Financing Investment In A World Without Maturity Transformation - <AUTHOR> http://www.macroresilience.com/2013/10/08/financing-investment-in-a-world-without-maturity-transformation/ <comment><USER2> > I have nothing against the kickstarter approach. But it is insane to allow > individuals to collectively donate millions to dollars to ventures without > any ownership stake while at the same time barring them from funding the > same projects and receiving an ownership stake in return.

In other words, "I have nothing against kickstarter, but it is insane _to allow_ kickstarter to exist as it is". Contradiction alert!

> Almost all the criticisms of capitalism are derived from the pathologies of > institutional fiduciary capitalism.

Having read on and discussed the topic extensively, I'd say that "almost all" is completely unjustified.

> However we can do better than allowing individuals to donate money on a hope > and a prayer.

Odd seeing such a claim from a self-confessed supporter of capitalism.

> If we want capitalism to become less selfish, we need to enable each > individual to become a capitalist.

Does he mean like owners of capital assets doing what they wish with it, as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others?

<comment><USER3> That comment isn't anti-Kickstarter. It's saying: since KS exists, why aren't we also allowed to do this better thing?

<comment><USER4> Exactly. The article is not saying it's insane to allow Kickstarter donations, it's insane that current law makes it just fine to donate to a risky venture but not to invest and get a chance to share in the venture's upside.

<comment><USER5> author of the post here - this is exactly what I meant.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't have interpreted it the way I did, had you written "I have nothing against the kickstarter approach. But when individuals are allowed to collectively donate millions to dollars to ventures without any ownership, it is insane to bar them from funding the same projects and receiving an ownership stake in return."

This retains most of your words, but what you find insane is less ambiguous now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > And the answer is that rates would be lower than they would be in a > maturity-transforming system. Maturity-transforming banking is redundant – > it only gives us recurrent financial crises. The idea that in the absence of > bank maturity transformation, lending rates would explode has been > disproven.

First, serious writers don't need to bold their punch-line sentences so you know that they're punchline sentences.

Second, showing low P2P lending rates in a tiny market during a period when lending rates are generally in the toilet does not "disprove" the need for banks.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. In a tiny market, with low to non-existent legal and regulatory overhead. I know, let's make it a 'proper' market with legally enforceable terms and contractual relationships, leading to lots of legal and regulatory overhead. That's bound to fix the problem!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The "accredited investor" thing has to end.

There are ETFs today that anybody can buy that will only give complete information to "accredited investors". That doesn't protect consumers.

<comment><USER9> If it trades on the public U.S. equity markets then there's no special information available to accredited investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, I invest/lend 100. The SME fails. Who is persecuting them? I don't want to chase each failed SME to get the money back.

I mean, you still need middle men. Nobody has willing, knowledge or time to rate, follow and persecute a bunch of SME's.

I would love laws and tools to lend to companies I know well although. Like companies of friends or friends of friends. But that is impossible now. Another big topic is discounting invoices, somebody here? Interesting topic with real hassle.

<comment><USER11> I think you misunderstand, If you invest in a business that fails, you lose your money..

You dont get to "persecute" anyone. Thats the risk of the investment

<comment><USER12> So con men who do nothing but run sham businesses and live off invested money have nothing to fear?

There must obviously be some sort of redress in the case of ouright fraud. But then, how do you distinguish malice from incompetence?

That's how the SEC got started...

<comment><USER11> Yes thats different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Banks are big because people's money is forced in by monetary supply inflation; it loses value when they actually save it.

Banks are crap because of regulation in a forced market: You basically have to put your money in a bank to counteract inflation, but becoming a bank is VERY difficult, so is competing with ones which will always be bailed out.

U.S. has the same issue with healthcare. Becoming a healthcare provider in the U.S. is incredibly difficult, even moreso becoming a healthcare insurer, and as such they consolidate and crapify as far as they can without making it bad enough to justify competing with them despite the regulatory barriers. Then all your drugs have to be FDA approved(which takes more than a decade at least), and many of them will be produced under one or more patents which also raise the cost of the medication.

</comment><comment><USER14> I liked the part where he says Kickstarter sucks because you donate your money to them without a stakeholder position or ownership in your investment of any kind. Its the reason Ive kept my money in my wallet and not thrown it around on kickstarter-projects, instead donated to FSF, EFF and Wikileaks among others.

Any takers to start up a kickstarter-clone without donation but part ownership? With pledges for more money to throw into project when it reaches a threshold and so on. Basically what we had 100 years ago with normal public stock traded companies but in a digital world.

<comment><USER15> I don't see why it's important that you become an owner. You are helping to fund what you believe is a worthwhile product.

When you buy an Android or iOS phone, for example, you are helping to fund a company. You don't get ownership for that company.

By funding individuals, or small groups, I believe that most are efficiently using the funds, and you are getting products that most larger companies couldn't be bothered with.

<comment><USER16> The problem is, you don't have any assurance of getting anything.

My condition for kickstarters is some kind of open sourcing clause, so that even if the creator fails, you are still assured of some kind of partially finished product.

<comment><USER17> Interesting idea. If you go bust, your intellectual property gets turned over to everyone like so much piñata candy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


23andMe, Google-Backed Company, Halts Genetic Testing Services - <AUTHOR> http://healthland.time.com/2013/12/06/23andme-halts-genetic-testing-services/ <comment><USER2> That is not what the headline says. The correct headline is: "23andMe Halts Genetic Health Reports". 23andMe is still conducting genetic testing services; they're just not providing health related results.</comment>


WebM - an open web media project - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmproject.org/ <comment><USER2> Mozilla has been working with Google on this for some time now, but we haven't been able to talk about it in public until now.* Some of the developers from the Theora project are also working with Mozilla and Google to implement and improve VP8. Firefox builds are available today:

<http://nightly.mozilla.org/webm/>

One of the most important parts here is that Google owns the patent rights to VP8, and is licensing them to the public under a royalty-free grant -- but the grant doesn't apply to anyone who files a patent suit _against_ VP8, which means the patents are still useful for defensive purposes.

* _This is, of course, part of the outcome Mozilla hoped for from not supporting the non-free H.264 format._

<comment><USER3> Is there the theoretical possibility that Google could turn around and use the patent offensively? Rescind their grant? Or are we all now guaranteed safe to use it?

<comment><USER2> The license includes a _"perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license."_ \- <http://www.webmproject.org/license/software/>

You'll have to ask a lawyer whether it's truly irrevocable, but clearly that's the intention.

<comment><USER4> There is nothing a contract can say that a good enough lawyer can't get out of, but there is no reason to expect that Google would try in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is absolutely outstanding news. Google gets some flack for privacy (some deserved, some not), but it's undeniable that they care deeply about the health of the Web.

" _a container format based on a subset of the Matroska media container_ "

I wonder what reasons they have for not using Ogg, or at least real Matroska? I notice their container format doesn't support subtitles, and is "undecided" on tags. Why on earth would they drop such important functionality, especially when every other modern container supports them?

It would be nice if Google and Mozilla add support for VP8 in Ogg or Matroska, so users can continue to use existing processing tools for web video.

e: Looks like there's already an Ogg mapping for VP8 at < <http://people.collabora.co.uk/~slomo/webm/ogg-vp8.pdf> >

<comment><USER6> "Google gets some flack for privacy (some deserved, some not), but it's undeniable that they care deeply about the health of the Web."

That's ridiculous. Smart competitors commoditize complements. Google's goal is to commoditize content and content players. When cash stops exchanging hands for content it starts exchanging hands for advertising. This is a strategic move by Google, not an altruistic move.

Say hello to your new master, same as the old master.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Basic tech is Matroska container (at least "based on") + Vorbis audio + VP8 video.

Biggest news imho, Adobe Flash Player is listed as a supporting software, but I can't see any details yet. Pretty good list of supporters altogether actually:

<http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/>

<comment><USER8> The flash support is absolutely key to this thing being adopted. If I'm a video company, I'd bet the future on VP8 and HTML5 with Flash to support older browsers.

<comment><USER9> Why VP8 instead of h264? VP8 will bring you firefox, which does support flash. h264 brings you i(Phone|Pod|Pad) and other hardware. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER8> Well I'd make the bet that Apple will eventually support WebM, namely because of Youtube (because I'm betting Google encodes Youtube videos in VP8).

VP8 has the best chance of becoming the HTML5 video standard since Mozilla flat out refuses h.264, yet Apple and MS have yet to publicly suggest refusal VP8.

The iPad and iPhone won't be the only players in the game. Android is getting more popular, and if Google releases a tablet that plays WebM youtube videos, I don't see why Apple wouldn't try to support it as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does it means something that I don't see Apple on this page?

<http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/>

<comment><USER11> Interesting. With both Chrome, Firefox and Opera supporting it, there will still be plenty of options for viewing WebM on OS X though. I wonder what will happen to Safari if WebM gets popular?

<comment><USER12> More interesting is Mobile Safari.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The interesting question for me is whether existing mobile hardware can accelerate this in any way - i.e. through the ARM Neon extensions and similar. Otherwise we will have to wait for a whole new generation of hardware if this is going to make any dent in the mobile web.

