Fukushima's nuclear signature found in California wine - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611654/fukushimas-nuclear-signature-found-in-california-wine/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the desirability of pre-WWII battleship steel in particle physics experiments. Due to required detection sensitivity they need to construct experiments from materials that have as low background radiation as possible in order to not mask the actual information of interest. Ever since the first atomic bombs were detonated, sufficiently low-radioactivity steel became much more difficult to find. A large portion of available low- background steel supply is from battleships that were built before the bombs [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low- background_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel)

<comment><USER3> Wow, I hadn't realized the effects of the atomic age were that widespread, creepy.

<comment><USER4> You should make the opposite conclusion. The fact that atoms are so tiny that almost _every_ notable event has a detectable affect on isotope ratios means you should downgrade the meaningfulness of the OP article. (See my other comment on ancient lead, which has nothing to do with nuclear tech.) Likewise, when seizmic technology improves and we can sense explosions from further away, we don't conclude that building demolition is somehow more important than we previously thought.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, a similar observation is that there are more atoms in a glass of water than glasses of water in all the oceans. So, dumping a glass of (somehow trackable) water into the ocean would eventually cause every glass of water to contain atoms from that glass. See also: [http://samkean.com/books/caesars- last-breath/](http://samkean.com/books/caesars-last-breath/)

<comment><USER6> Or it takes 10 years for one of your breaths to be spread around the atmosphere, and everyone is very likely to be breathing at least one molecule of that breath in every breath they take.

From article "Breathing Everyone's Air" \- scroll down to that heading in [http://www.scifun.ed.ac.uk/card/facts.html](http://www.scifun.ed.ac.uk/card/facts.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When they say "bathed in radioactive cloud" they actually mean "wind carried trace amounts of radioactive materials". Anytime anything "nuclear" is involved, the reporting gets very poetic.

<comment><USER8> Wait until someone tells the author about the sun. I get bathed in a radioactive death rays most mornings.

<comment><USER9> The sun is radioactive. Sunlight is not radioactive, it's radiation.

<comment><USER10> Sunlight does effectively produce radiation burns in your skin, however. And that definitely causes cancer. If we treated sunlight the way we treat barely detectable nuclear radiation, we'd never go outside and we'd use blackout curtains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just want to point out that low level radiation is probably good for you. It's cool that they found it, but this is not any kind of health danger.

Low level radiation probably acts as a beneficial stressor, like exercise or fasting [1]. Although this level is so low it probably does nothing at all.

You also probably don't have to worry about the radiation you get from bananas or plane flights. And it's possible those dumb sounding radioactive water spas might have actually been helpful.

Fukushima is aweful for the nearby region and still a cautionary tale. But it didn't poison the whole world.

[1] [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/04/06/small- radi...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/04/06/small-radiation/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477717/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477717/)

[http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/yang1/](http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/yang1/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26808887](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26808887)

<comment><USER11> Here's a very straightforward study, "Evidence That Lifelong Low Dose Rates of Ionizing Radiation Increase Lifespan in Long- and Short-Lived Dogs" [1].

Two studies on beagles:

"One exposed the dogs to whole-body cobalt-60 γ-radiation."

"The other evaluated dogs whose lungs were exposed to α-particle radiation from plutonium."

For both studies, excess radiation improved their lifespans by 20-50 percent. It is a substantial beneficial effect. Above a beneficial level of radiation their lifespans shortened to the level of dogs who were not exposed at all and then to substantial reductions in lifespans.

This graph illustrates it best: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/figure/...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/figure/fig4-1559325817692903/)

We don't know why low radiation exposure is good, but it does seem to be.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/)

<comment><USER12> The lack of public trust in science is a real problem, and mostly unjustified or misdirected. That said, nothing reinforces the evil scientist image like irradiating puppies.

<comment><USER11> It is pretty dark. There's even a cute beagle picture in a graph. Apparently beagles are the preferred model animal for radiation studies going back to the 1950's.

<comment><USER12> I don't even have a problem with it necessarily, but they should probably use pigs. Nobody cares about pigs.

<comment><USER13> Pigs are actually great pets. They've been domesticated practically as long as dogs

<comment><USER14> Truth. Had pigs for a time as a kid. When people spend quality time with them, pigs respond.

They like people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For some context a Becquerel (Bq) is a single decay per second (note the graph shows mBq/l). One gram has an activity of ~3 TBq.

Though 137-Cs has a half-life of ~30yrs it has a biological half-life of ~70 days. (30 if you are treated with Prussian Blue). It fairly uniformly distributes through the body, though it has higher concentrations in soft tissues, which does pose greater damage (see Sievert).

That being said, these are such low quantities you'd die of alcohol many times over before increasing your chance of cancer by 1% over the course of your lifetime.

From Wiki they gave some dogs a dose of 140 MBq/kg and they all died in 33 days. When they gave some other dogs half (70MBq/kg) dosage all the dogs survived.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very interesting read. I did a double take that a lack of Cesium-137 meant "post-1980" (not "pre-1980") since the levels have dropped off since the testing in the 50s and 60s.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm tasting hints of berry, hints of oak, rubber hose, high notes of plutonium...

</comment><comment><USER18> Even more interesting than other sources is the fact that many spinal and similar surgeons reach their lifetime radiation exposure limit in just 10 years of practice. Many (most?) end up with cataracts or other tell tale symptoms of radiation exposure. It's because of all the x-rays needed for minimally invasive surgury.

<comment><USER19> Do you have a source on that that you can cite? Thanks in advance!

<comment><USER20> Here's a link I found by searching 'surgeon radiation exposure': [https://spinalnewsinternational.com/reducing-radiation- expos...](https://spinalnewsinternational.com/reducing-radiation-exposure- during-spine-surgery/)

This one discusses limiting procedures per year. Apparently in one example a surgeon could do 4000+ safely with a lead apron and only 300 without one. [https://insights.ovid.com/crossref?an=00007632-201304010-000...](https://insights.ovid.com/crossref?an=00007632-201304010-00013)

There appears to be plenty more material out there relating to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A similar example of how sensitive measurement tools are: wine from the Livermore area is slightly higher in tritium than wine from elsewhere in California, ostensibly because of proximity to LLNL.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=nAgxAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA63&l...](https://books.google.com/books?id=nAgxAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA63&lpg=RA2-PA63&source=bl&ots=sy0Cj7lW5m&sig=_m7VUqXXDDmYTdRGV_r4ZJmsWuE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBk6eJ167cAhXSGDQIHUpPDBAQ6AEIhAEwCQ#v=onepage)

</comment><comment><USER22> We should treat this as what it is: a humbling reminder of just how big avogadro's number is.

</comment><comment><USER23> Edit: Oh no. Physics For Future Presidents lied to me. See here: [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol- radioactive/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol-radioactive/)

I'd delete this comment if it were possible.

<comment><USER24> Fake news

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol- radioactive/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol-radioactive/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if Japanese Whiskey would be affected?

<comment><USER26> Oh boy! Is that why some in the US are so expensive?

<comment><USER27> That's a different problem. Basically the whiskey makers under predicted the demand 12 years ago or so when they were making that batch. Now it's sold out practically everywhere, hard to find even in Japan.

<comment><USER28> Glad I have a couple bottles stashed in my liquor cabinet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Daahling! This vintage tastes absolutely _radiant!_ "

</comment><comment><USER30> Oh my god! Ban all nuclear reactors ASAP!!!

Just kidding. A regular banana is probably an order of manitude more radioactive than these wines.

<comment><USER31> I hope you understand different types of radioactivity and what they do to your body once they are incorporated in your tissues long-term. Something like 5,000 inhaled particle causing cancer probability to rise by 1%... Enjoy your banana simplifications!

<comment><USER30> 5000 particle? LOL! If that was true we would all have cancer:

"The average concentration of radon in the atmosphere is about 6×10−18 molar percent, or about 150 atoms in each ml of air."

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

<comment><USER31> Enjoy your ignorance:

[https://ratical.org/radiation/CNR/CHfIP1975.pdf](https://ratical.org/radiation/CNR/CHfIP1975.pdf)

<comment><USER30> Nowhere in this document do they state that inhaling 5000 particles increases lung cancer risk by 1%.

