Harry Shearer Files $125M 'Spinal Tap' Fraud Suit, Copyright Termination - <AUTHOR> http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/harry-shearer-files-125-million-939205 <comment><USER2> I'm not a fan of people getting paid for copyrighted works decades after the work was created but in this case I think Harry has it right. He obviously is not just looking to cash in on previous revenue that, if he is correct, is owed to him; there are a couple of paragraphs at the end describing how Vivendi has done little to nothing to enforce the trademark on Spinal Tap except when the actual actors/players decided they would like to do something more with it.

It seems to me that if the original creators want to go out and try something new with their work and the company managing the licensing of said work is doing nothing to contribute than they are indeed within their rights to seize it back.

Copyright law is complicated and IANAL but my layman's reading of this is that Harry, and the rest of Spinal Tap, have a case.

<comment><USER3> > I'm not a fan of people getting paid for copyrighted works decades after the > work was created

Can you explain why exactly?

John August (screenwriter/blogger) wrote about this extensively and his argument (when it comes to the film industry) is very simple: Most writers (and by extension actors, etc.) aren't stars or even semi-famous. They get very few new projects produced and rely on residuals to provide income in between new projects. Without residuals, screenwriting would only be accessible to those who are already wealthy.

<comment><USER4> > They get very few new projects produced and rely on residuals to provide > income in between new projects

Let's take 'decades' at its minimum value - 20 years. That's plenty of time to get another project and if it's not, then it's more likely lack of talent than lack of wealth that's keeping that person out of the industry.

I agree with the GP. You shouldn't be able to rest on your laurels for decades from a single piece of work.

<comment><USER3> > You shouldn't be able to rest on your laurels for decades from a single > piece of work.

Why not? If people still like the work and are willing to pay for it? People retire after cashing out stock from a startup. Are you against this as well?

<comment><USER4> In the context of copyright, which my reply was about, it's about striking a balance between rewarding creators and progressing the arts.

In my opinion, extended copyrights like what we have now tilt the balance too far in favour of rewarding the creator, at the expense of progressing the arts.

20-30 years is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to profit exclusively from the distribution of a work. Which is not to say you can no longer profit from it afterwards, just that opening it up to the public greatly increases the potential of progressing the arts.

Not to mention, it adds incentive for creators to keep creating even after making successful art.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For what it's worth Harry Shearer has a pretty fearsome reputation in the business for being a hardass, about a year ago or so he ended up in a heated public dispute re his contract with the Simpsons, and he's had some pretty high profile feuds with collaborators over the years.

Just an interesting footnote, I'm not sure that should do anything to diminish his side in this dispute, which seems like a pretty reasonable one.

<comment><USER6> Apparently society makes progress one angry hardass at a time. When people like this on the side of justice and progress what they accomplish can be incredible.

I think we've overly taught to minimize conflict and let things like petty office politics and passive agressive attitudes rule. Its nice to see someone go full tilt against something. Even guys I disagree with like Thiel certainly have the types of skills that get results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> do anyone feel rock n roll music keeps you 'child'? i.e. keeps you in a state of arrested development?

<comment><USER2> Arrested? No. Makes me feel like a child _sometimes_? Absolutely, that's probably why I listed to it as often as I do.</comment></comment>


Uber Driver Kidnapped Her And Took Her To A Motel - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/Uber-Driver-Arrested-Kidnap-With-Sexual-Intent-Charge-261730151.html <comment><AUTHOR> If Uber really wants to take it to the next level, they have to ensure drivers feel safe from incidents like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, it's not funny. The fact that they are trying to expand further with such financing "Bloomberg reports that mutual fund giant Fidelity is competing to lead a round of financing for startup car service Uber Technologies" coupled with this incident, should impel Uber to have the right compliance measures in place, as they are scaling, to ensure all users feel safe when using the service.</comment></comment>


Lisping at JPL (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html <comment><USER2> Some good prior discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7989328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7989328)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=304736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=304736)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2212211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2212211)

Incidentally, you posted this a few months ago. Why re-re-post now? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16423237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16423237)</comment>


Participate in the 2017 Go User Survey - <AUTHOR> https://blog.golang.org/survey2017 <comment><USER2> That was an incredibly long survey, felt like a participating in a survey marathon.

If anyone from the Go team reads this, in the future please try to be more mindful of people's time and keep the surveys shorter - you'll also get better data since less people will abandon only part way through :)

<comment><USER3> Quite disagree. I was glad almost all questions where choices to tick. This went pretty fast. It's a once a year surveyand there was a small warning at the beginning, so i didn't expect it to be 3 questions anyway.</comment></comment>


FBI launches a powerful facial recognition system - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/16/technology/security/fbi-facial-recognition/ <comment><USER2> Cool, even Sony has been working on the similar technology quiet from a while. They are working on a gesture and facial recognition based security system.

Sony's gesture and expression based security system is combining different authentication methods to avert security breaches. It is combining facial recognition, voice recognition, facial expressions, gestures, and IR sensing. In short, I can say that you can login into your computer or can enter into your office by smiling in front of the camera.

You can check about it here - [http://greybmusings.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/sony-forget- pas...](http://greybmusings.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/sony-forget-passwords- and-now-smile-to-unlock-your-smartphone/)</comment>


PSA: Disable JavaScript. Meltdown/Spectre exploits are live - <AUTHOR> Meltdown is in the wild. Meltdown allows normal user programs -- from database applications to <i>JavaScript in web browsers</i> -- to discern to some extent the layout or contents of protected kernel memory areas. <comment><USER2> Anybody have a code example? The Spectre pdf also mentions JS vulnerability, anybody have a code example of that too? Perhaps it would be a good idea to create a github repo compiling a list of exploitative code found in the wild.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you elaborate where in the wild you found it?

</comment><comment><USER4> Disable JavaScript? I might as well just stop using my computer.

</comment><comment><USER5> link to the in the wild exploitation or get the fuck out. Most over-hyped bug of 2018 /smh EternalBlue was 1000x worse than this but had a more boring name.

<comment><USER6> EternalBlue was worse but easy to patch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Chrome has some more explanation about the vulnerability and how/when a patch will be rolled out.

[https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/Home/chromium- se...](https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/Home/chromium- security/ssca)

</comment><comment><USER8> > to discern to some extent the layout or contents of protected kernel memory > areas.

For the end user, what possible negative consequences are there from this? It seems pretty far fetched that there could be any serious security implications from JavaScript on a desktop/mobile computer.

<comment><USER9> Using spectre you can read memory from the process on which javascript is executed, for firefox this is probably whole browser memory, chrome runs sites in different processes (but not always ex iframes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's no mechanism for javascript to use this exploit, it doesn't have access to the hardware. The only way I could see javascript being involved is if it's used to construct a malicious download.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://misc0110.net/web/files/keystroke_js.pdf](https://misc0110.net/web/files/keystroke_js.pdf)

<comment><USER11> You started this thread to warn about the risks of running untrusted JavaScript before the appropriate mitigations are in place, yet you expect people to open a PDF from misc0110.net with no additional context?

<comment><USER12> Its actually the page of one of the researchers (Michael Schwarz) who found the javascript keystroke timing attack (which is in the paper in the link). He is also one of the authors of the Meltdown/Spectre CPU Attack papers so the document is actually worth reading

<comment><USER13> The link goes to a site with a spammy-looking domain, and there's no reason to assume a URL with .pdf at the end is actually a PDF. There's nothing stopping the server from serving a malicious JavaScript file instead.

Assuming it's safe based on available information is very bad. Even your comment isn't enough because you could be working with someone to drive people to a malicious link.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Entrepreneurs and Freelancers - <AUTHOR>

What should a new entrepreneur know before sending their project\idea out to a freelancer or freelancing website (elance.com)<p>Appreciate ALL input! <comment><USER2> If possible try to create as much of a wireframe (even if hand drawn) and application flowchart of what you want. Don't worry about the look/feel at this point, as so much getting the flow of your application or site documented. Being able to clearly explain what you want the site to do and how you want it to do goes miles. It is always easier to change the look/feel of the site compared to the underlying operation. This is not to say that you should not be considering the look/feel at this point though. You should also be providing the freelancer as much detail as you can of what your ideas are and how you would like it to look.

Come up with a wants/needs list based on your requirements. What is needed to get the site going and to MVP. Then what you would "want" out of the site long term. Come up with project milestones based on this. Define your budget and payment terms based on the milestones.

You may find that you have a freelancer who is excellent at the backend programming and sucks at design. You should consider that you may need to hire two people to fill these roles compared to one. Always ask for references, check the references, and find out what the person's skill set or strengths/weaknesses are. Be upfront with them and encourage them to be upfront with you.

Don't always look at price when comparing freelancers. The old saying of "you get what you pay for" comes into play here. You want to get the most bang for your buck here though.

Live and die by your payment terms. Always keep a clear and open line of communication between you and the freelancer. Realize that they may be in different timezones and that the "emergency" you have at 3pm may not be an "emergency" to them at 12am when they are home with their family.

Overall, most importantly, ensure that expectations are clearly set before engaging anyone. Make sure that you both know what is expected of each other in terms of payments and deliverables.

<comment><AUTHOR> Jeff thanks so much for your input, I really appreciate this. It's probably going to guide me for this long haul in getting my iPhone game out there.