<comment><USER2> Both Mozilla and Google funded work to implement hardware-accelerated Theora on mobile devices[1][2]. While I don't know of any similar efforts for VP8 yet, I'd guess that it is inevitable.

[1]: [http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/04/interesting- ti...](http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/04/interesting-times-for- video-on-web.html)

[2]: <http://blog.mjg.im/2010/04/16/theora-on-n900.html>

<comment><USER14> On2 was already developing hardware solutions (iirc they already had hw encoder/decoder designs) for their codecs before G acquired them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, what does this mean for Apple? They're betting on H264 being the web video codec. If YouTube is all in WebM and Firefox supports it, that's 60% of the browser market and one of the largest video sites. Is this game over for H264?

</comment><comment><USER16> So, any bets on how long until litigation from the H.264 patent pool turns up?

<comment><USER17> No bet.

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20003895-265.html?tag=mnco...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20003895-265.html?tag=mncol;txt)

<comment><USER18> Right, but the MPEG-LA's strategy has always been to hint about possible upcoming litigation while never actually launching a suit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From the intro page:

 _a container format based on a subset of the Matroska media container_

Am I the only one who couldn't help laughing when reading that part?

</comment><comment><USER20> If you love the web, the web will love you back.

This is the kind of progress that makes me happy to tears.

</comment><comment><USER21> Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER22> We have a saying in Sweden, "the more chefs, the worse the soup". It kinda embodies what I feel about _yet another attempt_ at squeezing something new in through the door in hope of setting _the_ standard.

<comment><USER23> This _supposedly_ has a set of qualities nothing else out there has. Namely its royalty free (excludes H.264) and is high quality (excludes Theora).

If those two claims hold true, VP8 has significantly more value than the current options and should be the standard.

<comment><USER24> Definitely. This is not "just another video codec" - it is significantly better than any other open source video codec. That's a big deal.

And codecs are really really hard to create, for technical and legal reasons. It's not like 5 new production-ready video codecs come up every year. We might not see another credible open source codec for five years.

<comment><USER22> You are entirely leaving out one very important factor when it comes to video, and that is the video quality itself. Do you really think any user out there except Richard Stallman will give a damned about the fact that the codec is royalty free when the end-result might look worse than what they are enjoying on the web now due to bandwidth constrains putting harsh limits on bitrates? The answer is of course that it won't matter at all to them - they'll just be annoyed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why app store ratings are broken - <AUTHOR> http://leoncullens.nl/post/2013/04/30/Why-app-store-ratings-are-broken.aspx

<comment><USER2> These sound like the same reasons people give for why the model for most ratings platform are broken - The reviews are not moderated closely for value, and objective, careful research is lost on most mainstream consumers. I have a love/ hate relationship with reviews on Amazon, Yelp, and the App store for this very reason. You can't look at the overall star rating, you have to really dig in to sift out the mostly useless reviews.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. This just bothered me a lot recently because the ratings are also used for the ranking of your apps. That's not that case everywhere. Plus, at sites like Amazon you can reply to feedback if I'm not mistaken.

<comment><USER2> Actually, yes you are right about the 'reply' function on Amazon. Apologies. I think I mostly have problems with Yelp. They require business owners to have a paying account in order to respond. It fosters an unbalanced power dynamic that is left unchecked, since moderation there only serves the purpose of Yelp itself, rather than quality user generated content.</comment></comment></comment>


Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53403793 <comment><USER3> All: HN has been seeing a dismaying increase in nationalistic flamewar. This is not allowed here. I know it feels important when you're caught up in the intensity of such feelings, but it is not _interesting_ , which is what HN is for. Worse, it has the effect on interesting discussion that tank battles have on a city park.

If you don't have something thoughtful and substantive to say, please don't post until you do. Drop denunciatory rhetoric—it's tedious and evokes worse from others.

Remember that the community is divided on divisive topics and that the person disagreeing with you is probably not a spy, but just someone who disagrees with you.

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

<comment><USER3> This is a stub comment to collect replies in one place. That way we can collapse it and prevent too much offtopicness at the top of thread.

<comment><USER4> Can you present evidence of moderation not having a one sided bias? Every time I see anything critical of the US / Europe / Canada and other liberal democracies it's sitting at the top, no matter how unsubstantiated. While every time there's anything that puts CCP in a bad light there's strong moderation because it's "not interesting" (even though this particular event is objectively very noteworthy in tech world and beyond).

<comment><USER3> > Every time I see anything critical of the US / Europe / Canada and other > liberal democracies it's sitting at the top, no matter how unsubstantiated

The key word here is "see". The problem is that we mostly _see_ what we're primed to notice—which is basically whatever we most dislike—and we simply don't see (or don't weight as heavily) all the cases that don't feel that way. This creates a feeling of "every" or "always" (see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23835843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23835843) in this thread), which is a true statement of what you've seen, but only because your seeing is extremely conditioned by your passions on the topic. (I don't mean you personally—we all seem to have this bias.) People with opposite passions see literally the opposite picture. Moreover, the degree to which the picture you see feels unfair and unbalanced is a function, not of the raw data stream, but of the intensity of your passion, regardless of which direction it points.

For evidence, if you search my comments you'll find examples where I've admonished users for flamewar in the opposite direction, as well as for flamewar on other topics, including nationalistic flamewar about other countries (India is probably the second most common case; Russia was up there for a few years and still flares up at times).

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the response. If you claim there's no bias, would you be willing to release the full list of posts that have been nudged / downranked from the front page by moderator or trusted users as part of a "HN transparency report"?

<comment><USER3> The idea of a total moderation log comes up from time to time: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20litigious&sort=byDate&type=comment). I think it would be a mistake—it would drain our resources while convincing no one. People who see "every" comment they disagree with "always" at the top, and "every" comment they disagree with "always" flagged and removed, are not looking objectively.

I don't mean to pick on you personally!—these are common feelings, rooted in cognitive biases we all share. But the patterns they claim are not even close to true, so anyone who wants to be convinced by evidence can just look at HN in the first place.

Beyond that, there's plenty of transparency available through HN Search and the moderation record of [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang). Anyone who looks through the record can find numerous examples of us moderating opposite views in exactly the same way, if they want to. The litigious type of user tends not to want to, and although that group is small in numbers, their capacity to consume moderator time and energy is prodigious. It steals a lot of resources away from other users and from the things we need to be doing to improve the site in general.

By the way, I don't claim there's no moderation bias. How can we know what unconscious biases we may have? I'm just saying that certain stock allegations about it are incorrect and have clear explanations.

<comment><USER4> Does it mean every thread that is downranked by moderator or superuser will have your comment in it that will show up in search results visible to everyone in the community? Or are there threads that are promoted or demoted silently?

<comment><USER3> It does not mean that. HN is a curated, moderated site; it always has been. Moderators do lots of things that aren't commented.

There isn't any class of things we do that is secret, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is a meta comment: having read this entire thread, it's pretty obvious that if even reasonably educated and intelligent people on a technical forum like this descend into complete disagreement then one can think what happens among the society and people at large on both sides of the Pacific and how easily it is to descend into a conflict.

</comment><comment><USER6> Something I don't see many people talking about is how Openreach, the UK's main physical layer broadband provider, uses Huawei kit in the majority of its street cabinets and has done since FTTC VDSL was rolled out a decade ago.

5G is the tip of the iceberg with respect to the UK's communications infrastructure involvement with Huawei.

<comment><USER7> Worse, Hyperoptic gives everyone a terrible ZTE router lol

<comment><USER8> At least for the two Hyperoptic installs I've had or seen in the past 2 years have been Tilgin routers ([https://hyperoptic.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/Tilgin-HG2...](https://hyperoptic.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/Tilgin-HG2381-admin-manual.pdf)) instead of ZTE routers.

<comment><USER7> I think they've ran out of them a long time ago. I requested a non-ZTE that support 5Ghz last year. They didn't have any and they said they weren't ordering them anymore. Those Tilgin are probably old stock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If this is just Realpolitik/hardware independence, fine, but security..?

Any worthwhile Internet traffic should be encrypted in 2020, and if it isn't, Huawei probably isn't the most immediate concern.

And if it is encrypted, does it really matter who is listening?

Comments welcome, I know zilch about telecoms hardware.

<comment><USER10> Your questions aren't about telecoms hardware, but about politics and the international flow of power. China is slated to take over the world economically. Their political model has the potential to spread around the world. These are attempts to limit China's capacity to grow as fast while inhibiting their capacity to knock out, intercept, or backdoor critical infrastructure.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, this I get and, well, sympathise in a way. There is no war, but an ongoing struggle for staying ahead economically, and if this is a part of it, at least there is a logic to it.

I'm asking, is there really a security risk that Huawei might listen in on telecoms. Is traffic at the low level more vulnerable somehow? Is it the prevalence of unencrypted communications? Is it leaking of metadata that people are worried about?

