Ask HN: Why can't type theory be applied to personality types? - <AUTHOR> Given that type theory is a system for describing mathematics, and given that "Math can be applied everywhere", why is it that type theory can't seem to be applied to personality type theory? I've been thinking about this since about I started studying type theory. I'm thinking that one abstraction will be: a jolly man can act as a catalyst on a social environment and then cause the environment to be jolly as well. But I'm thinking as well about the case when a man "wearing a hat" can act as a catalyst on a social environment and then cause the environment to be "wearing a hat" as well. An environment "wearing a hat" doesn't sound good, does it? Well, my main question has a tendency to be flawed, but I would really like to have sincere answers. It would really help if the answers would focus on type theory. <comment><USER2> Short answer: personality is not strongly typed and interpretations vary wildly depending on which scale you use.

In a sense, this is already being done in fields like "organizational behavior", but the effect size of personality "type interfaces" (as it were) is relatively small, and varies greatly.

Is it possible? Sure. Is it useful? In practice, rarely.

<comment><USER3> Personality could be strongly typed, we don't know if it is yet. The continuous distributions we see in traits could be due to people behaving in a socially desirable way, while their mental algorithms are distinctly categorical. To link something like "type theory" to personality theory, I would look to computational complexity theory. The link is conceptually simple - different types of people might be optimized for solving different classes of problems. There might be a more direct link with mathematical types - I'll have to put it in the burner and see.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure we're using the term "strongly typed" in the same sense. Could we back up a bit? In what sense are you using the term "strongly typed"?

<comment><USER3> The difference between strongly typed and duck typed is not exactly equivalent to the difference between categorical and continuous variables, but it's close enough for now.

<comment><USER2> Okay, that's good enough for me :)

To speak plainly, the problem is that with duck-typing in computer science, it's trivial to determine whether or not an object has a given method. With regards to people, it's very difficult to reliably assess whether or not someone has a given personality trait, and it's even more difficult to know whether or not associating various personality traits together is beneficial. Different measures yield different results, both with regards to personality type and with regards to interactions between types.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm clueless about type theory, and outside school/university I've rearely used math on complicated stuff (mainly geometry in from-scratch GUIs) because creating mathematical models of real-world systems is very hard (in my opinion).

So I would say that modeling human personality would be an incredibly complex/non-liniar sort of thing.

I am quite fond of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, but I know it's controversial, and it only has 4 variables, I imagine a more comprehensive model would have many more variables.

<comment><USER5> MBTI isn't controversial at all.

Those who make money from it, or who have been sold on it, think it's great.

Those who do actual psychometrics research ignore it.

<comment><USER3> The MBTI and Big 5 are simply rotations of one another. They explain most of the same variance. This was demonstrated by McCrae & Costa, who created the Big 5, in the 80s.

<comment><USER5> > _The MBTI and Big 5 are simply rotations of one another. They explain most > of the same variance._

They are not and do no such thing.

> _This was demonstrated by McCrae & Costa, who created the Big 5, in the > 80s._

You're seizing on the same single article every single MBTI booster seizes on: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300)

Particularly the abstract, in which the magic words "However, correlational analyses showed that the four MBTI indices did measure aspects of four of the five major dimensions of normal personality." appear.

The thing is that of the correlations found, the strongest is between the 5-factor introversion-extraversion and the MBTI introversion-extraversion (.74 for men, .69 for women). This is hardly ground-breaking stuff. The next best is intuition and openness (.72 for men, .69 for women).

So on two axes, MBTI stumbles into something. Jung was a pretty smart guy who interview a lot of folk, so it figures he'd have noticed the surface features that anyone can notice (some people are introverted! some people are more conscientious!)

But all of this is by the by. It doesn't matter that MBTI is _sometimes right_. It matters that it is _more wrong than right_. If it is demonstrably wrong, most of the time, on most of its types, then it is _dangerous and foolish_ to use it.

You might as well argue that "some people get better from eating bread with mould". Sure, that's true, but I'd rather take antibiotics.

<comment><USER3> "The five-factor model provides an alternative basis for interpreting MBTI findings within a broader, more commonly shared conceptual framework."

That's the definition of a rotation. QED

<comment><USER5> I feel like I'm wandering into a Monty Python sketch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been thinking about this problem for quite a while now. I will in this comment describe the beginnings of a formal system of encoding the equations that underpin one aspect of emotions. It's incorrect, and incomplete, so forgive me.

1\. Everyone have a different skill levels for each of unlimited variety of tasks, for example, in cooking, cycling, running, eating quickly, enjoying food, planning vacations, etc. Everyone also have a different perception of their own skill level on each of those tasks. Some people view their own skill level at a particular task as better than it really is, some underestimate themselves and view their own skill level as worse than it really is, and some have a realistic perceptions. The disparity between reality and their self- perception is called _ego_. For some people, the disparity between perception and reality is so wide, and self-awareness in all aspects of life so low, we either call them narcissists, or co-dependents, depending on which direction the disparity goes. Let's denote a person's ego at a particular skill level as +EGO<cycling>, meaning the person overestimates their cycling ability or -EGO<cooking>, meaning the person underestimates their cooking ability.

2\. In a society, people interact with each other socially. Of the wide range of human interactions, two important ones are approval, and disapproval of another person's skill level at a particular task. These two messages, from the sender's point of view, can be deserved (a compliment / a criticism), or undeserved (flattery, insult). Over-simplifying a bit, a deserved compliment simply means the person is sending the compliment views the receiver as competent as a particular task, whereas an undeserved compliment means the person is sending the approval or disapproval, knows it has no bearing on reality, and is only doing the sending to achieve some motive, such as manipulating the social hierarchy, or to balance the disequilibrium that is occurring in their own selves, for example, insecurity. I've described deserved & unreservedness as discrete, though it is continuous. E.g. A person (prison guard in an nazi-like atmosphere?) complimenting Usain Bolt "You're not bad at running, I'll let you run around the camp." intending it as an insult, is a positive appraisal, but is underserved, because to the sender's knowledge, Usain Bolt is better than "not bad". There's also a case, where, for example, Usain Bolt's best friend who is bad at running saying "The store's almost closed, you go buy it. You're the one good at running." as a humorous understatement. I think that should still be classified undeserved compliment. The purpose of understating the compliment would be to maintain one's social standing in Bolt's eyes.

We can denote such a message as ++APPRAISAL<cycling>. The first sign "+" indicates it is a positive appraisal, the second sign "+" indicates in which direction it deviates from reality. If it contains only one sign, "-APPRAISAL<cycling>", then it will mean it is a realistic appraisal, as far as the sender is concerned.

3\. People are different. It means they deal with their own and others' emotions differently. People change. Each time they deal with a scenario, they change a little more. Now that we have some notations defined from above, let's describe a scenario, where a narcissistic mother, Earline, gives an negative, undeserved appraisal to her daughter, Maggie, who participates in a boxing competition[1]. The daughter had just bought her mother a house. As a narcissist, the mother is concerned with her image, and she thinks her daughter should also be concerned with the same thing. The mother is criticising her daughter's ability to generate a positive image, i.e., status, in society.

 _EARLINE: Find a man, Marry him. Live proper. People hear 'bout what you're doing and they laugh. Hurts me to tell you, but they laugh at you._

It's undeserved, because the only people who laugh are Earline's friends. Do Maggie's fans laugh? No. Does her mentor laugh? No. As a codependent who is -EGO<X> where X is not boxing, she takes it to heart, for now. Earline has been raising Maggie this way since forever, it will explain why in the movie the narrator tells the audience Maggie "knows she is trash". This continues until the final moments in the movie, when Maggie figured out her mother wouldn't praise her even when she was nearly the world champion at something.

Sending an appraisal message will alter the person's ego in some way. Sending a false appraisal message will also alter the person's ego in someway, but, like borrowing debt, while depositing cash in assets, creating a corresponding liability at the same time, the false appraisal message, when found out as false, will discredit the sender, diminishing the feelings the receiver have for the sender towards the negative direction.

We'll make an "equation" to describe the effect of an appraisal message to a person's psyche. As people are constantly changing, as they have experiences, we'll use => to separate the left side and the right side.

{0}{1}APPRAISAL<X>(sender, receiver) => {0}EGO<X>(receiver) + {1}RELATIONSHIP(receiver, sender)

{0}, {1}, are either positive or negative signs.

The notation as it is, isn't sufficient to describe the fact the negative effect on the relationship between the receiver and the sender is delayed until receiver _realises_ the appraisal is fake, retroactively. It is important to note, as the receiver realises the appraisal is fake, the receiver's ego _heals_ , so in fact, my equation isn't even correct, because over time, it doesn't balance.

Anyway, it's my first stab at it and I think it needs a lot of improvement. Thanks for writing this Ask HN to give me opportunity to try hashing some things that's been on my mind for a while. I've worked out relationships and the emotions that occur between narcissists and codependents, and the initial courting process between a male and a female, have some structure as to how people fall in love with each other, whether a couple will be stable, looking at the disparity between their attractiveness, and what kind of interactions that might occur if the disparity is too big. I have some idea of what happens when two strangers meet, and how they become friends. I think I know enough to eventually encode all of these, but there are more social interactions than between narcissists and codependents, and between husband's and wive's and their mistresses, and between strangers becoming friends. I thought about implementing a set of notations as programming code eventually, but I can't think of a use for it besides building more realistic diplomacy in strategy games...:) And it's going to be a lot of effort I don't know if I can even make some sort of significant headway.