Looks like I'm going to buy my copy of Balsamiq today!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your requirements and your budget. Clearly document both.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> bump</comment>


Can Homomorphic Encryption be Practical? - <AUTHOR> http://eprint.iacr.org/2011/405

<comment><USER2> Here is a question that's puzzling me. Since this thread has already dropped off the front page, and it probably won't be seen by many people, I've also posted it at [http://bosker.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/something-i- don't-und...](http://bosker.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/something-i- don't-understand-about-homomorphic-encryption/)

The homomorphic encryption techniques seem to allow the computation of arbitrary polynomials over various finite rings, and – at least in everything I've read – it's always treated as obvious that this is equivalent to allowing arbitrary computations. Is that actually true? If so, is it really obvious? I'd love some enlightenment here.

A related source of confusion is that clearly any encryption scheme that actually supported arbitrary computations on encrypted values would be hopelessly insecure. For example, suppose you have encrypted a ten- character ascii password. I then run the function that extracts the first character. The result I get is still encrypted, but since there are only 128 possible values for an ascii character, I can encrypt each of these values and compare the result to the result of my computation. (I can do this because I can always encrypt any data of my choice, just by running a constant-valued function inside the encryption.) Then I do the same for the second character, and so on, till I have your complete password. Encryption fail!

The only reasonable conclusion I can draw from this is that fully homomorphic encryption does not really permit arbitrary computations on the encrypted data. In that case,

1\. Why do people keep saying it does? 2\. What is the class of computations that are in fact permitted? Is it just the evaluation of polynomials?

Anyone?

<comment><USER3> You are assuming that encrypting is a bijection, i.e. that for every plaintext, there is only one possible ciphertext. One of the first things you learn in a public key cryptography is that you have to add random bits in the computation of the ciphertext, either via simple random padding (in the case of RSA) or via some more involved steps (in the case of cyclic group-based cryptography). I don't know much about homomorphic encryption (the concept has always seemed contrived to me - if you don't trust your cloud provider, hosting your own servers will always be much more efficient), but I assume they use similar tricks.

As for the thing about polynomials: it should be obvious that any polynomial- time computation on an input of a fixed size can be expressed by a DAG of logic gates. Logic gates can in turn be represented by simple polynomials over the field F_2 = { 0, 1 }, and the composition of gates is then simply the composition of polynomials.

Since we're talking about fixed-size inputs, this does not really capture the full Turing machine model. However, since all practical encryption schemes can be broken via brute force in exponential time anyway, it only really makes sense to worry about implementing polynomial-time computations in the context of homomorphic encryption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm kind of new to this, but here's my understanding of this idea -

"Fully Homomorphic Encryption" allows a computer to run an encrypted program without knowing what goes on inside. It's like a true black box, without any feasible way of accessing the internal components. I assume there are also ways of sending unencrypted inputs into the black box, and receiving unencrypted outputs, otherwise it would be relatively useless.

If I understand it correctly, then I see at least one application in web games. You could have the client run the entire game, by sending user inputs into the black box, and then later saving their game by sending the black box back to the server. This would allow cheat-proof gaming without any server validation required (until saving).

<comment><USER5> You're actually looking at it backwards. The data is the black box. The operations being conducted on it are sometimes unknown by the system conducting them, but this isn't a requirement for homomorphic encryption or necessarily the point.

You might want to try wikipedia's explanation: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption>

<comment><USER4> The paper mentioned that the functions in the financing applications might be proprietary, and it would be the point in their case to keep this logic hidden.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that fully homomorphic encryption allows proprietary logic to stay hidden by allowing a company to perform its proprietary logic on a customer's data without seeing the data.

If I have a function f and you have some data x, and you want to compute f(x), then without fully homomorphic encryption, either I have to give you my function or you have to give me your data. With fully homomorphic encryption, you can give me your encrypted data and I can use that as input to my function, so that you don't learn what my function is and I don't learn what your data is. I give you the output of the function, and you can decrypt it to learn what f(x) is without learning f.

<comment><USER7> In a lot of use cases for this I also need to be able to verify you did apply f too, which may be hard. There is clearly a huge lack of trust here. Thinking of financial service applications like trading.

I think the use case where I want to compute f(x) in an untrusted (eg cloud) environment is probably the real potential use case.

The (slightly odd) book Translucent Databases gives some more use cases, such as working with anonymised statistics.

<comment><USER8> Interesting -- how can you verify that f() was applied when by definition you don't know what the output of f() should be?

If someone was trying to be dishonest then they could fake any attribute of f() that you could likely verify.

<comment><USER9> _> If someone was trying to be dishonest then they could fake any attribute of f() that you could likely verify._

Not necessarily. For example: you can't fake bitcoin transactions, as each one requires significant amount of comuptation. Basically faking would require exactly the same work (modulo problems with SHA1 itself, but that's another matter).

This is used for other purposes as well: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_work>

<comment><USER8> I'm not familiar with the details of bitcoin, but in that case aren't (some of) the inputs to the function hidden not the function itself.

Proof of work techniques are relying on forcing the other party to run a known function in order to prevent various attacks. If the other party can't verify the result they would be no use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I sat through a recent presentation about this at M.I.T. While it's a long way from practical implementation, it does seem like it is at least feasible that we will get there.

<comment><USER5> I don't suppose you feel like sharing your reasoning behind this speculation, do you? There's some fundamentally annoying information theory involved in constructing an actual secure scheme. Gentry ran into some issues and I think the frustrating aspects of his scheme aren't particularly well understood.

Oh, and as an explantion, I voted you down because you're chiming in merely to state that you think the answer is that a fully homomorphic scheme is practical without discussing any of your reasoning for your claim or a basis... that didn't rise to the level where it seemed like it was a contribution to the discussion anymore than a comment that said "Yep, this is a really hard problem" would.

<comment><USER11> djcapelis,

Seems empirically like you are the most knowledgeable on the thread on this topic. Maybe you can help me understand the current state of this research a little better.

I understand that there are reference implementations that show fully homomorphic encryption in action but there is an efficiency issue, but just how severe is the inefficiency? To me practicality comes down to whether or not any application given current algorithms is worth that inefficiency and if it works at all it seems like there must be some edge use case where even the most severely inefficient implementation still meets a need.

So two questions for you-

What is the definition of 'practicality' at this point (i.e. how efficient does this _need_ to be)?

What is the current efficiency (and how is it being measured, big O notation per key length?, something else) ?

<comment><USER5> > Seems empirically like you are the most knowledgeable on the thread on this > topic

A disappointing conclusion. Welcome to HN on a weekend I suppose.

> What is the definition of 'practicality' at this point (i.e. how efficient > does this need to be)?

Hard to tell, but probably a good goal for practicality would be looking at the number of computations it takes to do an operation on ciphertext needs to be a reasonably low enough number that it actually makes sense to put it in the cloud. If it takes 10,000 computers to do the work of one, then it doesn't make much sense to use the cloud instead of just buying a machine. The only real answer to your question is to look at the relative costs of buying a machine vs. using the cloud and figure out how big of a factor difference that is, that's going to be slightly different for every org, but not likely to be larger than say... maybe 5-10x?

So if you accept that as being a reasonable benchmark, then you'd want to see a homomorphic scheme that allows 5-10 computers using homomorphic encryption operations to keep up with one doing operations on plaintext.

Maybe there's some absurd circumstances where 100x is still practical, but there's obviously a limit.

> What is the current efficiency (and how is it being measured, big O notation > per key length?, something else) ?

Not entirely sure what the current state of the art is. I haven't really checked on this since reading Gentry's thesis. I understand there were some advanced and some simplifications since then, but I believe we started out in the realm of it being about 10^6x times more complex to do homomorphic operations than plaintext operations with Gentry's first scheme that showed it was even possible.

So even if this has gone down quite a bit, we've got a long way to go before we're talking only a 10x - 100x hit.

Here's what I found with a quick Google, but I didn't quite find the numbers I could translate into anything reasonable, so maybe you can make sense of it: [http://eurocrypt2010rump.cr.yp.to/9854ad3cab48983f7c2c5a2258...](http://eurocrypt2010rump.cr.yp.to/9854ad3cab48983f7c2c5a2258e27717.pdf)

Edit: Looking through this one now: <http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/520.pdf>

Editx2: Oh, I suppose the real problem I should have mentioned is the more complex things you want to do, the worse it gets and "complex" here means "how many multiplies" which for a lot of things people want to do is "a lot." So for each scheme, the overhead changes somewhat wildly based on how you encode what you want to do into adds and multiples, or whatever basic blocks it's using.

<comment><USER11> Maybe a slow night on HN, but still you were on top of all the answers, so it was worth it to me to get your take. Thanks for the answer.

When talking about edge cases I could come up with ones that don't involve the cloud. And in those cases maybe I don't need to replicate a server, but instead I just need to represent a very small amount of data in an encrypted form that can be operated on homomorphically.

While I don't have a fleshed out idea on how to apply it, the one area that I'm interested in thinking about homomorphic encryption being applied is POS financial transactions. My gut (and this is just a gut, not backed by in depth thought by any means) is that homomorphic encryption as a building a block could allow you to design a secure and significantly better replacement for the existing credit card (or even chip and pin) system.

<comment><USER5> It's kind of an interesting thing to try and think through. I think emily37's post above brings up one of the more motivating usecases that's going to be much more forgiving when it comes to practicality, which is allowing someone who doesn't want to reveal how they do math on the data and someone else who doesn't want to reveal the data get together and make answers.