<comment><USER10> Yes, the risk is real. Imagine the US made phones for Russia during the Cold War, and the phones were so complicated and full of microcontrollers that reverse engineering and ensuring that a backdoor wasn't in place was impossible. Do you really think the US wouldn't have taken advantage of that?

The specific technical risk is unknown, though. There are thousands of microcontrollers in a modern advanced electronic device. It's nearly impossible to inspect each one and see what exactly is backdoored and how.

<comment><USER11> The phones have access to the raw data. The towers shouldn't have access to the raw data, because presumably it's encrypted. If it isn't, it's game over anyways. Not really comparable.

You could make an argument about metadata, which is much more questionable from the get-go.

<comment><USER12> I think the parent comment wasn't talking about intercepting traffic and being able to know what your enemy is talking about.

The parent comment was talking about being able to take advantage of the situation by making the enemy use your devices and then incapacitating their infrastructure at the perfect moment by activating the killswitch on those devices.

<comment><USER11> The solution for that isn't to boycott Huawei, it's to have multiple networks with many providers.

A country using Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei is much better protected to such an attack than a company using only Nokia or only Huawei or only Ericsson, or both Nokia and Ericsson but not Huawei.

<comment><USER12> Sure, I am not arguing one way or another regarding whether this ban is good or not. I am just saying that the cold war analogy had nothing to do with encryption, unlike what the post I am replying to is attempting to imply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> All providers had their infamy moment at some point, leaving a backdoor behind.

Maybe for spying, maybe because QA failed.

Huawei is on the US radar but somehow when Cisco left a backdoor on some routers it was "just a mistake".

Every country is guilty of stabbing in the back others (occasionally or all the time), it has been the case for centuries and is not likely to change.

I am French, we do not have our own tech so we get stuff from everyone around - we are probably in the worst spot from that perspective.

<comment><USER14> I've wondered how EU people feel about things like this. Euros have been inundated with "Americana" for the last 40 years or so. They watch TV shows about Americans, movies about Americans. They use American social media networks. It's like a culture-overload like USA is always "in your face". USA never had any problem with Skype as a Danish company being used by a significant number of Americans. But TikTok, a Chinese company, is stirring up national security issues.

<comment><USER15> I think the issue is that the United States – for all its faults and Snowden leaks and whatnot – can still be trusted, somewhat, to do the right thing. There clearly _are_ trust issues (for good reasons) but I would sure trust the US gov't _more_ to not install backdoors in equipment private companies deliver to befriended foreign nations.

China, on the other hand, has no clear separation between the state and large private companies, and has a state which does not acknowledge basic human rights in a myriad of ways. Again, the US is not _perfect_ here either, but it sure is _better_.

Personally, I wish Europeans would use more, well, European equipment for this kind of stuff. This isn't out of some nationalistic sentiment (I have no problems using foreign equipment _as such_ ), but given the state of the world's affairs and the direction I fear it might be heading, a strong and independent Europe will probably be more important than ever in the coming decades.

<comment><USER16> One lesson from Snowden's leaks is that the US is engaging in surveillance on supposed allies - not just enemies. This includes intercepting and modifying network equipment during delivery (Tailored Access Operations), and intercepting internal government communications of allies during trade negotiations. The consequences of the latter are quite significant, since knowing the other side's strategy and bottom line gives the US a serious leg up in negotiations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The justification is that the equipment presents a national security risk.

If that's true, how is it reasonable to allow this equipment to operate in the UK for 7 more years? Doesn't that mean the UK is willingly under national security risk for 7 years?

Unless, of course, there was never a security risk...

<comment><USER18> Not dissimilar to how face masks are being made compulsory in shops by the British government.

In 11 days' time.

<comment><USER19> You're assuming everyone who must to go to a shop in the next 11 days already have in their possession an appropriate face covering; the definition of which is as yet unknown.

<comment><USER20> If the face masks are that essential (which they probably are): wrap a t shirt around your face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If the protocols used for mobile networks were designed to be secure, most of the infrastructure couldn't do anything worse than a DoS attack. It'd still need some trusted servers for key management, but those could be standard hardware with relatively simple software.

<comment><USER22> If China can cause a denial of service attack on a country by remotely bricking all the network infrastructure or even slowing it down to a degree, this would still be economically devastating at the least.

<comment><USER23> I think there's a difference worth noting between subtle monitoring & coersion vs. a full out act of war. By the time China is trying to denial of service the UK's 5G infrastructure we've got other things to worry about.

<comment><USER24> But they don't need to dos the whole country, just interfere up to the point of plausible deniability. They could do targeted outages for some UK firm at a stratetic moment or something.

Also in the case of an actual war, it's surely better to not have your entire nations communications under enemy control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This kind of thing is going to play out a lot over the next few years. It's a tough question: how to marry globalisation with the political realities. When China was very poor, it didn't really matter, or perhaps the assumption was that China would liberalise more quickly than it has. But China, while increasingly mature economically, has not developed proper civil society, human rights, freedom of expression, democracy, and so on. Let us hope they do so as quickly as possible, not least for the sake of the Chinese people themselves. And let us work to improve our example and unity too in countries where we do have these things, however imperfectly.

<comment><USER26> I think the simplistic sort of thinking that capitalism and human rights are 'inseparable' from each other and can be 'exported' like Coca Cola or Blue Jeans is just a leftover from the Cold War. The reality is much more complicated unfortunately, together with the slowly growing realisation that the USA has quickly lost it's 'role model' status as the leader of the 'Free World' after the Cold War has ended.

The West needed 30 years to realize that (some are still working on this I think) because it thought that it had actually 'won' the Cold War through it's actions _during_ the Cold War, when the reality was much more likely that the East had collapsed also without much 'help' from the West.

The countries on the 'losing side' in this battle of ideologies (like the Soviet Union and China) had adapted to this new reality much more quickly, both in different ways though, but none of them copied the 'obviously superior' model of the Free West.

Of course hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes I've got the impression that many people in the West still wear their rose-tinted Cold War glasses ;)

<comment><USER27> Considering the actions of these capitalist nations during Cold War it's pretty clear in retrospective that promoting human rights and democracy wasn't very high priority. Propping up dictators and terrorist don't seem very much in those lines.

<comment><USER28> America had to undergo a great amount of social change too before it came out the winner. With groups like the Black Panthers carrying around Mao's little red book, it seems to me that America had to (was forced to) become more inclusive to build allies and compete with the soviet union.

<comment><USER29> Dont you talk about black panthers in this manner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would encourage people to read the NCSC blog post on this as it goes into technical detail on why the decision was made.

[https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/a-different-future-for- tel...](https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/a-different-future-for-telecoms-in- the-uk)

<comment><USER31> Effectively US is pulling US-made chip design tools from under huawei's manufacturing process. Seems that the political calculus is that this will damage huawei's standing, at the expense of global technological cooperation. But to what end? It falls short of providing Huawei (and the state behind it) with incentives to be more transparent with their technology, and at best creates a necessity for them to become wholly independent in their process. I guess the US is betting they can't pull this off, but if they do, this policy has bought US nothing but a few years of suppression and a fiercer competition.

<comment><USER32> >It falls short of providing Huawei (and the state behind it) with incentives to be more transparent with their technology, and at best creates a necessity for them to become wholly independent in their process. I guess the US is betting they can't pull this off...

Bingo. It seems like this is more a bet that they can't become wholly independent without the tooling itself, or can't become independent for a long while. I doubt it has much to do with "setting up incentives for transparency". I think the "will China become transparent about its actions" question is pretty much settled at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> According to [1], Huawei employs 1,500 people in the UK. I'm curious - <USER2> anyone from Huawei UK is reading, how is this news being perceived?

[1] [https://www.huawei.com/uk/facts/huawei- uk](https://www.huawei.com/uk/facts/huawei-uk)

</comment><comment><USER34> Following the German strategy I see. Just put things so far out they're the next governments responsibility

<comment><USER35> Or maybe the idea is to put it far enough out that no one actually has to start replacing equipment until the US has a new administration and they can see where that administration stands on China.

If Trump gets reelected this year that will be his second term which is the limit, and so there will be a new administration in January 2025. If he doesn't get reelected there will be a new administration on January 2021.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Just the beginning of a new cold war.

The Belt and Road initiative was a clear sign that China is confident and more assertive geo-political player and intends to eventually replace the US as the dominant world power.

An easy choice of the UK to make considering they export very little of consequence to China ... Australia on the other hand.

</comment><comment><USER37> This makes me nervous.

If the last few years mismanagement of Brexit, privatising the NHS, "universal" credit, historic immigration renegs, the perpetually delayed reaction to Covid19, PPE procurement contracts going to zero-asset companies monetarily linked to Tory members and donors...

Well... A large part of me _hopes_ it's mere incompetence.

But the bigger picture seems to be a party that —starting with May as Home Secretary— has been pushing harder and harder at knowing everything about everybody. Kicking out incumbent foreign hardware providers seems like a bloody good way to plant your own hardware in its place and achieve another level of control.