[1] Scenario taken from "Million dollar baby". See script. [http://screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/Million- Dol...](http://screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/Million-Dollar- Baby.pdf)

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

 _Given that type theory is a system for describing mathematics, and given that "Math can be applied everywhere", why is it that type theory can't seem to be applied to personality type theory? I've been thinking about this since about I started studying type theory. I'm thinking that one abstraction will be: a jolly man can act as a catalyst on a social environment and then cause the environment to be jolly as well. But I'm thinking as well about the case when a man "wearing a hat" can act as a catalyst on a social environment and then cause the environment to be "wearing a hat" as well. An environment "wearing a hat" doesn't sound good, does it? Well, my main question has a tendency to be flawed, but I would really like to have sincere answers. It would really help if the answers would focus on type theory._

With the jolly man, through empathy, others feel the same joy, and through peer pressure, some others will feel forced to show joy. On one hand it will temporarily raise the mood of the social environment, on the other, in some individuals the forced joy will even enhance their negative feelings and resentment, causing jealousy. These negative emotions leak out eventually, to return the environment to equilibrium (contentment, like a rock, like a tree, like a baby drinking breast milk, like a sheep chewing on grass, like a man or woman asleep). Of course in cycles, it usually overshoots to the other end of the equilibrium, so you have that bouncing back and forth waves of joy and discontent.

With the "wearing a hat", I grew a beard once, and within months half the people in my company had a beard. So it can be said "the social environment became more amenable to hat wearing", so what you're saying works on some level. Of course eventually more people had a beard than didn't, and people who wanted to show their individuality showed it by cutting their beard off first, and then everyone followed through, and now I'm back to the only one with a beard.

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

I suspect there's no type system to describe all these is because no one who knows enough about social interactions is interested and has the ability to define it through a type system has started doing this yet. Can you think of a way to denote all these specific aspects of persons and interactions in symbols, and devise a way to show the deltas of these symbols, and describe the changes the reverberate through the environment?

<comment><USER7> Overall your typing proposal sounds like a good start. The one thing missing, however, is any method of quantification. To bring a natural phenomenon into a mathematical realm requires something of a "codec" translating between nature and number. This, of course, would be a very big topic in itself. Neurological reaction data could possibly be used in the calibration phase to determine for various individuals the relative strengths of each relationship event. On the other hand, there's the option of using purely subjective surveys to assess the individual's reaction. Further still, with sufficient event data, relative event strengths could be inferred without direct individual contact or interference.

My observation on the topic of human social analysis has thus far been that most folks are relatively uncomfortable discussing human quantification, as if humans are somehow exempt from being measured. I sometimes wonder if the ego is afraid of being seen in the daylight.

<comment><USER6> Well, I think it's near impossible to quantify currently because all experiences are subjective. I think it's not too unsurprising many people are uncomfortable thinking about specific nuances of human social interaction, not many people are comfortable watching a doctor dissecting a human eye ball discussing how it works and measuring each part of it, either...

<comment><USER7> I agree that it's no easy task. I'm thinking maybe when real-time brain imaging (including EEG) improves sufficiently, the effects of social exchanges could be measured more directly without having to rely on surveys. Either this, or humans would need to be placed into a giant maze where all their interactions are recorded.

Surveys can sometimes be somewhat informative if done correctly. I once ran a morality survey (on TolunaQuick) where I quantified categories of morality across socioeconomic statuses using a three-tier questionnaire. The approach was much like that employed by common personality tests, where each measurement is made from multiple questions essentially targeting the same topic. By having related questions on different tiers (levels of magnitude or intensity), the subjective information was somewhat quantifiable across individuals. Like with many systems, it would be recommended to begin with a simple scenario (one type of event, one variable being measured) and to build from there.

Without having a method of quantification, the formulae for human interactions would remain as nothing more than abstract hypotheses. Hence, quantification is necessary for scientific analysis.

On a related note, I believe that one of the most detrimental flaws in everyday human communication is that magnitudes are expressed using highly subjective, discrete categories. For example, someone might ask, "How much fun did you have?". The answer would generally be limited to a scale having just several steps such as "a little bit", "a fair amount", "quite a bit", or "a lot". It is unfortunate that humans are unable to give a more fluid answer that is somehow standardised, such as by saying "3.5 F worth of fun". Another deplorable example is when journalists take scientific findings and say something like "X was found to be significantly more likely to give you cancer than Y" while not giving any details as to the absolute _or_ relative quantity of difference. For all we know, X increases the risk of cancer by 0.01% compared with Y; and the general public seems ignorant of the uselessness of the statistical term "significant" when not accompanied by the numbers whence it sprang. Common tongue is inherently deceptive, and many people have a bad habit of taking advantage of this ambiguity for propagandist purposes.

<comment><USER6> Very good points. Better technology including the ability to record inputs on the nervous system as well will go a long way. It sounds like something that will take half a dozen decades, though.

How do you overcome the issue where, say, if we're asking our survey participants, "How often do you feel insulted by a family member in a typical day?", participants who experience frequent emotional abuse from their family may not even realise what they're experiencing are insults? "It's not an insult because it's true" kind of thing.

<comment><USER7> Indeed that's a tricky one. My guess is that the average person lacks sufficient self-awareness to be able to answer a question such as that, especially if there are strong insecurities or other fears. At the same time, I believe that many people could attain a better skill at answering such questions if they practised meditation more regularly.

It seems that the nervous system pretty reliably adjusts its sensitivities to the recent norms, so maybe the answer to this predicament involves not only (a) asking participants such questions, but also (b) establishing for each person the current systemic bias. Similar to pain-threshold testing, perhaps the person could be exposed to social scenarios, such as in videos, while being monitored with an EEG or related device. The pre-screening done on the experiment participants in the 2001 film "The Experiment" could be seen as similar since it tests emotional reactions. Even persons from different worldly cultures and religions would presumably have different biases, so finding this bias for each individual would probably be very important if accurate analysis were sought. To give an analogy, asking people questions on feelings is like asking a multi-meter for a reading. The problem is that each person has a large set of calibration knobs, so the real-world measurements can not be known without first checking the knobs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: PHONK, JavaScript scripting for Android devices - <AUTHOR> https://phonk.app <comment><AUTHOR> Just to add a few more things about PHONK:

\- PHONK is a full dev environment that lives within the phone / tablet

\- The Web Editor is hosted inside the device and served using a web server. So no 3rd party servers / cloud needed.

\- It can access the device sensors in a couple of lines of code

\- Has support for Websockets, MQTT, OSC, Midi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth BLE, NFC and more in a very concise way

\- You can connect an Arduino straight to the phone with a USB OTG cable and communicate with it

\- UI uses normalized coordinates, which is very handy for prototyping. It comes with a variety of views for most needs. You can also create a custom one.

\- There is live code execution from the Web Editor. Just select the code => Control (or CMD) + Shift + X and that code will be live executed.

\- PHONK comes with a Console, so you can console out wirelessly to the Web Editor.

\- It comes with OpenStreetMaps support by default

\- More advanced 2d and 3d graphics can be done through Processing which is included as a library.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great work! I'm having a blast. I have tried 8th (a Forth that compiles to many platforms), a bunch of Basics, picoLisp, and some others, but using my mobile as a hotspot and coding from my laptop is so easy. I love that you included libPd and Processing.

One error I see: I ran the Date under JavaScript Basics, and it gives the right long string date (Mon Jun 29 2020 13:38:02 GMT-0400 (EDT)), but when it pulls the fields it has a '5' for month.

<comment><USER3> 5 sounds about right, months are counted 0 to 11 - [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/getMonth)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I am use to 0-indexing in J and other PLs, but for some reason I thought month numbers were always cardinal numbers and should start at 1 in my subconscious!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Phonk is also a genre that typically takes samples from early-1990s hip hop, combining them with sounds from jazz,and deploys distorting techniques such as chopped and screwed to create a darker sound.

\- From wikipedia

Really cool stuff I might add

<comment><AUTHOR> yes and thanks :)

I realized about the music genre a bit later and quite like it! I should get some vibes from the music into the project :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This could be a nice alternative to LlamaLab Automate [1], which is really useful for automating UI things on Android. That one is flowchart based, sort of like Scratch.

Theoretically one could write a scripting language for it, but it stores its programs in a proprietary binary format and the parser class is too hairy for me to reverse engineer. (the decompiler in jadx only gives you smali for most of it, control flow is too complex)

[1] [https://llamalab.com/automate/](https://llamalab.com/automate/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very interesting! In theory PHONK supports running scripts in the background which could potentially listen to all those events and trigger things in response.

