Vanished into Music - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/05/11/vanished-into-music/ <comment><USER2> "World of Echo" is a beautiful record. I used to put it on during my walk to my studio space whenever it was raining in Brooklyn (back when leaving the house was a thing). I didn't realize the recording of that album took place like that, but it doesn't surprise me at all.

Some friends of mine did a tribute to Arthur Russell at BAM a few years back and it was amazing to see so many people out paying tribute to an artist that still is more obscure than they should be. Go listen to "World of Echo" if you've never heard it.

</comment><comment><USER3> A good amount of his music has made its way onto Spotify if you want to give a listen! [https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3lBCGAjE3VEOqMa145BqMz](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3lBCGAjE3VEOqMa145BqMz)</comment>


We Predict Airfaires - <AUTHOR> http://getflyr.com/ Are you a developer? We've got something for you. Get access to our Airfare Prediction API at http://getflyr.com/ <comment><USER2> Date picker is broken on home page. I can't select any date from the picker. The results are not very informative. Risk the price will go up doesn't tell me the time frame. Moreover your claim that you predict airfares is misleading since what you do predict is probabilities of airfare rising or falling.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment, here are more in depth info on what we do and how we do it: [http://story.getflyr.com/post/88989665178/taking-the- guesswo...](http://story.getflyr.com/post/88989665178/taking-the-guesswork- out-of-airfares)</comment>


Raspberry Pi Pet Detector Camera Using Python, TensorFlow, and Twilio [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGqVNuYol6o <comment><USER2> I have a capacitive touch button that my dogs press when they need/want to go outside that makes a noise and sends me an SMS. They used to have all hours access to it and when they expected me home at the end of the day, I would start receiving texts in rapid succession. Access was removed shortly thereafter. The novelty of getting drinks after work and receiving a "Where are you?" text from my dogs every three minutes wore off quickly.

<comment><USER3> I just imagined reading your comment from the perspective of a layman 20 or 30 years ago. It's amazing how far we've come as a species!

<comment><USER4> that's hopelessly optimistic. so dogs can send texts. so what? we still clamor for power and ignore the consequences of our actions at every level and in every facet of life. we are hopelessly animalistic and primal in our social and environmental dealings, which is not offset by technological advances which often amplify our shortcomings.

<comment><USER5> We can appreciate that one of us was patient enough to set those burning desires for power aside and allow his dog to communicate that he misses him, and he has to take a poop.

<comment><USER4> of course we can. i thought it was funny.

<comment><USER6> Mmm, I think you were at least kinda serious

<comment><USER4> i legitimately thought the dog sending too many texts was funny and the project was cool. i was serious in disagreeing with our species coming so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Last Christmas, I used an RPi to build a dial-up WiFi modem for my Grandma, who lives in a rural area where dial-up is the only Internet option, but still wants to download books onto her Kindle (requires WiFi, but not fast speeds).

Was fairly straightforward--required just a USB dial-up modem, WiFi card, switch with some lights, a case, and a little Python programming. Oddly enough, the hardest part of the whole setup was "reverse engineering" what the proprietary Netscape dial-up app was doing with her password before sending it out--turned out it was lowercasing it! Facepalmed real hard there. After figuring that out, everything worked in Linux beautifully.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very cool. The Raspberry Pi is turning out to be a nice platform for little AI driven projects like this.

It's not using machine learning, but I'm just now finishing up a Christmas present; a web accessible treat dispense with live video. I know those exist commercially, but it has been a fun project to build one anyway.

Terrible quality pictures:

[https://imgur.com/a/nesMdhy](https://imgur.com/a/nesMdhy)

Raspberry Pi Zero W for the brains; Pimoroni speaker hat; cheap stepper motor and bridge; IR emitter and transistor create an IR break beam to detect when treats are dispensed; Raspberry Pi camera for live video feed; all controlled by a custom AppEngine deployment which provides a nice web interface for dispensing treats, viewing the video, and even uploading their own sounds which get played before the treats come out.

The most difficult thing has been the mechanical engineering; something I have little to no experience with. The whole CAD process took me a few weeks of working on and off. Then another two weeks of printing and iterating the parts. The main body itself is a 14 hour print even at high speed. I ended up using FreeCAD for the whole design. Not sure if that was a mistake or not. I like supporting open source software, but ... I have this terrible notion that something like Fusion360 would have made the whole process 10x faster... But it's all printed and working!

Since this is going as a gift to someone else, I also had to take a lot of time to make it easy to use; it couldn't just be a fiddly hack. So, for example, I got a nice setup procedure built into it for setting up wifi. You just hold the button on the back to put it into setup mode, and then show it a QR code on your phone with your Wifi network's details. And since there's a speaker, I'm using some text-to-speech to walk them through the setup. It turned out nice.

And using the magic of ffmpeg, I was able to get the Raspberry's camera feed into an HLS stream, which gets securely uploaded to the AppEngine server. So it's a live video, rather than still pictures or delayed video uploads. Was really happy when that got working. (I use hls.js to handle desktop browser compatibility. Works a treat. Also, FFMpeg is supposed to be able to upload the HLS stream itself to a server, but that was broken or something; had to use some Python to pipe it manually.)

Just putting the finishing touches on the frontend now. 4 days to go... wish me luck!

<comment><USER9> Love it, and about to dive into the world of 3d printing IoT devices myself. Currently in the process of choosing my modeling software, so your comments on freecad hit home. Would you do it in freecad again? I too want to support open source software and will accept ~2x speed reduction to do so, so I hope 10x is hyperbole, otherwise I need to reconisder.

Unfortunately the community definitely seems more geared towards fusion360. My gut reaction is that in general they don't value the open source aspect of freecad, but maybe it is just subpar for now.

Did you buy a 3d printer for this project? Don't have any source code available?

<comment><USER8> I haven't tried Fusion 360 yet, so I can't compare. For lack of any other options I would definitely use FreeCAD again. It wasn't a horrible experience.

I love supporting open source. For example, the 3D printer I have is the Lulzbot Mini 2. The company behind it is ... aggressively open source, to put it mildly (_everything_ is open source. Even their manuals for factory assembly are online.). Which is why I went with FreeCAD initially. But I lost a lot of time to A) the awkward UI; and B) bugs. Having just now, the day before Christmas, finished wrapping the gift ... I wonder how much time I would have saved using a "professional" CAD solution. _shrug_

Words of advice if you do go down the FreeCAD route; learn about dataplanes and shapebinder (check YouTube for tutorial videos). They are somewhat recent features. If you just look up FreeCAD tutorials you'll find a lot that tell you to bind sketches to faces. That's the old way of doing it and it can lead to a lot of problems. Dataplanes are the new way of doing it.

And be careful in the sketcher. A number of times I've had it tell me a sketch is fully constrained, but I was scratching my head because I didn't think it was fully constrained. A day later I'll go back into that sketch and it'll have realized its mistake and moved the sketch around (had one failed print because of that bug).

> Don't have any source code available?

I'm thinking of writing a blog post about the whole project at some point, with all the documentation and such. Bit exhausted right now...

Best of luck with your 3D printing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If it texted my wife I know in my heart of hearts the cats would quickly figure out how to abuse it for food. Neat video linked from the article [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGqVNuYol6o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGqVNuYol6o)

<comment><USER11> That's the truth. I had a cat for a total of a week and she basically had me trained fully to do her bidding within that time.

A 'cat sms' would put humans into full servitude!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does it also know when the cat is just going to stand in the window frame for 2 minutes until it goes back inside?

<comment><USER13> I bet the cat soon learns that sitting in front of the door magically summons a human to let it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool twist on an old problem.

Here are two others, using different tech to automatically open the door for the pet.

Facial recognition: [https://www.hackster.io/windowsiot/cat-door-with-pet- recogni...](https://www.hackster.io/windowsiot/cat-door-with-pet- recognition-514dac)

Pattern recognition: [https://hackaday.com/2010/05/14/cat-door-unlocks-via- facial-...](https://hackaday.com/2010/05/14/cat-door-unlocks-via-facial- recognition/)

<comment><USER15> The first link, "Flo Control" (named after Flo the cat) was built in the late 1990's, and this link on MetaFilter ([https://www.metafilter.com/15802/](https://www.metafilter.com/15802/)) is from 2002, but the host link appears to be dead.

The OP is kinda swatting a fly with a sledgehammer, but blindfolded, because the system would probably break if the door changed or someone moved something into the detection window. Problem with CNNs is training them to know what is NOT a valid condition, and that is VERY VERY HARD.

This kind of "blind overdesign" makes me sad.

<comment><USER16> Here's an archive.org link for "Flo Control":

[https://web.archive.org/web/20040401115046/http://www.quantu...](https://web.archive.org/web/20040401115046/http://www.quantumpicture.com/Flo_Control/flo_control.htm)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for finding that! I forgot about the wayback machine. I also forgot that is what websites looked like in the late 90's. /r/blunderyearsforwebsites

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As human intervention is required anyway to open the door, why have inside box and outside box? There can be just one big box with pet detection and an SMS that says 'Pet at door'.