I recommend revisiting high school chemistry, especially the topic of molar mass. (Hint: Plutonium is about 250 g/mol. One mol is 6x10^23 particles.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > The team began their study with the conventional measurement of cesium-137 > levels in the unopened bottles. That showed levels to be indistinguishable > from background noise.

And yet I bet wine snobs are gonna pretend their palates are so refined they can taste it now.

</comment><comment><USER33> This wouldn't surprise me even a little. I was living in Anaheim at the time of the disaster, and background radiation levels were elevated for so long that I got bored of checking. A normal reading might have been 0.08 - 0.15mSv, and it was super common to see readings in the 0.40-0.50mSv range for months at a time.

<comment><USER34> After the disaster my professor measured increases in radioactivity to try and determine if there was any increase in background radiation from man made sources. Unfortunately even our liquid nitrogen cooled gallium detector couldn't find anything. I think you need a mass spectrometer to really detect any change in California. (Fukushima itself is a different matter!)

Variation in radiation levels of the magnitude you are showing can be caused by many different sources, most of which are natural. Sun spots, changes in the upper atmosphere, cat sleeping on the detector, etc...

EditNote: We definitely could still detect the consequences of Chernobyl and atmospheric weapons testing. Fukushima didn't come close to touching the contamination from THAT

<comment><USER33> Interesting to know, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> BTW, alcoholic drinks are requred to be radioactive by US law.

[https://youtu.be/1N1ydPJGGj4](https://youtu.be/1N1ydPJGGj4)

<comment><USER36> [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol- radioactive/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol-radioactive/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If I'm reading it correctly, they can date wines based on the amount of radiation given off by them, and line it up with a chart for amount of radiation the atmosphere took in during events.

How could you properly date a bottle if it was in Fukushima during the event, vs a 1960's bottle during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

> the levels of cesium-137 are barely detectable, and even then, only if the > wine is destroyed.

So nothing to see here, move along.

<comment><USER38> The article seems less about the toxicity of the cesium levels, and more about their use as a signature in dating the wine, which I find is still interesting.

<comment><USER39> _The article seems less about the toxicity of the cesium levels, and more about their use as a signature in dating the wine, which I find is still interesting._

And rightly so, by far the most toxic thing in these bottles is alcohol, not vanishingly small traces of cesium.</comment></comment></comment>


How Did G.M. Create Tesla's Dream Car First? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/technology/how-did-gm-create-teslas-dream-car-first.html <comment><USER2> This article is a ridiculous hit-piece. Ugh.

From reading it you would think Tesla was some kind of failure of a company, rather than a miraculous startup that has done what no American car company has managed to do in over 100 years.

"You see, the fact that Tesla has 400,000 preorders is actually a sign of failure!" Yeah, tell me more...

</comment><comment><USER3> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12497014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12497014)</comment>


Hipmunk Lands A Big Acorn: ITA Will Help Power Their Airfare Results - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/16/hipmunk-ita/ <comment><USER2> If they're getting access to the whole QPX feed, this is a great step forwards for the Hipmunk guys. Matrix - the gold standard in flight-finding websites - is powered by QPX, but its weakness has always been its less-than-great UI. Sure, Hipmunk won't get Matrix's routing language (a small DSL that allows incredible precision in specifying the flights you'd like it to return), but the people that use it wouldn't be interested in something like this anyways.

Congrats to the Hipmunk guys!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm at the PhoCusWright conference where Adam and Steve announced this today. They did a fantastic job and I'll be shocked if they're not selected as the summit winner. They weren't afraid to take friendly shots at the established players (like Kayak), which was very refreshing.

I think there is an important lesson to be learned here. We've been searching for flights online for over a decade, and yet there is still room for what (now) seems like ultra-obvious innovation. You can bet that flight search is not the only market where looking at a problem through the lens of "what's best for the user" can lead to a winning business.

Moment of Zen from Adam's presentation: why does Orbitz even have a checkbox for "I prefer nonstop flights"? (Worse, it isn't even checked by default!) Got a big laugh from the crowd- nervous laughter from some, I'm sure.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Google just recently acquired ITA.

<http://www.google.com/press/ita/>

As a result of this deal, I am left wondering if Google is interested in acquiring Hipmunk.</comment>


An Open Letter to Members of the W3C Advisory Committee - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/open-letter-members-w3c-advisory-committee <comment><USER2> > We've proposed a simple solution, patterned after the existing W3C patent > policy. The patent policy doesn't take a position on whether patents are > good or bad, but it does hold that standards are more open if you don't have > to license a patent to implement them, so W3C members are required to > promise not to sue others for practicing their patents when implementing W3C > recommendations.

> Our proposal does the same thing, except for anti-circumvention rights > (rather than patents). Members who participate in the Media Extensions > Working Group will have to make a legally binding promise not to use anti- > circumvention laws to aggress against security researchers or implementers. > All other rights and causes of action -- trade secrecy, copyright, tortious > interference, breach of contract -- are intact.

This sounds like a reasonable compromise. Having a W3C standard that can't actually be implemented by anyone except those that are explicitly granted a license is not a standard: it's really just proprietary software, and feels like going back to the days of Flash, Java and Active-X applets, only worse, because it's a legal problem instead of a technical one.

I'm definitely against the idea of DRM in any W3C standards without this type of provision, but I'm not sure if this is enough or not.

<comment><USER3> What in the W3C EME standard cannot be freely implemented? As far as I know, EME is just a communications standard between the browser and components that are not part of the browser to allow those components to provide media data for the browser to display.

EME can be used to communicate with proprietary DRM components, but those DRM components are not part of the standard, and there is nothing that I've seen in EME that makes DRM the only thing it can be used for.

For instance, couldn't EME be used to make a system to protect the privacy of people sharing personal videos? Encrypt the video and upload to a web server that all the parties sharing have access to. Distribute the decryption keys to the people intended to share the video. Use EME to interface the browser to a component that uses that key to decrypt the video on the fly.

From the browser's point of view there is not really any significant difference between a video that is encrypted for DRM and one that is encrypted for privacy. In the former case those who encrypted it want to keep the key secret from the viewer, whereas in the latter case they want to keep the key secret from third parties. To the browser, these look the same: there is encrypted video, and the browser needs something to decrypt that and hand it the decrypted data for it to display.

<comment><USER4> You don't need an EME blackbox to protect privacy.

You simply need client-side decryption for that case, which can be done in a transparent sandbox with audited open source code.

<comment><USER5> But they're never going to agree to that, because then it would be trivial to dump the decrypted stream to a file. Right?

<comment><AUTHOR> But it is trivial anyhow. DRM doesn't actually work, never has, never will; and attempting to criminalize it (such as mentioned elsewhere around here) will only serve to increase piracy, not decrease it.

<comment><USER5> Yes yes, I'm on your side here. The point is that if the decryption module were open-source, it would be _trivial_ to do it, and there would be lots of implementations of it, while if it were a binary blob, it would significantly raise the bar. They know this, so they'll never agree to having it be open- source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have to say: I like this approach of offering an alternative far better thank a blanket "please don't do this thing because it's bad." Admittedly, I don't follow the EFF's actions as much as others, so maybe this is more common than I think, but it seems fresh to me. Their alternative seems like it could be palatable to a reasonable Media Extensions Working Group member (though I guess they could claim that the definition of a "security researcher or implementer" is unreasonably broad).

</comment><comment><USER7> The EFF's public communication is much improved recently, IMHO. Even with strong interest in these issues and with technical expertise, formerly I could hardly bear to make sense of their postings.

This one still could use a tl;dr summary at the top, but the vast improvement is heartening - without good public messaging, their mission seemed very difficult. Now I feel like there's a chance.

</comment><comment><USER8> Because of this article and comments here, I went to look at what w3c membership, and donations look like.

[https://www.w3.org/Consortium/fees?countryCode=US&quarter=04...](https://www.w3.org/Consortium/fees?countryCode=US&quarter=04-01&year=2016#results)

Ultimately the w3c is doing something that is in the best interest of its participants and NOT in the interest of users, or consumers.