Just opened an issue to have it in mind and check how feasible it is [https://github.com/victordiaz/phonk/issues/20](https://github.com/victordiaz/phonk/issues/20)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very smart integration layer with Rhino and Android components factory API ! Although i would love to see if ES7/8 features are also make their way.... may be GraalJS can help ... not sure about this.

Looking at the API it supports i think for the most apps i use on daily basis can be prototyped without the bulky Android Studio.

[https://phonk.app/reference](https://phonk.app/reference)

<comment><AUTHOR> More modern Javascript implementations is something I had in mind since the beginning. I played a bit with J2V8 but the amount of work to migrate it from Rhino is a bit too much!

I didn't know about GraalJS I will have a look and reopen this issue [https://github.com/victordiaz/phonk/issues/4](https://github.com/victordiaz/phonk/issues/4) Thanks for pointing at it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slightly off topic, but I love the site design here - the demos at the top illustrate it perfectly and simply, and it's one of few scroll-to-reveals I've seen that actually makes sense, and doesn't feel over the top.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I made it the website from scratch using Nuxt.js and some simple CSS. I'll share the source code in Github during this week :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How is this different from nativescript ?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a bunch of differences

1\. The scripts you write calls directly to Java methods, so is much easier to access Android API calls

2\. PHONK is not only a framework, is a development environment that lives in your phone, so no needs to install npm or any other tool in your computer. You can write scripts directly on the phone, or using a remote Web Editor that is hosted by the device itself

3\. The PHONK API is tailored for quick prototyping, making and exploration. I invite you to have a look to the built-int examples and see how easy is to access sensor data, communicate with Bluetooth Low Energy, add maps or create interactive sound to name a few things!

<comment><USER8> > quick prototyping, making and exploration

Thats definitely the cool part. With a debugger I can definitely see some good use cases for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> PHONK supports live execution. You can select the code you want to run and press Control or CMD + Shift + X and it will execute, which is pretty handy. Is not a debugger but it helps quite a lot to debug :)

What debugging workflow do you think would be important?

<comment><USER8> It is lovely to mess with. What are the apps that are not possible with this ? Is the API coverage full ? Can I make an app with it packaging PHONK + script ?

<comment><AUTHOR> PHONK has some "shortcuts" to make prototyping and experimentation fast, such normalized UI positioning instead of complex but powerful layout systems.

so for example you can write the following to include a button

      ui.addButton('Click me', 0.1, 0.1, 0.8, 0.2)

That's quite fast to do, but on the other side it makes it a bit cumbersome if your UI is complex and you need to support lots of screen sizes.

The good thing is that PHONK is quite easy to extend and virtually you could expose any Android API to the Javascript engine.

Packaging a PHONK script is possible but I haven't had much time _yet_ to write a guide. I you want, you can follow this issue and upvote it if you think is worth it to have a guide! [https://github.com/victordiaz/phonk/issues/9](https://github.com/victordiaz/phonk/issues/9)

<comment><USER8> Its definitely worth it, heck make it a script so that I don't have to think about it. Also IOS ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly IOS is not supported, PHONK depends a lot on Android and Java. I would be very happy to see this or something similar in IOS though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What JS engine are you using under the hood? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using Mozilla Rhino, its pretty old and it does not support ES6 but is very easy to interface with the JVM

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A lot of work obviously went into this. Super cool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :) I learned lots of things while making it!</comment></comment>


Goo.gl URL shortener open to everyone - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/goo-gl-url-shortener/

<comment><USER2> What about that question about the privacy of people's Google Maps links? Is that an important concern?

<comment><AUTHOR> A user has asked exactly that in Matt Cutts's blog.

I am too interested for the reply to those concerns.

<comment><USER3> I'm probably unusually dense today, but I don't understand the "Can't I find out where you live by seeing your goo.gl links" part of that question. How do I get to see someone else's links?</comment></comment></comment>


The Zen of Steve Jobs « EVALINUX - <AUTHOR> http://evalinux.wordpress.com/2008/01/13/ <comment><AUTHOR> I do not think I ever posted here from my blogs. Yet, since Jobs has past away, like many of us, I could not stop thinking how much inspiration, motivation and encouragement I have received from him.

This is a photo I cam across at January 2008, which was shocking, as my own loft looks quite similar to that one, as well as the fact, he was a multi million dollars guy at that time, yet, kept it humble, basic and simple.</comment>


The Meteoric Acceleration in Series A Valuations - <AUTHOR> http://tomtunguz.com/cooley-valuation-data/

<comment><USER2> > if the trend continues, and the Series A replaces the B, we can finally > state with confidence that the Series Seed is new Series A, which would > imply a very substantial change in industry dynamics.

Sounds like a "very substantial change" in what we call things.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Meteoric" is what will happen when those valuations come crashing down to earth.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the larger Series A rounds are just a natural by-product of companies being further along before they reach Series A. What was Series B is now Series A.

<comment><USER5> I think that's well-stated by the author.

> Nevertheless, I'll be paying attention to the Series A market, because if > the trend continues, and the Series A replaces the B, we can finally state > with confidence that the Series Seed is new Series A, which would imply a > very substantial change in industry dynamics.

I'm just glad it doesn't make big claims about some bubble based on the data in the graphs. There may be a bubble, but we have to at least look at assets and earnings vs. series A for that to be remotely meaningful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> thanks to QE and low interest rates there is a lot of money slushing around looking (and having pretty tough time finding and competing for) where to invest. I.e. it is a sellers(founders) market out there.

<comment><USER7> I thought that started many years ago, what is different this time? Is it that pent up?

<comment><USER6> Huge outside money influx into the Valley during last year

<comment><USER7> Where has it come from, and why is it the valley specifically this time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like how this article is from the future.

> Nov 11, 2014</comment>


Just Don't Compare Kosmix to Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15ping.html?ref=technology <comment><USER2> I'm glad they got it right by saying that they aren't trying to do search better than Google. Making your competitor the standard for comparison sets you up for failure.

It's the reason an iPod-killer, Google-killer, Twitter-killer, etc will never be one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sometimes, I hate reading news from nytimes. For example, in this article, there is no a single link actually pointing to Kosmix website.

Or, we are expected to find out the website ourselves by reading the article?

<comment><USER4> <http://kosmix.com>

<http://meehive.com>

I work there, and our team spent a bunch of time on friday trying to get them to add the link. They claim they still haven't figured out implications of this 'internet' thing on their editorial policies, and trained all their copywriters..

<comment><USER5> The NYTimes has a schizoid relationship with the internet.

The NYTimes was the first paper on the 'net. Brewster Khale (founder of Internet Archive) helped them get there. In 2004 they started threatening the Internet Archive to get them to stop archiving their internet pages.

Then they started threatening Google. Then they put up the registration wall. But then they started paying "reputation" companies to spread their links all over the web. Then they started protesting that they should not have the burden of being the "paper of record", but still maintain "all the news that's fit to print".

The Old Grey Lady has gone batty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> feels like Mahalo meets Algorithms

</comment><comment><USER6> where does search end and explore start? Will this be the new face of search?

</comment><comment><USER7> An article on Kosmix in NY TImes.</comment>


Looking for iOS / Android projects - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for programming project on iOS and Android. Let me know if anyone needs help with their apps.<p>Also, for a young mobile dev agency (~10 months in) - where would it make sense to look for projects from US and Europe. <comment><USER2> Hi, please drop me an email on email@example.com

Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I've dropped you an email.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you moderate a subreddit? - <AUTHOR> What tasks do a typical subreddit moderator have to do? <comment><USER2> My moderating day generally goes as follows:

\- Look at the mod queue, replying to any mod mail we've received and any posts that have been automatically removed by our AutoModerator script.

\- Have a peak at the new posts, on any one day my sub-reddits only get a couple of hundred, so it takes a couple of minutes for a cursory glance.

\- List all reported messages and see whether they're acceptable.

Then, because most of the sub-reddits I'm currently contributing to are about projects I'm working on, I generally answer any questions people have or problems they're facing.

However, this is just for me. It really truly depends on the type of sub- reddit you're looking to moderate as to what work you're required to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> I founded and am the sole moderator of r/apachespark. That one's easy because it's a well-behaving crowd and the purpose of the subreddit is obvious. The only real things I do is remove spam/unrelated material and tag big releases as announcements.

More generally, I think the moderators' main job is to set the mission/rules of the subreddit, and enforce them. Subreddits with weak enforcement rarely thrive as they devolve into the least common denominator.

</comment><comment><USER4> Remove spam and warn people that are behaving exceptionally poorly. I only moderate very small subreddits, but that's all I do, aside from playing with the design for fun.</comment>


America's Housing Affordability Crisis Spreads to the Midwest - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-30/america-s-housing-affordability-crisis-spreads-to-the-heartland <comment><AUTHOR> The many bad laws and policies in coastal cities (mandating single-family houses with large lots and subsidized parking) are also in place in most other cities that have been remained relatively affordable through low demand. But as coastal cities squeeze people out, those same policies are going to have similar effects.

<comment><USER2> I'm unsure it's that simple, since none of those policies are recent enough to explain why housing starts have been below the historical trend for ten years.