Nevertheless, this is a cool project, and the explanation in the YouTube video is even nicer, informative, and succinct.

One addition could be to have a motion sensor outside the door to turn on the light outside, so that this project can work even during late evenings/nights.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps he forgot if the cat is inside or out and he prefers to know directionality so that he can think "nah, it's about to rain so the cat shouldn't go out."

<comment><USER17> Great thought. Possibly can also use a weather API to monitor weather conditions to decide whether or not to send SMS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The inside box is poorly located because they can't overlap in this model.

In this case it would be better to just have one detection box, and say 'pet is at door'

<comment><USER20> You're right. In this model it does not matter as in both cases the door gets opened. It would only make sense to make a difference if after a given time you may only want entries and not exits (like after some predetermined time).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm leaving for a backpacking trip soon and left my dad in charge of my dog. I've put up three cameras to watch her and noticed they can all be included in a grafana dashboard using a text field and markdown.

(One of the cameras is my old security camera but the two new ones are fish eye lense zeros close to the ground.)

</comment><comment><USER22> Detector is really overkill for this problem. A classifier would do just fine. For a stationary camera you don't need to know where the cat is in the frame. But hey, still a cool project. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

</comment><comment><USER23> What if you're not home? It is for such occasions that cat flaps were invented. However, today's cat flaps either open for any cat, or they're RFID- based, and for that to work, you implant a chip into your cat, which I find utterly barbaric.

Now what could be a great improvement is a cat flap identifying _your_ cat(s) and letting them in based on computer vision, instead of relying on implants. I'd pay good money for it, provided that it worked in all weather conditions and all cat conditions (a wet and dirty cat needs to get in even more than a dry and clean one but I expect false negatives in these scenarios.)

<comment><USER24> Sorry if this sounds idiot, but can't you put the RFID chip into the leash or something like that? Why it needs to be "inside" the animal?

<comment><USER25> A few years ago our dog got out (Stupid power company went though our back yard and opened our gate and let the dogs out). We put up signs and were looking for him. Someone took him to the vet to get him checked out and told the vet he had the dog for years and was just able to afford to take him in to get checked out. The vet scanned his chip and our information came up. They called us. The guy left the vet and left our dog there. He is a purebred pekingeses.

That is why it needs to be inside the animal. And yes that is a true story. And yes he was also wearing a collar with a nameplate and address on him, the guy replaced it with a different collar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Everything is awesome until you have to go through the installation for Tensorflow and OpenCV which is a real PITA. Are there any alternatives for this also would Tensorflow Lite work better for RPi?

</comment><comment><USER27> cats are assholes, so they will find all the bugs and this will never work and probably crash your system. :P

</comment><comment><USER28> I want a neural network to convince my cat otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER29> I love my cat.

</comment><comment><USER30> Url changed from [https://hackaday.com/2018/12/21/neural-network-knows-when- ca...](https://hackaday.com/2018/12/21/neural-network-knows-when-cat-wants-to- go-outside/) to the source it links to.

This is a good example of how titles dominate threads. Because of the title "Neural network knows when cat wants to go outside", we got cat quips. "Raspberry Pi Pet Detector Camera Using Python, TensorFlow, and Twilio" primes a different sort of discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry guys, that was not the intention. I just send the link for the hackaday news. next time I will try a better approach.

<comment><USER30> Don't worry about it! As minimaxir pointed out, the story probably wouldn't have gotten much attention otherwise, and readers are clearly interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My cat doesn't even know when he wants to go outside

<comment><USER32> Cat claws at door. Opens door. Cat sits there doing nothing.

<comment><USER33> I've noticed that a lot of cat behavior can be explained by realizing that they have an incredibly short attention span and any change in their sensory environment can distract them for the half second required to drop their entire mental state. So for the cat it's like "UGHHH I want in... Oh, there's the human! ... What's going on, why are you looking at me?"

<comment><USER34> I don't know if its so much that they have a short attention span.

My cat definitely, however, is unaware of the idea that the environment around him can be changed, and isn't static. He can figure out how to open doors, and that if something is playing dead it will run when he knocks it from a shelf, but those are the limitations of his ability to interact with the environment.

He's smart enough to know his treats are kept in a small bin on a shelf in my desk, that weighs under a pound, and is covered by a thick sheet of paper. He could knock the whole thing to the ground and get all the treats he wants. But because it looks too big to be an eatable animal playing dead, it simply doesn't occur to him he can push it open to get the treats inside.

That, I think, explains a lot of their behavior. The cat will scratch at the door to go outside. But when I open the door, he needs to take a moment or three to re-situate himself in his new environment, for him, his entire environment just changed unexpectedly. If I then poke my head through the door, he'll realize that its open now, and run through. But if I don't, he needs to re-assess his entire locale, realize that the open door means its passable, and ignore his confusion for how his environment changed so rapidly.

This is true with a lot of things. He'll complain that his litterbox is too dirty. I'll clean it. He'll leave the litterbox, and go do something else. Later, he'll come back, find that its clean, and go to the bathroom. Its not that he was being an asshole, he just knows enough to have figured out that meowing next to a dirty litterbox results in it eventually being clean, but doesn't seem to recognize that the action of me scooping in there is what is actively changing the environment, he needs to rediscover his litterbox as clean 1-5-10-15 minutes later.

etc

You can use this to your advantage to play games with the cat, interestingly enough. I play with him with this thing: [https://www.chewy.com/snugglycat- ripple-rug-cat-activity/dp/...](https://www.chewy.com/snugglycat-ripple-rug- cat-activity/dp/149935?utm_source=google- product&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=hg&utm_content=SnugglyCat&utm_term=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIo9jVq7Ox3wIVgx- GCh3Odw-lEAQYASABEgK-lPD_BwE)

Some days, he gets bored with it. So I unvelcro it, change its shape, and start playing again, and suddenly, its an entirely new toy, and he gets excited again! lol

<comment><USER35> > That, I think, explains a lot of their behavior.

I honestly think the hardest part of explaining cat behavior is how chaotic they are as a species. You can explain A cat's behavior, but it's harder to explain all of them. My cats, for example, completely understand knocking over (even large) containers to get food, understand that turning door knobs will open doors (thankfully their lack of thumbs means they usually don't have the grip to pull it off), but fail to understand that sitting ON the closed food container means I can't use it to feed them.

Ive read that not only are cats more recently domesticated than dogs (like, by an order of magnitude of years, with dogs domesticated 50k-80k years ago) but that domestication didn't involve OUR deliberate breeding of them outside of recent centuries, so the traits selected for are more about compatibility (for their benefit) than for anything we explicitly want. My personal theory is that housecats are often from such small genepools (that haven't had a lot of recessives weeded out of them yet) that cats tend to be this mix of genius and idiot and weird, so it's very hard to extrapolate generalities from a few specimens. But that theory is likely worthless.

<comment><USER36> >> cats tend to be this mix of genius and idiot and weird

I applaud you for trying to explain this. You could be completely right, or wrong... We're talking about cats after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Never heard of Schrödinger's cat? You can't know whether it wants to go outside or stay inside until it makes a decision

<comment><USER38> I don't think you understood Schrodinger's cat. This is not relevant.

<comment><USER39> I don't think you understood the joke.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN - Occupy Everything, my weekend project - <AUTHOR> http://thinglet.com/releases/occupy-everything-a-weekend-project

<comment><USER2> $0.02: The animated widget inviting me to share your text through half a dozen mediums obscured your text in such a way where I couldn't read it.</comment>


Secret Court Takes Another Bite Out of the Fourth Amendment - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/secret-court-takes-another-bite-out-fourth-amendment <comment><USER2> Errr, reading the actual decision, i don't see a lot of support for the EFF's claims. It seems pretty cherry picked.

In fact it clearly states they can only retain stuff long term if the DOJ notifies them explicitly that they have a continuing litigation/preservation hold necessity (which is usually not the DOJ doing it,but say, a civil lawsuit that carries with it preservation obligations).

It also makes further clear that in all cases, the only people with access to most of any retained data is system administrators, not investigators, and that it can't be used for investigative purposes.

It does say general querying is allowed, but only people explicit 702 access rights are the ones who must be making such queries, or making such decisions. In all cases all records of who accessesd what with what query terms and their access level are explicitly logged, etc.

It also explicitly states that information acquired under section 702 will not be introduced as evidence against a person in a criminal proceeding, without 1\. Explicit approval of the attorney general 2\. in criminal cases related to national security crimes

In any case, this is not new, this viewpoint is something going back to FISC precedent from _2002_.

So it's not like this _just_ happened.

Additionally, the _statute_ is pretty clear here.