In this document ( [http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Process-19991111/backgr...](http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Process-19991111/background.html) ) the w3c claims:

 _" W3C is a non-profit organization funded partly by commercial members. Its activities remain vendor neutral, however."_

Yet I can find no US IRS 990, or foreign equivalent.

Fundamentally this structure doesn't look like a non profit. It also doesn't look like it has the best interests of the community (us) as a whole in mind. IANAL but I have to wonder if it is possible to challenge the w3c on its continued use of "non-profit". I also wonder if there is a way to put pressure on them to allow non profit orgianzations free access to these committees outside of collecting a fee from them, as it strikes me as an un-needed burden.

</comment><comment><USER9> Fair enough, but shouldn't this letter be to Google and Apple and the other companies that are really making this happen?

<comment><USER10> The W3C advisory committee is composed of representatives of all the members, including Google and Apple.

<comment><USER11> There is a chance that DRM is a forgone eventuality. Why is there no competing standards committee?

<comment><USER9> Well, if they're competing with Google, and Apple, etc... would they really be _competing_ or just existing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Working Group will have to make a legally binding promise not to use anti- > circumvention laws to aggress against _security researchers_ or > _implementers_.

(emphasis added above)

OK EFF I love you, but when did you start leaving end users off of your list of people you want to protect against litigious aggression?

Regular end users want to do fair-use things like pause and download too, without being sued, right?

</comment><comment><USER13> After reading the discussion yesterday on the Save Firefox post [[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11678516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11678516)], I'm still unclear if EME is a compromise that provides a standard for proprietary DRM solutions to talk to any browser, or a backdoor that will allow media companies to remove user control and decide which browsers win. If it's the former, that feels like a good thing compared to the proprietary plug-in days of yore.

<comment> TD-Linux The latter. The standard does not specify the interface that the DRM blobs talk to the browser, or even that it's an interface at all as opposed to a built in feature of a proprietary browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> at first I guess it'd be great, finally eff found a solution that any companies can implement their own security layer that's compliant with new standard and EME, but it's not. Even if W3C accepted this open letter and changed, there would be nothing changed at all.</comment>


Geo Locate an IP Address - <AUTHOR> https://myips.in <comment><AUTHOR> Made this tool to geo locate an IP address - [https://myips.in](https://myips.in)</comment>


Maintain an automated networked database? GraphOn wants to sue you - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9697 <comment><USER2> Make any money? Do something useful that people want? There's a line out the door of people who do neither who'd like to get money without creating wealth by suing you.

Its become one of the biggest, saddest, "nothing to see here's" of the modern age of business. The surprise factor of these types of things is long gone. I haven't even been able to be outraged since SCO... Now its just "meh". The lawsuit is just another form of normal business friction, like taxes and OSHA.</comment>


Correcting for the first-player advantage in Risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/08/correcting_for.html

<comment><USER2> I played risk online at warfish.net for a while until I felt like I had maxed out the strategy to within the noise level. It isn't obvious to me that there is a first mover advantage. In our games the initial territories were randomly distributed, and I always felt that whoever got the "most closely clustered" territories had a tremendous advantage.

The best advice I've ever heard for competitive Risk is "play the other players, not the continents". You want to try to create situations such that you are the least desirable player to attack. In general, this means turtling. Occupy a few territories that are close to each other with about 5 armies on each, and put as many armies as you can on one territory that is adjacent to enemies. Don't take a whole continent because people will try to crack it so you don't get the bonus armies. Try to get your armies off of continents that it looks like people will fight for. Try to get a card every turn, and hold them as long as you can.

You stop turtling when and only when you can eliminate a player in one move and get a bunch of cards from them. You will usually do this by trading in a set of cards, putting all of the armies on your big territory, and marching it all over the place. You will almost always succeed if you have about 0.75 _n_ \+ 1.0 _t_ armies to push with, where _n_ is the number of armies you will need to kill, and _t_ is the number of new territories you will need to occupy.

(Corollary, if you're weak then try to use all your cards so that you're not a valuable target.)

Eliminating a player who has 5 cards almost assures that you will win the game.

After a player or two has been eliminated the game will transition to one where the players try to hold continents to collect bonus armies. If the players are fairly competent then the winner will mostly be decided by how lucky people are with collecting cards. The yield from trading in a set of cards starts to dwarf the armies collected from holding territories. Almost as important, the new armies can be place freely.

I have never seen Asia successfully held for even a single turn.

(Regarding the first alleged first-mover advantage: obviously it can't be _disadvantageous_ to move first. If it were, then the first player would take no action so as to avoid the disadvantage. By induction, if it was disadvantageous to go first then the game would never advance past the initial state.)

<comment><USER3> Good comment. I liked to consolidate my troops in an area that gave me access to lots of places - like Western Africa or the Middle East. Then, you strike at wherever people leave alone. Getting that flexibility instead of getting locked into plans is key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not having played Risk in ages, I have a few questions:

* Is there a statistically significant first-mover advantage?

* How big is it?

* What is its mechanism?

<comment><USER5> You might be able to find the answers this over on board game geek <http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/181>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We adjusted by changing the order to count, attack, place (cf attack, count, place, as I remember). If the 1st player goes on a major offensive their first turn, they end up spreading themselves thin, so this balanced things out a lot.

</comment><comment><USER7> What if you auctioned first move? I'll take first move, but give each other player a 2 army advantage. Then, proceed with a 2nd move auction.

<comment><USER8> Good idea - this is often done in the game Puerto Rico.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That is remarkably content-free. Where's the maths?

<comment><USER5> Or really any real content. The author didn't even try out his own example to see if it would work. And honestly how horrible the old Risk rules is _really_ old. There are both new rules and much more enjoyable games these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Remember when you were a new coder, and sometimes you'd see an off-by-one error that for the life of you, you couldn't track down? And after a long enough time searching, you just gave up and added or subtracted one from the variable? I don't mean to badmouth these suggestions, because I have none that are better, but they all feel like that to me. Voo-doo fixes.

Just a thought.

<comment><USER11> _And after a long enough time searching, you just gave up and added or subtracted one from the variable?_

Don't pull that trick in my shop. Isolate your bug and fix it. Whatever is causing it is probably causing other bugs that will affect other people, including the poor sucker who has to clean up your mess.

<comment><USER12> He refers to the known floating point rounding error. You should not expect a 'new coder', as he put it, to trully understand floating point rounding errors because to understand it, you need to already be a coder with some experience.

<comment><USER11> "You should not expect a 'new coder', as he put it, to trully understand..."

Oh, but I do. If you don't understand it, figure it out. If you still don't understand it, ask. If you still don't understand it, sound the alarm, and we'll both sit down and figure it out together. And you _will_ learn it.

But please don't use "newness" as an excuse to leave shit behind. Excellence comes from doing excellently, whatever it takes.

<comment><USER12> I talk like that because one of my first assignment in College when learning C was exactly a program to calculate change. And the inherent floating point erro causes the said 0.01 difference. I was fresh into C, third, maybe fourth class. You can be sure that no one had the least idea why that happened. Obviously, we all took the easy way out, used integers multiplied by 100 to work around it, but you couldn't expect me to figure out by myself WHY that was happening. This error, and the explanation of why it happened was the introduction to floating point class that we had after we saw it happen. It is just one of those things that you have to see working to understand (like recursion and pointers).

I am always impressed to see how experienced people take a lot of knowledge for granted from others. It is not like you have never 'left shit behind' in your career. I would even daresay that if you pick the code you made six months ago, you will see that it could be improved in a lot of ways. Not because you wanted but because you didn't know better, mostly. This is pratically an axiom in the life of a coder.

Please don't use "experience" as an excuse to diss the hardships of others. We were all there one day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most modern eurogames make this sort of correction. Caylus, for example, gives the the second and subsequent players extra money.

<comment><USER14> There's money in Risk?

