Australian Government Scrambles to Authorize Mass Surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/australian-government-scrambles-authorize-mass-surveillance <comment><USER2> Prime Minister Abbott needs to whip up hysteria and panic to try to distract people from his government's incredibly poor performance and disastrous budget.

A nice solid war along with deep fear mongering should regain control of the media message.

I simply don't believe we are under threat of attack from knife wielding beheading terrorists.

The poor kid who died the other day was probably just mentally ill but its to Abbott's great advantage to be able to point and say LOOK, BEHEADING TERRORISTS IN OUR SUBURBS COMING FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, WE NEED TO RAPIDLY REMOVE YOUR LIBERTIES AND PRIVACY!

The first Iraq cured me of any belief in what governments ask citizens to believe.

I feel deep terror at what our government will do to us.

The good news for Australians is that Tony Abbott has decided that we are no longer getting a fibre to the home national broadband network because that was too expensive, HOWEVER thankfully we are getting 86 F-35 Joint Strike fighter aeroplanes. [http://www.news.com.au/national/tony-abbott-to-approve- austr...](http://www.news.com.au/national/tony-abbott-to-approve-australias- biggest-ever-military-purchase-of-stealth-fighter-jets/story- fncynjr2-1226851684344)

<comment><USER3> I've been out of Australia for many years now, though I always figured I would go home to raise a family one day.

Everyone I talk to now says it's getting destroyed by Abbott and his policies. Less sending on Health, Education. Privatized university loans (with interest - even for those with existing HECS debt), very overreaching surveillance.

I hate to say it, but it might not be worth going back after Abbott has had his way...

<comment><USER4> Talking about university loans, let's take a minute to share and contemplate the awesome system I've discovered in Australia: You can borrow money from the govt for your studies. The interest rate is only equal to the Consumer Price Index. You repay your debt through taxes after you start working, and your taxes are capped to something like 45% of your income.

Which means, if your studies don't land you a good job, you're not choked on the spot by banks. And it still transfers more responsibility to the student than subsidizing education to make it free.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Au...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Australia)

More countries should copy the same system for education loans.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely, I personally think it's one of the best things about the country.

After living and working for a year and a half in the US, and 7 years in Canada, I've seen first hand the impact of charging for university, and how it impacts people lives for decades.

I met tons of people that chose not to go to university simply because they couldn't afford it. I was shocked and saddened that happens in developed countries.

I have tons of 30-something friends that are _still_ paying interest only on their student loans, and it's crippling their life choices.

I really hope we can kick Abbott out before he does much more damage.

Are people in Australia seriously talking about getting him removed? Does anyone even know what the process is in Australia to remove a Prime Minister?

<comment><USER5> > Are people in Australia seriously talking about getting him removed?

No.

The political climate in Australia has seriously deteriorated over the last decade and much political discourse is now indistinguishable from hysteria. The criticism being leveled at the Abbott government from progressives is very, very similar to what conservatives were saying about the Rudd/Gillard governments of the last 6 years - they're destroying the country, they don't represent the people, etc. Since the Internet is, in general, a more progressive place you're being exposed to a lot more of this hysteria than you would've been previously.[0]

> Does anyone even know what the process is in Australia to remove a Prime > Minister?

The proper, established process is a Federal election. They happen every three years, and they give the electorate an opportunity to renew a government's mandate or to remove them from office as they see fit. At the last election, Tony Abbott was selected to be Prime Minister. He may or may not survive the next election, we shall see.

The new attitude in Australian politics of "I don't like this government - they should be summarily sacked" is despicable and anti-democratic. It seems to have infected both progressives and conservatives alike. It shows a complete lack of respect for the democratic process when one side decides that - since they don't like the new government's policies - they will simply ignore the fact that the government was duly and lawfully elected by the people. The dismissal of a government[1] is an extraordinary event that should only take place under extraordinary circumstances. The current circumstances are not extraordinary - progressives don't like a conservative government, what a surprise.

I don't agree with a lot of Mr. Abbott's policies, but as the Prime Minister of the country he should be afforded some respect. I will happily voice my disagreement with him, but I will not call for him to be dismissed. I will wait until the next Federal election and exercise my democratic rights then.

[0] Although it's an unpopular opinion, the conservatives had more reason to call for the Gillard Government's removal, as the hung parliament really placed the legitimacy of her mandate in question. Nonetheless, I think these types of criticisms are silly and hysterical coming from both sides.

[1] As another commenter mentioned, the Governor-General can dismiss the Government and trigger an election. This has only happened once, when the Whitlam Government was unable to pass supply bills through the Senate. This resulted in something similar to the US government shutdown that was experienced recently. This was a dark day in Australian politics and not something we should be eager to repeat - certainly not when the government is functioning (even if what it is doing is not particularly popular). "Well may we say 'God save the Queen' \- because nothing will save the Governor General."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am not normally one to put on a tin foil hat, but all the events of the last week seem so orchestrated that it is hard not to be cynical. Security agencies facing the sunsetting of powers granted after 9/11 "suddenly" discover all these threats _the very same week_ that laws are due to be voted on. There seems to be almost no evidence against individuals raided, only one arrest and that on the basis of some intercepted conversations where the idea of attacking someone was mentioned (and all this, we are taking on faith from security agencies themselves which have a massive vested interest in getting new laws passed). Even if you interpret the threat literally, _one_ individual was proposing to attack _one_ Australian - for this we need to discard our basic freedoms protected for hundreds years (deriving from the magna carta no less)?

I think there ought to be a moratorium on passing any new laws until there is _not_ any current terrorism scare, it is exactly _not_ the time to be making rash judgements about what laws we need.

<comment><USER7> "all the events of the last week seem so orchestrated that it is hard not to be cynical"

Uh... make that the last 51 years. If you only just noticed, you're not paying attention. And I only say 51 years from picking an arbitrary point (JFK assassination) for when the deep state's evil ways became _really_ obvious.

"If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched." \-- George Bush, cited in the June, 1992 Sarah McClendon Newsletter

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." \-- William Casey, Director of Central Intelligence. An observation by the late Director at his first staff meeting in 1981. This observation reveals the mentality of cynicism which infests the US Federal control structures, and the reality that these structures regard the American people with total contempt.

<comment><USER8> > This observation reveals the mentality of cynicism which infests the US > Federal control structures, and the reality that these structures regard the > American people with total contempt.

Yeah, I wouldn't call plans to brainwash and mind-fuck 330 million people a "mentality of cynicism". Contempt is not quite enough either. How about "evil, malicious hostility"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The "Stop The Spies" campaign will be launching prematurely in light of this news.

Here is the website design we were trying to achieve -> [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByT3WMbCYAEsFcA.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByT3WMbCYAEsFcA.jpg:large)

Expect it to be launched today or tomorrow.

When the campaign website launches, we need to generate numbers for the press, so make sure you take all the action available on the site.

In the mean time follow our lonely social media accounts to stay up to date with the campaign

Twitter: [https://twitter.com/stopthespies](https://twitter.com/stopthespies)

Facebook: [https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-The- Spies/35499951465040...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-The- Spies/354999514650401)

\-----

The government nearly passed the first bill in one day, this caught us by utter surprise. And the legislation proposed sets no upper limit on the number of devices in a network that they can monitor, meaning without oversight, they could potentially monitor every device in Australia with a single warrant.

The bill containing the mandatory data retention proposals will be hitting the senate next week and we imagine that it might get very little opposition like this first bill.

The only opposition to the bill is from the Greens and one LDP member so there is but a flicker of hope. But I imagine if we can at least delay these proposals, a more lively debate may spring up and pressure may be placed on legislators to reconsider their positions.

It is in the best interest of journalist to write about these bills at the moment because it highly affects them.

Personal thanks to Sen. Ludlam for delaying the bill yesterday!

</comment><comment><USER10> I find it greatly concerning that laws are passed with such haste, and then justified by very recent events. To clarify, the two recent events which seem to be frequently cited by the law makers is:

* An anti-terrorism raid across two states, which charged one person and questioned several others. This happened a couple of weeks ago.

* A tragic incident in which an 18yo stabbed two police officers and then was shot dead. This happened a few days ago.