It says: " (h) "Minimization procedures", with respect to electronic surveillance, means—

... (3) notwithstanding paragraphs (1) and (2), procedures that allow for the retention and dissemination of information that is evidence of a crime which has been, is being, or is about to be committed and that is to be retained or disseminated for law enforcement purposes; and"

So again, nothing new here, this has been law for quite a while.

In short, i may hate a lot of things about FISA/FISC/etc, but i think the EFF is stretching to say this is a new problem, or to blame the court for it.

<comment><USER3> I think they are blaming the court for finding the statute you quoted is constitutional, when they believe it clearly should not be. Warrantless mass surveillance is bad enough for the special purpose of national security. It's obvious they would never be allowed to perform the same exact wiretaps directly for use in non-national security cases. So why is the obvious loophole a get-out-of-Constitution free card?

Information _aquired_ under 702 may not be introduced.... Exactly, we call this parallel construction.

Those limits on retention you mention, which don't apply to evidence of a crime which has been, is being, or could possibly be committed (aka "about")... are those the same limits FISA just recently blasted NSA for not following and hiding from the court that they weren't following? [1]

They are not saying this is a new problem. This is a very old problem and also a very big problem. And for finding this constitutional, the only one to blame is the court.

[1] - [http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the- radar/2016/04/govern...](http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the- radar/2016/04/government-surveillance-fbi-nsa-violations-222162)

<comment><USER4> > It's obvious they would never be allowed to perform the same exact wiretaps > directly for use in non-national security cases.

There is no "national security" exception to the 4th amendment. At least in theory, these are communications that wouldn't require a warrant but for FISA, because they involve communications with foreign non-citizens.

<comment><USER3> It's hard to keep up -- my understanding is "meta-data" is mass collected for Americans talking to Americans, and does this mean it can, and we will see that data being bulk mined for "crimes" just by entering someone's name? Or are you saying that this part isn't overseen by FISA?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if this means that the NSA's definition of "collect" has conveniently reverted back to the widely accepted meaning.

Their previous defense was that "collect" meant to actually inspect the information.

</comment><comment><USER6> Western press always mocks eastern countries because of their policies around surveillance and censorship to restrict free speech. They rarely report on what is going on around here.

<comment><USER7> They are two different worlds. There's no comparison. In the west, with cases like these, and people like Snowden, we're trying to defend our free speech and privacy by _our_ standards. We're doing alright, but there are some big problems to solve. And yes, the media needs to cover this more.

But comparing this to censorship and related problems in China and Russia (single-party states with control of speech at the policy level) is just silly, for lack of a better word.

<comment><USER6> Well, here the 2 party system is like choosing between Coca Cola and Pepsi. Not very different from what happens with Communist countries.

<comment><USER7> I think you have no idea what you're talking about.

Since you bring up "Communist countries," my grandfather lived in Communist Romania. He was beaten to death in jail over the course of two months on charges of possessing foreign currency [0]. My parents grew up with almost no food to eat, most of the time being tracked by the secret police, everywhere, black car following them home, informants at every corner, in every place they visited. A modern "Communist country" is North Korea. You can do some research on your own regarding that.

Yes, modern Russia and China aren't that bad. But comparing their single-party system (in which the party literally controls everything, and on many occasions silences dissent by "disappearing" people (read: killing them) ) with the United States, is in fact, _just plain silly_. Whoever pointed out that this is a bad way to argue is wrong. It is simply _silly_. Having the choice in two parties, where mostly anyone can, in theory, run, this is infinitely more free than a single-party state. People can make themselves known, they can speak what they want (look at Bernie), they can come out of nowhere without being carefully monitored and selected by a single party. Having the choice encourages politicians to at least _somewhat_ work with the people's interest at heart, rather than just the interest of the party.

Your Coca Cola and Pepsi comparison is very myopic. If you cannot tell the difference between the two parties, especially at a time like this, you have no place discussing politics in any forum. Quick summary: one party is a center-right party trying increase funding to social services, the other is a far-right conservative party focused on the religious majority and traditional conservative values. There are many more things to them; the differences are tremendous. Read their Wikipedia pages, and those of their candidates.

Stop with these comparisons, guys. I know the state of affairs isn't great here, I know our media isn't focusing on the right things and we have huge problems with the NSA and privacy matters.

 _But be grateful for what we have, and appreciate that you live in a country where you will not be killed by the government for speaking too loud._

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

<comment><USER8> > one party is a center-right party trying increase funding to social > services, the other is a far-right conservative party focused on the > religious majority and traditional conservative values

Stop drinking the soda. Those are the most colorful agendas which often result in 1 or 2 grand policy gestures to point at. In practice, the majority of the time is spent bolstering the businesses of donors. To whit, this is EXACTLY what communist countries produce, once they get the populace under control after a few purges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's best as a society is to fight. What's best as an individual is to conform.

<comment><USER10> And then they came for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone aware of a source for this type of news that isn't quite so one- sided? It seems all we have is hyper-lefty "sky is falling" stuff and hard- charging right-wing "shut up kids, the government knows what's best for you."

I want reporting, not _advocacy_. The better of the mainstream press outlets are balanced to a fault but get the interesting details wrong or leave them out altogether. The fringe outlets target their core audience with lots of spun details and a lack of opposing viewpoint.

EDIT: If anyone can get past "lefty vs righty" and answer my core question I'd really appreciate it. This is a genuine query for information, not a clever way to troll.

<comment><USER12> I...hmmm...I don't know if my personal bias is influencing my perspective, but I usually find the EFF as a reasonable reporting source. They tend to fall on the left, but I struggle to see them as "hyper-lefty".

The key for me about the EFF is they are usually good at providing sources. I am going to take the time to read the linked Memorandum and Order document and form my own opinion:

> > [https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/20151106-702Mem_Opinion_...](https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/20151106-702Mem_Opinion_Order_for_Public_Release.pdf)

Although, I do tend to agree with the EFF on a fair amount of issues (not always though).

<comment><USER11> My personal bias is way in favor of the EFF but the tone still irks me. And don't be fooled by footnotes! Unlike EFF, Wikipedia consciously strives for balance and they often come up way short, too. Any decent advocacy organization knows how to play the "references" game.

<comment><USER13> I agree with you, often the tone of EFF feels off. It can vary a lot by article.

I think this is evidence of a nascent tech community. We are fractured in our approach to some things (e.g. RMS vs others) and this shows in the varied responses by EFF.

I definitely don't agree with everything they have to say about tech and policy but I am glad they exist. They keep pretty good tabs on government and private company policy. Sometimes it feels weird when they criticize some private company for a policy which I feel is not a big deal, but I just register my disagreement and note they're not me ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could someone clarify something for me?

As I understand it, PRISM is not a thing that lets the NSA willy nilly search the internal networks of companies they've onboard,

It is instead a thing for companies who would be the target of large volumes of these requests just because of their size to upload the data they're legally required to because of NSL or similar, in a rapid fashion.

Is this assessment correct?

<comment><USER12> As I understand it (so take it with a grain of salt) PRISM mandates that targeted companies collect and turn over data that matches a set of ("court- approved") guidelines without prompting[1].

This as opposed to the government finding probable cause, getting a warrant, and asking the company for the data (if they have it). Instead, the onus is placed on the company to comply with the guidelines set forth without first being asked.

It is unclear to me whether or not companies had to start collecting/reporting data they were otherwise discarding before, but this quote sounds like they are/were:

> "The NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were > encrypted when they traveled across the internet backbone, to focus on > stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded > earlier,[8][9] and to get data that is easier to handle, among other > things.[10]"

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_\(surveillance_program\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A lost opportunity. Had they asked for the court orders from the FBI, that could set the framework for the future - information is collected, but cannot be searched without a court order. That could have been a decent compromise.

This is not going to be a popular opinion, but I think a compromise is necessary. There is no way to stand up to the train of data collection. For one, the public being afraid of this and that will demand to be protected at all costs, no matter how small the threat. The more scandalous the news cycle gets, the more panic we will see. And then the technology improves so fast, soon enough publicly installed video cameras will track everyone, and all within the constitutional framework.

A middle ground would be to create the fourth branch of the government that is tasked with data collection, but will only give it up on court order. Orders may be for individual incidents based on reasonable cause, or for data-mining, based on a judgement of proper scope.

<comment><USER16> > There is no way to stand up to the train of data collection. For one, the > public being afraid of this and that will demand to be protected at all > costs, no matter how small the threat.

I disagree. I think government data collection on citizens should not be allowed, period. I know many people external to tech who agree with me.

The issue occurs when government officials talk about terror attacks. If they were honest, and told anyone it never prevented a terror attack, more would be inclined to not be tracked.

Coupled with this, is the fact I don't trust the government databases not to get hacked, and neither does anyone else.

<comment><USER4> This opinion is about what the government can do with the data of non-citizens believed to be abroad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _" If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged"_, Cardinal Richleu.