As for POS systems, I feel like public key is going to be far more applicable than homomorphic is for the usecases that make sense there. But I definitely could be missing something. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We've looked into this at Social Fortress and while Homomorphic Encryption could have interesting uses there are more practical approaches for the enterprise in the use cases presented in this paper.

Kudos to the researchers as there is valuable information contained.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd love to have some explain a few simple walkthroughs of why it's not doable. For instance couldn't you do you distributed text search by scrambling text content and then doing search on scrambled search terms? Or is that not secure due to being able to infer text content by analyzing the frequency of certain sequences(Certain letters/phrases will show up.) Anyone?

In general there must be classes of symbolic manipulation that is jus abstract pattern matching that doesn't have to unencrypted to work.

What are some concrete examples of it just not working.

<comment><USER5> The problems with the scheme you presented aside, you've misunderstood the problem. The goal isn't just to be able to do limited things like searching or other select things, the goal of a fully homomorphic cryptosystem is to allow _any_ computation on encrypted data.

Existing relatively feasible partially homomorphic schemes exist that allow you to do some things on encrypted data, like adds for instance. Search is also possible, I think. But neither have much to do with whether a fully homomorphic scheme is practical.

<comment><USER13> Ha, yes looking at my text search example again, it is totally illogical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> tl;dr "Maybe, but _somewhat_ homomorphic encryption definitely can be!"

</comment><comment><USER15> I prefer Homophobic Encryption: you obscure what you're saying by speaking in an extremely effeminate voice.</comment>


Show HN: Knowably – build your personal learning network - <AUTHOR> https://knowably.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here is our introduction - [https://blog.knowably.com/introducing-knowably- your-personal...](https://blog.knowably.com/introducing-knowably-your- personal-learning-network-385fd6f6fa00)

We hope you will like it and we will be really happy to get your feedback and answer all your questions!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Knowably is based on a Personal Learning Network concept (it includes peer-to- peer and role-based learning models). Basically you follow other people based on what do they learn and your interests. It helps your to discover and collect relevant to you resources (books, courses, links, notes) and by the way creating your public professional identity.</comment>


Rethinking PID1 – (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html <comment><AUTHOR> Ubuntu 1604 lts is on the road. I guess we'd better prepare for it.</comment>


History of the [Western] world in 100 seconds [According to Wikipedia] - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2011/03/21/history-of-the-world-in-100-seconds-according-to-wikipedia/

<comment><USER2> Impressive visualization, but I'd love to see it overlaid on an actual world map for geographic context.

<comment> DanI-S I'd love to see the points flash according to their subject matter. Red for war, blue for peace/neutral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a very Western-centric view of world history to say the least.

<comment><USER4> When Tom and Gareth built the original version of this at History Hackday in London they mentioned it in their presentation (it was being filmed so I presume it's online somewhere?) - it's based on the English Wikipedia data so it's skewed to a English speaking world view.

Although even more generally European and Asian history (as academic fields) have been much more deeply studied than African history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just wanted to post here and say thanks for all the comments.

Our hack day code is here: <https://github.com/gareth-lloyd/visualizing- events>

I posted datasets here: <http://www.ragtag.info/2011/feb/2/history- world-100-seconds/>

You're all right about the biases etc. All I can do is throw up my hands and say that's what our algorithm told us :)

</comment><comment><USER6> EDIT: Yay, title's been fixed. I'll leave my post here for context.

The title isn't very accurate, or at least it assumes a lot about the reader. I expected to begin about 4 billion years ago, for the entire history of our world. Or perhaps the beginning of humans, a few million years ago. Or perhaps human civilization, a few tens of thousands of years ago. Not a measily 2500 years ago dealing with the West.

<comment><USER7> The title appears to be a play on the BBC's popular A History of the World in 100 Objects: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/>.

Also the bias highlights the flaw in the underlying data which is the English version of wikipedia

<comment><USER5> You're right about the title.

As for the chosen time period, it's really very simple. We had limited time, and English-language Wikipedia has year pages going back as far as 500BC. Before that, years are grouped into decades and centuries - it would have been possible to parse those too, but hey, limited time.</comment></comment></comment>


The Shortest Papers Ever Published (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://paperpile.com/blog/shortest-papers/ <comment><USER2> Although these short papers are fun, I think the most interesting papers are those that are both important and concise. One of my favorite examples is Josh Nash's proof of the existence of Nash Equilibria (which is a foundational concept in game theory and arguably won Nash a Nobel):

[http://www.pnas.org/content/36/1/48.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/36/1/48.full)

It's less than a full page in the original journal.

<comment><USER3> His Ph.D. thesis is also relatively short (just 28 pages):

[https://rbsc.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/Non- Cooperati...](https://rbsc.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/Non- Cooperative_Games_Nash.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Is this some sort of draft? I've seen manuscripts from the 30s that are much more legible.

<comment><USER5> My supervisor's thesis from the 70's is in about as good as shape as the one linked. Must depend on when it was scanned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the shortest papers ever, or maybe the longest:

[https://johnmorton1000.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/1976-recu...](https://johnmorton1000.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/1976-recursive.pdf)

<comment><USER7> If you want to see what he did there, read again from the start of this sentence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This guy solved two open problems in mathematics because he mistook them for a homework assignment:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig#Mathematical_st...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig#Mathematical_statistics)

"A year later, when I began to worry about a thesis topic, Neyman just shrugged and told me to wrap the two problems in a binder and he would accept them as my thesis."

Each paper was seven pages, which would make a fourteen page thesis.

<comment><USER9> Very, cool! In fact, a paper which solved one of these problems [1] is precisely 7 pages. Additionally, it contains the footnote: "The main results of this paper were obtained by the authors independently of each other using entirely different methods."

[1] [https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aoms/1177729695](https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aoms/1177729695)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's ironic in itself is that the mentioned paper ("A comprehensive overview of chemical-free consumer products", published by Wiley; i.e. an empty page) costs $38 to download as PDF: [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/ciuz.2016007...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/ciuz.201600750/full)

This makes it the most expensive piece of literature (cost per word) that I know of.

<comment><USER11> Those journals got to recoup their expenses and hard work. /s

<comment><USER12> I suppose they just set a default price for all papers, and manually adjust others or something like that? I'm sure it's not as silly as it seems right

<comment><USER11> I'm sure they could price by number of pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about the most silent lecture?

"Cole's lecture was different. He did not speak a single word. He simply went to the board, and began to calculate. On one side of the board, he calculated 267 – 1 = 147,573,952,589,676,412,927 by hand. Then he went to the other side of the board and worked out the product of 193,707,721 and 761,838,257,287, the factors of 147,573,952,589,676,412,927. After spending the silent hour working out the calculations, Cole simply turned around and went back to his seat, completely silent! The audience erupted into a standing ovation."

[https://musingsonmath.com/2012/10/31/one-long- multiplication...](https://musingsonmath.com/2012/10/31/one-long- multiplication-problem-revisited/)

<comment><USER14> > 267 – 1 = 147,573,952,589,676,412,927 by hand

I think I spotted an error there.

<comment><USER15> It should be 2^67 - 1.

<comment><USER14> That was the error.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A bit tangential but amusing: my PhD dissertation was 51 pages, all math. One of my committee members approved of the work but wanted the dissertation to be bulked up with a program listing- thankfully my advisor firmly rejected this suggestion :-)

</comment><comment><USER17> I fail to understand how the content in the Soifer paper (triangles) answers its title question. So yes, some explanation would have been necessary in my opinion.

<comment><USER18> That's the thing, most of these are actually pretty bad papers. Their editors were right, it would have been improved with at least a couple of sentences of background info or explanation. For example, why is that problem even an interesting one to ask? Should we expect the answer to the titular question to be no? Is there anything particularly novel or interesting about the existence proof they've provided that could maybe be applied to other problems? And so on.

<comment><USER19> I disagree: the paper is clearly _not_ trying to answer it's titular question, in fact it is justifying why that question is interesting to ask. In particular, it demonstrates that the answer to the obvious other question to ask (with n+2 instead of n+1) is yes and clearly if you altered the question the other direction (with n instead of n+1), then the answer is no. This immediately makes me find the question compelling.

Papers motivating problems are, frankly, quite important and should be done more often.

<comment><USER17> Well, that way around it makes sense. But what you wrote here could have been written in the paper, so people like me would have understood it as well.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, it's definitely arguable. They clearly were trying to be cute with the paper. Though note that the published version of the paper was slightly longer (but without really enhancing its clarity).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My Favorite is Dan Janzen's paper "Yes?" that was published in Biotropica in 1978. Here it is in full:

        Yes?

        No.

        Acknowledgments: This study was supported by NSF DEB77-04889,
        and grew out of discussion with the Society for Historical Orations on Theory.

        Daniel H. Janzen
        Department of Biology,
        University of Pennsylvania,
        Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA

<comment><USER21> I want to know what the peer reviews looked like.

<comment><USER22> OK?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> andy-wu There's an excellent Numberphile on this topic, most of the papers in the post are mentioned in the video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvvkJT8myeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvvkJT8myeI)

<comment><USER23> In my opinion, it is clear the author simply copied that video, because not only is it the exact same set of papers, if memory serves (as I watched it only last week), it is in the exact same _order_ , which is particularly determinative. Citation would be appropriate at the very least.

<comment><USER24> A citation would absolutely be appropriate. However, you have it the wrong way around.

This blog post was published Jun 17, 2016.

The Numberphile video was published Dec 7, 2016.