I fail to see how any of the provisions in the new laws are able to be justified by either of these events.

Firstly, the anti-terrorism raids worked seemingly well without the yet-to-be- passed-laws. They successfully used existing laws to thwart a plan that allegedly involved the beheading of random members of the public.

Secondly, no amount of surveillance or detaining will stop a determined individual from being able to stab somebody who is standing right in front of them.

So as troubling as these two events were, it is also troubling that they are being used in this manner by politicians of both major persuasions.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, Nah. Abbot just learnt what a 'False Flag' operation was and is trying it out so he can feel like a big boy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For the record, the recent 'terrorist threats' involved an apparent plan to kidnap random citizens off the street and behead them on camera, then send the footage to ISIS for subsequent release.

The raid to stop said threats involved ~800 police officers across multiple states. Its result? Two people charged, with only one having anything to do with terrorism.

Just about every ounce of effort was put in to drumming it up as 'averted disaster at the last moment', yet very little effort was (probably intentionally) made to mention that the mobilsation of over 800 police resulted in the arrest of exactly 1 person on terrorism-related charges.

This is undoubtably an opportunistic move on the back of marginal news. It's a travisty and it will pass without much debate because both parties give approximately no care whatsoever about preserving individual freedoms and privacy, and every care about eroding those rights for increased capacity to monitor and police the public.

<comment><USER13> I think it's actually been pretty shameful how they've been milking everything they can for all it's worth - first the MH370 disaster, where for some reason it was Abbot on camera every night making announcements every time they found a tiny piece of debris off WA (probably none of which was related to the incident at all in hindsight), and then their going on and on about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, despite the fact we have absolutely nothing to do with it...

Now, we have this 'huge terror threat', milking the IS conflict in Syria and Iraq.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." \-- Hermann Göring

That'll be next. Any one who stands in opposition to these bills will be "exposing the country to danger".

<comment><USER15> "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." \-- William Randolph Hearst

Every war in recent history has been preceded by massive, concerted media propaganda. World War I was extreme in this regard. The monopoly situation on mass media has not improved since then.

<comment><USER16> It's been dizzying to watch the propaganda surrounding IS in order to drum up support for a new war. From the very beginning, with their characterization as "too extreme for Al Qaeda" this has seemed highly orchestrated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not a surprise really our streets are literally awash with headless corpses

<comment><USER18> What do you mean by this?

<comment><USER19> He means that people have to wade through a seething froth of semi-coagulated blood, hair, and brains while on their morning commute. Obviously due to the extreme terrorist threat arising in Australia to warrant such an equally extreme response as streamlining mass surveillance.

/sarcasm

<comment><USER20> It's true. I was late for work today but at least I got a seat on the train.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One of my more recent contributions to Wikipedia was a 'Mass Surveillance in Australia' page: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia)

</comment><comment><USER22> Surely it's inevitable that everything will be surveiled. The quicker we realise this and "encrypt all the things" the better.

What's the point in fighting legislation when you can solve the problem with technology? If the technology doesn't exist now then this stupid legislation should spur it on.

<comment><USER23> I think that unless the 'problem' that encryption is meant to solve is the existence of governments themselves, then it doesn't make sense to write off engagement with the political process altogether.. "encrypt all the things" only works if you somehow have the power and influence to make all the companies do all the work to encrypt all the things (against their own gain in some cases.) Without some kind of political pressure, or even better the force of law, or at the very least a bully pulpit to convince people that it's a good idea, I wonder if it's necessarily tenable. You can always do both anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think that the Government is manipulating the people and that these new laws will certainly be abused. I think that it is up to the entrepreneurial community to come up with solutions to help mitigate the situation. This can be achieved on several levels.

1\. Help whistle blowers deliver material to overseas journalists 2\. Create stronger security for journalists and whistle blowers to communicate 3\. Find ways to better engage the public in the politics of today so that better political parties can thrive in the future and strengthen our constitution

</comment><comment><USER25> 'straya!

I'm not sure how to feel about Australia's response to ISIS. The right-wing side of politics seems to be going completely over the top in trying to crack down on terrorist cells operating in the country (we did just have two policemen stabbed in what appears to be a terrorism-linked beheading attempt), arguing that security is more important than freedom.

Then we've got the left wing side of politics, which is trying to do all it can to downplay the risk and argue that there is literally a 0% of an attack on Australians, despite an incident just days ago and dozens of Australians having travelled to fight in the Middle East who may return.

<comment><USER26> I don't think there has ever been a "Terrorist" attack in Australia that has targeted "White Australians". I make that qualification based on the fact that a number of foreign embassies have been attacked within Australia, but that is quite a different thing.

How was the stabbing "terrorist-linked?" And how is people travelling to the middle east (even to fight), terorrist linked?

<comment><USER27> Would you classify the Russell St Bombing as terrorism?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Street_Bombing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Street_Bombing)

Edit: or maybe the Sydney Hilton bombing.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Hilton_Hotel_bombing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Hilton_Hotel_bombing)

<comment><USER26> So you found the 2 events that are different. Total death toll: 4 people (not to trivialise their deaths).

Neither of those times did we raise a 'threat level' (it is difficult to see if there was even a 'threat level'). So actual bombs going off in our streets don't cause panic. But crazed (brown) teenagers in police stations... Quick call the SAS!

There is something very off here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Aaahh tried and true, good strategy, First scare the shit out, and then tell them(people) we are here to protect you, look we need to come into your house now, so that we can save you.

<comment><USER29> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu_30-8ZlmQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu_30-8ZlmQ)

"I wan't everyone to remember why they need US!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So Bill Shorten (the leader of the opposition) is my member of parliament. I've written him to ask that he helps to slow the process down and read the recommendations of the joint committee. Not sure what more I can do here :/

<comment><USER31> Here is all you need to know about government and opposition in "times like these" \- a satirical piece from The Shovel:

Labor Party To Close Down Until After Iraq War: [http://www.theshovel.com.au/2014/09/23/labor-party-to- close-...](http://www.theshovel.com.au/2014/09/23/labor-party-to-close-down- until-after-iraq-war/)

 _On hearing the news, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, "Until this war concludes, we'll just have two parties saying the same thing, so it makes sense to put one away for now".

Labor leader Bill Shorten later released a statement saying "Until this war concludes, we'll just have two parties saying the same thing, so it makes sense to put one away for now"._

<comment><USER32> > Here is all you need to know

4 sentences

I mean, I know some love to think that a blog / tv show full of snarky jokes gives a hint of political driving forces behind decisions, or, you know, anything political in the slightest

but they don't, they are just snarky jokes

<comment><USER31> You don't think it's an accurate remark about how dangerous it is politically to oppose a war drummed up to drive fear into the public? About how major parties lock step in times like these?

"Soft on terrorism", "Can't defend our shores", etc. Huge political risk to work against what's happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> You know what all these "ramp ups" for mass surveillance in the so called "democratic countries" tell me? That this sort of stuff has been going on for quite a while, but now much of it has become public, and they are scared some of them could go to prison, or at least Courts could stop them from having these powers, so they try to "legalize" all of it now.

Even if people test its constitutionality, it will probably be a very long battle, to get rid of all of these powers, and they'll use the powers as much as possible against the people questioning them to try to maintain these powers.

</comment><comment><USER2> [http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/no- conspira...](http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/no-conspiracy- to-ambush-vic-officers-cops-20140926-3go8u.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> This is Australia's Executive Order 12333 moment:

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/meet-executive-order-12333-the-reagan-rule-that-lets-the-nsa-spy-on-americans/2014/07/18/93d2ac22-0b93-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html</comment>


Anonymous hacks MIT after Aaron Swartz's suicide - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57563752-93/anonymous-hacks-mit-after-aaron-swartzs-suicide/ <comment><USER2> Thread regarding the actual message from Anonymous.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5053359>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing the original text. The page on mit seems to be offline now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I needed to use an MIT website for some research and I wasn't too happy when it was down. As nobody has, I would like to voice my disapproval.

<comment><USER4> Sir, blame it on your ISP. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5052903>

<comment><USER5> Not necessarily: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5053466> (from the same guy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the post: <https://twitter.com/AnonymousIRC/status/290704903431655424>.