 _' Nothing to hide'_ privacy naysayers imagine innocence a perfect defense.

In practice a prosecution presents select facts in the order best suited to convict.

Under mass surveillance they have all the facts; the defense only has what one still possesses/ remembers.

With such resources, enough well cast aspersions could convict anyone of something.

Counter intuitively innocence can be harder to defend as the guilty will have prepared alabis. (part2 @)

Lawyers advise their clients not to talk freely to police for very good reason.@

@ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

<comment><USER18> Spot on!

But don't forget SCOTUS Scalia saying that basically if you are later on found not guilty, but the trail on its own was done properly with no misconduct, you will still get the death penalty!

[http://www.businessinsider.com/antonin-scalia-says- executing...](http://www.businessinsider.com/antonin-scalia-says-executing- the-innocent-is-constitutional-2014-9)

What a country! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Man... this is depressing...

I'm counting on you lot at HN and beyond to create the technology allowing widespread encryption that makes such surveillance moot.

</comment><comment><USER20> We all knew it was coming, but dang that was fast.</comment>


7 steps to storytelling success - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hsoub.com/7-steps-to-storytelling-success

<comment><USER2> I wish more people would do a little of this. Making a marginal effort makes a big difference. I run into friends applying to business school but unsure what to write their essays about because their lives are so 'ordinary.' Most paintings are of 'ordinary' stuff; it's often the technique with which they're done that draws people in.

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't agree with you more. Thanks for your comment!</comment></comment>


The ubiquituous Follow Buttons - <AUTHOR> http://julien.svbtle.com/follow-buttons-everywhere

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe this is an amazing window opportunity to revive RSS.

<comment><USER2> Or email lists!</comment></comment>


The most racist places in America, according to Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/28/the-most-racist-places-in-america-according-to-google/?postshare=7781430242128505%3Flink%3Dmktw

<comment><USER2> I wish the article had explained how the individual regions on the map are determined. It probably has to do with how the searches are geo-located but it seems like it could've skewed the results for some places.

<comment><USER3> They look like Neilsen's Designated Market Areas to me - that weird little square one around Alpena, Michigan is a pretty strong indicator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For California, that above average outlier appears to be counties Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernadino and Inyo. Wonder what that's all about?

<comment><USER3> It's an area in California with a lot of black people.

There's more to racism than just this, but in America, racism tends to increase with proximity. More diversity in a community leads to less trust between (and within) ethnic groups.

<comment><USER4> I would have thought proximity could also ease tension if there is a degree of integration. This theory can be confirmed or rejected by extending the original research to cover more races.

<comment><USER3> That's called the 'contact hypothesis'. There's been a few studies that support it (including a famous one involving WWII soldiers' attitudes to mixed-race platoons) but most social science research has found the opposite.

Robert Putnam is the political scientist who's done the most work on this, and if you're curious, his most relevant paper is probably 'E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century'.

Putnam is an interesting academic - he was (and still is, I believe) utterly dismayed by the results of his research, but decided to publish it anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rpi-logic-analyzer: a simple stand-alone logic analyzer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/osnr/rpi-logic-analyzer <comment><USER2> For bit more serious performance, check out BeagleLogic which provides 12 channels at 100MSPS on BeagleBone Black.

* Presentation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbEAq33vdA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbEAq33vdA)

* GitHub: [https://github.com/abhishek-kakkar/BeagleLogic](https://github.com/abhishek-kakkar/BeagleLogic)

<comment><USER3> Wow. That's in the ballpark of the DS1045Z I just bought. What an impressive technical achievement.

<comment><USER4> The scope you've got actually has an ADC which samples at 1G Sa/s :) rather than 100M Sa/s

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's in the ballpark -- not the same as it, but not really that far off either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just about any computer with input pins can be turned into an LA, so not surprising that this happened to an RPi.

For practical use, however, the sampling frequency is far too low and it really needs a triggering option. If you really wanted to use an RPi as an LA, then I think plugging in one of the cheap FX2LP-based LAs and running Sigrok ([http://sigrok.org/wiki/Embedded](http://sigrok.org/wiki/Embedded) ) on it would give you far better capabilities.

<comment><USER6> Naive question ... is the key difference between the Arduino,RPi,etc. and your vanilla laptop or PC with respect to physical computing that the first class of devices has a ADC and pins for hooking up sensors? Does that first class of devices have a name?

<comment><USER2> I'd say the difference between Arduino and RPi is far greater than the difference between RPi and vanilla PC.

RPi is very much just a computer with couple GPIO (general purpose input/output) pins exposed. RPi runs pretty much the same Linux as your PC would. Indeed RPi originally was designed to allow school pupils to have cheap access to Ubuntu and LibreOffice and whatnot, the maker community thing was kinda just a sideproduct of that. This class of devices are commonly called single-board computers.

Arduino on the other hand is designed to run your code on bare metal and typically does not involve operating system of any sort. That means that you got very direct access to the HW, and also that you generally have fairly solid hard realtime guarantees. Arduinos also have orders of magnitude less resources (memory/compute/storage) available than RPi but also consume order(s?) of magnitude less power. I'd call this class devboards.

One relatively important distinction between the two is that RPi class devices can be considered self-hosting in the sense that you can program the devices on the device itself without another computer, whereas Arduino development generally always requires a host computer that programs ("flashes") the device.</comment></comment></comment>


Quotes from Julian Assange of Wikileaks - <AUTHOR> http://beginning.anitawirawan.com/misc/julian-assange-from-wikileaks-quotes

<comment><USER2> _We know for sure that one big media company in the US had the 'Collateral Murder' video for years and did not release it._

That seems especially incriminating. I wonder if it's as sinister as it sounds, or if there's a good reason for this? (for example, it was encrypted and beyond their resources to decrypt)

<comment><USER3> That quote stood out at me too, not because it incriminates a media company, but because it incriminates WikiLeaks.

Why is WikiLeaks concealing whatever evidence they have of this? It's awfully convenient for them to make this claim. If true, it demonstrates the importance of the WikiLeaks organization.

But at this point it's just PR. Why should we believe this guy?

And besides, WikiLeaks is supposedly sitting on a stockpile of submitted information. They themselves choose when and how to release information, so who are they to criticize?

<comment><USER4> I think that the recent case with Bradley Manning demonstrated that even though WikiLeaks provides anonymity to the people who submit the materials, it is still possible to track down the whistle blower anyway and if cases like this were to repeat, people would not submit anything to WikiLeaks for the fear that they will be discovered anyway.

Edit: Huh, I was not aware of the fact that Manning was caught because Adrian Lamo revealed his name to the investigators.</comment></comment></comment>


mert: An iTerm 3-compatible tab and pane manager - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eggplanetio/mert <comment><USER2> Off-topic:

I don't have any use for this, personally.

I am both a longtime user of both tmux and iTerm, although I haven't ever used iTerm's tmux "integration". Anyone have a good reference they could point me to that explains how it works and how to get started using it.

FWIW, I normally have a single iTerm window with two or three tabs open. In tab 1, I have a tmux session running which is mostly just SSH sessions to various servers (where I usually have tmux nested). This tab is where I spend 98% of my time. The other tab(s) are just for quick little things I need to do in a "clean" shell/window. I've looked a little into iTerm's tmux integration but I'm not sure it'd really be any benefit to me. (I'm not a developer but I am a network engineer and server monkey, so I've usually got anywhere from six to 30 SSH sessions open at once.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. I'm not going to lie, I prefer just using tmux. I'd rather take a few minutes at the start of a session to get my windows/panes just right than to run this script. Plus, it doesn't look like there's any way to change the width and height of the panes, which I use very often in tmux.</comment>


Unite with Namecheap in the fight against CISPA - <AUTHOR> http://www.namecheap.com/cispa/alert.aspx <comment><USER2> Wait, is this year's CISPA dramatically different than last year's? Because if it's basically the same bill, this is a _profoundly_ dishonest campaign.

2012's CISPA:

* Did not provide the government with any capability to shut down traffic

* Explicitly rejected enforcement of intellectual property, going so far as to remove IP from a list of assets protected by the bill

* Created an entirely voluntary opt-in mechanism for companies to share information about attacks

* Limited the information shared to attack data, and provided a definition in the law for what "attack" meant that did not include piracy

CISPA 2012 was not a "warmed over SOPA". SOPA was so much more intrusive than CISPA 2012 that it is strange to even compare them.

So, is CISPA 2013 much worse?

<comment><USER3> Organizations ranging from Mozilla and the ACM, to the EFF and ACLU, to grassroots activist groups of the left and right didn't share your casual confidence in the reasonableness of 2012 CISPA.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_Protection_Act#Opposition)

Their analysis was that once a determination of a 'cyber threat' was made and shared, private communications and other data that would usually require stronger cause could (and probably would) then be handed over ('shared') on government request. The words "voluntary opt-in" are not reassuring, if it's a service provider opting-in customer data to law-enforcement, disregarding traditional expectations of privacy or even explicitly agreed terms.

