Kelsey Hightower questions Docker leading OCI standard - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/758832320245665792 <comment><USER2> I'm always interested in what Kelsey has to say but Solomon was right when he said that Twitter was the wrong medium for this debate. This is a perfect example of the Twitter-is-fucked story that topped HN the other day. It is impossible to carry on a coherent argument in 140 character sputters. When I read Kelsey's questioning the first time, I could not make sense of it...and then realized that Twitter was presenting it in reverse chronological order and I was reading it backwards.

I greatly miss mailing lists as a format for discussions like this. The latency involved encouraged the participants to organize their thoughts carefully before sending them to the world.

<comment><USER3> "I believe in standards [... that we control]"

<comment><USER4> a standard without adoption is useless

<comment><USER5> And universal adoption of a single-vendor "standard" is dangerous.

<comment><USER6> Which is why RFC 5657 demands two inter-operable implementations must exist to support a draft standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember when Microsoft was on trial for abusing its monopoly, they ran ads with Bill Gates saying they needed to be able to "innovate"—a euphemism for their famous tactic of embrace, extend, and extinguish. Funny to see people using the same language here. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who was writing software in the '90s and still has a bad taste in their mouth from that word.

<comment><USER8> I was in the same position in the 90's, and I completely agree with you.

Microsoft kept using that word all the time every time they opened their mouths. Its popularity may have been going down somewhat so I wonder if it was being pushed by Ballmer.

A random quote from the first Google result for "ballmer interview":

        "I still think it's very important to do the right kind of
        innovative integration across Windows and our hardware
        platforms with our cloud services."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Scores of companies are listed as members [0] of the OCI.

I assume that they all have a say.

[0] [https://www.opencontainers.org/about/members](https://www.opencontainers.org/about/members)</comment>


Ask HN: Help me find an article comparing language bootstrapping? - <AUTHOR> A few months ago I found a webpage that compared languages (C, C++, D, Rust, Zig, etc) on some metric that I can't find or remember.
It had to do with building the toolchain from scratch with no binaries, cross-compiling, or some  similar metric that looked at the toolchains and how likely they were to continue working for the next 50 years or something. I think it was a personal website with a table comparing the languages.
Anyone have the link I'm looking for? It's driving me crazy trying to find it! <comment><AUTHOR> Found it!

[https://cancel.fm/blog/2019-11/language- fragility/](https://cancel.fm/blog/2019-11/language-fragility/)</comment>


3D Printers: Make Whatever You Want - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-26/3d-printers-make-whatever-you-want

<comment><USER2> The future is awesome.

Another company, Z Corp, has youtube videos of their machine scanning and reproducing a crescent wrench, complete with moving parts. Could a future car be assembled completely from printable parts, whose blueprints are open- source? What about bicycles and office chairs?

Who wants to start a business researching which objects would be cheaper to 3d print than to get from a wholesaler, then build a retail operation around it?</comment>


Open Data Structures - <AUTHOR> http://opendatastructures.org/ <comment><USER2> "Pseudocode edition [...] Python sources". This made me laugh more than it should have. As a side note, I uploaded the Python examples to Github for easier navigation: [https://github.com/olalonde/ods- python](https://github.com/olalonde/ods-python)

<comment><USER3> Sources are already on github - along with the actual book itself:

> The book's LaTeX sources, Java/C++/Python sources, and build scripts are > available through github[1].

[1] [https://github.com/patmorin/ods](https://github.com/patmorin/ods)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If expanded enough, you could easily arrive at the Wikipedia of data structures. A place where, without the cludge of libraries, you could dive into a topic on data structures, apply search refinement until you find a structure that seems like the best match for what you want, and then implement.

Even better if at the top of code I could just put:

Language c++

Use OpenData (BarnesHutt BubbleSort SVD)

If only these people would tie in with the Computer Language Benchmarks Game so that you would have a feedback mechanism to improve All algorithms (not just the CBG subset) and a natural way to meta rate algorithm implementations vs one another as well as task groups (like "sorting") or languages as a whole.

<comment><USER5> > A place where, without the cludge of libraries, you could dive into a topic > on data structures, apply search refinement until you find a structure that > seems like the best match for what you want, and then implement.

Or, in my experience, a place where you can dive into a topic on data structures, apply search refinement until you find a structure with promising properties, be faced with an opaque wall of math, then copy/paste the data structure's name into Google and spend a day or two trying to find someone or something who will actually explain how to implement it in terms of bits and bytes, rather than polynomials over a Galois field.

<comment><USER6> Which why a programming language should ideally support arithmetic in a polynomial ring over an arbitrary field...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How come the PDFs don't have bookmars? It looks like \usepackage{hyperref} is in LaTeX source, but \hypersetup doesn't have bookmarks=true?

</comment><comment><USER8> Clifford Schaffer's _Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis_ books are online and in their third edition. Hard copies are available from Dover. There's also a full blown open Algorithms and Data Structures curriculum in development.

[http://people.cs.vt.edu/~shaffer/Book/](http://people.cs.vt.edu/~shaffer/Book/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Links didn't look like links so I was really confused with what I was looking at. Content looks interesting though!

<comment><USER10> > a { text-decoration: none; }

You bastards.

(Should be fixable with:

      a[href] { text-decoration: underline !important; }

in userContent.css.)

<comment><USER11> What, you don't enjoy scanning your mouse over the whole page to see where it turns into a finger?

Come to think of it, that behaviour is distracting .. it's only a matter of time before visual designers catch on that a uniform mouse icon "ehnances usability".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, I have no use of paper books, but would easily donate a few $ as a thanks for the free e-book. No donate button?