Note that the URL is this: rledev.mit.edu/aaron.html That's actually a subdomain. From what it looks like someone (maybe a MIT student) came up with the subdomain and posted the site there. I doubt there was any hacking going on.

<comment><USER7> <http://cogen.mit.edu/> was also hacked, and this is a MIT official page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great idea to deface an entire institution for the acts of a few.

Thanks anonymous for helping us understand why cyber laws are as harsh as they are. I read all over that MIT is actually open and the systems are begging to be hacked. So, I don't see how this shows you in any good light.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anonymous = idiots

<comment><USER10> In the literal sense of the word, the exact opposite.</comment></comment>


Windows Phone 7 goes gold master, begins rolling out to partners - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/01/windows-phone-7-goes-gold-master-begins-rolling-out-to-partners/ <comment><AUTHOR> with the iOS event today and the numbers that apple disclosed today I guess is to be seen how microsoft can leverage the mobile space. as a mobile entrepreneur I start to think how much it will take for them to start making a dent in the mobile space...

I hope to see zune hardware to be making the rounds as well, ipod + iphone pretty much rulz the mobile space regardless of how android is playing right now

what do u guys think?</comment>


Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL leaked renders show notch and bigger displays - <AUTHOR> https://www.xda-developers.com/google-pixel-3-pixel-3-xl-renders-leak/ <comment><USER2> I may be totally uninformed but I've got to ask... The iPhone X has a notched display for hardware that runs FaceID, and not for aesthetic reasons right?

Why are Android manufactures copying the notch? Strictly because it's a new design element of the iPhone X? I know people do not like the notched displays and if Android phones aren't implementing FaceID alternatives to take up that space, then why do it? Are they just really copying the iPhone design so that their phone looks modern by 2018 standards?</comment>


A Team Exploited the Coronavirus Pandemic to Set a 26-Hour 38-Minute Record - <AUTHOR> https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a32092440/26-hour-38-minute-cannonball-record-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> well I guess they switched drivers at some point?

<comment><USER3> Yes, Cannonball teams traditionally use two drivers plus a spotter.</comment></comment>


Google forced to go web 0.0 by courts - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/books/04google.html Gotta love the legal system. They could find the copyright holders much more effectively using well, google.com. <comment><USER2> Sounds worth it if it allows Google to auto-opt-in all authors into having their books digitized.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is really cool. I'm glad that Google is willing to go through all this hassle (court case, notice ads, etc) to digitize books. I'm sure somebody thinks they'll make money on it too, but even if it's a giant cash cow, it's also a giant win for culture.</comment>


Panic buying, lockdowns may drive world food inflation – FAO, analysts - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-food-security/panic-buying-lockdowns-may-drive-world-food-inflation-fao-analysts-idUSKBN21808G <comment><USER2> Hmmm. If only there was a way to incentivize food producers to produce more food while disincentivizing consumers from buying too much food. Something like what economists refer to as a "price", that can be raised during shortages in order to bring the markets to equilibrium.

But enough about economic theory. Let's continue to wag our fingers at the hoarders and profiteers while continuing to prosecute price gougers.

<comment><USER3> There is no need for such facetious argument.

Your post is strikingly similar to a modern "let them eat cake".

What does your idea of economic theory suggest for the masses living paycheck to paycheck due to ever increasing wealth inequality as capital begets capital, facing loss of income due to the virus?

Should they be priced out of buying food so that the rich and privileged can continue to do as they please?

<comment><USER4> Some supermarkets in Scandinavia have come up with the perfect solution to this. They implemented "anti-sales" on their POS systems, where each additional item from the same line gets more expensive, disincentivizing hoarders.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't this also mean people need to go to the grocery store more often? Surely this is not safe.

<comment><USER4> Not safe from what?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ITunes 8 First Impressions: Pretty, Good - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2008/09/09/itunes-8-first-impressions-pretty-good/

<comment><USER2> I fear change, and thus hate it.

These settings make it feel more like iTunes 7: <http://blog.jacobbijani.com/post/49475624>

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the look of the new visualizer.</comment>


Nexus 4 available again - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_4_8gb&feature=microsite

<comment><USER2> I'd be more interested in some replacement backs. Mine got a crack before I had even had the phone for 2 weeks. Gorilla Glass? OK! >_></comment>


Billionaire wants Michigan to reject free bridge to Canada & use his bridge - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/23/greedy-u-s-billionaire-urges-michigan-voters-to-reject-free-bridge-to-canada/

<comment><USER2> I live in Windsor, so it's pretty cool to see this make HN. I don't know what will happen if they do strike this down, because we've already been working __heavily __on the infrastructure for this for a year.

The fact that a single person is allowed to own an international crossing is laughable. I know they probably can't take it away from him, but that it happened in the first place is a joke. I hope that this never happens again.

Edit: especially an international crossing that accounts for 25% of US-CAD trade.

<comment><USER3> > The fact that a single person is allowed to own an international crossing is > laughable. I know they probably can't take it away from him, but that it > happened in the first place is a joke. I hope that this never happens again.

Why laughable? If the owner of the bridge does not provide good enough value and operational efficiency, then competing bridges will be received with favor instead of skepticism. If the government owns the bridge/infrastructure and does not provide acceptable value or efficiencies, it would likely be even harder to create an alternative.

<comment><USER4> If I owned the only bridge in town, I'd be giving lots of money to the people that had the power to authorize new bridges; they may even be personal friends or current employees of mine (who better to call the shots on the bridge than someone who has already built one).

I'd also sign near perpetuity contracts with all the shipping firms offering them lower rates for exclusivity of my bridge.

I'd push for tougher building and environmental standards so that any would-be competitor would have a larger barrier to entry and have to go through a longer approval and vetting process than I ever did.

My bridge would be the one with the proximity of gas stations, factories and major roads simply because it was there first.

Other bridges then wouldn't be built not because I'm offering a better service, not because the patrons are charged fair tolls, and not because the roads are clean and well maintained.

No. Other bridges wouldn't be built because my friends wouldn't approve them; they would be further away from the major roads, they would have to go out and pitch to each shipping client, and face a substantially higher cost of constructions. Additionally, they would have to deal with the arguments "We already have a bridge" and all the NIMBY lawsuits that comes with it. Hell, I'd even pay for their lawyers.

I'd focus on maximizing profit and making sure I remain the only game in town.

When someone has the capital and motivation to effectively stop the competition from ever forming it's in their interest to do everything they can to pre-emptively do so from the start.

Heck, it's probably even outlined in the initial business proposal given that addressing potential competition is such standard practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Canada's not only paying for Michigan's $550 Million share, but also financing them and collecting back via tolls. The bridge will connect directly into motorways (the current bridge dumps you downtown) check out <http://www.economist.com/node/21563756>

</comment><comment><USER6> So, this is the first I've heard of this. Are there any interesting economic details as to why the Canadians are willing to pay for the whole thing?

Growing up in Hamilton, having family in Windsor, and frequently visiting the Detroit area, it was clear that the U.S. bound truck traffic heading over the Ambassador produced totally insane backups. (Similar backups regularly exist for the Blue Water Bridge a little further north in Sarnia.)

<comment><USER7> The Canadian auto industry (as well as the American one) feels that the friction caused by the current congestion is slowing down their industry enough that it's worthwhile, even to pay for it in full. The gov't feels the same way. At this point, parts make many crossings as they're built into finished cars - the industry in Ontario and Michigan is completely intertwined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A common question for anarchists (people who argue that government is unnecessary) is "Who will pay for the roads?" Here we have an entrepreneur who has paid for a bridge, and the government is trying to compete with him. Government should not be in competition with business because it's based on coercion and it's inefficient. Coercion should be used only as a last resort.

<comment><USER9> Because when billionaires own everything they won't be able to coerce us? Government is the ONLY entity capable of checking the power of the private oligarchs who control the majority of the world's wealth.

Do anarchists have a solution for the straightforward fact that "free markets" lead to massive concentration of power in the hands of a few unaccountable billionaires?

<comment><USER10> The wealthy seem to extert power by buying off governments. Reduce the power of gevernment and there'll be less for the wealthy to buy.

<comment><USER11> "Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man."