<comment><USER23> I stand corrected then. And disappointed... I like the Numberphile videos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of [http://www.tinytocs.org](http://www.tinytocs.org), computer science papers whose bodies must be 140 characters or less.

<comment><USER26> twitter henceforth

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> On a related note, I'm fond of this Mathoverflow answer, "Which math paper maximizes the ratio (importance)/(length)?"[1] Highlights include:

1\. A one-sentence proof published in _American Mathematical Monthly_ that costs $19 to download on JSTOR,

2\. The 8-page paper that introduced ζ (zeta) notation, two proofs of the ζ(s) L-function, several new methods in analytic and number theory, and (most famously) the Riemann Hypothesis,

3\. Lebesque's paper introducing modern measure theory,

4\. Elkies' paper proving the (titular) existence of infinitely many supersingular primes for every elliptic curve defined on the rationals.

It seems it was a bit easier to publish short, dense material in the 20th century :)

_________________________________

1\. [https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7330/which-math-paper- max...](https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7330/which-math-paper-maximizes- the-ratio-importance-length)

</comment><comment><USER28> This reminds me of 'El Dinosaurio,' the shortest Spanish narrative:

"Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí."

English:

"When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there."

<comment><USER29> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction)

<comment><USER30> I like the idea of flash non-fiction, but I never seem able to find much about it. Not one-liners, rather in the 3-5 paragraph range, which might be understood as being an article (ex. newspaper/magazine), only articles are usually longer.

I'd love to find an example of a media outlet that does such a thing, albeit with mid/high-brow content.

<comment><USER31> 365 tomorrows might be the right length for you: [https://365tomorrows.com/](https://365tomorrows.com/) (only science fiction)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Gareth Evans' 1978 1-pager "Can There Be Vague Objects?" is notable both for its brevity, and for its significance.

[https://academic.oup.com/analysis/article- abstract/38/4/208/...](https://academic.oup.com/analysis/article- abstract/38/4/208/131350?redirectedFrom=fulltext)

</comment><comment><USER33> One of my favorite papers is a pretty short but famous one: Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?

[http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~kleinsch/Gettier.pdf](http://www- bcf.usc.edu/~kleinsch/Gettier.pdf)

<comment><USER34> How bizarre is it that I've read this paper before. I think it's provocative, but, this not being my field, I don't know what effect it had.

<comment><USER35> It's one of the most influential papers in epistemology. The paper gave rise to the notion of the "Gettier problem" for the otherwise appealing view that knowledge is justified true belief. A great deal of epistemology since can be understood as trying to figure out what to add to the "justified true belief" theory to get around Gettier-style objections.

Also interesting, it seems to have been basically the only thing he published, and he published it mainly because he had to publish something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ar-jan A more interesting zero-word article than the writer's block one is "On Nonrecoverable Deletion in Syntax" (1972) [0]

0: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmLQjz0CMAA-l28.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmLQjz0CMAA-l28.jpg:large)

</comment><comment><USER36> A nice example of short papers that introduced very important concepts are C.A.R. Hoarse publications on the partition and quicksort algorithms in 1961: * [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=366622.366644](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=366622.366644) * [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=366642](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=366642)

</comment><comment><USER37> Though an interesting article, it should be noted that the article reproduces and makes available copyrighted - and expensive - materials. Case in point, a $40 PDF that was converted to a .png and displayed on the site:

[https://cdn.paperpile.com/blog/files/Goldberg-2014](https://cdn.paperpile.com/blog/files/Goldberg-2014).

<comment><USER38> Uh

[http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/files/2014/06/nc...](http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/files/2014/06/nchem_- Chemical-Free.pdf)

[http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2014/06/a-chemic...](http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2014/06/a-chemical- free-paper.html)

<comment><USER37> To be fair, I should note that those publications published only the abstract and eliminated the actual research results.

(lrf v'z wbxvat)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Reminds me of the classic, "The Effects of Peanut Butter on the Rotation of the Earth" from the Annals of Improbable Research.

[https://www.improbable.com/airchives/classical/articles/pean...](https://www.improbable.com/airchives/classical/articles/peanut_butter_rotation.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> Another short, important paper:

E. W. Dijkstra, "Solution of a problem in concurrent programming control," Commun. ACM, vol. 8, no. 9, p. 569, Sep. 1965.

Just one page, no references (understandable, since it is one of the very first papers on concurrent algorithms), proposes a mechanism for mutual exclusion between N processes.

</comment><comment><USER41> Was the superluminal neutrino paper still relevant after they discovered it was an error?

Or it's something completely different?

<comment><USER42> Negative results are pretty useful. Eg the next time someone comes across a similar measurement, they can take that paper for some inspiration of a list of things to check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Has anyone made a self referential paper on recursion? That would tickle me pink.

<comment><USER44> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15737998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15737998)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is there any paper that can be both short, concise and deep?

</comment><comment><USER46> Cool!

</comment><comment><USER47> QED.

</comment><comment><USER48> Excellent.

</comment><comment><USER49> Huh.

</comment><comment><USER50> _If_

[https://m.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/best- spartan...](https://m.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/best-spartan- laconic-phrases-boldest-wittiest-lines-ever-recorded.html)

<comment><USER51> Non-mobile link:

[http://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/best- sparta...](http://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/best-spartan- laconic-phrases-boldest-wittiest-lines-ever-recorded.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Ah.

</comment><comment><USER53> Ducks swim.

</comment><comment><USER54> E=mc^2 . Thank you and good night.

</comment><comment><USER55> What's purpose? Seriously?

</comment><comment><USER56> "The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of "writer's block"1" by Dennis Upper has a total of zero words.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/)

<comment><USER57> Did you read the whole article? This example and a couple other "empty page" examples are given lower down in the list.

<comment><USER51> From the HN guidelines:

 _Please don 't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."_

<comment><USER58> > Please don't insinuate

He or she didn't. He or she was quite direct. See [https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/insinuate](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/insinuate).

If anything, it is you who are insinuating that the commenter did not read the HN guidelines. The guidelines misuse the word 'insinuate' to mean 'say or insinuate' or possibly 'accuse'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bringing balance to the universe: New theory explains missing 95% of the cosmos - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-12-universe-theory-percent-cosmos.html <comment><USER2> Reddit discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/a3a33c/scientists_ma...](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/a3a33c/scientists_may_have_solved_one_of_the_biggest/)

Another article with a good layman's explanation [https://theconversation.com/bizarre-dark-fluid-with- negative...](https://theconversation.com/bizarre-dark-fluid-with-negative- mass-could-dominate-the-universe-what-my-research-suggests-107922)

</comment><comment><USER3> Paper referenced: [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jamie_Farnes/publicatio...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jamie_Farnes/publication/328582146_A_unifying_theory_of_dark_energy_and_dark_matter_Negative_masses_and_matter_creation_within_a_modified_LambdaCDM_framework/links/5bfebe64a6fdcc1b8d488ab2/A-unifying- theory-of-dark-energy-and-dark-matter-Negative-masses-and-matter-creation- within-a-modified-LambdaCDM-framework.pdf)</comment>


Airbnb: A fan legally constitutes an air conditioner - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/d1i53n/its_100_degrees_in_mexico_and_airbnb_wont_offer_a/ <comment><USER2> There is a saying that goes something like: when you play with snakes, don't be surprised if you get bitten.

When you book AirBnb vs a hotel you are signalling that you value cost over predictability and oversight. Those hotel fees and regulations are there for a reason. With AirBnb, one of the reasons they can offer stuff cheaply is that they are arbitraging regulation and oversight.

If you really need to work, book a hotel that serves business clients.

I view this complaint in the same manner I view people who book travel on RyanAir and complain about poor service. The whole point of RyanAir is about seeing how much misery people will tolerate in exchange for a cheap airfare.

<comment><USER3> This assumes you're okay with the "hotel experience".

Personally, I dislike hotels. I don't like carpets or elevators or garish faux-marble baths. I don't like being in the middle of a city next to tourist traps or some busy downtown. I don't like being on the 23th floor, shut away from nature. I don't like staying in a place that is just a bedroom and this weird tiny desk that has a big TV on it so it's not usable for anything. I find most hotels clinical, synthetic and alienating. There are exceptions, of course; there are some great boutique hotels out there. But they are far apart and usually out of my price range.

When booking a trip, I choose Airbnb because I can pick a place that was made for living in. You know, the way you do at home. Multiple rooms, a kitchen, maybe some outdoor space, all in a practical location. Airbnb also allows me to pick features I could never get at a hotel, such as a private pool or private parking. And it allows me to scale it up and rent a whole place for a family or group of friends.

People make the mistake of thinking that Airbnb is about competing with hotels by offering lower prices on the same service and that somehow the lower price is because "it's just someone's home", but it really isn't the same service at all. If a hotel could offer what I could get with Airbnb, I'd be all over it.

<comment><USER4> Then ending up with a room that is conditioned for the locals, and not hotel- grade, should be perfectly acceptable too, and Airbnb and their partners are doing it right. Nothing to see here.

<comment><USER3> But with hotels, too, you can end up with something that isn't to your satisfaction, contrary to how it's presented in the listing and contrary to your expectations. Hotels are likely to be more consistent here, but there's never any guarantee.