<comment><USER13> Same here. I guess by buying it I can support them and write notes on the pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Open "Data Structure" instead of "Open Data" Structure.

<comment><USER15> In fact, that's the default grouping. Otherwise, it'd be open-data structures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's like Volume I of Knuth, modernized and without as much theory.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh hey! This is primarily authored by one of my supervisors. It's my go-to source for reviewing basic analyses and implementation details.

Totally worth the read!

</comment><comment><USER18> The bookmark links don't seem to be working for me either. An interesting project, though.</comment>


What makes decision right - <AUTHOR>

After noticing several two vehicle accidents governments bought up a new rule "Helmet wearing is compulsory for two vehicle drivers". But reasons such as hot tropical climate/weather in asia leads to excessive perspiration from the scalp, difficult to breathe from the full-faced helmets and also result in the loss of hair. so many people have started to buy four wheelers which in turn causing a lot of pollution and indirectly leading to deaths of many lives. I don't know exactly how many lives are saving by wearing a helmet but I am sure many lives are in danger with increase in pollution. So what makes decision right? <comment><USER2> Nobody knows.

My view is that those decisions should be made democratically, specially with direct democracy (like in Switzerland or California). At least most people will be happy with the rules they live under, since they choose them.</comment>


Useful one-line scripts for sed (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pement.org/sed/sed1line.txt <comment><USER2> Here is something to use as a replacement for "grep -q".

In the past I found grep -q was not portable.

There are times when I do not have grep.

But I always have sed.

       cat grepq

       test $# -ge 1||
       exec echo usage: $0 PATTERN \[FILE\]

       # count lines until PATTERN
       __=$(exec sed -n '/'"$1"'/!d;=;q' $2);
       # no of lines
       exec test ${#__} -gt 0;

For example,

       grepq '22.214.171.124 example.com' /etc/hosts||
       echo 220.127.116.11 example.com >> /etc/hosts

One of the very early OReilly books has a chapter or two about sed that tries to describe it using an analogy to a scrivener in a monastary. Quite amusing. This is not the "sed and awk" book. It was an earlier book on text editing with UNIX. It may have been co-authored by OReilly himself; I cannot remember.

</comment><comment><USER3> Widely useful pick of the bunch:

      # print section of file between two regular expressions (inclusive)
      sed -n '/Iowa/,/Montana/p'             # case sensitive

<comment><USER4> I use stuff like that all the time with config files where sections span multiple lines. For example, if ~/.ssh/config has a section like

      Host example
        HostName example.com
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_example
        Port 1234

      Host next
        ...

Then the following selects the identity file:

      sed -n '/^Host example/,/^Host\>/{/^\s*IdentityFile/{s/^\s*IdentityFile\s*//;p}}' ~/.ssh/config

Although I would probably use awk after sed because it handled space-separated fields nicer:

      sed -n '/^Host example/,/^Host\>/p' ~/.ssh/config | awk '$1=="IdentityFile"{print$2}'

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This guy is very interesting. pement.org

[http://pement.org/perl/biblink126_pl.txt](http://pement.org/perl/biblink126_pl.txt)

<comment><USER6> Definitely. I heard about him (10 years ago) from one of his old bosses who mentioned this page. This sed one liner page took about a month to go through from basically zero Unix experience. Probably the most important learning piece I've ever gone through. Good stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know what wins for most under used tool, sed or awk?

Both of these do wonders for clearing up messy data and for a wealth of other things.</comment>


Ask HN: Trying to be more Gmail-independent with Gandi and email forwarding - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I heavily depend on Gmail and still plan on using it since I love the interface and the mobile app, but I don't want to risk the potential massive damages of Google deciding to inadvertently suspend my account for TOS violation, locking me out of my other 300+ accounts that depend on my email address.
So, on top of doing periodic data exports with Google Takeout, I also did the following:
1) Registered "lastname.com" domain with Gandi (and enabled u2f authentication)
2) Setup email forwarding of "firstname.lastname@example.com" to my Gmail address in Gandi
3) Gradually plan on moving all my identity to "email@example.com", while using Gmail as backend
The problem is, I don't like the email forwarding feature, it screws up SPF validations since now there is one mail server in the middle (the Gandi one) that forwards mail it isn't supposed to according to SPF, so all the emails forwarded to Gmail become essentially a SOFTFAIL/NEUTRAL/FAIL (and they show up as that).
At the same time, I don't want to create a full mail account on Gandi and then enable the POP3 fetching from Gmail, because that feels very insecure (Gandi doesn't have 2FA/access auditing for mail accounts).
If I want to stay in the Google ecosystem, do I really have to convert to GSuite? Any suggestion?
Thanks <comment><USER2> I used the setup you suggest for a long time. It's an excellent intermediary step but long term, I do recommend you move to either GSuite if you want to keep the gmail interface, or otherwise another provider such as fastmail.

My primary Google account is now a GSuite (legacy) account, and my secondary one is a paid GSuite account. I honestly think that if you want to remain in the google ecosystem, paying for it is a generally good idea. $5/month is cheap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply. Yes, I might decide to become a GSuite customer at some point (maybe soon).

Since you say you used my setup for a long time, are you referring to the forwarding feature or the POP3 feature?

If POP3: how did you deal with lack of security?

If forwarding: how did you deal with basically all forwarded emails failing SPF validation when reaching the google server?

