome, but as I typed that, I got an audio hiccup. The visuals are noticeably jerky. Again comparing to my DR-110, it's pretty clear I'm using a different approach to the audio playback because I'm getting seriously weird glitches on my playback. And the CSS buttons don't quite line up on mine in Chrome the way it does in the other two browsers.

I wouldn't spend too much time chasing a solid tempo down. That's essentially out of your control.

<comment><USER4> This is great feedback, thank you!

Yeah, I think Firefox isn't quite up to the job yet. But I think Chrome's performance is indicative that it is possible.

I'm using the technique described in this article, but with a web worker, meaning that the clock doesn't stop when changing tabs.

[http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/audio/scheduling/](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/audio/scheduling/)

<comment><USER2> Awesome, thanks for sharing. This definitely looks like the way to go in the future, and with any luck, the abilities of the various browsers will catch up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now waiting for the visual counterpart of this: [http://imgur.com/T95SENl](http://imgur.com/T95SENl)

</comment><comment><USER6> Finally - someone gets the UI for this right! This is the first thing that has made me want to install fireFox since...well, since Chrome came out.

</comment><comment><USER7> Download link because I spent 10 minutes looking through the Mozilla site for the right version: [http://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/channel/#aurora](http://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/channel/#aurora)

</comment><comment><USER8> Question: how would this impact music piracy and the ability of every day people to rip audio off the web?

</comment><comment><USER9> holy crap this is awesome. Firefox is no longer using a proprietary audio API right? assuming it's the standard Web Audio API i might have a reason to reintroduce Firefox to my toolset now. :)

<comment><USER10> Web Audio has been supported as of Firefox 25 or something: [http://caniuse.com/audio-api](http://caniuse.com/audio-api)

It never had a proprietary API, their proposal for WebAudio just lost out to the Chrome proposal and the latter was standardized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does this support DRM on the audio files?</comment>


Designing for iPad: Reality Check - <AUTHOR> http://informationarchitects.jp/designing-for-ipad-reality-check/

<comment><USER2> Great article, this quote stuck out for me:

      The same rule applies to visual metaphors: Just as any
      literary metaphor, a visual metaphor confuses if it doesn't
      clarify; it breaks if you stretch it; and it becomes
      ridiculous if you combine it with a second or third
      metaphor.

      Avoid metaphor that do not clarify; if a metaphor darkens
      the meaning of what you are trying to express, don't use it.

<comment><USER3> Huh?

<comment><USER2> What part of the quote are you having trouble understanding, sir?

<comment><USER4> I think that it would be clearer if there were some examples of nested metaphors or metaphors that 'darken' other metaphors. Maybe there is in the actual text, but the quote out of context seems a little abstract.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, there are plenty of examples in the text. I didn't think it necessary to paste the entire article in the comment box.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

<comment><USER5> He didn't say an example was necessary, he said it could have made the quote clearer.

<comment><USER2> _whoosh_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> iPad Human Interface Guide is an in-depth exploration on iPad app UX and is now publicly available:

[http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/Gene...](http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/General/Conceptual/iPadHIG/iPadHIG.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> _We found that the iPad applications we designed, made it relatively easy to be translated back into websites. The iPad could prove to be a wonderful blue print to design web sites and applications. If it works on the iPad, with a few tweaks, it will work on a laptop._

In that case you might as well skip the iPad application and focus on the cross-platform web application. Many of the current iPad applications don't really need to be native apps.

</comment><comment><USER8> Glad I'm not the only one who thought many of the popular iPad applications were silly.

The Average Reading Time idea is intriguing, however, I don't expect it to be of much use. Reading time varies vastly depending on the material. Nobody reads a journal article at the same pace as a novel, for instance.

<comment><USER9> It knows how quickly you change/scroll through pages while you read, so it can make a reasonable assumption of the number of words you read per minute and create an estimation that way.

<comment><USER8> Yes and no. I've tried this sort of thing before, and obviously the machine can't know when you are actually reading a paragraph slowly or when you've just been distracted. It would have to be clever about weighting an overall average with a short term average. I'll be curious to see how they do it, definitely.

<comment><USER10> It says: "To find your average reading time all you need is taking a two minute test reading into one of the texts in the app and you're set."

<comment><USER11> Yeah, that's where I went from "this could be useful" to "that's stupid". It's like doing an internet speed test to determine how long it will take to download a file, ignoring how fast the file has actually been downloading.

<comment><USER10> It's called calibration.

<comment><USER11> It's one thing to calibrate, it's another to rely on context-sensitive data and pretend it is universal, when instead you can just rely on the context- specific data for any specific context and refine the estimates as you go. To my knowledge, web browsers do not "calibrate" like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I read the whole thing and learned nothing about design for iPad. Confused.

<comment><AUTHOR> What did you expect?

<comment><USER12> Some kind of a practical advice I could use in my work. If I knew what it looked like I might not need it. Maybe "we tried this and users hated it, but then we tried that and they loved it and lessons here is that that sort of things works better in such and such circumstances".