One difference is in the ability to rectify such issues. Since Airbnb is a middleman who doesn't own the property, and the host is potentially not able to be physically present (e.g. it's a short-term sublet while the host is on a trip, as opposed to a permanent Airbnb), the blame may technically lie with the host, but Airbnb's platform is also responsible. Airbnb can't pretend they're merely a passive hosting platform for hosts, and needs to tread more carefully in handling such disputes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So apparently it had A/C in bedrooms but not other areas. Host suggested leaving doors open and having a fan redirect air from bedroom(s) to living area. Looks like guests were looking to work while on a trip, so wanted and expected A/C throughout.

I can see both sides. On the one hand it did have A/C —just not central A/C. On the other hand it was (they claim 100F) and were trying to "work from home." On the other hand it was $60/night equivalent...

It's kinda borderline. What would judge Judy decide? Split the diff?

<comment><USER6> I'm kind of leaning towards AirBnB, because it sounds like the travelers didn't bother with any diligence, which is puzzling when having AC was so critical to their trip.

I think it's reasonable to expect AirBnB hosts, like any seller, to try to bend the truth or hide inconveniences in their listing, and it's up to you, the buyer, to exercise caution, read reviews, or ask the host.

That said, if hotels try that kind of BS, I complain until they refund me or upgrade my room, which has worked 10/10 times. This is one area where hotels have a clear advantage over AirBnB.

<comment><USER7> > _I think it 's reasonable to expect AirBnB hosts, like any seller, to try to > bend the truth or hide inconveniences in their listing_

If we all pitched in and shamed dishonest sellers (to the point where there was a culture of honesty), we could all have the reliability of hotels without any of the costs of management. It's like how one of the reasons third world countries are so bad is that there is no social trust.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly what is happening through the review system. I find AirBnB reviews to be much more reliable than say Amazon or other easily gamed places. You can and should shame bad hosts and bad guests. You can't see the review text until after both wrote a review so there is no fear of revenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As is ever the case, dig in deeper and oh look we see the apartment did have A/C as advertised.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/d1i53n/its_10...](https://old.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/d1i53n/its_100_degrees_in_mexico_and_airbnb_wont_offer_a/eznhz87/)

<comment><USER10> Copy paste in case it gets deleted:

""" I'm OP's roommate and I was involved in this. We booked the place on short notice and came to see it the same day. It was advertised as a "penthouse" but in reality it was simply the top floor of a pretty decrepit ~50+ yo building, with bars on every window, and a filthy "pool". This is the view from the "penthouse".

Contrary to what Airbnb says in the screenshot, there was no "A/C" of any kind in the bathrooms (no, not even fans). The only A/C units were in the bedrooms, and they were small, sized for bedrooms. The host showed up and said that if we let the A/C in the bedrooms run for 20 minutes with the doors open and the fan strategically placed, the living room and kitchen would be "cold like a fridge".

We let it run for 30 minutes and were still sweating after that. Told him we couldn't stay because we work from home and the heat was just unbearable in the daytime during this hot season.

What pissed me off:

The host refused to refund us anything (which is why we reached out to Airbnb). Airbnb refunded ~USD 300, so the host took USD 480 from us for essentially visiting the place for 30 minutes. That's a $1000/hour occupation... pretty lucrative. Yes, we wasted their time, and an opportunity for someone else to book it, so I'd be totally fine with paying the nightly rate (USD 60) for even two nights. But not for over a week. It's just not fair by any stretch of the imagination. (Note that it's the week before Mexico's Independence Day, and the host bragged that the place will get occupied very soon if we don't book. Also, we booked same-day, and left same-day. How Airbnb considers that is inconveniencing the host USD 480, baffles me.)

Airbnb's rude, STFU, response:

This is the last that can be said on the subject.

This seems to be part of the training they give to support agents, because I saw the same phrasing in the famous How I Got Banned for Life from AirBnB post:

we consider this matter closed and will no longer reply to any inquiries regarding your account

The fact that Airbnb doesn't have anything more nuanced than "Yes A/C", "No A/C". How about "partial A/C"? How hard is it to implement that, Airbnb? It's one thing to have central A/C or heating, and a very different thing to have a heater in one room or a fan in another. """

<comment><USER11> I won't delete it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On the other hand, when an act of god occurs, airbnb holds the host completely responsible.

My wife and I own an airbnb (with a/c!). At midnight one evening, the a/c went out due to a mechanical failure. The temperature in the texas heat rose to 80 degrees in our condo. Our guests called us to complain.

We couldnt find any techs at that time of night (and at 1am we tried!), but had one come in at 8am the next morning - and it was fixed by 10am.

The guests asked for a refund from airbnb based on breach of contract...and airbnb agreed, saying our unit did not match what we had advertised. No matter that we've had over 600 very positive reviews in the past 5 years.

Maybe we owed the guests a refund despite trying to solve the issue as best we could. But seeing the internal inconsistency of this article angers me (our unit does have two ceiling fans!)

<comment><USER13> How do you see it any other way than that you owe them a refund? Have you ever tried to stay in a hotel room that is 80?

<comment><USER14> I could see getting a partial refund instead of a full one.

Otherwise, why even try to find an a/c tech at night, if you know that it won't make a difference?

<comment><USER15> So, you'd be happy if another guest decided to leave at 2am one morning and pay you only 50%? You're charging a nightly rate, not an hourly rate.

<comment><USER16> You're arguing a different point. The refund is because the beach of contract was only for a specified time. A total refund provides no incentive to attempt to rectify the situation.

<comment><USER17> Does that matter? Because there was no work around anyway. Sure they tried to find an AC tech, but ... haven't, so no AC in 80 F (26.6C).

A partial refund would incentivise we-tried-our-best problem solving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is intentionally misleading. Sure, "legally" it might be accurate , but is that what a customer would be expecting if a listing says the accommodation has air conditioning? AirBnB should provide accurate representations of accommodation, regardless of the legal definition. The listings are not legal documents - they exist to inform customers what they will be getting for their money. And if AirBnB knowingly misleads customers (despite adhering to legal definitions) then they could (in some countries) be liable under consumer protection laws.

<comment><USER19> The accommodation had A/C, just not in every room. I've rented AirBnB's like this. You are out all day, come home, turn on AC in bedrooms and go to sleep. Not everyone puts AC into their kitchen, dining room, living room, bathrooms etc etc.

You are going to sue AirBnB over this?

<comment><USER18> Ah didn't realise full context in this specific case. I was referring only to "a fan legally constitutes an aircon". So, if the _only_ thing in an AirBnB is a fan, saying it has aircon is misleading.

<comment><USER19> The point here is that this guest is misleading everyone and the media is eating it up. Airbnb says that the hosts description of the place was reasonable. It had AC. It just didn't have it in every room the guest wanted. This is not a "fan is AC" \- and airbnb never said that, this (spoiled) guest did. What airbnb is saying is some rooms have AC is AC. While that could be argued, the headline should reflect that.

If you're just reading the headline easy to get it wrong. But these "outrage" stories often have another side.

<comment><USER11> No. The Airbnb rep said EXACTLY that, as seen in the screenshot.

Context: I'm the OP's roommate. See my detailed reply at [https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/d1i53n/its_10...](https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/d1i53n/its_100_degrees_in_mexico_and_airbnb_wont_offer_a/eznhz87).

See also [https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/44524/can-a-fan- be-c...](https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/44524/can-a-fan-be- considered-an-air-conditioning-unit)

See also [https://airhostsforum.com/t/do-fans-count-as- airconditioning...](https://airhostsforum.com/t/do-fans-count-as- airconditioning/5729)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the Airbnb message: > "This is the last that can be said on the subject."

Why would a customer service representative be allowed to write something so smarmy and condescending?

<comment><USER21> As a customer, this seems out of line.

As someone who has worked in customer service, and observed customer service workers at my company, it seems completely reasonable, especially when dealing with entitled people like the OP and his roommate (from other comments).

<comment><USER11> That's how Airbnb agents are trained. It's exactly the kind of phrase used in the famous "How I Got Banned for Life from AirBnB" post:

> Additionally, we consider this matter closed and will no longer reply to any > inquiries regarding your account.

Source: [https://medium.com/@jacksoncunningham/digital-exile-how-i- go...](https://medium.com/@jacksoncunningham/digital-exile-how-i-got-banned- for-life-from-airbnb-615434c6eeba)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My first and last experience with AirBnB was a lack of AC, fan, or anything in a very hot, humid home rental in Santa Monica last year for a month straight during an abnormally hot (go figure) summer. I had to find/invest in as large a box fan I could find, which I left for the next poor bastard.

Never again. My fault? Perhaps, but still, never again. Thanks for the memories AirBnB.

</comment><comment><USER23> AirBnB is a monopoly in an unregulated market. It can do whatever it pleases with little recourse. What are you going to do? Leave. Great, some other sucker will take the bait.

In an unregulated market, they make whatever rules make them the most profit. I quit AirBnb 3 years ago when a $400/night place in NY clearly engaged in false advertisement by stating the wrong room size. It had pungent smell and generally was a hell hole. AirBnB would not refund. That's the last I ever made a booking to AirBnB.

I really hope governments step up their game and bring some sanity. AirBnB as a monopoly is wrecking havoc to many cities. It's like a virus.

</comment><comment><USER24> I needed to report an airbnb that was having someone else who's not the host on airbnb site run it. So I was staying in the place with a person that they ran no background check on. They only allow you to make a report from a pre selected list of possible complaints and support wasn't any help. The system was setup to prevent the user from reporting problems that they cannot easily solve.

Airbnb is just one little step above hopping on craigslist and finding a room.