<comment><USER9> The economic ignorance on display at Hacker News is pretty solid evidence for the necessity of liberal educations to maintain a civilized society. There are now entire generations of engineers who never read any philosophy, economics, or history, yet believe themselves to be experts on questions addressed by these fields. It's astounding how smart people can be so stupid when they are denied a liberal education.

Anyone who considers himself educated should be able to instantly spot the author of that quote. How many HN readers, aside from pg, could do that? It's not okay that this kind of ignorance is now considered acceptable among the "educated" and wealthy classes.

<comment><USER12> Religion major, music and philosophy minors, so yes, I instantly recognized it as well as it's philosophical context. We are here on HN too.

<comment><USER9> I'm here too. I know that we exist.

But Peter Thiel's entrepreneur/libertarian monoculture is expanding. These culture killers are celebrating the death of the liberal arts. It used to be that entrepreneur billionaires funded the arts, now they are actively seeking to dismantle them out of some kind of resentment. Things are looking bleak for the open, civil society.

Mark Zuckerberg called for the end of privacy in his book. Our society is putting sophomoric man-children in charge of the cultural landscape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why on Earth was "greedy" in quotes in the title?

<comment><USER14> Could be a selective grab of one of Mr. Norton's quotes in the article:

 _"The Morouns are greedy. They are manipulative. They are cynical."_</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What operations of your Engineering/IT department do you audit? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Information Security is obviously an important area to audit.</comment>


Teardown of USB Fan Reveals Journalists' Lack of Opsec - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2018/07/11/teardown-of-usb-fan-reveals-journalists-lack-of-opsec/ <comment><USER2> Title: TEARDOWN OF USB FAN REVEALS JOURNALISTS' LACK OF OPSEC

Content: "The real story here is that accomplished journalists would be grateful for a random USB device given to them by a foreign government. There is every indication this journalist actually plugged this USB fan into his computer. But even if he went the safe route and opted to use a USB battery or a cable with data lines disconnected to protect against malware, I'm sure others didn't take precautions. Out of 2500 journalists at the Singapore summit, some unquestionably plugged this threat into their computer."

Question: What is the indication that the journalist actually plugged this USB fan into his computer?

Reality: there is no evidence of any journalist plugging in the USB fan.

Conclusion: YAZWPSRAAS (yet another zer0cool wannabe posting self-righteous articles about security)

<comment><USER3> Exactly - the photo shows the fan _in the plastic bag_ , the evidence is it was not used!

Also, " _The journalist who started this whole mess by posting the image of the USB fan drive on Twitter_ " how is posting the image on Twitter starting a mess?

This is a bad article with a blatant disregard for fact, and I've flagged it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a strange headline... the _teardown_ apparently didn't "reveal" anything unexpected at all.

"Lack of opsec" is still all fine and good as a comment about this story, but this article is implying (really, more than implying) that they actually found something hidden in the fan.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Based on the headline I was expecting the journalist had inadvertently revealed some data about which they weren't intending to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A physical switch on all ports that are sometimes used for power-only, disconnecting data lines, would be worthwhile for many people.

Or just train people to use power banks for USB-powered accessories instead of their computers.

<comment><USER7> There are cables and adapters that don't have the data lines connected, they are sometimes called USB condoms.

<comment><USER8> I would expect them to be made of clear plastic for easy visual confirmation

<comment><USER9> That just makes me want to design a fake USB condom that looks legit. Maybe modulating the data over the power cables using ICs implanted in the connector...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess the downside of having "one port" for power/ stoarage and peripherals, is that you really can't know what's going to happen when you plug a device in.

It's almost like you want a dialog box approving what the usb device can do. But nobody really wants that.

Convenience over security.

<comment><USER11> Android already does this. When you plug in you get a notification with options for \- Charging only (with direction selection if your phone supports it) \- USB media protocol \- USB flash storage

<comment><USER12> That's assuming the software can't be exploited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Alternative headline: Teardown of USB fan reveals systems were engineered without taking into account the need for user-friendly security

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Can't have opsec if you don't know "op"(how a system operates and is meant to be operated) or or "sec".

</comment><comment><USER14> Teardown of article on USB Fan teardown reveals lack of teardown

</comment><comment><USER15> Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17459041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17459041).

</comment><comment><USER16> Is OPSEC covered in modern journalism degrees?</comment>


Poof.js - Professional Object-Oriented Framework for JavaScript and Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.poofjs.org

<comment><USER2> This looks very interesting. I can see it allowing developers familiar with C-style languages to start hacking away at JavaScript without first having to learn prototype-based programming.

Are there any examples of applications built with POOF.js?

</comment><comment><USER3> The dollar signs are hideous. Change class$ to Class. Don't be an amateur when it comes to reserved words, even my doge knows about case sensitivity.

<comment><USER4> +1 for this :)

<comment><USER3> Sorry for the overly harsh comment. I was busy and didn't get a chance to look at it in depth, but the reserved keywords hack was the first thing that caught my eye.

Now that I've overviewed the framework, it's actually pretty nice. I'm a big fan of the way you've bolstered privates and constants with runtime checks in there. Pretty sweet :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1 question: why?

Not trying to be a dick, just honestly curious.

<comment><USER4> I have been working on a larger nodejs project for past two months. I can say I have experience with web based JS and with OOP in other languages but this was my (our) first encounter with JS being used in a team environment where you needed to distribute the work among programmers. This is near to impossible without specifying interfaces. And for good code readability you need to separate public and private insides of your modules/classes too.

While we were starting the project we found ourselves trying to emulate class behaviour, inheritance, singleton patters etc. because it was natural for us and pretty much desired for that kind of project. There are many ways how to imitate such behaviour in JS but each and every one of them lacks some kind of a feature such as multiple inheritance or interface implementation to which you are accustomed to in modern OOP languages like C# for instance. We had a lot of trouble with prototypes and I think we never accomplished getting to a OOP pattern on 100%.

I am very excited about Poof because it gives me a lot of hope and I am quite sure we will invest in researching spoof (I just found out about it through HN). If it proves OK after several tests and delivers its all promises such as speed, I am quite sure we will be rewriting whole project under spoof style.

Of course that if you are using JS only in front-end web environment, there is no need for such a thing, but a framework like this is a big helper in a project like the one we are dealing with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> is it childish that i giggled at the name?</comment>


Ask HN: Organization of Layered Software? - <AUTHOR> A while back I found a couple of great articles here about changing the way software is layered, such that your code was less coupled; to do with the way operations were propagated through.
I'm trying to find this and my usual google skills are failing me.
There was a very good article that gave an example of some operations that went through the normal layers of UI, business, persistence (as I remember it) but was modified so that the layers were oriented differently and I think that meant functionality could be composed in a better way.
Can anyone help?
edit: just remembered - in the article I read it showed a diagram of the layers but with operations in a kind of tree and leaf way, and showing how this was modified, and the advantages of re-organizing in this way.  I think the article may have been something to do with functional core/imperative shell but I'm not 100%. <comment><USER2> This isn't an article but reading your post reminds me of the presentation by Gary Bernhardt titled "Boundaries", [https://youtu.be/yTkzNHF6rMs](https://youtu.be/yTkzNHF6rMs)

I would be interested in looking at the article(s) if you can find them again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, yes the area I think is relevant to Gary Bernhardt's presentations. Thanks for the link.

If I find the article I will reply again to your message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds vaguely related to domain driven design</comment>


How Often Did You Study In College? Does It Matter? - <AUTHOR> http://www.flatplanetmedia.com/how-often-did-you-study-in-college.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Most CS types that I talk to suggest that they didn't really need to study all that much in school as many of their CS classes didn't even have tests...more like projects. But overall...what was your level of studying while at college?</comment>


IMF: "Technology is chipping away the share of income that goes to workers" - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/1374/technology-automation-takes-income-from-poor-and-gives-to-rich-imf?utm_source=NL <comment><USER2> "The gains from technology instead are accruing to the already rich."