Thanks

<comment><USER3> I actually use both. I use a POP3 enabled account on my hosting provider, but because Gmail only polls for new mail from external accounts on its own schedule (you can't specify the frequency, and when you're on the phone and someone says "I've emailed that through, is X correct?", waiting 5 or 15 minutes for it to appear in your inbox in Gmail isn't ideal, so I also have mail forwarding turned on. This means that for mail where the DKIM policy allows forwarding, you get the email almost instantly, but if the DKIM fails, you will still get it just a few minutes later. I've been doing it this way for years without an issue. I set a very strong password on my POP account (since I only have to enter it once into the Gmail interface to setup the account) and accept the security risk of no 2FA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

What you are implying in your reply is that Google ignores its own SPF validation results for spam purposes/mail acceptance then?

When you enable forwarding, even the emails that don't fail DKIM still show up in gmail with the SPF fail (under "Show Original"/"SPF"), and I'm sure they do in your setup as well since it's a logic consequence of doing the forwarding.

I'm essentially trying to figure out if any of these conditions can happen with forwarding enabled:

1) SPF validation will fail, the Google mail server will refuse the forwarded message, so the Gandi mail server will bounce it back to the sender without me even knowing, rather than depositing it in the associated mailbox (especially with the domains set with SPF "-all", such as several of the financial institutions I use). So, no POP3 fallback even if it's enabled along with the forwarding.

2) SPF validation will fail, the Google mail server will still accept the forwarded message, but will be more inclined to mark it at spam.

Thanks

<comment><USER3> Where Gmail refuses to accept the forwarded email (because the DMARC policy doesn't allow forwarding) I receive the 'Mail Forward Failure' notification but the email has been accepted into the original mailbox, so will be pulled into my Gmail mailbox the next time the POP3 check runs. I have a rule on the Gmail side to remove those failure notifications.

I haven't noticed any impact to Gmail's actual spam filtering, either garbage slipping through or false positives.

I've just checked a few random emails and Gmail shows "SPF: PASS with IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx". For most emails, the DKIM and DMARC checks also show PASS, but this is obviously dependent on the sender.

<comment><AUTHOR> Last question: do you use Gandi as a forwarder? If yes, I truly can't understand how it is possible that the forwarded emails (non POP3) can pass the spf on the google side, since your mail server acts as a forwarder and most definitely is not allowed to do so, according to the SPF records.

Thanks for engaging!

<comment><USER3> Sorry, no, I'm not using Gandi, I actually have a legacy account in Zoho that I use (from back when POP3 was available on free accounts), but the logic is the same.

The emails get accepted into the Zoho mailbox, then forwarded to Gmail. If Gmail rejects the forwarded email (due to DMARC policy) then I get the failure notification, not the original sender (as the failure is that Zoho was unable to forward the email to Gmail, not that Zoho didn't accept the original email from the sender), and that email will be retrieved by Gmail when it next does it's POP3 check.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

The part that I'm not understanding, and at this point I will put it in my todo list to sign up for a free forwarding account in Zoho to try it out, is how it is possible for the Zoho mail server to forward emails to Gmail without the messages being flagged as SPF fail, since your Zoho server is not authorized to dispatch emails from the sender domain when they have SPF records.

In other words, this is a real example from an email that just got flagged on my Gmail from apple.com, as part of being forwarded:

      Received: from relay5-d.mail.gandi.net (relay5-d.mail.gandi.net. [126.96.36.199] by mx.google.com ...
      Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: domain of transitioning firstname.lastname@example.com does not designate 220.127.116.11 as
      permitted sender) client-ip=220.127.116.11;
      Received: from nwk-txn-msbadger0502.apple.com (nwk-txn-msbadger0502.apple.com [184.108.40.206]) by spool.mail.gandi.net ...

      Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2019 03:18:35 +0000 (GMT)
      From: Apple <email@example.com>
      Reply-To: email@example.com

You can see, from bottom to top:

1) The email is being sent from firstname.lastname@example.com

2) The email is received by the Gandi mail server from Apple mail server

3) The email is received by the Google mail server from Gandi mail server

Step 3 is where the forwarding happens but, since the Gandi mail server is not supposed to originate emails from apple.com (according to the SPF records on the apple.com domain), then it gets marked as SPF fail, and the Google mail server tells why (ip address of the Gandi mail server is not allowed to generate mail from email@example.com).

I don't understand how that cannot happen with Zoho, and I'll study it asap.

<comment><USER3> Here's the relevant headers from a recent email from Apple, including the Authentication-Results and Received-SPF lines:

      Delivered-To: (ME)@gmail.com
      Received: by 2002:a9d:650d:0:0:0:0:0...
      Received: from sender-of-f72.zoho.com (sender-of-f72.zoho.com. [184.108.40.206]) by mx.google.com...
      Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of (ME)+aml_=(MY DOMAIN)=gmail.com@(MY DOMAIN) designates 18.104.22.168 as permitted sender) client-ip=22.214.171.124;
      Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
           dkim=pass email@example.com header.s=id0517 header.b=S5Hlyy1T;
           spf=pass (google.com: domain of (ME)+aml_=(MY DOMAIN)=gmail.com@(MY DOMAIN) designates 18.104.22.168 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom="(ME)+aml_=(MY DOMAIN)=gmail.com@(MY DOMAIN)";
           dmarc=pass (p=REJECT sp=REJECT dis=NONE) header.from=id.apple.com
      Received-SPF: pass (zoho.com: domain of email.apple.com designates 188.8.131.52 as permitted sender) client-ip=184.108.40.206; firstname.lastname@example.com; helo=nwk-txn-msbadger0405.apple.com;
      Authentication-Results: mx.zohomail.com;
    	dkim=pass;
    	spf=pass (zoho.com: domain of email.apple.com designates 188.8.131.52 as permitted sender)  email@example.com;
    	dmarc=pass(p=reject dis=none)  header.from=id.apple.com
      Received: from nwk-txn-msbadger0405.apple.com (nwk-txn-msbadger0405.apple.com [18.104.22.168]) by mx.zohomail.com...

