Air Force's mysterious X-37B space plane passes 400 days in orbit - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/30/air-force-mysterious-x-37b-space-plane-passes-400-days-in-orbit/ <comment><USER2> Funny how the article doesn't mention the X-37 at all, artist renders of which are still available at the Dryden photo gallery and it's listed as "1999 - present" (Although this gallery hasn't been maintained since 2005, so read that as 1999-2005+).

[http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/X-37/index.html](http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/X-37/index.html)

So it looks like it was initially being planned to be run as a NASA project out of Dryden.

Edit: Which I could have found out just by reading wikipedia rather than maintaining a encylopaedic knowledge of the old dryden photo gallery.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's lots of talk about nuclear platforms. I don't believe that's the case with the X-37B for a few reasons. We have better options elsewhere, the X-37B designs I've seen don't seem to fit this picture, and NASA/Boeing Space & Intelligence would not typically deal with nuclear weapon platforms.

I think it's clearly a reconnaissance (ISR) platform. Think Gorgon Stare [1] but for an even wider area. As an aside, Dryden has a long history of testing recon platforms.

Source: I used to work on this stuff (although not the X-37 program)

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Why is this 'secret'? We're not exactly in a cold war anymore and the terrorists don't care if we're in space? Why not just tell us what the plane is up front?

<comment><USER5> What makes you think we're not in a Cold War? There are plenty of countries that are each other's adversaries and are actively trying to undermine one another. Perhaps we aren't in a bilateral Cold War, but it's not like we suddenly have world peace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "If they wanted to make it a weapon, the first thing would be to give it a serious main engine"

I don't think asking a robotic arms control activist about orbital mechanics and aerodynamics is going to result in anything insightful.

Plane changes are very expensive if you don't have the aerodynamics to get cross range. So if you have a traditional triangular capsule, yes, you do in fact need a honkin' big engine (and more importantly, a big fuel tank...) to expand your "landing zone". But if you have wings, even if the L/D ratio is not exactly a high performance glider, you still have an immensely larger "landing zone" so you don't need a honkin' big engine. Thats why they invest mass and volume in those wings instead of engines, tanks, and a parachute.

Another way to phrase it, is without wings you pretty much land somewhere along the ground track you would have passed over plus or minus like ten miles. But with wings, you can get hundreds, maybe thousands of miles of cross range glide. Your orbit can be over Chicago but you can decide to land in Florida.

We've had the strategic nuclear triad for decades, this thing's certainly big enough to make a strategic quadrilateral or maybe one leg of the triad is getting too expensive and needs retirement.

If you have patience, perhaps for a doomsday weapon or strategic deterrent, you don't need wings, giant engines, or much of a parachute. Its obviously a sensor platform not a weapon.

So what kind of sensor platform exists where its cheaper to launch 1000 one terabyte hard drives in a NAS than to downlink all that stuff. Well, "strategic" photographic imaging, maybe some kind of wide bandwidth SDR... The kind of thing were you press the record button and a year later gather demographic strategic intel, rather than a handful of snapshots of one semi- tactical target. Like how many total radar units does Iran have, well, you listen to the entire surveillance radar band over the country for an entire year, then do a lot of analysis once it lands. Not for "gimmie a pic of that one target today" type questions.

<comment><USER7> >>If you have patience, perhaps for a doomsday weapon or strategic deterrent, you don't need wings, giant engines, or much of a parachute. Its obviously a sensor platform not a weapon.

Thank you. The other thing is; everything that goes up must come down. With the X-37 you have control of WHERE it comes down, and less exclusively, when. So much less risk of your tech falling into enemy hands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why is this vehicle still referenced as X-37? The mission appears to be reconnaissance and no longer aerospace vehicle research.

<comment><USER9> Good question, perhaps giving it an actual name would reveal too much. General consensus seems to think its a 'deploy on demand' reconnaissance transport (basically a bunch of signal or optical gear in the payload that it can point at various places and then return). That would make it something like an MQ-37 or RQ-37.

<comment><USER10> The return ability also lets you collect data and store it on board for recovery later. Any sensor that can see through clouds could generate a colossal amount of data and there is never enough bandwidth!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the first I've heard of it. Wikipedia says it's just under 10 feet tall. I would never have guess it that small from the images I've looked at. Aside from you know, the man standing at the bottom of the wikipedia photo...

<comment><USER12> For the lazy: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37)

<comment><USER13> > measuring over 29 feet (8.8 m) in length

<comment><USER11> Yeap. My apologies, I was looking at the height.

Height: 9 ft 6 in (2.9 m)

<comment><USER13> Admittedly it is up for debate which is length and which is height in a VTHL craft ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone know if this would be capable of carrying a weapon that could hit targets on earth? I assume all you'd need is a smart aerodynamic projectile and gravity would take care of the rest...

<comment><USER15> Yes, but: nuclear weapons in space are prohibited by at least two treaties to which the US is a signatory; any point on the globe worth hitting with conventional weapons would be _far_ easier and cheaper to hit with, say, a cruise missile or a drone-launched Hellfire; last but not least, you'd first have to build a weapon to fit in this thing's cargo bay, which almost certainly has not been done because, given the first two mentioned points, it's not worth anyone's time or money to bother.

To understand the X-37, you need a reasonable knowledge of the origins of the Space Shuttle program. The only reason that program came to even the bastardized fruition it did was because the Air Force signed on, and they did so only because they needed a means of servicing and maintaining their orbital equipment. In theory, and occasionally in practice, this means involved actual human astronauts going up and doing spanner work on satellites in orbit, but this was expensive and fraught with undue difficulty; cheaper and easier was simply to stuff the whole satellite into the Shuttle's payload bay and haul it back down the gravity well for repair, refit, and relaunch, and indeed many Space Shuttle missions involved precisely this evolution. (It's probable, if uncertain due to the Air Force's bent for secrecy with regard to their payloads, that the Shuttle was used to return some or most of these satellites to orbit; on the other hand, a Titan-IV's probably cheaper, and the Air Force has used plenty of those, too. I don't know much about what goes into that sort of decision.)

The X-37, then, far from being some kind of conspiracy-theory FOBS, is just a Space-Shuttle-style "space truck". The major difference is that technology has now reached a point where it's possible for such a vehicle to satisfy the Air Force's mission parameters without having to involve all the complex, costly, and potentially disastrous encumbrances required to carry living humans into space.

 _Edit!_ I've finally just recalled the name of the book from which I gained my understanding of the politicking which took the Space Shuttle program from initial conception to final operational "Space Transportation System". That book is _The Space Shuttle Decision_ , published by NASA as part of the NASA History Series, and you can read it online at [http://www.nss.org/resources/library/shuttledecision/](http://www.nss.org/resources/library/shuttledecision/) and, oh, probably lots of other places as well. A bit dry, but marvelously detailed and surprisingly objective given its origins; I recommend it unreservedly to anyone with an interest in the history of its subject matter.

<comment><USER16> Could they potentially use it to grab other countries satellites in a time of war? Such as taking down GLONASS or something else.

Why would the Air force need a "space truck" and not NASA?

Its easy to point the conspiracy theory finger when the military is involved. Especially when they are staying silent about what the plane's purpose is.

<comment><USER15> Satellites in LEO, probably, albeit at enormously wasteful expense compared to, say, an SM-3, or some other sort of anti-satellite missile. (Ships with the Aegis guided missile system mount SM-3s, and they've been successfully tested against satellites in low orbit.)

I haven't time at the moment to check, but I'd assume GPS and GLONASS birds are in geostationary orbit (or whatever they call that now), which would complicate matters significantly. I imagine the Air Force probably has some sort of weapon in mind for such cases, but I wouldn't begin to know how to guess what that is, except presumably a big rocket, whose payload is a small rocket, whose payload in turn is a tiny warhead with some very precise attitude jets.

NASA never wanted a "space truck". Ever see _2001: A Space Odyssey_? NASA wanted something along the lines of the spaceplane/station/moonbase system depicted in the first act; the Space Shuttle program was all they could sell to Congress, largely thanks to the efforts of now-deceased then-Senator William Proxmire. (If you've ever heard a science-fiction fan curse that name and wondered why, now you know; if you want the full story, read the book whose URL I just edited into my prior comment.)