There's so much rent-seeking from network effects and lock-in, after decades of monopoly laws not being applied, that the profits from automation are largely being vacuumed up by the rent-seekers as the government accepts political donations and looks the other way. This isn't something essential to automation, it's how we choose to do it - through self-appointed monopolies that aren't expected to obey laws.</comment>


Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/driverless-hype-collides-with-merciless-reality-1536831005 <comment><USER2> Driverless cars are coming along just fine. Waymo is making steady progress. The sensors are getting better. The problem comes from all those "fake it til you make it" startups, Uber and Tesla being the worst. Both have killed people.

This is mostly about sensors and geometry. Machine learning has a role, but only in target identification. That's how Waymo does it. The fake it til you make it crowd had the fantasy that you just hook up some cameras to a machine learning system, train it, and you have self driving. Doesn't work. Machine learning is way too dumb.

You can maybe identify "traffic light", "car", "pedestrian", and "deer" with machine learning. That's just used to guess what they're going to do next. It's not used to decide if they're an obstacle. Obstacle detection and avoidance is all sensors and geometry.

Also, "self driving car", "electric car", and "transportation as a service" are all independent. All will be available, but not from the same companies.

<comment><USER3> Hasn't Tesla autopilot saved more lives than it took? So it's more net beneficial (so far) than cautious Waymo?

<comment> semi-extrinsic How could it do that? The safety statistics quoted by Tesla is "fatalities per mile of Autopilot-enabled vehicle", compared to "fatalities per mile for the average car on the road". It's by no means an accurate comparison, in fact they're inflating their relative safety versus other cars by more than an order of magnitude.

<comment><USER4> Tangential to your point, do you think it's fair to compare AI driven cars to "average" drivers? I think it's more reasonable to compare them to "average [worst_category_of_driver]." For example, how does the Tesla car compare to teen drivers? If it's better than a meaningfully sized category of human drivers, it's probably ready for the road. Being on the real road is where the best data will be collected.

<comment><USER5> only if you are exclusively giving the Teslas to that smaller, worse, category of driver

<comment><USER4> The point is that we allow teen drivers on the road with the expectation and understanding that they will improve over several years. Why would we not expect to have to make the same concession for AI?

<comment><USER6> Because they are companies that sell a product to consumers, who expect that this will keep them safe on the road. We need to hold them to a much higher standard than a teenager.

<comment><USER4> I feel like this position is too risk averse. Fear of a few hundred AI driver deaths will result in hundreds of thousands more human driver deaths.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest."

I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more cities like Seattle with its rail expansion and fewer New York City where the infrastructure is finally getting money so it doesn't fall apart.

There are already so many tax breaks going into driverless companies. If Alphabet or Here want to do this on their own, go for it; but governments around the world should stop giving tax breaks and municipal incentives for this technology.

I can see it being more useful in Europe, where so much of the country is connected and it'd help sold the last leg problem. But in most of America we need to get back to the point where cars are no longer a necessity, not just for those who can afford to live in the city, but all the people who are barely making it who's lives fall apart if something on their car breaks.

<comment><USER8> > But in most of America we need to get back to the point where cars are no > longer a necessity

While I completely agree with you, the cultural barriers to this are petty much a non-starter in much of the country. I love not owning a car and being able to rely on mass transit where I live (Austin, TX), but Texas is so culturally opposed to anything like this.

A lot of people think that mass transit is for the poor, and the car represents independence and freedom. Go where you want, when you want (but you're gonna be bumper-to-bumper most of the way there.)

I hate that mentality, but driverless cars represent the "have your cake and eat it too" solution. It more closely aligns with the culture of driving here in the US, while also claiming numerous commercial and infrastructure benefits.

<comment><USER9> >A lot of people think that mass transit is for the poor

That's because it is. I had to take the metro in Montréal to get to work this week, hadn't taken it in months because I usually bike, it's such a shitty experience. It smells bad, it's hot, it's filled with tired people that don't feel like going to work (you feel it in the air), beggars harass you, it's slow (it can take 3x as much time as riding a bike to get where you want to) and it's operating past maximum capacity during rush hour. I haven't even gotten started on when service is interrupted and you show up over an hour late to work or class. Anybody who can afford a bit more for reliability and comfort will spend it without looking back.

<comment><USER10> I can't speak for Montreal, but there are countless counterexamples of cities in wealthy countries (not as wealthy as the US) where metro users are drawn from more or less every income level. Turns out you can actually make riding a metro into a good experience with a bit of effort.

New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Taipei, London, Berlin, Munich come immediately to mind.

And as sibling commenters have pointed out, in some places even smaller cities and towns have excellent public transit networks that pretty much everyone uses (maybe not always, but when convenient). Freiburg, Germany is one example I've seen.

<comment><USER11> Taipei... yes, absolutely. That was a great experience and easy to use.

NYC... altright, better than 15 years ago but still not great at all. Not as good as Germany or DC.

Tokyo... lol, no! While clean and efficient, it's a joke that you have different rail stations owned by different companies, different cards that may work on each other but probably not. The ticket machines are almost all cash only. And instructions in other languages might have well used Google translate. Tokyo was one of the more difficult public transport systems I've used and I've been around the world a bit.

<comment><USER12> _Not as good as Germany or DC._

Did you just claim DC public transit is good? Wow. Coherent bus lines are few and far between. Light rail is non-existent. And the Metro is falling apart at the seems... Prone to excessive delays. Entire lines are brought down for extended periods to perform decades of deferred maintenance. There's no ring routes - to get from Dulles to Rockville, you have to go all the way downtown and back out again. The system was built without consideration for express lines. And neither of the DC airports are on the same line as Union Station.

<comment><USER13> A ring route from Bethesda to Largo is under construction and it's called the Purple Line. Metrorail could be better and has it's own shortcomings but it is one of the best in the US and far from nonexistent.

<comment><USER12> I said light rail (trams, streetcars) is non-existent. There is a test line in South DC, but nothing that's actually useful for commuting or getting across the city.

My wife tried to use Metro for her Reston->downtown commute. It was a disaster - rail delays made it completely untenable. Then she tried the bus. It was more consistent, but overcrowded. She ended up driving 4/5 days because it was faster, cheaper, and more consistent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This assessment of the state of play is very uneven. For example, the assertion made by Meredith Broussard quoted in the article "It's also not true that we must transition to self-driving cars because human-piloted ones are so lethal" is a truism. The article goes on to say "Countless innovations have made cars radically safer since the 1950s and continue to do so."

Yet vehicles remain as lethal as dread diseases, mostly down to the humans piloting them. Just cutting that number of deaths and injuries significantly would be a boon similar to eradicating malaria.

I expect the flourishing of autonomous vehicles to be sudden and unanticipated. Just as you can't tell unless you are looking for the decals or attuned to why back seats are suddenly more populated you might miss the fact there are two million ride share drivers in the US now. One day we will realize the wait for a bus is much shorter because busses are right-sized and more frequent and can surge where they are needed because drivers aren't a bottleneck and routes are dynamic.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Our love affair with self-driving cars is a form of 'techno-chauvinism,' Prof. Broussard says. 'It's the idea that technology is always the highest and best solution, and is superior to the people-based solution.'"

<comment><USER16> We like the idea of technological solutions that don't require us to change our lifestyle or make hard choices. Driverless cars are appealing because they would allow us to largely maintain the status quo (as opposed to, say, reorienting toward public transportation). It's like an obese person who says, "I don't want to eat healthy and exercise. Why can't scientists just invent low-calorie versions of the food I like?"

<comment><USER17> Really? I don't like to fetch water from a lake every day to my house. Instead of using technology to bring water to my house, what lifestyle changes or hard choices should I rather make?

<comment><USER18> The great invention for dealing with this is a public utility that provides water to everyone. A mass transit system for water.

<comment><USER19> But why not a fully-autonomous robot that employs machine learning to detect nearby lakes and streams that can hand-deliver the water?

<comment><USER17> Tuche!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think Musk notwithstanding, folks who are actually developing ADAS technologies are not* really touting driverless capabilities – that's the ultimate goal but the genuine projects today are focused on HD mapping and image recognition from cameras to overcome the LiDAR price hurdle.

OEMs are very interested in startups working on those specific issues, but for various reasons these incremental steps aren't as widely reported so all we get left is the hype that self driving cars "are here" and things like Tesla Autopilot

</comment><comment><USER21> The argument that autonomous tech will save lives is the most dangerous. This will take decades to be true.