</comment><comment><USER25> I had a similar situation with vrbo. The ac was broken and the host installed a makeshift "ac" system that didn't even cool the room it was in. This was in Vegas with temps way above 100. I didn't stay there and they only refunded me 1/3 the cost. I'm waiting for the chargeback to come through.

Another time in Mexico at the Marriott their "ac" would not go below 73 or so. It was still pretty warm. That time I got fucked.

Another time I stayed at a holiday inn outside DC with temps well into the 90s. The whole floor had the ac turned off. They said they couldn't turn it on. It was late so we suffered for one night but then hotels.com moved us to another hotel (I had silver membership).

Another time I stayed at an airbnb in Amsterdam and the ceiling fan was considered ac. It wasn't that hot so that wasn't a big deal and I didn't mind in that case.

Basically, if you want ac you're taking a big chance staying at an airbnb, vrbo, Marriott, or other hotel. It's a big issue both in and out of the us. There should be regulations. If the temperature can't be regulated to 65 - 68F, sleeping temperatures, then it can't be considered ac. Of course, without regulations it can even if it doesn't actually cool any space down. Scam artists are everywhere.</comment>


Ask HN: My project is dead.I have a fully functional app. What can I do with it? - <AUTHOR> I have a fully functional web app sitting on my desktop. I'm sure I'm not the only one. What do you typically do with this? Is someone in this same position? If you are, let's talk maybe we can put together something cool. <comment><USER2> Why is the project dead?

If you have a fully functional web app, the logical next step would be to launch it, but it sounds like you've tried that and felt it failed for some reason. Are there other things you could try to push its adoption forward?

<comment><AUTHOR> This app was meant to connect physicians with patients, needs licensing to legally operate, and on top of this the team fell apart. Someone licensed could grow the app, or someone with a different vision could use the product to connect other type of professionals outside the healthcare space.</comment></comment>


YouTube Music - <AUTHOR> https://music.youtube.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice. When YouTube Music first came out I was a bit annoyed there wasn't a web app to go along with the Android app.</comment>


Turing's bombe pips Concorde in mechanical engineers' poll - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-29512623

<comment><USER2> I had to read the article to understand what on earth the title means. I guess "pips" is slang for "beats" or "surpasses"?

It's also interesting that Turing's "bombe" is not capitalized, even in its Wikipedia article, while its counterpart, "Enigma", is.

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

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's informal British language: [http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/pip?q=p...](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/pip?q=pips#pip-6)

"Defeat by a small margin or at the last moment"

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Strange, I only submitted this to give context to the other thing I submitted which is the story of the RB211 Rolls Royce engine that bankrupted the company and yet helped it to be re-born as a stronger entity: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420407](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420407)

As an added bonus, having stumbled upon the story of the RB211 from the short mention in the above-linked BBC article, there is a free talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London by a former Director or Engineering at Rolls Royce on the RB211, the engineering feat that it was to produce it and the company at that time... the talk is on the 10th November 2014, and the link is in the other discussion thread that is linked above.

PS: Nice to see that HN really has a soft spot for Turing.

<comment><USER4> > PS: Nice to see that HN really has a soft spot for Turing.

One of the original hackers surely?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pythagoras would have that crown IMHO, Turing was relatively recent.

I wonder whether there can be said to be some overlap between the non- Dialectic philosophers of old and the pioneers of computing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By coincidence I just finished "New Shape in the Sky" which is a pretty good book about the development of Concorde. There are two versions -- a 1982 version which you can pick up for 1p + postage from Amazon, and a recent version which is super expensive.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Concorde-New-Shape-Ken- Owen/dp/07106...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Concorde-New-Shape-Ken- Owen/dp/0710602138)

Sadly I never had enough money to travel on Concorde, so it looks like I will never travel faster than sound [relative to the surface of the earth anyway].

<comment><USER6> If you're interested in the Concorde, this thread on an aviation forum is incredible. Starts with a guy asking why there was no auxiliary power unit onboard, and shortly turns into a rolling conversation including original design engineers, pilots, flight engineers and cabin crew. Super entertaining!

[http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde- question.html](http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would have been nice to mention that the Turing bombe was an improvement on the earlier "bomba", invented by the Marian Rejewski. The Beeb even attempted a recent article about it:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28167071](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28167071)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_\(cryptography\))

</comment><comment><USER8> Don't miss the bit at the bottom about Crossness Engine House. Jawdropping. That thing was the datacenter of its day. But it looks like a church!

[https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Crossness+pumping+station](https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Crossness+pumping+station)</comment>


Ask HN: questions from a tech/start-up newb - <AUTHOR>

Good afternoon everyone,
I'm new to the game (I will not call myself a hacker), but my interest and self teachings have been giving me a lot of insight into the hacking world.
With that being said, I sprung this idea 6 months ago and have been working at it since. My efforts towards this project have been very time consuming and I feel like I've hit a few barriers. Being a full time student I have zero capital, and what I need done requires advanced programming (php).
I am hoping the following questions can be answered.
How do I find a good partner/co founder?
Should my programmer/designer be local?
Is crowdfunding a good source for raising capital?
Any advice will help as I am the only person working on this at the moment. Thanks all.
Dave <comment><USER2> How do you find a good cofounder?

Asked and answered many times, but I like this answer the best:

[http://www.humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop- asking-h...](http://www.humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-how- to-find)

Should your programmer/designer be local?

I think your programmer should be you, to begin with. Don't know PHP? I think you can learn it in the next six months at minimal expense. You may groan and discover you hate PHP, and end up moving to another medium because there's a reason you hate it. If you're going to try and get a technical cofounder, presumably with equity only, you'll significantly expand your available talent pool if you can get the talent to take you seriously. That can be done by either having money to throw at the project (ruled out already), or being able to at least carry on a conversation on how to get things done in the medium you've chosen.

You can often find programmers in far-flung regions of the world that work for cheap, but probably not many work for equity. That leaves your immediate surroundings or whoever you can travel to get an audience with.

Is crowdfunding a good source for raising capital? Yes. That's why it's illegal.

Other than end-runs around the system (crowdfunding a loan you're personally liable for like with prosper or lendingclub, or crowdfunding a project through direct sales of finished product like kickstarter), you're stuck with friends, family, and fools.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cofounders; [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=fin...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=find+cofounder&start=0)

programmer/designer: there is no real answer to this. It depends on what you can manage. Local is easier for most people.

I am not sure where you are, but in the US I don't think the crowdfunding bill has even passed yet.</comment>


The absolute bare minimum every programmer should know about regular expressions - <AUTHOR> http://immike.net/blog/2007/04/06/the-absolute-bare-minimum-every-programmer-should-know-about-regular-expressions/ <comment><USER2> Slight terminological quibble:

 _Regular expressions are strings formatted using a special pattern notation that allow you to describe and parse text._

"Parse" is a questionable word choice. A proper Regular Expression can only describe patterns found in "regular languages", though modern backtracking regex engines have a bit more power. Parsing implies a _parser_ , which means matching a grammar somewhat more sophisticated than a regex engine can handle.

<comment><USER3> Regular expressions in modern programming languages and the regular expressions you learned about in your automata theory class are not the same thing. The back references present in the regular expressions discussed in the article make the entire system capable of handling even NP-complete problems. So yes, regular expressions (in the more common use of the term) can "parse".

<comment><USER2> I did allude to that, but regular expressions are still not quite up to the tasks you would use a parser for.

<comment><USER4> I can only hope this challenge inspires a spiteful hacker to create a full grammar parser in a regular expression. It won't be me, but I love how these types of comments can sometimes spawn the most interesting toy projects. :)

<comment><USER5> You may enjoy this <http://www.a-k-r.org/abnf/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Considering he listed just about everything I can remember about regexes without google, and nothing more, I believe I'm duty bound to upvote.

My only quibble: I'd promote the character classes (especially \s and maybe \S) into this list from the "expert" category. Here's part2 (or what I call: stuff I can google later, if I need it), if anyone wants to keep reading: [http://immike.net/blog/2007/06/21/extreme-regex-foo-what- you...](http://immike.net/blog/2007/06/21/extreme-regex-foo-what-you-need-to- know-to-become-a-regular-expression-pro/)

<comment><USER7> (Off topic, but that same character you randomly dump into irc messages appeared at the beginning of this comment)

<comment><USER8> That appears to be a backspace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The title makes me wonder... I was an okay programmer before I learned about regexes. When the need arose, I learned how to use them easily. Should I have learned them before that?

Many programmers seem to think that they possess just the right amount of knowledge. Someone who knows Unix utilities but not algorithm design will argue that Unix utilities are vital, but algorithm design is a random obscure topic; someone with the opposite skillset will defend it just as eloquently. I think programmers have no obligation to know anything. If you can do the job, I don't care how much you use Google.

I'm spoiled enough to think that boring things shouldn't be deliberately memorized. It's enough for me to know the mathematical concept of a regular language, which lets me recognize situations where regexes would help. For concrete syntax we always have cheatsheets. This attitude has its advantages: for example, I never needed to be explained why parsing XML with regexes is a bad idea.

<comment><USER10> I agree that boring things shouldn't be memorized, and that being familiar with the concept of a regular language helps identify where a regular expression could help.

Two points:

\+ A lot of programmers aren't familiar with the concept of a regular language, especially those that are hobbyists, or who went to shitty schools. Sad but true.