</comment><comment><USER38> I am actually glad for this. Not because of any nationalistic reason but rather because Huawei is an extremely anti-user company (locked bootloader etc) and I would be glad if it went down.

</comment><comment><USER39> there is so much talk on here that this is about security or that the USA has some hold over the UK. The one and only reason this has gone back to parliment to vote on and that it has been decided not to use Huawei is because due to the sanctions the US has placed on Huawei around procuring chips the UK has come to the conclusion that its not safe to use Huawei due to the risk that replacement devices might become an issue.

</comment><comment><USER40> 2027? I guess to install 6G

<comment><USER41> > UK's mobile providers are being banned from buying new Huawei 5G equipment > after 31 December 2020

<comment><USER42> good news, huawei just got bunch of 4G LTE Advanced++ gears to sell

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> 5 years serves 2 things, one is to show UK is with their partner US and two, 5 years is a long time for a punishment to be effective because so much policies can change(2 elections) during this, and China knows this isn't really a big punishment.

</comment><comment><USER44> A trade war masquerading as national security concerns.

<comment><USER45> No, the security concerns are real, given the TikTok example and so on.

<comment><USER45> Ah, this is proof I struck a nerve!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Impressive how much power the USA has over UK. It is known that Cisco has backdoors in their routers - and UK politics doesn't care. Now the Trump administration is spreading the rumor that Huawei hardware _might_ have backdoors (when the most plausible actual reason for this warning is to gain the upper hand in the trade war) and England is already putting the wish into action.

<comment><USER47> UK is in a weird spot now alone in the world out of the EU.

The country is essentially for sale. China just needs to make the "right" political donations.

<comment><USER48> They did try and it wasn't enough. Or as you put it, wasn't the 'right' candidate.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/07/14/lord- brown...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/07/14/lord-browne-quits- huawei-uk-chairman-ahead-government-ban/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Carrier maintenance modes still allow you to access the memory of the device and force screenshots to fire

<comment><USER50> This is about carrier equipment, not phones. In fact, phones are exempt from this decision.

<comment><USER49> Please re-read what I said. The carrier equipment can read the memory of your phone remotely dog. It's a "feature" in nearly all Qualcomm chips

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Guys, just my lame thought but can't differential privacy be legally enforced in every software on every digital device?

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

<comment><USER52> I think the issue is that things that can not encrypted because of protocol requirements is enough to be dangerous

[https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa- chief-...](https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa-chief-we- kill-people-based-on-metadata)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The ghost of Nortel haunts thee.

</comment><comment><USER54> What's the expected service life for that kind of network gear? Wouldn't most of it be gone or upgraded by then anyway?

<comment><USER55> 4G lasted probably 5 years

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> a very simple person here:

Does this mean that operators will have to pay for it, so new investments will be required?

If 5G deployment price increase due to this political stuff, is gonna be then more expensive for the end user no? price will reflect it i guess...

</comment><comment><USER57> We will end up like cavemen if we start to banish every new technology coming from China based on racism. China will not stop developing new technology just because the US doesn't like it.

<comment><USER58> I don't think people dislike Chinese tech because it's made by Chinese people, but rather because the Chinese government is assumed to have some hand in it. Best faith interpretation and all that, right?

<comment><USER57> Technology has no political badges or flags. First of all, scientists and engineers are not political actors. Moreover, I have all the right to use a technology if I want it, even if it was developed in a totalitarian regime. For the US to prevent me from using this technology is infringing on my freedoms.

<comment><USER59> Get of your high horse. Scientists and engineers in China, are political actors. Everything done in china is political. And your right is superseded by national security, and good luck trying to find infringment on it.

I for one am rooting to start boycotting the whole of China, until their communist regime which conducts genocide is forced to change and play humane and fair.

<comment><USER3> Please stop posting flamewar comments. We ban accounts that do that.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The China-US tensions are not going to get better, and, in fact, will get worse as years go by. More and more nations will be forced to choose sides. It's not good and I'm not sure what a resolution even looks like.

<comment><USER61> A resolution is difficult. China is a totalitarian country and totalitarianism needs to be fought, but I doubt that a democratic China would be any different when it comes to their claims to the world. They'd want to expand just as they want to expand now. Just look at the various western colonial empires of history. Many of them were democracies in some form or fashion.

Any long term resolution to the conflict has to involve the realization that China has had 100 bad years and now has a giant comeback. And that the US has had 60 good years but now large parts of it decline.

<comment><USER62> > A resolution is difficult. China is a totalitarian country and > totalitarianism needs to be fought, but I doubt that a democratic China > would be any different when it comes to their claims to the world.

I wonder about this. Why does totalitarianism in a sovereign nation need to be fought? For those of us considering a democratic China...why do we think the country would fare better as a democracy? The Chinese civilisation is goes back thousands of years. Could the system they have now be the cumulative effect of all they have gone through to date? In other words it has evolved and generally serves its people. It may evolve into something else (possibly resembling Western democracies) but it may not. I don't particularly think it has to.

<comment><USER15> If you see your neighbour kick their dog (or even child) would you stand idly by and say "well, it seems to work for them" or would you take action?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Total crap;either it is a security risk and it has to be removed yesterday or it is not. 2027 is meaningless.

<comment><USER64> That's not how risks work.

<comment><USER65> Do you buckle your seatbelt before you start driving or when you're 68% of the way to your destination?

<comment> kube-system A closer car analogy: antique vehicles without seatbelts were not banned from public roads when seatbelts became mandatory.

<comment><USER65> Except that it's already been decided the towers will be removed, which is counter to your example. My analogy was meant to highlight the delay in action against something that has been deemed a risk.

<comment> kube-system Almost every safety regulation does this; few are effective immediately. Manufacturing plants need retooled, workforces need retrained, new equipment needs to be acquired and implemented, compliance measure must be implemented, etc.

>Except that it's already been decided the towers will be removed, which is counter to your example.

Grandfather clauses are implementation grace periods that are equal to the expected lifetime of the device. This is not counter to the example -- this is an example that sometimes these grace periods are very generous even for things we are very sure are unsafe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> U.S. is just concerned that China, and not them, will get an edge in spying and the next industrial revolution. Speaking of human rights it should be noted that U.S. not only wantonly attacks or bullies other countries, but it also has the highest incarceration rate in the world - in absolute terms the number of inmates is comparable to that of China and India combined.

<comment><USER67> Regarding your first point, yes, that's an interesting take. Regarding the criticism of the US, yes you're probably correct, but this is a "what about" argument that doesn't really aid the discussion in my opinion.

<comment><USER68> Whataboutism gets brought out too fast to dismiss discussion. Democratic systems project their values by demonstrating them. A democratic state that cannot show that its values work will have no ability to demand of others to emulate it.

In that context the failures of the US (as it is de-facto the standard-bearer of political liberalism in a broad sense), have real influence.

When the Chinese look around the world and they see the state of the US on imprisonment, racial conflict, failure during the current covid crisis and so on, this strengthens the domestic control of the party and the alternative autocratic system the government is advocating.

<comment><USER67> The US has certainly lost a lot of moral standing, and yes it makes it harder to criticize others, and it strengthens autocratic hands abroad to be able to point to the US' failures.

That said, the parent poster isn't the US government, but a private citizen raising a valid criticism of another country. So why can't it stand on its own, without a big show of self-criticism first? Can we not criticize others until our own house is in order? Once that happens, the discussion turns into an argument over moral equivalence or lack thereof -- ie. "the US' crimes are just as bad as China's!" versus "No these things are of completely different degrees!".

This line of argument quickly becomes tiring and, I think it completely muddles the original point, which is often what is intended when hurling "what about...!" into the discussion.

<comment><USER69> I hear what you're saying here, and no, our country doesn't have to be perfect before criticizing someone else.

But still, we should wonder if the criticism is motivated by something other than pure concern for human rights. You expect me to believe that Americans are mad at China strictly because they really, really care about the rights of muslims? With our record and our allies' records?

Or is it possible that this is just motivated by geopolitical interest?

<comment><USER67> I believe that people who claim to be mad at Chinese human rights abuses are mostly genuine in their feelings. They also have a blind spot for the abuses of their own country and their allies. That blind spot probably comes from the part of ourselves that's very tribal, as well as a social and political environment that ignores and minimizes self-criticism.

Now, if we're talking about the US state department, then absolutely they're doing it for geopolitical interests. However, they're also reflecting the concerns of at least some of their citizens.

I'd also like to note that there's a moral equivalence argument to be made here. It's possible that China's abuses are actually worse than our own. Or maybe not. I just want to acknowledge that aspect of this argument, but I don't want to get into it because I'm not really informed enough to make it, and I'm certain that 80% of that impression is formed by skimming headlines and whatnot, which is not really a proper basis for debate.

<comment><USER11> A consequentialist analysis would say that attacking China when it is almost impossible to influence while ignoring the abuses of your own government is even worse than inaction, because you are giving even more power to a state that is pretty much as bad.

