AWS and Zombies - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/service-terms/ <comment><AUTHOR> Jump to 57.10

However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organized civilization.

<comment><USER2> What if it's mediated by a non-viral disease vector, like a bacterium?

<comment><USER3> Or something like a prion that isn't alive so isn't really an infection?

<comment><USER4> Technically viruses are not considered "alive" either

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i think a text of quote & link would be more helpful in the future rather than a url + comment :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of this old comment on "Be Wary Of Geeks Bearing Gifts" ([http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/04/03/be-wary- of...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/04/03/be-wary-of-geeks- bearing-gifts/)) , man that was four years ago. What a trip:

" Simon, I respectfully beg to differ.

Eucalyptus and CloudStack are merely "zombie projects," being used tactically by Amazon to achieve its strategic objectives — as Microsoft used similar zombie projects in the 1990′s. Any firm that uses these zombies runs the risk of infection with the zombie virus, thereby risking disaster when Amazon slaughters its zombies in a future Cloud Zombie Apocalypse.

Please allow me to explain. :-)

In traditional voodoo, "zombies" are corpses raised by a sorcerer and completely controlled by the sorcerer's will, with no freedom of thought, choice, or action. If raised soon enough after death, they may LOOK alive, but they are…merely zombies.

Eucalyptus and CloudStack are now "zombie projects." They are utterly (although indirectly) controlled by Amazon, through the projects' need to maintain compatibility with Amazon's AWS APIs. These projects may once have had independent life, but — threatened with economic death by the meteoric rise of OpenStack — they have chosen to become AWS zombies instead. As such, they have lost all freedom of thought, choice, and action. They can implement no new cloud services, other than those previously implemented by AWS. Their architectures cannot be creatively improved, lest they break compatibility with AWS. They are _zombies_ , serving only Amazon's will — and serving only Amazon's strategic interests. Every company that comes to rely on these zombies becomes infected with their zombie virus, and thereby exposes itself to a future Cloud Zombie Apocalypse.

In creating these zombies, Amazon is stealing a page from Microsoft's "How to Build a Monopoly" playbook (of which I wrote one small chapter, back in the 1990′s).

Consider one of Microsoft's best-documented zombie-creation programs, the Windows Interface Source Environment (WISE, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Interface_Source_Enviro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Interface_Source_Environment)). Microsoft used the WISE program to combat Sun's WABI & PWI projects, which sought to create Unix-based implementations of Microsoft's Win32 API. This API was the key to Microsoft's vendor lock-in, and so Microsoft wanted to control any such implementations.

By licensing Windows' source code to third parties such as Hunter, Mainsoft, and Bristol, Microsoft created "zombie projects" that out-competed Sun's WABI & PWI. Once the tactical threat of WABI & PWI was eliminated, Microsoft slaughtered its zombies, as detailed in the records of subsequent anti-trust actions (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Technology_Inc.#1998.E2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Technology_Inc.#1998.E2.80.932001:_Microsoft_litigation)). Any apps that targeted the Win32 API could then run only on Windows…which was Microsoft's strategic goal.

Microsoft could kill its WISE zombies because of the fine print in the WISE program's license agreement, which — is it had been public and were closely examined — would have revealed signs of the coming Win32 Zombie Apocalypse.

At the same time, Microsoft created a zombie project on the Mac: the "Visual Studio 4 Cross-Development Edition for Macintosh," to further establish its Win32 API as the industry's de facto standard. This zombie enabled developers to recompile their Win32-based apps to run on the Mac. This worked so well that at least one such app won an "Eddy" award for best new Mac app one year. Indeed, it worked so well that Microsoft's apps group burdened its license agreement with restrictions on the kinds of apps that could be created with it, to ensure that no one could use it to create an Office-killer.

Again, the zombie project's fine print contained signs of the coming Win32 Zombie Apocalypse.

Many developers were seduced into supporting the Win32 API in part by the zombies' demonstrated ability to deliver cross-platform deployments. When Microsoft slaughtered its Win32 zombie projects (in the Win32 Zombie Apocalypse), these developers found that they had _no choice_ but to deploy their apps on Windows, and only on Windows, because it was the only Win32 implementation left. Which was, of course, the WHOLE POINT of Microsoft's creation of these zombies in the first place: to lure developers with claims of portability, with the intent to eliminate such portability as soon as the tipping point had been crossed.

Zombie-creation is just too effective a tactic NOT to use, if you're trying to lock the entire industry into a proprietary de facto standard.

That is, of course, exactly what Amazon is doing today. It is attempting to establish its proprietary AWS API as the industry's de facto standard, and one of its tactics is the resurrection of corpses like Eucalyptus and CloudStack as zombies. These zombies walk, and talk, and smile, and market just like living projects…but Amazon can — and will! — slaughter them as soon as they have served their tactical purpose.

Some pundits, seeing Amazon re-animate these private cloud zombies, have taken Amazon's actions as recanting its leadership's previous denunciation of private clouds as "false clouds." Ha! Far from it! The zombies are a mere tactic, advancing Amazon's strategic objective of providing the One (Public) Cloud to Rule Them All. The _sole_ (not "soul," because zombies have none) purpose of Amazon's zombies is to slow OpenStack's momentum. Only by preventing OpenStack from establishing a truly open cloud stack — with an open API and an open implementation, designed through an open process, openly governed — can Amazon establish the kind of Total Industry Domination that Microsoft attained in the 1990′s.

When Amazon uses the fine print of its license agreements (and/or its rapidly- growing portfolio of cloud patents) to slaughter its zombies in the Cloud Zombie Apocalypse, each company that has come to depend on such a zombie will realize that it, too, has become infected with the zombie virus. It, too, will have lost its free will. Every line of code that its has written to AWS' API will _compel_ it to switch from the zombies' private clouds to Amazon's public cloud (or to a private cloud service that Amazon may, by then, have started), because no other implementations of that API will then exist.

This outcome would, of course, be tremendously valuable to Amazon. It would give Amazon a monopoly on cloud services for the foreseeable future — an outcome that is clearly worth exploiting a little fine print.

On the other hand, it would be disastrous for the industry, and damaging to the entire world economy. Just because Microsoft got away with it, doesn't mean we should let Amazon, too. We can choose to learn from history, rather than repeat it.

Fortunately, the solution is simple: use OpenStack — an open implementation of an open API, openly designed and openly governed — to meet your cloud computing needs. Using OpenStack is an vaccination against the coming Cloud Zombie Apocalypse.

So: is AWS' API already the de facto standard cloud computing API? Not even close. It is, at most, the CP/M to OpenStack's DOS. And as these references show, this competition is still in its _very_ early stages.

Simon, I understand that you disagree. But you shouldn't. Dig in a bit, explore the history of zombie projects, and see for yourself how they've been used to create the false appearance of de facto standardization long before the issue has truly been settled.

You are far to virtuous a person. Simon, to continue luring people into the zombie trap, once you see it for what it is. Or, if I am mistaken on that point, I can hope for your future redemption. I, too, once lured people into the zombie trap. It is a relief, now, to be on the side of the angels. I hope that you'll join me there.

Respectfully,

Jim Plamondon Director, Developer Relations Rackspace Cloud"

<comment><USER7> That's interesting in light of [http://www.rackspace.co.uk/managed- aws](http://www.rackspace.co.uk/managed-aws)

<comment><USER8> Openstack effectively has become a "zombie" project. Four years on, it's (still) an overly complex mess that keeps breaking in inexplicable ways.

The board of directors[0] consists of people that all work for companies that sell turnkey cloud solutions that are _very different_ from the open source Openstack. Up until recently even a VMware (later EMC) employee was there for whatever reason. Yeah, no conflict of interest there.

Openstack on its own is practically unusable unless you have an army of sysadmins ready to challenge the myriad of bugs and complex interaction of components. The only successful open-source deployments I know of is CERN (and possibly NASA) who are tailoring it for their specific use cases through a large engineering effort. If you're a small IT shop or otherwise low on resources, it's not worth the investment, and probably never will be.

Meanwhile companies like Mirantis, HP and Redhat keeps hailing Openstack as a true open source project in the hope that people will install it and come crying to them when it (guaranteed) breaks in multiple, mysterious ways.

Oh, and you have a broken hypervisor? Have fun looping through the MySQL (cluster edition!!) tables and migrate each VM one-by-one with the "nova" command. The "evacuate" button in the (terrible) default web interface does not do what you might expect (if you've ever used a proper virtualization solution).

The combined length of the Nova, Glance, Cinder and Neutron config files are 9451 lines (actually python code). Not including the various ini and JSON files, neutron plugins, and the settings stored in the database.

Source: worked with Openstack for a year, fought dozens of production-breaking bugs and race conditions and still don't have a stable product. About 30% of VMs will just fail during creation in various ways. CERN allegedly just keep retrying until it succeeds..

As many of the other poor souls who threaded the Openstack waters, we are actively exploring alternative solutions. Sadly we already have people using it, so we are forced to support it while figuring out what to do instead.

0: [https://www.openstack.org/foundation/board-of- directors/](https://www.openstack.org/foundation/board-of-directors/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks like this only applies to the new AWS game engine and not all AWS products. Shame :(

[https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard](https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard)

</comment><comment><USER10> Huh. I thought this was going to be about the kernel bug which is causing a large amount of zombie processes in container systems at the moment.