      From: Apple <email@example.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, really appreciate you taking the time to extract those headers, very helpful.

Looking at the headers, it seems clear that the Zoho mail server does something different when forwarding the message: it also sets some parts of the headers (like smtp.mailfrom) to instruct the recipient mail server that the mail is sent from your email address, and not really from @id.apple.com. Google then validates not @id.apple.com, but (ME)+aml_=(MY DOMAIN)=gmail.com@(MY DOMAIN), which makes it work.

I will ask Gandi support.

Edit: after doing some research, it appears Zoho is implementing SRS ([http://www.openspf.org/SRS](http://www.openspf.org/SRS)) as the diagrams in the web page show, whereas Gandi is not. I just learned a new thing!

Thanks again.

<comment><USER3> I've just learned something too :)

I've known for years it "just works", but now I know why :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone have experience with getting their paid G Suite account locked? If paying them means that I can un-suspend my Google Account easily, I would be more than happy to shell out $5/month just for that privilege.

<comment><USER2> In GSuite, you don't get your "account" locked because the account is the responsibility of the organization you sign up with. Now, you might get your organization kicked out as a customer if you really piss Google off (you'd have to do some pretty illegal shit I suspect).

There's definitely less risk and more recourse as you would be able to talk to customer support should issues arise. I absolutely think that paying for GSuite is very much a way to "vote with your wallet" that you are willing to pay for support for a critical account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few options:

\+ Use another email service, such as Fastmail or GSuite (has Gmail!)

\+ Get Gmail to do POP3. The password will only be exposed to Google, so the attack surface is low.

\+ Set up an email filter in Gandi to forward to your Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have not heard about Gandi, added it to my list of useful products. Thanks for discovering.

If you will be thinking about changing email service, here I've made a short review on most popular options: [https://tarasmatsyk.com/posts/3-how-to- custom-email-address/](https://tarasmatsyk.com/posts/3-how-to-custom-email- address/)

PS. There are more services which I review in next posts, currently most popular ones are covered.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it normally quite easy to get your account unsuspended, or are there cases where it's an absolute final decision and you can't do anything?

This is assuming that you didn't deliberately do anything bad/illegal, but maybe you accidentally violated the ToS or your test emails were detected as spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> I luckily never got my account suspended, but I've certainly done some minor violations of the TOS here and there (e.g. in college I downloaded a few copyrighted books and stored them in my Drive for my strictly personal consumption, and I'm sure those files could be fingerprinted and detected by Google, ...).

From what I've heard, when it happens it's not quite easy to regain access, in the best case it takes many days, and the frustrating thing is that there's no support to which you can appeal to, you're mostly left to yourself (e.g. Google employees connections, twitter noise, ...).

I find it silly that my electronic identity would be held hostage in such cases, so with an external domain I can flip a switch and keep receiving my email somewhere else.

<comment><USER7> I also primarily use a 'flip a switch' setup specifically for this reason. To be honest I think that using your own domain name is the only way to go these days, as even other email providers can have issues resulting in you being completely locked out.

At least with a domain name you have multiple paths for recourse or regaining access should something go wrong (domain registrar, hosting provider, DNS provider, mail provider, etc).

Now that I've moved to Cloudflare Registrar, I guess in some ways I've made it harder for myself should something go wrong, since my domain and DNS are now hosted in the same place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've already started moving stuff to GMX (Mail), SpiderOak (Drive), DDG (Search), !Chrome (Browser). Been on Android (non Google phone), trying to work without Google Play Services - contemplating switching to iOS or Jolla. I wish that Apple Maps/Here Maps were on more platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> While admirable, I'm not there yet: let's just say I don't have a problem at the moment with Google reading all my activity (I like the ecosystem too much), as long as I can take out my data periodically (Takeout works well enough for me) and an account suspension wouldn't mean me losing my email address for more than a few hours (which is what I'm trying to fix now).</comment></comment>


The Human Log - <AUTHOR> https://neilkakkar.com/the-human-log.html <comment><USER2> Here's a fresh discussion related to the article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20795526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20795526)</comment>


Ghostery Email Incident Update - <AUTHOR> https://www.ghostery.com/blog/ghostery-news/ghostery-email-incident-update/ <comment><AUTHOR> I found this interesting for three reasons.

First, it's a data leak, and it's always good to have people informed about them.

Second, it's funny that their GDPR-related email saying that they're commited to it and respecting our data lead to our data being leaked.

And third, this might be the first instance that the data leaking reporting obligation of the GDPR is acted on ?

> We will be reporting the incident as mandated by the GDPR.

We very often see on thread about leaks justified complaints about how companies don't care, don't do anything to stop it and don't even warn their customers that they sent their data in the wild, and with all the talks about the GDPR I think this particular obligation, that they _have to_ report when they screw up, kind of slipped under the radar of a lot of people. Just one more reason why I personally believe this regulation is a string step in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm actually fairly happy with the way they handled it. Because I run a small startup myself, I often put myself in the position of people committing blunders like this, because, frankly they can happen to anyone.

Just yesterday I accidentally wiped 30 minutes of production data, despite taking great care to have multiple backup systems in place. The error: I was upgrading our CI and accidentally swapped the production and staging labels. I back up production and make a copy to staging on every deploy. But I don't back up staging data, because who cares. Thankfully it was at off-peak hours and no customers were affected.

But I'm going off-track. What I mean is, I would have done exactly what Ghostery did in this case, so I'm happy with their response. Just like when LastPass made a mandatory site-wide password reset because of an anomaly, and when GitLab lost production data.