When you say 2012 CISPA "remove[d] IP from a list of assets protected by the bill", they could only 'remove' it because the original draft had it in. And, that's the sort of insider-wishlist-item that can be re-added as the bill progresses, or perhaps even interpreted-back-in when the bill contains vague language.

The 2013 language includes in its definition of covered 'cybersecurity crimes': "a violation of any provision of title 18, United States Code, created or amended by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-474)."

That's the same CFAA as used in the recent prosecutions of Swartz and Aurenheimer. It has the open-ended "exceeding authorized access" and "obtains anything of value" language that lets the violation of terms-of-service and unauthorized acquisition of commercially-valued copyrighted material become serious federal crimes.

Advocates of new security powers tend to portray their scope as small and reasonable, before passage, but then manage to find a more expansive interpretation, when it behooves them after passage. Because such bills keep changing and stretching, I tend to trust the EFF and ACLU, who will actually litigate cases under the enacted legal regime, about the bill's likely effects.

<comment><USER4> Noting all the concerns about privacy, it is still intellectually dishonest to compare it to SOPA, with which it shares literally nothing.

But that is not particularly surprising because Namecheap cares more about getting people fired up to switch their domains to Namecheap, than they do about being an honest participant in the legislative process.

<comment><USER3> Sure, it's not the 'same as' SOPA, nor is it SOPA renamed/resuscitated. But CISPA shares an aspect giving law-enforcement new powers that may be expansively used, without judicial hearing, against anyone identified as a 'cyber threat' or engaging in 'cybersecurity crimes'.

And CISPA does this via a similar mechanism: broad immunity for those non- governmental service providers who 'voluntarily' do what law-enforcement may only informally advise. That's an elastic clause that can look innocent in the text but be nasty in practice.

So there are enough similarities in mechanism and feared effect that analogizing it to SOPA is within the bounds of fair discourse. It's the same approximate way of speaking we see ins headlines that say "Mexico is the new China" or "Facebook is the new Google"... similarity in _an_ important aspect, not _all_ important aspects.

<comment><USER4> No, it doesn't give law enforcement any new powers. This is an example of the misinformation about this bill.

<comment><USER3> Mere contradiction -- "No, it doesn't" -- isn't convincing.

Your argument doesn't pass a simple-logic smell-test: why would law enforcement want this, if it doesn't give them any new capabilities?

Organizations that are expert in the legal implications of such bills, like the EFF and ACLU, disagree with you about the effect. Their concern is that under CISPA, "these combined power and immunity provisions would override existing privacy laws like the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act." [1]

Imagine there were a law which said, search and seizure without a warrant or probable cause is bad, but any evidence so collected is always admissible in court, and law officers who collect such evidence may never be disciplined in any civil, criminal, or administrative fashion. That creates a de facto new power, because it shifts all the incentives, and agents may then search and seize with impunity.

The concern of the EFF and the ACLU is that CISPA does something similar. It sets up a system where doing the federal government the 'voluntary' favor of sharing information -- even in contravention of other laws or contracts that could create liability -- is always the safe and easy course. So, agencies wind up collecting far more info that people expected to be private.

There's an old joke that "national security" is the root password to the Constitution. Well, CISPA makes "cybersecurity threat" the root password to every private service-provider data set.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/cispa-privacy- invading...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/cispa-privacy-invading- cybersecurity-spying-bill-back-congress)

<comment><USER4> Carefully read the EFF link you posted. It does not say that CISPA gives law enforcement any new powers. Their objections to the bill center around the privacy implications of giving private companies liability protection if they choose to share data with the government.

The language of CISPA explicitly prohibits the government from using such protections to force companies to give up data. Again--read the EFF article. It does not even use the phrase "law enforcement" at all, nor the word "force". The only usage of the word "power" refers to the power of private companies to collect data related to cybersecurity (which of course they already do).

The EFF is right to raise questions about privacy in the context of cybersecurity coordination. Where I part ways with them is that they seem to have taken a maximalist approach that _any and all_ sharing of data is wrong and should be prevented. I happen to think that there is a role for the federal government to help coordinate cyber threat information.

<comment><USER3> I've read the EFF write-ups, the 2013 proposed bill text, and other sources carefully.

If after CISPA, federal agencies can receive more private data than before – in ways that were previously prevented by liability under the Wiretap Act, the Stored Communication Act, contractual obligations, and other court precedents about expectations of privacy – then that's a 'new power' for law enforcement. Even if the way the new power is created is indirect, through immunized information 'sharing'.

<comment><USER4> I guess we'll just have to disagree about the meaning of the phrase "law enforcement power." SOPA would have given law enforcement a legal right to compel certain behavior. CISPA does not grant any right to compel behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This bill is nothing like SOPA and whoever is campaigning on this basis is doing a massive disservice to themselves because people can tell the difference.

CISPA is just a continuation of clear "wiretapping" landgrabs by the US Federal Government, in this case using the basis of "cybersecurity". The US government have been trying to do this for decades and they will almost certainly succeed, no matter the resistance.

What is new is that it seeks to indemnify specific third parties who wiretap or even hack on their behalf.

As for the current version of the bill (H.R.3523.RFS), apart from the obviously broad language, there is only one section, on the _use_ of information, that I would be greatly concerned with if I were a US resident, Section 2.C.1 (specifically part A):

 _LIMITATION- The Federal Government may use cyber threat information shared with the Federal Government in accordance with subsection (b)--

`(A) for cybersecurity purposes;

`(B) for the investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crimes;

`(C) for the protection of individuals from the danger of death or serious bodily harm and the investigation and prosecution of crimes involving such danger of death or serious bodily harm;

`(D) for the protection of minors from child pornography, any risk of sexual exploitation, and serious threats to the physical safety of such minor, including kidnapping and trafficking and the investigation and prosecution of crimes involving child pornography, any risk of sexual exploitation, and serious threats to the physical safety of minors, including kidnapping and trafficking, and any crime referred to in 2258A(a)(2) of title 18, United States Code; or

`(E) to protect the national security of the United States._

What does "(A)" mean and why is it present when both "(B)" and "(E)" are already present? Without further highly specific legal binding, _"for cybersecurity purposes"_ is far too broad an entry for the _use_ at which the information may be put!

<comment><USER2> Exactly how would CISPA indemnify a company that hacked on its behalf? Obviously I'm asking because I think there is no way that it does.

<comment><USER5> Section 2.B.1:

 _SELF-PROTECTED ENTITIES- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a self- protected entity may, for cybersecurity purposes--

(i) use cybersecurity systems to identify and obtain cyber threat information to protect the rights and property of such self-protected entity; and

`(ii) share such cyber threat information with any other entity, including the Federal Government._

Section 2.B.4:

 _EXEMPTION FROM LIABILITY- No civil or criminal cause of action shall lie or be maintained in Federal or State court against a protected entity, self- protected entity, cybersecurity provider, or an officer, employee, or agent of a protected entity, self-protected entity, or cybersecurity provider, acting in good faith--

`(A) for using cybersecurity systems to identify or obtain cyber threat information or for sharing such information in accordance with this section; or

`(B) for decisions made based on cyber threat information identified, obtained, or shared under this section._

1\. The key phrase "Notwithstanding any other provision of law" allows those parts of the bill to ignore all other laws.

2\. "EXEMPTION FROM LIABILITY" subsection could not be any more clear.

3\. "use cybersecurity systems to identify and obtain cyber threat information" is such broad language as to mean almost anything, especially in context of software.

But we're getting side-tracked, imo. At this point, I would not even try to prevent the US government getting whatever information it wanted, however it wanted - third party or not. The key is what they are allowed to do with it after they have it...

<comment><USER2> "Cybersecurity systems" are intrusion detection systems. It's a ludicrous misreading of the law to suggest that you can call a zero-day exploit a "cybersecurity system" that you've deployed "preemptively" against a threat. To see why, reframe: _anybody_ running an exploit against _any_ system could make that claim. It clearly does not mean that.

The term is defined later in the bill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > For each Tweet or Facebook share about this threat, using the buttons below, > you will increase the amount donated to the EFF foundation by $0.10.

My god they are working this thing to their benefit. That is just really really good marketing.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is something new; a combination of marketing, propaganda, and demagoguery. Namecheap says that "If CISPA is passed, the US government gains the power to shut off Internet traffic." That wrong, and so provably wrong that it may be a lie. The bill is here. <http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3523/text> There isn't a word in there about shutting off Internet traffic. More reputable sources--like EFF, for whom Namecheap is fundraising--don't make that outrageous claim. Namecheap is trying to make a buck off the gullible.

<comment><USER2> EFF made a series of outrageous claims about CISPA. If all your information about CISPA came from EFF, you might indeed think that CISPA was an attempt to reintroduce SOPA.