<comment><USER11> Can you elaborate on this?

<comment><USER10> For about the last 10-ish days there was an aufs bug in the latest supported kernels that caused zombie processes to pile up and chew up CPU.

I don't know how much I can say publicly, but the tl;dr is that it really sucked for my ops and support colleagues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sadly this is not included in the German TOS which I get redirected to automatically.

<comment><USER13> Probably because of German censorship of violence in video games?

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

<comment><USER14> No, it's simply out of date.

<comment><USER15> Is It? I know someone who used a German credit card of a friend to buy a shooter on steam (some recent AAA title, can't remember), and it completely omitted the nazi-zombie mode he was for some reason looking forward to.

<comment><USER14> Yes, the media is sometimes censored but not a description of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, now we know who stands behind Umbrella Inc.</comment>


Is Scheme Lisp? - <AUTHOR> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?IsSchemeLisp

<comment><USER2> I think the fact that we're now asking this question shows how successful the Scheme and Common Lisp efforts have been.

Thirty years ago, there were dozens of variants of LISP out there, from the mainstream (MacLISP, InterLISP, Lisp Machine LISP) to the esoteric (it seems like every major CS department in the world had a local LISP dialect, much as many of them would soon have local Unix dialects).

Many of these dialects had differences between them -- from the everything's-a-message architecture of Carl Hewitt's ACTORS (think smalltalk- meets-continuation-passing-style) to a number of LISPs with logic programming features. A number of dialects even played with Algol-like syntax (McCarthy himself had planned to give LISP an Algol-like syntax. S-Expressions were a fortuitous stopping point on the way to an implementation of so-called M-Expressions which never came).

In the writings of the time, I don't see much debate over whether these systems were or were not LISP. Mostly, people understood this as a big family of languages.

In contrast, Common LISP and Scheme not only have much more in common than those LISPs did, in one important regard (lexical scoping), they are closer to each other than they are to the vast majority of historical lisp implementations. The only reason we're asking this question is because after the fading away of other historical LISP dialects, the differences between Scheme and Common LISP seem bigger than they are.

So yeah, I'd say Scheme is LISP.

(By the way, two great looks at the LISP family tree are The Evolution of Lisp[1] by Guy L. Steele and Richard Gabriel, and Olin Shivers' History of T[2], an early dialect of Scheme with an extensible version of set! similar to Common Lisp's SETF)

[1] <http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/HOPL2-Uncut.pdf>

[2] <http://www.paulgraham.com/thist.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Scheme most definitely is a Lisp. While it is clear enough that Scheme is moving in a direction that is totally different to Common Lisp (which no one doubts is a Lisp), McCarthy's original idea of Lisp, i.e. List Processing and use of symbols in programming still hold true for Scheme. Its basic data structure is still a cons cell and it uses S-exp.

If Scheme is not a Lisp, then by stretching the argument one can even say Algol 68 (large like CL) is not Algol since its very different from Algol58/60 (much more minimal) or vice-versa. Besides the blurred line between what is the language's evolutionary state and what should be considered its family extension, for all practical (and I daresay otherwise also) Scheme is a Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's confusing: Is the article saying that:

1\. Scheme is not Common Lisp ? 2\. Scheme is not Lisp ? 3\. Scheme is not _a_ Lisp ?

For the #1, everyone understands that Common Lisp is a different programming language than Scheme. For the #3, it is clear that Scheme is _a_ Lisp.. where Lisp, here, means the _Lisp family_. (Read, cons, car, macro system, etc etc)

For the #2, this is where it can get a bit blurry as it depends of what we mean by Lisp. Do we mean all the dialect who decided to unit themselves in Common Lisp? If so, Scheme is not Lisp. Do we mean a lisp dialect? So, Scheme is Lisp. It's just confusing because of the word _lisp_ who is being used in all possible ways.

But, Scheme is _a_ lisp and Scheme _is not_ Common Lisp. Whether Scheme is Lisp, it depends of your meaning of Lisp.. So, unless you take the time to clearly define what you mean by _lisp_ , it doesn't worth all the argumentation.

<comment><USER5> Exactly the same argument is continuously happening about OOP, because the terms themselves are fuzzy and people argue past each other.

I think "Scheme is a Lisp _dialect_ " is clearer. "Does Scheme have enough Lisp-iness?" avoids the semantic trap of "is", but in doing so, shows how vague the question is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have chosen to look further into Scheme rather than Common Lisp, in part because it appears simpler, but also that Common Lisp is said to be directed by a standard that has stood still for many years and which doesn't address many new issues faced by programmers. Scheme appears more nimble with many different implementations for different purposes.

For historical reasons, I would call Scheme a Lisp, and I would not use the word Lisp as synonymous to Common Lisp. Common Lisp surfaced after Scheme, and Lisp was used of programming languages even before Scheme.

<comment><USER7> Scheme moves very little, standards-wise. It's still mostly R5RS and R4RS, with R6RS being deemed a total failure.

The standard of Scheme, if at all, is being set by major implementations. However, Scheme is designed so you make your own early in the learning process.

<comment><USER6> True, but as I understand it, the Scheme standard isn't as complicated as that of Common Lisp. Implementations are partially standardized through SRFIs as well, which I think is a more active process.

<comment><USER8> R5RS is famously shorter than the index of the ANSI Common Lisp spec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found the arguments lurched from "Scheme is a Lisp because _____" to "It would be nice if Scheme were abitrarily designated not a Lisp because _____" and possibly "It would be nice if Scheme did not exist because _____." This page needs some editing to put the arguments onto a common basis for comparison.

There are three things being discussed, two of which are relevant to the title and one which is not. First, what test or tests define whether language X is a Lisp. Second, does Scheme pass these tests. Third, is it advantageous to "Lisp" the community or concept or whatever for Scheme to be considered a Lisp.

The third question has nothing to do with whether Scheme is a Lisp as defined by the first two questions.

</comment><comment><USER10> The best argument I have seen in favor of Scheme being something other than a Lisp is by E. Naggum:

 _"In the Algol family, the symbol table is a compiler construction. In the Lisp family, the symbol table is a run-time resource. In this sense, Scheme is a member of the Algol family and not a member of the Lisp family."_

([http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3225240324630811@naggum....](http://email@example.com))

</comment><comment><USER11> Asking a CL advocate whether Scheme is a Lisp is like asking a plantation owner whether his slaves are human beings.

The page's second argument for why Scheme is not a Lisp ridiculous. Basically: CL is meant to be _the_ Lisp, therefore Scheme should just go away.

As an ardent, strident even, Schemer, it is my reasoned opinion that only a mentally disabled person would today design a LISP-2; the idea that function names occupy a namespace distinct from other objects makes _less_ sense than Perl's syntax.

CL and Scheme occupy, by design, I am comfortable saying, two distinct roles in the Lisp world: CL is the New Jersey Lisp whereas Scheme is the MIT Lisp.

That said, there's a new New Jersey Lisp in town, and it wipes the floor with CL. It's called Clojure and it's a LISP-1 for kicking ass and taking names.

<comment><USER12> This analogy is too extreme. Slavery should not enter into a programming language debate unless you are actually discussing _forced human bondage_.

Otherwise, I agree.

<comment><USER13> What about java development?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I didn't even know this was a debate.

I figured the overall list processing model (car/cdr and code as data), lack of for loops and ubiquity of recursion _obviously_ made scheme a lisp.

I suppose I haven't really written any common lisp though, so maybe I'm missing something.

<comment><USER8> Common Lisp has multiple looping constructs, and tail recursion is NOT part of the Common Lisp spec.

The functional programming of Scheme is a Scheme thing, not a Lisp thing.

<comment><USER14> Thanks. I had always heard of scheme as a dialect of lisp so I figured the philosophy was consistent across both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Scheme is in fact the most orthodox, true to McCarthy's original intent, living LISP.

<comment><USER15> Is Lisp a tool or a religion?

<comment><USER5> It's a _building material_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A better question: is THE UNIVERSE lisp?</comment>


Shadertoy Path Tracing: Fresnel, Rough Refraction and Absorption, Orbit Camera - <AUTHOR> https://blog.demofox.org/2020/06/14/casual-shadertoy-path-tracing-3-fresnel-rough-refraction-absorption-orbit-camera/ <comment><USER2> This is part 3. Part 2 discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445575)

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing and made to look so accessible. I love posts like these.

FWIW, this ShaderToy doesn't seem to work in either Firefox or Chrome for Android. Had to view it on a Linux machine.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a great article. Thanks for the effort. Just one thing; can you explain absorption, please? Is that just the fact that darker materials absorb more light?

<comment><USER5> As Alan says in the article, '"absorption" […] means that light is absorbed over distance as it travels through the object.' So you can make an object darker by increasing the material's attenuation of light going through it, but it'll also become darker when you keep the material the same, but scale the object to a larger size.