<comment><USER13> No, I just meant to point out that a lot of modern games make up for the first player advantage (in cases where there is one) in various ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This was actually addressed in the newer version of the game, Risk 2008 Revised edition, states in the rules:

Player 3 receives an additional card Player 4 receives an additional card Player 5 receives two additional cards

In the games we play, this usually neutralizes the first players advantage.

<comment><USER12> Wonder if they will do anything similar with the War game. The last players certainly also suffer an unfair advantage there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Novice players will overextend themselves and in this case the first player might have an advantage, otherwise I don't see it.</comment>


Introducing DuckDuckHack - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/05/introducing-duckduckhack.html <comment><USER3> This is absolutely fantastic.

I remember suggesting ages ago that Intel's ark.intel.com should be integrated, so if you searched for Q6600 or 2600k or i7 980 it would show you details of the processor.

I might have a shot at integrating that. Does anyone know about the legality of doing so? I'm sure Intel wouldn't care, but showing the info in a zero click box would seem to be different than merely scraping the pages in order to return search results.

<comment><USER4> Showing extracts in search results is widely considered to be fair use: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_v._Google>

<comment><USER5> perhaps bit OT, but read this <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_v._Google#Ruling>

(1) Operator did not directly infringe on author's copyrighted works;

(5) Search engine fell within protection of safe harbor provision of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

wouldnt the same rules applies IF the government comes after The Pirate Bay? Or even the guy who is now being extradited to US for his linking website?

<comment><USER6> 1\. The Pirate Bay's support of piracy is quite "volitional", to use the ruling's terminology. The Pirate Bay goes to great lengths to maintain its ability to enable piracy. Google will gladly exclude your entire site if you ask them to.

2\. The purpose and character of Google's summaries and cached pages is quite different from The Pirate Bay's links. (In particular, Google has no intention of totally replacing the original site with an unauthorized copy, and its content is not generally useful as such.)

3\. The Pirate Bay is not covered by the DMCA's safe harbor provisions (as, again, it isn't open to the idea of taking down content at the request of copyright holders).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems to me to be a great example of hour DDG can gain an edge on Google. I don't think you'll ever see Google offering something like this; they're too big. A smaller option like DDG has more room to grow, and can take advantage of the crowd like this in ways that Google can't.

<comment><USER8> Google offered something very similar to this a few years ago: [http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/10/google-search- add-o...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/10/google-search-add-ons.html)

Sadly it seems to no longer be supported.

<comment><USER9> Your link also mentions that Google has a patent on this (patent no. 20070239716). Interesting.

<comment><USER10> (That's a publication number, not a patent number. Notice that it starts with a year. Issued patent numbers are sequential.)

<comment><USER9> Oops, you're right. The patent number is 7593939.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For some context on how this has been tried before:

* <http://yubnub.org/> \- one of the first if not first to create a community around web commands. Primitive string substitution

* <http://queri.ac> (disclaimer: I maintained it for awhile) - a small community of web commands. Supported options, bookmarklets and more. Browser-independent.

* ubiquity, <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity>, - improved on web commands by having them written in javascript and had an awesome API for combining commands and rendering command output. However, it was firefox-specific.

The main innovation I see with duckduckhack is that they're using github to foster contribution.

<comment><USER12> And that it directly adds to an already successful search engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is begging to be renamed "HackHackGo." Has such a nice ring to it!

<comment><USER14> Haha, you'll notice hackhackgo.com redirects to the same place :). We had a large internal debate about the name and it came down to these two, with hacksear.ch in third.

<comment><USER15> You compared this to Firefox Add-ons. Does that mean that these won't be integrated into DDG natively? Will that only be at your discretion?

<comment><USER16> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3915588>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here are a few ideas that would be cool.

# hackernews / hn

"hn _url_ " - See if a URL has been posted to HN. If so show the title and link to post + comments

"hn _keywords_ " - Show HN search results with linked title and link to comments

hn could be an alias to hackernews.

# reddit

Reddit's native search sucks in every way possible. Add a reddit keyword with similar functionality.

<comment><USER16> Good ideas, we are collecting all of them here: <http://ideas.duckduckhack.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is like Google Labs turned inside out. Innovative stuff. I love it. More power to DDG!

</comment><comment><USER19> Google had something like this back in 2007.

Matt Cutts: "An easy way to add new features to Google" <http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/adding-new-features-to-google/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you guys already support Mycroft plugins? Granted you can't use them to play tetris in the results list, but they're easier to make (you only need to know how to edit XML) and there are already thousands on <http://mycroft.mozdev.org>. You just need to add some heuristics to scrape the results out.

Actually, one could make a pretty good search engine that was just a frontend for mycroft that was able to extract results and figure out which plugins to use for which queries.

<comment><USER14> Not directly -- but will definately look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Slightly off topic, but can anyone elaborate on the legal handling of displaying the xkcd comics? As they are fetched directly from images.xkcd.com, and do not contain a "discussion", would it still be considered Fair Use, or have they made an agreement with Randall Munroe?

<comment><USER21> Their usage is noncommercial (no fee) and links through, so it satisfies CC BY-NC 2.5.

See <http://xkcd.com/license.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is more about duckduckgo than duckduckhack, but Im starting to love this search engine. Found out about the "s:d" command that sorts all the hits in descending order.. combined with the arrow keys and the "h" key to get back to the search box, you can search a multitude of search terms reaally fast and efficiently.

And no spying on its users! Google, you can go f-ck yourself from now on.

I love this engine. Thanks so much for creating it!

<comment><USER14> Thanks -- for the record, s:d is an internal plugin that currently calls Blekko.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> VerticalSet is offering similar functionality. DuckDuckGo is starting to go in the same direction.

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

Although aim is same to make search engine a platform, technologically it is rather different. Would love to hear feedback on this.

<comment><USER24> I actually quite like VerticalSet as the display is very clean. The thing that is most interesting about is is the installable extensions. Assuming its still around in a few years like DDG it may be worth spending some time to create some of them.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for compliments, I don't see stopping development any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I couldn't figure it out from the docs, do the plugins get approved by DuckDuckGo? Or does the user have to install them for their own account? I'm a bit confused at how you would mediate between different plugins trying to provide an answer for the same query, etc.

<comment><USER14> The plugins get approved by DuckDuckGo, and generally we work with people to make them good or round them out ourselves. In the future there may be a way to install them in addition (for say, the ones we aren't using for the whole site).

We have a bit of an answer for conflicts on this in the FAQ: <http://duckduckhack.com/#faq>

"What if there are plugin conflicts? The ultimate arbiter is the user, and that's the perspective we take, i.e. what is best for the user experience? That said, often times it makes sense to combine ideas into one, better plugin."

<comment><USER26> It'd be great to let users download plugins. There might be small communities that do regular searches where certain instant answer hacks might not make sense to the vast majority of users.

<comment><USER27> You can download plugins from github, but note that they are under GPL as far as I know. EDIT: Nope, perl5 license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> sasha-dv DDG is getting better all the time. These days, I use it almost exclusively. I love the !bang syntax.

<comment><USER28> The !bang syntax is for pass-through search (<http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html>). So, why even bother going to DDG and not simply using address bar search shortcuts?

Why would I do 'ddg !g "my" "search" "terms"' as opposed to 'g "my" "search" "terms"'??

Or is this using ddg as start page for your browser, or ...

Just curious.

<comment><USER29> For me, there are a couple of benefits of having the functionality built into my search engine rather than my browser.

First, all I have to do is set up DDG as the default search engine in my browser, and then I get tons of search shortcuts working without any more effort on my part. I don't have to worry about syncing between different computers, browsers (I use Chrome and Firefox at different times), and operating systems.

Second, there are many more shortcuts than I'd ever think to maintain myself, and somebody else has already put the work into defining them. I can do !{relatively popular site} and even if I'm guessing, it almost always works. (In fact, I can't remember the last time it didn't.)

<comment><USER28> So, if there was an addon that bundled all these !bang pass throughs as search keywords and worked cross browser would you still use ddg for this?

I'm going to guess "yes" but perhaps for others it would be no?

