Why opting for Git was a natural choice - <AUTHOR> http://kissflow.com/kissu_kissu/git-vs-svn/

<comment><USER2> I think this article does not do the svn workflow justice.

 _Svn was designed with the inherent assumption that the context of a developer within any single codebase would be linear_

This may be how the engineers in question used svn, but that's certainly not how svn was designed!

Creating a branch in Subversion is not difficult or expensive. It's natural for each engineer on a team to have a separate svn directory containing "private" branches. If engineers are committing unstable code to the trunk, they're doing it wrong.

 _Git branching is also cheap and quick, unlike svn in which a branching creating a new copy of code. Git also preserves history when branching, unlike Svn._

Subversion uses copy-on-write when creating a branch, so it is not expensive. Subversion also records the branch event in the file's history.

It sounds like the team had a flawed understanding of svn, and was using a terrible workflow. The benefits of the switch are not due to git, but to investing actual time learning a scm tool. That same time invested into learning svn would have paid equal dividends.

<comment><USER3> > Subversion uses copy-on-write when creating a branch, so it is not expensive

It doesn't matter what the server does, it's relatively slow on the client to either switch to or checkout a branch.

<comment><USER2> With git, you typically have a single checkout of the repo. But with svn, it's natural to have separate checkouts of each branch you care about, in separate directories. So a typical "switch" in svn is not a switch at all: you just start working on files in a separate directory, or even simultaneously on two separate checkouts (which is more awkward in git).

I use and like git, but multiple checkouts is one aspect of the svn workflow that I miss.

<comment><USER3> You're making my point for me. In typical Subversion client usage the server's CoW optimisations mean nothing.

If you have to check out each branch you make, using Subversion gets really slow, really quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The gist: The technicalities of moving away from SVN was never a problem for us, It was more of a workflow issue.

I think this should be the real reason anyone should consider moving their codebase from SVN to GIT.

</comment><comment><USER4> The way I handled branching in SVN was to have several checkouts of the same trunk, and run "svn update" to fast-forward before committing (once my patch had passed code review.) Hard drives are cheap, brain cells expensive!

(note, this model works fine when you have a big company machine sat in an office on gigabit LAN to the SVN server - break any of the assumptions there, and SVN quickly deteriorates. I'm not saying git isn't better, just than SVN isn't that bad where I encountered it.)

<comment><USER5> Hard drives are slow. Copying a huge working tree to make a small branch makes no sense.

<comment><USER4> I would just permanently maintain 4 or 5 checkouts of active projects, and rename the containing directories for branch names. I know git is better, I'm just saying SVN can be used in a similar way, if less efficiently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Git sucks. It ruins my process. SVN has great integration with eclipse .

<comment><USER7> It would be more accurate to phrase that not as "Git sucks", but as "the EGit plugin sucks", or, if you must generalize, "Git's ecosystem sucks".

<comment><AUTHOR> I would agree, There is nothing that can beat the Git-cli at least for now.

<comment><USER8> magit ([https://github.com/magit/magit](https://github.com/magit/magit)) is unequivocally better than the Git CLI if you use Emacs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Best Single Board Computers of 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2019/11/20/best-single-board-computers-of-2019/ <comment><USER2> I feel like there are a lot of these types of articles that verge on blogspam. Literally 60% of the content is just specs from the manufacturer regurgitated in one spot. It would be nice if the author had done some actual comparison or tried some benchmark on each. Even if they just booted up each one and saw how easy it was to write a blog post on each it might be enlightening beyond the specs which anyone could gather.

<comment><USER3> Yup pretty weak article.

In their defence seeedstudio has done good stuff for the sbc ecosystem so inclined to give them a free pass

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a pity the most important info is often omitted:

\- Can it run mainline Linux kernel? What about a major Linux distribution?

\- How good is the documentation?

\- Which major peripherals (audio input, audio output, camera, HDMI, USB on headers) are available?

\- Are there GPIOs with usable levels (not 1.8V!) and with large pitch (2.54/1.27)?

\- Are there embedded low-level peripherals, like I2C, multiple serial ports, PWM generators, ADC, DACs?

</comment><comment><USER5> Its a little disappointing that after all of the years and revisions of the rpi. It still requires untrusted proprietary drivers to simply turn on.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, Linus, you and everyone who develops the board bitch about that same thing. Some people even parrot it without understanding the underlying issues at even a basic level. So let's see their models that compete with the rpi at the same price point. Until I see those, I am left to see a whole lot petty whining. The rpi is very much in front of the pack when it comes to their clearly stated mandate.

Remember the purpose, and not lean too heavily onto your personal ideology.

<comment><USER5> I haven't used it personally but I was told that the RockPi ([https://rockpi.org/](https://rockpi.org/)) is similar to the rpi but runs on totally free drivers. Having a backdoor with full system access is just not acceptable in 2019.

<comment><USER6> What are you referring to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ZFS eats memory for breakfast. All thats stopping a Pi being a really great BSD+ZFS filestore is the USB bound disk access and the lack of memory. The sweetspot would be north of 4GB, but probably 8GB would be enough. SATA would totally rock because you can get SATA enclosures which handle all the hot swap you need, and the bandwidth is fine.

So.. you _can_ get a SATA Pi-Hat. But.. you can't boost memory north of 4GB. (sigh)

<comment><USER8> Also a added gigabit Nic would mean a nice firewall.

<comment><USER3> Rasp 4 already has gigabit and does work as a firewall

Been using that for past couple months

<comment><USER9> My understanding is that he meant having a total of two ports, so that you can use one for WAN and one for LAN.

<comment><USER3> Just add a USB3 ethernet adapter. Works fine

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How about for real-time audio?

<comment><USER11> [https://bela.io](https://bela.io)</comment></comment>


Why python? - <AUTHOR>

i am not a blondie, but also not a hacker at all. why language soft is often written in python? <comment><USER2> As absurd as it sounds is basically, in my opinion, because it is really easy to write it! That is to say is human readable! (E.g.: for element in list:)

Furthermore, is the time you spare with testing, compilation problems, etc!What it could take you 1 hour with C++, you dont need more than 10minutes with Python...

It has some problems though! Since it is interpreted it will never be as fast and performant as directly compiled code! Moreover, the lack of type definition can generate some unexpected problems during execution! For that I have a trick...I just put a letter in lower case before the variable to indicate the type to myself (s for string, i for integer, t for tuple, d for dictionaries, o for objects and so forth)

<comment><AUTHOR> are there any features within python making it much better than others while programming language specific soft (machine translation, dictionaries, etc)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can use Python for writing portable code between multiple OS, no need for recompilation. Basically everything can be implemented in Python, in the scientific community it is used mainly as a glue code, meaning you keep your computer intensive tasks in C++ or Fortran and use Python for gluing the pieces.

If you want to see more, check the python website:

<http://www.python.org/about/apps/>

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a dynamic programming language that runs on all major platforms and has good libraries.

The code tends to be clean and readable.

(This applies to ruby as well).</comment>


Ask HN: How much does the Internet weigh? - <AUTHOR>

A fun discussion topic that persists in my office: how much do you think 1GB of data weighs? By extension, how much does the Internet weigh? <comment><USER2> Neat. So, we can establish a lower bound, anyway. Let's start with one of the newer mini usb flash drives that you can get these days, which weigh about 1 gram per 5 GB [1]. For the amount of data in the internet, we can start with Google; in 2006 they were storing in the neighborhood of 220 TB [2], but by 2008 they were processing 20 petabytes per day [3].

So, just to invent a rough lower bound, let's say that Google processes the internet every two days, and that they're storing 50% of it, so that's roughly 80 petabytes on the internet, for a minimum weight of about 16,000 kilograms, or about 1/5th the weight of a blue whale, according to Wolfram-Alpha [4] -- as a lower bound.

I'm sure it's really quite a lot more than that, but probably not much more than a blue whale or two.

[1]: <http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?p=STU32GPCG>

[2]: [http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-much-data- does-...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-much-data-does-google- store.html)

[3]: [http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/09/google- processing-20000-ter...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/09/google- processing-20000-terabytes-a-day-and-growing/)

[4]: <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=16%2C000+kilograms>

<comment><USER3> Maybe it should be a fail whale or two?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jun/07/guardianwee...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jun/07/guardianweeklytechnologysection1)

2 oz, apparently.

</comment><comment><USER5> The weight of an object is defined as being equal to the force exerted on it by gravity. Take the object far away from any celestial bodies and you'll find it weightless. Toss it into a black hole and it's weight will approach infinity.

For the sake of simplicity, lets imagine that the internet is uniformly distributed on the surface of the earth, as a single object. You will find that the gravity of the earth pulls the internet from every direction with equal force, and assuming the internet is a solid object, the net force is zero, since the opposing forces negate each other. So in essence, the internet as a single object is weightless, even on earth.