Excessively low property taxes in California likely doesn't help, but doesn't explain the high prices in other coastal cities.</comment></comment>


Why Zuckerberg's Critics Are Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/in-defense-of-philanthrocapitalism <comment><USER2> >Governments do better at providing public goods (defense, say, or education)

Not really. At least not necessarily. Health and education as provided by the government in Brazil is just horrendous. People die in line and student's grades are far, far below private schools. Public security is non-existence, whereas organized communities both poor and rich enjoy relative security with private guards in the streets and electric fences or barber wire on their houses fences. Generals have said Brazil has ammunition for just 1h of war[1]. There was recently a rise in the private education sector, with competition leading to affordable prices for the poor. However, with the current recession I think the sector has slowed to a halt, like all others.

[1] [http://exame.abril.com.br/brasil/noticias/exercito- brasileir...](http://exame.abril.com.br/brasil/noticias/exercito-brasileiro- possui-municao-para-uma-hora-de-guerra)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have three problems with the original press release and what it entails.

1 = It comes across as the most epic humble brag of all time. The short form of the release is simply 'Look how great I am for making 10's of billions and how amazing I am for giving most of it to charity. Hell I will only leave a handful of billions for myself to live off.'

2 = He should not be trying to get credit for something he has not actually done yet. You cannot expect credit for giving 10's of billions to charity until you have actually given it to charity. Wait 20 years and then issue a press release showing how much you have actually given away.

3 = Maybe this is more of cultural issue but it is the height of uncouth behaviour to boast about your charity work. The first we hear about your charity work should be many years in the future when it is exposed that you have given billions to good causes. Deriving even the smallest credit for charity giving only diminishes the giving.

<comment><USER4> > Maybe this is more of cultural issue but it is the height of uncouth > behaviour to boast about your charity work. The first we hear about your > charity work should be many years in the future when it is exposed that you > have given billions to good causes. Deriving even the smallest credit for > charity giving only diminishes the giving.

The Jobses donated anonymously to charity for years and all we ever heard about was how Steve Jobs was an asshole because, unlike Bill Gates, he wasn't a philanthropist.

Contrariwise, Bill Gates gave billions of dollars to charity, but only his own charity named the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation" of which he is the full time co-chair, and uses his celebrity to popularize their work.

<comment><USER5> > all we ever heard about was how Steve Jobs was an asshole because, unlike > Bill Gates, he wasn't a philanthropist.

Whoever you heard that from was probably not worth listening to, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The harsh criticism feels unwarranted to me as well.

It honestly feels to me like a little bit of misplaced self insecurity.

I kind of get it, but considering that there is no evidence of ill will, I get the sense that people are reacting to something other than what's actually happening here (like their dislike for Zuckerberg's fortunes, how he got it, Facebook privacy issues, etc.)

To put this into context, if a young mother dedicates 99% of her life (but not billions because she doesn't have it) into charity and she does so in the name of her children and their future, I doubt she would be receiving the sort of harsh criticism that Zuckerberg is receiving for the same thing.

It reminds of people's hatred for SUV's (seems to have died down more recently). It was always under the guise of the environment, but really other types of environmental waste were not really villified to the same extent. For example, it's far worse to own a non-SUV and decide to live out in the suburbs and drive to work than to live nearby work and have an SUV.

I'm not a Zuckerberg fan-club member, but what he did would be something I wish I could do someday and it doesn't seem weird at all to me to do this in dedication of my child. I also feel, from a pragmatic point of view, that we need to be encouraging people to donate.

<comment><USER7> >if a young mother dedicates 99% of her life (but not billions because she doesn't have it) into charity

That is the point. He is not dedicating 99% of his life, he is moving money around. If an average person gives 5% of his income to charity he is losing power and losing opportunities. He is sacrificing his well being and that of his immediate family for charity. If someone with as much money as Zuckerberg or Gates does it he is increasing his power and his opportunities. They still get influence, they earn karma points, they get a legacy, they still decide.

The average guy giving is a hero, Zuckerberg is not.

<comment><USER8> So what?

This sounds like a twisted, reversed version of Widow's Mite[0], in which the rich guy is being hated for giving a lot of money for good purposes. Yes, the average person (or the poor person) is giving up much more personally. But even the Bible story doesn't deny that the rich guy giving lots of money is doing _much more_ for the cause. If you care about _actual effect_ , as opposed to judging someone's moral state (to which Jesus is entitled, you're not), you should be happy that a rich person can single-handedly give more good than most other donors taken together, and you should encourage more rich people to drop their money, instead of scaring them off.

It's results that matters.

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesson_of_the_widow%27s_mite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesson_of_the_widow%27s_mite)

<comment><USER7> >you should be happy that a rich person can single-handedly give more good than most other donors taken together

How is that supposed to make me happy?

>It's results that matters.

What results beyond Zuckerberg having even more power and influence than before?

<comment><USER8> > _How is that supposed to make me happy?_

Because significantly more good is being done? It should make you happy if you care about the particular issue being solved. If not, that's fair, but it means we're not complaining about philanthropy anymore, but about rich people being rich.

<comment><USER7> _You_ claimed I should be happy about rich people being rich. I asked how you expected me to do that.

Also, I'm not sure good is being done at all. As my second question showed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Actual title: In Defense of Philanthrocapitalism, by James Surowiecki

<comment><USER10> The page has the same title as this story currently, so at least the clickbaity title is coming from the source and not OP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Surowiecki did a horrible job of making a case for his conclusion. After reading that, I'm left wondering why his critics are wrong. Perhaps he should have avoided the click-bait title and tried to actually explain something reasonably rather than arguing from the position of "Zuckerberg and I are right, and you're wrong. Now I'm going to write some paragraphs".

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's an idea:

Don't allow tax deductions on "charitable" contributions.

If, for instance, somebody wants to give $100MM to Central Park, let them do it because they like Central Park that much, rather than because they like it $70MM worth, and the tax payers can cover the other $30MM.

Philanthropy is about giving, period. Not giving when it has financial benefits that make it easier at the expense of others.

<comment><USER13> I think it's perfectly reasonable to deduct charitable contributions - up to say, 10K per year. There exist people who sit on huge amounts of unrealized capital gains. If they donate 100M in stock, then they can sell 100M in stock without ever paying any taxes whatsoever.

<comment><USER12> I agree that setting a limit (rather than getting rid of deductions altogether) could be beneficial, while also eliminating a lot of the abuse, but there is one other thing to consider:

If the limit is $10,000, the middle class and wealthy gain the benefits of directing tax dollars while the underclass remain unrepresented.

I'm a capitalist through and through (you might guess that based on my ideas herein), but giving different people different rules is always a problem.

<comment><USER13> Well, you could make it 1K$. But I think the issue is to try to make it harder to use donations for tax-avoidance by very rich people; this isn't really about the middle class vs poor people (who tend to pay fewer taxes anyway).

I think another general issue is that many deductible donations go towards organizations that spend very little on their prescribed cause; or aren't non- profits or for the benefit of the public at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the critics are mostly, maybe at a subconscious level annoyed by the unfairness of Zuckerberg first having a fortunate upbringing / IQ, then making $45bn before turning 30 and then doing saint like stuff. So they try to knock him down which I guess is understandable, and rationalise it in various not totally logical ways which I guess is human nature.

<comment><USER15> I'm glad you're making an effort to understand the criticism, but unfortunately you need to spend more time doing so.

His company, Facebook, is infamous for not paying taxes. (On profits of three billion last year, it paid six thousand dollars in corporate taxes.)

Now, instead of paying taxes on his personal capital gains, he's placing them in an LLC, which he controls, ostensibly to do philanthropic work.

He could avoid all criticism by simply paying his taxes.

<comment><USER16> My understanding is that the founding of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has no tax implications at all. The only way that tax would be avoided is if the foundation sells some Facebook stock and donates the proceeds to accredited non-profits in the same year. But the exact same deductions would apply if the Chan-Zuckerberg family donated directly.

<comment><USER15> That's opaque; of course it's the same as if he had donated directly.

I'm not accusing him of illegal tax evasion. I'm accusing him, and Facebook, of legally not paying taxes. That it's legal, though, is of little consolation. Remember that it was legal to send Rosa Parks to the back of the bus, at the time. The criticism is directly that its legality is a poor veil and its morality open to debate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that "philanthrocapitalism" is a term used to obfuscate the issue of billionaires setting up tax havens in the guise of philanthropy. The term implies that philanthropy can be or is a mode of capitalism, whereas in reality it's the opposite because philanthropy deals with altruistic allocation of resources rather than profit-seeking allocation of resources. Let's not use this term, because it's deceptive and doesn't make sense internally.

Instead, let's do some white hat thinking (purely facts, as little spin as possible) about Zuck's new venture. Fact: Zuck has laid down a large chunk of change for a new project, and marketed this project to the public as large scale philanthropy. Fact: Zuck will get a large amount of leeway on taxes and oversight by moving his money in this way. Fact: some billionaires before Zuck have made similar moves that actually turned into fantastic philanthropic organizations that have made tangible positive impact in the world (Gates Foundation)-- but others have used the construct as purely a means to protect their money and get good PR.