And, yes, "its [sic] easy to point the conspiracy theory finger when the military is involved." It's easy to do a lot of things, which is not the same as saying those things are sensible or worth doing; ignorance, especially of the trivially addressable sort, is no excuse for foolishness.

<comment><USER17> As far as i know, the navigation systems are somewhere in between LEO and geostationary orbit.

<comment><USER18> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_satellite_navig...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_satellite_navigation_orbits.svg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nasa, you can't call it reusable if only the payload( read as: the shuttle ) makes it back.

<comment><USER20> It's not just the payload - the entire airframe comes back and lands...

<comment><USER21> Deletes is referring to the rocket to put it into space also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Major Tracy Bunko — then posted at the Pentagon's Air Force press desk"

Now who can we get to really blow some smoke on these classified projects? Well, there's Major Bunko, sir. They say he can really sling some major... uh... bunko.

</comment><comment><USER23> 'hush hush'</comment>


Investors don't want to meet you. They wanted to be introduced to you - <AUTHOR> http://blog.42floors.com/investors-dont-want-meet-wanted-introduced/ <comment><USER2> I'm impressed with Jason's posts. He seems to be methodically working through all the misconceptions of inexperienced founders. This is an important and subtle one. Investors assume that if they're hearing about you first from you, you can't be any good. If you were good, they'd already have heard about you, because you'd have found a way to get introduced to them by someone they trust.

Even if investors didn't start out with this bias, they'd soon learn it from experience.

<comment><USER3> _Investors assume that if they 're hearing about you first from you, you can't be any good. If you were good, they'd already have heard about you, because you'd have found a way to get introduced to them by someone they trust._

So you're admitting that they're social-proof whores who refuse to think for themselves, even about the subject matter of their own jobs?

VCs should be mortally _humiliated_ by the fact that the game they're running is, after all is counted, a feudal reputation economy-- all flashes, no substance.

Yet people are surprised that VC, as an asset class, has been a stinker for the past 13 years.

<comment><USER4> Turns out most men are social proof whores. They are much more likely to date somebody who has been introduced to them by a friend they trust.

Oh, and women too.

C'mon. Weak argument here man. Newsflash: We trust the people that... we trust.

<comment><USER5> _Weak argument here man_

You're explaing why people are basically racist and xenophobic. Congrats. Unfortunaely, this makes your posture politically untenable / incorrect and dangerous. It also paints VCs with guilt by association. Because, ya know what? they are certainly sexist and racist based upon the data. Unfortunately. Bad news for this argument is tha VC cash comes from Public Pension funds and other LPs which politically cannot support such institutionalized _bias_ against protected classes. Of course, the loophole is that VCs are not employers. So they are legally entitled to be as rascist, mysoginistic, and otherwise discriminatory as they damn well please. But don't go around publicising it.

<comment><USER4> Uhh.... Sure?

Suffice to say I find your comments so absurd that they don't even merit a rebuttal. Consider yours the last word, congrats.

<comment><USER5> Its no more absurd then the appeal to authority from _dating advice_. Because if you look at the quantitative analytics on dating, they are pretty strong. They show rampant/pervasive casual racism and obvious self-segregation. The value of trust should not be underestimated, but if you're not going to go through the bother of thinking through the implications you need to hedge any sweeping proclamations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ooh, this one is really good. Also heartbreaking as someone who invested a TON of time into making personal investment calls. I definitely learned this one the hard way.

One thing that I would add also is that investors don't seem to want to be introduced to you by their non-investor/non-business contacts, so their friends and acquaintances. I learned this one also because I figured that would be a good approach. What seems to happen in this case is the "stink" on you gets transferred to the intermediary and the investor picks up on it.

</comment><comment><USER7> _If you're working in any startup hub, you almost certainly have friends that are working on their own startups. Ask them to help you. The first question should be, "Am I ready to fundraise?"_

I would actually phrase this another way, "Be honest with me: If I asked you to refer me to one of your investors, would you recommend me to him/her or is my startup not there yet?"

<comment><USER8> As someone who, like the OP, is often on the other side of that conversation (I've helped startups raise seed funding and get into accelerators), here are a couple tips:

1) Be specific. Which investor do you want an intro to, and why? I know my investors well. Some of them love meeting early-stage startups. With others, you are wasting your time unless you've already raised significant capital. Other times I can't help at all (recently got asked for an intro by a B2C company--I know my investors from a B2B perspective since that's where my company is, and I'm not sure who would be a best fit for a B2C company.)

2) Be real. If you don't have any customers/pipeline, traction, or even a working demo, you're not ready for investment. For some reason there tends to be a pervasive belief that a "napkin idea" can get funded. Maybe 1% of the time, that's true. But even with a previous exit under my belt, I still had to have some form of traction before I got investors onboard. If you have nothing except an idea, please feel free to ask for advice, but don't ask for advice on looking for investors, because I'm going to tell you to focus on traction first.

<comment><USER9> As it was explained to me, amount of prep work you must do varies by your credibility:

\- First-time founder has to show traction.

\- With a handful of successful startups under the belt, one can make do with a good powerpoint, a prototype and some customer interviews.

\- With a long streak of victories, a napkin is just fine.

Ergo if you're not Steve Jobs, you can't get away with a napkin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Argues its impossible to find the needle in the haystack, so VCs use other founders to sift the chaff.

But a VC was quoted that they funded zero cold contacts. That doesn't sound like its hard; it sounds they're incapable of evaluating cold contacts at all. I'm guessing they use contacts for their expertise, because VCs lack any.

<comment><USER11> Why would they run the risk if they have enough warm leads from trusted contacts? The VC money to startup lead ratio is obviously one sided to present sufficient profit motive to invest in cold introductions. If the VC market becomes sufficiently in favour of warmly introduced startups that there is profit motivation in investing in those startups that cannot garner warm introductions then someone will do it. But they will be assuming much greater risk.

<comment><USER10> The ecosystem changes: sometimes leads are scarce; sometimes plentiful. That can't explain never, ever investing in cold contacts.

Risk can be mitigated by doing some diligence. It sounds to me like the only diligence VCs do (are capable of?) is "what does some other smart guy think?"

I'm not trying to paint VCs as incapable, but this story makes it so likely. Zero cold contacts invested in? Zero ability to evaluate leads on their own? That's pretty damning.

<comment><USER12> You're missing a third category here. "Cold contact" implies that the startup contacts _them_. I imagine the really-smart VCs are going out, doing research/watching the market, and cold-contacting _the startups_ , with nobody having reached out to them first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So is it the same meritocracy(1) of being accepted on a top university?

(1) [http://www.justiceharvard.org/2011/02/episode-08/](http://www.justiceharvard.org/2011/02/episode-08/)

<comment><USER14> Possibly so. People have limited time to process evidence to come to a decision. So they seek out the types of evidence that provide stronger signals. That may cause some false negatives, but since you know it now, that's pretty much your problem. No one owes you an investment in your startup.

(I think this is far less of a problem than access to education, as someone in the position of founding a startup is already on a very high tier of agency and privilege compared to the vast swath of society. Also, you're "born with" connections to startup founders at a far lower rate than you are born with connections to universities, in general.)

Great link, though, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As someone on the East Coast, I feel this is the main reason everyone wants to immediately leave our town to go to the West. We have plenty of VC's around our area, but the network hasn't been built so only the very high up know anyone.

</comment><comment><USER16> Forget about investors. Bootstrap your Company. When you are successful, don't mind them. They like to reap where they have not sown.

</comment><comment><USER17> I was at an event with VC Peter Thiel (founders fund) over the weekend. Someone asked him to contribute to a charitable event during the Q&A. He made the point clear: If you want me to do something for you, come through a trusted friend. I only invest personally if you've been recommended by a trusted friend.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think Jason is overly focusing on one side of the relationship (i.e between the startup and the introducer) when I'd argue in actuality a lot of the value of the introduction depends on how well placed the introducer is to evaluate you.

For example I would rank introducers as:

1) People who are superstars in your field (i.e Peter Thiel if you're a payments startup) or have great track-records in backing super-star companies across fields.

2) People who are experts in their field and the VC trusts. For example if you're in an adjacent space to a current portfolio company, getting an introduction from that portco (or even a reputable non-portco) carries a lot of weight. Or investors who have a track record in your field.