I'm not saying this just to be argumentative (honest!). Just that when I tried DDG as my search provider before (which was a while back now) I found that !bang looked like a great idea but just made searches slower for me. But then I've got quite a few years of established search keywords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reminds me of Yahoo's Search Monkey (RIP). DDG seems like a much better home for this (awesome) idea.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_SearchMonkey>

</comment><comment><USER31> At least _someone_ is innovating in search.

</comment><comment><USER32> Nice idea.

I have but one problem, and it's with the site (DuckDuckHack) itself.

Could the author just make the tutorial section scrollable with the rest of the page? The current functionality is quite awkward. It's also ignorant of (most of) the keyboard (home, end, page up, page down, etc.), which is the quickest way to traverse a page.

<comment><USER14> Thanks -- the site looks for the scrollwheel and the down arrow, both of which will open the tutorial after which page down et al. should work as expected. Are you seeing different behavior or just wanted to hit page down initially?

<comment><USER32> I'm referring specifically to the state before the pane is activated. It feels awkward to have so few options to activate it. The transition/animation also toys a bit with scrolling up/down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Switching my default search in 3..2..1..

</comment><comment><USER34> Yay! I wanted to contribute to duckduckgo a while ago, but found it quite daunting, this is perfect!

</comment><comment><USER35> Crowd sourcing better search results through content plugins. Genius - <USER2> job ddg/h guys!

</comment><comment><USER36> I have seen duckduckgo popping up in more places over the past few months. I don't know much about them but they're obviously doing something right. This just pushed me over the top in setting them as my default search engine.

</comment><comment><USER37> I started using DuckDuckGo for its position on privacy, but that is just one reason of many to use it now.

I have more than a few ideas for hacks, after reading the very nice tutorial. Look forward to playing with it.

</comment><comment><USER38> In 10 years, Google could be in serious trouble on the search front. Yes it will take that long. Yes they could actually lose. Rock 'em Gabriel.

</comment><comment><USER39> I saw this on GitHub a few days ago (there's, umm, not a lot else in the Perl section) and have been thinking about things to add.

Looks good, guys!

</comment><comment><USER40> Can't wait to spend a weekend creating a plugin!

</comment><comment><USER41> Awesome! Wish I could upvote this twice.

</comment><comment><USER42> How does ranking between plugins work? Is the order arbitrated in advance?

<comment><USER43> Plugins should be narrow enough to only ever trigger one of them

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Nice! Will this be integrated with the zero-click info API at <http://api.duckduckgo.com/> ?

<comment><USER14> The goodies/fathead plugins should auto-flow through. Spice/longtail are a bit more complicated but would love to get them in at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> OT: nice signin implementation there!

</comment><comment><USER46> This is so cool...

</comment><comment><USER47> It's really cool that duckduckgo want to go this way. I think both, the creator of ddg and the users will profit of the ideas, which will come up in DuckDuckHack. The users know what they want, so it's the right choice to let them be part of it ;)

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder how google fights on every frontier, and apple being smart always avoid fights.</comment>


My team is responsible for Trending Topics - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/tstocky/posts/10100853082337958 <comment><USER2> This article is a response to this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659565](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659565)</comment>


Scientifically Illiterate Congressmen Are Resigning the World to Ruin - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/congresss-scientific-illiterates-are-resigning-the-world-to-ruin?trk_source=popular

<comment><USER2> We'd be better off if some scientists were obligated to serve in a political capacity to regulate the sciences.

As it is now, the idiots are running the show, to everyone's detriment.

<comment><USER3> Hear, hear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about open sourcing a government? Maybe it worth a discussion.

<comment><USER2> I'm behind you 100%, but even getting that discussion started will take a colossal effort.

People don't know what open sourcing even means.

Worse, the government will certainly interpret discussions of open-sourcing as an affront to its authority/power (rightly so), and will likely attempt to crush any movement toward that end.

<comment><USER4> I agree that "People don't know what open sourcing even means" and even that starts to change. We can use better terms like "open government". I don't think the government, as powerful as it be, can oppose the concept if gains enough popularity. It starts from words and inevitably moves to actions. But I we need to start talking about it more.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to I restart work on my OSS project? - <AUTHOR> I maintain a (formerly) popular Python third-party library. At one time it was in the top few hundred most-downloaded packages on PyPI. Unfortunately (thanks to work and life) I haven't actively worked it for several years now, even though it's still a dependency for a few very well-known projects.
Every time I try to get back to it and get started again, I remember all the roadblocks. These are probably not that hard to overcome, but psychologically they keep making it easier to do nothing rather than dig in:
- All the latest work is in an "next generation" branch that's been converted to Python3. I'm not sure whether I should release this as a separate "NG" package, or do a bunch of work to make it 2.x compatible again, or if I can use something like 3to2.
- There's a lot of changes on that "next generation" branch that I need to document.
- I haven't read any of my project email or mailing list traffic in years.
- The project is hosted in mercurial on Bitbucket, I want to migrate it to git on Github. I have an old attempt to transfer it on Github already, I need to figure out how to update that to the latest mercurial revision.
- I should release a new version of the "old" (released) codebase with bugfixes, but I'm not as familiar with it anymore, compared to the "next gen" code.
Has anyone else gone through this? Any advice on where to start? Should I try to find a partner to help motivate me? Even just words of encouragement might help at this point ;) <comment><USER2> I feel you man. I would definitely say, this whole disastrous decades-long schism between python 2 and python 3 certainly does not help the situation. I would start by answering the following questions to myself:

1\. What are the major issues users are most frequently facing with my packages and what minimal-effort things can I do to address these issues

2\. As you said, should I make a "next-gen" version, and if so, should I deprecate the old version (I think this might be a good approach)

3\. are there developers who, if given a nudge/opportunity, could help in this clean up?

Just some thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER3> To get the juices flowing don't focus on "all the roadblocks" just focus on putting in Time - 20mins to 1 hour a day - same timeslot everyday (early mornings work for me). Doesn't matter on which issue. Its about building momentum up slowly. The longer you sustain it, the more likely you will get sucked back in. I usually need atleast a month of that, to get back into older projects.

And try to work on that documentation. Good docs brings in those collaborators. Even if they have no experience, any help is better than none and those interactions will be an extra source of motivation.</comment>


Can Canistro be the new Craiglist? - <AUTHOR> http://canistro.linuxforme.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> With canistro is possible to exchange products and services and be contacted about them. In Future version it will add LBS being able to find deals close to your location. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER2> Not bad.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: advices for presenting a project - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I have been working on a project for quite some time now, and I have been struggling to get in touch with a big organization that could both help me kicking off my "startup" and receive good attention out of my project. After a lot of hunting I managed to find two contacts (the president and the secretary of the said organization). I am about to contact them to see if I can manage to convince them about my "baby" and I would hate to ruin everything because I badly planned the presentation.
Since many of you (and ycombinator) dealt with this all already, do you mind to share some advice and URI on this matter? I'd also love to improve my slideshow skills, any suggestion?
Thanks <comment><USER2> "Presentationzen" by Garr Reynolds and "Slide:ology" by Nancy Duarte will be exceedingly helpful to you. Here are links to their blogs and Amazon descriptions. Good luck!

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

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321525655/103-6148611-3957...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321525655/103-6148611-3957463?ie=UTF8&tag=garrreynoldsc-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0321525655)

<http://blog.duarte.com/>

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596522347?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596522347?ie=UTF8&tag=slideology-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0596522347)

You should also find a copy of Guy Kawasaki's "Reality Check" or "The art of the start". Even if you don't have enough time to push through the whole book, just read the chapter on pitching. Should be very helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you: the first and second were in my shopping cart already (suggested by some fellow on another site), will add the ones from GK as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a slideshow for you which will help you improve your slideshow skills: <http://www.slideshare.net/thecroaker/death-by-powerpoint>

Definitely one of the best I've ever seen. Its a tutorial what to do and how to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, nice and to the point. Thanks! :)</comment></comment>


Start and finish an app in one day - <AUTHOR> http://browseology.posterous.com/start-and-finish-one-app-in-one-day-with-us-o

<comment><AUTHOR> Inviting all hacker news readers to join us in a very casual and relaxed day of creating a brand new app in a single day.

We will setup a chatterous room, amongst other fun things to keep us all interested.