These are some of the facts. I do not believe that there is any way to get around or reinterpret any of them without adding opinion, which probably snuck in anyway despite my efforts. At this point, I think that the reactions of those who question Zuck's motives are justified because we haven't had the time to see the program in action disbursing money as it claims that it will. A promise, a wad of cash, and a lot of PR do not make an effective philanthropic organization. Effective philanthropy requires that real, living people and real institutions are altered in an objectively positive way. The proper stance is skepticism and a request for more evidence of good will.

EDIT: I will add that the rabid detractors of Zuck have counterparts with the rabid pro-Zuck crowd... I doubt Zuck is looking out for anyone other than himself, but there is more to life than celebrity-watching, and it seems petty no matter how you slice it.

<comment><USER18> Is it at all clear that Zuckerberg is getting any tax benefit from moving his shares? I believe the "foundation", which is not a non-profit, will still pay taxes when it sells FB shares. If the LLC donates to a non-profit then it will get a tax benefit.

IANAL, so please someone who is actually informed feel free to correct me. A lot of what I've seen written is completely un-nuanced and probably wrong.

<comment><USER19> I am a lawyer -- or used to be one -- and your understanding is consistent with mine. I think some people are confused and think there's something shady going on, because they think Zuckerberg is getting some tax benefit from gifting to a non-charitable organization. But what you say is actually what's happening: no tax benefit to Zuckerberg on the gift to the LLC, although the LLC itself will be able to claim tax benefits by making subsequent gifts to non-profits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some people have a tendency to tell other people what to do with their money. This can range from annoying when it's some pundit doing it, to dangerous when it's someone in government.

</comment><comment><USER21> Surowiecki</comment>


Pykka - Actors For Python - <AUTHOR> http://pykka.readthedocs.org/ <comment><USER2> Hi there, I'm working on a similar actor library in Ruby:

<http://celluloid.io/>

The main thing I'd like to say is that there is a well-researched way to combine actors and object oriented programming. After stumbling upon this particular combination myself, I discovered it had been done a decade and a half earlier in Python:

<http://python.org/workshops/1997-10/proceedings/atom/>

I believe the original source code has since been lost, but I would strongly encourage you to read their paper.

Actor-based concurrent object oriented programming makes using actors as transparent as using objects.

</comment><comment><USER3> Actor model concurrency is way more fun and easy to use than handling threads on your own. It's really nice to see this coming to Python. Let's just hope that this project doesn't get neglected like the one for Ruby.

<comment><USER4> Apparently this was already done for python a few years ago:

I just discovered a very similar, albeit older project that essentially does the same (i.e. implementing the actor model on top of threads, greenlets or stacklets)

<http://osl.cs.uiuc.edu/parley/>

The most important part, i.e. the download section, seems to be down though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fun thing is that Pykka works with Gevent. Now, if only it did networking too...

</comment><comment><USER6> How is it different from xmlrpclib?

[http://docs.python.org/library/xmlrpclib.html#example-of- cli...](http://docs.python.org/library/xmlrpclib.html#example-of-client-usage)

<comment><USER7> They're not even comparable. xmlrpclib is a library for remote procedure call. Pykka provides an implementation of the Actor model, which is a model of concurrent computation.

<comment><USER8> WikiPedia defines 3 basic things that make up actors:

* send a finite number of messages to other actors; * create a finite number of new actors; * designate the behavior to be used for the next message receives.

Now, I'm not saying that xmlrpclib and actors are the same, but one could implement a system that has these properties using xmlrpclib as the basis of transport, and to "designate the behavior to be used for the next message receieves." The way you'd designate is the message you sent, is the handler that gets run.

And, if you want to get even more actor like, run xmlrpc servers in their own threads.

But, yeah, a real actor system would probably never do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The name made me hope that it would let you communicate from python with akka actors. Apparently not.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wondering how it compares with Pyro4 (at least if such comparison actually makes sense)

</comment><comment><USER11> Won't the GIL really limit the performance of this?

<comment><USER2> Not on Jython, which has no GIL by virtue of the JVM. Work on Jython has recently resumed and the new work is focusing on adding InvokeDynamic support, which I think is really exciting.

(I say this all as a Rubyist who as seen these same problems on the Ruby side)

<comment><USER12> It's great to see that Jython development has picked up! For the interested, details are at

[http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=jja...](http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=jjarhr%245e0%241%40dough.gmane.org&forum_name=jython- dev)</comment></comment></comment>


Nvidia's new mobile superchip - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/4/7492783/nvidia-unveils-its-latest-mobile-superchip-the-tegra-x1

<comment><USER2> Too bad NVIDIA's (theoretical) FLOP numbers are always single precision (which is misleading if you are comparing it to supercomputers), as their theoretical double precision FLOPs are always ~1/4th of their theoretical single precision numbers. The other problem is that the CUDA shader cores are relatively from the ARM cores, which adds signifigant latency. While this isn't really a problem for video rendering and other GPU tasks, this makes it significantly worse for any sort of processing that has a lot of random accesses (most compute-heavy workloads). I don't get why NVIDIA tries to brag about compute performance, which always under delivers compared to what they claim, when their chips are the best when it comes to what most end users actually care about... media/video processing.

(Disclaimer: I am founder of a startup, [http://rexcomputing.com](http://rexcomputing.com), working on a new processor for high performance computing applications, which would be competing with this chip for supercomputers, but not in any mobile/consumer tech.)

<comment><USER3> In this case, I believe it's 1TF of FP16, or 500GFlops FP32. You're likely looking at 16GF FP64.

I've also heard, though unconfirmed, that on the CPU side it's quad A57 + quad A53 rather than Denver derivatives.

<comment><USER2> For theoretical FP64 flops, it should be closer to 128GFLOPs. Assuming 10W TDP, that would put it at 12.8GFLOP/Watt, putting it right there at the (Double precision) GFLOP/Watt ratio for pretty much all the top chips for 2015 (coming from Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc). I guess it is nice that it is an SoC, but I'm not super impressed (then again, I am biased).

Anandtech ([http://www.anandtech.com/show/8811/nvidia- tegra-x1-preview](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8811/nvidia-tegra-x1-preview)) is reporting that it is a Big.little A57/A53 combo...I'm not completely surprised that they went with off the shelf ARM cores instead of Denver, but it makes me think they are putting Denver off to the pasture (especially since they say they are not going to be going after the HPC or Server markets with it). Denver has some interesting code morphing (a la Transmeta) tech, but has in order instruction pipelining. This saves a lot of complexity for the chip, but decreases performance in most usecases (but NVIDIA claims that it is more efficient 80% of the time for the average mobile user). Maybe NVIDIA determined that out of order execution that the ARM reference A57/A53 cores provide is better for the applications they seem to be targeting with the X1 (automotive).

<comment><USER3> For your 128GF I take it you are assuming 1:4 with FP32. That would be unexpected. E.g. in contrast to AMD parts, the recent NV parts based on Maxwell2 (such as GM204 in the gtx980) are 1:32 for FP64:FP32. I would expect that ratio to hold in this part, and the SMs are likely highly similar, giving the ~16GF number I used.

I haven't seen the automotive workloads, but they strike me as repetitive and regular enough that a Denver style part would do ok. That said, I'm not shocked by the use of A57+A53.

(Disclaimer: I worked on an early version of Denver on the code morphing software, and at an ARM server vendor on A57 based SOC).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Last decade's supercomputer(!) in today's pocket. Really, the sheer speed at which computing technology evolves is mind-blowing. I don't even want to guess where we are in ten years...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually quite interesting to think about it. Considering Intel hitting 14nm with Broadwell, there's only a certain limit to which we can push things or make them smaller. There has to be a point of saturation with things. BUT that's where the interesting part will be. The new revolutions that spring up new manufacturing materials which can defy the limits of the current ones.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Raspberry PI Zero Docker/Swarm on QuickStart - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/docker/status/722286615939432448 <comment><AUTHOR> As re-tweeted by @Docker

"With the release of the 5 dollar PI Zero computer, there has never been a better time to start building a Docker Swarm. Whether you want to try distributed computing or just build something awesome with your PI Zeros."

Check it out - with a star count of 43 already.</comment>


Show HN: readfa.st - learn to read faster - <AUTHOR> http://readfa.st <comment><USER2> Your site tells me absolutely nothing about the product without requiring me to sign up.

Consequently, I did not sign up.

<comment><USER3> Agreed... You need a video, a tour, or a how it works section. I'm not signing myself up for anything without a clue of what it does or how it works.

<comment><USER4> No, you need a lazy signup process -- let me use (most) everything immediately. Save my data in a cookie or in a temporary user object on your server, and make it permanent once I signup.

<comment><USER5> This would be great; but ANYTHING other than a signup form on the front page would be a huge improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 15 years into the web and still we see new sites coming out with the "Go Away" pattern. I just don't understand it.

If a potential user has somehow managed to find his way onto your homepage, that's a big win for you. You need to take that opportunity to hook him as quickly and effectively as possible. Given the average attention span on the internet, you've got at most 5 seconds to avert the Back Button, then maybe 10 more to convince that user that your thing is worth investing some time in.