3) People who are customers of your product and the VC trusts. If your customers are gushing about you that makes for a great intro, if a portco emails their VC saying "there's this product that we use and love and the company is raising money" that'll get attention.

4) People who are well placed to evaluate your product/startup and have some relationship with the VC. Similar to (2)/(3) but they don't have to have a strong relationship with the VC. The VC trusts them because of their expertise not because of their relationship.

5) People who are well positioned to evaluate you and your team personally and the VC trusts. So for example people you've worked with in the past who will personally vouch for you.

Below that you basically have introductions from people who (a) Aren't in a position to evaluate your business and (b) Aren't in a position to evaluate your team. So it's basically a case of "we met these guys the other day and they seemed smart and had a nice demo" \- i.e. the VC might spend a bit of extra time looking at it as a favour to the introducer but it's unlikely to be significantly better than meeting at an event, etc.

At that level a bunch of other factors come into play. If an investor is super-into your space or if you've got a strong resume/team they'll likely look at you regardless of how you came to their attention.

</comment><comment><USER19> > This is an important and subtle one. Investors assume that if they're > hearing about you first from you, you can't be any good. If you were good, > they'd already have heard about you, because you'd have found a way to get > introduced to them by someone they trust.

Yes, the investors do "assume", but, for information technology investing, their ROI for the past 10 years sucks (details in a Fred Wilson blog).

VCs don't know the right people to know a significant fraction of people who are really "good". A really "good" startup entrepreneur likely won't know anyone a VC will "trust".

If a VC can't evaluate my work from what I write, then they won't be able to be effective on my Board; I won't be able to hope to be successful with them on my Board; and I won't be able to have them on my Board or have them invest.

I want to be successful in business, but on average VCs are not very successful. Khosla had some recent, sharp remarks on VCs.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's not what you know, but who you know.

<comment><USER21> Its not who you know, but who they know.

<comment><USER22> Its not who you know, but how they know you.

<comment><USER23> It's not what you know, but how you think

<comment><USER24> It's not what you know, but how who you know, know, know how you think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _another top tier VC once told me that out of the thousands of business pitches he receives in his office every year, his firm has never funded one that came in completely cold._

Referring to Chris Sacca ([http://lowercasecapital.com/prospecting/](http://lowercasecapital.com/prospecting/)) perhaps?

<comment><USER25> Majority of VCs/investors (particularly in the bay area) don't give significant importance to cold approach. Lot of savvy founders are aware of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Investors can want whatever the heck they want, but wanting is not getting.

I know plenty of people high up in US business and academic research, but those people and the VCs don't know each other.

VCs and I don't know the same people.

Bluntly, the VCs are a bit below my 'circle' of business acquaintances.

In particular, the fraction of VCs I would hire into my company is tiny, so small to be nearly invisible. Why? Because their technical qualifications in information technology, etc. in a word suck.

I mean, would you hire a VC? For what, _BizDev_? What if a VC gave you advice on how to invest your IRA?

How many VCs can code, productively with today's technology? How about be a system administrator for a high end server farm or network?

"The single most important decision you will ever make is with whom to do business."

Extra credit for the source.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is the sort of thing you need to be aware of, in all areas of life, if you want to be successful. People have filters, and you're fighting a stupid, uphill battle if you want to get through them. Spend that time going around them. It doesn't matter if you're looking for funding from that top firm, a date with that gorgeous woman, a job in that blue-chip, or a visa to visit a post-Soviet wonderland.

Everything worth having comes from others, and a confrontational attitude is the worst one, if you're trying to get through filters, that's how they perceive you. If at any time it feels like you're beating your head against a wall, that's because you are. Take a step back and figure out what you're doing wrong.

</comment><comment><USER27> Thank you Jason. I direct a not-for-profit foreign government and private foundation incubator based in San Francisco. We just completed a one-month quasi-accelerator for companies that came to the US. None were ready for VC funding and we made this clear. Despite our best effort to get the entrepreneurs to focus on customer development, many spent their time on VCs and angel networks. They got meetings but not much else. We are going to make sure that all new companies participating in future accelerators read your post.

</comment><comment><USER28> This leads me to the question: How you get networked with people that know investors, when your startup is in a non-hub place? (like, not in United States or Europe)

</comment><comment><USER29> Another thing you can do if you are are a practitioner in a particular domain is to let your vendors and partners know that you're open to doing due diligence calls on their behalf. Then if you do take a call, be circumspect but honest in your advice/feedback.

That can be great for building your network for the day when you might want funding, advice, or 3rd party intros.

</comment><comment><USER30> So many hoops you have to jump through to "do a startup" (I want to differentiate between starting your own company).

It's starting to look like less freedom and more BS compared to working for BigCo.

</comment><comment><USER19> The actual sense of the title of this thread is just not true. My experience is that plenty of information technology (IT) VCs are plenty eager to talk seriously without any introduction except an e-mail from a startup founder.

What I learned, to my great surprise, is that apparently the VCs are under some quite severe constraints. So, they are forced, from whatever, to ignore essentially everything about a project I learned doing projects in business, academic research, and for the US DoD.

Instead, for an IT project they want to see, as about the second thing, some running software. That there might be a lot of crucial work before such software, work that makes the software itself trivial, just is not in their experience and is nearly always way beyond their nearly always rather meager technical backgrounds.

So, for the running software, they want to "play with it", likely essentially to look at the user interface (UI) and estimate how well many users will like it.

For more, they want to see some forms of 'traction' which apparently they use as a surrogate for accounting data traditional in commercial bank lending or private equity investing.

For a deeper look, they like simplistic 'patterns' based on past history of IT VC taken fairly narrowly. So, they have a fundamental problem seeing or evaluating something that is really new, even if, say, the US DoD problem sponsors could see the power and value.

So, I have a list of 40+ VCs eager to "play with" my software when it goes live. I got an introduction to none of them and for each of them just sent e-mail. They responded with e-mail and at least one phone conversation. They are impressed enough with the 'market', the 'technology' to the (meager) extent they and value it, and the goals. Then they just want to see it working, hopefully also with 'traction'. How much? One VC firm said 100,000 unique users a month. With my site that might be $12,800 a month in revenue at which time, with my low 'burn rate' of a sole proprietor solo founder, I should be on a nice path of 'organic' growth and still 100% owner.

Yes, my situation is not 'standard', but neither are successes in the VC business.

The VCs need to learn how to look at and reliably evaluate work that is new, typically just on paper; US research academics and high end US DoD problem sponsors can; VCs cannot. So far maybe that lapse has not much hurt them. But, generally, gotta tell you, the VCs are way, way behind the _leading edge_ of US science, technology, and entrepreneurship.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to kill the messenger-- OP is right-- but that "only our kind, dear" stance is an arrogant attitude for people who are spending _other people 's fucking money_.

Fuck all of those emasculated half-men who can't bite down on a decision themselves, but must slurp down the pre-chewed, half-digested chyme of social proof.

I could say a lot more but it's already obvious where the good people stand.</comment>


Bourne shell idioms - <AUTHOR> http://billharlan.com/pub/papers/Bourne_shell_idioms.html

<comment><USER2> Maybe a wiki would be more appropriate. Then we could contribute things like:

Count the number of times a given line occurs with $ sort | uniq -c | sort -n

$ awk '{x[$0]++}END{for(y in x) print y, x[y]}' (helpful on billion-line files, so that you dont have to sort)</comment>


Smartphones can be fooled by fake, digitally composed fingerprints - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/technology/fingerprint-security-smartphones-apple-google-samsung.html <comment><USER2> I shouldn't be surprised, but the reporting on this makes it sound way different than the actual research. Specifically, none of the research appears to have been performed on, or tested against _ACTUAL SMARTPHONE_ implementations - for example:

"Experiments on a capacitive fingerprint dataset, similar to the one used by Apple TouchID, showed that it is possible to break 6.88% of users' account in 5 attempts if the FMR setting of the matching algorithm (Verifinger 6.1 SDK) was set to 0.01% and each subject was enrolled with one finger and 12 partial impressions per finger."