EFF is not a trustworthy source of information about CISPA. I believe they're using it as a vector for fundraising. They're certainly not trying to educate about it.

<comment><USER3> Can you provide more detail about the "outrageous claims about CISPA" made by the EFF? (That's a strong accusation without details.)

<comment><USER2> A starting point:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/cybersecurity-bill- faq...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/cybersecurity-bill-faq- disturbing-privacy-dangers-cispa-and-how-you-stop-it)

<comment><USER3> Are you saying that whole FAQ is 'outrageous claims' about the 2012 CISPA, or can you highlight the most 'outrageous' claim? Has anyone written up an explanation why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Short version: "Buy my stuff and I'll donate to a good cause".

Disclaimer: I love and use namecheap and think they're one of the best registrars. But this is cheap marketing pitch.

<comment><USER9> It's actually "spread my stuff" rather than "buy my stuff".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has been all over HN the past 24 hours [1]. Namecheap (and I use them) is starting to get known for this sort of marketing. They were ALL over reddit when SOPA was the big thing. Maybe drop a marketing person and improve their email/mobile experience? [1] [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=namecheap](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=namecheap)

</comment><comment> clark-kent Namecheap is beginning to look bad in my eyes with all this.</comment>


Realtime Data Processing at Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2016/07/realtime-data-processing-at-facebook.html <comment><USER2> If you're looking to do something similar at your company, I work at Interana[1], and we're aiming to provide near-real-time insight into analytics; Both slice-and-dice real-time queries and session-stitched funnels.

The founders were the guys who built Scuba, and we're taking a somewhat different approach (mostly driven by differences in scale). We're not quite at the second scale delivery times, and are based on more classical logfile rotation and aggregation mechanisms to get our raw data, and then an efficient sharding layer to get it into our columnstore.

[1] [http://www.interana.com/](http://www.interana.com/)

<comment><USER3> How many applications are written embedding or extending your tool? Understand the Scuba comparison and very valid points you make but the core of the paper seems to be about writing applications that can make real time decisions like fraud, ad analytics, Sensor alerts, etc

AFAIK your tool cannot seem to identify trending events as they are streamed in (like moving standard deviation for example) and feed downstream to a pipeline unless I am mistaken

<comment><USER4> [https://www.interana.com/what-is-it/just-add- data/](https://www.interana.com/what-is-it/just-add-data/)

"We like JSON best." \- lol

<comment><USER2> Json happens to be the self-describing interchange format that's well known and generally accepted. It's the payload of most tracking cookies (which are the primary type of data we ingest); You don't need any transformation on the ingest tier; Just POST, validate, dump to logfile.

We also support CSV and apache logs, but JSON is what works for customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sort of unfortunate codenames. Since scribe is a company that makes message bus software in the Microsoft world, and swift is, well you know..

<comment><USER6> Scribe was open sourced in 2008... It's not a new project.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribe_(log_server)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribe_\(log_server\))</comment></comment>


Florida Man Jailed for Failing to Unlock His Phone - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/florida-man-jailed-for-failing-to-unlock-his-phone-1827600878 <comment><USER2> This seems like parallel construction. The dude sounds dirty, but it doesn't matter.

1) Why was there a cop watching him leave his driveway? This sounds like the easiest made-up charge where there is no evidence to prove it DIDN'T happen.

2) Why did they want to search his car for failing to yield? Maybe it's SOP.

3) Why was the canine unit called BEFORE he was stopped? Big red flag.

110% effort to have it thrown out on appeal. They were targeting him.</comment>


Undirect - Chrome extension that removes Google redirect search result - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/undirect/ <comment><USER2> Would you rather have Google track your visited pages, or allow your destination to know how you got there, personally identifying you?

Webmasters get aggregated data via Google analytics. If you're signed in to Google, they don't know your personal, individual referrer on landing on their site.

<comment><USER3> I guess the question is would you rather have hundreds of separate sites that you don't trust but who each only have a very small amount of data on you, or one site that you slightly trust but who has every data to build a complete profile of you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice. I'm on a pretty decent connection but quite often google's redirection page takes forever to load.

For anyone struggling to install this: Download the .crx file to your computer, open chrome://extensions/ then drag the file to that page.

<comment><USER5> There is a chrome webstore link above that.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/undirect/dohbiijnj...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/undirect/dohbiijnjeiejifbgfdhfknogknkglio)

<comment><USER4> Woops, completely glossed over that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One alternative is GSanitizer extension.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a useful extension to Chinese Google users.

<comment><USER8> Yup this is just what I've been looking for. Since Google regularly gets one- minute bans, I'm constantly having to give up on a search and switch to another search engine.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Simulating Infectious Disease in 200 lines of C - <AUTHOR> https://0x0f0f0f.github.io/posts/2020/03/simulating-the-spread-of-infectious-disease-in-200-lines-of-c/ <comment><AUTHOR> Can you do better in a few hundred lines of code? It would be nice to compare the results of multiple toy simulations to see if there are some shared outcomes.</comment>


Barclays says Nokia's Windows Phones can compete with iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2011/10/28/barclays-says-nokias-windows-phones-can-compete-with-the-iphone/

<comment><USER2> Don't pay heed to what stock analysts say. They can't predict the future, but instead of saying "I don't know" they make some forecasts with dubious assumptions, and then make stock recommendations.

[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-08-08/wall_street/3...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-08-08/wall_street/30092077_1_forecasting- analysis-analysts)</comment>


Ask HN: downsides of using Wikipedia as a source? - <AUTHOR> For many new topics, things, places, categories, I'll look to Wikipedia for an overview. Have you experienced any downsides to using Wiki as a source? <comment><USER3> Over time, I've found Wikipedia to be quite biased in a subtle way. Articles about cities or countries tend to be written like advertorials, replete with rankings rather than facts. Articles about religious figures, philosophers or just controversial people in general tend to be more obviously biased, with certain facts highlighted and others buried or hidden.

This is pretty much just the nature of any publication - there is no such thing as an "unbiased" source of information. Having said that, I prefer the older, more academic ones like Britannica. They tend to be less caught up in the zeitgeist and more descriptive, if a little boring.

Compare these two articles to see what I'm referring to:

[https://www.britannica.com/place/Vienna](https://www.britannica.com/place/Vienna)

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

<comment><USER4> The Britannica there shows how a professionally edited and authored encyclopedia has a greater liberty and authority to make simplifying claims that are nevertheless accurate, like this prose which you would rarely see in Wikipedia:

" Vienna is among the least spoiled of the great old western European capitals. Its central core, the Innere Stadt, is easily manageable by foot and public transportation. In a city renowned for its architecture, many of Vienna's urban prospects remain basically those devised over several centuries by imperial gardeners and architects."

I think Wikipedia is almost always more boring because of its voiceless, detached, noncommittal style.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wikipedia articles are a very mixed lot: sometimes the articles are great; most of the time they are adequate and part of the time they are inadequate or incorrect.

A big question is how important the answer is to you: if it is of major importance you need to do more comprehensive research.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wikipedia prose is very disorganized, strange, and hard to read. Pages are like school assignments cowritten by dozens of authors. There is no professional editing. This can make you feel stupid—how come I read and read but somehow fail to understand or remember? So trying to use Wikipedia for getting an overview of a complex topic is a bit of a waste of time compared to a "real" encyclopedia article.

</comment><comment><USER6> It can be biased. Not every article is, but some certainly are. If you speak other languages besides English, pick a couple of historical events, political groups, and in general contentious topics and compare their article in English and other languages. You will be surprised how different they portray the same event and how the choice of facts to present and how to present them totally changes the narrative.

You may say the same is true of any source. But unlike most sources, where the writer or publisher of the piece is known and their biases researchable, you won't know who wrote a particular article and what their allegiances are. Besides, most people use Wikipedia as their one and only source of information, so they do not get exposed to different viewpoints and interpretations. It is considered fine with Wikipedia, as it is an encyclopedia and is supposed to be objective. With individual sources, you know you need to read a couple before forming an opinion. With Wikipedia, you may not do the same.

<comment><USER7> I find it useful to look at the talk section of a page when I'm unsure about possible biases. If there's a heated discussion going on there, that says a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the only issue I have come across, very occasionally, is that information in an article is changed or updated or removed. It's possible to see the edit history, but it's not optimal. You could save an offline copy for certain articles but then they won't get updated. Edits due to political reasons in a technical article are annoying.

The other issue I have come across is that sometimes the articles from a specific category aren't linked well or aren't equally in depth. Some might be thoroughly researched but another might have a single paragraph.

I haven't come across issues with the information itself, for information unrelated to celebrities and politics.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wikipedia is not an original source for research. It just references other sources in their text, which is why researchers cringe if the majority of your sources is based on Wikipedia unless for good reason.

<comment><USER10> This! No teacher, professor, peer reviewer worth their weight would accept WP as a source. WP is great for getting a summary of a topic and a quick start list of possible sources. However if one wants to cite something, one should ready WPs citations. Often those are actual sources (though sometimes those aren't even original sources).