</comment><comment><USER3> Always test your emails with actual sending disabled. Especially right after changing the email infrastructure. Email mistakes like this seem inevitable, and the only solution in my experience is a ridiculous over-abundance of caution. Can't hotfix an email.

</comment><comment><USER4> > We take our privacy and security practices very seriously

This is verbatim what Amazon said a few days ago when they responded to the privately recorded conversation of a Portland woman being sent to an arbitrary contact. I get they are trying to make people feel safe by saying this, but I read this more as "wow, if you take it seriously I'm frightened by things with less priority"

I don't expect any company to care about what happens if it doesn't affect their bottom line. However, I do think the terrible PR they get will eventually effect their bottom line, but who knows if they will connect the dots or blame it on a bad marketing campaign etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, glad I never registered, then.

(One more reason to resist the "register" nagging UI.)</comment>


Show HN: Free multi-channel portal to create quiz/test - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, you can create a quiz, test or survey on our portal at https://ana.authorisedterritory.com
No need for an email or payment details. It is free.
Set a password and receive a play code which you can distribute to users who will answer your questions.
Test, quiz or survey can be answered using an Android app or in the browser.
A test can be timed where a user has to complete a test within set amount of time.
Other features:
- Create multi-answer questions or open text answers
- Upload images so that they can be showed with the question
- Check results in the portal and mark answers
- Export results to PDF
- Test expires after five days
Videos can be found on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR2VG1Rq7abZ33S1T3XSWNg
App on GooglePlay:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.authorisedterritory.ana <comment><USER2> I just visited the web page and saw the following message

> Internet Explorer not supported

I'm using firefox. It's better to perform browser detection and show the message if you detect that I'm actually using internet explorer. Otherwise it seems like something is wrong with my browser.

Here's a stackoverflow answer for how to perform browser detection with JavaScript: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2400935/browser- detectio...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2400935/browser-detection-in- javascript).

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback, thank you.

<comment><USER2> No problem.</comment></comment></comment>


A short (and slightly biased) history of collaborative editing - <AUTHOR> http://log.emonk.net/post/6539765532/a-short-and-slightly-biased-history-of-collaborative <comment><USER2> The statement you're trying to refute remains true. There's no application on the Mac that has an implementation of Operational Transformations (OT) nearly as powerful as the Google Docs / Google Wave OT.

SubEthaEdit (while incredibly impressive and producer of a big technical feat at the time), is a _plain text_ collaborative editor.

Similarly, but higher up the scale, is Etherpad, which has the concepts of annotations for rich text.

On Google Docs and Google Wave, I can collaborate on rich text of arbitrary markup. For example, I can import any Word document and collaborate on it in real time. This is not a huge challenge from just the convergence / intention preservation algorithms perspective, but because they run on a browser. Wave went to the extent of normalizing the HTML representation of the `contenteditable` divs across all browsers to enable converging document results. Google Docs ditched `contenteditable` and rewrote an editor on top of plain HTML, with range selection logic and caret simulation built from scratch.

The fact that software like iWork Pages / MS Word[1] don't offer similar functionality (even with native, hand-made rendering engines and no browser support challenges) in 2011 speaks of Google's clear superiority in the office suite cloud offerings, which is the point the original article was trying to make.

[1] There's a plugin for Word <http://www.codoxware.com/> that enables OT written by one of the most well-known OT researchers, who spoke at Google in '08 (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84zqbXUQIHc>)

<comment><USER3> Here is the sentence that immediately precedes the quoted text: _"It's not just that many of the applications we use are actually intimately tied to the web (even Apple's own products are able to make quick changes like the switch to iCloud services in iOS 4.3 thanks to markup being used in place of native code), it's that the web provides something native applications cannot."_

Topolsky seems to claim that collaborative editing with native apps is categorically not possible. That seems like a very odd claim given the history of collaborative editing.

Maybe he wanted to say that currently no native collaborative rich text editors exist (which is true), but he certainly failed to express that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is a new OT editor called ShareJS for plain text and JSON built in Node, by Joseph from the Google Wave team:

<https://github.com/josephg/ShareJS>

<http://sharejs.org:8000/> (examples)

JSON OT is particularly neat for developing unique interactive applications, such as this board game:

<http://sharejs.org:8000/hex.html#9gBIACm3su>

</comment><comment><USER5> It's amazing how much awesome tech can be traced directly back to Xerox PARC.</comment>


Listen: Google Launches An Audio Search Engine For Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/20/listen-google-launches-an-audio-search-engine-for-android/ <comment><USER2> Nice. I wish I could use voice search to search in the Market app, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is that a Vonnegut reference in the title?</comment>


Show HN: A DOM text-selection highlight renderer - <AUTHOR> http://bowlingx.github.io/marklib/ <comment><USER2> This is really great. I think we're going to use this for helping us highlight parts of the YC application that sticks out to the partners. Very interesting to see that what you actually store in local storage.

[{"startOffset":35,"endOffset":42,"startContainerPath":"html>body>div:nth-of- type(1)>div>p:nth-of-type(1);0","endContainerPath":"html>body>div:nth-of- type(1)>div>p:nth-of- type(1);0"},{"startOffset":32,"endOffset":7,"startContainerPath":"html>body>div:nth- of-type(1)>div>p:nth-of-type(1);10","endContainerPath":"html>body>div:nth-of- type(1)>div>p:nth-of-type(1)>code:nth-of-type(3);0"}]

One thing I think we might tweak for ourselves is to also store a copy of the string in there.

Thank you so much for sharing! I bet people would love an example showing how to use this to sync highlighted examples across user accounts. Hopefully, someone will do a Show HN of that!