This is introduced together with refraction because, in that context, it's important for rays that go through the object, as opposed to bouncing off the surface. When you look at diffuse reflections, darker materials also technically absorb more light penetrating through the surface than lighter ones. The difference is the scale at which the effect becomes significant enough that you want to spend computations on simulating it. A piece of rock doesn't change brightness when you scale it up — unless you're looking at grains of sand. With clear water it's the opposite: You don't need absorption to render a cup of water, but you do need it to render a lake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems HN brought shadertoy to life big time. Really hard to connect to the site :)</comment>


Where The Atheists Are - <AUTHOR> http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/05/26/where-the-atheists-are/

<comment><USER2> This is nothing but a great example on why you should not read blogs. The map presented is not even close to the real story.

[http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Ath- Chap-u...](http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Ath-Chap- under-7000.pdf)

<http://www.norc.org/PDFs/Beliefs_about_God_Report.pdf></comment>


(Don't) Outsource your iPhone app - <AUTHOR> http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/23/business/la-fi-app-goldrush-20100624

<comment><AUTHOR> Bad reporter. No donut.

"agreed to build Deliso's app for about $5,000." "sold more than 5,500 copies. A year after its release, the 99-cent app still sells about 200 copies a month on Apple Inc.'s iTunes store. Apple takes a 30% cut of the revenue, leaving Deliso and his children with a nice little bit of pocket money."

Deliso won't break even on his initial $5k for another 8 months.</comment>


Multi-Datacenter Cassandra on 32 Raspberry Pi's - <AUTHOR> http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/32-node-raspberry-pi-cassandra-cluster <comment><USER2> I'd be worried about just switching RPi's off. We recently got a Pi for the office to run as a dashboard - and after a couple of power cuts it corrupted the SD card.

Now I'm going to have to set up the system again, and I don't know whether this is going to happen again. The SD card that got corrupted was a Class 4 Kingston.

Maybe I'll look into a Sandisk (possibly Class 10?) next time. But I am worried that it's not the SD card's fault, but rather a combination of a journaling filesystem, an SD card and a sudden power outage.

Edited: Apologies, I realized now that the red button cuts power to the network switch, not to each individual Pi. But my concerns about the Pi and power cuts still remain though.

<comment><USER3> Raspberry Pi's are very susceptible to SD card corruption. And it's hard to fix: [http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/7978/how- can-...](http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/7978/how-can-i- prevent-my-pis-sd-card-from-getting-corrupted-so-often)

<comment><USER4> I had one device that just killed all SD cards on power up. I still don't fully understand how this is even possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a video we can see? Hitting the button im imagining the circles showing some kind of re-sync animation?

<comment><USER6> Well, if everything works it will be a very boring video, nothing will happen.

<comment><USER7> Well I'm assuming when half the pis turn off half of them will go red.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty cool. Would like to see it working (video/timelapse/gif)?

Also, any reason for not making the big red button randomly select a "datacenter" to take offline?

Idea: transition this into a 3 or 4 datacenter cluster.

</comment><comment><USER9> I noticed the mention of FIRST and at the same time, noticed the red/blue color choice. I'm sure its just a coincidence, but still entertaining. Project looks awesome.

</comment><comment><USER10> Demoing the multicluster setup and simulating the failure to various people was the hardest part for me. This will help so much. A video will be nice.

</comment><comment><USER11> How is the circle of lights set up? What does it show?

<comment><USER12> The two rings in the middle are from OpsCenter, the admin UI that they provide. The lights on the outside are from the LED on the Pis I believe.

If you hit the button, I believe one of the rings would turn red but the cluster would still be able to function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Picture of the back of that wall !!

</comment><comment><USER14> I see rpis everywhere... Are they self-replicating?

</comment><comment><USER15> and here is the link to the "high res" picture of the setup 4000x2000: [http://www.datastax.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/08/cluster_c...](http://www.datastax.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/08/cluster_closeup_final.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER16> Wicked! I want to see a video.

</comment><comment><USER17> They need a custom designed enclosure with pretty lights.

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice

</comment><comment><USER19> They say it was difficult to get a high performance DB running on a 700mhz chip with 512Mb of ram. Perhaps its just the wording but that sounds like the opposite of high performance to me.

<comment><USER20> i think they meant to highlight the high resource requirements.</comment></comment>


A.I. Researchers Leave Elon Musk Lab to Begin Robotics Startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/technology/artificial-intelligence-start-up.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15644299](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15644299) (1 comment as of 20171109)</comment>


NASA Releases Images of Earth by Distant Spacecraft - <AUTHOR> http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-229

<comment><USER2> I have very little knowledge about this, how much post processing would go into a picture like this one, if any? I presume there's effort put into highlighting the Earth because I find it hard to believe that Earth would be even be visible as a dot from that distance.

<comment><USER3> Saturn, with 10x the diameter of Earth, is visible as a faint disk from Earth, without a telescope, and with atmosphere in the way. Saturn's moon Titan, 40% of the diameter of Earth, is visible with a small telescope.

I think the integration time for the image was around 20 minutes.

Bottom line, I think seeing Earth was no big deal (with the Sun behind Saturn). The issue with this image was to capture as much fine detail in the rings as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> NASA is worth it just for the pics. Please give them more money.

<comment><USER5> Agreed! This is so amazing. Something about it makes me smile like I can't help it. Space always makes me feel small, but in a good way.

Sad bit: "Almost 20,000 people participated..." At first glance that might seem like a lot until you realize that it's 0.000003% of the population of this planet. Amazing things like this happen and literally nobody cares.

<comment><USER6> Participating in what? Looking up and smiling? That's ridiculous.

This was pure hype. Glad you showed yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can you see, I was waving...

</comment><comment><USER8> Catnip for HN.

It's beautiful and so far less ominous than Carl Sagan's pale blue dot. Instead of being lost in the vastness, we are part of someone else's sky, connected not alone.

Have as much tax money as you want Science.

<comment><USER9> > less ominous than Carl Sagan's pale blue dot

Certainly, seeing how all we get to see now is a mere white dot....

<comment><USER10> "I'm crushing you! I'm crushing ..."

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is beautiful, isn't it?</comment>


Satire/Parody Distinction—Can Satire Ever Be Fair Use? (2006) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/intellectual/roundtables/0506_outline.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw a lot of confusion on the distiction between parody (generally okay, relatively easier defense) and satire (sometimes okay, relatively harder defense) in the Psy and Copyright discussion thread. I've found this document from an American Bar Association roundtable quite informative for exploring the distinction.

Of course, nothing is cut and dry here, and you'll always want to weigh how much you want to risk having to pay for legal representation vs. how much you want to produce this new work.</comment>


Sofa Is The Best Place to Code (After Bed)  - <AUTHOR> http://www.gameproducer.net/2010/08/29/sofa-is-the-best-place-to-code-after-bed/

<comment><USER2> Lately i'm finding i'm more productive while i'm in bed, awake. I just go there with my laptop and i can code and solve problems much faster than being in my living room.</comment>


DuckDuckGo tracks you - <AUTHOR>

Google's deception is well known - search for "test", hover the mouse over the first result and you see the speedtest link, but if you right-click on that link, you can see on the status bar at the bottom (is that why the status bar not visible by default?) that the link to speedtest is channeled through Google first, so they know what you click, but pretend that they don't. Google being an ad company pretending to be a tech giant, no surprise here.
Now, to DuckDuckGo, or "we don't track you"... Unlike Google, they show you the target link when you hover and when you right-click, but they dynamically modify your link to channel your click through their system, just like Google does, only with a more sophisticated deception technique. If your internet connection is slow, or if if you switch it off, you can see that false link right there in address bar. It can also be seen sometimes when you don;t move the mouse and hit the back button on your mouse while staying on that link.
Bing does not seem to be doing any of these, or at least I didn't notice. Perhaps WireShark can be of use. <comment><USER2> These link modifications increase privacy by hiding the referer from the destination page [1].

[1] [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/05/duck-duck-go- sea...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/05/duck-duck-go-searches-are- now-externally-anonymous.html)

<comment><USER3> Also, leaving the clean link isn't trickery. It's usability.

I can do "right click + copy link" on DuckDuckGo and get a clean copy of the link. That isn't the case on Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seriously? I am hoping you are just trolling. They are just doing this to hide the referer. If you are looking for brownie points about companies that are screwing you over, you have looked in the wrong place. This is FUD at its finest.</comment>


Will China Protect Kim Jong Un from International Justice? - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/10/asia/un-north-korea-meeting/index.html <comment><USER2> There is really no international justice. The international arena is an anarchy, where countries operate to keep each other in check while expanding their own sphere of influence. NO COUNTRY has ever intervened to "bring justice" to another country.

Even during World War II, the Allied powers went to war against Hitler's expansionism, and not on account of the holocaust. If Hitler had just concentrated on killing people in his own country (like Stalin), no one would have clamored for bringing the Nazis to justice.

<comment><USER3> > _Even during World War II, the Allied powers went to war against Hitler 's > expansionism, and not on account of the holocaust. If Hitler had just > concentrated on killing people in his own country (like Stalin), no one > would have clamored for bringing the Nazis to justice._

Not sure if we can say that. There were reports of what's going on smuggled out of Nazi territory, but they were mostly ignored; public opinion learned about the genocide only when Allied soldiers stumbled upon the concentration camps in 1944. Hard to tell what would have happened if people listened to the reports that came even before the war.