I feel like this is something that I was taught in 6th or 7th grade that all literate adults should learn.

This same argument holds true for most "news" sources too. I would not call many of the well known "News" sources legitimate "sources". Just because Fox/CNN/Wikipedia says something doesn't mean it's true. Check the citation! If there is no citation/can't be verified, then the trustworthiness is close to 0 regardless of the person/agency/organization stating it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wikipedia can be a worthwhile place to look for very general descriptions to give yourself an introduction to new ideas. much like you're already using it.

However, in areas where I have actual expertise, I've noticed that it gets the technical details wrong consistently. Often 50% of the time or more on complex subjects. My guess from looking at quite a few articles is that much of the text is from repurposed mediocre to bad essays by college students, or at least written at about the same level.

<comment><USER7> May I ask what areas you are referring to? I haven't noticed that yet - <USER2> then, I very rarely refer to Wikipedia on topics I already know...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A lot, if not most, of the full-time editors are paid shills.

So the information is bought and paid for.</comment>


Show HN: Pix.pe – Easily sharable pixel art - <AUTHOR> http://pix.pe <comment><USER2> Red Mage from Final Fantasy 1:

[http://pix.pe?E____H4___4ACSJSAKUJEYjk4AARAAA_AAk8gAISAA4_A4...](http://pix.pe?E____H4___4ACSJSAKUJEYjk4AARAAA_AAk8gAISAA4_A4HSBASBIBISSKRoFAJkkkbJP5VKRJS4H4ASpVqFIA_H4_AqPJBA____DYbAHYbbbbbbbYbLZLAYDAbADY_H4)

Mario from... Mario :

[http://pix.pe/#http://pix.pe?O_____c7_bbbb2O0jk0222t1Otk2k__...](http://pix.pe/#http://pix.pe?O_____c7_bbbb2O0jk0222t1Otk2k___223t9________8nk_JJ____JJJZJttNJttt5JJJZJJ______Jk_________kk8________t9_ttp2BGot1rOeb7_2_2u3____)

Mickey Mouse :

[http://pix.pe/#http://pix.pe?QX4AJBAISH_____AAAB_JO-2JJAAAIA...](http://pix.pe/#http://pix.pe?QX4AJBAISH_____AAAB_JO-2JJAAAIAH___slsl________8ktk_iV0t1Ryt93233-_32y2BK2tlsVq12kv8_______1u1l___8_BAABMN53pRCIAAAQS4_QQIBAAJ_P_)

Attempt at something cool. Bonus points if you actually understand what it is.

[http://pix.pe/?O____AH_________4_4_H4_____H_________________...](http://pix.pe/?O____AH_________4_4_H4_____H_____________________AA______H_HH4_4A_4HH4H4____________________A_______4_4___H__4_AH__________H4____#http://pix.pe?C____AH_________4_4_H4_____H_____________________AA______H_HH4_4A_4HH4H4____________________A_______4_4___H__4_AH__________H4____)

Comments: Would be good if you could somehow define your own color pallette. Obviously you are limited in how much data you can encode in with your available Tweet length... so not sure how plausible that would be. Still kinda fun, just hard to make anything decent out of the available canvas size.

<comment><USER3> _Obviously you are limited in how much data you can encode in with your available Tweet length..._

All urls on Twitter are shortened with t.co to 22/23 characters (depending on https) so the url is not a limit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Storing everything in the URL is a feature I just rolled out today. The HN submission is in honour of that. You can of course post it without the [http://pix.pe/](http://pix.pe/)? to twitter, paste that chunk of letters back in, and it will work. Here is an example of how that looked:

[https://twitter.com/ZenSaiyuki/status/373400181338693632](https://twitter.com/ZenSaiyuki/status/373400181338693632)

Which is neat, and purist and all, but people didn't know what the "gibberish" was, so making it a link is a compelling improvement, it would seem :)

I was really inspired by the twitter image compression challenge [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/891643/twitter-image- enco...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/891643/twitter-image-encoding- challenge)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty cool. Any chance you could include a 16x16 preview? You could even dynamically update it as the favicon (e.g., [http://favris.info/](http://favris.info/)) which is supported in Chrome/FF.

<comment><AUTHOR> there is some chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Happy Halloween

[http://pix.pe?IJJttttSJTdaStuttts2kkkgkkltttttttkkkkkktltttt...](http://pix.pe?IJJttttSJTdaStuttts2kkkgkkltttttttkkkkkktlttttlkkAgkkkkAAkkEkAAkkAEkkkkgkAEkkstkkstttttttttlslsttttttttttskAklttttt1tqSqKLJttttJL)

</comment><comment><USER6> This just screams challenge to me. You have a 16*16, 8 colour image in 768 bits.

So the question is, how much can the format be changed to allow for a wider range of expressibility?

The obvious place to start is increasing the resolution by somehow reducing the bits per pixel.

768/(16x16) = 3 (current resolution makes 3 bits per pixel)

768/(17x17) = 2.657

768/(18x18) = 2.370

768/(19x19) = 2.127

768/(20x20) = 1.920

768/(21x21) = 1.741

768/(24x24) = 1.333

768/(26x26) = 1.136

768/(32x32) = 0.75

Of course, once you get a higher resolution with fewer bits you lose the ability to be able to make each individual pixel any colour you want. Once you go below 1 bit per pixel you lose the ability to refer to pixels individually altogether. Most pixel artists would take some degree of hit though, in fact much of the beauty of pixel art is in massaging the restrictions.

A lot of 8 bit systems used 8x8 cells at 1 bit with a colour attribute byte to bring it up to 1.125 bits per pixel. The spectrum used that to make things like [http://fc05.deviantart.net/images3/i/2004/116/3/d/ZX_Spectru...](http://fc05.deviantart.net/images3/i/2004/116/3/d/ZX_Spectrum_gallery_1997_2003.png)

You could quite easily support a 24x24 image in that form, but with only 3 cells across the colour restrictions would be a bit harsh.

My preference would be to try for 21x21 using 3x3 cells. Being restricted to only 2 colours per cell is much less of a problem when the cell size is small. A quick and easy approach would be a 2 byte per cell structure where the first byte defined the foreground an background colours and the second byte defined the pixels. That gets you a palette of 16 colours overall, any two in each cell. It is marginally over the required limit (21x21 at 1.778bpp) though, so would require a little more cleverness to eek out that extra little bit. dropping back to an 8 colour palette would do it easily, but 1.778 is so close to 1.741 that those bits can surely squeezed out from somewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. It did occur to me that I could get pretty close to a black and white 32x32 picture by replacing the 8 colors with 8 patterns. You'd have to make impossible some patterns, but constraints breed creativity!

<comment><USER6> I made a mode like this for a dcpu16 emulator as a mode proposal. [http://fingswotidun.com/dcpu16/GraphicsMode1.png](http://fingswotidun.com/dcpu16/GraphicsMode1.png)

There's potential for extra data in the situation where the two colour attributes are the same. Possibly have a second compliment palette where

         if A==B {
           colourA:=pallette[A];
           colourB:=compliment[A];
         }

That allows for an extra set of colour pairs, to help out in unusual cases. You don't gain ability to set the bottom right pixel of each cell to the compliment colour, so even though it gives you another 16 colours to play with you get some interesting restrictions rewarding clever use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love this idea and your spec! What do you think about extending it to include little animations?

I would like to apply it to Draw![1] pixel art editor.

If somebody want to help me you can fork the project at [https://github.com/potomak/drawbang](https://github.com/potomak/drawbang)

[1] [http://drawbang.com/](http://drawbang.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea, and was secretly planning to do that eventually. And also I remember drawbang! I thought up the original "pixtweet" around the same time you first posted it to HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My Attempt at Happy Mac [1]

Wants: 32pixels, a 1:1 pixel preview and favicon support!

[1] [http://pix.pe/?C___A_4HH4HA_A_H4_H__H_4_4HA_A_H4_AH__4A_H___...](http://pix.pe/?C___A_4HH4HA_A_H4_H__H_4_4HA_A_H4_AH__4A_H___A4A__AH4H4A_____A_AAAA_A_A4H_AH4H4A__AHA___4_AH__4A_H4_A_A4H_H_4H44_H4_A_A4H44H_A___)

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you think of a way to fit 32x32 pixels reliably in under 128 base64 characters?

edit: hint: it's 768 bits, while 32x32=1024

<comment><USER8> Yes, use DEFLATE[1] before you B64. Also, it does not hurt to up-vote all of these useful comments!

