ESO Instrument Finds Closest Black Hole to Earth - <AUTHOR> https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2007/ <comment><USER2> From the article: «The discovery of a silent, invisible black hole in HR 6819 provides clues about where the many hidden black holes in the Milky Way might be. "There must be hundreds of millions of black holes out there, but we know about only very few. Knowing what to look for should put us in a better position to find them," says Rivinius. Baade adds that finding a black hole in a triple system so close by indicates that we are seeing just "the tip of an exciting iceberg."»

As a layman I wonder if this could be the solution for dark matter ... but experts probably already checked that idea.

<comment><USER3> They have, and it has a great name: MACHO

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

<comment><USER4> And of course the main competing hypothesis—which appears to be winning—is WIMPs:

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

(Note that confusingly, while both are called "massive", the mass of an average MACHO would be somewhere between 50 and 60 orders of magnitude greater than that of a WIMP!)

<comment><USER5> I'm under the impression that WIMP uses "massive" in the sense of "not- massless"?

<comment><USER6> I think they're "massive" in relation to the weakly-interacting-and-very-much- not-massive neutrinos, which were another dark matter candidate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a wonderful discovery. I had built up a picture of black hole environments always being an accretion disk plus lots of powerful radiation, which would make most unexplorable without some incredibly survivable craft.

A quiet non-accreting hole would be something you could actually visit and be curious about without getting fried by radiation or sandblasted by disk material. That's awesome.

<comment><USER8> One of my favorite astronomy hypotheses is that Planet 9 (not Pluto, the one that's maybe mucking up the orbit of Kuiper belt objects) not only exists but is a primordial black hole. That would just be the most awesome thing to have a black hole accessible within our lifetimes. We would have to stop every other space mission and send up a mission to test quantum gravity on it.

<comment><USER7> I could get on board with leaving Moon, Mars, and most other planetary missions on hold for some serious replanning and some serious test missions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The paper: [https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2020/05/aa38020-...](https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2020/05/aa38020-20/aa38020-20.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder at what point we can spot the SMBHs/supernovae that had given rise to our own solar system, opening a whole new chapter in pre-solar history. I guess it should be possible to estimate the age of the other two (visible) stars in this system.

<comment><USER11> > I wonder at what point we can spot the SMBHs/supernovae that had given rise > to our own solar system

Likely never, if you mean an actual supernova remnant that released the enriched material into the interstellar medium. Partly because the formation of the Solar System requires that the enriched material mixes with the ambient gas and cools. That means the supernova remnant would most probably not be identifiable as a distinct entity. The other reason is that there almost certainly isn't a single supernovae that gave rise to the enriched material that formed the Sun and Solar System. The enrichment probably happened through multiple generations of star formation and supernova enrichment cycles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They say that the system can be seen with the unaided eye. If I were to point my telescope directly at the black hole, what would I see? Nothing? Or a lensing effect of the stars behind it?

<comment><USER13> They say that the stars orbiting it can be seen but the hole itself is hidden.

I'm curious why there's no lensing, though. Or is it just that the size makes the lensing weak enough to not be noticable?

<comment><USER14> It is very hard to observe lensing around a small object. A light source needs to pass directly behind it, and stay behind it for long enough that your camera exposure can capture it (which for distant objects, can take days or months or years).

That's why gravitational lensing has only been observed for

1\. very bright stars behind the Sun (event that lasts a second detectable with sub-second exposure)

2\. Galaxies behind galaxies (event that lasts millions of years detectable with hours-long exposure)

3\. an SMBH warping the light generated by its own disk (permanent event detectable with years-long exposure)

<comment><USER15> If lensing is so hard to observe, why is lack of lensing considered enough to reject "dark matter==black holes"?

<comment><USER14> Because if the galactic halo was so full of black holes that it accounted for all the dark matter in the galaxy, then lensing would be extremely _easy_ to detect. If the MACHO hypothesis was correct, there would be lensing everywhere you look because the whole galaxy is totally surrounded by enormous black holes. A lensing effect could be constantly seen viewing any object outside of the galaxy, because there's guaranteed to be a black hole in front of it. It would be difficult to get a good picture of any but the closest galaxies because of all the lensing artifacts from the black holes all over the place. Lensing around black holes is hard to detect precisely because black holes are so rare and don't frequently cross in front of very bright objects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Article says finds black hole.

There has never been direct observational evidence for one.

Hmmmmm...

<comment><USER17> If you want to be pedantic, you cannot observe direct evidence of anything. After all, when you look at your hand you don't see the hand itself, just the photons that happened to interact with it a short moment ago. Actually you don't see those photons, you only perceive how those photons interact with the cells in your eyes.

Evidence for black holes has been shown in the way they bend light from distant galaxies and cause stars to orbit around them. There's not much stronger evidence needed to prove their existence.

<comment><USER16> That's...an interesting way of looking at it.

A black hole is made up of an infinitely dense point-mass singularity and an event horizon. Nobody has every found either. So nobody has found a black hole.

<comment><USER18> This is astronomy, we have only photons or the lack thereof and our interpretations of these photons and their lack. We haven't even sent a probe yet to the surface of the Sun (we have gotten eleven million miles away). So, by "direct observation" standards, we don't even know the Sun exists.

For your standard, we would need to send ships to each star, including the event horizon of a black hole. These aren't standards we can _do_ anything with.

<comment><USER8> They're already playing definition games at the second reply. Don't feed the troll.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Taking a peek at the experts' genetic secrets  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/us/20gene.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

<comment><USER2> I read this, and the Wired article on PGP that came out earlier this year.

I think it's great that researchers want to improve access to genetic data correlated with behavior, habits, illness and other traits, but I have to ask: Why not just keep the subects' names obscured? It doesn't matter to most researchers if they are looking at the results from subject #098352 vs. John Smith, either as a single record or in aggregate. Tacking on the other part of the project -- seeing how subjects' benefit/suffer from the release of their personal information -- may be an interesting experiment on its own, but it could have some very negative impacts on participants and skew the data toward people with a different set of values and lifestyles than the population at large.</comment>


Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-plans-ad-blocking-feature-in-popular-chrome-browser-1492643233 <comment><USER2> At first it sounds insane that Google would do such a thing since while ad blocking is growing, enabling the feature natively especially by default would incredibly increase the number of ads blocked.

My guess is, that where other blockers by default can easily block all google ads, Chrome blocker would not block Google Ads because it would classify them as acceptable. And Google would then hope that people would use their built in blocker rather than downloading a third party extension which would highly likely block there ads. And if people have a built in blocker that blocks the mostly bad ads, the people would start to hate ads less and be okay with 'good ads'. Also since people wouldn't use third party blockers as much those companies would go out business more likely.

It's a very risky move on Google's part, so would be a bit surprised if it happens. But doing nothing, is equally if not more risky in the long run for there business model.

<comment><USER3> The "ad blocker" companies will go out of business? ARE YOU INSANE?!