First of all, for many/most users iPad is a part of a different workflow compared to iPhone, and if people are to use it differently we should design differently.

Each iPhone's screen should serve single purpose and unambiguously lead to the next action. That way you get an app that can be used on the go. My guess is that this is not true for iPad, as it's not likely to be used on the go, so there will be a bigger preference towards multi-purpose screens. I would like someone to talk about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-zed Aha, so this is what an iPad developer does.

"In order to answer the questions: Is the font big enough? Does it render well? Is the Schriftbild (text impression) inviting or rejecting? How does it feel to read? ...we had no other choice than printing out your screens on a 1:1 scale. We had to print out hundreds of pixel designs to get a feeling for the new canvas and the high resolution... After two months of printing, we did get the type choices and sizes quite right..."

I have no words.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's wrong with that? I would guess that's not the only thing they did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure I fully agree with his argument against using materials and textures to humanize a software interface. I do know that it requires a designer who's execution is better than average, but I don't think it's as much of a distraction as they proclaim. I also think it largely applies to the type of software one is designing. For example, the stock Notes app is fine but for Cultured Code's Things, it would not fit since task management is a much deeper interaction.

Anyhow, this article wasn't really informative, seems to be mostly opinion driven and the message is scattered. I showed the iPad to my parents this weekend, they were enamored by it because it was easy to relate with compared to their clunky Windows-based "laptops" -- a UX that's cold and impersonal.

<comment><USER10> Did you read the full article? Doesn't seem like it, since "it requires a designer who's execution is better than average" is exactly what it says. And not just that, it also defines the criteria for using metaphors and textures.</comment></comment>


FAA Database: 20 Pilot Write-Ups Incl. UI and MCAS issues - <AUTHOR> https://pastebin.com/5Cw5Ektf <comment><AUTHOR> This is the full list of Boeing 737 Max incidents reported by pilots to the FAA. Many of the reports relate to problems with UI design, documentation, and training. Three of the reports are specific to the MCAS software implicated in the Lion Air crash and a suspect in the Ethiopian crash. In two of those cases, the pilots were aware of MCAS and still had (harrowing) problems during their flights. (The third mention of MCAS is a complaint about the lack of disclosure/documentation.)

Thanks to the Dallas News for breaking this story [1], to @tuna-piano for the NASA ASRS database reference, and to @dpwm for the regex. The original story explains that the database is maintained by NASA and pilots' identifying information like names, airlines, and some locations are redacted to protect their anonymity.

[1] [https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2019/03/12/boei...](https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2019/03/12/boeing-737-max-8-pilots- complained-feds-months-suspected-safety-flaw)

</comment><comment><USER2> Be aware; the list contains a number of events involving the B737-800, which is an NG aircraft, not the MAX.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, that's a limitation in the database. They show Max's as 737-800s. The list was filtered with regex to only pull out incidents that mention the Max.</comment></comment>


Vstr: C string library designed to work optimally with vector I/O - <AUTHOR> http://www.and.org/vstr/ <comment><USER2> Sds from Antirez has a lot of the same features (not all), and is kept updated since it's used by redis and other projects. [https://github.com/antirez/sds/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/antirez/sds/blob/master/README.md)

Vstr appears to have last been updated in 2006. It does have a comparison of different string libraries, though that's also dated: [http://www.and.org/vstr/comparison](http://www.and.org/vstr/comparison)

<comment><USER3> 2006 being the last update makes me not want to use it. But I suspect it is a stable library that doesn't need much update. I'm just getting back into c/c++ development and I'm very interested in libraries like these.

<comment><USER4> > 2006 being the last update makes me not want to use it. Why

<comment><USER3> security concerns, might be unfounded, but something to consider

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are these claims of O(1) behavior accurate? They might not be O(n), where n is the length of the string, but they sound likely to be O(v), where v is the number of 'iovec chunks' that the string is using (which could get large, depending upon how you are building up your strings)

<comment><USER6> If your strings are short that's basically O(1), which could be nice for some workloads - enums, json keys, etc.

<comment><USER7> if all your strings are of size < c, you can do any string operation on a single string in constant time.

<comment><USER8> There are certain (randomized) operations that you can't…</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Web-based typing game from the maker of Minecraft, using Unity3D - <AUTHOR> http://drop.notch.net/ <comment><USER2> Fantastic, using Unity which isn't available for Linux. Hardly deserving of "web-based".

<comment><USER3> Unity has an Google Native Client target which runs on Linux Chrome. They also recently got Unity compiling to asm.js, so as soon as that's more widely supported, Unity _will_ be "web-based" in the more ideal sense.

<comment><USER4> I do believe that doesn't change anything; having it available on a proprietary 32-bit application that happens to run on Linux does not make it web-based. As a person who still uses Firefox (on Linux), denoting "works in Chrome only" as "web-based" reminds me too much of the good old IE days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Listen up you extremely cantankerous lot, it's the submission's title that is 'wrong' in calling it web-based, not the fact that it uses a Unity plugin. I am amused by the wisecracks calling Notch's work a failure because of a small inaccuracy in the submission title.