Local hackers are welcome to join us (SF Bay Area).

<comment><USER2> Where are you guys in the SF Bay Area? Bay Area is a big place, for all we know, you could be located in East Palo Alto.

<comment><AUTHOR> we are over in Berkeley, though we might just all meet in San Francisco if there's a big enough crowd at a cafe or some other nice venue with wifi =) The location will have to be tentative, though I'll pick a spot by tomorrow afternoon so you guys have a heads up.

If anything, we can just do this remotely on Chatterous. In future events, if this becomes popular enough, we should probably setup a venue for it =)

<comment><USER3> +1 for doing it in person vs chat. much more impact to meet people as far as future connection.

also - is it one single app being created or everyone teaming up in small groups or?

<comment><AUTHOR> we will all be teaming up in small groups, groups which can be made prior or during the brainstorm sessions in the morning.

We won't be holding this at a venue this time, we didn't know the turnout would be so big, and don't have enough time to really make it work out.

Next time (which will definitely happen) we will organize a venue (suggestions welcome) and try to get those around the globe to organize within their regions as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like these things as a great way to meet fellow hackers, but every time I've done this (I've only done 3), I've seen the same thing happen. People get excited about the app while there, but there seems to be little follow through afterwards. Even if you do manage to finish the app (which is hard but not impossible), the point is to have a successful app.

There is often no marketing or promotion of the app or even just adding new features. For once I'd like to see an app come out of one of these that takes off. But for that to happen there needs to be follow through and constant work that goes in after these things and not just during the meeting.I think it would make a great success story and get more people interested in doing these things.

</comment><comment><USER5> If anyone in the Washington DC area wants to take a crack, shoot me an email.

<comment><USER6> The next meetup is this weekend, I think, so if you want to run something like this around DC, that's a good bit of your audience.

<comment><USER7> Where does one get information on these meetups? I'm in MD area, working in NOVA, but this is the first I've heard of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Official chatroom for the event: <http://www.chatterous.com/onedayapp/>

Thank you chatterous for helping us with the mixup with the rooms.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Announcement: This will be a completely virtual event! Please join the Chatterous chatroom to participate. We will post up at a cafe in SF, so if you guys are in SF send me a message. Next time around we will definitely organize a venue (if you have one in mind, please let me know) since there is such a big outcome.

Thanks to all! See you early in the morning!

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm wondering what kind of tools you are using for such a fast tempo. Are we headind towards automagically generated web applications?

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyone probably has their own set of tools, but the tools can be used for both LARGE and small projects. Usually using popular frameworks for web, or just doing quick and easy adobe AIR projects would be fairly quick as well.

Web applications could be faster to build, mainly because there is probably a ton of community support and plugins.

I'm thinking of either using PHP and Smarty Templates, or Ruby on Rail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This sounds like fun. It's the ICFP competition (www.icfpcontest.org) of webapps!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The official start time will be 10am PST | 1pm EST, but everyone is invited to start as early as possible! Those east coasters might get a head start ;)

</comment><comment><USER10> Great idea. I won't be able to participate in it even virtually (have other plans), but it's inspiring. Maybe next time. Good luck to all and have fun!

<comment><AUTHOR> we will definitely do this again, and in a more organized manner. This one will probably all virtual for this round. We will organize some venue and such in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If people want to team up, check the chatterous chat on Saturday! come even if you don't have an idea, it'll be a big brainstorm session.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The official voice chat: <https://voxli.com/onedayapp>

Try to keep it clean ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of Album-A-Day:

<http://crapart.spacebar.org/aad/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We have about 10 applicants already! A few YC company reps will pop into the chatroom and hopefully take part.</comment>


Ask YC:  Suggestions for funding a small-scale open-source development project (a la the X Prize) - <AUTHOR>

Greetings, YCers.  I'm planning to announce a "breadpig prize" (http://breadpig.com/prize.html) but wanted to get some feedback on implementation.
Ideally, I'd like to use about $3,000 I've earned in profit from various breadpig projects (tees/unholidaycards) as a reward for creating a nifty little (open-source) app.
Is there some software you wish existed (that would be worth only 3K of motivation)?  I'm thinking along the lines of a nifty FireFox extension -- the sort of thing you've always said you'd build yourself if you weren't so busy.
The other problem is creating a reward system that makes it even worth attempting.  What are the criteria by which a winner is chosen and is it even possible to create something on this small scale that makes it worthwhile to developers to even attempt to be that 1 winner (you all are better than most at probability).
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
-Alexis (the reddit co-founder who didn't know Lisp) <comment><USER2> I'm writing a web app that has a PHP/JSON backend and a very javascript-heavy front end. After spending some time in JS, it really sucks going back to PHP, as the language itself lacks so many things Java/ECMAScript has.

So the idea is to be able to use EMCAScript as a backend programming language with the ability to access files, SQL databases, sockets, do system calls etc. Since its too much work writing these from scratch, the project could be a cross "compiler" between ECMAScript and Python (or any other suitable language), so that people can write web software in one language only.

<comment><USER3> are you looking for Helma? (<http://dev.helma.org/>) It's basically what you asked for (Javascript backend and front end) but without the Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the Netflix competition model where there is an objective measure that is being optimized.

This allows there to be a leaderboard where there is publicity benefit for people who do well, even if they don't win.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think that's an awesome idea. I've wanted to do much the same thing. I think putting the money out purely as a bounty will probably work fine, and if it doesn't you can always try something else instead.

A few ideas I've had for plugins I'd like:

A browser plugin that makes zip files transparent, so you can browse them and open pieces of them.

A browser plugin for native multiple file upload (credit to Paul B. for this one)

A p2p file transfer app built into the browser.

I have more specifics on each if you're interested.

<comment><USER6> Opera has a torrent transfer client built in since version 9 (if I'm not mistaken) I'm too lazy to check at the moment but I'm willing to bet there's a firefox extension for downloading torrents as well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've done this many times in the past, if on a more private scale (e.g. on the developer mailing list of a particular project). In fact, a few years back, I started work on a website to facilitate this kind of project, though I never launched it (but I do still hold the ransomware.com domain name just in case I decide to come back to it). All of those projects ranged in cost between $500 and $20000, and most eventually turned out good (though I sometimes had to double down and hand the code over to someone else, or work on it myself, to get it polished and ready for production).

In the Open Source world, this kind of thing is not at all rare or unproven. It can work extremely well, and if it's something that works within an existing community of users and developers you get free quality control and vetting of the results...if it's a standalone project, I suspect you'll be doing your own QC. Though I'm sure you wrangle some of your fellow YC'ers into helping bang on it if it's generally useful.

Firefox plugins are a good choice for this kind of model (and I had a Firefox plugin made for about $4k about three years ago, in a very similar process), as they are small, easily testable by a wide audience, and can leverage existing infrastructure for the hard stuff.

The tricky thing, however, which you've noted, is that since only one prize is being offered, you'll have a hard time getting real buy-in from a large number of developers. $3k guaranteed is a great motivator for a student to spend a month working on something. A 1-in-50 chance at $3k is far less of a motivator. So, I've almost always broken it up into a "prove you can and really want to do it" phase and a "OK, now do it" (and the occasions where I didn't I already knew the work of the people offering to work on it from their Open Source contributions--this is tricky if you aren't following their projects reasonably closely). I didn't always phrase it as a "prove you can do it" project...instead I would pick the highest value low effort part of the project and offer a pittance for the first person to solve it--$500 is plenty, if the task is small enough. Then when the best version is delivered, I'd hire them for the rest of the project.

All of this begins to sound more like traditional contract work, rather than a contest, of course. But it does work, and making it a public process does tend to get more community involvement than a "I hired this guy to work on this project and now it's done, let me show you it" situation--if you need to get the project merged into the core project codebase, this separatist practice can make the merger very difficult...personalities get bruised if they think you're absconding with good ideas and dropping in a bunch of code they've never seen or talked about.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd love an extension that garbage collects my browser tabs.

I open a lot of tabs. Closing them is painful, and something I usually put off until my browser crashes, or I have to do a restart.