<comment><USER4> When you won't accept a ship full of Jews, and given how many Stalin killed, I don't think anything short of the UK actually being invaded or Perl Harbor would have got the US into WWII. Lot of anti-semites in leadership positions pre-WWII. Hell, Wilson was a KKK member and re-segregated the federal government.

<comment><USER5> > Wilson was a KKK member

I don't think this is true. A brief search finds nothing that says he was, and several places that don't say he was where I'd expect them to. E.g. [http://www.weatherimagery.com/blog/president-woodrow- wilson-...](http://www.weatherimagery.com/blog/president-woodrow-wilson- racist/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson#Civil_rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson#Civil_rights)

<comment><USER4> President Wilson was a racist. The screening on March 21, 1915 of "The Birth of a Nation" that he so enjoyed (probably because he was friends of the author of the book it was based). You can search on all that information.

The Wikipedia page ignores all the other articles (do the search) about Wilson's beliefs, friends, and civil rights record. It is also ignored in HS history books just as President Lincoln's dealing with the Dakota is ignored. Let's also remember he was happy about the biggest KKK march on DC in US history. Never mind his dumb meeting after WWII in Paris.

<comment><USER5> I never said he wasn't a racist. I said he wasn't a member of the KKK. You haven't provided any evidence that he was.

"Not being a member of the KKK" doesn't mean someone wasn't a racist. If he was a racist, we can say that without saying he was a member of the KKK. You'll note that I linked an article titled "President Woodrow Wilson was a Racist", which successfully accomplished this.

<comment><USER4> The book I saw as the source "Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White" detailing 5 Presidents who were members. The only dispute I see about the book is its deemphasis of churches over Republicans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Deeply saddening but I doubt Kim Jong Un will actually face international justice. 2014 report aside, the world has long been made aware of the cruelty in N Korea, to no avail. I don't see what's different this time to suggest that the tide will actually turn.

<comment><AUTHOR> The only way he'll avoid prison is if he dies young, he won't be able to avoid justice for 4+ decades, there are many corrupt old people in prison who thought they could.

<comment><USER7> Sadly his father and his grandfather escaped justice. There is no reason to believe this time will be different.

<comment><AUTHOR> Open access to information might make a difference - at some point the world will be blanketed with internet access from satellites/drones/balloons, it will be impossible for the average North Korean to be forcibly kept ignorant forever.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Whether China chooses to exercise its veto to prevent the UN from issuing a strongly worded condemnation or not, _North Korea_ will protect Kim Jong Un from international justice. They have weapons pointed at some of the world's most densely populated areas, and enough fanaticism to use them. Even if the rest of the North Korean leadership were to decide Kim Jong Un was going too far, I don't think the UN would be invited to participate in their palace coup.

<comment><USER9> > Whether China chooses to exercise its veto to prevent the UN from issuing a > strongly worded condemnation or not

A referral to the ICC is a substantively different action than a condemnation (of course, the DPRK is unlikely to cooperate with the ICC, at which point there is a different discussion that may happen at in the UNSC -- or potentially even the GA, under "Uniting for Peace" \-- about how to deal with that.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> China wants stability, they don't want trouble on their borders. So if this would cause NK trouble (it might), they'll block it.

Some day, though, NK will fall apart, if only when this Kim or the next runs out of planned economy money to reallocate to bribes. Then China will have a problem on its hands.

<comment><USER6> China's also an unlikely ally for intervention here as it too was recently reprimanded for continued use of torture in prison and cracking down on human rights lawyers and activists by the UN Committee Against Torture:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- china-35058284](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35058284)

<comment><USER9> > China's also an unlikely ally for intervention here as it too was recently > reprimanded for continued use of torture in prison and cracking down on > human rights lawyers and activists by the UN Committee Against Torture:

That's like saying that he US is an unlikely proponent of action here (despite the fact that it is, obviously a key proponent of that action) since it, too, has been reprimanded by the UN Committee Against Torture over its use of torture, particularly in the context of detainees at Guatanamo Bay and at secret, exterritorial detention facilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...

It is interesting how our mainstream media phrases these things, to make them a question. They frame debate to be 'normal' or 'silly'. For instance, they could also ask:

Will China protect Tony Blair from International Justice?

Will Mozambique protect George W Bush from International Justice?

More generally the U.S. in its dealings with China always want to put our Chinese friends on the back foot by questioning their human rights record. Meanwhile, which country imprisons the most? USA. I would not be at all surprised if there were more people imprisoned inside the USA than there are people imprisoned in the rest of the world.

Hence, when it comes to important matters of human rights it is difficult to take the U.S. government or media seriously.

<comment><USER12> > People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...

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

> I would not be at all surprised if there were more people imprisoned inside > the USA than there are people imprisoned in the rest of the world.

I would, since it's common knowledge that the US has 22% of the world's prisoners.

America has an incarceration-per-100k of about 700, while North Korea has an estimated 600-800, but we can't be sure because they're so secretive.

HOWEVER, america's prisoners get medical care, food, and many protections. North Korea's prisoners are starved, beaten, raped, and worked to death in brutal camps that rival nazi germany for pure concentrated evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> .....</comment>


Announcing a New Tool for Building Interactive Adventure Games on Alexa - <AUTHOR> https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/TxEQV5K754YS77/Announcing-a-New-Tool-for-Building-Interactive-Adventure-Games-on-Alexa <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool. :-)

Building games on something like Alexa could be really fun. I can see adventure games in particular working well.

Are there any mobile adventure games or choose your own adventure stories that use your voice for commands? That could be fun too.

Very cool of Amazon to promote this employee project. Hope some good Alexa adventures get created!</comment>


Create FreeNAS Jails with IOCAGE - <AUTHOR> https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-create-freenas-jails-with-iocage/ <comment><USER2> this is relatively useful,

but FreeNAS is about '20 minutes'* away from trying to implement a GUI package/plugin manager with IOCAGE for this very task so that they can set- and-forget the process and have it scripted into a launch command that is self-healing in case of failures.

'20 minutes' being 'maybe this year' in terms of delivery.

as for the guide, it's perhaps better to integrate the FreeNAS resource page from their forums, since this is becoming the defacto standard in the interim, [https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/fn11-1-jails-...](https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/fn11-1-jails- for-plex-tautulli-sonarr-radarr-headphones-jackett-ombi-transmission- organizr.58/)

While it might not be the most practical guide for non-media use, it will get you past the basics of implementation and problem-solving,

especially the concept of putting iocage settings inside of a zpool dataset where it can be snapshot for backups, the issue of iocage not handling spaces inside datasets, without being escaped, and the networking glitch introduced in FN11.1 that can prevent IPv6/IPv4 addressing working as intended (that should be fixed by now ?)

to an extent, this is top-down, people will get their feet wet and learn, or not need to learn iocage.

or how to script pkg updates across the iocage 'fleet' etc.</comment>


Ask News.YC:  Were logical people born logical? - <AUTHOR> Short and sweet.  Your thoughts, please. <comment><USER2> In short: no.

I have seen tens of examples where people of incredible logical/analytical heritage sink to the bottom of the barrel, as well as those that rise to the top from no discernible "good" set of genes.

There is more, I believe, than being born in making a person understand and function on a logical level. It requires a whole set of correct external stimuli, as well as a certain drive.

For me, I can clearly define two key points in my life: one that got me started in the right logical way, and one that directed me into computers specifically. As for the drive, it's also very much a function of environment, because I have seen my own motivation and desire tide and ebb depending on various external inputs.

In conclusion, I would say that there is potential in a majority of us to achieve amazing things, yet this potential requires specific grooming to blossom.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes.

Or at least they have the propensity to become more so than others.

My evidence is very very subjective... based on watching children (ages 2-5) you see some have a natural inclination towards order and logic. They love legos, lining up their action figures/matchbox cars, coloring in the lines and when they color they only use colors that make sense (i.e. they won't color a tree blue).

While other kids love drawing/painting, giving their parents plays/shows, and creating stories that don't make any sense. They enjoy the chaos of turning little red riding hood into a who-done-it with Optimus Prime and Mario helping find gold on mars.

</comment><comment><USER4> I disagree with the premise: people are not logical.

There are a lot of people with great analytical skills, but even those people consistently act illogically. It comes with the wetware.

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly. Rumor has it that Einstein had at least one or two mistresses that he would visit from time to time. Those visits probably did nothing to improve his personal life, or benefit him in any way except emotionally (and even then, only in the short term; his jaunts probably had long-term emotional consequences). Therefore, those actions were probably illogical.

However, setting that aside for one moment... Imagine someone who most people would classify as "developmentally disabled". (I don't like over-general labels, but it is a relatively specific one in this case.) Now, the million- dollar question is: would it ever be possible for that person to solve a problem of the magnitude Einstein has solved?

It _seems_ like the answer is no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting question.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Education.

<comment><USER6> I noticed myself learning logical rigor as I learned to program. My hatred of bugs classically conditioned me to think through things in a way I wasn't accustomed to.

However, as with most yes/no questions, the correct answer is is "sorta".

<comment><AUTHOR> Please, expand on that.