I would be much more amenable to agreeing with the people that claim to be mad at China in the US if the solutions they proposed didn't give more power to US, that has no fundamental difference in foreign policy than China. Economically isolating China, for example, does absolutely nothing to help the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but gives a _lot_ more power to the United States. But if the solutions that were being talked about changed the balance of power towards entities that didn't wantonly abuse human rights, I would entirely agree.

Therefore, I don't think it's whataboutism. It would be whataboutism if the claim was that China actually respects human rights because the US is worse. But the question is different - it's whether we should economically isolate China on the pretext of their human rights abuses, or not. Saying that the party that benefits from this and that is pushing it is fundamentally just as disrespectful of human rights is not whataboutism, it's a question of whether the proposed actions will do anything for human rights at all.

It seems pretty clear to me that they won't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> And we already know China has been backdooring other equipment: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the- big-h...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how- china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies)

So yes, this is a small victory in a massive war.

<comment><USER71> The cost of that victory, according to the BBC, is a 1 year delay in the rollout of 5G tech.

That's a pretty large economic cost. Bob can't watch his medical lectures on the train, so ends up behind in class, Mary's company looses a contract to a foreign competitor because she got frustrated with her bad VPN and didn't read over the bid one last time, Fred couldn't afford the cost of the new 5G contracts so didn't get much data and ended up losing touch with his friends who were all group video calling eachother.

All these socio-economic costs cascade for decades or more. Do they really outweigh the theoretical ability for another nation to disrupt network traffic for a few hours until a mitigation is put in place?

<comment><USER72> Not sure if you are being sarcastic, but assuming you aren't. No consumer is asking for 5g, and I don't think any consumer will realise the difference. And not sure that 5g can do much good on a train, unless the train circles around inside a big city and never goes in the countryside where what matters is antenna with long range.

<comment><USER73> 5g also doesn't beat my wifi. My wife and I slashed our data plans during COVID.

<comment><USER74> but your wifi is unreliable and slow. Instead of buying a good AP, buy this 5G modem for only $5 and get your nice, capped 20MBit/s for $200 a month. Isn't this just what you need, when every site is slowly just getting a fibre- connection theoretically allowing a community hosted mobile mesh-network in any city which deserves the name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Will the brexit still be in progress by then?

</comment><comment><USER76> It is increasingly appears that the CCP government wants to confront every countries at the same time. First, I thought this was just the power struggle/grab between US-CCP economically. Then, it spread to the political issues like the South China sea claims which pisses off Viet Nam, The Philippines , Taiwan. The CCP even manages to engage India into its territorial issue resulted in sanction from Indian gov. In the north-east side, the CCP is irritating Japan to a point Japan is considering ramping up its army.

If the CCP wants conflicts at least it needs to find allies, right? So why then it tries to piss off just about every countries it's surrounded by?

<comment><USER77> > it needs to find allies

No shortage of Chinese allies - 70+ countries supported China's recent change to Hong Kong's laws ([https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1193422.shtml](https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1193422.shtml)). Certainly none of these countries are bastions of freedom - North Korea, Venezuela, Chad, Myanmar, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan. But all of them support China to the hilt. Tanzania didn't even stop with an endorsement of the HK law, they also felt it necessary to mention that Taiwan is a part of China. Turns out Chinese loans go a long way in creating a sense of gratitude.

All countries barring the US need China more than China needs them. And China only needs the US until it has semiconductors of it's own.

The US and EU were asleep at the wheel these last 30 years - allowing China to grow powerful without also creating a counterweight like India. Now the world's dependence on Chinese manufacturing and Chinese consumption means that no one dares to criticise China, and there's no shortage of countries lining up to praise every action of Comrade Xi's.

That's why China can screw over every neighbour, taking what they please. Who's going to stop them? Is Vietnam or Malaysia suddenly going to stand up to China? No, they will merely grumble. Is India willing to provoke an actual war? No, they will merely ban TikTok and call it a day.

<comment><USER78> > That's why China can screw over every neighbour, taking what they please. > Who's going to stop them? Is Vietnam or Malaysia suddenly going to stand up > to China? No, they will merely grumble.

ah yes, exactly the same logic that resulted in World War 2

<comment><USER77> The world is much more inter-connected than it was then. The cost of a war with China is orders of magnitude more than the cost of a war with Germany. In fact, for the first several months of WWII, British and French citizens barely noticed the war.

War with China would be extremely painful, every single item that modern life depends upon apart from food will suddenly become scarce. That acts as a powerful deterrent.

<comment><USER78> > The world is much more inter-connected than it was then. The cost of a war > with China is orders of magnitude more than the cost of a war with Germany.

"economic interdependence prevents wars" was commonly accepted to be true in the 1910s, right up until the outbreak of World War I</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How HTTPS works - <AUTHOR> https://howhttps.works/ <comment><USER3> I found the layout confusing but stuff like this is desperately needed. Encryption is a difficult subject but so important to how the Internet functions; the better people understand the concepts the better decisions they will make.

I tried to explain explain how the web browser retrieves a web page (including HTTPS) in simple terms once; the resulting text quickly got away from me[0] so I respect the creators of this for trying.

[0] [https://sheep.horse/2017/10/how_you_are_reading_this_page.ht...](https://sheep.horse/2017/10/how_you_are_reading_this_page.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I may very well be an old curmudgeon but am I the only one who doesn't like all this comic-y cutesy content? They seem to be a rebranded version of the old `Idiot's guide to X` which were ubiquitous in the '90s. Yes, I'm also talking about stuff like `Clojure for the brave and true` or `Learn you a X for the greater good`. Does anyone actually benefit from this content? I look at it and it seems to be targeted to 10 year olds. Are we as an industry getting dumber?

For this specific subject, instead of reading about the `adventures of Certificat, Browserbird, and Compugter` can we just read something like [https://hpbn.co/transport-layer-security-tls/](https://hpbn.co/transport- layer-security-tls/) ?

<comment><USER5> > can we just read something like [https://hpbn.co/transport-layer-security- > tls/](https://hpbn.co/transport-layer-security-tls/) ?

Yep, we have that option and lots of explanations like that already exist.

This is a different approach to explaining the subject. I don't see how that's a problem. Personally I think they just went overboard with it (to the point of being distracting), but I get what they're trying to do and appreciate the effort - even if it's not for me. Kudos I say. Others might find it useful. Plus it could inspire someone else to explore another approach.

<comment><USER6> I mean, the OP's comic is just... really, really hard to read. It's not a medium problem, it's a layout/font/design problem.

I think GP is just hating on the wrong thing. Comics are fine, and having that _as well_ as the technical explanations, is fine.

I agree with a commenter further down wrt. the immensely popular "For Dummies" series which manages to make various complex subjects more accessible. I also think this type of webcomic can be really well done. Chrome's webcomic springs to mind:

[https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html](https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html)

<comment><USER5> Spot on. A few UX and editing passes would make a world of difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> OK, cute, but why? Who is the target here? Distraction to content ratio seems pretty high.

<comment><USER8> >but why?

Content marketing and SEO purposes for the parent company, dnsimple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why am I having such a hard time remembering that the dog is the computer and the cat is the certificate while reading this?

<comment><USER10> Because it barely spends any time setting that up, for one thing. It would probably be a bit more memorable if the characters actually said things like "Hi! I'm Compugter! I sit on your desk or in your lap and talk to the Internet for you!"; instead there is just a panel with a tiny label floating off to one side.

Or maybe it should be "Hi! I'm Compugter, I sit in a rack in a puppy farm somewhere, and talk to the browserbird in your hand or lap or desk"? It really doesn't define its terms at _all_ before launching into a description of a man-in-the-middle attack. This is just not well-written, and no amount of cute drawings will cover for that, no matter how well done they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I skimmed over it and it seems to be a bit dated. The handshake description is basically a static RSA key exchange. This is deprecated in TLS 1.3 and largely unused even in older TLS versions, because it's horrible. (I wrote a paper to show how horrible it is.)

Unfortunately I see this quite often that people are simply not up to date when it comes to crypto.

<comment><USER12> > I wrote a paper

I'd be curious to read that paper, if you don't mind sharing a link - <USER2> recognize your name from the TLS mailing list, but I don't recall seeing that paper referenced there, and everything I google is in German...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pretty amazing, congrats to the authors.

As a technical person I don't particularly love privacy = confidentiality, but I understand the desire to simplify.

If you're looking for something next, I vote for phishing. We tried to make a short explanatory video, but it's not even remotely cool as this one! [https://twitter.com/_conorpp/status/1036751355346595840](https://twitter.com/_conorpp/status/1036751355346595840)

</comment><comment><USER14> I found this really hard to read. At first I tried to read left-to-right, top- to-bottom, but then it felt like the "panels" (or lack thereof) were not lining up. Then I thought "Oh! It must be three columns top-to-bottom" so I tried that then realized I was missing content and that I was right the first time.

I'd love to see you lay this out a bit differently. Apart from that, I love the content. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER15> Self signed certificates do not prove integrity. A crab in the middle can generate another self signed certificate for the same domain name and your browser will not know that it isn't the one you expected.