Google is a frigging AD MONOPOLY ... its their major business for crying out loud. And the same company that controls a HUGE portion of all the Internet Ad business is creating an "Ad Blocker".

And this doesn't ring any bells anywhere?

No friend, they are not trying to put "ad blocker" companies out of business. They are trying to put "competing internet ad companies" out of business.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's about putting "ad blockers" out of business. Hell, they're not businesses, uBlock is OSS. I think the idea is, people get so annoyed by poor ads that is in your face that they get pushed beyond their "threshold" and get an ad blocker. If ads are used with moderation, most people won't get annoyed enough to go out of their way and install a traditional ad blocker.

Bad ads ruin it for Google. They teach users to mentally block ALL ads. It's like people abusing antibiotics and building a resistance.

<comment><USER5> Or another example of how I see ads on the internet:

You walking down the street having a guy handing out leaflets, trying to force his leaflet on you... You're most likely to get annoyed by them.

There is a little stand at the corner having leaflets, without anyone yelling in your face or handing it out, you're more likely to go grab one if the product fits you.

Walking to work every morning I have created my real life AdBlock, where I just ignore people handing stuff. (Not their fault... just businesses not understanding how to change ways)

<comment><USER6> Well here comes Google, shoving leaflets up your ass because they think their leaflets are special and more acceptable!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "In one possible application Google is considering, it may choose to block all advertising that appears on sites with offending ads, instead of the individual offending ads themselves. In other words, site owners may be required to ensure all of their ads meet the standards, or could see all advertising across their sites blocked in Chrome."

I like this approach. It punishes site owners for running malicious or badly- behaved ads. I think this is a step forward. I hate blocking ads across the board - I just want to stop the intrusive and dangerous variety. I can tolerate the rest.

<comment><USER8> I like it too, but isn't Google in a conflict of interest here?

<comment><USER9> No because all of their ads will meet standards. I wouldn't be surprised if a competing lower-quality ad agency sues Google over this.

<comment><USER10> Except it's your device, you can choose to block ads.

<comment><USER3> And what about the grandmother of the guy next door? What about the other 99.999% of internet users who are not you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My cynical side can't help but think they will do this first, then later disable uBlock / other ad blockers (or the APIs they rely on) and claim that "we can do it better." I can't imagine that this isn't a violation of some kind of law (RICO, antitrust, or otherwise), but I don't imagine this would ever be prosecuted.

<comment><USER12> There's really no way to disable _all_ ad-blocking in a browser, even if the browser-vendor wanted desperately to do so, because—whether ad-stripping _browser extensions_ exist or not—ad-stripping _HTTP proxies_ (e.g. Privoxy) will always exist.

And if you think users couldn't handle _using_ one of those, there's nothing stopping someone from making an e.g. "Privoxy configurator + blocklist updater" browser extension that just serves as a client GUI to your ad- stripping proxy's control channel. (Or giving the daemon a system-tray icon that launches an Electron GUI or something.)

The development of ad-blockers outside of the browser kind of stalled ~5 years ago, but only because everyone has been pretty satisfied with the browser extension solution to the problem. Take it away, and other solutions will just come back into play, with all the modern lessons learned from building the browser-extensions brought in.

<comment><USER13> The only issue with that is HTTPS, which Privoxy currently can't handle ( [https://www.privoxy.org/faq/misc.html](https://www.privoxy.org/faq/misc.html) ) and will become even more of a problem with the current "encrypt everything" trend. Certificate pinning and all the other stuff aimed at making TLS harder to MITM also gets in the way of effective adblocking proxies. The only one I know of which can MITM SSL on Windows is Proxomitron, and you still have to patch the browser(s).

<comment><USER14> HTTPS proxying is perfectly possible, though. IMHO it's one of those bizarre cases where the code to implement it isn't even that hard necessarily. The challenge is all in the fact that A: more people _think_ they understand the HTTPS security model than _actually_ understand the HTTPS security model and B: it's really easy to write code that "works" in the sense that it allows you to proxy pages, but allows you to proxy _too many_ pages _too easily_. Programmers generally acquire a deep and generally-mostly-justified belief that getting code to do the thing they want it to do is the hard part, so code that appears to work is likely more correct than broken, but this is one case where it's quite shockingly easy to write code that works far too "well" and all the challenge is actually in writing all the test cases for when it is _supposed_ to fail to proxy the page.

That's a lot of headwinds on a bit of code, but they are possible to overcome, if the motivation, and perhaps even more importantly, the humility is there.

<comment><USER12> It'd be nice to lift out Chromium's own network stack into a library (as a continuously-rebased-from-upstream derivative fork), and then build a proxy that made requests using said network stack. Then you'd get all the HSTS/cert- pinning logic, the CORS and only-N-requests-per-host-at-a-time policies, and a very good LRU cache implementation, "for free", for your proxy daemon.

Heck, if you don't mind an extra 100MB of memory consumption, you could probably throw a "correct" proxy-daemon together in Javascript by relying on the browser network stack of a [headless] Electron instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ads are a subset of a larger issue: the out of control data mining and tracking[1]. Focusing only on whether an ad is visually pleasant or not does not address the larger issue -- which larger issue is the foremost reason people should install a content blocker, to get back in the control seat of their _user agent_.

[1] [https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/849263615634964484](https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/849263615634964484) => [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8ka33oUMAAGMBm.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8ka33oUMAAGMBm.jpg:large)

[https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/803998582227533825](https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/803998582227533825) => [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyhfYyWWEAAH8zq.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyhfYyWWEAAH8zq.jpg:large)

[https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/649256227277537280](https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/649256227277537280) (visually, a page with no ads) => [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQKfGQBWoAAhNc7.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQKfGQBWoAAhNc7.png:large)

<comment><USER16> For you it's 'out of control'. For me it's 'the price I'm happy to pay to get what I want'.

<comment><USER17> I'm glad you understand what that price is and are happy to pay it. I personally have a hard time evaluating the price because the _whats_ and _hows_ of a site's tracking seldom are disclosed in a clear and concise manner that I can review ad understand before the tracking occurs. And even if it was, that would be a lot of friction to do for every site I might visit.

I find it much easier to control by deciding on a policy up front and letting my browser help me enforce it.

<comment><USER16> The problem with that approach is that you are going against the wishes of the person who produced the website. To my mind if someone creates something of value, the creator should have a say over how that something is consumed. To use something without the permission of the owner feels a bit dirty. If I don't agree to the terms of use for a website I simply won't use it.

<comment><USER17> > To my mind if someone creates something of value, the creator should have a > say over how that something is consumed. To use something without the > permission of the owner feels a bit dirty.

I agree. That's why I want a say in how my data is consumed.