Then there's this process of manually serializing each unread URL to disk (cutting and pasting each unread URL and emailing it to myself).

I'd like something that does two things.

\- Make it so that I never have to close a tab again, when I get to 15 or 20 active tabs, this firefox garbage collector starts writing them to bookmarks/saved pages, and closing the oldest ones.

\- Provide some mechanism for winding back the wheel - and either searching the contents of - or just scrolling through my history.

I'd love to write it today, but feel my time is better spent hacking on mobile devices. If I don't find an implementation of this within a couple of weeks - I'll probably reconsider.

Cheers to anyone who sends me a link, or writes the code that makes my dreams possible.

</comment><comment><USER9> For a large prize, you can get a small amount of experts to work for a long time on something straightforward but technically demanding.

For a smaller scale, flip everything. Get a large amount of dabblers to work for a shorter time on something that might be hard to quantify but is not really hard to do.

So maybe you should reward inspiration that has just enough execution. That is, enough that people get it and it will sustain the project, but not too little that someone would have done it without the prize.

Now, I'd say get some more specific goals than "nifty" because otherwise we're all going to say "libraries for Arc" which is nifty to us but maybe not yourself.

Plus if you pick some criteria that inspire people, are clever and/or people really get behind, you can get a lot more exposure, which will increase the expected quality of the winner. And then maybe you can hit up some people at Community Next or something to add to the prize pool.

But if you really do want merely nifty, you could just set up a restricted subreddit for judging... although I'm sure I didn't have to tell you that!

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd suggest that $3,000 wouldn't pay for a great deal of development of any kind (except you could theoretically get three-and-a-bit Digg clones I guess ;) so maybe you should look at hacker-friendly prizes instead. XKCD goodies, 100,000 reddit karma points, something like that.

I used to run a fantasy football league in a school and there was massive interest just for the fun of playing and the kudos of winning. The only prizes on offer were a team shirt, a pair of boots and a wooden spoon (for the loser, natch). If you could find similar things which would appeal to hackers, you'd spend less, get more interest and get to keep some cash for next year.

<comment><USER11> $3,000 would pay for my services for a summer. It would for a lot of students. I'd love to have a cool flexible summer job where I get to implement something interesting. Shamelessly i'm putting my name into the hat. I'll build whatever cool thing you want.

You're basically suggesting google summer of code on a smaller scale. I'm applying for that too, but its a long shot.

XKCD goodies and karma points sure don't help pay for bread, rent or tuition. Or all those other things I would buy if I had a reasonable income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1\. Divide the money into several prizes.

2\. Make some sort of contest. Perhaps for a slightly academic challenge that has immediate applications? Eg. recommendation algorithms, AI problems, compression, encryption, p2p problems.

That should give you maximum return on this money.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well there is one OSS app that I'd really like to see:

\- A successor to (no longer maintained) centericq</comment>


8-Bit City (not Google) - <AUTHOR> http://8bitcity.com/map

<comment><USER2> This thing is old and was already on Hacker News. Google's one looks better also!

<comment><AUTHOR> I find the label placement and general aesthetic of 8-bit city better, actually.</comment></comment>


Adware Is Malicious, and It Uses Advanced Techniques to Infect - <AUTHOR> https://sensorstechforum.com/adware-malicious-advanced-techniques/ <comment><USER2> One of the more frustrating things about infosec is that more and more practices that were once considered bad or malicious later become mainstream.

Used to be, don't publish information about yourself that could be used to impersonate you. Then we got Facebook.

Installing random binaries used to be a bad thing, now it's outright encouraged. "Thanks for using our toilet. Download our app to unlock the door!"

Telemetry/analytics/arbitrary callbacks used to be shady/questionable and require user consent, now it's standard practice to exfiltrate whatever you want from user devices. You've got root/elevated privilege, encryption is easy and your traffic can easily blend into the haystack, so why not.

Opt-in billing used to be the domain of sleazy porn sites, but now you can't buy anything from Amazon without them trying to surreptitiously slip a Prime subscription into your cart during checkout.

Seeing traffic from anonymous VPNs logging into financial accounts used to be an obvious giveaway of something suspicious going on. Devices are now shipping with easy-to-enable "anonymous mode" apps that average users have no legitimate need for and route all of your device's traffic through god knows where, which has the effect of making your traffic indistinguishable from a fraudster's.

Popular email clients, budget analysis and social media platforms will solicit and cache third-party credentials for your employer, your bank, or your life if you provide them. This despite a decade of trying to beat "never give your password to anyone!" into the popular mindset.

Same with algorithmically-generated domains/subdomains, etc.

<comment><USER3> >Installing random binaries used to be a bad thing, now it's outright encouraged. "Thanks for using our toilet. Download our app to unlock the door!"

It's surprising to me how rarely even reputable companies provide hashes/signatures.

I just downloaded a Windows virtual machine that MS offers for free[1].

No sha256 sum, no pgp signature. I ended up deciding that since it it served over HTTPS from an MS controlled domain that I'd accept the risk, but I wish more vendors would allow advanced users to verify downloads.

(MS is not alone in this, many, many open source projects offer up pre- compiled binaries with zero checksum info, which especially sucks since so often they rely on an assortment of mirrors for the binaries rather than a central location)

I understand that _telling_ users to fire up the CLI may be a pain point, but offering the information as an optional step for the experienced user should be a best practice IMHO.

[1]For the interested, seems to last "only" 30 days but you can roll back to a snapshot if you're just testing compatibility of sites with Edge: [https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/tools/v...](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/tools/vms/)

<comment><USER4> It would be amazing if the desktop OS had a right-click option to validate checksums for you. Just something simple that when clicked allows the user to choose which type of hash to generate, then you still have to compare to the website. In 2019 with the amount of data downloaded, this is something the OS vendors need to do more for their users.

<comment> Digit-Al What you are looking for is HashTab[1]. It adds a tab to your file properties page that shows a variety of different hashes for the file, including MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256. You can configure it to show a large number of different hashes. Also, if you have copied a hash from a website into your clipboard it will automatically compare it to the configured hashes and show you if there is a match.

[1] [https://download.cnet.com/HashTab/3000-2094_4-84837.html](https://download.cnet.com/HashTab/3000-2094_4-84837.html)

[edit: typo]

<comment><USER4> That sounds cool. However, that's just another piece of software that needs to be downloaded and verified before installing. I want this to be part of the OS. It's a dangerous world out there, and the OS shouldn't make it so hard to stay safe.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, for example a right click option to show the hash of a file in macOS would be nice. Technically I can do it on the CLI, but most users are cli-shy

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I reverse malware from time to time for fun and for work and I can guarantee you that many adware are malware in disguise. They often have the same functionalities and persistence mechanisms. We're far from the AskToolbar that was showing up in your Internet Explorer over a decade ago.

Two variants in particular, known as DealPly and DealAlpha use advanced persistence mechanisms that you'd find in APTs to make themselves nearly impossible to catch and remove.

The other risk is the advertising network itself that delivers the advertisement. Exploit kits have been using comprised advertising servers to deliver the exploit and compromise hosts since adware exists. These servers rarely have good security and the companies owning them generally don't care much. I even suspect that some willingly participate in the distribution for financial gain.

While doing forensics for a client a few weeks ago, I found what appeared to be a state-sponsored APT being delivered by a program bundled with adware.

I'm really upset with open source projects like FileZilla willingly serving bundled crap to its user downloading from the official website to finance itself. They're putting millions of computers at risk.

<comment><USER6> There is a malware family out there that managed to outwit a couple of security researchers. Multiple layers of VM/debugger detection layers were present in a malware sample. If a debugger or VM was detected it would drop a generic adware sample to disguise the true intent. Additionally, telemetry designed to look adwareish would sent to the CnC servers, blacklisting your IP so that you'd only ever receive the adware from that point on even if you managed to bypass the additional layers of protection that were previously missed.

[https://foxitsecurity.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/foxit- whit...](https://foxitsecurity.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/foxit- whitepaper_ponmocup_1_1.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Remember back when everyone's computers were infected with this crap because everyone installed p2p crap like Kazaa?