<comment><USER6> Once, after a few months of learning to program, my bike started falling out of gear going up hills. I knew nothing about bikes and so I looked at it for a while and then got frustrated. Then I looked at the pedals and thought, what happens when I push these? And if this chain is here, how does the wheel move? And what else can affect the wheel? And how does this change if the chain is on this gear wheel? Then I realized, hey, I'm debugging my bike.

I was just helping someone learn to program yesterday, and I noticed her doing something that I remember doing as well. She was writing code that she didn't understand, without even understanding that she didn't understand it. Then, when it blew up, she was irritated in two ways: once because she had no idea it was coming, and again because she had no idea how to fix it. I rarely write code I don't understand now, but when I do, I'm damn well certain that I don't understand it, and it makes me nervous as hell. One day she's going to be me, because she hates what she sees every time she javac's now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Consider the following analogy. We all have bodies, but few become athletes. We all have minds, but few become thinkers. I think this is a matter of choice influenced by ones predisposition and experiences. Inevitably we choose to specialize in something and that specialization strengthens us in some ways at the cost of weakening us in other ways. -cheers

</comment><comment><USER8> anyone can become rational. it takes only the willingness to throw out any notion that is proven false, no matter how much you held that notion dear. with this one parameter you will arrive at successively more accurate approximations of reality.

</comment><comment><USER9> People were born stupid. Education (and in small part experience) is necessary to the development of the rational faculties.

</comment><comment><USER10> Of course not!

They were all babbling fools as infants.

</comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps born with the genes but developed over time with education, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my conclusion as well. And unfortunately, it is a somewhat depressing conclusion. It means that not everyone is able to rise to the level of Mozart or Newton or Michelangelo (or Carmack, to use a more modern example). Certain problems are simply _beyond_ the capabilities of certain people.

I honestly don't care whether this topic rises to the front page... I'd just like to talk about this with others. Do you have some time to chat here?

<comment><USER13> Malcom Gladwell has a new book coming out in a couple of weeks called "Outliers".. He delves into all of this, I'm half way through it and I cant put it down. He has so much proof! Proof of all of the contributing factors that go into the exceptional accomplishments of certain extraordinary people. People like Bill Gates and Bill Joy. It's a little mean of me to mention the book as I think it gets released on the 18th, until I saw your post I resisted mentioning it.

The only answer I have for you is probably not what you are looking for- there is a Buddhist expression called "mu". It means you have to un-ask the question before we can proceed, your question is like saying "are you still beating your wife?" Of course, either way one answers is incorrect- if you say "no" it could mean you used to beat your wife, and if yes thats quite bad as well. The correct answer can only be mu. So, in essence, there are too many factors involved for a yes or no . Get the book and then email me if you would like, I'd love to chat about it, its fantastic!

<comment><USER14> Now I'm really jealous. I've been waiting for that book to come out for months.

<comment><USER13> I didn't see this here, I'll send the book out to whomever emails me first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's a logical person?

</comment><comment><USER16> Human beings don't always act rationally or irrationally due to emotions. So calling some as logical is illogical, assuming that you meant someone is completely logical when you say 'born logical'.

Where and how you grow up plays a big role in how logical you are.</comment>


On Thanksgiving Week, Native Americans Are Being Tear-Gassed in North Dakota - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/standing-rock-sioux-tear-gas-thanksgiving_us_583496a3e4b000af95ece35d <comment><USER2> "holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."</comment>


Uber Finds Profits in Leaving Tough Overseas Markets - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/technology/uber-finds-profits-in-leaving-tough-overseas-markets.html <comment><USER2> Profits in this case are one-time gains from exiting some of the largest markets in the world.

From a better article (1):

"But there's a big caveat with that figure. Uber gained $2.9 billion after it merged its businesses in Russia and Southeast Asia with local competitors.

... Excluding gains from Uber's deals with Yandex in Russia and Grab in Southeast Asia, the company lost about $480 million, down from $1.1 billion in losses in the previous quarter"

So, the losses have narrowed, but that is expected as the markets Uber is competing in has been reduced. Didi is interestingly going to go after South America one of Uber's best markets.

(1) [https://www.recode.net/2018/5/23/17380952/uber-2018-financia...](https://www.recode.net/2018/5/23/17380952/uber-2018-financials- yandex-grab-softbank)

<comment><USER3> Top line grew by 70% YOY so the reduction in losses cannot be attributed just to Uber exiting markets (which would correspond to reduced growth). 70% increase in bookings with 55% reduction in losses is pretty remarkable.</comment></comment>


Cheap GPUs rendering strong passwords useless? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/cheap-gpus-are-rendering-strong-passwords-useless/13125 <comment><USER2> _NO THEY AREN'T._

This is a great example of a bona fide _awful_ trade press article: some guy with a column-inch quota sees a piece by _another_ trade press hack who is in turn digesting a blog post by someone who is "allergic to command line utilities" writing up someone else's GPU password cracking tool. And so, strong passwords are useless!

Except that this has nothing at all to do with why passwords are bad. The problem GPU crackers exploit was solved over a decade ago with adaptive hashing. GPU crackers cannot crack scrypted passwords of any real complexity in tenable amounts of time.

Once again: <http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/>

<comment><USER3> Bcrypt seems to have a big design oversight. Given a password stored with cost factor C1 that you would like to increase to cost factor C2, it seems to me that you have to have the plaintext password to do this. Thus, you have to wait until that user next provides the password, verify it, and then re-store it with cost factor C2.

<comment><USER4> That's just not true. To oversimplify a bit, let's say BCrypt is a function b(data, cost) that returns a hash.

Right now, I have b(password, c1) = hash_a stored in my database. To increase the cost to c1+c2, I just replace that with b(hash_a, c2) = hash_b in my database. To verify a user's login, I just compute b(b(password, c1), c2) and compare it to the hash_b I have stored.

Am I missing anything?

<comment><USER5> Or you can wait until the user signs in again and create hash_b at login with the plaintext password after you validate it against hash_a. I believe that is how the bcrypt documentation recommends you do it.

<comment><USER6> That is much less preferable though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article is missing a bunch of facts, namely that NTLM passwords have been broken for 2 to 3 years long before the invention of cheap GPUs. Rainbow tables are a far more effective way to attack NTLM hashes. Cracking passwords is trivially parallelizable, if you let your hashes fall into the hands of the enemy then it's only a matter of money.

The fundamental issue is that of salting combined with not disclosing your password database. If you're using Windows you should enable the options for SSHA and disable the NTLM / LM hashes. Instead of using a password use a passphrase. I use 3 levels of password and at the top level you're looking at ~22 characters which contains characters outside the normal ASCII range so an attack is looking at ~65536 combinations instead of ~256. I doubt many attackers include the snowman character. :) (and no that char isnt in my password)

Running the math quickly yields a time to crack in excess of the lifetime of the universe, it would probably be easier to generate a hash collision than crack the password.

</comment><comment><USER8> GPUs are rendering MD5 and other weak hashing methods useless when a database is compromised. Using bcrypt [properly] can reduce the attempts the fast computer on the planet could make to a handful per second.

<comment><USER9> Yep. Don't store passwords using (non-password) fast hashes like MD5 or SHA-256. Use bcrypt: <http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/>

<comment><USER10> His recommendation of not using salts is very misleading and should not be quoted due to poor advice as Bcrypt is also useless against dictionary and brute force attacks.

The aim of password storage security is to prevent pre-computed hashing reasonably enough. No amount of password hashing even if it takes 1000 years to hash a password if your users use '12345678' as a password.

Salting protects against pre-computed hashes (rainbow tables [0]). Otherwise I can pre-compute many bcrypt hashes and then quickly look up the password.

[0] [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rainbow_table...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rainbow_tables)

<comment><USER2> No; you're incorrect.

All secure password storage schemes are randomized. If you insist on using the word "salt", then just know that bcrypt, scrypt, and the PBKDFs build the salt in. You cannot "pre-compute many bcrypt hashes and quickly look up passwords". So: if you're using a scheme that requires you to think about salts, you are virtually certain to be using an insecure storage scheme.

And, dictionary and brute force attacks are the entire problem bcrypt is designed to address. Go back to that article that you didn't really read, follow the first Usenix link, and read the Usenix paper it cites.

<comment><USER10> I'm concerned that you advocate ignorance of 'salt'.

Some functions[0][1] seem to optionally allow the use of salt, are you saying that users should just use passwords as input with bcrypt hashing?

In the article, it does not suggest only bcrypt as well [2].

[0] <http://www.mindrot.org/projects/py-bcrypt/>

[1] <http://au.php.net/crypt>

[2] [http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix99/provos/provos_html/nod...](http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix99/provos/provos_html/node16.html#SECTION00070000000000000000)

<comment><USER2> Bcrypt uses a 128 bit salt. The code I provided above didn't show it, because the library simply generated it for me.

The bcrypt libraries that _require_ users to explicitly provide a salt are themselves doing their users a (slight) disservice, by making it seem as if there was a reasonable option for salt generation other than simply using a CSPRNG.

<comment><USER11> > The code I provided above didn't show it, because the library simply > generated it for me.

... and this is another reason why people should use one of the bcrypt() implementations for their language* - the API makes doing the wrong thing difficult or impossible.