<comment><USER16> Person A: "I created a web page. I'll let you view it if you also look at this advertisement"

Person B: "No, I don't agree to your condition. I'll just view the page without the advertisement"

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Person A: "I've built this car. I'll let you drive it if you keep the speed under 60 miles per hour"

Person B: "No, I don't agree to your condition. I'll just drive your car and go at whatever speed I like"

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Person A: "I baked a cake. I'll let you eat it if you give me $5"

Person B: "No, I don't agree to your condition. I'll just eat the cake and give you nothing"

<comment><USER18> Privacy really isn't transactional, it's a ecological issue. There's no way for you to make that decision without (as a group) impacting others. A choice to not use Google or Facebook can now be crippling for some people, and fairly bothersome for most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I suppose Google's own ad network will be unaffected, thereby "encouraging" sites to move to Google's network for a no-block guarantee?

<comment><USER20> Yup. I'm a big supporter of ad blockers, but this is a conflict of interest the size of Everest.

If Google is really interested in ensuring good user experiences, they should work with the EFF to set up a fund of some kind to support this work, and then have EFF manage it.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure offering prime position to a relatively random tech foundation that Google donates to will play better than relying on an independent advertising industry group. Given. A choice between indiscriminate regulation by a foundation of my industry, and an independent organization of an industry choosing to self-regulate, companies should prefer the second.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The »Coalition for Better Ads« is just the same as »Acceptable Ads« - we will try not annoy you with flashing ads. Both entirely fail to address privacy issues. Just search for »tracking« [1][2] or »privacy« on those sites, there is nothing at all. Not acceptable for me.

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=tracking+site:betterads.org](https://www.google.com/search?q=tracking+site:betterads.org)

[2] [https://www.google.com/search?q=tracking+site:acceptableads....](https://www.google.com/search?q=tracking+site:acceptableads.com)

</comment><comment><USER23> Hmm...

Step 1. Surprise the world with better ad blocking tech than what currently exists.

Step 2. When trust in tech is established, start blocking ads from other ad networks by calling them foul. Do this slowly so it's not obvious.

Step 3. Wait for customers of other ad networks to notice their ads are not effective.

Step 4. Steal customers...Profit.

<comment><USER24> Thats just mutually assured destruction - all IE/edge browsers would start blocking all google ads, firefox would block everyone, chrome would black all not google ads, and half the internet economy collapses

<comment><USER25> Microsoft doesn't have any serious advertising business. Firefox has none. So how exactly could it be mutually assured destruction?

More likely is an antitrust lawsuit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My first instinct is that this feature will involve google contributor, where users can block ads and still send revenue to sites they frequent. [https://contributor.google.com/](https://contributor.google.com/)

I went to check on the status of that program and got this message:

 _We're launching a new and improved Contributor in early 2017!_

<comment><USER27> It'd be a neat middle option: display safe ads in Chrome with Google providing assurances that impressions/clicks aren't bots without the crazy messes of JavaScript currently used for that, and put a "Pay this site directly and never see ads" button next to it so people who really don't like ads can opt- out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Honorable mention goes to Adnauseam ([https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)). It is an extension for Firefox and Chrome, which clicks on almost every ad. Hopefully, costing advertisers money. The interesting part is: Google removed Adnauseum from their Chrome Extensions. If you anyway install it, every Chrome restart requires that you re-enable the extension.

I like the extension... the advertisers are costing me money by consuming bandwidth, and slowing down everything... well I will try to hit them where it hurts.

<comment><USER29> There's a pretty significant difference there, though. They're costing you a small amount of bandwidth in order to provide the content that you apparently want to look at, while you're costing them money just to be malicious. If you don't want to look at the content, just don't. If you want to look at the content but don't want to see ads, use an ad blocker. Punishing them for trying to stay afloat while giving you something you want is just pathological behavior.

<comment><USER30> You can rationalize it however you want, but there's only two possibilities.

1\. People like you, who say "but I can just ignore ads" are right, and ad companies are about to go out of the business.

2\. People who are convinced that ads don't affect them are wrong.

It doesn't seem like ad companies are struggling to me? So the logical conclusion is that ignoring ads doesn't work.

Now on the retaliation. Anyone trying to expose me to ads is aggressively trying to compromise my decision making process. Since they started, I see nothing wrong with defending myself by increasing their costs.

>They're costing you a small amount of bandwidth in order to provide the content that you apparently want to look at

The real cost is that your decisions are compromised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So, Google...largest ad company in the world is going to start blocking its competitors ads and white listing their own. How is this not going to end in an FTC law suit? Sounds super shady, I know Google is a darling, but ask yourself if Microsoft had as much advertising market share as Google and they did this...would you still be ok with it? If the answer is no, then you should see that Google is possibly not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and has a long term strategy to snuff out all remaining competition while retaining their own market share and revenues...which ad blockers have greatly effected.

</comment><comment><USER32> As someone who uses ublock origin and has been blocking ads for many years, I will consider turning it off if this is effective. My problem is not with ads themselves, it's with terrible ads.

<comment><USER33> some terrible ads don't look terrible, but instead behave terribly. Violating your privacy, Consuming your bandwidth, ect. How would you recognize these except to audit them yourself? If you read the criteria from the coalition for better ads:

        ...the following types of ad experiences fell beneath the initial
        Better Ads Standard: pop-up ads, prestitial ads, ads with density
        greater than 30%, flashing animated ads, auto-play video ads with
        sound, poststitial ads with countdown, full-screen scrollover ads, and
        large sticky ads.

In other words, privacy compromising is not considered bad behavior. Nor is exorbitant use of bandwidth, It seems their focus is merely on what the average consumer would consider toxic.

same source as the story: [https://www.betterads.org/coalition-for-better-ads- releases-...](https://www.betterads.org/coalition-for-better-ads-releases- initial-better-ads-standards-for-desktop-and-mobile-web/)

<comment><USER34> This is where it will fail (if indeed it is true).

Privacy is not a massive concern for people, but it is a concern. It's enough of a concern for people to mistrust the brand serving the adverts - google.

Considering how much google relies on its brand, trust is a big part of the reason why people entrust google with their often very private searches.

People don't like advertising for lot of reasons, that's why they use ad blockers and not ad filters.

This is why googles attempt to introduce a block on advertising is like a salesman attempting to stop people from cold calling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Whoa. A company where 85%+ of its revenue comes from ads and over that owns a really popular browser is going to block ads? Could be a power play to give Google even more control over advertisers

<comment><USER36> This isn't about controlling advertiser spend at all. It's about controlling publisher supply.

Publishers have other choices for ad supply, Google is not the most lucrative, but it's the best for high volume so it's everywhere, because people need to get their fill rates.

If a major browser like Chrome starts punishing publishers for not policing their supply, it'll only benefit the big networks.

(I'm actually very skeptical of this article's claims...)

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Maybe time to stop using and recommending Chrome? I heard of this browser called "Firefox" which isn't developed by an advertising company.

<comment><USER37> As a web developer you can take my Chrom(e|ium) from my cold dead hands.