The same companies who are pushing for that narrative, are also the first ones to blame the drivers when their tech goes wrong.

There's so much data fudging to push for those narratives — they want the credit for lives saved, and at the same time don't want the blame or liability for accidents caused.

<comment><USER22> Or maybe we hold driverless cars up to an unfair standard. Today, 3000 people die in the US every single day because of car accidents. Many, many more are injured or disabled.

Why would we expect driverless cars to reduce that to 0? Shouldn't it be good enough if they reduce it to 50%? 25%?

<comment><USER23> > Today, 3000 people die in the US every single day because of car accidents

Whoa... that's over 1 million people annually... you probably mean globally?

Depending on the year, it's somewhere between 30,000 - 40,000 annually[1][2][3], or in the worst-case, about 109 people daily in the US.

When you examine those numbers further, you'll see about 10,000-18,000 (depending on the year) are sadly still alcohol related[4]. We can and should fix this first and foremost.

With over 3.1 Trillion miles driven annually in the US, that's about 0.001 fatalities per 100,000 miles driven, or about 1 fatality per 80,000,000 miles driven. Driving is pretty safe - although I agree we can make it safer.

[1] [https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/usdot- releases-2016-fat...](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/usdot- releases-2016-fatal-traffic-crash-data)

[2] [https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle- safety/index.ht...](https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle- safety/index.html)

[3] [https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general- statistics/fatali...](https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general- statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview)

[4] [https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impa...](https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired- drv_factsheet.html)

[5] [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2017/02/21/516512439...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2017/02/21/516512439/record-number-of-miles-driven-in-u-s-last-year)

<comment><USER24> Hey, you know what would fix the drunk driving problem?

Autonomous cars.

<comment><USER25> Cars don't cause drunk driving.

Drunk drivers cause drunk driving.

<comment><USER26> Yeah but you can make all the PSAs and laws you like and some people will still drink and drive.

That's not a concern with a robot car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> [https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/driverless-hype-collides- wi...](https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/driverless-hype-collides-with- merciless-reality-1536831005)

<comment><USER27> That doesn't work for me but [http://archive.is/xKX1T](http://archive.is/xKX1T) does.

<comment><USER20> Thanks. fullwsj.com links you to a facebook redirect which is not paywalled, so YMMV depending on your treatment of facebook

<comment><USER27> The Facebook redirect takes me to the WSJ article, still paywalled.

<comment><USER28> Works fine for me

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Driverless vehicles are "the new fusion power". Always "about 10 years in the future".

>Driverless cars are coming along just fine.

Even if this were true it doesn't mean humans will be fine with them being deployed. We had working driverless trains 20+ years ago yet almost none are deployed today (AND we have plenty of human-caused fatal train crashes that might be a good reason to want driverless trains).

<comment><USER30> There are plenty of driverless trains deployed all over the world: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> While I am still waiting for my Tesla Model 3 SR, I browse the Tesla forums and find it amusing (or maybe just sad) that Tesla is charging $5000+ for Full Self Driving (FSD). Owners are paying for the future possibility that the car will be "conducting trips with no action required by the person in the driver's seat" [per Tesla Model 3 ordering page].

I think some Tesla owners are even expecting that their car will go self work for Uber over night, generating the user income. Other customers seem to be paying the fee, yet they are just leasing their car. Will these leasees ever see any significant FSD features?

This article gets it right that self-driving is way, way off. It will be interesting to see what and when Telsa delivers to its customers who prepaid for FSD. I think Tesla already settled a lawsuit with some owners over self- driving fees and associated delays.

<comment><USER6> Ha! I can just see the teenagers blocking the car, covering cameras with paint, and leaving an empty Tesla in the middle of a busy intersection for the cops to deal with. Pranks for the future generations are going to be really interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think it's important to distinguish between a self driving car that can work in every scenario, and a self driving car that can take over part of the time. Personally, if someone could make a car that was extremely good at highway driving so it could sit in traffic for me and drive on the highway (basically if Tesla autopilot actually worked and was 99.9999% safe) that would be AMAZING. that's good enough for me. I don't need a car that can self drive in the snow.

</comment><comment><USER33> The people who argue that driverless cars can't match humans have a real double standard going. They talk about all the conditions like snow and edge cases that driverless cars can't handle now.

But they have nothing to say about all the real conditions that everyday make human-driven cars unsafe, like lack of sleep, alcohol or illegal drugs, youthful showing off, road rage, texting, arguing with a passenger, old age, poor vision, and so on.

Remember, the problem is not to make driverless cars perfect, it is to make them as good as humans, and that is much easier.

Also, let's remember, the transition to driverless cars will not come all at once, with all vehicles handling all conditions. Instead we will gets lot of partial, easier cases, like a truck that drives only along a well-mapped route, or people using it only when weather conditions are reasonably good, and so on. As the AI and sensors improve, new uses will be added, until eventually we get it to be universal, or nearly so.

And finally there is the likelihood of infrastructure improvements to make it easier.

So want we are going to have is not suddenly one day driverless cars take over, rather a gradual increase in their use.

</comment><comment><USER34> Generalized self driving cars seems like such a hard problem, laced with a huge amount of hard to handle edge cases and a huge amount of hard to enumerate possible scenarios.

I think it will still happen, but they need to simplify the problem. The way to simplify it is to create automated driving lanes, similar to the current HOV lanes, that have standardized markers that are easy for computers to read, and then eventually extend it to automated driving routes.

That will take some amount of buy-in by the government to install, but I have faith in our well paid lobbyists.

<comment><USER35> Afaik, highways in non-severe weather are already pretty much solved, so I'm not sure that special lanes would make much difference, except perhaps during snow storms.

The edge cases seem to be mostly around city driving, rural back roads, and bad weather.

<comment><USER34> > highways in non-severe weather are already pretty much solved

And yet all the automated driving driver fatalities have been on the highway, with the Mountain View crash in particular having been caused by weathered / confusing road markings.

I wouldn't consider that solved at all.

But to the larger point, self driving lanes would only be a first step. Eventually it would develop into a standard set of markings and signage for automated driving friendly roads so that you could safely have self driving cars in things like snow storms.

There's no need to limit it to highways only, although there I think there is some benefit in the near term to segregating automated driving cars from human driving ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Automotive industries never had problems with attracting taxpayer's money. Graduating the car from break-clutch-engine machine to airliner level of complexity vehicle is a perfect money sink.

<comment><USER37> > Automotive industries never had problems with attracting taxpayer's money.

I wasn't aware that the government is funding self driving car development. Do you have a source?

<comment><USER38> In the 00s driverless car tech was heavily incubated by DARPA, a branch of the US DOD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm still skeptical that this will happen anytime soon outside of selected small zones. I may be wrong, but I feel like the US or wherever these get deployed need a major infrastructure update to be better or more consistent. Even with the most advanced automated driving system imaginable you will still have poor and inconsistent infrastructure everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think we underestimate how amazingly versatile even an 85 year old grandmother's brain truly is.

I am certain AVs will work EVENTUALLY. And that will radically change the economy.

But robotic killing machines will be working long before that happens. And you can bet somebody is working on that.

Maybe we're focusing on the wrong things.

</comment><comment><USER41> Anyone joined and then left an SDC company because they thought the product was too far away?

</comment><comment><USER42> Seems like a good interim solution is to build infrastructure for designated "driverless" lanes. I assume there's a good reason why this isn't being pursued though?

</comment><comment><USER43> [https://outline.com/Psn6Px](https://outline.com/Psn6Px)

</comment><comment><USER44> Totally unrelated to the article's content but is _Refactor_ now part of common english?

<comment><USER45> If you factored algebraic expressions in high school, and you agree that the "re" prefix generally can be added to a verb, then it's already part of your lexicon.

The process of code refactoring, especially extracting common code into a method, is very similar to the process of simplifying algebraic expressions. So it's not just a grammar argument; the two words really do represent related concepts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The web link to google often doesn't work to find the non paywall version anymore. I'd be happier having a setting in my HN profile that ghosted these publications.

</comment><comment> ur-whale Paywalled.