\+ Regular expressions are useful commonly enough that I would be very surprised if an okay programmer with any sort of experience under their belt couldn't remember at least [] . * ? + .

I definitely agree with your main point. There is, however, a weird subjective layer of knowledge that _tends_ to be present in developers of any experience. That doesn't mean that I would look down on an individual programmer who claimed experience that didn't know how to make a regex character class off the top of their head, but I _would_ be a bit surprised.

<comment><USER9> I agree. When you're planning to invade Iraq, you need people who shoot well, and you need people who have been to Iraq before. They don't have to be the same people, though.

We had a great experience at one of our contract jobs: we found a smart math student with no webdev experience, and he did most of the programming while I constantly consulted him on "platform issues" and jumped in to code any tricky parts he had problems with. He became a competent webdev in about two months - way faster than it took me to learn this stuff by myself - then I handed the project over to him and left. I wonder why other employers don't do this more: mix experienced programmers with smart newbies who come from hard-science backgrounds. Seems to be a winning combination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's very disappointing to find the author didn't mention greedy matchers. Consider the difference:

      >> s = "hello world, I love you world"
      >> s.sub(/(.*?)world/, '\1universe')
      => "hello universe, I love you world"
      >> s.sub(/(.*)world/, '\1universe')
      => "hello world, I love you universe"

<comment><USER12> Those are in the next article in the series, which is linked from the bottom of this one: [http://immike.net/blog/2007/06/21/extreme-regex-foo-what- you...](http://immike.net/blog/2007/06/21/extreme-regex-foo-what-you-need-to- know-to-become-a-regular-expression-pro/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I prefer fishbowl's law

       Every regexp that you apply to a particular block of text reduces
       the applicability of regular expressions by an order of magnitude.

\- [http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/08/18/beware_regular_expre...](http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/08/18/beware_regular_expressions/)

The minimum any programmer needs to know about regexps is when they are applicable, and more importantly, when they are not.

<comment><USER13> Seeing how im advocating that everyone should know when to be using parsing tools rather than cobbling together a regexp cludge, here are some links to some relevant tools in a variety of languages. Note that these are not parser generator tools, but parser combinator libraries:

        * Python:
            PyParsing - http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/ - this
            is probably the most well respected parser library
            for python

            picoparse - http://github.com/brehaut/picoparse - My
            parsec inspired parser combinator library. It is
            significantly more light weight than pyparsing, and
            I would recommend pyparsing in its place for more
            heavy lifting parsers.

        * Ruby:
            RParsec - http://rubyforge.org/projects/rparsec/ - A
            ruby implementation of Parsec. I've heard good
            things about it.

        * Haskell:
            Parsec - http://legacy.cs.uu.nl/daan/parsec.html -
            This is an amazing library, worth anyones time.
            http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/using-parsec.html
            http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Parsec

        * F#:
            FParsec - http://www.quanttec.com/fparsec/ - This is
            reason enough to learn F#; it is a fairly true port
            of the haskell library and very nice to use.

        * Scala:
            Packrat Parsing - I believe this is part of the
            standard lib. http://www.scala-lang.org/docu/files/api/scala/util/parsing/combinator/PackratParsers.html

        * Clojure:
            fnparse - http://github.com/joshua-choi/fnparse

        * Java:
            jparsec - http://jparsec.codehaus.org/

[edits: formating]

<comment><USER14> I think this actually illustrates the other guy's point. If you want a parser, you need to go download code off the internet. If you want a Regex, you type something along the lines of new Regex().

<comment><USER15> [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/daan/parsec.ht...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/daan/parsec.html) "Nowadays, Parsec is distributed with the standard Haskell libraries with most Haskell compilers (GHC, NHC, Hugs)."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's quite a good guide but I had thought it was going to contain warnings like "Don't use regular expressions to parse XML" and then explain why.

</comment><comment><USER17> In Python, you can get the regex parse tree to help you debug your regex expressions: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101268/hidden-features- of...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101268/hidden-features-of- python/143636#143636)

</comment><comment><USER18> I learned something new - disjunction is sometimes called "alternation":

<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/165607/disjunction>

</comment><comment><USER19> One thing everyone should know about regular expressions is that the things called "regular expressions" provided by libpcre (which, of course, stands for "Perl compatible regular expressions") aren't regular expressions at all. Since they support backtracking, they provide a more powerful parsing framework than regular expressions alone (which don't support backtracking). That's how the (in)famous regular expression that recognizes prime numbers can work, even though the language of prime numbers is not regular.

</comment><comment><USER20> For some reason, I've never been able to get the knack of regular expressions. This is the best introduction to them that I've seen, though I wish I'd read it years ago. However, if you've tinkered with regex at all ever, which I suspect virtually everyone here has, you'll know this. (I know it, and I hate and avoid regular expressions and am not even a programmer.)

<comment><USER21> It's weird, because they've always just clicked for me. I mean, you have text and you compare it to a pattern. The regex is just a crazy shorthand for the pattern you're looking for. What pattern should you match? Well, first write down examples of what you want to match and see what they have in common.

I think it's easier to get if you match a pattern to some text by hand, taking a simple pattern like ^a+b _c$ and trying to see if it matches:

Here are a few test cases:

"aaaaaaaaabbbc" ?

1) ^a+ means it starts with 1 or more 'a's, so those eat all my 'a's and I'm matching bbbcc against 'b_c' now 2) b* means 0 or more 'b's; those eat up everything but the c at the end. 3) c$ matches exactly one c at the end, so yeah, we have a match. If there had been one more c (or anything else), the match would fail because it wouldn't hit the $ (which is end of string).

aaac ?

1) ^a+ eats all the 'a's again. 2) b* ... what b _? It's "zero or more" so yes, we can skip it. 3) c$ Yes, there's one c at the end. We have a match.

bc ?

1) We need _one* or more 'a's at the start. That's the difference between + and _. Match fails immediately.

acbbc ?

1) ^a+ matches the a. 2) b_ means it's optional, so we don't fail... yet. But we don't match anything, either. 3) c$ That c matches, but we're not at the end of the string yet. There's still "bbc" left to match and we're out of pattern. Fail.

You can do something similar with the tools other people have linked in comments. This was just to give an example pattern and a few test cases to get you started.

It's weird, though. Even though this clicks for me, I don't feel like I get monads at all. Yeah, I've read the 3 monad laws (great... so something being a monad means that I can monad it, un-monad it and do something vaguely similar to composition on monads) and I can do some very simple Lisp which uses built- in stuff they say is built from monads (like printing). But I don't know how they work internally at all, or how they're fundamentally different from all the other Lisp statements ("causes side affects" isn't terribly specific... why is printing to the screen a side effect? Is setq a monad?).

In other words, there's probably some topic for every programmer that they really have to struggle with. As easily as regexes come to me, I struggle to understand other stuff.

I've been at it for quite a while, incidentally. But I'm not going to give up any time soon. So keep working on it.

<comment><USER22> I wrote some stuff about monads on HN a while ago that some people found helpful: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=247446>

<comment><USER21> Thanks. I just read it.

It does help, but I think there's still a lot I don't know. I mean, 'bind' and 'return' still seem like the names are backwards to me. Somehow, I feel like 'return' should give me a value, rather than shoving a value into a monad. But that's probably because I'm used to C and its relatives.

Perhaps I simply need to read up more on FP itself. I have a huge bookshelf full of half-read books (and yes, plenty of fully-read books) but nowhere near enough free time...

<comment><USER22> Oh. Yeah. The names are poorly chosen, but we're stuck with them. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When writing regular expressions I always use this website to test them out.

<http://www.rubular.com>

</comment><comment><USER24> I learned regular expressions when writing the documentation for my Sleep programming language. They never made sense to me until I had to organize my thoughts on them in a logical way. I'm still quite happy with how that chapter turned out:

<http://sleep.dashnine.org/manual/regex.html>

</comment><comment><USER25> Here's a cool online tool my friend (HN user KrisJordan) made:

<http://www.gethifi.com/tools/regex>

It's super handy when learning Regular Expressions because it shows results as you type.

<comment><USER26> Obligatory emacs post: M-x re-builder is also pretty handy. Of course, then you're using emacs re syntax, which is a bit clunkier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> While we're at it, could someone please explain why \\[[^\\[\\]]*\\] does not match things like [X], where X is a string of non-square-bracket characters? How would you fix it? Thanks!

<comment><USER28> In what language? That expression works fine for me when I test it?

<comment><USER27> Say in ed or sed.

<comment><USER29>
        $ printf 'a[]b[c]d[ef][g[h]i\n' | sed 's/\[[^][]*]/-/g'
        a-b-d-[g-i
        $ ed
        a
        a[]b[c]d[ef][g[h]i
        .
        s/\[[^][]*]/-/g
        p
        a-b-d-[g-i
        q
        ?
        q
        $

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was surprised to find no mention of the issues with nesting. Every programmer should know about this limiation, even if they don't get into the pumping lemma and whatnot.

</comment><comment><USER31> (2007)

kind of disappointed that there's 13 comments and no mention of jwz's quote.

in terms of actual thoughts, this is certainly an aptly named article.

<comment><USER32> Of course there's always the counterpart to jwz's quote:

> Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll quote Jamie > Zawinski." Now they have two problems.

[<http://twitter.com/diveintomark/statuses/1249729494>]

<comment><USER31> awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> 1\. Regular expressions cannot match recursive patterns.

2\. No, they cannot! extended regexps are a nice hack, but not really met formal regular expression definition.