<comment><USER3> It seems like using a tree-index based path, this serialization format would only work with purely static content. If you have a change to the underlying content (e.g. adding a new paragraph before a selection), there doesn't seem to be enough information in the serialized path to select the right part of the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct. But it is possible to specify a context container where the highlighting is executed so if you change parts of the document (like around this container) it doesn't change the relative path.

Example:

...

If you add or change words and paragraphs of course, that would make the highlighting unstable. You could also restrict the marking to a specific paragraph only (and set the context accordingly). It always depends on the application this library is used for. But if anyone has a good idea how to compensate that I'm open for suggestions :)

Thank you for your feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I build a fast small text-selection renderer that creates serializable text- renderings. Feedback appreciated. Right now it lacks some documentation how to use it, but I hope the sample makes clear what the library does.

<comment><USER4> We were working on a Medium-style text editor for a while and text selection is notoriously hard. Things like [https://github.com/timdown/rangy](https://github.com/timdown/rangy) somehow made it more palatable but seriously, what a pain when you want to select something and apply DOM transformations to the underlying nodes.

Could a WYSIWYG text editor be based on your library or does it have a completely different target?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the Feedback. The library only focuses on render a selection, either a serialized one (it's not yet shown in the demo) or a selection made by the user.

But of course you may use it with any other library :)

<comment><USER4> To be more precise, the biggest pain with selections I feel is that if you have a H1 (for example) containing some text and you select that text, the range will never report the H1 even though the user actually selected it. That makes it hard to go full WYSIWYG and you end up having to deal with parentNode and the likes.

<comment><USER5> That was a huge problem to overcome when I was working on the new email designer for ActiveCampaign. Rangy had issues, because it wouldn't select ["empty" elements]([https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Glossary/Empty_elem...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Glossary/Empty_element)).

I ended up rolling my own solution that worked for us, but one approach we tried out was looking at each selected element's parent. If the first and last element non-empty nodes in the parent were selected, then we also added the parent to the selection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I noticed that you can mark an already marked section, which adds the marked color on top again, and again and again until you can't tell anymore because alpha = 100.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, thats correct, I just specified colors for 4 overlappings. This is just made with css, you can specify the level how deep you want.

<comment><USER6> Oops... I guessed wrong. It's a nice option to be able to define different colors for each level. Great work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did you take inspiration from Rangy ([https://github.com/timdown/rangy](https://github.com/timdown/rangy)) and if yes, what makes Marklib better? Would like to know if there are obvious benefits to using Marklib over Rangy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi :), marklib focuses on rendering and persisting (serializing) the selection, not on actually providing a cross-browser functionality to get the selection.

marklib is especially useful and build for rendering incremental persisted selections and/or adding selections when other selections are already rendered (and though have modified the DOM). This is something rangy does not provide (at least that's my last information).

<comment><USER8> Might be worth adding this to adding these notes to the README.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems like a good candidate for a bookmarklet that injects it into any page.

<comment><USER10> My thoughts exactly. This should be a chrome plugin.

<comment><USER11> [http://www.getpoint.co/](http://www.getpoint.co/)

<comment><USER10> Hmm... kind of. Point looks like its focus is primarily on sharing and discussing articles and quotes with others - I just want something that will let me save (and browse/search?) my personal highlights for the next time I read an article or need information from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I get inconsistent results when I triple-click to create the selection. For example, triple-clicking the word "Start" in the first paragraph highlights the entire first line, extending to the right margin; hitting enter to "mark" it results in the entire paragraph being marked. Triple-clicking the first word "Marklib" in the next sentence highlights the remaining three sentences, but only "Marklib" is marked.

Also, any marking in the "code block" or the page title omits the spaces, which looks a little awkward.

Running Chrome 43.0.2357.124 on OS X

</comment><comment><USER13> Well done! I know it is not an easy task to do. I built something fairly similar (and way less quick) [http://jsfiddle.net/2XLBr/](http://jsfiddle.net/2XLBr/) and the git repo: [https://github.com/skimhub/phone-highlight](https://github.com/skimhub/phone- highlight)

</comment><comment><USER14> There is a weird behavior when you highlight something that has partially already been highlighted. I think you should take a look at how `preview` on osx does it. It cancels the already highlighted parts only if they are included in the new highlighted area. If an already highlighted part cross with the new highlighted area, then it will behave like it is behaving in your script.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback. What do you mean with cancel? The script will render all selections without doing any assumptions about previous renderings and nests them. Can you give an example?

thank you :)

<comment><USER14> do you have osx? that would be easier for you to open a pdf and see how that highlight thing works.

I'll try to explain it again giving another example:

if you highlight a word, and then you highlight the entire sentence containing that world, with your script it will highlight the word with a different color, with osx it will display like you didn't highlight the word prior to this

your behavior only happens when two highlighted segments cross over, but none of them contain the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is really nice work! I think I've found a bug where the highlight doesn't fully mark the part I've selected, though. To reproduce scroll down to the section "A second paragraph with some latin like text" and select that header, the entire paragraph, and up to the button below it. Then press enter. Only the header is highlighted.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thank you for your feedback. Yeah, that are some problems with the selection that comes back (no textnode comes back but properly the body or something else). I have no solution for this so far but I will figure something out ;). thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a case of Something.js if I've ever seen one:

[http://www.developingandstuff.com/2015/03/somethingjs.html](http://www.developingandstuff.com/2015/03/somethingjs.html)

<comment><USER17> One, it doesn't have ".js" in the title. Two, it's a Show HN post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is also [https://github.com/SmartTeleMax/MaSha](https://github.com/SmartTeleMax/MaSha) MaSha has ajax support. But no library supports multiple colors :(

</comment><comment><USER19> Well done - works surprisingly well on my iPhone. Working with text selection in the browser is notoriously difficult so I'm glad this works.