So that didn't work out. Lets instead assume that the internet is divided into numerous parts so that the weight of each one can be summed together to give a meaningful answer. So what is the internet? Is it the servers that run it? The huge cables that run below the oceans? Or maybe internet can be best thought of as the information it contains. Then what is information? Is it the magnetic direction of the molecules of a harddisk? Is it the dents on a CD? Or something else that can be thought of still being "physical" in nature? Or does information on the storage devices only truly become _information_ once it is observed and digested by a human mind?

How much calories would it take for a human brain to go trough all the information on the internet? After finding out, use the calories to calculate their mass by E=mc^2.

Or maybe the internet is the biomass of the humans involved in it? The biomass of the users? Internet is after all, an "international network". Is it a network of machines or a network of people? Are people the whole bodies or just the brain? Is the brain just the gray mass or it's whole history of nature and nurture? All the way to the big bang? Could it be said that the mass of 1GB of data is the mass of the whole universe, since you need humans to give meaning to data and you need universes to support human brains?

I have only more questions for you.

</comment><comment><USER6> The internet doesn't weigh anything, Jen.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRmxXp62O8g>

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems entirely possible to "store" data in ways that are not dependent on things that are traditionally said to have weight. For example, you could stream data as electromagnetism, making how much it weights completely dependent on your definition of "weight".

Imagine streaming the entire internet into outer space with a pulsating laser. In transit, it would weigh very near nothing (IANAP, but it's weight would probably be the mass-equivalent of the total energy of the photons), but could still be read at a later time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ah, but this is just a consideration of the data as it is stored in the medium itself.

What about the weight of all the electrons necessary to do a read-state of the internet wherever it might be encoded or, perhaps better still, the peak transit rate of the internet in regular use - how many bits are being transmitted and what do they weigh as they actually move, rather than relying on arbitrarily chosen storage media as our determinant.</comment>


Google apps whitelist hardcoded into Chromium open source project - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/chrome/renderer/chrome_content_renderer_client.cc&q=plus.google.com&sq=package:chromium&dr=C&l=830 <comment><USER2> Throwing some more info here, this is the NaCl whitelist, looks like it was originally added Feb last year [1]. There's a discussion on Chromium Code Reviews here [2], and an issue on the project itself here [3]

The original commit includes the comment 'We should remove this code when PNaCl ships' which got removed somewhere along the way.

[1] [http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/rende...](http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/renderer/chrome_content_renderer_client.cc?revision=122709)

[2] [https://codereview.chromium.org/9368046](https://codereview.chromium.org/9368046)

[3] [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113668](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113668)

<comment><USER3> Does anybody know why (variations on copies of) leokun's comment are automatically marked as dead?

The comment seems perfectly valid so I can't figure out why that would happen...

<comment><USER4> The shortened link seems to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would they check if Adblock is installed or not?

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/chrome/renderer/chrome_content_renderer_client.cc&l=1261)

      bool ChromeContentRendererClient::IsAdblockInstalled() {
        return g_current_client->extension_dispatcher_->extensions()->Contains(
            "gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom");
      }

      bool ChromeContentRendererClient::IsAdblockPlusInstalled() {
        return g_current_client->extension_dispatcher_->extensions()->Contains(
            "cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb");
      }

<comment><USER6> They were apparently trying to understand performance issues with adblock, so they can fix them...

      // TODO(mpcomplete): remove the extension-related histograms after we collect
      // enough data. http://crbug.com/100411

      const bool use_adblock_histogram =
          ChromeContentRendererClient::IsAdblockInstalled();

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=100411](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=100411)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very uncool. Google's association with Chromium is why I still recommend FireFox over Chromium, even though they are both open source. Now that I see this, I'm glad I do.

</comment><comment><USER8> I mean. Google is so large it will always be making mistakes like this. A lot of people look at Google as a whole like it is the greatest set of technical minds in any room on the planet. Sure they have lots of smart people etc.etc but with >10,000 engineers it's impossible.

Also, with >10,000 engineers (even assuming they are the best 10k in the world), mistakes will be made which is why vulnerabilities exist in the real world.

I guess what I'm trying to say is. Don't act surprised. We've seen it before and we will see it again.

<comment><USER9> I agree, but lets also be sure they don't get a pass just because they are large. In Google's case, being a behemoth corporation is in itself a business risk that they need to manage, and one way to motivate them self-police is by holding them accountable for bad decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What whitelist?

JS Execution? No popup blocking? Something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> Did a bit of digging - it lets NACL apps downloaded from those whitelisted Google apis have access to "dev interfaces". Brief search shows that these dev interfaces would have the ability to access the user's PC outside of the Chrome sandbox.

In effect, this gives Google remote code execution rights from their domains on anybody running Chromium.

<comment><USER11> > Brief search shows that these dev interfaces would have the ability to > access the user's PC outside of the Chrome sandbox.

Aren't they just the APIs in [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/p...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/ppapi/c/dev/&sq=package:chromium&type=cs)? By the looks of it they're just things that aren't ready for primetime, not things that are special dev-only debug tools or whatever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well there is

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/p...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/ppapi/c/dev/ppb_testing_dev.h&sq=package:chromium&type=cs)

and

[https://src.chromium.org/chrome/trunk/src/ppapi/c/extensions...](https://src.chromium.org/chrome/trunk/src/ppapi/c/extensions/dev/ppb_ext_events_dev.h)

I haven't looked deeply, but both seem to allow for access outside the sandbox. Maybe a chromium committer could give more detail on the safety of the dev interfaces. They are blocked from public usage for a reason though.

<comment><USER12> They don't enable access outside the sandbox and should be pretty safe.

PPB_Testing_Dev is a set of helpers for writing tests: querying status of the plugin; running nested message loop to wait for results of async operations; simulate input events which are received _only by the plugin itself_.

PPB_Ext_Events_Dev is for registering/unregistering events provided by Chrome apps apis ([http://developer.chrome.com/apps/api_index.html](http://developer.chrome.com/apps/api_index.html)). It will only be accessible when the NaCl module is included in a Chrome app. This interface hasn't been implemented yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Apparently not patched out in Debian either (according to apt-get source chromium-browser). I've got a bit of a mongrel system, so I can't rebuild from source -- but it looks like it should be easy to patch that line to read:

          bool is_whitelisted_url = false;

(If one should be so inclined).

</comment><comment><USER14> Code never lies, comments sometimes do.

            — Ron Jeffries

</comment><comment> steve-slicify From the source: _Allow Chrome Web Store extensions, built-in extensions and extensions under development_ (for calls from whitelisted apps amongst others)

<comment><USER15> That, and give Google special treatment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> An important comment in the code

        // Whitelisted apps must be served over https.

<comment><USER15> Security issues aside, it still reeks bad taste though.

Google is saying that everyone on the internet has to dump plugins, dump Flash and create pure HTML solutions. HTML should be good enough for everyone! Everyone except themselves, apparently.

They can just jump to native code on their websites whenever they like. So much for their credibility when it comes to web-standards, eh?

<comment><USER17> Isn't it entirely possible they want to dog food their own new code via Chrome before they open up the API to the world?

<comment><USER15> If they were genuinely interested in dogfooding their own stuff to ensure it works properly, they should also be dogfooding the process of white-listing plugins and websites, not to mention handling graceful fallback when the user cant or wont do that.

That's a big part of getting the end-user experience to work well and can't just be "tacked on" later.

<comment><USER17> You're just adding things that probably aren't within the scope of the project.

For instance graceful fallback is a 'nice to have' but not necessary. If you deny flash or javascript, essentially most sites simply break. I imagine a native client plugin would have the same results if you don't enable it.

As for white listing, why can't it simply be handled with the same dialogs used for whitelisting all the other existing extensions per site?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So it's a... Backdoor

</comment><comment><USER19> A lot of things are hodecoded into chrome/chromeium. For example the font types and sizes of the tab area. Their browser is practically unusable on a 4k monitor at full resolution.

</comment><comment><USER20> be evil

<comment><USER21> You have to remember that Chrome an OS aswell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> since google started silently removing all the referrer removal options developers contributed to chromium over time, I've started to call it Google's Chromium open source project.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm more horrified by how ugly that code is</comment>


CloudFlare is down - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=cloudflare

<comment><USER2> Looks like it's back up now, but for 15 minutes or so I was seeing >95% packet loss to every CloudFlare IP address that I tested.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just feel like so many sites have just slowed down today. It's apparent how much of an impact cloudflare has on the internet.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the second time in two weeks, makes it hard to keep trusting them.</comment>


Using parallel sequential scan in PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> https://rafiasabih.blogspot.com/2018/10/using-parallel-sequential-scan-in.html <comment><USER2> PostGIS user here -- this feature makes a big difference on common workloads for analysis (Ubuntu 1604, PG10).

a common case is a commmon table expression (CTE) as a filter with a spatial test on the result set e.g.

with tmpset as (<select on a common attribute>) SELECT count(star), <spatial- test> from 2GB_table GROUP BY <spatial-test> order by count(star) asc;

example run: gather Workers Planned: 12; Workers Launched 12 Parallel Seq Scan on 2GB_table

shared_mem, work_mem set to 8GB or so.. other details on request.