</comment><comment><USER6> He also uploaded just the fractal-like animation: <http://trom.s3-website-us- east-1.amazonaws.com>

It seems like there is a Ludum Dare event going on: <https://twitter.com/notch/status/328290085487398913>

</comment><comment><USER7> 196! The key is to recognize that there are a limited number of words you type. The first one is always "drop", and then it seems to randomly choose from "harmony", "eternal", "gnostic", "clean", "universe", "fractal", etc. Once you play enough times, you'll start to recognize the words before they fully appear.

Also, try to press enter every 4 words for the biggest bonus possible. If you've gotten a lot of short words recently, you can probably enter 5 words before encountering the overflow error.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's actually harder to read than to type correctly. I only got to 48 before it turned unreadable. Cool idea though.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Web-based"

"install now!"

No. Stop it.

<comment><USER10> "Web-based [...] _using Unity3D_ "

If you didn't have a Flash player and the game was made in Flash (surely that would meet one's expectations for a "web-based game", or at least until very recently) and you didn't have a Flash plugin, would you complain as well?

<comment><USER11> One problem with Unity is lack of a linux plugin (whereas Flash has one). Is it "web-based" if it doesn't work everywhere the web does?

But whatever your answer to that theoretical question, in practice, I cannot play Unity games because I'm only using linux machines. IMHO not being able use a platform is reasonable cause for complaint.

<comment><USER12> Unity has Linux exporting but that's for stand-alone games only, the web plugin isn't available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I only see a blank page

<comment><USER14> Download the Unity Web Player browser extension. <http://unity3d.com/webplayer/>

<comment><USER15> As long as you aren't using Linux... Fail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is cute, but not a very good game. I have no problem typing quickly enough to keep up, but I can't easily read the characters on a gray background, moving around, to get past 50 or so. I get that they're words, so as soon as I can figure out the word (2-3 characters in, since it's usually the same word), it's easier, but still, meh.

And a game where a single error is "start over from the beginning" is a non- fun game, generally.

<comment><USER17>
      "And a game where a single error is "start over from the
       beginning" is a non-fun game, generally."

Before the 1990s nearly all computer games worked like that. Most only ever gave you 3 lives many started you from the beginning again each time you lost a life.

These are widely recognised as some of the most fun computer games in history.

<comment><USER16> There is a difference between _dying_ in a game, and making a single mistake. Failing to jump at the optimal moment or kill a single enemy with your first shot is 'making a single mistake'. Virtually every game which is any fun gives you some opportunity to correct that without dying, let alone without returning to the beginning.

I assure you I've played plenty of pre-1990 video games.

<comment><USER3> Ever played a shmup (e.g. Gradius, Touhou)?

<comment><USER16> Neither of those, but plenty of others (galaxian, contra, etc)

Missing a single shot on a target isn't fatal; getting hit could be, but even then there were usually intermediate points/levels or some other way of making replaying it interesting (non deterministic enemy movement or whatever in some games)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> All I see is a white page...

<comment><USER19> same here. Tried using both chrome + firefox on xubuntu 12.04...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It requires a Unity plugin.

</comment><comment><USER21> Broken. Input doesn't work on OSX 10.7.5/Chrome. It did for a few keystrokes and then died, doesn't work after refresh or anything.

Concept reminds me of a game I played on Amstrad-Schneider cpc 464. It was a space invaders game with your spaceship being in several positions at once. Each position corresponded to a key on keyboard. When you pressed it, you fired a shot and corresponding key for that spaceship slot was changed. Essentially, that's how I learned to type fast.

</comment><comment><USER22> Am I the only one being very underwhelmed by this simply by the fact that it's from Notch? The bar is set so high and this feels like something made by someone doing a Unity tutorial. I know it's a skewed way of thinking but I can't help it.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm confused about how to play. I keep scoring around 45-50 when I just get Overflow even though everything seems to be fine. It definitely seem I'm typing the letters far too quickly, but if I type them slowly I get Underflow or something.

<comment><USER24> There's a buffer of characters at the bottom left and if it gets too full you get overflow. Hit 'enter' to flush it. (Yes, this is confusing)

<comment><USER23> Oh, wow, I had no idea you had to hit 'enter' to submit the buffer you'd typed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm disappointed that I used 5 min to install Unity3D to see this.

</comment><comment><USER14> God darn it Notch. This is gonna make people have forced tunnel vision!

My record was 37. Though I only played it for a few minutes. It's just too damn fast and annoying on your eyesight.

</comment><comment><USER26> uhh. 183. This game is so addictive. don't forget to hit 'enter' about every four words to prevent overflows. more words between 'enters' gives incrementally more points, it seems.

</comment><comment><USER27> Super Hexagon combined with a typing tutor? Awesome!

Love the animation, too.

</comment><comment><USER28> Loading Unity player chrashed my (chrome) browser.

</comment><comment><USER29> what is this man doing to my brain!!!!!!

</comment><comment><USER30> 33, then it hurt my head.</comment>