Know the absolute worst thing you can do at that point? Stick that user on a page with absolutely no information about your product, then assign him some chores to do so before you'll let him even find out. Like this:

<http://readfa.st/signin>

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey guys, great idea, but your method seems off from most of the speed reading courses I've found.

Whereas those courses focus on training you to not just read individual words, but entire lines or blocks of text, and without subvocalization, yours seems to focus on increasing your word-by-word reading speed as much as possible.

In your FAQ you say:

 _"We have taken the latest speed-reading curricula and cut out all of the extraneous exercises to create an effective, simple tool to improve reading speed. The readfa.st curriculum forces users to read at speeds that push the upper limits of your comprehension and by constantly challenging you to push yourself faster; at the same time we use regular quizzes to ensure that you maintain your understanding of the text."_

What is the 'latest speed-reading curricula' you've based the site exercises on? I have an interest but not expertise in this subject, would love to know more details.

Also...

 _"Ani, one of our co-founders, read at over 1,000 words per minute without any training. When we noticed how blazingly fast he was finishing books, we began to look into what makes people read at such vastly different speeds. We did extensive research into the scientific (and pseudo-scientific) literature around how people read, but the body of work is not very encouraging. Most speed-reading products make unverified and unverifiable claims about their effectiveness, and because of their SEO and sales interests, those specious claims overwhelm most legitimate discussion around speed-reading. One of our goals is for readfa.st to help us better understand the process of reading and what factors affect speed and comprehension."_

It would be both awesome in general and good marketing in particular if you elaborated on your findings. Think OK-Cupid data blog but about speed reading.

Finally, one question. On the initial assessment I hit 'Too Fast' at 1105 WPM, but the report said I was only reading at 880 WPM. Why the discrepancy?

<http://i.imgur.com/zf9AC.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> The exercises we looked at were everything from the index-card/finger and stop-watch to flashing words all-around the screen. Based on the small bits of data available and the effectiveness of the various exercises on our own reading speeds, we found that flashing "chunks" of text (similar to spreeder.com) and the "word-snake" method (that we decided on) were the only effective methods of increasing reading speed. Because the word-snake most closely approximated off-line reading, we settled on that as the basis of our curriculum. For sources, we looked at available literature like Evelyn Wood and software like 7SpeedReading.

As far as a data blog - that is one of our middle-term goals, but until we have more users, the best we can offer are anecdotal evidence. This type of shoddy analysis is a big part of the problem with existing reading research, so the plan is to wait until we have a more robust data-set before we start publishing results. I'll post on HN when we start publishing results.

The reason for the difference between the final treadmill reading speed and the suggested speed is that users regularly demonstrated a significant loss of comprehension at the final speed. We think that it was because of the delay between realizing that the treadmill was too fast and stopping the treadmill. At first, we reduced the speed by 10%, but after a few more users, it was clear that was insufficient, so we're trying it at 20%. The quiz speed is adjustable (with the faster/slower buttons or by using f and s as hot-keys), so it's meant more as a suggested starting point than as a definitive reading speed.

Thanks for your feedback!

<comment><USER7> Ah cool. It's a very interesting area, and extremely useful this day and age. Good luck with it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every time the topic of speed reading comes up I post about

<http://www.zapreader.com/>

This javascript site parses a whole lot of text and displays it at a fixed location very quickly. I can read about 475 words/minute with very good comprehension. I don't catch all the specific names but in some cases I find that I form a high level overview of the material much faster. I tend to notice big picture patterns when I use this tool. I don't know why more people aren't writing apps that work like this for ios or android. When I finish my current side project I want to try something like this in flex.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another site, similar to ZapReader is spreeder.com. Sites like these offer a really spartan reading experience, but on top of a proven curriculum/methodology. They were a big part of what inspired us to create the first version of readfa.st.

<comment><USER8> Yea I see what you mean about spreeder.com. I think what makes it so fast is that I don't have to move my eye across the page in what I think are called 'saccades'.

I imagine an interface where I fix my gaze in the center and see text pulled through the single point. Perhaps the words near the fix point are a little blurry. Words further away are unreadable. I think there should be something like a gutter on the right or left for images, equations or code samples that floats from bottom to top as it is in context.

If I hit pause I would like to see all the text snap into focus with my focus word highlighted somehow.

Also, I would like this to just work with any old web page. I hate having to pull the print version of long articles then copy and paste into zap reader.

Good luck with your site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This site is fundamentally flawed. The key to fast reading is learning to read phrases rather than words. It is the same concept as reading words instead of letters (obviously after you have passed the phonetics reading stage).

The only site I know of to truly learn to read fast, without silly scams or even a cost, is <http://www.readspeeder.com/> It takes a little figuring out as it is really lacking in usability (I suggest reading the help files) but it will give you staggering results.

</comment><comment><USER10> Good stuff. It is the first Show HN site that I actually bookmarked for later. It is well-done and it is _interesting_.

A couple of things though. Requiring an email address upfront means that I will feed you a @mailinator.com one. Let people play with the site a bit, and then require creating an account if they want to save the progress... or something along these lines.

Second, a confirmation email appears to include a numerical user ID. This inadvertently discloses the number of users you have to anyone who signs up. May want to fix that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice idea! A couple of suggestions: 1) Make the quizzes shorter than 2 minutes. 2) As avree and bherms suggested, you need an intro. before the sign- up. I'm just an impulsive sign-upper because I like checking out new sites, but I suggested the site to my friend and he just stared at it before getting distracted by something else.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point on the quizzes - we've added logic to choose quizzes that are more reasonable in length (going for 90 seconds for now and we'll see how it affects use).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Awesome app! I'd actually enjoy reading regular books like this. Can I upload PDFs to have read to me at my speed of choice? If you could access my kindle library that be even better.

<comment><USER8> I have also wanted to do this, or have a link to pull in titles from project gutenberg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would pay between 5-10 usd/month to see my speed increase. I think I am going to be using this tool a lot if it works.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice execution! I like the badges and WPM counter on the right, and it steps you nicely into using it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wouldn't change a thing. This is awesome. I will be using this to consistently improve my language. With the amount of content I read online, improving a skill at the same time is an added bonus that I think is awesome. Curious how you will monetize.

</comment><comment><USER16> mh would be awesome if you make an background-Fallback for the buttons or add prefixes for more browsers.

i.e. in Opera i don't see any linear-gradient if you only use -moz- / -webkit- just add a background:#color one line above the linear-gradient. Older browsers display the #color and newer browsers use the background:linear- gradient

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice app. Any way to integrate the bookmarklet on online pdfs files ? or import the contents of .pdf to readfa.st?

</comment><comment><USER12> Works on my iPhone, way to go, the screen size is a little nit of a problem but the site runs smoothly.

</comment><comment><USER18> That's not innovative at all.</comment>


Are Trolls Ruining Social Media? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/are_trolls_ruining_social_media.php

<comment><USER2> _Online anonymity is just a leftover from the early days of the web - a time when there really just weren't other options._

What, you mean when services expected your machine to be running identd? When finger worked? When your IP uniquely identified you? When sysadmins knew your phone number?

If anything, the internet has trended _towards_ anonymity as it's aged -- the more people are online, the harder it is to track someone down.

<comment><USER3> You nailed it. The original notion was that the Internet was "peer-to-peer," but people have forgotten what this originally meant. Machines on the 'Net were expected to be somewhat sophisticated service and intelligence-wise (since they were owned and operated by universities, military establishments, etc.) IP addresses originally had identifying characteristics that could be tracked to an employer, if not an individual or department. Even when "anonymous" PCs and Macs were originally being hooked up the Internet (first directly, then later via NAT) the initial connection tools still provided support for identification via finger, message signatures and so on to continue this tradition. (Anarchie, one of the first Mac FTP clients, also doubled as a Unix-like identification stack when configured fully. Many PC video game developers, like John Carmack, continued to use .plan files prior to rise of the modern "blog.")

But then the Endless September came, and most end users by this point weren't versed in "netiquette" or the whole RFC tradition to know how to use such tools and protocols, so anonymity crept in as an accidental default state. (As the drift towards the modern connotation of "peer-to-peer" demonstrates.) I personally got online about year or so before this, spent time lurking and learning the ways of the old Internet, only to watch in horror as my peers didn't give a s--t and ruined it for the rest of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Online anonymity is just a leftover from the early days of the web - a time when there really just weren't other options."

I disagree. I thought about this when we were starting HN, and I deliberately opted for anonymity, though with profiles if people wanted to post stuff in them. When all people know about you is what you say, they judge you based on what you say, instead of who you are.

<comment><USER5> _When all people know about you is what you say, they judge you based on what you say, instead of who you are._

But there is no such anonymity for the user known here as "pg."

<comment><USER6> maybe he's got more users?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _This could be easily accomplished by simply putting an end to online anonymity - a trend that hasn't quite arrived yet. [...] Online anonymity is just a leftover from the early days of the web - a time when there really just weren't other options. You just created a handle, set up an account, and began to write. Now that we have the tools to identify each other, shouldn't we begin to use them? Think of all the problems it would solve[...]_

This sounds a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There's a lot of talk of "the problems it would solve", but what would the costs be?