I tried out Firefox for a week this year and the experience didn't come anywhere close to that of using Chrome, not only for development but also as a user. Heck, even Electrolysis is still a mess with half the extensions still blocking it.

<comment><USER30> I like how Chrome still doesn't let you turn off the downloads bar showing up when you download something. After 10 years, "it's a feature" guys.

It's really beyond my understanding how a megacorp like Google has a product with worse UX than old Opera which was developed by what, a hundred people, maybe?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Google has to do _something_ about ads IMHO. On the desktop it isn't so bad as we have extensions such as uBlock Origin but Chrome on Android is a truly awful experience on some sites.

Just yesterday I tapped a news story from Google Now only to be greeted with a full screen and _vibrating_ phone ad a few seconds after the story loaded. Totally unacceptable and from a story promoted by Google within Google Now!

The big issue for Google is clearly conflict of interest.

But like I and others have said something needs to be done to sort out the mess that is web advertising. We need industry standards on what is acceptable and anything that isn't gets blocked.

<comment><USER39> > On the desktop it isn't so bad as we have extensions such as uBlock Origin > but Chrome on Android is a truly awful experience on some sites.

Yeah. If only Google allowed uBlock Origin to be installed on Chrome for mobile they wouldn't need to create their own adblocker. /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Looking forward to ublock origin no longer working in chrome on whatever pretense, that's obviously the end game here.

</comment><comment><USER41> Who is clicking on these ads, anyway? I've never understood how this adds up to profit (for the advertisers).

<comment><USER42> A small percentage of users click ads that I assume make up for the users who don't.

And for the record, I click ads sometimes. Mainly on Facebook, because they're impressively relevant. I've discovered quite a few apps and products that I like through ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Who is the Coalition for Better Ads? Their About page gives no names. Is Google a member? How influential is Google? Whose interests does the Coalition serve?

[https://www.betterads.org/about/](https://www.betterads.org/about/)

"Leading international trade associations and companies involved in online media ..."

<comment><USER44> [https://www.betterads.org/members/](https://www.betterads.org/members/)

<comment><USER43> Thanks; I don't know how I missed that.

Google is a member, FWIW, among very many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Wow that seems like playing with fire for Google. Maybe they figure that Trump's lax antitrust enforcement will give them free rein to screw with competitors for the next 4-8 years.

<comment><USER46> What law does this violate?

<comment><USER47> Antitrust laws. What happens when Google allows its own ads while blocking Facebook's?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> While the notion that Google is going to "do something about the ad problem" is completely laughable, it would turn out to be a great thing if they just blocked all ads from Facebook as a starting point. This would start some kind of tit for tat race which will spiral out of control for both companies until it ends up in MAD.

Once both companies destroy each other, we can pick up the pieces left over and start to build a nicer web free of these two privacy plagues.

<comment><USER49> Nice dream

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> My guess is that Google ads would be whitelisted?

<comment><USER42> They're following a standard: [https://www.betterads.org/standards/](https://www.betterads.org/standards/)

Seems like a safe bet they wouldn't serve ads that would get blocked.

<comment><USER51> Except they don't follow that standard:

[http://www.groundup.org.za/article/why-were-dropping- google-...](http://www.groundup.org.za/article/why-were-dropping-google-ads/)

<comment><USER36> Seems like you haven't read the better ad coalition standard, because it doesn't say anything about creative content – it's just about formats.

And, honestly, that site is basically a south african blog; as much as I love picking a fight when it's due, I don't think Google is to blame here, but the advertisers targeting their core demographics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> It's scary to watch how google manipulates the web to make it "google's web". At first they incentivized everyone to offer specific types of content, then they gradually made monetizing more difficult, and now they are actively going to try to remove the competition. They should be working on improving their ad delivery system instead.

<comment><USER53> It becomes "less" scary if you remember that many people already think that "web" means "Facebook+Instagram app on iPhone".

<comment><USER52> google is still the most visited site though, and you always end up on the web with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> "Advertising company will block ads"?

or is it

"Advertising company will block ads (obviously except its own)"? "Content providers - use Google's ad network if you want to make sure you get ad revenue from Chrome!"

Will Google try to remain "fair"? Does the profit-maximizing moves align with "fairness"?

<comment><USER55> I am not sure profit-maximization is ever primarily concerned with fairness. Google is probably not the exception to this. However, like many things Google this is something that will improve user experience (no more shitty, malware infested ads, by default) and undercut their competitors. So, most of their users aren't really going to be up in arms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is a bad idea. Unless Google allows the ad-blocker to block Google's ads as well as others, it will be viewed as anti-competitive, antitrust.

</comment><comment><USER57> So I'm guessing "stripping adds that provide a bad experience for users" is just code for "stripping adds not generating revenue for Google." A lot of other neutral add blockers block Google and hence Google needs to convince users to just let Google be their add filter.

It's a risky move by Google and one made likely more out of need for themselves than need for their users.

For all the wonders of Google it's still very much a one trick pony from a business standpoint. Anything that threatens their ad revenue is a very real threat to their business health. All the fun "side businesses" while very cool aren't exactly paying the bills.

</comment><comment><USER58> Will the feature block paid placements in search results, too? I think most English speakers would consider these to be, erm, advertisements.

</comment><comment><USER53> Yeah, The Ad Company of the twentyfirst century makes an adblocker. I think I'd just deactivate it on day one and use an adblock plugin instead.

</comment><comment><USER59> This would be fantastic. I finally installed Adblock Plus and I feel bad about it, but I had had enough. I couldn't even see content on legitimate webpages anymore through all the pop up ads and auto start videos. I don't mind normal ads but it was getting ridiculous. The arms race had tipped too far to the ad providers. I just want to block the ridiculous, which is what this sounds like it would do.

</comment><comment><USER34> Google have totally missed the point here. Ad blocking is a reaction to advertising, not good ads or bad ads. People install ad blockers, not ad filters.

Advertising is dead in its current state. The first banner ad had a success rate of 95%, compare that with today's metrics of less than 1% and you see the issue.

Google is trying to do something to please shareholders, but ultimately this strategy will fail.

</comment><comment><USER60> How many prognosticators among us think that Google will end up buying one of the big ad-blocking companies out there? If acquired, this would be a coup for Wladimir Palant and folks like him. Currently, Adblock Plus allows us to uncheck the "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" option. If Google were to acquire said company (or similar offering), this ability to disallow non- intrusive advertising will be either hidden or removed entirely. If Google's properties are the only ones "allowed" through the filter, that's another case of monopoly power. Time will tell.

There is a silver lining for users here. If Google does go down this route, Firefox and Edge will eventually follow suit. This somewhat concerted action against intrusive ads will put a lot of pressure on ad agencies and content providers, which could be the impetus they need to rethink their ad delivery strategy to be more user-friendly.

</comment><comment><USER61> This isn't a Google coming to Jesus moment and realizing ads are bad. No, this is getting out in front of the ad-blocking movement and proactively saving their business model.