It seems that using commercial fingerprint software and captive systems 'similar to the one used by Apple TouchID' is very different from actually testing your theories against, you know, Apple TouchID.

The way you believe TouchID works may be significantly better or worse than it actually does, so don't you need to test iPhones if you're going to be giving scary quotes to reporters about them being insecure?

<comment><USER3> _> I shouldn't be surprised, but the reporting on this makes it sound way different than the actual research. Specifically, none of the research appears to have been performed on, or tested against ACTUAL SMARTPHONE implementations_

That is exactly what the article says. Specifically:

 _The researchers did not test their approach with real phones, and other security experts said the match rate would be significantly lower in real-life conditions._

and

 _"To really know what the impact would be on a cellphone, you'd have to try it on the cellphone," she said._

and

 _Dr. Ross acknowledged the limitations of the work._

Half of the article is about the limitations of the approach the paper used, so I fail to understand your criticism of the reporting.

<comment><USER2> The article currently linked here is not the same one originally linked. It was changed after I made my post.

That said, the headline still explicitly calls out smartphones.

<comment><USER4> >article currently linked here is not the same one originally linked //

Grr, hate it when they do that, it's clearly too hard to add a second link "previously the linked article was: ..."?

<comment><USER5> Like here? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14318899](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14318899)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the IEEE paper referenced in the article:

[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7893784/?reload=true](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7893784/?reload=true)

PDF version:

[http://www.cse.msu.edu/~rossarun/pubs/RoyMemonRossMasterPrin...](http://www.cse.msu.edu/~rossarun/pubs/RoyMemonRossMasterPrint_TIFS2017.pdf)

Abstract:

This paper investigates the security of partial fingerprint-based authentication systems, especially when mul- tiple fingerprints of a user are enrolled. A number of con- sumer electronic devices, such as smartphones, are beginning to incorporate fingerprint sensors for user authentication. The sensors embedded in these devices are generally small and the resulting images are, therefore, limited in size. To compensate for the limited size, these devices often acquire multiple partial impressions of a single finger during enrollment to ensure that at least one of them will successfully match

<comment><USER7> I skimmed the paper but I don't see which iPhone they were able to unlock with this method. Do you know if the resolution of the fingerprint scanner differs between iPhone models?

<comment><USER2> > I don't see which iPhone they were able to unlock with this method

They either didn't try, or were unable to and didn't document the results.

<comment><USER8> According to the article itself, they never actually tried unlocking a real phone.

<comment><USER9> That strains credulity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have the feeling that the researched tried to unlock real phones and failed.

It sounds weird when you say you have made a research about security of fingerprint scanners on phones without actually trying the attacks on those phones.

<comment><USER11> > I have the feeling that the researched tried to unlock real phones and > failed.

That sounds plausible.

Think about how much more impressive their results would be if they demonstrated the attack on real phones. But they have a paper to publish, so why detract from the paper by mentioning that tests on real phones didn't pan out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _" Dr. Memon said their findings indicated that if you could somehow create > a magic glove with a MasterPrint on each finger, you could get into 40 to 50 > percent of iPhones within the five tries allowed before the phone demands > the numeric password, known as a personal identification number."_

I don't understand how this is possible at all. I've always assumed that each fingerprint is essentially turned into a hash, and that there must be something like at least 10,000+ possible hashes. I mean, I used to belong to a gym that used a fingerprint reader for entry, and it correctly identified me (flashing my name) from the other 1,000+ members each time.

So as long as the hash space is reasonably large, it doesn't matter _what_ these 5 magic imprints are, they still each convert to just 1 hash, no different from any other fingerprints.

Am I missing some critical aspect here to explain how "master prints" are even plausible -- how they could possibly act as "wildcards" for large swathes of hashes?

<comment><USER13> That's not how it works. The process of reading your retina / fingerprint is error prone. You can't take hash out of error-prone data blob!

My understanding is that matching the pre-saved template against a fresh scan is a process similar to measuring Levenshtein distance. There is some threshold, and sample with smaller error are accepted. This does imply that the iphone has somewhere stored your _unencrypted_, _unhashed_ template of your fingerprint.

But this is not my area of expertise. Perhaps a subject matter expert can comment.

<comment><USER14> Indeed it is, inside a sensor (that's why so much trouble replacing one on iphone), gladly raw data never leaves it (same goes for Android as well, except really really old versions, like 4-)

<comment><USER13> "data never leaves it" reference please?

<comment><USER15> [https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)

Find the section titled "Secure Enclave." When the SE needs to store data on the filesystem, it's encrypted with a key that never leaves the SE. Effectively, assuming the encryption is implemented correctly, data 'owned' by the SE is never available to any other part of the system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are all sorts of reasons fingerprints are not a highly secure authentication mechanism. Just as there are all sorts of reasons passwords and other techniques are imperfect. Password entry can be observed. Chosen passwords are frequently insecure, particularly on smartphones where brevity is so important.

Fingerprints are an excellent mechanism for almost all threat vectors for your average consumer smartphone. Your friends, enemies, and criminals would have to go through enormous, expensive, and clearly unethical efforts to access your phone. Given the convenience and security of this, I'm entirely happy with the security of my thumbprint-encrypted iPhone.

It's important for people who are dissidents or engaging in criminal activity to be aware that their brain is more secure than their fingerprint, although that seems entirely obvious to anyone capable of maintaining a high security lifestyle.

<comment><USER17> Considering there is no 'active' part (e.g. no known secret) it cannot be used for authorization, only for identification. The 'kids unlock phone with sleeping parent and buy stuff' techniques are a clear proof of this. Fine for identification, do not use for authorization (e.g. using secrets like when you buy stuff).

<comment><USER16> I'm still fine with this threat vector. The idea is to prevent casual intrusion, not premeditated intrusion. If I put my phone on the dinner table, no one is going to send text messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nearly all biometrics, except for physically invasive ones, are _easily stolen_.

All are forgeable.

Biometrics can never be revoked once compromised.

They're like the social security number of logins. Completely useless.

Using biometrics for security or identity violates practically every rule for secure credentials. They exchange convenience for extremely minimal security.

Perhaps the oft-cited username, _not_ a password?

No, not even useful for that: for a mobile phone, a username isn't even needed in most cases because there's usually only one user on the device. It lends no additional security -- merely an extra step.

For a phone, a fingerprint is probably less secure than a swipe pattern.

It's security theater. Why do we keep equating biometrics with security?

<comment><USER19> For most people biometrics offer a better security posture than some of the alternatives. The average user is at much greater risk of someone watching them enter a PIN/Password than having them capture and forge their biometrics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not a security expert by any means, but I have to ask- if it's acceptable and most people use a four digit pin to unlock a phone, is the idea of somebody going to the trouble of lifting and replicating fingerprints that worrisome?

</comment><comment><USER21> "The researchers did not test their approach with real phones, and other security experts said the match rate would be significantly lower in real-life conditions. Still, the findings raise troubling questions about the effectiveness of fingerprint security on smartphones."

Wat.

</comment><comment><USER22> Modern fingerprint scanners use various methods to detect if it's a living finger or if it's a static image.

This "research" could not beat any phone using a modern fingerprint scanner with liveness detection.

Using fingerprints may not be a perfect solution but it beats 4-digit pincodes and passw0rds. Next level in a few years, we'll have retina scanners in our phones, cars and IoT including peppes pizza ads in Oslo. Then 1984 will look like a bedtime story for kids.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Your fingerprint is your username, not your password"

<comment><USER24> A fingerprint is not suitable as a username (as it can be physically damaged unrecoverably) or as a password (because it cannot be freely changed if potentially compromised.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Biometrics are in general a bad way to implement security. Finger prints and iris scans can easily be stolen many times by just browsing a person's Facebook profile photos. We have already started depending on these to allow access to bank accounts.

I live in India, and there are already companies with phones that have iris and fingerprint scanners to link with each individual's Aadhar ID and grant access to all government and financial services including bank accounts, and even online shopping [1]. Unlike regular credit card transactions, these are supposed to be authenticated, so you cannot ask for a chargeback. Data for 130 million Indian people including their Aadhaar numbers and bank details was recently leaked accidentally. [2] There is a big disaster here just waiting to happen.