3\. man grep

</comment><comment><USER34> Did someone learn something on this site? Why it's on hacker news instead of newbies news.

</comment><comment><USER35> Meh, no one here wants to here my spoiled brat opinion, so I apologize in advance:

It should also be included in the bare minimum:

Regex will drive you crazy. Not just writing the expression, but installing a library (especially if there is no handy installer) ect. Regex likes to punch you in the balls whenever possible. (I can say this because I've written many line of Regex and I _do_ love it.)

.

.

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. -Jamie Zawinski</comment>


What Happened When I Yelled Back at the "Christians" Calling My Wife a Murderer - <AUTHOR> http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/148607

<comment><USER3> I consider myself a religious man, and always find myself getting frustrated with protesters/sign holders/judges like the ones in the video. Not only for their blatant disregard for--in this case--the Gospel, but their incredible insensitivity.

Not sure if the OP is the father in the video, but to you, good sir, I tip my hat. If I were in such a position, I know I would not have been as calm, and would probably have included far more curse words for my own good. To the couple in the video, I wish you the best in trying for your next child.

</comment><comment><USER4> If people like this(the protesters) truly believed that God would punish people with eternal damnation, then they could just go about their lives - <USER2> they know that they are full of shit and so they lash out.</comment>


Show HN: Animation CPU new programming platform with a realtime reverse debugger - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm author next generation mobile programming platform Animation CPU and looking a way how to fund my project
Animation CPU is new BASIC
Animation CPU architecture pure & minimalistic, optimized for speed, privacy & security
AnimationCPU is mobile programming platform for gamers, programmers and twitch streamers
Play & develop new worlds on mobiles together
New live coding IDE with reverse debugger Programs will never halt or crash
https://www.instagram.com/animationcpu/
UI/UX IDE short video:
https://vimeo.com/363434798
Full video with demo app:
https://vimeo.com/346007625
Please share
Here is live coding session 24/7:
https://www.twitch.tv/ellips0nspice/
Best regards, Victor <comment><USER2> Is there a website?</comment>


Retired U.S. general charged with lying to FBI in 'Stuxnet' leak case - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iran-cyber-idUSKBN12H25M <comment><USER2> I'm confused by the reporting, as I didn't follow Cartwrights case very well.

The article states that they are charging him for making false statements to the FBI. But also that the Justice Department had been after him because he was a potential leaker of the fact that Stuxnet was an American sabotage project.

The way I'm reading the two together - the article doesn't make this clear - is that the Justice Department had not been able to prove that he was the source of the leaks, but were able to prove that he lied to the FBI during questioning, and so are pursuing a punishment.

Anyone follow this case very closely care to chime in and clarify exactly what's going on? The article and the title are very different.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Tough to follow this news report, though I came to the same conclusion as you.</comment></comment>


Engineers are operating space missions from their homes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21222372/nasa-telework-curiosity-rover-osiris-rex-asteroid-mission-satellites-remote <comment><USER2> I wonder if they have failover ISPs</comment>


Ask HN: Does reddit have any competitors? - <AUTHOR>

Basically I wanted to know what are the sites you visit which are like reddit?(or hn for that matter, although hn serves a niche crowd). Are there any? <comment><USER2> It depends how you view reddit. If you want jokes, try Fark or Digg. If you want more technical news, try Slashdot, in addition to HN. If you want a ton of memes, try 4chan.

But those aren't all the topics discussed on Reddit. Reddit seems to be unique in that its very large community is fractured; its system of subreddits leads to niche topics being covered better than they would be on other sites. You don't have to set up an entire phpBB forum for your interest in antique nesting dolls, just go and create /r/antique_nesting_dolls . It's simple, fast, and because adding a subreddit to your frontpage is so easy, you can get a lot of eyeballs coming back to your subreddit over and over again. That's the part of reddit I don't see happening elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.hubski.com/>

It is slow, but I find the majority of links in-depth and worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.somethingawful.com/> I don't visit it, but it is huge. Forums are massive too <http://forums.somethingawful.com/> Amazing what's out there when you look beyond the echo chamber.

</comment><comment><USER5> HN is a top-1000 website, I doubt it classifies as niche any more.

<comment><AUTHOR> What i meant was a general purpose site.Most people who visit hacker news are programmers/entrepreneurs/designers i presume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Digg comes to mind as a watered-down competitor, though I stopped using Digg altogether after the #DiggRevolt and subsequent exodus of their user-base.

</comment><comment><USER7> Other than HN, no. HN gives me everything I need and more.</comment>


Apple Has Made Its 'iPhone Calibration Machine' Available to Repair Shops - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/apple-has-quietly-made-its-secretive-iphone-calibration-machine-available-to-repair-shops <comment><USER2> Does anyone know if this opens up a back door to Secure Enclave by malicious operators of calibration machines?</comment>


Ask HN: Is SVG Dying? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Alive and kicking. SVG is often requested (or just included) as part of design assets; used for icons/logos/illustrations/charts/diagrams on the web; programmatically generated or manipulated (i.e., animation).. Language ecosystems usually have choices of parsers (less so renderers)..

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure what context you're referring to, but SVG is heavily used for displaying scalable logos and charts on the web. It's also heavily used for vector-based graphics and outputs to machines (ex. laser cutting) due to its relative simplicity and openness.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why would it be dying? If anything, most companies are using it more. I'd like to see a binary format for SVG to make them smaller but keep the scalability.

<comment><USER5> Such format isn't really necessary, because http has protocol level compression that can get rid of text-based format inefficiencies. And in case you need it precompressed there is a compressed svg format - svgz.

I agree that svg is not dying, it's still growing.

<comment><USER4> Gzip isn't going to compress as well as a binary format would. SVG is XML and while it has text components that can be compressed, it will reach limits. Plus, if you compress the binary, it could be reduced even further.

Using a byte encoding for element types and numeric values over strings would likely dramatically reduce sizes. For example:

<z:rect x="0" y="0" width="10" height="10"/>

Could be binary encoded as something like:

00 00000000 00000000 00000110 00000110

(shape, x, y, width, height)

Total size of compress XML is probably 30-40 bytes. Final binary size is 16-18 bytes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think so. It's used heavily by D3. There are many useful applications of SVG for rendering on the web.</comment>


First public release of MorphAdorner - <AUTHOR> http://morphadorner.northwestern.edu/morphadorner/

<comment><USER2> "adornment" is less confusing than "annotation"?

Oh, my alma mater is so cute.</comment>


Why Men Die Younger Than Women: The 'Guys Are Fragile' Thesis - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/06/17/192670490/why-men-die-younger-than-women-the-guys-are-fragile-thesis

<comment><USER2> What a cheat. The "theory" advanced here is that "mean are weaker" with no further explanation, which is just a restatement of the fact that needs explaining – namely that men tend to die off at a higher rate across all ages.

<comment><USER3> > _What a cheat. The "theory" advanced here is that "mean are weaker" with no > further explanation_

Em, the article offers several explanations. Perhaps you skipped them?

<comment><USER4> Actually, the explanations the article put forward were unrelated to the "male weakness" hypothesis. Riskier lifestyles, tougher treatment of their bodies by men, unspecified effects by testerone, and size differences were all listed as explanations. Near the end, after these explanations had been discarded as insufficient to explain the full difference, we get this:

 _" Something about being male 'influences unfavorably the resistance ... to disease at all ages.' He called it 'male weakness.'"_

The quote then reuses the same basic argument by the author, that there are numerous valid reasons that men die younger, but they cannot explain the full difference.

Because of this, the author claims that there must be some other force at play (which is quite likely true) but instead of offering a scientifically testable hypothesis he simply chalks it up to some vague notion of male weakness. Even if "male weakness" was better defined, no further explanation is offered to support this theory at all.

It's definitely a cheat. The article started with sound data and logic and ended with an arbitrary conclusion not based on any of the prior considerations. It allows the author to assert a predetermined conclusion based on the appearance of thorough research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is another interesting factor. Women seem to have more active immune systems. This gives them a lot more cases of the sniffles, but less of a chance of dying outright.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have another theory: girls just receive more attention and more care than boys, at any age.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't seem to be true. In almost all societies where there is a significant disparity between the treatment of boys and girls, boys are far more highly prized. They are first in the line for food, medicine, education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Married men die before their wives - because they want to. ;-)</comment>


Ask HN: Exercise that makes source-to-source compiler wheel - <AUTHOR>

Sorry if this is an inappropriate post/against the rules.  The curiosity is killing me.
What's the name for the exercise of making a source-to-source compiler wheel? As in you have source in language X that compiles to lang Y, which compiles to lang Z, and back again to X?
I saw one on HN a while ago for 20+ languages and I can't find it, searched everywhere. <comment><USER2> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_%28computing%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_%28computing%29)</comment>


In U.S., Perceived Need for Third Party Reaches New High - <AUTHOR> http://www.gallup.com/poll/165392/perceived-need-third-party-reaches-new%2Dhigh.aspx

<comment><USER2> Single member districts and plurality vote make it very hard.

Only if there is huge local support in some areas this could happen. For example Tea Party could break from Republicans and get several representatives.</comment>


Show HN: OpenSit is an open source meditation community - <AUTHOR> http://opensit.com

<comment><AUTHOR> You can read more about our ethos here - [http://opensit.com/about](http://opensit.com/about) \- and how to contribute here - [http://opensit.com/contribute](http://opensit.com/contribute)</comment>