<comment><USER3> do you have to do much tuning to trigger parallel queries? i'm also trying to do this with PostGIS, and it looks like you kind of have to tweak costs and fiddle with things a fair amount to get parallel queries to trigger: [http://blog.cleverelephant.ca/2018/09/parallel- postgis-3.htm...](http://blog.cleverelephant.ca/2018/09/parallel- postgis-3.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a very similar access pattern to Map Reduce.

It should be valuable for analytical workloads - do analytics databases like Amazon Redshift support this kind of thing already?</comment>


"Destroy Capitalism" print by Banksy for sale at Walmart - <AUTHOR> http://www.walmart.com/ip/Destroy-Capitalism-by-Banksy-Canvas-Print/23127186

<comment><USER2> Hilarious, plus I love Banksy's art, but flagged. I'm happy to see something that is not related to Bitcoin on the front page, but this isn't it.</comment>


Crazy Fuel Efficient Plane Design Has Passengers Sitting in Its Wings - <AUTHOR> https://www.physics-astronomy.org/2019/06/this-crazy-fuel-efficient-plane-design.html <comment><USER2> Looks kinda cool. Hope it works!</comment>


OneRNG – Open Hardware Random Number Generator - <AUTHOR> http://onerng.info/ <comment><USER2> Note: I'm Paul the designer

Some background - this board is in late beta testing, we're going to kickstart it and release it (with papers scheduled at a couple of conferences) - it's hitting Hacker News a little early - but keep us in mind when we do finally release to the public - at the moment we haven't published the design - we'll be putting up both the firmware an hardware designs on GitHub when we think it's ready for the public (almost there)

If you want some idea of the code and development system it's largely based on the dev system for out IoT project:

[http://www.moonbaseotago.com/cheaprf/](http://www.moonbaseotago.com/cheaprf/)

Meanwhile I'm happy to answer questions

<comment><USER3> _> we're going to kickstart it and release it_

Do you have any timescales for that yet, or are such decisions still heavily dependant on feedback from testing?

<comment><USER2> testing is good, no known roadblocks, we planning on a Decemberish time frame, we think we have a final firmware load at this point.

We have a small pick-and-place machine/etc setup we'll do a small in-house run for those who want to pay a premium for early delivery and then possibly a slower run depending on demand.

<comment><USER4> > We have a small pick-and-place machine/etc setup

I've been in at the ground floor of a number of successful hardware startups. One of which had a number of pick and place machines, IR reflow ovens, and all sorts of related manufacturing equipment. So I'm quite familiar with the field.

My very simple, very emphatic advice about a "pick-and-place" machine is: NO NO NO NO NO, a thousand times N0!!!

Maybe it's something you have to do in NZ. But in some other parts of the world, if I blindfolded you and let you stumble around you would probably trip over a pick-and-place machine in about 5 minutes! They're everywhere.

In other words, unless your primary purpose is to bootstrap yourself into being a contract manufacturer, you have absolutely no business owning your own pick-and-place machine.

A design as simple as yours could be manufactured by almost _anyone_ in the world. It's so simple that most of them could do it in their sleep.

Just contract the manufacturing out and be done with it.

Your quixotic effort at stuffing your own boards reminds me of the perhaps apocryphal story of, in the 1970's, WDC designing a chipset that was used in the DEC LSI-11 minicomputer.[1] They had a fab, and in one week they could make enough chips for DEC to sell minicomputers for a year. "Okay, the LSI-11 chips are done. Now WTF do we do with this fab for the other 51 weeks of the year???"

Yeah, in the old days IC fabs were cheap enough that everyone and his brother owned one. And they had large fixed costs. And unless they were utilized around the clock they lost money.

To a large extent stuff like pick-and-place machines are the same. Sure it's orders of magnitude cheaper. But still, maybe it takes you a week or two to build some of your boards. What do you do with your equipment for the other 50 weeks of the year? Is that the business you want to be in?

Of course, if that _is_ the business you want to be in, then OK.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Digital#1970s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Digital#1970s)

<comment><USER2> It really depends on the demand, I do plan on doing a small run myself - as I said as a kickstarter premium - that lets me test out the manufacturing support hardware (board test and programming jigs) and provide boards really quickly -if the volumes are high enough then yes, we're off to Shenzhen (I was there in May, I'll be back in December)

We have a CHEAP (~$8k) P&P machine, it's great for doing prototypes (you load it with the 10 most common components and hand place the rest) and VERY small production runs (10-20 panelised boards is probably a limit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, I'm happy to see that for once, they understand that the single most important thing is that it's _verifiable_.

So many crypto-related systems ask you to trust the provider implicitly it's not even funny.

I don't care who you are, if I can't look at the source (all the way down) of your product and build it myself, it's not going to make the cut as a "secure" system. You can provide _additional_ guarantees and proofs, but showing me the source is item number 0.

Sure, it's not perfect, but it's much closer to perfect than any alternatives.

<comment><USER6> > You can provide additional guarantees and proofs, but showing me the source > is item number 0.

And item number 0.5 is allowing me to build the source and upload it to a pristine EEPROM chip.

<comment><USER2> as part of our kickstarter we'll be offering programmers as an added reward - you can build the image from source and program your device - and we hope you do and share the results with the world

You can't program it over the USB (although we could) we consider that that would be a security problem - and given recent security issues with programmable USB devices ....

<comment><USER7> One of the kickstarter rewards could be the ICSP programmer HW (i'm guessing that's what you're using) so who ever wants to program it could do it.

<comment><USER2> we use a home-grown programmer - it's cheap but the bed-of-nails cable costs as much as the board - we wont be making any money on them

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A question for the designers (Paul?) about verifiability. In the software world you can effectively choose from 2 levels of review. You can (1) review the source code of a project and convince yourself it's fine. Or (2) you can assume/hope that experts have done that, download the software, and just verify you have an identical copy of what everyone else is reviewing. (Ideally using signatures of the authors and reviewers.)

Almost everyone who cares does step 2, assuming they do anything at all. Very few people are qualified or bother to review source code, but everyone who performs step 2 can feel pretty safe, as long as a release is big enough that it's getting reviewed by experts.

So, what's the hardware equivalent? If I'm not capable of reviewing the schema of this hardware, but someone I trust says "this is great", how do I at least know the one I bought is identical to the one she/he bought (or built) and reviewed? How do I verify the components? This seems like a difficult problem.

<comment><USER9> You run your "verified" software on hardware, right? How do you know the hardware is verified?

<comment><USER2> we publish the hardware design - in reality we have to run it on someone's chip, we've picked one that includes among other things AES, we just don't use that stuff, at some point we have to trust the CPU, and we use a CRC32 engine for minor whitening and stirring of our internal entropy pool - but crc32 is easy to verify (while AES is not)

more importantly we've chosen a platform that we think is unlikely to have already subverted by 3 letter agencies

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If the avalanche diode is the main/primary source of entropy why do we need the CC2531? The super paranoid part of me is worried about the 802.15.4 radio being used as a vector to taint the RNG.

Shouldn't an HW RNG NOT have any secondary communication method built in?

I am guessing you guys added that because that's the platform you're working with for your IOT project, but it just seems a little overkill to me. The diode data acquisition and the USB comms could be easily done using any Cortex-M0 type micro.

<comment><USER2> I think that's a fair point, I agonized over it for quite a while - the cc2531 was the USB device/ and stack I was building with at the time.

This is the main reason why by default the device disables the RF source, you have to go out of your way to enable it by editing an /etc .conf file - however it actually does make a slightly better random stream

<comment><USER10> Is it possible for this device to transmit over radio, or only receive? I certainly prefer only being able to receive, as transmitting seems like an attack vector.

With the assumption that it only receives, I would strongly prefer that it be left on by default. Adding a second source to the CRC mixing can only improve entropy, even if the source is controlled by an attacker. Since the noise from the zener has no simple proof of it's entropy output rate, and it can vary over time, and because zener noise TRNGs have been known to be power-supply noise sensitive (not that your's is), having that second source gives me much more confidence in the device.

<comment><USER2> It could transmit, there is no transmit code in the firmware, in fact there's no real receive code, we turn on the receiver and sample the LSB of RF noise in the sampling DACs but don't enable any demodulation or framing.

Turning both RNGs on only gets you a about half a bit/byte of extra entropy - but it is a great belt and braces sort of thing, makes it much harder to attack, especially since the sampling clock inside the device for both sources is not visible eternally

Remember we don't use the output data directly, we mix it into the kernel's entropy pool (where it's whitened)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems sound. However, I'm in doubt about some of their points:

> _You can ask it to dump the current firmware to you_

It can dump the firmware but it can still execute something else than this (or in addition to) this firmware, can't it?

> _You can see all the components on the board_

The fact that I can see these tiny thingies doesn't do much good either? Can I, seeing them, tell what they do? No.

Building one of these yourself seems to solve both problems. Not trying to undermine it or anything, just curious what others think of it.