[1]: [http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/shop-online-soon-with-fool- pr...](http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/shop-online-soon-with-fool-proof-iris- scan-aadhaar-phone-1692398)

[2]: [http://indiatoday.intoday.in/technology/story/aadhaar- data-o...](http://indiatoday.intoday.in/technology/story/aadhaar-data- of-130-millions-bank-account-details-leaked-from-govt-websites- report/1/943632.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> I use fingerprint screen unlock, because it's the most convenient screen unlock mechanism. The phone will not be unlocked by a mistake and it is very fast when you really want it.

I like especially the placement of the sensor on the back cover. When the phone is in front of my face it is already unlocked if I want it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Honestly, I've never cared about the fingerprint reader for security. I just see it as a better way to prevent my phone from turning on in my pocket and butt-dialing someone.

I never put a password on my phone before the fingerprint reader. The apps that I care about protecting have password functionality built-in.

<comment><USER28> What about 2-factor auth or sms two factor auth or access to your gmail client?

<comment><USER29> You know, not everyone uses gmail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> That is really clever. The Ur-fingerprint, developed using simple machine learning. Well, that's the end of using "minutiae" for recognition. Recognition has to use something that requires the features have the proper positional relationship to each other, such as a whole fingerprint.

</comment><comment><USER31> > But I'd rather see Apple make me enter the PIN if it's idle for one hour.

Does this ever really happen though? It's rare for my phone to sit there for more than 15 minutes without me messing with it.

<comment><USER32> You are missing the point. It's not for you to re-enter the PIN every once in a while, it's to prevent a potential attacker with physical access to your phone to unlock it, exactly when the phone itself it's not phisically with you (and so you have nothing to mess with).

Anyways it would only mitigate the risk without fixing the root problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> My friend claims that her boyfriend managed to unlock her iPhone using his finger, although I can't 100% verify that claim.

</comment><comment><USER34> The phone is covered with fingerprints from the owner anyway.

If you have the phone, you already have the "password". The fingerprint scan is just to make it a little bit annoying for attacker, so they'll factory reset instead of bothering to crack it.

It's not intended for any kind of real security.

Like many others here I never used to lock my phone at all until the fingerprint scan, and I don't consider the scan as a form of security, but rather as a quick way to turn on the phone.

<comment><USER35> How do you know that the finger data the scanner uses is present in oil prints?

If this true, someone would have created a working demonstration in the past 5 years.

<comment><USER36> [https://www.heise.de/video/artikel/iPhone-5s-Touch-ID- hack-i...](https://www.heise.de/video/artikel/iPhone-5s-Touch-ID-hack-in- detail-1966044.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is there a way a phone could know which finger was used by using the camera too?

</comment><comment><USER38> Fingerprints are usernames, not passwords.

[http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2013/10/fingerprints-are- user...](http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2013/10/fingerprints-are-user-names- not.html)

<comment><USER39> Exactly this. I've made the same comment other places on here. Fingerprint for username, 8 character alphanumeric for password and mandatory hardware 2FA fobs/keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There's no reason to cite a Google-translated version of this article when a suitable, well-explained English article exists in the New York Times: [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/technology/fingerprint...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/technology/fingerprint- security-smartphones-apple-google-samsung.html)

As the article notes, you really need more than one imprint in order to get into a phone - the authors suggest that five distinct imprints could get into about 40-50% of phones, which fits within the 5 try limit imposed by many systems.

<comment><USER41> Right. Url changed from [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A//www.mobilegeeks.de/news/fingerabdrucksensor- sicherheit-generalschluessel/).

Submitters: Please don't post Google translate links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Totally not relevant, but holy cow Google Translate is getting good.

I swear I've read articles in plain English that were less comprehensible than this translated on, by a mile.

<comment><USER43> It's pretty good at European languages, but still terrible at Arabic and Japanese. The system still has a very shallow understanding of the content. One of my primarily Arabic-speaking colleagues was actually offended by Google Translate butchering their language so badly; their culture places a relatively high value on poetry, calligraphy, etc.

As an exercise, try translating your search queries into Arabic before searching. Then, let Google translate the results for you. It is hilarious.

<comment><USER44> I wonder how much Arabic translation suffers from a lack of available data to feed the ML. [1]

> Nor are foreign books much translated: in the 1,000 years since the reign of > the Caliph Mamoun, say the authors, the Arabs have translated as many books > as Spain translates in one year.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/node/1213392](http://www.economist.com/node/1213392)

<comment><USER43> I am somewhat surprised that our ML is not yet strong enough to make good use of a relatively small, but precisely translated work, such as the Qur'an. The success of human anthropologists in deciphering the Rosetta stone to learn the ancient Egyptian languages must have had as much to do with understanding the context, the culture and tools of the time, as actually cracking a code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> A fingerprint isn't secure in any robust sense of the word. you leave your fingerprints on everything you touch.</comment>


Launching Answers by Crashlytics - mobile analytics you don't need to analyze - <AUTHOR> http://www.crashlytics.com/blog/launching-answers-by-crashlytics

<comment><USER2> Analytics I don't need to analyze? Who came up with that tag line? They're not analytics, then, right?

"Crashlytics - mobile data you don't need to analyze"

"Crashlytics - making mobile analysis dead simple"

"Crashlytics - even a caveman can do it"

Reminds me of that scene from Beavis and Butthead:

        Beavis: Bunghole!
        Some guy: What's a bunghole?
        Butthead: You're a bunghole, bunghole.
        Some guy: You can't use a word to define itself!
        Beavis: Shut up, bunghole!

That said, the new stuff looks well done. I'm not much of a mobile analytics person, but if I'm not mistaken, a lot of services already do this trending / predictions thing for cyclical processes, letting you know when abnormal things happen smartly (without you having to manually set thresholds for alerts, etc).

It seems to me that the real problem with analytics is context. More granular data doesn't automatically answer questions, and the amount of time spent on a particular page vs page views doesn't necessarily mean anything without context.

I dunno. I guess I'm just not the target market, here.</comment>


Clay Mathematics Institute: Ian Stewart on Minesweeper - <AUTHOR> http://www.claymath.org/Popular_Lectures/Minesweeper/

<comment><USER2> As a side note, if you enjoy playing Minesweeper but don't like losing to a bad guess, you might want to try the implementation in Simon Tatham's puzzle collection:

<http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/>

Unlike most other implementations, it only generates boards that can be solved by logic, so you never need to guess; your first square is guaranteed to be safe and to reveal enough information to progress.

(IIRC, the algorithm used to pre-solve each generated level bottoms out in an exhaustive search, so I guess this game variant is still in NP.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe I should read more, but this is the clearest explanation of P vs NP I've read so far.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. Do you think it's clearer than the one I gave here?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1587884>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I will be interviewing Ian soon for Math-Blog.com. If you have any specific questions you think I should ask him, please feel free to let me know.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've submitted an interview with Ian Stewart here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1594526>

He's a serious mathematician, and a serious writer of both fiction and non- fiction.

</comment><comment><USER6> Figure 3 is incomplete; as the space depicted in it is not a valid board configuration. If either x or x' is false, then the respective 1s on the extreme sides will be invalid. This is either a crop of a real situation (in which we assume the wire repeats beyond the scope of the image), or an error.

<comment><USER4> It is a crop of a board containing a wire that extends beyond the area shown. It is not an error, although indicating (somehow - people's intuitions vary) that it's a crop would help.</comment></comment>


The Hackers Manifesto - <AUTHOR> http://www.spoiledtechie.com/post/The-Hackers-Manifesto.aspx

<comment><USER2> Wow, memories. Reminds me of going to the 2600 meetings in the Pru's food court and hanging out with guys from the other sides of Boston who I'd have known no other way. Guys with whom I'd later go to college and/or start companies. Reminds me of learning how computers actually worked by reading and finally understanding "Assembley for Cracking" by the shepherd, playing with Macsbug, ResEdit's code editor, and referring to a Morotola m68k manual which Motorola sent me for free after I called and asked for one. Reminds me of cracking software for fun. Neither distributing the cracks nor really even using the cracked software but knowing that I could do it. Reminds me of trying to find every way possible to locate the base-address of the VRAM and then blitting pixels directly into it "by hand for speed." That MOV16 instruction on the 68040 was really something. Back then my little brain focused so much energy on this stuff and it's something I don't even remember unless someone posts something like this to news.yc. So strange.