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

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried deflate, and I was surprised, it actually worked in about 66% of the cases I tried. The question remains what to do for those remaining 33%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Oliphant Immortal" from Gurk III: [http://pix.pe?Q_____A4_YEAHDDYcDbYacDbA4_H_______wGuAA_H4__H...](http://pix.pe?Q_____A4_YEAHDDYcDbYacDbA4_H_______wGuAA_H4__HAAcoCFwGwc2u2FwuGogYAGuoYgotaGoFAH4H4HACAICAIAFwAcAACAKA_H44ACUaYCHASAbCAQ4H4_AKAIA)

</comment><comment><USER10> You should look into using replacestate()[1] from History API[2] instead of changing the hash on each pixel change. This will remove the problem of not been able to use the back-button to get to the previous page (instead of the previous pixel)

[1]: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17507091/replacestate- vs-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17507091/replacestate-vs-pushstate)

[2]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Guide/API/DOM/M...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Guide/API/DOM/Manipulating_the_browser_history)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I use the backbutton as an undo stack. if you want to get back to where you were before then you can open pix.pe in a new tab I suppose.

Also, i would note that the backbutton is not per pixel. Each pixel event is filtered through a debouncer, so it actually only updates the url if you are inactive for about 200ms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's fun to type in sentences in the URL part, and watch the picture morph around. Even a single letter repeated over and over gives cool patterns.

I wonder if there are any sentences that are also meaningful pictures?

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend of mine worked out that if you draw a picture, and leave "blank" space (which is rendered in text as underscores) then you can carefully replace the blanks with letters which appears as noise in the picture, but otherwise doesn't disturb what you drew.

edit: e.g. [http://pix.pe?Cttttt5tt9vt____P_5___J__v9_ttttttt9v9tttttkkk...](http://pix.pe?Cttttt5tt9vt____P_5___J__v9_ttttttt9v9tttttkkkkttVSkSiUSSP5_PP_5P_5v9vt_5qSSkkktt__Hacker_News__tttttttttt___P__ttP5__ttttttttttt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Neat! Suggestion: show a 'actual size' thumbnail of it. Those of us new to pixel art have trouble visualizing what it looks like shrunk down to actual pixels!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I like that idea.

</comment></comment><comment> throw-away-914 Was drawing obligatory lady finger and two potatoes, ended up with this. [http://pix.pe/#http://pix.pe?QAHA____A4HA_____H4AAA4AAHA4H4A...](http://pix.pe/#http://pix.pe?QAHA____A4HA_____H4AAA4AAHA4H4AAHA4_A___A4AAAAAH___AAAA__AH4HAA_A4HA_______AAAA___4AAAAAAAA____AAA_______A__HAAAA_____A4HA___AAAA)

</comment><comment><USER13> Can someone make something cool and post it?

<comment><USER14> I'm not a creative man.

[http://pix.pe?Q_____________P5_J_PP_55J__P__________________...](http://pix.pe?Q_____________P5_J_PP_55J__P_____________________P______77P5__P5PNtNP_J5P________L_________J__J__P5PJ_P_55JNpNpJP__________P5____)

<comment><USER15> I forked it:

[http://pix.pe?Q_____________P5_J_PP_55J__P__________________...](http://pix.pe?Q_____________P5_J_PP_55J__P_____________________P______Z_f5__P5PNtNP____J______JJ_________Z__J__P5PJ_P_55JNpNpJP__________P5____)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love how smooth this is on mobile, regarding touching and dragging. I've been working on making UIs for simple art projects on mobile browsers and this will be great to learn from. The palette option is fantastic, it's cool to quickly see a drawing with different color renderings. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> I worked hard on it, but sadly it totally breaks on android and windows phone. I hope to at some point remedy this though it is difficult, since I don't have access to testing on those easily.

If you are interested in this, I found hand.js which seems to do a good job of solving my problem.. I plan to use it eventually. [http://handjs.codeplex.com/](http://handjs.codeplex.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I used to call this pixtweet. Here's all the pictures I collected from the old times. [http://www.zenpsycho.com/allpixtweets.html](http://www.zenpsycho.com/allpixtweets.html)

edit: also note that "infinite" undo is available via the back button.

</comment><comment><USER17> Best part is writing some stuff in the box and see what it produces and how it evolves as you type.

</comment><comment><USER18> Finally, a way to share all the pixel art I've been working on!!

Jokes aside, very cool project. Nice work :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Neat! If you want to go further: [http://www.stickaz.com/en/studio](http://www.stickaz.com/en/studio) You can draw your model (or import it) and buy real stickers.

</comment><comment><USER20> I found the easter egg but I'm not sure what exactly it does. At first I thought it's one iteration of conways game of life but that's not it. Enlighten me!

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh! well it's a failure mode. I have used an unconventional pixel order, in order to improve the look of failure modes. I use a hilbert curve.

When you enter in an amount of text that is not exactly 129 base64url characters, it takes out the non base64url characters, turns them into 0-7 numbers, and then 1-dimensionally stretches those until i get exactly 256 pixels- and lay those out along the hilbert curve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is cool. It would be nice to have a grid option, though.

</comment><comment><USER22> It might be worth considering encoding the URL data to something to compress it a little bit more, perhaps base 64 or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> it is base64 already.

edit: in an older version I tried out compression. I quote from the pix.pe page:

It turns out generic compression of any kind is very rarely helpful below a certain message size. The size of the added overhead overtakes the characters saved. Only about 10% of pictures were RLE compressible, and even then, savings were tiny.

<comment><USER23> I think it would benefit from simple arithmetic compression / huffman coding if the number of colors used is small so the table can be small.

<comment><AUTHOR> You'd be surprised how ineffective such techniques are with such a small message size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> looks like each drawn pixel is being recorded in the URL, which means considering all the combinations + permutations of colors and pixels, you can draw (theoretically) the art just by modifying the URL! :) So maybe you can create a randomizer that creates a picture.... :)

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, but it's easier to modify the text field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have just one suggestion: Make it possible to erase pixels by right clicking.

Other than that, great work!

</comment><comment><USER26> Replace state over push state for this kind of history twiddling please.

</comment><comment><USER27> Try hitting the Back button in your browser after drawing for a while.

</comment><comment><USER28> you should post this on r/pixelart

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh! maybe I'll wait til after I implement some of these feature requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> why the hell aren't you shortening the URLs?

<comment><USER30> Because it would be half the fun?</comment></comment>


Utah's Guv seeks $50k from taxpayers for anti-pornography push - <AUTHOR> http://www.sltrib.com/news/4705065-155/utahs-guv-seeks-50k-from-taxpayers <comment><USER2> Lovely. Framing a first amendment issue as a public health issue _and_ getting public funding for it. Priceless.</comment>


Recession hits hard- people take to selling kidneys online - <AUTHOR> http://www.follor.com/2009/09/recession-hit-you-need-money-now-sell-a-kidney/ People are trying to sell their kidneys online as the world struggles with their debts <comment><USER2> Empty of useful content. Here's how to prove your point:

1) Show your readers that 20,234 searches in one month, coming from all over the world, is actually a big number. Maybe compare it to the pre-recession numbers for the same search terms.

2) Do some research and present results that show how many of those searches come from people who really tried to sell a kidney.

3) Present some proof that all this has anything to do with recession. The comparison that I mentioned in the point #1 is a good start.</comment>


Dick or Nice Anyone - <AUTHOR> http://dicknice.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This might go viral</comment>


Free Learning List - <AUTHOR> https://freelearninglist.org/ <comment><USER2> Reply all as one of the top podcasts to learn from?!

I love reply all, but I do _not_ think it's a great resource for learning.

I'd much rather see Science VS, The knowledge project, 80000 hours, rationally speaking or flash forward. Over reply all if the goal is to learn something new. Albeit those aren't all super focused on learning stuff, but they all certainly taught me more than reply all did.

<comment><USER3> Hi, creator of site here (following referral links back). I made mention of the fact that reply all isn't as overtly educational as many other podcasts, but we still felt it taught people a lot about the interwebs etc. The criteria we used were effectiveness, design, engagement, and reputation. Also worth mentioning that the knowledge project and rationally speaking are both on the list. Pls feel free to make suggestions and add feedback via the google form at the bottom of the page - this is a live and updating list and we welcome community engagement and critique

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great share! Thanks :)</comment>


Dark Web Marketplaces Shut Down Following Police Operations - <AUTHOR> https://digit.fyi/dark-web-marketplaces-europol/ <comment><AUTHOR> Pretty sure this follows the dream market takedown not too long ago. Seems authorities are constantly playing a tit for tat game with this.</comment>


There was a startup posted here a couple of weeks ago... can someone remind me? - <AUTHOR>

I recall someone posting their startup which offered a free temporary phone number or something similar in a very minimalist, slick interface.
Does anyone remember the name/url of the startup? I've tried searching for it via Google to no avail. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Do you mean huddle.im?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848640>

<comment><AUTHOR> yep that was it, thanks</comment></comment>


The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-most-important-skill-nobody-taught-you-9b162377ab77 <comment><USER2> Clickbait title. The skill is "solitude".</comment>