* disclosure: I ported/wrote a couple of them

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are at least a few obvious solutions. One is to use long passphrases. Another is to stop trying to memorize your passwords, write them down on a postit, encrypted file, etc. The main threat to your security is not someone digging through the postits in your wallet, it is the hash being stolen from someone's insecure database.

<comment><USER13> The bad part is that some sites (even banks!) force you to limit the number or type of characters. In one ridiculous case, I was forced to use an 8 character pwd with only lowercased letters.

The solution is to use tools like KeePass or 1Password to allow maximum length passwords (randomly generated also) wherever possible.

<comment><USER14> I recently signed up for the new payment system for my local water and gas company... you _must_ use your phone number as your user name, and the password, to my suprise, can only be _digits_ , up to 8 characters.

Pretty horrible. I wonder what level of idiot designs these systems.

<comment><USER15> That "new payment system" is quite possibly interfacing with, say, mainframe code written in the 70s. That's often the source of banks' ridiculous account restrictions.

<comment><USER14> I can't see any legitimate technical reason to restrict passwords.

In my example, they could put a sensible account system on the front end, and do whatever they need to in the back end to link it to my phone number and a random 8 digit number, if that's what they need.

Same with banks. They can set up a real user name and password from you, store it in a modern system, and link it to the older system behind the scenes. Perhaps there's some arcane legislation that prevents this, but it seems unlikely.

<comment><USER15> That's certainly true, but it doesn't usually seem to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Since this has attracted the attention of some very knowledgeable people, can anyone suggest a good textbook/site/paper discussing password security and encryption? Obviously I can google 'computer security' and find something, I just wondered if there was a well regarded standard reference (ala K&R or Art of Electronics). I don't understand the majority of the techniques being discussed here but would quite like to.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, key derivation functions are kind of a back alley in crypto research. Your best bets are Colin's scrypt paper and the original bcrypt paper; the bcrypt paper is on the link at Coda Hale's "How To Store Passwords" article, which you can find plastered all over this thread, and Colin's paper is at:

<http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/scrypt.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article uses NTLM passwords.

Can anyone compare this to the actual MSFT recommended Kerberos security protocol?

Also, how does one go about getting a list of NTLM passwords to work against? You steal the domain controller or somehow get access to it?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTLM> MSFT does not recommend using NTML which is very old.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc236715(v=PROT.10)....](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc236715\(v=PROT.10\).aspx)

Implementers should be aware that NTLM does not support any recent cryptographic methods, such as AES or SHA-256. It uses cyclic redundancy check (CRC) or message digest algorithms ([RFC1321]) for integrity, and it uses RC4 for encryption. Deriving a key from a password is as specified in [RFC1320] and [FIPS46-2]. Therefore, applications are generally advised not to use NTLM.<68>

</comment><comment><USER18> can't you design your software to prevent brute force logins? i.e. lockout for x seconds if y unsuccessful login attempts are made?

<comment><USER19> That doesn't matter if someone has a dump of the database. Which as Sony can tell you, is becoming more common.

<comment><USER17> Yes, but once you are in to the point where you have the db...what else are you going after?

If you can dump the db then (most likely) you also have the credit cards, other information that is useful to you?

This assumes a hacker has a financial motivation.

<comment><USER20> > Yes, but once you are in to the point where you have the db...what else are > you going after?

There are many conceivable attacks that would result in a read-only dump of password hashes. An administrator's account would be useful in such an administration, turning your read-only access to read-write access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> NTLM passwords? Meh. An awful benchmark for evaluating modern passwords. Who uses NTLM besides Windows, honestly? (Apparently the person who seemed to have not liked this comment, very quickly, heh)

I'd be curious about the timeliness of GPU cracking a 8 character, alphanumerical mixed case password hashed with SHA1?

<comment><USER2> Like MD5, SHA1 is designed to be fast. For that matter, so is SHA256, and all the SHA-3 candidate functions. The right way to think about this is that all the strong crypto hash functions are unsuitable for use _by themselves_ as password hashes.

Cryptographers have a mechanism for securely turning human-readable text into secret material: key derivation functions. All the modern KDFs are adaptive, meaning that they come with a "pain" dial that you can turn to force attackers to spend more time executing crypto code paths and less time comparing results.

You can build decent KDFs out of functions like SHA1, but if hardware GPU cracking is the future, you're best off with something like Colin Percival's "scrypt", which was explicitly designed to be memory-hard (requiring lots of state to compute) and hard to parallelize:

<http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/scrypt-slides.pdf>

<comment><USER22> I know you're a domain expert and in this thread you've suggested both bcrypt and scrypt. Is there any advantage to one over the other? From my POV it seems that bcrypt has more implementations and seems better-known (in a good way).

<comment><USER2> scrypt is the sounder scheme, but bcrypt is far more widely available. Both are fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Childhood amnesia kicks in around age 7 - <AUTHOR> http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/01/childhood-amnesia-kicks-in-around-age-7.html <comment><USER2> I have distinct memories of when I was 2-3 y.o. that have astounded my parents. I was raised in Korea till I was about 3, then we all flew to Hawaii to immigrate to the U.S. I remember the flight, I remember my life in Korea, I remember going to the public spa's with my dad, I remember feeling ashamed of my nudity in front of many older folks around me. I told all of this to my parents later in life, and they were amazed. I even distinctly remember the time when I thought I was lost, being scared, walking through a tunnel only to emerge to find a statue of some Korean soldiers. My parents found me and took a picture of me pointing at that statue. I asked my mom about that time, and I said, "How did I get lost? I was scared." My mom said that they were following me from afar, making sure I didn't see them, and they wanted to see how I would explore the world.

I've told people about this many times. And, people just can't or won't believe me. A history professor told me that this is impossible, because children can't remember anything before the age of 3. He was adamant about it, and completely dismissive of my claims. I think these kinds of pseudo- scientific research (you know, taking polls and applying statistics) should be taken with a grain of salt. One should NOT draw definitive conclusions from them.

<comment><USER3> >And, people just can't or won't believe me.

It seems to me that not believing you is the right thing to do. Childhood amnesia is well-studied; false memories are equally well-studied and are easily formed; since the former is more probable than an exception to the latter, unless you have additional evidence (which you can't really produce), I have no reason to believe your claims.

It's more probable that you reconstructed those memories from stories told by other people, even if you forgot hearing those stories before remembering the event, than that you're an exception to a well-studied and widely documented event.

Cognitive psychology is hardly psuedo-science, and in this instance, there were no polls conducted. This was a longitudinal study that took considerable resources to conduct and involved a seemingly well-designed experimental test. The findings are entirely in line with what the rest of the data in the field suggests, so it shouldn't be controversial. There were no polls involved, either.

It's frustrating to believe something that contradicts most available evidence, and it must be even more frustrating to not have a way to demonstrate the truth of such a belief. You'll notice that even this article doesn't claim that all memory prior to age 7 is irretrievably erased, and it's fully possible you truly have the memories you have -- but it's nonetheless improbable, and it isn't wrong to disbelieve you.

<comment><USER4> > It seems to me that not believing you is the right thing to do.

I'm sorry, but you have your science backwards. You don't dismiss evidence because it doesn't fit your current hypothesis.

Most significantly though, you grossly misunderstand statistics/surveys if you think it's possible to extract definitive physiological truths out of a subjective "how do you feel about remembering X?" survey.

For what it's worth anecdotally, I also can access memories from when I was 3-4 years old, and I can easily prove they're not fabricated memories because the memories in particular were not retold, and in some cases took some effort to actually confirm when I was the only one remembering them (even parents forgot).

Usually the memories are misc. trivia -- e.g. the design of the wallpaper of a house I only lived in until I was 4, a certain set of kids' cups I only used until I was 6, etc. There is no way these are false memories, because nobody told such things to me. I also remember some of my thoughts as a very young child, which is interesting, because they're very different from adult thoughts (though obviously I can't really "confirm" this in the same way I can physical memories).

Anyone saying childhood amnesia occurs completely is completely misguided. Of course, I have "childhood amnesia" like everyone else in the sense that most of those memories I haven't accessed in a long time, and can't recall them _instantly_ at will. But they're still there, and I can access them with meditation if I want.

<comment><USER5> > I'm sorry, but you have your science backwards. You don't dismiss evidence > because it doesn't fit your current hypothesis.

It is you who are misunderstanding either science, or what Tedks is saying. Mililanis story is not evidence, it is an anecdote. Based on our understanding of the human mind, it is simply more likely that his/hers story is a false memory rather than a true memory from a young age. Obviously it could be a true memory, but it is unlikely.

On the topic of false memories: I actually have several memories from a young age that directly contradicts with each other. I remember longing for a specific Nintendo game. I also remember getting the game as a christmas gift, looking at the box thinking "this looks like crap, why did they buy this?".

<comment><USER6> Well may be the TV ad for the game was much better than the box art of the game. It can happen.

I see no contradiction there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember several things from before I was 3 (and plenty more after that), but I'm always unsure if it is an actual memory, or a memory of a memory.

I was a pretty introspective kid. I thought about my past and tried to recall my childhood even at the young age of 5. So perhaps my earliest memories are really just memories of being 6 or 7 and thinking back to when I was 2. Second hand memories, so to speak.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps your memories are things your parents said when you were 7 that you did when you were two as well?