<comment><USER8> Lower participation and, as a result, maybe lower advertising earnings. On the other hand, the cost of not controlling bad content could be much higher both in monetary and non-monetary terms.

<comment><USER9> ...Says Mr. Cosinepi :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _As tons of celebs flock to Twitter in an effort to regain control of their image_

Control? You have control over what you put into the world and you have control over what you pay attention to. You do not have control over what people think or say. At best you have _influence_.

</comment><comment><USER11> Delicious very explicitly did not have comments/discussion/etc in order to make it a placid place. This probably cut down the engagement, because there were no discussions to be in, etc.

I believe that most social features are really just mechanical coping mechanisms. Generally to deal with traffic, but some for spam, trolling, etc. We need to come up with some better coping mechanisms. (And news.yc has been inspiringly innovative in this regard.)

</comment><comment><USER12> Another article to end anonymity while being utterly blind to the problems of oppression that dominate the majority of the world's population.

People of fame need to accept the trade-offs, particularly people who strive to become famous. So they may not be able to use Twitter like the rest of us. Although I think most people of reasonable fame are using it just fine.

We're talking about about Trent Reznor here, not everyone encourages and profits from typically very young people by writing consistently dark, sex- infused and anti-authoritarian lyrics. He's gonna have to take his lumps.

Plus, like the article says, there are places he can go, like Facebook, where he can deal with a more well identified group. This article is just pushing an agenda that's removed from the real nature of Trent Reznor's online experience and options.

I wish that people who write these calls for removing anonymity would get a more mature world-view.

</comment><comment><USER13> The internet, like the world, has neighborhoods. They change over time, and they have there own characteristics. There are places you can go to have healthy, civil debates, and places you can go to be exposed to flame wars and adolescent behavior.

Big names (Like Reznor) have fans who follow them to whatever online neighborhood they may move into. Reznors' experience may say more about the type of people his music attracts than it does about the internet at large. There are plenty of well-know people who are able to use the internet as a way to engage a readership in meaningful ways, and a lot of it has to do with the audience they attract. If Reznor was a classically trained Violinist, for instance, I'm willing to bet his foray into social media would have had a different result.

<comment><USER14> ...and I'm willing to bet that a classically trained violinist with a sufficiently large following would prove a very attractive target to trolls.

Are there really places on the internet you can "go to have health, civil debates" that are a) troll-free, and b) unmoderated? The world has neighborhoods, each one tnds to have its own police force.

<comment><USER13> Everything is moderated to the extent that you can choose to remove yourself from the situation. Moderation in some form has to exist to limit the chaos. It's not black and white either, sure anyone of a certain level of popularity will get trolls to some extent, you are right. That happens in real life too. I'm just saying that it matters 'where' the discourse is taking place and it matters who is involved. If you and I where having this conversation on Reddit, somebody would probably have trolled us already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can anyone actually prove that forcing everyone to identify themselves would cut off trolling? Everyone seems to take that as given, but I don't see the evidence. Especially if you define "trolling" large enough to include things like merely being anti-social, or being voluminous, or just anything in general that would make you not want to be online.

You might _cut down_ on the trolling, but merely, say, cutting it in half isn't going to change anything.

<comment><USER16> It is actually kind of simple really. If you have fixed identity (or even psuedonyms that are tied to a "true name" a la Chaumian credentials) then filtering out bad behavior becomes easier. Users cannot create sock puppets, they get one chance to troll and then join the global killfile or get put a sufficient number of user killfiles as to have the same effect. If the identity was non-pseudonymous or the pseudonym systems supported cross-domain joins it would get even harder to troll since a trolling attempt at site A might get you added to user filters at sites B and C.

The trolls would not go away, but no one would ever see them and this would have the same effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If the idea that we should all get identified on the internet takes foot (and I seriously doubt it will), my guess is that we will see an almost immediate fragmentation of the internet.

If you look at wifi maps of any major metropolitan area, they're almost all completely covered with signal these days. A mesh system could be brought up very quickly, with some point-to-point communication to get beyond metro areas. Once that happens I'm sure there will have to be some people who will end up having to tunnel to a "Free-speech zone", but many Chinese citizens are already doing that today to circumvent the Great Firewall. The infrastructure is already in place to escape any attempts at censorship or forced identification now.

Of course, what I'm suggesting is ridiculous... but not quite as ridiculous as recommending we all get on board and verify who we are for every site we visit and every comment we leave.

<comment><USER5> _my guess is that we will see an almost immediate fragmentation of the internet._

Are you saying that we haven't seen that already?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What, because rock stars don't like talking to (mental and physical) adolescents in open forums?

</comment><comment><USER19> Very funny

<comment><USER19> Downvotes, really? I thought it was quite clever. And accurate. We are talking about the headline 'Are trolls ruining social media?' here.</comment></comment>


Did you know the source for Reddit is on GitHub? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/reddit/reddit

<comment><USER2> Yeah but a lot of the moderation tools that the administrators use is behind closed doors.

It's like running a chatroom and doing moderation through a bot with a little DSL built-in. The bot itself might be FOSS'd, but all the little scripts that make it actually useful are shut away on someone's drive.

That's basically how reddit is. Automoderator is kinda neat, but it's not even CLOSE to being FOSS™

</comment><comment><USER3> oh god i wish there was more reddit news</comment>


Real apartments, no bullshit. - <AUTHOR> http://apartable.com/ Trusted apartment listings direct from owners, managers and brokers, organized in a clean interface. Apartable provides all the information that renters need to make smart decisions. <comment><USER2> As a New Yorker, not being able to filter out apartments with broker fees isn't a hugely compelling value proposition.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder why so many people wants to live there, if there are no apartments available?

<comment><USER4> Because so many people want to live there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. No L.A. apartments. I wonder if that was on purpose...</comment>


A free and open Indoor Navigation Service with superb accuracy - <AUTHOR> https://anyplace.cs.ucy.ac.cy/ <comment><USER2> > World-class accuracy of 1.96 meters

Good for WiFi/IMU-based indoor (phone-based) position tracking, I believe. For more accuracy, especially for robotics, etc., Pozyx [1] claims resolution of "a few centimeters" (indoor rooms/outdoor) by using some custom trilateration circuitry, and then there are attempts to use VR (esp. Vive) methods [2], which are even better (albeit more limited range).

[1] [https://www.pozyx.io/](https://www.pozyx.io/) [2] [https://hackaday.com/2018/09/04/this-is-your-solution-for- op...](https://hackaday.com/2018/09/04/this-is-your-solution-for-open-source- motion-tracking/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone used the in-store navigation feature in the Target app? It works on items that are in stock - it shows you the aisle number. Tap on that and it shows a store map (with the correct floor you are on) and the location of the item and your location. It's scarily accurate. I'm not sure of the technology behind it.

Edit: a word, and also this was on iOS.

<comment><USER4> I was curious about their technology too. From my brief research it works using Bluetooth beacons accessible for app via iBeacon API - [https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/](https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know how this differs from [https://www.internalpositioning.com/](https://www.internalpositioning.com/) ? So far as I can tell the idea is almost exactly the same.

I've been using that with quite a bit of success in automating my smart home as I move around it.

<comment><USER6> Am I correct in seeing that neither is available on Apple products? Is this because of some technical difference or is Apple putting up barriers or some sort of open source issue or something?

<comment><USER5> Apple doesn't give apps the ability to read raw rssi values from seen list of ssid(s). Also their WiFi Mac randomizing can cause issues depending on how you've got things setup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have had really good experience with a Microsoft Research project called Path. The main usecase I had was navigating places like shopping malls without proper shop numbers or any addressing scheme.

You can find it discussed here [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/blog/path-guide-new...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/blog/path-guide-new-approach-indoor-navigation/)

<comment><USER8> I think it is discontinued (the link to the app is broken). Any idea why?

<comment><USER9> The team is aware of the website outage and it should be back online soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very interesting. Indoor mapping is a great project to take on. I started mapping my house using Wifi Signal. By capturing signal strength, noise, and connected AP for each device for every second. I can manage to turn lights off and on as I enter certain rooms. I can also tell the "occupancy level" of each room and "Who's where".

<comment><USER11> How do you tell the occupancy level of each room via WiFi signal?

<comment><USER10> I know the location of every WiFi device connected to my network. In general, I, and other occupants carry a device that has WiFi (Phone, watch, etc). Since I know the location of the device, I can infer/assume the location of the person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool :) I have done my bachelor's project around wifi location fingerprinting back in the day. Took a year but with a bit of tweaks we did manage to calculate pretty accurate models of signal propagation by just having a wall model. The only downside at that time was the lack of development tools for Android (we had to use netbeans which was being horrifying experience). I guess it would be a lot easier to do the project with modern development environments + Flutter & Dart and using a bit more modern versions of OS :)

Really nice to see that this area is still active and being worked on!