Oh and if anyone has "Assembley for Cracking" I'd love to read it again! :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I prefer this one "Imagine a school with children that can read and write, but with teachers who cannot, and you have a metaphor of the Information Age in which we live."

<comment><USER4> I had one teacher was trying to teach us about the moon landings. She threw up a picture of the Lunar Lander and said, "Oooh, look, it's a Moon Walker!"

That's wrong on three levels at least.

Mush-for-brains imprecision is one thing when teaching history. Now imagine that applied to teaching about technology. Ugh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. Flashback to 9th grade.

Glad I'm not there anymore.

<comment><USER4> Enough pointless raging against "the machine" or "the man." Create something useful or beautiful or both.

<comment><USER6> It can be both useful and beautiful to rage against the man.

<comment><USER7> No, it's just old and might get a few heads turned from some people who say, "Yeah, that guy's a nonconformist. Just like me!" Then nothing happens.

We need to do something against the man.

<comment><USER8> There's a quote from Steven Bond, some guy whose web site I read a while ago, regarding why he critiques awful movies:

"Why do I review crap? Simple: for pleasure. For the sheer joy of it. Every piece of crap you like is an immense world of delight waiting to be explored. Crap is a driving force, crap is inspirational: nothing urges me to set things right more than seeing them done wrong. I'm especially pleased when the crap is so bad it makes me angry — for anger is a pleasant sensation. To feel your bile rise and your blood boil, to feel a rush of fury — why, it's the pleasure of being alive, of feeling some actual emotion instead of the constant dull fuzz of the easily contented."

<http://plover.net/~bonds/stupidresponses.html>

Partly it's that. Anger towards the system very often gives you the energy, motivation, and experience enough to make something great. The two big projects I've done - the book I wrote last year, and the site I'm building the beta of now - both had some element of hate against the system that was preventing me from doing something. It's not good to _dwell_ in the emotion, but using it is useful.

<comment><USER4> Then don't dwell. Innovate or fix. Open source or sell.

<comment><USER8> I don't think dwelling is a good solution. But neither is ignoring it if it genuinely upsets you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not our kind of hacking.

<comment><USER10> Not _your_ kind of grossly capitalistic hacking. :)

<comment><USER11> I lived in a so called socialistic state for the first five years of my live. That's enough for a whole live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Teen angst.

"You build atomic bombs..." Oh, not you Mr. Feynman. You're fine.

</comment><comment><USER13> I find it amazing that many of these people complain about the school system leaving them behind, behind in the sense that it didn't fulfill all of their curiosities. I felt the same way, but I didn't complain; I went to the library.

<comment><USER14> The system doesn't leave you behind. It locks you into your seat with your eyelids taped open with turgid pap being projected onto a screen in front of you.

Any creativity or individual initiative which resists the system is swiftly punished.

<comment><USER13> I read books while many of my teachers lectured. They knew there was only so much they could do for me without seeming to neglect the rest of the class. I was left alone to read or do what I wanted as long as I did the work that was assigned.

<comment><USER8> I was put in detention for reading in class, I had books taken from me and thrown away, I had long lectures from teachers in front of classes to humiliate me. I was sent down to several offices and lectured by several administrators who told me something like, "We understand you _can_ do this, but it's disrespectful to your teachers and the school operates in loco parentis while you're here." And I thought the school system was a very good one overall.

If you can get away with that stuff, it's great. But more often than not you don't have a choice.

<comment><USER15> More or less the same experience here, except that I don't think the school I went to was very good at all.

I tried really hard to get my school to let me test out of classes and be in classes where I would actually be learning something, they refused. I spent the entire time there pissed off and frustrated at having to sit through a whole lot of boring, and in many cases inaccurate _shit_ when there was so much out there to _actually learn about_.

An example: I got suspended for correcting a teacher that told the class that Germany was a communist country during WWII.

<comment><USER13> In that case I would take all the detention they would give me. The truth is the truth.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but "the truth" only goes so far before some level of anger, if not cynicism, begins seeping in. Once you get used to this idea that you'll be punished for doing the right thing, either you start deciding that the right thing isn't really right (which I find despicable, but which happens pretty often), or you decide that the system itself is flawed in some way, which is what happened to me.

It's tough to keep yourself an idealist when your parents tell you it's not worth it to get in trouble for things - I suppose they might have had a point, especially since if they _did_ I'd still be too stubborn to cave in to somebody that was wrong - and when you get scolded across the board for what you do. I spent 3 years mainly under the radar at the school, then in my senior year was threatened with suspension three times: once for making a rude gesture at a teacher who over-the-top ranted at me for not standing during the pledge of allegiance, once for telling the teacher in charge of the literary magazine that I was the editor of that the magazine was bad and that he was refusing to fix things, and the last time for posting on Facebook about my dislike of the yearbook magazine (on a private note, of course).

I left still trying to do the right thing, but the result is a profound dislike for that school, despite the excellent handful of teachers that actually shaped me as a person. That's really sad, when you think about it.

Anyway, the point is that unlike most systems - unlike, say, the world of entrepreneurdom, where all that matters is idea and execution and getting ahead - some systems are designed intentionally to cripple the people within it. The school system is the worst, because a, focusing on the best students _would_ hurt most other students and that would be unfair in a manner of speaking, and b, it's much easier for the teachers when they can create a bland routine, force everybody into it, and have everybody come out unharmed if not much wiser. The teachers who _didn't_ do that at my school were incredible, but there were always unspoken hints at how difficult the administration was making things.

I entered school wanting to be a teacher. I left it realizing that it simply wasn't worth the sheer cost fighting the system would be worth.

<comment><USER13> I didn't get in trouble at school, but I constantly got in trouble at home for choosing not to do chores so that I could read more. Thankfully my mother and stepfather didn't realize that grounding me to my room was not a punishment but rather what I wanted all along. The thing is, make do with what you have. Don't let people take things or time away from you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is to hacking what The Cure's "Disintegration" is to popular music.

</comment><comment><USER17> What is the significance of the image at the end?

<comment><USER18> It's a screenshot of logs showing someone trying a brute-force attack so gain entry via ssh. They used the username "Hitler."

<comment><USER11> It's on Windows. That spoils the whole page.

I mean you can go work on Windows when you have calmed down and want to make money (or actually explore the system etc). But an angry young hacker on Windows?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had this memorized at one point..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Such a long time ago....</comment>


Information is the Antidote to Fear: Wikileaks, the Law, and You - <AUTHOR> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/information-antidote-fear-wikileaks-law-and-you

<comment><USER2> excellent information, including this from a CRS (Congressional Research Service) memo:

"we are aware of no case in which a publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it"</comment>


A Gorgeous Guide to the First Wave of Personal Computers - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9k8a57/a-gorgeous-guide-to-the-first-wave-of-personal-computers <comment><AUTHOR> I would normally have submitted the creator's website[0], but in this case, it is less informative and usable than the Vice writeup.

[0] [https://www.docubyte.com/works/i-am-a- computer/](https://www.docubyte.com/works/i-am-a-computer/)</comment>


The Chinese Economic "Death Spiral" - <AUTHOR> https://dailyreckoning.com/chinese-economic-death-spiral/ <comment><USER2> I have very limited understanding of how economy works, and I have a question. Author says that train tickets price is not enough to make train profitable. Ok, I agree, its hard to disagree with such a claim. But then he reasons about wasted investment, and this seems wrong for me. Such a conclusion would be true in capitalist's word: investors want their money back. But it is not true in communism, because central planning and everything is in government possession. The only reliable way to measure effect of investment is to deduce how investment affect on global economy. Train passengers are governmental employees, to raise costs on tickets is to raise costs for other departments.

After I invested time to train my fingers to play on piano, I wouldn't pay them for playing. I'd like to get payments from others, but my fingers would get nothing.

Maybe I oversimplified situation? Maybe there are private companies who profited from new train line, and it would be justified to move some costs on them. Maybe there are private investors, who invested in new train line along with government. Maybe I'm wrong. Am I?