That's how I figure it works in my head.

<comment><USER7> I suspect many of my early memories come from my parents, but there are quite a few that they don't remember at all. Those are probably memories of memories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see two other people commenting about framing memories based on moving at a young age. I have the same thing, and I wonder if moving at a young age correlates with higher childhood memories.

I moved when I was 7, and it's a _very_ distinct transition in the quality of my memories. I have tons of pre-move memories, including one confirmed by my parents as my 2nd birthday party, but they're primitive. No sense of time, just a jumble of memories that I can't place chronologically, and most are very brief moments. However, I remember the move and everything after it vividly and in chronological order.

I would suppose that the move made me reminisce about my old home during the period when my childhood memories were fading, and saved many of them from being lost.

<comment><USER10> I moved houses once a year every year until I was 7. I can remember things just after I was two years old, the floor plans of my parents house, grandparents house, christmas when I was 3, parents friends houses, memories of those things, lots of other things. My parents didn't believe me until I told them the floorplans. Some memories are a little fuzzy, but I remember parts of every place I've lived since I was two years old. Sometimes random memories will pop up that I forgot about. My earliest memory my parents were able to pinpoint to about 26 months old (we moved to a new city at 30 months, and my memory was of my dad leaving to work at night which he had stopped doing sometime around when I was 27 months).

Maybe more interesting is that I can't remember a single seizure my brother who had epilepsy had, although I can remember before and after moments (ages 3 and 4).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> All I remember about when I was young is due to looking at photo/video of the event, and then later on, when I'm "remembering" the event, I'm really remembering the photo/video. I'd say I have close to 0 legitimate memories of when I was young. Anyone else?

<comment><USER12> I have a few "flashes" of very clear memories from < 3 ... I very vividly remember a single moment of being in my crib (I recall the high walls, the feeling of the felt base, etc.) I have an equally vivid memory of the first night I spent in my "big boy bed" (mostly I remember experiencing fear and anxiety, and that wooden side rail meant to keep me from falling out). And I remember toddling around my house, seeing this incredibly juicy and tempting big button that just needed to be pushed, and then a lot a lot of chaos (it was an old-school panic button that set off our house burglar alarm ;)

But the flood of real memories doesn't start until nursery school, which was right around 3-4.

On a related note, there's a different type of memory that started to form later and that I can pinpoint to a VERY specific age...I refer to it as "cultural awareness/memory". I.e. movies, songs on the radio, etc. I was born in '78 and my earliest memories of that sort of stuff is all '85 (i.e. 7 years old). And what a year! Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, "We Built This City", "Born in the USA", etc.

I can barely remember any movies/songs from before then...maybe some in 84, but 83 is a basically non-existent to me. So maybe this is the sort of thing they mean when they're referring to "adult memories" ?

Aaaaand now I feel old.

<comment><USER13> > mostly I remember experiencing fear and anxiety, and that wooden side rail > meant to keep me from falling out

It's theorized that the amygdala has a "gating" function for memory - we tend to recall memories more easily when they're highly emotional (especially anxiety, fear, trauma). I had a cognitive science professor who brought this up and asked people in the class what their earliest memories were - many of them were scary/anxious events (mine was moving out of an apartment and into a house).

<comment><USER14> My earliest memory is definitely strongly emotional - a recurring nightmare when I was 3 or younger (I know that because we moved house) was of a big tube sucking on my belly. I can't imagine that was a memory then of having an umbilical cord, but maybe someone fooling around with a vacuum cleaner...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The opening to the article:

> You could travel the world with an infant aged under 3 and it's almost > guaranteed that when they get older they won't remember a single boat trip, > plane ride or sunset. This is thanks to a phenomenon, known as childhood or > infantile amnesia, that means most of us lose all our earliest > autobiographical memories. It's a psychological conundrum because when they > are 3 or younger, kids are able to discuss autobiographical events from > their past. So it's not that memories from before age 3 never existed, it's > that they are subsequently forgotten.

This is obviously tremendously overblown. I could just as easily point out that people who are over 60 frequently have no memory of things (even significant things) that happened in their 20s. It's a "psychological conundrum" because people in their 20s are able to discuss current events!

Memories, no matter when they originate from, fade with disuse. We have plenty of people, here and outside, who can attest to preserving early memories. Attacking them on the grounds that those memories could be reconstructions instead of strengthened "true" memories doesn't make any sense -- all memories are reconstructions; there is no possible way to distinguish between a "true memory" and a "reconstructed memory" _at any age_.

All that said, the coolest experiment I know of in this area concerned visiting children still in the process of language acquisition with a "marvelous machine" designed to be highly entertaining and memorable. The experiment showed that though the children remembered the machine a (couple?) years later, when asked about their memories of it, they would describe it using only words they knew at the time of the visit.

<comment><USER16> You can point that out, but is it true? The 20s seems to be an age that folks obsess over. Almost as bad as high school years.

<comment><USER15> I can only recommend asking some old people about this. Your grandparents?

<comment><USER16> And those are the ones I know (or, well, knew) who still remember college times. Some still likened back to their high school years.

In other words, that whole anecdotes not necessarily being data thing. This study seems to show by and large there is something significant around the 7 year mark. Are there similar studies on other years?

<comment><USER15> > And those are the ones I know (or, well, knew) who still remember college > times. Some still likened back to their high school years.

I don't understand the relevance of this. There is no conflict between remembering swathes of your college and high school years, and forgetting other swathes. It covers a lot of time (and your 20s cover even more than that); there's plenty of room to forget large parts of it while remembering others.

<comment><USER16> I know _far more_ people who have no reliable memory of pre 7 than I do of any that have no reliable memory of their 20s.

Now, you seem to be saying it is simply a matter of the age of the memory. But you are completely disregarding the study, which shows that children around the age of 8 have a _massive_ dropoff in what they can remember from a scant 2 years ago. This isn't a case of 2 years being a significant time. Indeed, they went out of their way to show that at age 6 they had a high recollection of things 2 years prior.

If there are studies on this at other ages, I'm interested. But the dismissive "older memories of course are lost" seems somewhat rude. Do you have specific questions with their techniques on how they established 7 as a significant age? Do you just think there would be other significant ages, as well?

<comment><USER15> > But you are completely disregarding the study, which shows that children > around the age of 8 have a massive dropoff in what they can remember from a > scant 2 years ago.

> Indeed, they went out of their way to show that at age 6 they had a high > recollection of things 2 years prior.

You have misread something. The study does not make reference to any 6-year- olds, or 8-year-olds, being tested for recall of events 2 years prior. The events tested always occurred at age three; they are comparing 5-year-olds' recall of events two years prior to 6-year-olds' recall of events three years prior to 7-year-olds' recall of events four years prior to 8-year-olds' recall of events five years prior to 9-year-olds' recall of events six years prior.

Furthermore, I specifically didn't say it's a matter of the age of the memory. If I had meant that, I would have said something like "memories fade with time". What I did say was "memories fade with disuse". If you exercise a memory (whether a true one or a false one), it will become stronger. If you don't, you will lose it.

<comment><USER16> Indeed, it looks like I misread a few things and then just got confused. Apologies on that.

Back to the specifics of this article. This study was more about whether conversational differences in discussing memories related to their retention. It appears they have some evidence that this could be the case. And note, they specifically looked at _how_ it was discussed. All memories were discussed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I remember one event from back when I was a bit over 1.

My mom took me to her friend's shop, they had 2 daughters and a chihuahua. One of the daughters (~5 years old) picked up the chihuahua and held it in front of my stroller, within reach. She urged me to pet it, and when I did, the dog bit the first joint of my left ring finger off. I remember that part, I remember crying, but I don't remember having it sewn back on.

To this day, I'm irrationally horrified of tiny dogs (I like big ones as long as they don't bark and show teeth).

Sidenote: Whoever sewed it back on didn't do a very good job; you can see it's slightly slanted and a bit rotated too. =( I'm thankful for getting it back though.

</comment><comment><USER18> My earliest memory is of riding on my mother's lap in a tank. My older sister tells me I must have been less than 18 months old as this would have been a family day event at Fort Benning Georgia in the fall before we left for Germany. I was born in June, so this puts me around age 15 to 17 months. So the tank must have made a really big impression on me.

While in therapy in my twenties, at some point, I spontaneously remembered my own birth. In my teens, I knew a woman who claimed to remember her own birth. I think she was born outside and there was snow on the ground, so perhaps the shock of it made an impression?

My oldest son is able to access his early childhood memories. He is a visual and kinesthetic thinker and had trouble learning to talk. It took practice for him to be able to access them reliably and it involved him essentially translating them into English for the first time. I accidentally tripped across the fact that he had memories from infancy, which is a longish story that I don't have time to type out.

Short version: I think there is still lots to be learned about how early memories are formed, accessed, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> My earliest (or one of the earliest) memories is of a guy in a mascot costume coming to our preschool to promote a bank. I think they gave us some money boxes, and I guess they were trying to teach us about the importance of saving money. I would have been 3 or 4 at the time.

35+ years on I can still vividly remember the mascot, which bank it was, etc.