<comment><USER5> The point is - you can verify it _yourself_. Without trusting anybody else.

Dumping the firmware means you can ensure it's not been modified (presumably from when you uploaded it to the device yourself).

Being able to inspect components means you can ensure it's still exactly as you built it. And if you haven't, you can visually check that it does what it says it does.

If you're not technically competent to make this verification, you can ask somebody you trust and who is to do it for you.

<comment><USER12> None of the images show the other side of the board, but unless every trace is visible, it will be difficult to non-destructively inspect. If its only a 2 layer board then this just means scratching off the white silkscreen, which wouldn't be too bad. If its more than 2 layers, you would have to have access to an X-ray machine.

<comment><USER2> it's a two layer board - no buried wires or vias - by design there are very few wires on the bottom layer, none under the noise source (we want to contain the noise) - you can see all the wires without removing the solder mask just by holding it in the right light

we'll be publishing the layout files of course

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A good CS-PRNG can take a modest amount of entropy and store it in a way (internal state) that you trust it can't be recovered by the attacker. From this they can generate a nearly endless supply of random output. That, as I understand it, is /dev/random vs. /dev/urandom/.

So it's nice to have a good reliable source of _entropy_ , but you can also consider how protected is the internal state, aka the place you stick that entropy? The better protected the CS-PRNG state, the less entropy you actually need.

If you trust the CS-PRNG state, then hardware entropy sources won't matter much to you, because you just don't need that much entropy. When you start streaming entropy from many sources, it's probably to consistently update internal state over time because you don't fully trust that the state is secure.

It should make no difference either way in the quality of the output (directly pulling entropy versus CS-PRNG output). Because the necessary amount of output to reverse-engineer state is almost infinite, the output of a properly implemented CS-PRNG is highly trusted. And they're really nice algorithms that have well reviewed implementations.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, but you have a reliable source of entropy you don't need to get a lot of random numbers from your CSPRNG before reseeding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Suggestion for modification: Call it OpenRNG instead of OneRNG. In every second sentence i read the word open. Its obviously a main purpose.

<comment><USER2> it's a sad pun, we're from NZ ....

<comment><USER16> Still took me a minute - OneRNG -> "One Ring" LOTR reference

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If this gadget sells for under $50 (which it certainly should) I might consider buying one, just for the fun of it.

But I haven't seen anyone here mention ID Quantique, one of the companies that the "big boys" use for random numbers. They're in Switzerland: [http://idquantique.com/](http://idquantique.com/)

Admittedly not open hardware, but FWIW they claim:

       QUANTIS has been evaluated and certified by the
       Swiss Federal Office of Metrology (also known as
       METAS), the Swiss national organization in charge
       of measurement science, testing and compliance.
       It confirmed that the quality of its random output
       complies with the highest requirements.

The minor detail about buying from ID Quantique is that their cheapest USB product sells for about 990 euros, or about $1250.[1]

I know it's apples and oranges, but anyone interested in this product should at least be aware of some alternatives.

[1] [http://idquantique.com/component/content/article.html?id=83](http://idquantique.com/component/content/article.html?id=83)

</comment><comment><USER17> How does it compare to the NeuG? Which entropy source is better? [http://www.gniibe.org/memo/development/gnuk/rng/neug.html](http://www.gniibe.org/memo/development/gnuk/rng/neug.html)

<comment><USER10> Note: I've only glanced at NeuG, so this is an over-simplified repy. Neug relies on a few different A/D inputs as a noise source. The resolution of the A/Ds is only 12 bits, meaning it is not capable of reliably measuring thermal noise in the system. In any case, it does not seem to be trying to measure voltage on a high impedance node. Therefore the data passed will be power supply noise and other sources of external influence. These potentially can be influenced by an attacker, maybe even remotely. I do like this architecture for a TRNG, and I like that it is open, but I do not believe the creator of NeuG has put nearly the TRNG know-how into this design as OneRNG. Personally, I'm looking forward to signing up on the Kickstarter for OneRNG when it happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Back about 25 years ago I wanted to build a PC card to generate better random numbers. The idea I had at the time was to build in a set of four or five FM/AM radio receivers into this card and have them hop ratio stations constantly at, well, random intervals. Then I'd use the digitized audio signals in some combination to feed a random number generator. I thought it was a good idea at the time. Well, I didn't have enough experience yet to know just how much I didn't know. Never built it.

</comment><comment><USER6> > It even has a "tinfoil hat" to prevent RF interference

Isn't this a problem in the US, being against the famous part 15 of the FCC rules:

«Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) this device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.»

<comment><USER19> I'm fairly sure that the "accept" does not refer to "absorb without any countermeasures". It's a bit poorly worded.

I think it refers to the fact that if your device fails due to interference below the legal limit it is your problem to fix, not the device that generated the interference.

<comment><USER20> I always assumed that it refers to the fact that interference under certain limit should not permanently destroy the device even when such interference may cause the device to behave erratically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's awfully complicated for a hardware RNG. A channel-hopping receiver? The classic solution is a radiation source, which quantum mechanics says is random.

[http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/hardware3.html](http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/hardware3.html)

<comment><USER10> The channel hoping is just a bit of software. It costs $0.00 in additional hardware. Software complexity is a big deal in a TRNG. The KISS rule applies big-time here. The more complex the software, the more likely it is a significant flaw will be found and exploited. It remains unclear to me whether there should even be a microcontroller on a USB TRNG. Without one, we can eliminate the complexity from the USB key itself, but we have to move the whitening and health monitoring to the driver. It is unclear to me if making the driver more complex opens it up to enough additional attacks that the system is less secure overall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> On a related note, is there any device out there that lets you create a private key and "burn" it to that device in a way that the key cannot be taken off the device and you instead use the device the same way you use SSH_AUTH_SOCK?

Ultimately, it would be nice to have a way where private keys can not be copied.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious why they chose to use an avalanche diode which doesn't generate quantum-random numbers, unlike a reverse-biased transistor.

As far as I'm aware, this means you could effect the numbers, by varying temperature.

<comment><USER14> I doesn't matter.

And being in a semiconductor it is a quantum process (in fact most sources of noise in circuits are quantum in origin - not that it matters)

<comment><USER23> That's untrue, just because it's a semiconductor, doesn't mean it can't generate data effected by non-quantum properties such as temperature.

<comment><USER14> "it can't generate data effected by non-quantum properties such as temperature"

And do you think quantum effects are not affected by temperature? REALLY?!

Start here [http://ecee.colorado.edu/~bart/book/distrib.htm](http://ecee.colorado.edu/~bart/book/distrib.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Total layman question here, but how does an avalanche diode work?

</comment><comment><USER25> Or you could just use a shitty cheap webcam and take the lower bits of each pixel (or one pixel of each 8x8 block if the compression is bad).

The amount of randomness per second webcams generate is pretty insane, it's more than enough to feed the seed of a crypto PRNG function like Fortuna.

<comment><USER10> There are plenty of decent sources of entropy, like webcams and sound cards. However, they all add parts we don't need, and they don't take any care to design with security in mind. Eventually, a good open hardware TRNG should be cheaper, more reliable, easier to use, and more secure than any of those solutions, IMO.

<comment><USER25> > _they all add parts we don 't need_

What are you worried about exactly? Space? There are really really tiny cameras for smartphones that are mass-produced, and they are very noisy, which is perfect.</comment></comment></comment>


Danish FM admits to selling mass-surveillance technology to Saudi Arabia, UAE - <AUTHOR> https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2017/8/21/danish-fm-admits-selling-mass-surveillance-technology-to-saudi-arabia <comment><AUTHOR> Link to June reporting on sales of "Evident":-

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle- east-40276568](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-40276568)</comment>


Scientists must fight for the facts - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/scientists-must-fight-for-the-facts-1.21347?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews <comment><USER2> Comments here are still talking about defending facts. This is a losing argument.

This is bread and circuses.

Let scientists do science - comics and comedians are the weapon to reach for.

America has lead the way for the past 4 decades in bringing the public into areas they don't have the prior knowledge to navigate.

Anyone old enough to remember the climate change debates will remember a time when scientists didn't debate climate deniers because it gave climate deniers too much credibility!

But what scientists didn't realize is that vested interests were setting them up.

Cranks and fakers were nurtured and given air time by a certain news channel till they eventually the "public interest" invaded the scientific.

At which point "science" lost. Science expected a debate, but walked into Spectacle.

Trump showed that with Twitter and crap you can cross the very low threshold required to beat the current crop of presidential candidates.

This is entertainment. If you don't treat it as such you lose space to the person who generates better TRPs.

<comment><USER3> Comedians were almost completely united against Trump and a lot of good that did. (I recall John Oliver pointing out, self-deprecatingly, how effective his repeated eviscerations of Trump had been).

Before I moved here, I remember thinking that Americans must be too stupid to understand "The Simpsons" because it takes apart and laughs at all the obvious flaws in American society, but discovered instead that Americans can cheerfully laugh at Homer, understand why they're laughing at Homer, and be Homer all at once.