Google has every incentive to make advertising on the web palatable for most everyone. If that means blocking some ads, then they need to do that.

</comment><comment><USER62> How is it not a massive legal problem to have an ad company supplying the ad blocker, and deciding what gets blocked?

<comment><USER21> The whole "relying on an open standards organization" bit.

<comment><USER3> I call bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Google has to know this is going to invite a wave of antitrust investigations. I guess they think they can win?

</comment><comment><USER64> While video ads with sound on and popups are pretty irritating, I think interstitial ads with a timer are more in the grey area. I mostly use the Epic Privacy Browser which already by default blocks all ads.

</comment><comment><USER65> I wonder how this will impact their competitors (Facebook?). I assume these features will be opt-in instead of enabled-by-default. it could be pretty catastrophic if it is enabled by default. For an optin feature, it is not much different from today, where a user can install adblocker extension. Very few consumers opt to do so.

A while ago, Apple added ad blocking features to iOS 9, however users had to explicitly enable them by installing an adblocker apps. I have not seen significant impact by this move (G and FB are still growing).

<comment><USER36> Facebook runs the tightest ship when it comes to ad formats. They don't allow rich media ads at all either, so malvertising is almost non-existent on Facebook.

They wouldn't be impacted by this at all, in my opinion who this hurts most is publishers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Then watch Google start blocking add-ons that block ads Google likes.

</comment><comment><USER67> I can only hope they are also developing a micropayment system to allow easy payment for web content. This shouldn't be too hard - they have a billing system (Google Play) already

<comment><USER36> They have a system to allow easy payment for web content: Google ads.

<comment><USER67> So... Marry Google Ads and Google Play to allow consumers to pay directly for content without the ads?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What about the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)?

According to wikipedia they have criticized Microsoft for enabling Do Not Track by default in Internet Explorer 10.

They also went against Mozilla for planning to turn on blocking of 3rd party HTTP cookies in Firefox.

They even blocked AdBlock to attend an event of theirs.

So I am sure they will just LOVE that Google is making all of its competitors dance to the IAB's tune. I wonder who is pulling the strings behind IAB when Google goes and does something like this.

</comment><comment><USER68> Finally. The mobile web is literally broken without adblocker on Android. In the meantime the Adguard (Fake VPN, non root) filter + Chrome does a good job for now.

</comment><comment><USER69> Sometimes just being able to do a thing, distorts the whole playing field. Actually, just having this red button, will make google adds-business untouchable for any serious competition. One nuke atop a rocket makes your country s borders safer then any tank army ever could. And this is what this is. A nuke, who even by just lying there in the ground, doing near nothing, fortifies the walls of this empire.

</comment><comment><USER70> It's too late. After my 9-year-old son's start-page got taken over by a malicious ad, I set up uBlock. I was fighting long and hard to avoid adblocking because I really did think it was wrong to view the web without the ads that support it... but the industry has utterly failed to keep their houses clean.

Whatever "polite" implementation Google implements in Chrome won't be enough anymore.

<comment><USER71> I'm visiting my parents for Easter and was driven to installed uBlock Origin on my dad's laptop because of Google's own Adsense ads.

He was on this website: [http://www.beverlybees.com/install-package-bees- langstroth-h...](http://www.beverlybees.com/install-package-bees-langstroth- hive/) and the first ad said "Click here to download the video player extension" which got him to install a browser extension.

When I asked him why, he said "well, I'm trying to watch this tutorial video and it said I needed an extension". It was just an unrelated ad. Adsense must've picked up the "install" keyword on the page and started showing "download" ads.

I told him it was an ad and he went back to the page, falling for the 2nd mid- article ad further down which was a large play/download button. The ads made him think he was looking for a video even though there is no video in the blog post tutorial.

Watching my dad get fooled like this so helplessly really nauseated me, and it's Google's own ads. How many ad clicks are from people thinking it's part of the content?

I installed uBlock Origin immediately.

<comment><USER34> Click bait ads that are made to mimic UX / UI are as close to malware as you can get and often result in malware installs. Good on you for protecting your dad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Chrome has already won the war of browsers however the new ones (Brave, Vivaldi, UC) are jostling their way with inbuilt ad blockers.

Now, it might seem that Google wants to maintain an edge over these with the new ad-blocking feature but one can tell that it will only block ads outside Google network.

The way I see it as a bigger bet on cannibalizing itself because if Google does not then somebody else will.

</comment><comment><USER73> I wish google would give me the option to describe what ads not to show me and would only block those ads.

Then again, I wish Gmail could see that 60% of my email traffic is with one other person and stop showing me ads for dating sites. And I wish that Amazon ads would be for goods complimentary to the things I've bought rather than ads for the items I've already bought.

</comment><comment><USER74> Before everybody gets excited, please read the fine print. They are working with the Coalition for Better Ads and industry trades to support the Better Ads Standards. If anyone is interested, here is the standard: [https://www.betterads.org/standards/](https://www.betterads.org/standards/)

</comment><comment><USER75> When content blocking becomes first class citizen on all major browsers you can't go back. Offering a sub-par browsing experience which forces people to look at your ads is a surefire way to drive users to competitors.

Unless you have some lobbying ace up your sleeve to force 'acceptable ads' as a standard to implement.

</comment><comment><USER76> Note that this is built-in in Opera, which is basically a skin over Chromium at this point. I definitely recommend it.

<comment><USER77> How is opera like chromium at this point? I've been using safari mostly, so I've not kept up with browsers and development.

<comment><USER78> I'm not the parent poster, but I believe the parent was referencing the fact that Opera now uses the same rendering engine as Chrome/Chromium.

I haven't used Opera since they changed rendering engines, so I can't comment beyond that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Judging by the comments before this one, very few actually read the article - soooo /.

My take: Ad wrangler attempts to quash competition by leveraging it's dominant browser share.

How on earth does an ad slinger take the moral high ground wrt ad intrusiveness or whatever is currently considered naughty by targets of ads?

</comment><comment><USER80> This will be pretty interesting.

The web has been in a downward spiral for years: Fewer and fewer users browse the web without an adblocker. Which leads Publishers to bombard them with more and more ads. Which leads more users to use adblockers.

Blocking annoying ads for all users by default could break this vicious circle.

</comment><comment><USER58> Serious question: I see that they are (sort of) adhering to (some) standard of "ad acceptability."

Why are ads that consume a few too many CPU cycles more morally repugnant than ads that nearly invisibly manipulate a consumer's search results with undermining, misdirecting, or hortatory messaging?

<comment><USER34> Because they gave to be seen to do something. Google have never really cared how dirty or malicious it's ad inventory is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> This is interesting -- it leads to another eventuality where, instead of blocking ads, Google replaces "bad ads" with "good ads" and provides revenue to website owners that suffer from lost revenue as a result of ad-blocking.

</comment><comment><USER82> If Google can block "bad ads", like malware and the ones that trigger alert/confirm in rapidly generated iframes, I imagine adblock uasage could decline growth. I'll always use ublock origin and privacy badger though.