It saddens me that my earliest memory is of a form of advertising.

<comment><USER20> I wonder, if there was a video available of this, how closely your memory would match the actual event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My earliest memories are very clear, and I astounded my father when I recounted them as a teenager. I remember riding in the car by my dad's work at the University, and seeing owls on the facade of some of the buildings. We always stopped at one building in particular. Obviously some of the context for the memories is pieced together from when I was older -- e.g. The fact that I was riding in the car. I distinctly remember my dad pointing out the owls and saying the word for "owl" but being unable to remember/grok the word, for example.

Anyway when I was a teenager we drove by the building we used to stop at and I told my dad about these early memories. It turns out that my mother had been seeing a therapist in that building on campus and once a week we would drive by to do a pickup and drop off. He was so shocked because they never discussed the matter with anyone, so he figured it was a real memory.

According to my dad I was six months old.

</comment><comment><USER22> I had meningitis when I was 2, and I clearly remember a flash of when I was in the hospital bed, with all the gear monitoring me, trying to reach out for my blanket. My mother confirmed my story when I was ~20.

It's pretty vivid actually, and not only do I remember the "scene" but also how I felt and what I thought.

I have a few others like that, but this is the most ancient.

</comment><comment><USER23> Now they need to test for the type of memory recalled, is there a difference in emotionally laden memories vs non emotional 'moment' or experience based memories?

And what is the recall on 'pure' emotional memories?(Where the memory is primarily about the emotion, not what was occuring at the time).

This would be incredibly useful in counseling psychology (and possibly neuropsych), where emotional based memories can get corrupted or ingrained into a person's overall personality. (Think of getting burned by a stove becoming anything from a subconscious jerk away from a stove to full phobias).

</comment><comment> V-2 Like many people, I have a few early memories (3.5, 4 yrs old).

But I can't stop wondering - do I __really __remember them, or do I only remember remembering them?

I mean, is it a "direct" memory? Or is it an act of recollecting a previous recollection of it?

Like, I remembered what I did at 4 when I was 6, fine. And then, if I happened to remember it still when I was 8, I actually remembered how I recalled the event being 6.

This is (I believe) how distortions gradually crawl in. And I believe it persists in adult life as well; every refreshing of a memory is actually rewriting it, thus damaging it in a way

</comment><comment><USER24> If I had to make an uneducated guess, it's probably because at early ages our recall is vastly different compared to years later. Older memories aren't as easily accessible because they're on different neural pathways that haven't been used in a while.

The earliest I can remember is probably riding my first bicycle at around age 7-8, and everything after that is a flurry of memories that I have no idea where they came from. Little bits of conversations or of rooms that used to be in the house before they were knocked down and rebuilt, etc.

</comment><comment><USER25> > _In contrast, children aged 8 and 9 recalled fewer than 40 per cent of the > events they 'd discussed at age 3, but those memories they did recall were > more adult-like in their content._ //

If the memories recalled were more adult like at a later age that suggests children recalled things at a later age that they didn't (couldn't?) recall at an earlier age.

This seems to me the most important insight in the article in respect of recall, that one would need greater understanding in order to recall details that one couldn't recall earlier. But mostly that recall is not [completely] limited by cognition.

I'm guessing that the results didn't really show that though ...

These sorts of articles just make me want to do research to rigorously address the obvious questions that don't appear to be addressed.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone know of other research about how to promote increased retention of early childhood memories?

<comment><AUTHOR> Near the end of the article:

"Specifically, mothers who used more "deflections", such as "Tell me more" and "What happened?" tended to have children who subsequently recalled more details of their earlier memories."

<comment><USER25> It's interesting it specifies mothers - this suggests that there was a difference with the effect with fathers. Or that they only looked at children who never chat with their fathers?

<comment><USER27> They had the mothers chatting with the children, not the fathers.

<comment><USER25> > _They recorded mothers talking to their 3-year-olds about six past events, > such as zoo visits or first day at pre-school. The researchers then re- > established contact with the same families at different points in the > future. Some of the children were quizzed again by a researcher when aged 5, > others at age 6 or 7, 8 or 9. This way the researchers were able to chart > differences in amounts of forgetting through childhood._ //

They did, but why?

In order to isolate the mothers influence and make the study capable of providing scientific results one would need to rule out the major external factors - the primary one in my view is paternal interactions.

If they chose only mothers to assess - and the presence of only mothers in the other studies suggests they did - then this seems notable. Why? Did they already have a result showing paternal interactions had no effect? Are they trying to demonstrate a theory in which only maternal interactions are valid for stimulating recall? Or what? Just seems like a big old hole that would warrant a mention somewhere in such an article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I remember my parents dropping me at the neighbors when they went to hospital to give birth to my brother. I was a month shy of 3. Then I have nothing until I'm about 5.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have had a smell trigger a memory from my pre-seven-childhood. It was a smell that I hadn't smelt in the intervening years.

It was upon meeting a distant relative that made a dish the first time I met them and then again when I met them in my mid-twenties.

The second I smelled the smell of the dish I remembered an incident that I alone witnessed -- getting jalapeño oil in my eye when I was sneaking some of the dish.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have tons of memories of age 2 and 3. My mother would often ask me, "What did you do today?" before I went to sleep, and so perhaps that is why I can recall so much.

Interesting memories are: the day I saw light shine on dust particles, watching my sister miss her first bus, and eating lint off the floor.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have a large number of memories from age 2 and going forward. I can even remember the details of conversations I heard and the physical appearance, location and orientation of various objects that were in my environments, and can accurately recall the floor plans of places I lived in or visited. I can't recall a single thing prior to my second birthday, though. I'm age 37, presently.

I've met people who, if the subject of very early memories came up in conversation, thought it was completely normal as they have similar ones. I've talked to other people, though, who insist that I can't possibly be telling the truth, perhaps because they can't even imagine remembering anything that far back.

</comment><comment><USER32> There's also parental amnesia where as soon as a person has a child, they completely forget what it was like to be a child and get very frustrated that their children aren't adults. I see it all the time in colleagues.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder about other thing. I don't remember when (circa 10?), but I remember that some day I fully get a very sad tougth: I can't dream anymore as a child.

I have the tendency to run the same kind of "history" in my dreams (obviously, awake!) before sleep then continue it later. I remember that I was playing a kind of war history or something (I forgot), and for the life of me, I can't do it like before. Now I only get stuck, and things are not fluid.

Exist some info about this? When is not possible anymore to have (on command) the same vivid dream bending as a child?

</comment><comment><USER34> Isn't there also a phenomenon of elderly people recovering childhood memories? I've always heard of this, and relatives in their 60s and 70s have told me of vivid memories of their early life. In the same age range, they have less memory of more recent events. It's as if the transition to childhood amnesia is reversed. If some of this is true, it should provide clues for researchers to pursue.

</comment><comment><USER35> I remember a few things that happened to me when I was 2 years old. Mostly some events when I used to play with my cat or with legos in my room.

I'm fairly sure those aren't constructed memories, not sure why some specific memories have stuck with me compared to others from such an early age (they were nothing particular, really, no special events). The human brain is such a fascinating thing.

</comment><comment><USER36> My earliest memory it's me in the high chair (seggiolone, in italian) at age 1.5, doing that game of the plane which is a spoon with food.

After that, all dark until age 2 with a lot - a lot - of kindergarden memories and so on till yesterday.

Always thought it was the norm.

</comment><comment><USER37> My 5 year old daughter has great memory and recollection of her entire childhood, reminding us of things we had forgotten about when she was 2, 3, etc.

I thought it was remarkable, since I can't recall any of my own memories from younger than 10 years old.

</comment><comment><USER38> Any Study that claims to know what someone remembers to thinks is inherently unreliable and has a potential for falsehood. Until mind reading is perfected, there is just know way to test what someone else is thinking for sure.

</comment><comment><USER39> What about forgetting your 20s? I can barely remember what I used to eat before I learned how to cook. I assume that it was a lot of macaroni and cheese, pasta and mashed potatoes, but I can't really remember.

<comment><USER40> You're not alone. It annoys me a bit when people reminisce about their childhood and say things like "do you remember when" because I don't remember any of mine. In fact I don't remember my teens and come to think of it my uni seems a bit foggy.

Any memories from highschool and such I know for a fact are second hand so I suspect maybe some people don't realise this - I'm more willing to believe in how easily we make false memories. I remember things as told to me by others even if they told me about it long ago. Riddle me that. I don't have amnesia, learning difficulties etc. Maybe I should keep a diary but it's a bit late for that.

<comment><USER41> Don't worry -- it just means your brain's eviction policy is well-tuned for immortality. ;)

<comment><USER40> I hope my brain is putting all those reclaimed neurons to good use then but it's probably just storing pins and passwords which I remember for decades after not needing them any more. Wish I could talk to the bit of the brain that decides what should be kept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I recall very very little specific memories before 12 even. I know flashes...

</comment><comment><USER43> Heh, I think some significant memories can be retained. I know that my 4 year old son will forever remember what happens when you play with a loaded mouse trap.

</comment><comment><USER44> I have little memories when I was below five and I can still remember how I felt during those times. Thanks for posting this! Great info!</comment>