The only workaround is to manually add the certificate to the root store. But this depends on securely receiving the certificate - say by physically transferring it from one computer to another by USB stick.

</comment><comment><USER16> A major problem with this is that non-expert users might interpret it to mean that the "green lock" always means everything is ok. That is dangerous advice since it's possible to publish a phishing site having proper SSL. Users need more context than what is offered here to avoid becoming victims of phishing scams.

I also found the content itself difficult to read in both layout and copy. The character names were confusing, and I don't think the three concepts of privacy, integrity, and identity were conveyed in a clear enough sense so that a non-expert could interpret how those are actually 3 different things.

</comment><comment><USER17> I like the light-hearted direction taken to explain HTTPS, but I personally find the narrative difficult to read and follow.

It might be unfair for me to compare the two, but I do like Randall's approach to explaining Heartbleed [https://xkcd.com/1354/](https://xkcd.com/1354/) because it feels like it has a better flow.

I'd definitely like to see this idea get expanded upon and improved, so I can feel confident about forwarding this link to non-technical users who are interested in learning how the Internet works. I also agree with doing one of these on phishing.</comment>


Ask HN: How have you asked for a raise?  - <AUTHOR> What has worked? What hasn't? <comment><USER2> I went in six years from bankrupt to 100k ukp a year, most of that over the latter 2 years - and I did it by asking my next-boss-to-be for the raise. Usually I managed a 20k leap each job, something frankly not happening in any negotiation you are in with your current boss - no matter what technique you use.

Be professional about your job search - I spent most lunch hours for a year job hunting or improving my skills or my presentation.

And be more professional about your profession. Take online courses, (I went back to Open University - udacity is zoo much more convenient), treat the job you have as a professional project rather than a job - start to separate away from the employed mentality.

Professionals are responsible for their own reputation and skills, they are willing and able to act like an owner or stakeholder. You really are a company of one.

Sell your services to a higher bidder

Ps - I am reliably informed job hunting is a terrible way to find a job. I would seriously suggest you keep job hunting the normal way(chase the agents - they do not expect it!) but also start / join a smallish OSS project related to a tiny niche (no smaller than that) in your own area - then join the appropriate LinkedIn group.

One hour a day (that lunch hour) and you will be and probably be recognised as an expert in that area.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have some evidence that your position pays better. HR departments will buy salary reports that under report sources like BLS (that they use to justify your low wages to themselves), so you better bring some good stuff. When a substantial change in responsibilities or work environment is made bring it up. This might get you a token 1% or so which your company will just take out of next year's 2% raise.

Going someplace else works great. Expect 10-30% more unless you are already at the top of the pay range for your job and market.

<comment><USER2> Agreed, except that as a business owner I am frankly arguing that the people worth keeping should get 20% yearly pay rises or I lose them.</comment></comment>


Hyperbrain Owner's Manual - 5. The butterfly approach - <AUTHOR> http://inter-sections.net/2009/02/23/hyperbrain-owners-manual-5-the-butterfly-approach

<comment><USER2> I keep lists. Many different list of all sorts of things that need doing. Stuff to do in a text file, tabs in Firefox, post it notes scattered over my desk, lists in my head... So whenever I get bored with what I'm doing, I wander through them all and find something more interesting.

It works reasonably well for most stuff, but I have some hang ups:

1) I'm a relatively fresh-out-of-college programmer, so my job at work is pretty narrowly defined. I pretty much only ever have one task, so it's hard to find diverse things at work to flit to and from as interest dictate. This gets me pretty burnt out on 'programming stuff', which translates to (nearly) always skipping all the cool hacking stuff I have written down in my various notes/lists when I get home. I've yet to find a way around this... :(

2) Some things on my lists get put off a long time. Like I wanted to research some topic that caught my interest after reading an article about it, but figuring out where to start was rather difficult, so I put off starting for about a year.

<comment><USER3> _This gets me pretty burnt out on 'programming stuff'_

22 here -- I have a similar programming day-job and nothing works better than a good 1 hour of lifting/running to relax and clear your mind of the last 8-9 hours at work. Usually after my workout I'll spend another hour to cook a good dinner and watch some TV to kick back. I make it a point to shut the door on the past 8 hours and mentally move on.

Working out seems counter intuitive because you think you'll be more tired after a workout (some days it will exhaust you), but once you get a good routine going you feel more energized and rest better during the night, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Daria: "But Quinn's a brain with bouncy hair. I can't compete."

Jane: "Then you can be... a super-brain. An even bigger outcast than before."

Daria: "I don't think I can handle being a super-brain."

Jane: "Then she's got to be stopped... but how?"

Daria: "Oh I already know how. I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it. Until now."

</comment><comment><USER5> There seem to be many articles of this sort that are around in various places. Why do they insist on using feel good adjectives in lieu of "you have adhd like behavior, here's what works for me to function well"?

The window dressing makes it had to pay attention to the ideas in these articles :p

<comment><USER6> _The window dressing makes it had to pay attention to the ideas in these articles :p_

I think you are only perceiving the "window dressing", because you think the article should be more negative about having ADD or whatever. Why make it negative? "ADHD" sounds like "a disease that needs to be treated". Hyperbrain sounds like "the personality of some very smart and productive people". So there's really no need to use terminology that immediately taints the personality as being negative. (Plus, the target audience will probably get upset and get distracted by something else.)

There is no reason to consider your personality a disease that needs treating, but it is also not bad to learn how to exploit it effectively. That's the point of the article, and the terminology used appeals to the "target market".

Anyway, this is pretty much exactly my personality. I consider myself pretty productive (look at my GitHub page, more than a few projects there), but I am very easily distracted from things I don't want to do. The key is to not let yourself be distracted by stupidity (Reddit was my problem), and instead let yourself be distracted by things that are going to be useful. Other programming tasks, answering people's questions on StackOverflow or mailing lists, etc. If you aren't going to get any work done, at least get _something valuable_ done.

I should really stop reading news.yc, though, because I waste too much time here. (The problem is that pretty much everything I say gets upmodded, which is very addictive. It's nice when people like you, or think you're interesting. But it is still a complete waste of time :)

<comment><USER5> umm, no. I just don't like having layers of fluff between me and content. Don't project your sensitivities onto my words.</comment></comment></comment>


Physicists Create World's First Time Crystal - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602541/physicists-create-worlds-first-time-crystal/ <comment><USER2> I figured this article would fly over my head (which it mostly did), but it was actually a very fun read. My main takeaway was the paradox that the interesting arrangement of matter could be in its lowest energy state, yet still moving. And that no energy could be extracted from this movement. I'm probably butchering the concept with my misuse of terminology but whatevs.

<comment><USER3> You're not that far off. The particles aren't really _moving_ , i.e. they are not going from one spatial location to another. What is happening is that they are changing quantum spin states, and the spin states are changing in such a way that it appears that a circular arrangement of atoms is rotating. This is a reflection of the fact that an atom isn't really a _thing_ (there are no "things", i.e. there are no particles) it's just a quantum state, so if you have a quantum system A in state 1 and system B in state 2, and system A transitions to state 2 and system B transitions to state 1 then this end result is indistinguishable from the two systems having swapped locations. We call this "moving" because classical motion is the only mechanism we're familiar with in everyday life that allows two systems to swap locations. But that kind of moving is not what is happening here.

<comment><USER4> Sounds almost like how words appear to be moving across a scrolling led (or previously, incandescent bulb) display, when nothing is moving it's just each led/bulb switching from lit to unlit.

<comment><USER3> That is (almost) exactly right. The only difference is that with classical states it is possible to distinguish between the object (the light bulb) and the state (on or off). With quantum systems the object _is_ the state, so there is no way to distinguish between "the same atom" and "different atoms with the same state".

<comment><USER5> So by saying this, you're actually saying that we're living in some sort of state machine / cellular automata universe, and in order to understand it, we just have to find the rules of interaction/propagation of the states ?

<comment><USER3> No, we are living in a quantum universe (or a quantum multiverse if you prefer). We don't yet know whether space and time are discrete, because we have not yet unified QM and relativity. If space and time turn out to be discrete then yes, the multiverse would be essentially a cellular automaton. But if they aren't then it (probably) isn't.

<comment><USER5> But "quantum universe" doesn't actually mean that we're working with quanta(s), which translates to infinitesimally small but discrete quantities ?

Aren't Planck constants all about that ?

<comment><USER6> He is referring to spacetime actually. quanta we are sure are the smallest objects in space.

Spacetime is a sort of cartesian representation of space and time, with probably 4 axes (x, y, z, time).

Many relativity concepts obey this, for example stuff moving in space at the speed of light, move literally zero on the time axis. And you can calculate the relationship between time and speed by rotating vectors.

So back to quanta: we don't know if time is discrete. We don't even know if time actually exists, or its properties, because the math right now has results that are quite weird (like implying moving backwards in time should be normal and common as moving forward...), also there are arguments over the shape of "spacetime" with most people assuming it is a 4d cube, but maybe it ins't.