</comment><comment><USER83> If google does this then Firefox should ad block google ads. What's good for the goose.

</comment><comment><USER84> Seems like a great move for Google. Block all ads except theirs (and, most people won't install another ad blocker if there is one built-in), so that publishers will be forced to use Google ads if they want to target customers.

</comment><comment><USER85> I like this move. I don't mind ads to support webpages I enjoy but I do want to 've rid of the really annoying ads. I also don't get why advertisers do that. If I am annoyed by an ad, I'm not going to buy.

</comment><comment><USER86> I've barely read/skimmed a few dozen of the comments here and its clear most people didn't even read the article.

The primary goal for this _possible_ feature is to block "bad" ads, as deemed by the ad industry.

</comment><comment><USER87> Considering Google's main business is selling ads I'm guessing they are only going to block ads from competitors. Who will then have very solid ground for a lawsuit for anti-competitive behavior. This seems like a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER88> It will be interesting to see if they block ads that are served through Doubleclick for Publishers, a Google owned ad server.

Publishers that use DFP will be paying Google to serve ads that will ultimately be blocked by a Google owned browser.

</comment><comment><USER89> Offending ads = non-google ads.

</comment><comment><USER90> I'd be surprised if they block tracking which is the other half of what ad blockers do and arguably the half that I think is more important.

It would be neat if they checked your DNT setting and then blocked tracking based on that.

</comment><comment><USER91> We need less terrible ads. Let's go back to static picture-based banner ads. The picture-link tracks the ad-clicks, simply, reliable and non bloated third party JS needed.

So where are the ad networks that offer such ad-type?

</comment><comment><USER92> "Alphabet Inc.'s Google is planning to introduce an ad-blocking feature in the mobile and desktop versions of its popular Chrome web browser, according to people's familiar with the company's plans."

Yeah like every journalist do not give your source, make false article, try to say what will be the future and fail to do it. This site have BIG annoying ad at start. F __* this site. (Downvote me it 's free) this is not a value added article, it only try to bias make view and try to pretend they know what will happen, like we all know, journalist don't know anything they are just follower and they need to start to give info that matter, that are true of today, not of the future, without any added value.

</comment><comment><USER93> Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?

</comment><comment><USER94> It makes sense to do this on the mobile browser, trying to get around the net can be horrific on a phone, not to mention the data useage. Ublock and so on already have the desktop sewn up.

</comment><comment><USER95> But letting through their own ads because Google by pure coincidence judges Google's ads to be OK, I guess? I don't like Google's interests guiding their web platform (it's not just a web browser anymore), and this is icing on the cake to me. Thankfully there are community ran alternatives on par with the latest web standards and competing with these corporate web platforms, or else our web would risk being truly lost.

With that said, how in the heavens or hells will Google be able to defend this move from competing ad agencies while letting through their own ads? This cannot be the first we'll hear of this if it actually happens.

</comment><comment><USER96> Pretty interesting; I just today found it and added the extension to my Chrome and it works fine. Still have Adblock in Safari, Bing and Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER97> The concept of an ads company blocking "some" ads that _it_ decides aren't good for users sounds a bit like google blocking its competitors, doesn't it?

</comment><comment><USER98> I really want to know if others do this. I don't click on ANY ads, except chumbox ads. Yes I'm admitting it - I want to know what those stars look like now!!!!!

</comment><comment><USER99> If you go to a restaurant and order a salad, you're not obligated to eat the olives, and you have the right to take them off your plate.

Likewise, you have the right to bring an intermediary who looks at your salad and hides all the olives for you.

If your intermediary happens to work for Green Olive Co. and he hides the black olives but not the green ones, you have the right to switch to another intermediary. Or get another intermediary who checks the plate and hides the rest of the olives. Or do whatever you want, because you're not obligated to consume any part of the salad that you don't want to.

<comment><USER100> Sure, but in your example, you've paid for the salad. The whole reason (presumably) that advertising has gotten in the state it's in is that nobody wants to pay for things, but it costs money to keep the lights on.

Full disclaimer: I use things for free day in and day out. I try to pay for things that I find value in as my budget allows. I find many ads annoying.

<comment><USER99> Yeah, I see how my analogy fails now.

I still don't think there is a moral right or wrong with AdBlockers. Web sites are text--how you choose to render them is (or should be) up to you, in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> I wonder if this is the replacement for Google Contributor that they've alluding to for a while. I'm sure u/Filligree can't comment... :)

</comment><comment><USER102> This will put them in a position to avoid or bypass hosts file blocking by being able to reroute ads through alternate hosts on the fly.

Hmm, maybe I should patent that idea.

</comment><comment><USER103> ppl at google are scared of FB's resurgent growth. now they are leveraging on advantages they already have. if FB reacts with introducing plugins for blocking ads completely (on desktop and mobile), It would ensure total annihilation of ad industry. that is the a step fb can take now to force google to make truce and backoff their adblocking features.

</comment><comment><USER104> Will this potentially be able to disable tracking cookies from the likes of Facebook and others who follow you around the internet?

</comment><comment><USER105> My god, to get quality journalism it would be so strange if the death of online ads brought some semblance of Print back again.

</comment><comment><USER106> In general I like Google but a transparent move like this makes me consider finally installing a third party ad-blocker instead.

</comment><comment><USER107> So Google will be blocking competitor ads? Will they block their's too?

How does this bode for anti-trust protections?

</comment><comment><USER108> > According to those standards, ad formats such as pop-ups, auto-playing video > ads with sound and "prestitial" ads with countdown timers are deemed to be > "beneath a threshold of consumer acceptability."

Seems reasonable considering Chromium goal:

> Chromium is an open-source browser project that aims to build a safer, > faster, and more stable way for all Internet users to experience the web.

[https://www.chromium.org/Home](https://www.chromium.org/Home)

</comment><comment><USER109> Is this an indication that Google isn't able to control 'bad' content ingested up stream in their ad network?

</comment><comment><USER110> I like the idea but only because FF will likey copy them without the conflict of interest.

</comment><comment><USER111> It's probably a way to counter more aggressive ad blocking, since it will allow some ads, and especially tracking.

</comment><comment><USER112> That's practically one way to speed up browsing performance without changing the underlying technology itself.

</comment><comment><USER96> I just added to my extensions in Chrome and still have Adblocker in Safari, Bing and FireFox

</comment><comment><USER96> I just added to my extensions in Chrome and still have Adblocker in Safari, Bing and FireFox

</comment><comment><USER113> Some people dont like this. May i suggest firefox? Not fast enough for you? You could always contribute.

</comment><comment><USER114> This makes microsoft look like saints.

</comment><comment><USER115> I guess it makes sense for them as they can block annoying ads but leave Google ads up there.

</comment><comment><USER116> Yet another power grab from Google.