<comment><USER3> Think about it as a measure of value - a very high value of inputs went in; the tickets have a low price because what was built has no great value to the riders, so you can't charge them more or they won't travel. Now if the government is subsidizing something of great value fine - child care, education, research, preventative medicine, all that's fine 'cause that produces great value over time. On the other hand, if you keep using up a big pile of inputs to produce a smaller pile of outputs or nearly-useless outputs, real wealth shrinks even though the economy is churning away producing apparently good numbers re economic activity. Hiring people to tear down every structure in China would also produce good economic numbers while reducing wealth. Roads to nowhere do pretty much the same thing, just more slowly.</comment></comment>


Fastscript: A lightweight JQuery Clone - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DevilishDB/FastScript

<comment><USER2> So what does this have over ZeptoJS [0] or jQLite [1]? Things like:

      // jQuery $() function
      function $(element) {
          return document.querySelectorAll(element); // Redirects the function to querySelectorAll()
      }

Might fly in evergreen browsers [3] but not all (<IE 8, yes this is old but there is no mention of it in the README and some people still need to support this).

[0] [http://zeptojs.com/](http://zeptojs.com/)

[1] [https://code.google.com/p/jqlite/](https://code.google.com/p/jqlite/)

[2] [http://tomdale.net/2013/05/evergreen- browsers/](http://tomdale.net/2013/05/evergreen-browsers/)</comment>


Hello again • Joshua Topolsky - <AUTHOR> http://joshuatopolsky.com/post/123817628197/hello-again <comment><USER2> First: Josh ran Vox Media and The Verge, and most recently, Bloomberg's online media.

This, particularly, stands out::

 _And I've been thinking a lot lately about my industry._

 _The reality in media right now is that there is an enormous amount of noise. There are countless outlets (both old and new) vying for your attention, desperate not just to capture some audience, but all the audience. And in doing that, it feels like there's a tremendous watering down of the quality and uniqueness of what is being made. Everything looks the same, reads the same, and seems to be competing for the same eyeballs. In both execution and content, I find myself increasingly frustrated with the rat race for maximum audience at any expense. It's cynical and it's cyclical — which makes for an exhausting and frankly boring experience._

 _I think people want something better, something more meaningful. Something a lot less noisy._

I've been thinking about this a lot as well (check recent HN submissions, and discussion under the "Media" flair at [https://dredmorbius.reddit.com](https://dredmorbius.reddit.com)), and also reviewing some old lectures of Dana (Donella) Meadows.

She makes two points that are key, one pertaining to the importance of media, the other to changing systems.

First: systems _cannot_ work properly where the data they're fed is unreliable, and _especialy_ where it is _deliberately_ distorted or falsified. Which is increasingly happening in media.

Second: the most effective way to change a system _is to change its goals._ And the goal of most media, presently, is _advertising_. Hence the pursuit of marketshare, the homogeneity of content, the outright gaming and manipulation, and the lack of incisive, deep, _relevant_ reportage.

Meadows' Twelve Leverage Points addresses this (and other influences) in more depth.

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

If Tapolsky's going to change that, he's got his work cut out for him. And he should be starting at the tail end of Dana's list.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR (between the lines): the money was good, performance was good, but the management was not flexible enough; off to make a next startup (animated parallax HTML5 pages are to be expected).</comment>


Ask HN: Career opportunities with Haskell? - <AUTHOR>

I've fallen in love with this language and writing in anything else just doesn't feel right.<p>How valued are Haskell programmers in the "real world"?  How do you think this will change? <comment><USER2> Haskell is such a great language and it's a real shame that not many companies see it's advantages. There was recently a discussion on haskell-cafe[1] about it's lack of adoption in industries other than finance.

Haskell is perfectly suited for critical systems: I've seen job postings for C++ programmers for air traffic control systems which I think could really do with haskell's type safety.

In recent years however haskell performance and library availability has made it suitable for general high level programming like web development for example[2][3].

[1]<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/78651>

[2]<http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Web>

[3][http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Applications_and_libraries/We...](http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Applications_and_libraries/Web_programming)

</comment><comment><USER3> I suppose you already looked at:

<http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_in_industry>

Haskell is used for quantitative analysis and especially in the finance market. OCaml is also used in various "finance" companies.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wall Street seems to desire Haskell skills. Saw a posting from Allston Trading looking for Haskell/Erlang/C developers.

[http://cufp.org/jobs/haskellerlangc-developers-high- frequenc...](http://cufp.org/jobs/haskellerlangc-developers-high-frequency- trading)

</comment><comment><USER5> For anyone looking for a Haskell job, this was recently submitted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1608147> I'm also under the impression that functional languages are just generally used more extensively in the financial(high frequency trading for example) sector than in other areas.

</comment><comment><USER6> come on now, have you ever fallen in love with a phillips head screwdriver?

<comment><USER7>
      module Comment where

      import Control.Exception (assert)

      class Loveable thing where
        loves :: Person -> thing -> Bool

      instance Loveable ScrewDriver where
        _ `loves` PhillipsHead = False

      instance Loveable ProgrammingLanguage where
        Me `loves` Haskell = True
        TheOtherGuy `loves` Haskell = True
        _ `loves` _ = False

      data ScrewDriver = FlatHead | PhillipsHead | Torx
      data ProgrammingLanguage = Haskell | Lisp | Scheme
      data Person = You | Me | TheOtherGuy

      implies a b = if a then assert True b else assert True True

      argument person = (not (person `loves` PhillipsHead)) `implies` (not (person `loves` Haskell))

      check a = mapM (print . a) [You, Me, TheOtherGuy]

     Comment> check argument
     True
     False
     False

<comment><USER8> Respect.

<comment><USER6> lol much respect</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Transposing Instruments - <AUTHOR> https://opencurriculum.org/5567/transposing-instruments/ <comment><USER2> > The fundamental pitch of a brass instrument, on the other hand, is > considered to be the fundamental of the harmonic series it plays when no > valves are being used.

For those who don't know how brass instruments work (and wonder how you can produce so many pitches with so little valves) this may sound a little confusing (a lot of people asked me, so I'll assume some people don't know).

I'll take a trumpet as an example, as it is the instrument I'm most familiar with.

First of all, you don't just blow air inside the instrument: you buzz your lips, as if you were making a sort of fart sound without using your tongue. Depending on the speed your lips vibrate at, you are able to make a series of pitches, which ones basically depend on the length of the instruments. The pitches you can make are part of an harmonic series, so basically (transposed from Bb) C, G, C, E, G and so on.

Pressing the valves changes the length of the tubing so you can lower the note you're playing by a half step (middle, or second, valve), one step (rear or first valve) or one and a half step (forward or third valve). So by combining them you can obtain all the other pitches you may need.

For example, suppose your lips are buzzing at a (written) G. You press the middle valve and get a F#, you press the first valve and you get an F, first and second (or just third) gives an E, second and third Eb, first and third D, all the valves Db, then you can vibrate your lips at a lower rate and release all the valves to get a C.

<comment><USER3> Re: _First of all, you don 't just blow air inside the instrument: you buzz your lips, as if you were making a sort of fart sound without using your tongue. _

The dirty secret of brass instruments. I wonder if they could make a direct air-powered vibrator so that one doesn't have to torture their lips. It may also make life easier for amateurs. I imagine it may result in loss of control for subtle effects, but some amateurs will accept that.

<comment><USER4> Assuming you play a brass instrument, I suggest to try this experiment: Blow air through your lips and purse then together, but do NOT buzz. Basically the "buzzing" without the buzz. When you do that, continue to and press your lips against the mouthpiece. You will make a note!

This was something my instructor showed me because use way too much of my lips when I play (a very common mistake with amateurs), and a lot of the power you use should be through your diaphragm (large versus small muscles).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a really nice article. "usually ..... A is 440hz". The 'usually' here is an interesting topic by itself: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch)

Anyway, I do have some questions:

\- regarding the universalness of this. Is it (the transposing of instruments) like this everywhere or is it different in some parts of the world? (some things differ wildly, like the whole 'fixed-do' versus 'movable-do' thing.

\- If I look at a score written for an alto sax, How can I tell which note is meant ?