Bear in mind that a Christian Conservative is already managing epic levels of cognitive dissonance "the love of money is the root of all evil.... mmmmm tax cuts" so a bunch more is barely going to have an impact.

<comment><USER4> > but discovered instead that Americans can cheerfully laugh at Homer, > understand why they're laughing at Homer, and be Homer all at once.

This is not unique to Americans.

You can generalize your assertions to humanity as a whole. America is not unique in believing wildly irrational, logically inconsistent ideas and compartmentalizing cognitive dissonance. This is the story of human politics since the beginning of history...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      > Within two days of Trump assuming power, White House
      > officials have found themselves embroiled in a
      > scandal over "alternative facts".

Those weren't alternative facts, those were lies.

Actual alternative facts do exist because we often select the facts we represent based on our tribal affiliations.

I won't be able to reclaim the term now that is smeared. But I wish people could point out when somebody is lying (or misleading) without trying to smear the existence of counterzeitgeist truth.

Aside: why didn't anybody in the Trump administration respond by pointing out that Washington, D.C. is majority democrat, and that Bush's inauguration might have been a better comparison? Quite embarrassing that they would lie when deflating the authority of the comparison would have probably been more effective...

<comment><USER6> I blame the media for a lot of this, honestly. If someone tells a lie, say "why did you lie about _____?" That's about 90% of why the media exists in the elevated status it has/had.

But when a reporter on CNN says "Why did the Donald Trump tell the Press Secretary to come out and tell falsehoods?" that diminishes what actually happened. The PS lied on national television. Call him out on it. Use the word "lied" or "liar" and stop dressing it up by using terms like "telling falsehoods."

When a liar is said to be "telling falsehoods" it's only one small step for them to reply with "alternative facts."

<comment><USER7> I wonder if the lawyers have a hand in this. Words like "liar" paint a person in a negative light and could lead to a defamation lawsuit. Whereas pointing out that something is a "falsehood" is inviting a comparison of facts - i.e. inviting Trump to prove he wasn't lying.

<comment><USER8> That is what I understand; lie implies intent, which is impossibly hard to do. IMO the media is trying to being courteous, even delicate, when it is and should be an all out brawl, when the truth and fact are at stake.

<comment><USER9> I kind of like the vocabulary they're using. Everybody knows politicians lie, and I don't think that word would have much of an impact. Repeating the term "alternative fact" and using terms like "believes... won't provide any proof" draws attention to just how absurd these particular lies are.

<comment><USER10> It only draws attention for paying who willing to think critically. Lots of Trump supporters are perfectly content with the notion of "alternative facts."

<comment><USER9> That's true, but is there _any_ way to reach that group?

<comment><USER6> There were what, 63 million of them? They're not all closeted racists with barely a HS education. _Most_ of them aren't.

I don't understand the pervasive notion that anyone who voted Trump can't be reasoned with and isn't upset with how his administration has operated in the last week.

<comment><USER9> Maybe you have trouble understanding that pervasive notion because you misunderstand what people are saying?

Neither I nor the person I replied to said or implied that all Trump supporters are, well, anything. The other fellow talked about "lots of Trump supporters" (which could easily refer to just a few percent of the total) and that's the group I referred to in my reply.

 _I_ don't understand the pervasive notion that if you talk bad about any set of Trump supporters, you're somehow painting 63 million people with the same brush.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This isn't about facts. Science is rarely about facts. Empirical science is and cannot be about proofs. Proofs and facts are for the abstract, the ideal, left to philosophers, logicians, and occasionally mathematicians and computer scientists. No, this is about something much more sinister: denying the ability to reason about and disseminate observations. All empirical science can do is look at things, do experiments and come up with logically consistent and plausible theories or hypotheses that explain them. The value is rarely in the data: the value is in the reasoning around it. Observing, for example, that beaks in birds change depending on the environment is rarely interesting. The interesting bit is reasoning that traits get passed down to offspring in a survival of the fittest scheme. Similarly, observing that combustion engines release CO2, and there is more of it than before we had them … not particularly interesting. The interesting bit is that it acts as insulation to sunlight and that a lot of ecological and climate systems act as non-linear under the influence of temperature and CO2.

Do I say this to downplay empirical science? On the contrary. However, the focus on facts is I think more harmful than it might appear in trying to protect our scientific legacy. Dump every table ever recorded on the internet as a torrent, and very little useful things will come from it. It's protecting the institutions and freedom to reason about, and talk about, those findings that is important; to be able to openly challenge them, and rigorously come up with "best explanations" (a human intellectual construct, not fact, not truth).

Gag orders to silence academic findings, that is problematic. More so than trying to "protect" facts-of-the-matter as if they are somehow the pinnacle of human intellect.

Corollary this is also why I always find "humanities are not science" or "this is not Nature worthy"-statements rather annoying. It's a no-true Scotchman fallacy. Science is more than stamp collection, it's more than peer-review, it's more than running elaborate statistical tests on randomized experiments: it's the collective human endeavor to understand the universe and ourselves, it's a mindset. A mindset that can, and should be, in constant flux as our understanding progresses (and sometimes regresses).

<comment><USER12> >it's a mindset.

No, it's more than that. Without the rigor to come up with testable hypothesis and reproducible results, you might as well be practicing religion. You can have a very inquisitive mindset but without applying scientific rigor, you're right in line with numerologists and whatever else.

That's why people are so hard on shaky humanities studies that have poor experimental design, poor analysis, or terrible biases in the data. You can't derive meaningful conclusions from bad science. Garbage in => garbage out.

<comment><USER13> One of my favourite quotes on the subject:

 _"Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible… We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power."_

I saw The Ascent of Man at a young age (probably 7 or 8) and I've always remembered this scene:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXwj4jMnWZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXwj4jMnWZg)

<comment><USER14> I think a lot about the tension inherent in science; we do science because we have a desire for the truth, which for many scientists is a deeply emotional and visceral hunger, a need for knowledge and a joy of discovery... but we do science by acknowledging that this goal is impossible, that we can never have a moment of celebration where we're absolutely certain we've discovered something. Trust your methods too much, and you'll end up believing in phrenology or whatever other misplaced scientism even the establishment can come to believe. Trust your methods not enough, and you'll never be able to come to a conclusion, and never be able to convince others of the importance of your findings (even if the fate of the planet depends on it.)

And in the end... it's a tension that can't be resolved. All there is is the tension. That's what science is, despite our hopes in it as a rational, dry methodology; at some point, the methodology has to come to a conclusion, the controlled experiments and p-values end up affecting the way we think and act, and we all just keep trying our best to make sense of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think of late one of the problems is that there is a certain dogma within political circles and the media that the body of facts produced by scientists is absolute and irrefutable, when the truth is somewhat the opposite: the body of knowledge produced by science is constantly changing, individual results are continually reevaluated, and theories are compared against each other until there is a preponderance of evidence in favor of one over the others.

I don't want to get too political, but one can't help but wonder if the way science has been talked about in the media has led to a skepticism of academia to an unhealthy degree.

<comment><USER16> I think a tangential issue is the assumption that science can decide one particular course of action to be the correct one, often expressed in a form such as that the science of climate change tells us that we must build solar farms and wind turbines. Science doesn't, in fact, tell us that, directly at least -- but it can tell us that _if_ we want to combat the root cause of climate change, we need to decrease CO2 emissions, and major component of CO2 emissions is electricity generation, and solar and wind are reasonably practical, comparably low CO2 options, compared to most other option. But they are also expensive, and science can't tell us if it's 'worth it' (specifically if its _more_ 'worth it' than other competing expenses), for an example.

Scientists understand this, headline writing journalists less so, and agenda- pushing activists and politicians _definitely_ don't.

<comment><USER17> Do scientists understand this? I've tried to have this sort of conversation with scientists and most don't see things that way. I don't know if contemporary scientists see themselves as activists or if they are too hooked on grant money to give up the notion of scientific hyperauthority (reminded of Upton Sinclair's lament about getting people to understand things)

<comment><USER18> Yes, in great numbers they do. The spur to activism is in response to political foot-dragging, and the party bias is simply because the Republicans resist the whole issue en masse.

"Hooked on grant money" is a smear trope that is used by political opponents. If there was a credible scientific opposition to GW, they'd get all the grant money they could handle. It just ain't so.

<comment><USER17> no the spur to activism existed long before trump was elected president. I haven't been an active mainstream scientist for about 4 years or so.

> If there was a credible scientific opposition to GW, they'd get all the > grant money they could handle.

Really? Without claiming that GW is not real (I think it likely is). What journals would they be published in? Who would review their papers? Who would review their grants? Where would this hypothetical credible GW scientist be getting their PhD from? Which advisor and committee members signed off on their degree? The overall process for getting money for science (and getting _to_ the point where you're even in contention for getting money) is not different between chemistry and biology and climate science, and there is so much pettiness in the process in chem and bio, it's disgusting (and a large part of why I left). In the end whether or not you get money pretty much boils down to who you know and what your pedigree is.