</comment><comment><USER117> Well this is going to be a tool for Google to tame unscrupulous advertisers. Good and Bad.

</comment><comment><USER118> They basically going to track the websites you visit and sell the data to get revenue.

</comment><comment><USER119> _Pull major ads from youtube_ Google: "Fine! no one can have ads!"

</comment><comment><USER120> What about the pop-up blocker? Doesn't that block most of the pop-up ads?

</comment><comment><USER121> I wonder if Google will use this feature to accidentally-on-purpose step on other adblocking extensions' toes, tech wise. Will running uBlock on top of it hurt performance like running two antiviruses?

All of a sudden, Mozilla's decision to move towards Chrome's extension model looks suspicious.

</comment><comment><USER122> Opera already does this already and includes an unlimited VPN for free.

</comment><comment><USER123> Is this visual ad-blocking only?

Or are they also going to block user-tracking?

Just wondering.

</comment><comment><USER124> Anti-competitive / monopoly lawsuit in 3... 2... 1...

</comment><comment><USER125> If you can't fight it, join it. Then lead it.

</comment><comment><USER126> Есть небольшая разница между удалением рекламы и фильтрацией всей рекламы кроме своей. Теперь нужно будет ставить дополнительный ублок, поверх штатного. Как всё это будет работать - медленно и ломать вёрстку.

</comment><comment><USER127> The sentence parse, but beyond that it makes no sense.

</comment><comment><USER128> Vivaldi already has an integrated ad-blocker.

</comment><comment><USER129> Usability alert: _Really_ faint text.

</comment><comment><USER130> Good! I hope it blocks YouTube ads as well.

</comment><comment><USER131> probably google trying to destroy the competition. maybe block other ad networks but not theirs.

</comment><comment><USER132> Imitation is zhe best form of flattery.

</comment><comment><USER133> That sounds like an anti trust case in the making.

</comment><comment><USER134> Trojan horse.

</comment><comment><USER135> Google, meet The Sherman Act.

</comment><comment><USER136> LOL

</comment><comment><USER137> Paywall removed: [http://outline.com/f35FY6](http://outline.com/f35FY6)

</comment><comment><USER138> Why didn't WSJ block access to this article?</comment>


How much does typing speed matter for programmers?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/09/does-typing-speed-matter/ <comment><USER2> The reason it's hard to take slow typists seriously as programmers isn't that typing speed affects your ability as a programmer; the issue is that it speaks to how much time you've really spent in front of a computer, actually writing programs. I've never met a slow typist who had written gobs of code (good or bad).

</comment><comment> T-hawk For a programmer, words-per-minute text typing speed is not so important, but _navigation_ typing speed is. I'm talking about the ability to, without conscious thought, tab around between windows, hit the command keys for operations like copy+paste, and use speedy text navigation shortcuts like Ctrl-arrow keys and Home/End. The more a programmer can instinctively take shortcuts like that, the more he'll maintain mental flow on the real task instead of diverting effort to managing his tools. I don't have any hard data of course, but anecdotally I feel a large correlation between environment navigation efficiency and work productivity.

This applies to more than just programming, like spreadsheet work as well. A user who's learned End-navigation or fill-down shortcuts can get a complex Excel sheet done in significantly less time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whenever I hear a developer pounding away frenetically at the keyboard, 9 times out of 10 they are pounding away at an email.

<comment><USER4> Whenever I see an artist furiously drawing lines on a piece of paper, 9 times out of 10 they are writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tl;dr people spend more time thinking than typing, but the benefit of fast typing is the ability for your hands to keep up with your brain.

</comment><comment><USER6> Average typing speed is enough. Programmers do not look at the keyboard when typing.

Novice speed does hamper efficiency. Finding alphabets, numbers and symbols on keyboard interrupts programmers' thought.

Fast does help much as programmers do not type much one at time but thinks more between lines of code. Usually programmers write a few lines even a few characters for adjustment.

For programmers, good use of editor is more important. Able to use keyword short-cuts to cut and paste, replacing pattern of text, finding text, moving text between files is a key to efficiency.

<comment><USER7> Agree on all points.

I watch "over the shoulder" of many software engineers at my (Windows-based) work, and 90% of them work at a CMD shell/console with QuickEdit mode disabled; software that I'm responsible for spits fully qualified logfile names out to said console, but rather than copy + paste the filename into Outlook's attachment File Open dialog, they laboriously click their way thru the "Explorer" dialog pane trying to find the same file. I sometimes point out that they could easily copy and paste the name from the console into the dialog, and some of them have an "aha!" moment, but most simply don't "get" it.

OTOH I've watched experienced unix developers who type at fantastic speeds, but with a significant error rate: bzzzzz (a command line) enter [error]; bzzzzzz (a whole new command line intending to duplicate the intent of the first) enter [error]; (third time's the charm?). Slow down or use line- editing? No... These are far less the rule than the mouse-click-happy Windows users, but clearly there are many ways to be inefficient...

The fewer times I (a marginal typist) am forced to type out a copy of text I see on the screen, the more productive I am. My work processes are optimized along this axis: let the computer do the work instead of my fingers whenever possible.

<comment> T-hawk Funny, I usually observe the opposite use of copying at a command-line window. I often see co-workers and client users copying and pasting as little as 4 or 6 characters out of a command window, when in that case it would be more efficient to simply retype it rather than reach for and point and aim the mouse. These are tokens usually like investment account numbers or ticker symbols or the like. The excuse is usually "to make sure I get it right" -- as in many jobs, covering your ass from any mistakes is more important than actual productivity gains.

<comment><USER7> Maybe your co-workers and clientele are all skilled typists who _never_ make transposition errors. But I've dialed enough wrong numbers due to simple transposition (mental) errors (and made analogous typing errors) to know how easy it is to make them. If 'persons unknown' had to move _my personal_ investment account number around via data-entry, I'd feel much better knowing they were copy-pasting and not manually transcribing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The thing is it's _easy_ to comfortably type, say, 60 words per minute if you use a computer a lot and care. When I learned to type I could do 20 or 30 or something, but when I found chat programs my max speed went over 100 after a few years. As long as you have any reason to be typing a lot, your speed should increase to the point where you're "fast" and don't care anymore.

Sure the benefit of typing 80 wpm instead of 60 is not that much. But the cost isn't much either, it happens naturally for heavy computer users.

If you're not typing reasonably fast, one has to wonder: why not?

No doubt a few people will have some good reason why not, or just say "I'm new to computers". But others will have a dumb reason. Others won't have ever thought about it. So you can learn about people by asking this.

It's kind of like: any serious programmer should learn a decent text editor. Yes you can code in a crappy one. Yes most of the time is spent thinking not text editing. But if you aren't using good tools one has to wonder: why not?