<comment><USER13> I did the same for my bachelors but we basically pushed a cart with a wifi sampler around the building and built a machine learning model in matlab based on the signal strength to access points.

It would have worked waaaay better if we had some sort of surveying equipment to accurately capture each few steps of the cart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Bike-shedding: What kind of domain name is ap.cs.ucy.ac.cy?

<comment><USER15> Not sure whether to interpret your comment as "this is not the best usability choice" or "what does this mean?", but here's my answer to the latter.

.ac.cy is the Cyprus equivalent of .edu in the US. Or, more similarly, of .ac.uk in the UK.

ucy is University of Cyprus.

cs is their Computer Science department.

ap is Anyplace, the name of the app.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any other open Indoor Navigation Services I should be looking at for inventory tracking?

<comment><USER16> This isn't that. This is like google maps indoors for walking around malls and is no where near accurate for anything else.

For inventory you could use decawave, but it would be pricey.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what they claim on their website, but you are right, I think Indoor Positioning System would be a better description of what Anyplace offers. <2m accuracy is good enough for me though, just wondering if there are any alternatives. And thanks for the Decawave suggestion, good to be aware of it but it is waaay too pricey as you mentioned

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's also [https://www.indooratlas.com/](https://www.indooratlas.com/) which does indoor positioning based on magnetic signatures.

<comment><USER18> From what I've heard they require regular recalibration, which is a pain because someone has to walk the floor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Didn't Portlandia do this a few seasons ago?

</comment><comment><USER20> tldr: Watch this demo video, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO-473oWSfE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO-473oWSfE)

It is the Navigator Video on the far right column of the homepage.</comment>


Facebook will take action to protect the privacy and security of their users - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and-privacy/protecting-your-passwords-and-your-privacy/326598317390057

<comment><USER2> Every once in a while Facebook does the right thing. Is there any sort of self-motivating factor that I'm missing here? (other than good PR)

<comment><USER3> I guess it's in Facebook's interest to get users to share without the fear of a future employer looking into it.

<comment><USER4> I interpreted this two ways:

1\. Facebook gets more of people's personal info.

2\. _Only_ Facebook gets this info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If an (prospective) employer asked for a email/social account password, you should leave immediately, period.

<comment><USER6> What if it is for national security, like working for the CIA or MI5?

<comment><USER7> Then they don't need to ask you for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While I completely agree that this is unacceptable and applaud facebook for their attempt at protecting users, there is a bit of irony in this move. Wasn't it Zuckerberg who has repeatedly expressed the idea that privacy is no longer a social norm, almost to the point of fatalism.?

<comment><USER9> Zuckerberg is financially interested in getting your info, not giving it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has anybody heard of or personally experienced a company _actually_ doing this?

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, it's nice and all but some privacy policy isn't legally binding in any sense whatsoever in most countries.

</comment><comment><USER12> its simply understanding your client`s pain point(s) and providing a solution.

Thing is there`s 2 users here

1) facebook user. demanding inappropriate access to their personal life is invasive - todays memo... check.

2) employer/potential employer. Understanding the character of the candidate. Facebook offers a premium service e.g. say $10k/seat that offers more in-depth access. similar to LinkedIn`s premium account.. yet users dont feel violated.

Todays note address 1) maybe 2) will be addressed in the future. Im sure that would be quite the cash cow.

</comment><comment><USER13> Isn't one of the issues not about obtaining passwords but rather being pressured into befriending the (prospective) employer's representative/HR person? Allowing them to trawl thru your wall and so on...

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm still confused how employers could ever justify doing this. Do they ever explain what they're looking for?

</comment><comment><USER15> Smart publicity play on their part</comment>


How the TOR Project is helping Iranian protesters - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/26/protesters-use-navy-technology-to-avoid-censorship/print/ <comment><USER2> Only problem is that TOR can be compromised by operating a hostile exit node. This involves running a packet sniffer on a exit node and analyzing the traffic.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean with _compromised_? A Tor exit node can sniff the traffic. So what? Unless you are signing in on a site, that doesn't matter. There is no MITM attack against your anonymity, provided you use Torbutton to block known Javascript/plugin exploits.

Don't use Tor to sign in you bank account or your email account. Reading news or Wikileaks through Tor? No problem. All what the exit node sniffer will see is an anonymous user reading news websites.

<comment><USER4> It depends on which attack was meant - there are two that come to mind. It annoys me that you're assuring security without being familiar with the systems, and that the legitimate concern expressed above and this response is now at the bottom due to downvoting of the former.

The first attack is simple packet sniffing for passwords and data. A few of these have been covered by the media[1]. This is considered a compromise of the system because ignorance of complicated security procedure should be expected and countered, but is not by default (as is attempted in, for example, I2P/Syndie). See sslstrip[2] for your MITM attack against anonymity, which does a great job of compromising even the security-aware. As for using a bank account or email, I would feel perfectly safe using both over Tor, as long as I entered the https: myself (my webmail is set to always use https). In fact, I would feel less safe using news websites, since my activity with these could be used to identify me as the same user over a number of exit nodes.

The second is the timing attack. Tor is low-latency and not a mix[3], so packet size & timing data can be correlated to determine whether two hostile nodes are on the same tunnel. You-H-N-H-Dest, where H are hostile nodes and N a neutral node. The one beside You is a guard node, and can determine its status as such by observing how often you connect to it (your node connects to only a small group of guard nodes). The second H is the exit node, and knows what the Destination is. A simple timing attack plus the mutual connection to N links your ip to the destination. There are 1800 tor nodes[4], I'll let you do the math on how long it would take an adversary with a very modest budget (or 20 zombies) to land two hostile nodes in this configuration. It's not very long, given that your 3 outbound tunnels reconstruct every 10 minutes.

As is common with security, you've gotten just about everything wrong. (No doubt I've made similar blunders in this short message.) Luckily, though, nobody actually cares about what people do on Tor - or perhaps they think that collecting data is more worthwhile than exposing vulnerabilities. Please take the time to learn more before commenting on (or using) these systems.

[1] <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/15/tor_hacker_arrest/> [2] <http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/sslstrip/> [3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaum_mixes> [4] <http://proxy.org/tor.shtml>

<comment><USER3> _As for using a bank account or email, I would feel perfectly safe using both over Tor, as long as I entered the https: myself_

DNS lookups are made through Tor. This means that a compromised exit node could phish your email or bank account. Unless you do the DNS lookups yourself off-Tor, of course, but then you won't be anonymous.

 _I would feel less safe using news websites, since my activity with these could be used to identify me as the same user over a number of exit nodes._

How? Torbutton doesn't use your non-Tor browsing cookies. And you can block cookies altogether anyway.

 _The second is the timing attack. Tor is low-latency and not a mix[3], so packet size & timing data can be correlated to determine whether two hostile nodes are on the same tunnel. You-H-N-H-Dest, where H are hostile nodes and N a neutral node. The one beside You is a guard node, and can determine its status as such by observing how often you connect to it (your node connects to only a small group of guard nodes). The second H is the exit node, and knows what the Destination is. A simple timing attack plus the mutual connection to N links your ip to the destination. There are 1800 tor nodes[4], I'll let you do the math on how long it would take an adversary with a very modest budget (or 20 zombies) to land two hostile nodes in this configuration. It's not very long, given that your 3 outbound tunnels reconstruct every 10 minutes._

You're right on this. I knew about timing attacks, but I didn't know they were so easy. I though you needed a big infrastructure like Echelon.

I think a solution for Iranians would be using I2P or Freenet, or even Tor if it's just with .onion websites, because then the traffic never leaves the darknet and therefore it's more resistant to a timing attack (You might need something like Echelon for a timing attack in this case). The problem is they wouldn't be able to use Twitter, Google or any other Internet sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why can't the iranians just filter TOR node IP addresses?

<comment><USER3> Some Tor nodes aren't publicly known. You get to know them by a friend or visiting a website, chat, etc., like it happens with some P2P networks.

I don't know if Iranian the government is trying to block tor nodes, but even if they were the would never be able to completely block it.

<comment><USER6> They could identify connections into the Tor network by analyzing handshake traffic and it seems that this may be exactly what is currently happening.

<comment><USER3> They are SSL-encrypted. They cannot identify Tor connections unless it is to a publicly known Tor node.

<comment><USER6> The way Tor uses TLS/SSL is unique enough that it seems very possible to automatically classify Tor traffic.

I don't think this is really happening in Iran, but nobody knows for sure. My comment was misleading and what I really meant to say is that there is some evidence that encrypted protocols which can be used for tunneling traffic such as SSL and SSH are being automatically detected. Rather than blocking the connections completely, they are traffic shaping them to make them very slow.

Since the Tor link protocol is basically just SSL it will also be affected by any policy applied to all SSL connections.

<comment><USER3> _The way Tor uses TLS/SSL is unique enough that it seems very possible to automatically classify Tor traffic._

Do you have more information on this?

<comment><USER6> No, and I'm not sure about it. The way that Tor uses certificates does not seem to be very well documented or I would have a stronger theory about how it could be done without causing an unacceptable level of false positives on regular SSL traffic.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>