Do non-tech savvy people still have a reason to install software? Don't most people just need a web browser?

<comment><USER8> I still see non-tech savvy friends have computers with "adware" installed in their browser. It's usually because they tried to "fix" something themselves, googled, and installed something that was purported to fix the problem.

There are a bunch of well SEO'd sites that will come up if you google nearly any computer issue that will appear to have a solution, but step 3 is usually to try installing some software.

(For example, if you google "can't delete file windows" this site will come up. I don't recommend installing the software [https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-software/delete- fil...](https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-software/delete-files-that- cannot-be-deleted.html) ) Here's a discussion on MalwareBytes forum about it: [https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/166526-easeus- partitio...](https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/166526-easeus-partition- master/)

No matter how many times I yell and scream at friends not to just blindly google for "Device Drivers" and install them, they do. Even sites that look a lot like a legit Epson or Canon site (for scanner or printer drivers, etc) are fake. (And they're searching for device drivers because they have a printer problem and they don't realize that the need to install a custom driver for a name-brand current printer on Windows or MacOS is very very rare)

<comment><USER9> It's fascinating that someone knows what a device driver is but doesn't know what a malware site is. Is this someone whose computer knowledge is frozen in 1996?

<comment><USER10> Actually, it's news to me that Windows no longer requires looking for and installing device drivers for common printer brands. Also, what's a malware site? Is that an anti-virus official website or a forum where people just talk about their experiences with malware? I guess my Windows knowledge is stuck in the 90s/00s. Never really needed either on Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So why no prosecutions under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for "exceeding authorized access"? Adware doesn't have consent. There's no contract of adhesion. Has anyone filed a criminal complaint?

</comment><comment><USER12> Paper here: [https://madiba.encs.concordia.ca/~x_decarn/papers/vdm- tifs20...](https://madiba.encs.concordia.ca/~x_decarn/papers/vdm-tifs2019.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Wrong paper linked. See: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/20/wajam_malware_claim...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/20/wajam_malware_claims/) and [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.05224.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.05224.pdf)</comment></comment>


Princeton Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies Online Course Now Open - <AUTHOR> https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/randomwalker/sign-up-now-for-the-bitcoin-and-cryptocurrency-technologies-online-course/ <comment><USER2> I'm the lead instructor. Let me know if there are any topics you'd like to see in particular. Here's the syllabus from the version of the class I taught at Princeton:

[http://randomwalker.info/teaching/fall-2014-bitcoin/](http://randomwalker.info/teaching/fall-2014-bitcoin/)

(P.S. about 200 students enrolled in the first couple of hours. Great to see the level of interest.)

<comment><USER3> It may be helpful to talk about consensus based systems like Stellar and Ripple. Is this included in your altcoins section?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the suggestion. We discuss it briefly, and one of the programming assignments is based on Ripple. It could use a deeper discussion, I'll work on that.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget to mention that their consensus algorithm simply doesn't work. That's why they made it 100% centralized "temporarily" (without even asking, so apparently it was 100% centralized even before that). They themselves said exactly that in a blog post. Also, the creator of Ripple dumped all his coins before joining Stellar.

<comment><USER5> Here's the Stellar team's blog post about this. While there's no attempt to conceal this, it's also not being spelled out clearly enough: the Ripple/Stellar "consensus" model is a centralized and does NOT provide the guarantees which Proof-of-Work does in Bitcoin.

[https://www.stellar.org/blog/safety_liveness_and_fault_toler...](https://www.stellar.org/blog/safety_liveness_and_fault_tolerance_consensus_choice/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why didn't you use Coursera for this MOOC? Roughly 5% of students registered for a MOOC actually complete the course. If you'd like to educate the world, do it through a platform that could actually make it possible.</comment>


Releasing bitmapist.cohort - or how we saved over $2000/month - <AUTHOR> http://amix.dk/blog/post/19718

<comment><USER2> Has someone seen something similar to this under ruby?</comment>


OnePlus 3 Support Nightmare (on-going) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kornkris/oneplus-3-support-nightmare-on-going-66c6eb64d614 <comment><USER2> I have been tempted to make the move from my One to the Three, but i have heard a few stories like this and they are making me hold off.</comment>


Nearly Half of the Twitter Accounts Discussing 'Reopening America' May Be Bots - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-discussing-%E2%80%98reopening-america%E2%80%99-may-be-bots <comment><USER2> The NPR version [1] is easier to share - quote marks in the URL of CMU's article

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting- about-coronavirus-are-likely- bots?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&t=1590076506367)

</comment><comment><USER3> This things happen all the time on Twitter. Does Twitter actually do anything? They seem to careless about this sort of stuff. Bots overrun anything remotely controversial.

</comment><comment><USER4> I suspect many users don't care whether they're reading a real human's opinion or not. Some people just want to read something inflammatory, and to then retweet it.</comment>


Art in the Internet Age, an Introduction to LBRY - <AUTHOR> https://lbry.io/what <comment><AUTHOR> I'm not associated with this project, but have seen it appear a few times as a "Suggested Post" on my Facebook timeline.

I was just taking a moment to take a look at there site and thought to search HN to see if there had been any discussion here. There didn't seem to be much discussion.

Has anyone here checked this out?</comment>


Isolation of an archaeon at the prokaryote–eukaryote interface - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1916-6 <comment><USER2> >2000 day culture... impressive</comment>


Java: All about 64-bit programming - <AUTHOR> http://vanillajava.blogspot.com/2011/07/java-all-about-64-bit-programming.html

<comment><USER2> _As of mid 2011, for £1K you can buy a PC with 24 GB of memory and for £21K you can buy a server with 512 GB of memory._

I'm not sure where he gets his computers from but those prices seem to be at least a few years away.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.alternate.de/html/product/GeIL/DIMM_24_GB_DDR3-10...](http://www.alternate.de/html/product/GeIL/DIMM_24_GB_DDR3-1066_Hex- Kit/663956/)? <\- 180€ for 24gb of memory... i think his prices are pretty accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You also have to remember that to run 64-bit applications, you must specify the -d64 flag. Otherwise your app will run in 32-bit mode!

<comment><USER5> AFAIK -d32 was the default on some versions of Solaris, but -d64 is the default now. Windows doesn't support these options. Linux does support -d32 but it has to be installed seperately, otherwise -d64 is the default for a 64-bit JVM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A big win for 64bit java over 32bit is that the kernel can provide more memory to the 64 bit process. This is because the java heap has to be 'contiguous' memory, and this is difficult to offer when in 32 bit mode due to memory fragmentation. In 64 bit mode the kernel can cobble together disparate blocks of memory and make it appear contiguous to the process.</comment>


EU to vote on patent law - <AUTHOR> https://www.unitary-patent.eu/content/lord-unitary-patents-preview-european-parliament-plenary-vote

<comment><USER2> is there a clearer discussion somewhere that doesn't piss around with that painful tolkein metaphor?

<comment><AUTHOR> This explains the general issue: [http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open- enterprise/2012/10/why...](http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open- enterprise/2012/10/why-the-ecj-must-be-ultimate-arbiter-of-the-unitary- patent/index.htm)

The basic problem is the same as in the US: a patent-only court which is captured, or at least intellectually swayed, by those with an interest in lowering the standard of patentability. This is worse, because the Federal Circuit can never ultimately escape the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court should it choose to act. But the European Patent Court is a separate international institution, so if it is given sole jurisdiction over the European Unitary Patent, then there will be little to check it.

<comment><USER3> Where's the evidence that the Federal Circuit is intellectually swayed by those with an interest in lowering the standard of patentability? The Fed Circuit is the largest collection of judges in the U.S. that actually understands patent law (not to say that _all_ of them do...); I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss their jurisprudence as "capture."</comment></comment></comment>


When Lift (new Obvious Co) Was Known as Mibbles - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_twitters_co-founders_appear_to_be_building_ne.php Twitter's co-founders announced a new partner company for Obvious Corp today, called Lift.  They disclosed very few details.  But a previous iteration offers lots of clues. <comment><USER2> It is so sad that they choose a name already used by an established and well known Scala Web Framework...</comment>