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think words per minute is the best measurement of programming speed, if we are trying to assess the efficiency of translating thoughts into code. The speed of navigating between files and functions and editing blocks or terms (delete, insert) deserves strong weighting as well.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, plus programming is symbol heavy while most WPM tests focus on prose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When you write, you don't just type constantly the whole time. You think a bit, decide on something to say, type it, then think of the next thing. The better you can type, the shorter the delay before you get back to thinking again without still having to remember what you're currently writing down. And typing itself is quite distracting for a weak typist, whereas a good typist doesn't pay attention to typing and keeps his mind on the content. The same applies to programing. Typing does matter.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you want to increase your typing speed (or waste a lot of time) anyway, check out <http://play.typeracer.com/> . In addition to popular works, you can configure it to make you type samples from open source projects in your language of choice.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes, it's great for impressing the others in the boss so they know you are in fact technical (apart from building all the stuff).

</comment><comment><USER12> Not at all if you're programming APL/J/K/Q!

</comment><comment><USER13> Typing speed is probably irrelevant. Touch typing is probably important for programmers to master, even if it is just so they don't have to break their zen state while programming.</comment>


Lockbox: secure secrets for your rails model using public key crypto. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mashd.cc/tag/lockbox

<comment><USER2> What padding mode is this using? Looking at the code, I think it's using raw RSA to encrypt the data directly. That may be vulnerable to several attacks.

I may not understand your application correctly, but it's unclear why you're even using public key crypto. It appears that you must type a passphrase to access both a public and private key that live on the same server. Why not just use a symmetric key?

Cautionary advice about rolling your own crypto: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySQl0NhW1J0></comment>


Utopia of the day: open-source the IRS code - <AUTHOR> http://dynin.blogspot.com/2011/04/utopiairsgov.html

<comment><USER2> There is work being done on this, actually, although it will take a few years to bear fruit. Gmail me, or <http://www.robotandhwang.com/?page_id=189></comment>


Optus Innov8 Seed Program Announces their Winter 2012 shortlist - <AUTHOR> http://optusinnov8seed.com.au/announcing-our-winter-2012-shortlist/

<comment><USER2> In my very quick review of these companies, it seems most have already been or are currently part of an incubator program Pollenizer[Flikgift,WooBoard], StartMate[ YoungRepublic], AngelCube - Lexim.

I don't know if this is a good sign for the Australian ecosystem or not. It would seem the goal of most incubators is to have companies funded after the program ends, not to enter another seed stage program.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm one of the founders of Lexim - an AngelCube company. The Optus Innov8 Seed program isn't another accelerator/incubator in the same sense as AngelCube/StartMate etc, but rather a pre-series-A fund, filling the void in Australia of post seed/pre-VC funding.

I can't speak for the other shortlisted companies, but AngelCube put us exactly where you suggested an accelerator-graduate company should be. We've raised a seed round post the AngelCube program, and picked up traction. The Innov8 fund is a great way to get a pre-series-A size investment, access to great resources and specified, targeted mentoring.

Unlike an accelerator/incubator it is not a structured program, nor do they prefer co-location of the teams.</comment></comment>


Modern GPU: a collection of well-written GPGPU programming tutorials - <AUTHOR> http://www.moderngpu.com/

<comment><USER2> If you want an "easy" way get into GPU development, AMD recently launched an interesting (open source) project that transparently compiles JVM bytecode into OpenCL: [http://blogs.amd.com/developer/2011/09/14/i-dont-always- writ...](http://blogs.amd.com/developer/2011/09/14/i-dont-always-write-gpu- code-in-java-but-when-i-do-i-like-to-use-aparapi/)

Definitely the easiest way I've seen to begin mucking around with GPU development.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I've talked to the AMD engineers who wrote it -- bunch of very smart guys.

My startup (TidePowerd : <http://www.tidepowerd.com>) has a product called GPU .NET which JIT-compiles CIL (.NET bytecode) directly into GPU machine code; essentially, we've extended the .NET VM onto the GPU to make GPGPU coding as seamless as we possibly could.

We'll be releasing a new version next week with a much-improved API; if you're experimenting with GPGPU coding, please give it a try -- feedback is super- helpful in shaping the API into something that's both really powerful and really easy to pick up and start coding with.

Oh, and GPU .NET is written in F# -- which we don't support just yet for writing your GPU code, but we're hard at work to add that (likely around the end of November)!

<comment><USER3> How do you deal with documenting the way the code gets mapped on to the GPU architecture? I've found that small tweaks in how things are laid out can cause huge performance gains (or losses) and if you've managed to automate that it would be really great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, we've managed to automate some of it -- things like the memory allocation/transferring we've got down fairly well and the new API we'll be releasing soon will take care of any edge cases.

For some things, like how your structs are organized/laid out, we haven't automatically optimized that yet -- but one advantage of using .NET (vs. native code like CUDA or OpenCL) is that the CLR specs allows a lot of freedom in implementation; so in the future, we could pretty easily implement some code to analyze your data layout / access patterns and reorganize things under the hood for better performance. All without you needing to rewrite your code, of course ;)

As time goes by though, and solidify the rest of our codebase, we'll be able to spend more time adding optimizations to the JIT compilers to get your code running as fast as the hardware allows, as often as possible.

<comment><USER3> Cool, really! Is there a way to 'hint' to the JIT compiler what layout you'd like to be used?

<comment><AUTHOR> Kind of -- there's 3 different layouts you can use for structs in .NET: "auto", "sequential", and "explicit".

"auto" lets the JIT compiler organize the fields in any order, with any padding bytes, etc. it wants to. This is the default, and changing it is basically a tradeoff between speed _now_ (where the JIT compiler may not recognize where it can optimize something) and speed _later_ (when we add a new optimization and your code automatically executes faster).

"sequential" requires the JIT compiler to layout the fields in the order they're defined, but it can add any padding bytes, etc. it wants to.

"explicit" forces you to specify the offset of each field, and forbids the compiler from re-ordering the fields or padding them in any way. It's rare to use this unless it's to handle interop'ing with a C library which uses some weird data structure as a parameter. You might get a speedup from using it in your GPU code, but since you've taken everything out of the hands of the compiler, there's little room for improvement/optimization.

Check out the docs on [StructLayout] for more info: [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/system.runtime.inter...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/system.runtime.interopservices.structlayoutattribute.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it interesting that you can write for the GPU using Haskell's GPipe: <http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/GPipe/Tutorial>

<comment><USER5> Nice Link!

We need more of these technical links on HN.

<comment><USER6> Back in the old days...

<comment><USER7> Yeah, like, back in the old days we had a link to an 8085 instruction reference card that got some attention. I think that was about four months ago... ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nasdaq Acknowledges Security Breach - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704843304576126370179332758.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

<comment><AUTHOR> "In a written statement, the company said during its normal security screening, it discovered "malware" files installed on a part of its network called Director's Desk..."

One can only imagine how many virtual strippers were dancing on their desktops at that time.

</comment><comment><USER2> The article is behind a paywall.

<comment><USER3> Try this: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870484330457612...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704843304576126370179332758.html)</comment></comment>