[http://archive.is/xKX1T](http://archive.is/xKX1T)

</comment><comment><USER47> I can't read this paywall article, but here are some similar counterpoints to hype, starting in 2016. They are from people actually working on self-driving technology or executives/investors close to it. (I'm interested in any earlier "expectation setting", having heard a lot of this at Google.)

March 2016:

Chris Urmson: _How quickly can we get this into people 's hands? If you read the papers, you see maybe it's three years, maybe it's thirty years. And I am here to tell you that honestly, it's a bit of both._

[https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/sel...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/self-driving/google-selfdriving-car-will-be-ready-soon- for-some-in-decades-for-others)

[https://mondaynote.com/autonomous-cars-the- level-5-fallacy-2...](https://mondaynote.com/autonomous-cars-the- level-5-fallacy-247ae9614e14)

\----

April 2017:

 _It will be 25 years before self-driving cars take off in America, says early Uber investor Bill Gurley_

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06/bill-gurley-uber-investor- se...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06/bill-gurley-uber-investor-self-driving- cars-25-years-away-in-us.html)

\----

October 2017:

[https://medium.com/self-driven/a-decade-after-darpa-our- view...](https://medium.com/self-driven/a-decade-after-darpa-our-view-on-the- state-of-the-art-in-self-driving-cars-3e8698e6afe8)

 _Those who think fully self-driving vehicles will be ubiquitous on city streets months from now or even in a few years are not well connected to the state of the art or committed to the safe deployment of the technology. For those of us who have been working on the technology for a long time, we're going to tell you the issue is still really hard, as the systems are as complex as ever._

</comment><comment><USER48> I wish cities would create zones specifically designed around facilitating autonomous car operation. For example, there's zero reason to allow random private cars in Manhattan south of 96th street. In a small, dense area like this, it should be possible to optimize around the limits of current autonomous car software.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think the car manufacturers will, in the end, win out with the continued, steady progress of smarter and more capable driver assistance systems. Cruise control gave way to super cruise with lane keeping, warnings when your back bumper was approaching something gave way to features that stop the car for you before you hit something.

Eventually, the car will be less dependent on the human's attention, as the safety features will make the human's attention less important (while not telling the human their attention is less important), until it's good enough to take over for the human.

I think a lot of the issue is that dream and expectation that "hey, I can just watch a movie, I don't really need to pay attention" is crazy, and will continue to be for many years to come. We need to stop marketing that future.

</comment><comment><USER50> I was just having this discussion last night as it happens. We sat at an impasse as everyone was quite inebriated and didn't have any real empirical evidence to back any of our claims up. I was rather curious if the rate of deaths caused by human drivers would continue to dwarf those caused by edge cases of deployed self-driving cars if we scaled up the number of self-driving vehicles.

Presently human drivers cause an awful number of deaths with cars. However even despite the edge cases of machine learning, which can be adapted for relatively quickly, would drunk drivers still kill more people every year even if we replaced all of the cars with robot ones? We've been trying for decades to minimize the damage caused by drunk drivers but policies don't seem to have much of an effect. Compared to the massive amount of data we could collect from robot cars in order to optimize them and adapt them... it seems like we'd be faster at making them safer than preventing humans from making poor decisions.

I think in the case of piloting a slow-moving bullet around crowds of humans... I'd trust technology more in this case. It did wonders for the aviation industry and while cars are more complicated to pilot in many cases I don't see how we can make current human-piloted cars safer vs. optimizing robot piloted cars. We've been trying the former for decades with diminishing success.

<comment><USER51> > didn't have any real empirical evidence to back any of our claims up.

NHTSA publishes the FARS every year. It is their database of every known roadway fatality in the United States. It's free to the public. It's well worth study. Here's an example: Texas has more fatalities than California. Not per-capita, but in total. California has 10m more people living there than Texas. This is not a uniform problem.

> Presently human drivers cause an awful number of deaths with cars.

Yes, a majority of accidents only involve a single vehicle. It is often the case that a driver exceeds their ability or roadway conditions and kills only themselves.

> would drunk drivers still kill more people every year even if we replaced > all of the cars with robot ones?

Replaced them with cars that have no manual control option. Given everything we've learned about automation, this is a bad idea given our current infrastructure. So, it's highly unlikely that they will have much of an impact for this group.

> it seems like we'd be faster at making them safer than preventing humans > from making poor decisions.

This ignores the nearly 100 years of saftey history that we already have. We have already reduced roadway fatalities by a staggering amount and have created a regulatory framework that has successfully created higher saftey margins for all drivers.

We already drive Trillions of miles every year in the US and we only have 36k fatalities. Further: 6k of those are pedestrians and 8k of those are motorcycles. 7k are young men under 24 and 7k were drivers under the influence. There are not a lot of "easy gains" left out there where it's obvious that self-driving cars will have a major impact.

> I think in the case of piloting a slow-moving bullet around crowds of humans

Which is one thing. However, we're talking about piloting thousands of slow- moving bullets around crowds of humans _and_ each-other. There will not be a single manufacturer of technology, nor will there be a single auto-pilot system.

Plus we haven't experienced any automation failures yet that have caused us to establish best-practices around this system. For example, should the autonomous system have full 100% authority over the cars controls? It may be useful in an accident that the car can use full authority to avoid an accident. It may be disastrous in a situation where the car has bad data from it's sensors. So, should we limit control authority to reduce the opportunity for failure here and also leave some margins for a human to override the machine? Will drivers actually understand the complicated and subtle difference?

What happens when we need to roll out regulatory changes to autopilot functions? Do we do that all at once? How do we force drivers to do these updates? How do we keep drivers safe now that we've changed a major operational mode of their vehicle? We expect airline pilots to engage in simulations and continual training to ensure that they are on top of these changes, what are we going to do in vehicles?

> It did wonders for the aviation industry

It wasn't without it's own set of challenges[0]. Upshot of the video is, switching to a lower level of automation is now recommended practice in many situations because it's actually safer.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Popular skills for stable remote work 4h a day? - <AUTHOR> Can someone advice what skills and exact technologies are the most popular among employers giving part time remote jobs in Europe?
I will be able to work up to 4 hours a day and willing to learn new technologies and skills. I have broad background in IT, basic experience in programming, network and system administration, general computer science knowledge.
I don't want to learn specific language, technology or skills just for one job. I need advice what programming technologies or skills are best for having stable remote job for part time and also possibility to change if needed (for now I will not be able to have full time remote job).
I'm interested in jobs requiring technical skills but also open to more soft skills based types.
Thanks in advance for the answers <comment><USER2> Focus primarily on the "soft skill" of selling yourself, whether you see that as a job interview process or more like selling consulting work.</comment>


MIT Intro to CS Course: 20 Videos and Free Textbook (and Intro to Lisp) - <AUTHOR> http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/ <comment><USER2> FYI: Most or all of these are available for easy streaming on Google Video with the tag "sicp". Not all of you have vdsl to download a gigabyte file in 5 minutes with :-)

<http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=label%3Asicp>

</comment><comment><USER3> I've just started going through this course, and I found that in addition to the video lectures and book there is a tutorial on the MIT OCW website:

OCW website: <http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer- Science/6-001Spring-2005/CourseHome/index.htm>

Tutorial: <http://icampus.mit.edu/xTutor/content/?more6001>

The tutorial provides sample problems and will grade them on-line to give you instant feedback. They also give an estimate for when the assignments should be due, which is helpful if you're attempting to go through the material as if you were taking the class.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> DISCLAIMER: THE VIDEOS WILL TAKE TIME AWAY FROM CREATING SOMETHING PEOPLE WANT.

This is something I would have found very interesting when I was 17 years old, but I decided I am not going to let a 20 hour long video Introduction to CS course, no matter how free, keep me from programming my startups, not even if it's from MIT. Plus it'll still be around for me to watch it in another 22 years.

I've tried leaving it running in the background so I could listen to the audio, but it's just so distracting and the presentation is so interesting, that I had to leave the room before I could decide to come back, close it, and write this. :)

It was kind of like the video course "Physics for Presidents" from Berkley. Although it's very interesting, and the professors are so very smart, I had to shut it down because it's a time sink.

<comment><USER4> Disclaimer! Eating will take time away from creating something people want!