<comment><USER7> What's been on my mind about these things is, we don't need to have "space" to be a "thing" that "exists". You can simulate a universe where "space" is encoded in each "particle"'s state as a scalar distance to some other particle.

Thus you don't have a "full dimensional vector {x,y,z}" but you have a bunch of particles each keeping a list of variables with distances to other particles around them.

Maybe I'm not explaining it right, but no one has proposed anything like this as far as I know.

<comment><USER8> I get what you're trying to say, and it's an interesting viewpoint on the matter. However, i still think of "space" as a useful abstraction in this case

<comment><USER7> Would it even be possible to devise an experiment to test for this? It doesn't seem likely to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know anything about anything, but I want to enumerate some things I learned reading this article, and if someone actually knows what they're talking about and sees fit to take pity on me, please correct me so that I can understand what this actually means.

So a time crystal appears to be made up of real matter. The article mentions ions that are arranged in a certain particular way, cooled in order to reduce their energy, and this still makes sense so far.

So, the idea is to create a closed loop of sorts from a temporal perspective. I'm imagining an object as a set of states that the object can be observed in, and if there was a loop, it'd be possible to observe a certain sequence of states over and over.

The arrangement of the ions is important, and one of the properties is the spin, which is possible to change with a laser beam, because obviously.

Anyways, I guess the frequency of the oscillation of the ions changing spin, since they interact with each other in a domino fashion, can be controlled with the frequency of the laser.

They did this, and observed the ions changing in such a way where there was no driving influence and it's implied that the reason that this behavior was observed is because time symmetry was broken, which is just a fancy way of alleging that the universe is non-deterministic, I think.

Maybe this will eventually be useful?

<comment><USER10> >They did this, and observed the ions changing in such a way where there was no driving influence and it's implied that the reason that this behavior was observed is because time symmetry was broken, which is just a fancy way of alleging that the universe is non-deterministic, I think.

Time translational symmetry and determinism have nothing to do with one another. Even a classical pendulum breaks time translational symmetry yet it's fully deterministic. In this cases they do break the symmetry in a more fundamental way, but it still doesn't say anything about determinism.

<comment><USER9> So what are the implications of an object that breaks that symmetry? Would it be possible to observe an object in different times in the same state, or the same time in different states?

<comment><USER11> > So what are the implications of an object that breaks that symmetry? Would > it be possible to observe an object in different times in the same state, or > the same time in different states?

The object would be in a repeating set of states. First state 1, then state 2, then state 1, then back to state 2, etc.

This is not in itself surprising. Think of a pendulum, for instance. The difference here is that the motion is the lowest energy state. Over time, a pendulum swing decays. This does not: it will continue forever, if not disturbed.

The obvious next question is: isn't that perpetual motion? According to the normal dictionary definition of those words yes it is, which is why this is a fascinating discovery. However, it doesn't violate the normal arguments against perpetual motion, because there's no way to extract energy from the system. Anything you did to influence the motion would require adding energy.

<comment><USER12> But... don't the process by which this is observed (I mean literally, the machinery used to measure it) introduce energy into (or draw it out) this system?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And somewhere, high in the ramtops, Lu-Tze has just developed a crick in his neck and he almost knows why.

</comment><comment><USER14> What are time crystals? Try this: _Physicists Predict The Existence of Time Crystals_ [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/426917/physicists- predict...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/426917/physicists-predict-the- existence-of-time-crystals/)

<comment><USER15> This is also helpful: _How to Build A Space-Time Crystal_ [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/428334/how-to-build-a- spa...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/428334/how-to-build-a-space-time- crystal/)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for both those links.

That article is from 2012 and quotes:

"If that's the case, we ought to be reading the details about the first space- time crystal sometime in the days and weeks to come. "

Was there something non obvious they had to overcome that took the extra few years to produce these space-time crystals?

(I use the term non obvious as if this was not all way beyond my ken!)

<comment><USER15> The 2012 article said they were using beryllium ions, Wikipedia says in 2013 they were planning on using calcium ions, and now the 2016 article says they used ytterbium ions. Without more content to go on, we can only guess about these changes.

In any event, they sure seem to have made a lot of progress in just a few years. I look forward to reading more about this, as well as listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson describe it in his infectiously enthusiastic way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm definitely too dumb for this.

<comment><USER18> Joining you. Saw some potential concept here [1]

[1] Back to the future (1985) [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088763/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088763/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone explain what computations using __zero energy__ from related article [1] actually means ?

[1] [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/426917/physicists- predict...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/426917/physicists-predict-the- existence-of-time-crystals/)

""" Another is the possibility that it may be possible to exploit time crystals to perform computations using zero energy. As Wilczek puts it, "it is interesting to speculate that a…quantum mechanical system whose states could be interpreted as a collection of qubits, could be engineered to traverse a programmed landscape of structured states in Hilbert space over time." """

<comment><USER20> They literally mean "not spending any energy doing the computation".

We spend energy on computation for two fundamental reasons: 1) zeroing data and 2) error correction. You avoid zeroing data by doing reversible computation. You avoid error correction by finding really really well behaved / stable systems.

Time crystals are reversible basically by definition, and Wilczek is saying that maybe there might be some time crystals that are also well behaved and do something interesting enough to encode computations.

<comment><USER21> IIRC reversible computations only take zero energy if you perform them infinitely slowly.

<comment><USER22> Just curious, is there a difference between infinitely slowly and not at all?

<comment><USER23> "Infinitely slowly" is a theme in physics. What is actually meant by the term is "slow enough that you can approximate it as being infinitely slow". Now, obviously the idea of approximating an infinite value with a finite one seems dodgy, but the idea is that if some process converges to the "purely theoretical and infinitely slow" solution quickly then you can make that kind of approximation (physics is generally not obsessed with precision).

As a concrete example, most of thermodynamics becomes insanely complicated for very rapid changes in pressure and temperature. And in many cases, you cannot actually compute the state of the system (without making a bunch of approximations). But, if you make some assumptions and approximations, thermodynamics becomes much more simple even though you've added some error factors due to your approximations (but it's definitely "good enough").

In general, the first thing you learn as part of a physics degree is that approximations and assumptions are just part of how you do science. Without them, we'd all be stuck dealing with insanely complicated equations that probably are not solvable. And at the end of the day, the unsolvable part of whatever equation you're dealing with wouldn't actually have a significant effect on the result (so you can generally ignore it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a fascinating concept. What kinds of applications could time crystals be used for?

Time locked crypto that doesn't rely on proof of work jumps to mind, but I'm by no means an expert on either cryptography or quantum mechanics.

</comment><comment><USER25> Could this be used for very stable time measurements, as an alternative to atomic clocks?

<comment><USER16> From @brathouz link above..

"One reason why space-time crystals are interesting is that their periodicity in time makes them natural clocks. So there should be plenty of people with more than a passing interesting in making one."

So I took from that, yes, this could be an alternative to atomic clocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Correct me if If Im wrong. A time crystal is a cycle at atomic level.

\- matter / energy is neither added nor removed to retain shape/movement

\- the energy/matter within the "crystal" change state/position in a repeating and/or predictable matter

\- pattern retains even when the energy is at extreme lows

This would be analogous to a water cycle. The water changes state in a predictable manner, water heats up (due to the sun) and evaporates. As the molecules get closer to space, the cool and attract each other to form clouds. The clouds hit a maximum and rain occurs flowing back into bodies of water again.

The difference is that the water cycle needs the presence of heat/cooling from external sources while the time crystal can exist at "zero degree" temperatures.

</comment><comment><USER27> So, states change without physical objects changing position. Meanwhile we pitiful humans, have a hard time distinguishing the objects that exchange states.

...and can someone tell me where the _actual_ time comes into play?

Sure, one can say it is "something not unlike" the manipulation of time, and yet... somehow... it seems like we're just deciding to call it something it is not, since it certainly seems similar enough.

If I carve a piece of wood, such that it resembles a gun, it can play the part of a gun, but only until a person with an actual gun challenges me to a duel.

</comment><comment><USER28> >But the laws of physics are not only symmetrical in space but also in time.

Can someone explain what this means? It makes sense that physical laws are symmetrical in space. But in time? I thought that would _not_ be the case because of entropy/irreversible processes etc. What am I missing? The whole article rests on this premise.

<comment><USER23> "The arrow of time" which you're referring to (entropy increasing in closed systems) is something that is IMO still puzzling in the field of physics. To be clear, entropy isn't a "force" its just a statistical effect (a very large number of particles in a system are always going to be more likely to be in a macrostate that has the most microstates -- meaning that the system will tend towards more "disordered" states).

However, it should be noted that the arrow of time only applies to the _macroscopic_ universe. All of the laws of physics (in this article's case it's quantum mechanics) are time symmetric (if you play the experiment in reverse you couldn't tell it was being done in reverse -- which is what you can see in Feynman diagrams). So at the heart of it, the universe is very symmetric in time.