\- In jazz, people learn a standard in a certain key, and when that tune is called, it's called together with a key, usually to adapt to some constraint (like the singer's vocal range). The musicians mostly can adapt on-the-fly. Is there something similar in classical music ? (an example would be to transpose Beethoven's 9th from Dm to Em)

<comment><USER6> 1\. Universality of transposition: These conventions apply wherever people use western instruments.

2\. Alto sax is always in the key of E flat. That means the note called A flat played by an alto sax would be C on the piano. Likewise tenor is always in the key of B flat. A huge advantage to this arrangement is that the fingering is the same no matter which instrument you are playing; that means it is up to the composer to transpose notes as appropriate. The saxophone family is amazingly cohesive and consistent because Adolphe Sax invented it in one fell swoop.

3\. Well-trained classical musicians can transpose at will. I read a story by the composer/pianist Andre Previn whose touring orchestra was late to a concert hall due to the bus driver getting lost. He was playing the piano in a concerto. What he didn't know was that the entire piano had detuned up half a step. It meant that The moment he sat down to play a concerto in C minor he was therefore playing in C sharp minor. The orchestra caught this immediately and everyone transposed up for the rest of the concert – on the fly.

Edit: I mysteriously screwed up keys of alto and tenor sax, both of which I play. Idiocy caught by klez and duly corrected.

<comment><USER2> > Alto sax is always in the key of A flat. That means the note called A flat > played by an alto sax would be C on the piano. Likewise tenor is always in > the key of E flat.

Uh? Alto sax is in Eb and tenor is in Bb.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the correction. I play sax. You are right of course. WTF is wrong with me?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One technique that is overlooked when transposing music - that maybe is interesting - is using clefs to transpose.

Suppose I play alto sax (which I do!) and have sheet music written for a violin, in the concert key, in treble clef. If I want to transpose the music and play it on the sax, which is an Eb instrument, here's the trick: read the music as though it's written in soprano clef!

A C in treble clef will be an A in soprano clef, which is indeed the correct transposition. Of course you still have to change your key signature.

So if you can learn to be comfortable with a new clef, as was the standard when Bach was writing choral music, then this would be a great tool in the toolbox for transposing on the fly!

<comment><USER8> This works for trombones who might play in a brass band (where everything is Bb to ease moving between instruments). Read the treble clef in tenor clef (somewhat commonly used in orchestral settings for trombones) and 2 flats to the key signature (and use intuituion on accidentals :). Similarly can read Eb treble clef (e.g. baritone sax) parts in bass clef + 3 flats

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I picked up the clarinet in 5th grade and played in school bands through college. I knew that it was a Bb instrument but was never taught what exactly that meant. I assume it was because my instructors never felt that it was important for their players to know. Since we always played off sheet music that was written for the specific instruments, that's probably true. It's nice to finally know.

</comment><comment><USER10> To relate this to startups: my company Soundslice ([https://www.soundslice.com/](https://www.soundslice.com/)) makes interactive, web-based sheet music that can be instantly transposed for any transposing instrument. :-)

<comment><USER11> I saw a slider for transposing. Don't you need two? One should change the pitch, and the other should change the notation. I tried yours, and it changed both pitch and notation at the same time. (listening to the synthetic sound)

For music with multiple parts, it would be nice to transpose everything together in the most reasonable way. This would maintain relative pitch relationships, adjust the whole thing up or down to fit ranges of the players, transpose according to how the players will read music, and avoid excessive accidentals. A few alternatives could be offered: option 1 makes the trumpet player suffer really high notes, option 2 makes oboe player suffer lots of flats, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a mess. Have there ever been any serious efforts toward "modernizing" musical notation?

<comment><USER13> It's really not a mess. It's a solution to a problem, and it works well.

To give you an idea of how not-a-problem it is, many composers (myself included) prefer to read orchestral scores (so, a page will have roughly 15-20 staves) that are transposed. So, instead of reading each instrument in the same key, we see what each player is reading. If the concert key is C, I'll see the clarinets and trumpets reading in D, etc. I prefer it because you get a better sense of how the music feels to each individual player, and can better respond to any issues they're having.

It's a mess to look at, I guess, but to any reasonably well trained musician, it's clear as day and conveys far more useful information than the "cleaner" way of seeing everyone in the same key, which really just obfuscates what's really going on.

<comment><USER11> It's a mess. The relevant badness is that the interval from one line to the next is not constant. This makes transposition far more difficult than it needs to be.

If the 12 notes of the octave were on 6 lines and 6 spaces, perhaps with a distinct (dotted, wavey, thick, missing, etc.) line to aid in not getting lost, the situation would be far better. There wouldn't need to be a key signature at all, or any accidentals. Stack as many octaves as needed for the part.

Probably we'll never transition to something sane. We can't even manage to get grand staves with middle C in a unique (shared, central) position, which is what you want when hand distinction isn't required.

<comment><USER13> Question, so I better understand where you're coming from: are you a musician, and if so, at what level would you consider yourself?

<comment><USER11> I suppose I understand this stuff far better than most people who have bothered to learn an instrument. I frequently arrange music for flute, trumpet (my primary instrument), and garklein recorder.

I'm at the level where usability matters. Top experts, not that there are enough of them to care about, can handle anything. Beginners will be lost in any case.

I would greatly prefer a chromatic notation. Accidentals ought to be reserved for quarter-tone needs. Chromatic notation gives music the same shape on the page no matter what pitch it is transposed to; this is an extremely valuable property. Sight-transposition would be trivial. Imagine a world in which an ordinary clarinet player could play music for the flute, horn, or bassoon. Sight-transposing, even by other than an octave, would be easy for most players.

<comment><USER13> Gotcha, thanks for that. I wasn't sure if you were coming from the place of a musician who's super deep into it, or a novice or non-musician who just can't really grok notation because that just isn't their world. Obviously it's the former.

I think your ideas here are so interesting! I totally see what you're saying with accidentals being reserved for quarter tones. I studied microtonal music in college and _hated_ the notation systems. They truly feel "bolted on" to standard notation.

Have you developed any sort of concrete "replacement" system? If so, I'd love to see it. This is super cool stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not understanding this. Why, for example, doesn't a clarinetist just play a C? I'm on mobile so I can't explain my question well, but: why isn't the transposed version just the default interpretation of the score? If clarinetists are playing bflat when the score says c, why not just play c? Is the implied point that the same 440 hz is interpreted differently because of quality, secondary frequencies etc?

<comment><USER2> Try doing that with a Eb instrument like an Alto sax and tell me how you like the fingering :)

Also, as the article says, this allows players of an instrument that has different versions with different tunings (e.g. saxophones which can be in Eb or Bb depending on the type of saxophone) to learn one set of fingerings and being able to reproduce it on all tunings.

So, for example, a written C is done by pressing all but the last button (iirc). By doing this you'll play a Bb on a tenor sax and an Eb on an alto, but with the score being transposed you'll know that when you see a note one line below the staff you'll have to put your fingers in that position regardless of the sax you're playing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can understand transposing whole octaves to limit the use of extra bars.

Transposing anything other than that seems silly to me.

<comment><USER2> > Transposing anything other than that seems silly to me.

You make it sound like it's done out of spite, or because musicians like unnecessarily complicated things.

Reasons for this are given both in the article and in this thread.

So having read those, why do _you_ still think it's silly?

<comment><USER15> Because I'm not convinced that the benefits outweigh the downsides.

Again, any excessively too high/low (part of a) piece you can transpose in octaves to get it within a reasonable level. Then everyone can read eachother's sheet music without having to adjust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's also the reason why orchestras usually play two to three pitches (e.g. C - B flat - E flat) before starting the concert, so that the conductor can determine if the relevant instruments are attuned to their respective pitch in harmony.

Listen here: [https://youtu.be/KfSH1ezevjM](https://youtu.be/KfSH1ezevjM)

<comment><USER2> In this case the pitch is given by the piano, but do I remember correctly that if the orchestra doesn't include a piano the base pitch is given by the oboe, as it's the hardest instrument to tune?

<comment><USER17> I've never heard it said that the oboe is hard to tune. From what I've found, it's mostly historical accident that the oboe is used for tuning: [https://www.rockfordsymphony.com/faqs/why-does-the- orchestra...](https://www.rockfordsymphony.com/faqs/why-does-the-orchestra- always-tune-to-the-oboe/)</comment></comment></comment>