I guess my overall point is that at this juncture in history, our scientific edifice is on very shaky foundations across the board. As much as I disagree with Trump, the fealty to which "anti-Trump" writ large gives over to "science", or really "scientific authority" is unfortunate. Moreover it's not 'being hooked on grant money' per se, but in order for scientists to keep being paid like they are, they must accept the validity of the system as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Facts are weird beasts. We are terrible at recognising facts, for a number of reasons. For a start people tend to confuse them with truth.

A fact is generally considered to be a proposition that is true. The problem is, science doesn't deal in what's true. Science deals in what's falsifiable.

Most things that are believed to be true aren't falsifiable, and therefore fall into the epistemologically nebulous category of "things which are not yet false". I'd suggest that trying to build a positivist bastion of truth on such shifting epistemological sands is doomed to fail.

<comment><USER20> > _A fact is generally considered to be a proposition that is true. The > problem is, science doesn 't deal in what's true. Science deals in what's > falsifiable._

That's the epistemology of Popper. Not necessarily how science works. See e.g. Fayerabends arguments in "Against Method".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't think it is as easy to identify "facts" as this article implies. For example, which of the following statements are factual:

1) The effective radiating temperature of the earth, T_e, is determined by the need for infrared emission from the planet to balance absorbed solar radiation:

      pi*R^2(1-A)*S_0 = 4*pi*R^2*sigma*T_e^4

where R is the radius of the earth, A the albedo of the earth, S_0 the flux of solar radiation, and sigma the Stefan-Boltzmann constant.

2) Rearranged, this equation gives:

      T_e = [S_0*(1-A)/(4*sigma)]^0.25

3) For A - 0.3 and So = 1367 watts per square meter, this yields T_e ~ 255 K.

4) The mean surface temperature is T_s ~ 288 K.

5) The excess, T_s - T_e, is the greenhouse effect of gases and clouds

<comment> 08-15 1) Conclusion from a well supported theory (not a fact, but pretty darn close). It's only an approximation, though: what's the albedo of a heterogenous body and doesn't it depend on temperature?

2, 3) Simple conclusions from (1).

4) Fact... sort of. It needs a precise defintion of "mean surface temperature" that makes sense in the face of the equation in (1). Shouldn't you take the fourth root of the mean of the fourth power of temperature? For practical purposes, this is called a "ball park number".

5) Plain wrong. The correct coclusion is that either (a) the theory presented in (1) is wrong or (b) one of your inputs (R, A, sigma, S_0) is wrong. Turns out the value of A is wrong, and the simplistic idea of albedo is not good enough for the theory in (1).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A march of scientists is being organized:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/speaking-of- scie...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/speaking-of- science/wp/2017/01/24/are-scientists-going-to-march-on-washington)

</comment><comment><USER23> Maybe scientists should first set their own house in order.

* Reproducibility crisis - [http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-...](http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970)

* P-hacking [http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-statistical-err...](http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-statistical-errors-1.14700)

* Prominent scientists criticizing those who find math errors in their works [http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/9/30/13077658/sta...](http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/9/30/13077658/statcheck-psychology-replication) (There are few facts more basic than math, and one of the scientists actually used the words "methodologic terrorism" to describe this effort)

* Not publishing raw data so others can analyze it [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/08/16/sc...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/08/16/science-without-open-data-isnt-science/#.WIjlefErLmE)

These issues, especially the last two make it seem that a lot of scientists are not fighting for the facts, but for their own academic position.

<comment><USER24> By scientists you do mean Elsevier shareholders, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> People communicating scientific knowledge to the general public need to become more responsible in talking about uncertainty. Scientists in certain fields need to as well. When people hear a bunch of scientific facts that later turn out to be false, they will stop believing the experts. This happens all the time with nutrition and health "facts." Today drinking red wine is good for you and next decade it's bad for you. Hear that enough and you stop trusting nutrition studies. Same with anything coming out of the fields with reproducibility crises. You stop trusting them. If we properly communicated the limits of and uncertainty around these ideas, people wouldn't say we're crying wolf. If we had different layman's language to denote a theory of bunk and the theory of evolution, people wouldn't say "but it's just a theory," and experts might regain trust. If people stop presenting "X affects Y in certain conditions for mice, maybe" as "X affects Y for all humans, definitely" then lay people might stop associating that level of trust to things like climate change. At the very least, it becomes more defensible.

</comment><comment><USER26> The problem isn't people holding these anti-science beliefs.

It's people holding these beliefs receiving human connection in the context of these beliefs primarily from people who share the same beliefs! We use differing beliefs as a reason to disconnect & disassociate, which is EXACTLY what got us Trump in the first place.

Science knows this! We have to temporarily affirm their worldview before challenging specific pieces of it. The more foundational the belief, the deeper the connection needs to be.

My hypothesis: we need to collectively learn nonviolent communication in order to hear the right on an emotional level. By connecting with them over all their deep-seated fears & beliefs, we can then more easily stay changing them.

</comment><comment><USER27> Scientists must have their skin in the game - so the facts will fight for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER28> I disagree with this premise.

A scientist job is to _present_ the facts. It's the media, and ultimately the citizen job to _fight_ for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Using the word "unconventional" instead of a more accurate word such as "counterfactual" or "intentionally ignorant" is a poor start.

</comment><comment><USER29> Selective outrage. Where has this been when scientists were quoting pharmaceutical jobs because they were being asked to omit facts?

</comment><comment><USER30> Has anyone else noticed the disturbing parallel between Trump's "Alternative facts" and the famous Nixon-era press office claim that "Previous statements are inoperative"?

<comment><USER31> We had 'core' promises and 'non-core' promises here in Australia. How politicians use language is quite instructive.

<comment><USER32> Sounds like Donald Rumsfeld's _known knowns_ and _known unknowns_

<comment><USER33> Without defending the misleading way this was used, there are such things as 1. Known knowns, 2. known unknowns, and 2. unknown unknowns. AKA stuff you know, stuff you know that you don't know, and stuff that you do not know that you don't know.

<comment><USER20> It's basic epistemology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Seems like Python could use more TCL influence in regards to "split" and other nuances, from your description.

</comment><comment><USER35> This kind of article does not belong to Nature. It talks about what the media said as _evidence_ , undefined _alternative facts_ , how "Rejecting mainstream science has become a theme for Trump", yet the only fact presented is that tillerson acknowledged climate change. Other than the fair criticism of pushing fossil fuels, it's a purely political fluff article. Even editorials should be based on facts in Nature.

<comment><USER36> Not true: freezing EPA funds, censoring EPA twitter, replacing web pages on climate change with fossile fuel propaganda, and disputing truth on live television

We need to act, and we need to act now. Science is what got this man elected (twitter, television), now it needs to fight for the very basic principles.

<comment><USER37> > _Science is what got this man elected (twitter, television), now it needs to > fight for the very basic principles._

The word "science" seems to mean almost everything nowadays.

Twitter and television are not _science_. They are social constructs built around the works of _engineering_ , which itself was based on some established scientific knowledge.

<comment><USER36> >Twitter and television are not science. They are social constructs built around the works of engineering, which itself was based on some established scientific knowledge.

I admit it's a long causality chain, but without the scientific methods, those things would not exist. Thus, those methods are what we need to preserve in order to advance, and this is very openly threatened by the current administration.

<comment><USER37> I agree that scientific method needs to be preserved, but honestly, I don't think the current US administration even enters top 10 of dangers to _science itself_. Science as both the methods and the established culture around it has been in serious trouble for years now, and a lot of that has to do with mass media reporting and with the way incentives for scientists are structured.

As for Trump's administration creating creating a danger for the climate- change mitigation efforts, that's another topic.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


China's Built a Railroad to Nowhere in Kenya - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-07-19/china-s-belt-and-road-leaves-kenya-with-a-railroad-to-nowhere <comment><USER2> > with concerns rising globally that Belt and Road was loading poorer nations > with unsustainable debt

So the reason the railroad wasn't completed was because the Chinese discovered that the debt was unsustainable. Seems like a rational business move. I wonder why they didn't discover this before they started building the railroad.

<comment><USER3> > I wonder why they didn't discover this before they started building the > railroad.

Because it doesn't matter to China in any case. The debt these nations take on goes directly back to Chinese firms. If they struggle to pay the money back, even better for China, because that lets them flex more muscle over all of these developing countries they're investing in.

It seems this is more a response to external pressure than it is to some new revelation that the projects are infeasible.

<comment><USER4> > It seems this is more a response to external pressure than it is to some new > revelation that the projects are infeasible.

I'd say no. I've been personally involved with now 4 companies that were directly or indirectly involved in all that OBOR kerfuffle.

It was certainly a genuine miscalculation on Chinese side, and a very grave one.

An average Chinese bureaucrat knows no more of the outside world than a lifelong gated community dweller knows of "the hood." And add to that the natural incompetence of China's "aristocrat-bureaucrat" class.