</comment><comment><USER20> Thanks a thousand for posting about marklib (and rangy, and phone-highlight).

</comment><comment><USER21> Is there a good library that does the same inside a textarea?

</comment><comment><USER22> At the risk of sounding a bit grumpy but I'm genuine here, I seriously don't get this tool. Is not the same thing as getSelection() with a CSS background- color cherry on the top or I'm missing something here?

<comment><AUTHOR> marklib helps you persisting selections a user did by providing rendering and serialization of selections.

<comment><USER23> I'll volunteer to display my total ignorance: I have no idea what you mean when you say "rendering and serialization of selections" or why and how that is useful. Could you elaborate and give some good scenarios in which it (whatever it is) would be useful? I _think_ this could be cool, but I don't understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's say you want to build a collaboration tool where you write articles. You want to provide a functionality that people can comment on parts inside the article (inline comments) and you need a way to visualize what they marked and also persist the marking (on a server for instance). That what this library is for :).

<comment><USER23> Thank you. So am I correct in thinking this would be useful if you wanted to let people select a portion of an article and save just that portion to a database? (If so, I'll be using it immediately.)

<comment><AUTHOR> If you just want to select a portion of a text that would be working with build-in browser APIs (see [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Window/getS...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Window/getSelection)). Marklib can be used to make a selection visible and persistent. Especially if you want to display a lot of inline comments for instance and you need to paginate trough the result, this library can be handy because it allows marking, even if the document has been altered before with another rendering.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


$450 million DC-based and East Coast focused Venture Fund - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/leonsis-case-found-450-million-fund-to-aid-washington-area-start-up-firms/2011/11/30/gIQAtb1fEO_story.html

<comment><USER2> Spent a bunch of years in SF and DC.

The fundamental core competencies are quite different. In DC, the primary startup mode is to 1. Suck money out of a gov't agency, by 2. Having a contact willing to sign the checks.

Gov't funding has made that area quite fat. (5 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the US are in greater DC.)

<comment><USER3> I very much agree, as a DC front-end dev who has worked both for gov't contractors and now for a legitimate b2b startup.

Want to know why the federal government hasn't made much of a dent in the recession? Visit the DC exurbs and then visit the exurbs of any other city in the US. If you never left fifty miles of DC you would be forced to assume there was an economic boom going on.

<comment><USER4> The typical federal worker is paid 20% more than a private-sector worker in the same occupation.

[http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-04-federal- pay_N...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-04-federal-pay_N.htm)

<comment><USER5> It really depends on your quality within title. For example USA today probably considers waffle house cooks making 6 Per hour the same as a government cook working at the state house. There are far more low end cooking jobs by percentage in private sector.

Another thing the USA today article over looks is living expenses. Almost all professional government jobs are in big cities with high cost of living.

It is commonly known that at equal skill level you will make less pay for the government.

<comment><USER2> > _It is commonly known that at equal skill level you will make less pay for > the government._

As much as the politicos would like to claim otherwise, I have never heard of _anyone_ taking a govt job so they can make more money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've lived in DC, Santa Clara and now Boston.

DC/Baltimore has a number of companies that target nongovernment markets which started there i.e. Living Social, Under Armour, Opower (office in SF too I think), etc.

The biggest difference in DC and SF is the style of funding. SF VCs have the perception of funding bigger addressable market size companies with excellent engineers and lower probability of success whereas DC VCs and angels tend to focus on companies with traction and maybe a lower possible addressable market and do not seem to be as web engineering focused.

The result is lower level of headlines for DC companies in places like hacker news which are focused on the type of company that is born in SF.

There are a number of great ways to get funding in DC and for companies which are starting to prove themselves it is a great market to be in.

Made In DC (a bunch of startups in DC) University of Maryland's "Dingman Angels" (Although it is university affiliated, their focus is on community startups rather than student startups) The list goes on.

Also, the guys from AOL are in a bunch of Angel/VC investments in DC according to CapIQ.

<comment><USER6> Spot on with AOL guys doing Angel/VC. There is also a sizable cohort of ex- advertising.com guys doing angel investing nowadays.</comment></comment>


Why You Can't Get a Good Phone With Verizon - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/verizon-smartphones/ <comment><USER2> Someone please explain to me why this article doesn't start and end with one word (well, acronym): CDMA. Sure, the US is the biggest smartphone market in the world, and VZW has a huge share, but look who else uses CDMA extensively aside from VZW -- China Telecom. Two giant, conservative bureaucratic entities, one state owned, one who used to be. Compare that to a more dynamic and competitive GSM marketplace. More phones, more compeition, more flexibility.

<comment> old-gregg Sprint is on CDMA as well. AFAIK Jpananese providers use it too. CDMA is generally quite popular in Asia. Besides, it doesn't really cost that much to have GSM/CDMA versions of the same phone.

GSM is mostly a European phenomena which is unfortunate since it is ___vastly_ __inferior to CDMA. I used to be on Sprint and Verizon for years and got used to crystal clear sound. Now, even after 3 years with AT &T and T-Mobile, I still cannot get used to the pathetic voice call quality of GSM handsets (I tried Motorola, Nokia, Blackberry and Apple).