I think if the value you gain from doing something outweighs the opportunity cost paid for not working on your startup, you ought to go ahead and do that thing. Whether these videos are worth your time is your opinion. But they are excellent resources, and others might find them worthwhile.

<comment><USER5> I think if the value you gain from doing something outweighs the opportunity cost paid for not working on your startup, you ought to go ahead and do that thing.

Quite true. Ive been going through the videos, an SICP (albeit slowly). Yes, I sometimes feel that I could be writing production code instead of getting an education. I believe, though, that having some additional insights on software development will pay off quite well in the future.

Plus it's fun. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I respectfully disagree, because the video is something one can watch at any time, but releasing a web service to the public is something that should be done as soon as possible.

But you made me reconsider. I guess I can probably put it on my phone and watch it at the gym when I'm doing some stretches or warming up!

I'm glad you enjoyed my link, and I hope I have some time to watch more of it myself. Thanks for your reply!

<comment><USER6> Gee, this reminds me of the time when I showed to a friend a stop motion clay animation I had painstakingly made. The man played it in fast forward. I didn't stay for his comments.

Check out the reviews at amazon.com: both PG and some Peter Norvig give you permission to read it:

[http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Programs- Engineering/dp/0262510871/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7486399-1082204?ie=UTF8&s;=books&qid;=1179281225&sr;=8-1](http://www.amazon.com/Structure- Interpretation-Computer-Programs- Engineering/dp/0262510871/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7486399-1082204?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179281225&sr=8-1)

Or yes, you can choose to postpone the important for the urgent. But for your deity of choice's sake, don't multitask at this. Whenever you think you're ready, get a paper copy and set aside some time for it every day. Kiss the cover. Open the book. Read at least one subsection and do the exercises. Close the book and kiss the cover again. Candles optional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a great course. BTW, MIT recently decided to retire 6.001 course. :( :(

<comment><USER8> There is always cs426, "Death Graphics" with _Funkhouser_ at Princeton ~ <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall00/cs426/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Which Lisp?

<comment><USER10> It uses MIT Scheme. There are important differences between CL and Scheme, but IMO those are much less important than their similarities as compared to non- Lisp languages.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't have to be MIT scheme. I'd recommend Dr. Scheme for ease of learning.</comment></comment></comment>


Brain Hacks: The neurons that shaped civilization - VS Ramachandran - <AUTHOR> http://fabumed.net/medicina/brainhacks/ <comment><USER2> All posts by this user are blogspam. Flag and move on, or submit it in the original content.

Check out his submissions: <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nicktarazonamd></comment>


Distributed Vs. Fault Tolerant Systems - <AUTHOR> http://stu.mp/2009/12/distributed-vs-fault-tolerant-systems.html

<comment><USER2> Stump's three criteria for a distributed system has a partial-truth in it that might confuse people (and perhaps he himself is confused.) A distributed system can work just fine if there is a master, as long as the system does not rely upon that node always remaining the master and/or has no way to elect a new master if the old master can no longer connect to a quorum of the nodes in the system. Whenever you see nodes described as the "master" this is usually a strong indicator that the system is not really a distributed system, but you have to dig a bit deeper to make sure.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Distributed systems" is not a new term. Please don't use it as though it only applies to systems designed to distribute data (ala NoSQL). Distributed computing has classically been focused on the use of network nodes for both data storage and computation. See: MPI, Linda, etc.</comment>


The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Unix Legacy (by Rob Pike) - <AUTHOR> http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/good_bad_ugly/

<comment><USER2>
      And it has some horrible mistakes: (Ugly)
        The preprocessor
        Conditional compilation

Quite disagree - this feature is what makes C programs so portable.

And yes I saw the thing about Plan 9 compiling a kernel for all arch's with no ifdefs - well they only way you can do that is by cheating and either making your own preprocessor, or a fancy makefile. So big whoop.

I read some more, but rapidly came to the conclusion that this is unreadable without the associated (verbal) commentary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Elsewhere in the plan9 writings, Rob Pike says that he structured it by putting all of the stuff that would need to be ported in one group of files (which export the same interface), conditionally compiling the relevant subset of those, and then writing everything else in terms of those. (A better packaging/namespace system could handle this much more elegantly, though.)

Also, the C preprocessor is largely ignorant of C syntax. Am I the only one who finds that incredibly strange?

<comment><USER3> What would be the advantages of a preprocessor knowing the syntax ?

<comment><AUTHOR> While it probably wouldn't be as useful as Lisp macros, due to the comparatively complex syntax, it would at least avoid bugs involving things like #define macros that evaluate their arguments multiple times.

OTOH, not having the C pp tied to C means it can be used for other stuff. The only thing I can think of offhand that uses it is the BSD calendar system, though, and that's largely just #include.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> His main point is that a strong community is a strength, but many different communities leads to too many fragmented (and incompatible) codebases and ideas.

Some counterpoints:

1\. The number of different implementations grew as the number of available computers and users grew. The number of smart people using each distro nowadays is probably still more than the total number of users of some of the original Unix implementations - the same implementations he says spawned the most good ideas.

2\. Many different distros allows for many different ideas and paradigms to be tried out. Over time, the best ideas will escape their parent communities and become adopted by all the major versions. Ideas that may never have gained traction in one massive community might find purchase in some of these splinter groups.

The fracturing of the distros was a natural and necessary step in the evolution of the nix system. Yes, Microsoft managed to assert its dominance because it presented a single unified solution, but its heyday is nearing an end. Slowly, the myriad good ideas coming from the countless nix's are again unifying into a very strong front. Mac OS X (FreeBSD Unix) and Ubuntu (Debian Linux) are two great examples of how many different ideas have coalesced into a pleasing and usable system.

Rob Pike ends his message with an injunction to the Unix users of the world to unite, to work together as opposed to walling themselves off in their own segmented communities. While I think the segmentation was beneficial and necessary, I do agree that a strong effort towards unifying the current crop of ideas into a uniform package is beneficial, if only to provide a seed for a whole new set of distros splintering off in new and unique directions.

<comment><USER5> "Over time, the best ideas will escape their parent communities and become adopted by all the major versions."

It's taking a very long time. At the current rate of transfer, Linux will take the whole 21st century to absorb the progress Plan 9 made in the 1980s.

What I hope will happen, is that Linux will focus on the traditional OS role of abstracting hardware, and become purely a hypervisor system. That would exploit its strengths: the vast collection of device drivers, and systems such as network packet munging and LVM. It would provide a sane, consistent hardware interface, that sane, consistent application interfaces such as Plan 9, Oberon, and Alan Kay's new system could easily support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. What is the best thing about Unix? A: The community. 2\. What is the worst thing about Unix? A: That there are so many communities.

Learning the insides of things is what got me into UNIX. I wanted to know how hardware and operating systems worked together. Rooted in academia and science, the community and culture drew me in, It is a problem solvers platform. You will find many a startup trying to make their dream come true by hacking together their idea in C/Linux. Microsoft may develop a great business application platform. But if you want to learn and experiment with new computer science concepts you have UNIX.

</comment><comment><USER7> I totally agree with Rob's final statement (Community = Good), (Communities = Bad). In fact, you can apply the same analogy to all sorts of other relevant real world situations. Think: politically, racially, religiously, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was looking forward to reading the comments on this after finishing reading the presentation, but there aren't any yet!

<comment><USER9> Well there are now!</comment></comment>


USB Random Number Generator  - <AUTHOR> http://jayakody2000lk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/usb-random-number-generator.html

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6469040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6469040)

<comment><USER3> Related: why does google/blogger insist on changing the domain name based on your location?

Startup idea: google but like 5 years ago :-/</comment></comment>


How America made Scandinavian social democracy possible - <AUTHOR> https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/03/30/2186656/how-america-made-scandinavian-social-democracy-possible <comment><USER2> Nice paywall. This is why I hate FT links.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, super annoying. Quick trick is to copy the URL and search for it on Google—sites like FT allow traffic that comes referred from search engines like Google.

<comment><USER2> Still a bad user experience especially when posted on HN. I know my attention span may be a tad short, but if I have to figure out a way past a paywall (no matter how little steps) or just move on to the next link, I'll usually pick the latter.</comment></comment></comment>