In talks with many members of political establishment, I heard very much the same sentiment: many genuinely expected OBOR to be "a walk in the park." To a lot of them, their first first hand experience working outside of China is a complete eye opener.

The common line they thought was that "if Kenya's GDP is zillion times smaller than ours, then we can put zillion times less money on an equivalent project, and still get the same result."

Another one after that is "if it is so much cheaper than in China, it must be very easy."

Some times they get messed up with analogies beyond silly, like in the case of one OBOR official who was estimating costs of road projects in Africa by trying to find physically similar roads in China, and copypasting their costing.

A lot of things in China are done with presumption: "if it's abroad, it can't be worse than in China." That presumption is just so wrong.

<comment><USER3> I've worked with a number of companies in SEA who deal with these kinds of infrastructure projects, and there is quite widespread concern that China's intention is just to set up a series of debt-traps that it can leverage to achieve further strategic goals. The terms China tends to seek in these deals are also quite predatory. There's little doubt who's benefitting the most out of them, especially considering the ways China aggressively minimises their own downsides. This is a topic that has been written on quite extensively, and is likely the primary reason that Japan is outperforming China in SEA infrastructure investments.

If any of these countries do start to struggle paying back this debt, I'm sure there will be some bureaucrat stressing over it in his office in Beijing. That tends to be how the accountability model works in central planning committees. But China is acting a lot like a loan shark in most of these deals, and any default just means they get to exert their influence in other strategically meaningful ways.

It's also very easy to see how all of this makes perfect sense to China. A lot of their internal mega-projects are starting to flop. Deals like this keep parts of their constructing industry busy, while transferring all the risk to ill-prepared developing nations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did a project in Kazakhstan on turnstiles for the light rail. It was a very weird experience. A nominally 6 months project, which I managed to complete in just 2 months. Nevertheless, they extended my stay for 2 more months during which I did nothing, and was compensated for living and office expenses.

Prior to that, I also been to UAE, Kenya and Angola, with a UAV company, trying to sell drones to their respective border services.

To my surprise, I saw DJI sales reps also contending for same orders in both Kenya and UAE. Neither they, nor us got any contracts. In all cases, the tender victors were no name companies, registered few weeks before the start of tenders.

<comment><USER5> Is it possible to get in touch with you about this? I'd love to learn more about those customers.

<comment><USER4> what for?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is a clickbait title. The reality is that it hasn't yet finished building a railroad to somewhere.

<comment><USER7> ...and, since the funding dried, the work is currently finished (it ends at Nowhere), but it may not be continued for a long time... So quite a good title IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm suprised Bloomberg is only covering this now,while a much more detailed article was published in the Economist quite some time ago. Tbh I'm quite surprised Chinese were letting run these projects so loosely. I can only imagine how many locals became millionaires off these infrastructure initiatives.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't really see how a railway between two of the biggest cities in Kenya, with approaching 10million people between them can hardly be considered nowhere...

</comment><comment><USER10> Between the two largest cities in Kenya, one the capital and one it's primary port, hardly seems like "Nowhere". Stopped in the middle of what was planned, certainly. And shutting down financing after that turned out unprofitable (or, as the article implies - The debt-load makes it unprofitable) is hardly something that you can blame China for.

I don't know what this article is trying to say. It dances around calling the initial plan a scam, yet it also implies that their backing off is somehow worse. Much as I hate to say it, it sounds like a "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for China. And perhaps that's the real message that this article is trying to convey, but lacking any evidence to actually support such. Had they gone through it would have been a terrible sunk cost. Had they never oversold the infrastructure, it would have been fine - The line is replacing colonial-era lines, not adding routes that weren't viable before. But instead, they're let off the hook for setting up a hangman's noose and encouraging Kenya to put their head here.

<comment><USER11> What you're missing is the context. This isn't the only Belt and Road project that's not everything China promised. It's one of a number that have come up recently.

This article mentions at least four others, and I've seen others in other publications (a failed power station in Kazakstan most recently).

Considering the amount of money involved in Belt and Road it makes sense for a financial publication like Bloomberg to publish this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> California built a railroad to nowhere in Fresno. Same central planning mentality.

<comment><USER13> > Same central planning mentality.

The high-speed rail project was never viable to build in 2019.

California already has a successful high-speed transit project - it's called Southwest Airlines.

However, the high-speed rail problem is the exact opposite of a central planning issue.

If the state government had enough power, it could fund and eminent domain all the property needed.

Instead, private contractors are in charge of the project, and money comes (and goes) at the whim of the Trump (federal) government.

From a political standpoint, transit projects are just pension rewards for supporters. That a member of the public could actually get from Point A to Point B is irrelevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The title and the content of the article are completely disconnected. The title implies China is funding false investment, but the content then goes on to explain that China is witholding funding due to concerns about debt of sovereign nations. China is concerned about being seen as acting Neo- colonialist. Which they are, but, they are smart in understanding the perception game they are playing when it's clear the these African nations cannot ever pay back the money they borrow.</comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't HN keep all the questions in the "ask" section? - <AUTHOR> I find some really good questions (and great answers) on HN. But HN only keeps the last 64 ones.<p>Why is that? How can we access older quedtions/answers? <comment><USER2> There's a search box on the bottom of the page. If you select 'all time' and sort by date you get a list of all 66.000 Ask HN ever submitted. - [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ask%20hn&sort=byDate&prefix&pa...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ask%20hn&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><AUTHOR> But how does algolia do that?

<comment><USER2> It's a search engine, they crawl and update copies of all submissions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I second what @mtmail said. You can use Algolia [1] to access older questions/answers. But, if you want to make it more accessible I would recommend to upvote or favorite the question/answer. This way will save your up-voted or favorite questions/answers into your HN account. You can use bookmarking tools for tagging questions/answers. It will help you to organize.

As mentioned on FAQ [2], HN limits the number of showed threads because its ranking algorithm. It depends on thread points and submitted time.

I remember, there is a website which provided weekly top Ask HN threads [3]. This website is useful if you miss threads on previous week.

[1]: [https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

[3]: [http://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly- ask/](http://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-ask/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm seeing 66 right now. Poking around it looks like maybe the threshold is asked within the past 7 days + at least 1 comment?

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember emailing Dang about it two years ago. At the time it was barely showing a page worth of stories. They got it to improve a bit, but since then I don't think it's ever paged on and on like top does.

</comment><comment><USER6> Even this question will be kept. But it won't be found....

<comment><USER7> All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

<comment><USER8> All past ones after searchable</comment></comment></comment>


Math Looks the Same in the Brains of Boys and Girls, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/11/08/777187543/math-looks-the-same-in-the-brains-of-boys-and-girls-study-finds <comment><USER2> > _Finally, a standardized test of mathematics ability found no difference > between boys and girls._

> _So why are fields like mathematics and computer science so dominated by > men?_

At that age, boys' and girls' hips, shoulders, and height show little difference either. Should we wonder why men and women show differences in basketball and tennis?

I'm not saying female and male brains grow differently after that age. I have no idea. I'm saying that their data doesn't change anything about answering why fields differ.

<comment><USER3> > I'm not saying female and male brains grow differently after that age. I > have no idea.

The do develop differently after that age. The transition from a child brain to the emotionally and cognitively more mature adult brain starts a few years earlier in girls than in boys.

It starts at around 10 to 12 in girls, and around 15 to 20 in boys [1].

I suspect that this can lead to difference in what fields boys and girls end up in for two reasons:

1\. It may be that the best way to teach a kid depends on where the kid is on their child->adult brain transition. Trying to teach teen boys and girls in the same classes, with the same material, at the same pace might mean that half the class is being taught in a way that is geared toward people whose brain does not work like theirs does.

2\. One of the big things you get better at and more interested in as your brain becomes more adult is dealing with larger and more complicated social networks. Just around the time that you are getting close to high school, and you've finally got enough background to start getting to the good stuff in STEM subjects--the girls are also getting to where social networks are a big deal to them and they put effort into growing and maintaining their network. That's still a few years away for the boys, who are still happy to spend hours alone in front of a computer. By the time they get interested in people a few years later, they are now firmly on their path to going into STEM.

I have a suspicion that we could largely close the gender gaps in STEM fields by changing middle school and high school so that boys and girls are in separate classes with separate curricula geared toward their different child-> adult brain development trajectories.

[1] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science- news/105291...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science- news/10529134/Girls-really-do-mature-quicker-than-boys-scientists-find.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So according to the article (the paper isn't linked anywhere, so I have to rely on the reporting), the study found that men and women are using the same parts of brain when they do math. That's a _completely_ unsurprising result. Was anyone ever claiming that it is not the case?

However, I don't understand how the brain activity patterns can prove (or disprove) that women and men have 100% equal ability to do math. I just don't see the connection between those two things.

<comment><USER5> If you are coming from the point of view that males are better at math then females, then the next thing to wonder is "why"? This study attempted to find some factual backing for the most popular explanation: that there is a biological difference between the brains of male and female people that causes males to be better at math.