To quote Primer: "What's the one variable in all of the equations of heat and matter? What's the one variable that you can turn negative and still get rational answers? Its not energy, it's not mass..." [It's time].

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> wow that was fast! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12474029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12474029) ("Time crystals might exist after all")

</comment><comment><USER30> This is very interesting, but I'm frankly not convinced that they've actually created a spacetime crystal. Either way though, it's a fascinating bit of work.

</comment><comment><USER31> Could this be used like a piezoelectric in a clock except powered by time rather then a charge applied to a quartz crystal?

</comment><comment><USER32> Can you explain in layman's terms what a time crystal is? I'm not sure I understood it right. Is this like a RAM which has persistent state?

</comment><comment><USER33> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646342)

</comment><comment><USER34> Could this _really_ be used for self-correcting quantum memory, as the article suggests?

</comment><comment><USER35> Oh. From which substance?

<comment><USER35> Not that much has been changed since the times of Egyptian pyramids - producing himeras and pure abstractions out of words and socially conditioned mental constructs is still one of the most rewarding occupation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Super jail

Time police

</comment><comment><USER37> Ugh, that title though... WTH is a time crystal, and who decided to call it that? I'm not clicking the bait to find out.

<comment><USER38> The core idea is not too strange, actually.

A "normal" crystal has a repeating structure in space; a time crystal is a construct with a repeating temporal structure.

<comment><USER39> Does that mean it is continuously changing in a repetitive fashion?

<comment><USER40> apparently yes, but because it's in a low energy state, it's impossible to extract any energy from it and do work (otherwise it would be a perpetual motion machine.)

<comment><USER41> It's interesting it is a perpetual motion machine, but it works only as long as you don't use it.

<comment><USER42> Any atomic nucleus with orbiting electrons fulfills that requirement, you could loosely call those time crystals too.

Their half life for most stable atoms is so long that perpetual applies for most practical uses of the word.

Which makes me wonder if these time crystals have a half-life too.

<comment><USER43> Electrons do not orbit atomic nuclei in the quantum description of atoms. Instead, in the lowest energy state the electron wave function is spread out in a sphere around the nucleus, and this wave function stays constant in time. Almost all quantum systems do something like this in the ground state, which shows why the time crystal is something new and interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What are they used for? A required part for a time machine??

</comment><comment><USER45> I hope you like time paradoxes because this is how you get trapped in a time paradox.

</comment><comment><USER46> Ever since I saw my parents' initial skepticism to the use of handheld devices (smartphones, tablets etc.) I have always wondered what such a mental block for my generation might be like. It could very well be an invention such as this that is considered speculative today which might become viable overnight. My kid may someday wonder why his dad doesn't understand basic quantum phenomena.</comment>


Beyond Meat Shows the World Is Changing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/utopiapress/beyond-meat-shows-the-world-is-changing-9d17dd057ca7 <comment><USER2> Not sure what the millennials angle adds to this article, but they sure do say the word a lot.

They're asserting that Beyond Meat's success is driven by millennial ethics on the back of... absolutely no data whatsoever. Who's actually buying Beyond Meat burgers? Do other generations actually not care about health, the environment, animal welfare, etc? Is there any evidence at all to justify these assertions?

Or did you just need to include the buzzword?

<comment><USER3> Millennials grew up with the internet, unlike generations before them. For millennials who want vegan products the internet made it easy and natural to find them, information, and community.

For older people, this took longer and is still in progress.

There are older folks interested in vegan products, but millennials are the largest current customer base so far.

<comment><USER4> I'm gonna need some hard evidence to believe what you just wrote there.

Also this assumption that "older people" are less capable of using the internet is such a load of ageist nonsense. Many of us "older people" were skilfully using the internet _to find things out_ before most millenials were twinkles in their parent's loins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> World is Changing maybe a little presumptuous. Maybe in the west where ground meat is a pervasive culinary ingredient. Good luck convincing ethnic cuisines with heavy use of offal or other meat components to adopt aka the rest of the world. Appetite for meat is increasing as developing countries move from subsistence to affluent diets. People are looking forward to enjoying regional meat dishes not science burgers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think beyond meat is completely revolutionary, the one way to stop them is if somehow some study finds that eating this stuff causes cancer, but even that i think if off some years, where hopefully BYND can establish market dominance and work on alleviating whatever issues arise.

<comment><USER7> But that would only be an issue if the burgers are consumed in the state of California.

But more seriously, I'd like to see more food items available that aren't trying to imitate meat. For example there is a Samosa with chickpeas dish that they do in my company's cafeteria that is really good, contains no meat, but I don't miss the meat in that dish. It has a good mouth feel, gives an appropriate amount of energy, and fills me up throughout the afternoon. Whereas a dish containing mostly steamed vegetables (such as broccoli, carrots, and peas) or a salad typically fails to satisfy (unless you put cheese on the broccoli, or add ham or egg to the salad).

Now I can feel mostly satisfied by switching to primarily fish based meals, along with free range chicken (the ones that came from my grandma's chicken yard were really tasty). And I personally see that as more ethical / sustainable than consuming other mammals.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I never expected this stock to do so well, and it makes me wonder just how transformative it will become?

<comment><USER6> It has the potential to become VERY big. If i could have bought it at 45 dollars or so i would have put 80% of my net worth in that stock, i bought it at 80, expecting it to be $100+. These are the juul and vapes for traditional cigarettes. If vegetarian meat tasted good, is similarly priced, and doesn't prove to have adverse health consequences, why would anyone support the cruel practices of animal farming etc... Think about it, it is not easy to create fake meat which tastes like real meat, and all the money they make will enable their R&D to go further in a hard to enter market of which they are one of the first pioneers.

<comment><USER8> The current market cap for BYND is bigger than the expected global "fake" meat market in 2025 ($7.5 billion) and they are far from the only player. Its definitely valuable but I dont think its worth that much

[https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/meat-substitute- market](https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/meat-substitute-market)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >The stock shows this is not just a movement, but an entire shift in the food industry that's transformative to the future of fast food.

Stop inventing meaning where there is none. Their stock performance shows that that food shoppers accept this as another option on the shelves. That's it.

>Cannabis & Beyond Meat Shows the Future of Ethics in Consumerism

Cannabis is not about ethics. It's about people who WANT TO GET HIGH.

<comment><USER10> > HIGH

That's a curious word. The effects of LSD, MDMA, cocaine, heroin and weed are all described as "high", but they're very, drastically different from each other, and different people, in different life situations and psychological states, crave for different drugs.

Weed in particular is about relaxing, contemplating, slowing down and drifting off. I think that a person who wants to get high on weed is, in general, much more ethical in his subsequent actions than someone who snorts amphetamine lines or drinks shots of vodka, and that this shift in substance of choice in the last ~10 years is overall a positive change. So, it is somewhat connected to ethics.

<comment><USER11> I'm no opponent of cannabis, having enjoyed it myself now and then. But I've known quite a few habitual users whose actions subsequent to getting high involve neglecting their personal obligations and their health. I'm not sure there's anything ethical about watching cartoons for hours while consuming copious quantities of junk food, especially if this means ignoring your family or responsibilities. Of course, not every cannabis user does this, but, anecdotally, I've encountered this cluster of behaviors frequently.

<comment><USER10> When compared to being completely sober, I agree. But when compared to alcohol, which weed is replacing, I think it's obvious that weed is a more ethical alternative.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cluzee for Android is a terrible Siri clone - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/106985-the-rush-to-release-siri-clones-for-android-result-in-awful-apps-like-cluzee

<comment><USER2> I'm not too sure why people are expecting Siri clones to be good at this point. Apple had lots of resources, top employees of the country, and lots of time to develop Siri. 3rd parties are now trying to replicate this in a short amount of time using startup resources. They won't be perfect at this point. I love the fact that smaller companies are trying, however. The fact that Android doesn't really have a built in Siri like the IPhone actually intrigues me. The competition between new droid Siris should help drive a better app, assuming Google isn't hard at work on their own version

</comment><comment><USER3> I was suspicious when the demo used what sounded like a woman's voice with a cheesy voice-mod rather than the actual product.</comment>


Parsing Your Ideas : Web Development Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.parseten.com Parseten is an offshore web development company providing affordable web site design development including website  designing, website development, ecommerce solution, social network, search engine optimization, software development. <comment><USER2> this website gives me a virus warning:

Contains recognition pattern of the HTML/Infected.WebPage.Gen HTML script virus

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Best Development Company</comment>


Mass SQL Injection Attack Hits Sites Running IIS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sucuri.net/2010/06/mass-infection-of-iisasp-sites-2677-inyahoo-js.html

<comment><USER2> SQL injection is platform independent. It usually targets a specific vendor's DB, but it's crappy code by users of the DB that is at fault.

So it's really SQL injection attack hits sites running crappy custom code.

Neither SQL server nor IIS are at fault here.

<comment><USER3> Did anyone say it's not platform independent?

The article just states a couple of IIS sites got compromised again. It's not blaming IIS for that.

And SQL injection is not completely platform independent: your database must support SQL for it to work.</comment></comment>