This study didn't find any such difference, in the study both gender's brains worked in the same way. They studied children in an attempt to factor out some other influences (i.e. societal).

<comment><USER6> Not so quickly. They didn't find any obvious differences in some basic coarse metrics. That's like stating that the thermal image of AMD and Intel processors is about the same and thus their abilities are the same. The only thing this study proves us that the differences are more subtle than what they could measure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I appreciate the objective behind the study, it's kind of disappointing that it is even done.

"Serious" mathematicians are hopefully like "serious" coders, they read the math and when they happen to meet the person they are like "Oh, hi black/indian/asian/white/A man/woman/X not that I want to chit chat but what does this line here mean exactly..." The analogy does break down due to the sheer number of mathematicians being men, which is probably why some people need these kind of headlines in the first place (to challenge their bias).

I personally believe that all mathematicians have poignantly different ways of going about their work, so my real issue with studies is that personally, I wouldn't like being a test subject.

<comment><USER8> Hardy said the famous "all mathematicians are isomorphic" which means there basically only one way of doing math. And I tend to agree.

<comment><USER7> I think math is separated into two parts—the scientific and the language—and the scientific part is where I think mathematicians show a lot of variation. The language has to be standard, otherwise it could be ambiguous or even incorrect.

For example, back when we were doing our MSc degrees, my one colleague would start his day reading Mac Lane's old and new testaments [1]. I would start my day usually obsessing about the same things—what time is and its relation to space and orientation, whether everything can be expressed in a self-dual way, learning or improving language skills, writing music and playing soccer. Whenever I read mathematics I find it somewhat stressful and I've realised that I should write more than read. The "stress" part is maybe actually just the fact that in general I often don't like skimming things—not even story books. I also have Mac Lane's books, but I try to focus on one thing at a time.

Whether you replace every group by its permutation group as a habit or not, they may be isomorphic, but they are constructed differently—as are mathematicians.

[1] This was his joking way to refer to _Algebra_ (old testament) and _Categories for the Working Mathematician_ (new tastament).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good news everyone,this site has a 1996 mode you can activate in order to get to their content without becoming their product. No pics through,so maybe more like a 1993 mode.

<comment><USER10> It also has a 1984 mode: "Cantlon suspects the answer involves the societal messages girls and young women get"

This kind of conspiracy theory being backed up by medias and politicians really become tiring. It's easy to blame "society" for everything without ever identifying a potential mechanism, formulating a testable (and possibly refutable) hypothesis which is the basic job of a scientist. And of course this kind of claims are never accompanied by a single concrete exemple... which would be easy to find if there was even a small basis of reality behind them.

<comment><USER11> _And of course this kind of claims are never accompanied by a single concrete exemple_

How about a 10 percentage point difference in the share of women among STEM graduates between the Netherlands and Denmark?

Unless you're suggesting there's some sort of biological factor involved that makes Danish women more suited to go into STEM, society's the remaining culprit, even if the exact mechanisms have yet to be identified...

<comment><USER6> And this is not impossible. The obvious example is the north vs south Korean. The same people, but different nutrition, different lifestyles. Now the NK people are obviously smaller and I'd bet, have a much lower IQ (the lack of food doesn't help with math activities!) I'm certain that there are many subtle differences in how people live in Netherlands and Denmark.

<comment><USER11> How do you expect this to work: To get a gender imblance, only one of the sexes would have to suffer these adverse effects due to, say, nutrition. That would likely still be caused by social factors...

<comment><USER6> Because makes and females have different nutrition, different habits and fir example use different drugs. It may be something silly like different contents of birth control pills. It's not a secret that small changes in amount of consumed zink, calcium or iodine make big impact on body and mental abilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The study had a tiny sample size (104 kids? There's 7.7 billion people total), it asked kids to do arithmetic while lying in a brain scanner and found it can't distinguish between the two sexes in the results of the experiments. Or in other words, a weak study turned up no significant result. That's not news.

The meat and potatoes of the article are in this passage, which has true explanatory power (and seems to be based on actual experimental results):

 _But Geary says an international study he did with Gijsbert Stoet at the University of Essex suggests a different explanation.

Using an international database on adolescent achievement in science, mathematics and reading, they found that in two-thirds of all countries, female students performed at least as well as males in science.

Yet paradoxically, females in wealthier countries with more gender equality, including the U.S., were less likely than females in other countries to get degrees in fields like math and computer science.

Geary thinks the reason may be that women in these countries are under less pressure to choose a field that promises an economic payback and have more freedom to pursue what interests them most.

Also, males may be more likely to choose science because they are less likely than females to have strong reading, writing and language skills, Geary says._

If in most countries girls do as well as boys in science we can lay to rest any ideas about genetic advantages. If women and men behave differently with regards to maths and science in different parts of the world we can safely assume the differences are cultural.

The international study mentioned above is the one that npr should be reporting. Not this garbage study looking at kids' brains on Sesame Street.

<comment><USER13> > If in most countries girls do as well as boys in science we can lay to rest > any ideas about genetic advantages.

Yep.

> If women and men behave differently with regards to maths and science in > different parts of the world we can safely assume the differences are > cultural.

No, we cannot safely assume that. That's not even what the part you quoted says.

Probably the single most common argument about why the split occurs in wealthy countries is around _interest_ , not _ability_. And that can indeed be genetically driven.

To me it looks like the "gender paradox" has a trivially simple solution: Men are more interested in math and math-like fields than women (and women more interested than men in people-focused fields, just look at ones like nursing or teaching), this is at least partially genetically driven, and ability has nothing to do with it. This is part of the reasoning in what you quoted:

> Geary thinks the reason may be that women in these countries are under less > pressure to choose a field that promises an economic payback and have more > freedom to pursue what interests them most.

<comment><USER14> In the abstract...

An alternative hypothesis for why group X (and not Y) dominates field Z, is that members of group Y who are good at Z usually are also good at other things, which they usually prefer, while group X disproportionately contains people that are _only_ good at Z. So it's possible that most Z's are X even though they are on average less able _and_ without unfair discrimination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is hard to believe any study discussed in the news, when the opposite result would not have made the news, unless it has a p-value below 1/(the number of news articles about studies).

</comment><comment><USER16> James Damore in shambles.

</comment><comment><USER17> This leaves me completely unsurprised. Every time sexists come out with "brain differences", we find they are culture differences.

Girls leave STEM because they face creepiness, misogyny and unequal treatment from students and faculty.

<comment><USER18> Care to explain e.g. the difference in size with men having larger brains on average? (between 8% and 13% larger)

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

<comment><USER19> Brain size doesn't correlate very well with intelligence amongst humans, while average brain differences between men and women are both nuanced and not universal.

<comment><USER18> I know but that doesn't answer the question how culture makes male brains bigger which is the statement of OP

<comment><USER19> Men have bigger brains most likely because they have bigger bodies. Bigger bodies need bigger brains to control them. But there are differences in the relative proportions of grey vs white matter for example, so in this case size most likely doesn't matter.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook and Twitter reject request by Pelosi to remove doctored video by Trump - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/08/us/trump-pelosi-video-state-of-the-union.html <comment><USER2> "The roughly 5-minute clip shows Ms. Pelosi repeatedly ripping his speech in between snippets of him paying tribute to the airman, Charles McGee, as well as other guests he had invited to the State of the Union, including military families. In fact, Ms. Pelosi ripped a copy of Mr. Trump's speech immediately after his address to Congress on Tuesday."

I never thought the clip indicating the timing of the ripping. This is a very weird interpretation.</comment>


Yahoo Challenge to Google Has Roots in Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.baselinemag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=213707,00.asp

<comment><USER3> I've played with Nutch, and looked at Hadoop, and it's pretty cool stuff. It's also a great foundation for building Google-style solutions to embarrassingly parallel applications. Combine it with Amazon's EC2 and things look really interesting...

I'm glad to see Yahoo supporting/contributing to the community in this way. I think it's stretching the point to call it a 'challenge to Google' - <USER2> Yahoo seeking to level the playing field a little.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Combine it with Amazon's EC2 and things look really interesting..._

Right, just being open source is not enough, you still need the bandwidth and infrastructure to make it work.

A free version of EC2 would really change the game.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

 _If you want to get your hands on an open source version of some of Google's core technologies, maybe you should ask Yahoo._

 _Yahoo has emerged as one of a major sponsor of Hadoop, an open source project that aims to replicate Google's techniques for storing and processing large amounts of data distributed across hundreds or thousands of commodity PCs._</comment>


NASA doesn't know if it wants Boeing to do another test of passenger spacecraft - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/6/21167883/nasa-boeing-passenger-spacecraft-cst-100-starliner-flight-test <comment><USER2> The rules says that it must, and yet clearly some parts of the gov want to help out Boeing's financials.

</comment><comment><USER3> Boeing wants an aerospace welfare handout from the government.

But lacks a team dedicated towards securing undeserved state handouts like lockheed martin has.</comment>