Verizon doesn't have the latest phones because they never allow customers too much freedom at exchanging data. Even their basic phones come with crippled Bluetooth (so you can't upload your own MP3 - have to pay Verizon for that) and disabled tethering. With something like iPhone they'd have to disable most of the phone to make it fit their corporate dogma of controlling everything users do.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about vastly inferior. I'm not really even sure you could make a case that one is better than the other, really. GSM call quality tends to be poorer, but only because GSM uses less bandwidth per call. That's not really a problem with the codec, just a decision by the cell companies. Besides, all my calls these days are over 3G GSM, which uses much more bandwidth, and those calls sound great.

On top of that, since GSM uses time division (as apposed to time division, which keeps the radio on for the whole call), batteries last a lot longer on a GSM device. I remember when I first switched from a CDMA network to a GSM network. I was amazed that my phone would last the better part of a week when I was used to charging it every day. I could see this being tough on device makers. People really hate phones that can't hold a charge. But they hate large phones even more.

CDMA does seem to penetrate buildings a little better, in my experience.

<comment><USER4> But if you're using 3G GSM, you're really using UTMS, which is barely GSM at all. It uses a completely incompatible air interface that ditches TDMA... for CDMA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's what happens when you stop innovating (and looking around at competition) and start competing on price. When all you have to offer is lower price, you're already halfway downhill.

<comment><USER6> Remember that 700 Mhz auction? Verizon bought big and is using it to quietly build LTE all over the place.

So what happens next year when they offer data service that is a order of magnitude faster than 3G? Are they still not innovating?

LTE is promising 50-60 mbps, but field trials are showing 8 to 10. Would you drop your AT&T iPhone for that?

<comment><USER7> _Would you drop your AT &T iPhone for that?_

Aren't iPhone users already selected for data rate insensitivity, considering the history of both the hardware product and AT&T's data performance?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really can' t imagine why this forcefully pre-segmented market exists at all -- except for to keep the carriers from beating themselves to death. Then again, completely free markets rarely exist but this is bordering a cartel.

"Psst! Hey, I won't sell X and will offer only Y, if only you won't sell Y and offer only X."

I like to buy the best phone that suits my needs, and choose the best carrier that suits my needs. If those two are coupled, I am given suboptimal selection of choices as soon as I want a phone I can't get from one carrier or I want a certain carrier that doesn't deliver the phone of my choice.

</comment><comment><USER9> Time for them to build their own android phone...</comment>


Ever been approached to be bought out before your app is launched? - <AUTHOR>

We submitted our App to iTunes Connect on Monday and put up a promo-how-to video. We blogged about it on Tuesday and we got some HN buzz.
We got an email today saying that someone is interested in buying out our product as they've got a similar product in the works.
What do you think that means?
We're curious to hear any opinions on it, bearing in mind our App is waiting for review and that the only thing we've shown is a video. <comment><USER2> It's easy to say they want to buy you out but it could just be a ploy to delay your launch until they can get their product out the door. Unless they're willing to put cash in your hand today, don't stop for anything. Talk to them for sure, but don't change your strategy or release plan for anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> They offered six figures but we politely said we weren't entertaining any offers at the moment and that our main focus is in launching and promoting our app for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER2> Another option you might want to think about is licensing your engine to larger outfits (and/or this company that has approached you). You would basically give them access to your back end and iPhone app and let them integrate it with their offering. Instead of a one time cash hit you get recurring revenue and you can deal with multiple online dating sites offering them a new service they can offer their customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like you've got somebody worried!

I'd ask for an offer in writing, and don't worry about it until you hear something back; I'm with doctorwho on this one, it sounds like stalling tactics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Possibly. I think it's a good sign.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've just been approved! [http://itunes.apple.com/app/date.fm-simple-private- free./id4...](http://itunes.apple.com/app/date.fm-simple-private- free./id470074344?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think this could be good motivation for you and your team, at least now you know you're on to something.

Good luck and I hope all goes well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can you share a link to the video? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://date.fm> :)</comment></comment>


Babbage Difference Engine No.2 at CHM Going Off Line - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerhistory.org/exhibits/babbage/ <comment><AUTHOR> As noted on the linked page, the Computer History Museum will demonstrate the Babbage Difference Engine for the last time at the end of this month. After that, it will be returned to it's owner (Nathan Myhrvold). It's been at the CHM much longer than originally planned, which is a good thing, as I only got to see it in operation just over a year ago. If you haven't seen it, I encourage you to make the effort, it's an amazing machine.

This is a significant loss for the museum, but they have a lot of other excellent exhibits and I'm sure they'll fill the now-empty space with something great. Or maybe they'll help build the Analytical Engine...</comment>


HDMI Light V2: Open-Hardware FPGA-Based Clone of Philips Ambilight (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://hacks.esar.org.uk/hdmi-light-v2/ <comment><USER3> Something similar to this was commercialized as lightpack: [https://lightpack.tv](https://lightpack.tv)

The first version of lightpack was usb driven, and it's software (prismatik) is open source: [https://github.com/woodenshark](https://github.com/woodenshark)

<comment><USER4> I was an early backer, and my Lightpack is still working just great. I don't drive it from Prismatik though, I use Boblight... although I see that it hasn't been developed in a while.

<comment><USER3> I also have the 1st-gen lightpack, but just use it as 'bias' lighting set to one static color. For some reason never got around to making it more programmable to track time-of-day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The poor man's version of this is to place an old monitor at the back facing the wall and then clone and flip the screen.

But ofcourse never as good looking as this. Those examples are great!

</comment><comment><USER6> all those projects are dead on the water thanks to DRM.

I look into them from time to time. If your source is a topbox or smarttv itself, you can't get any signal because those things use drm protocols that only allow one source. you can get around it with chinese hdmi splitters that will have their own problems.

if your source is a computer, then all those hdmi solutions are overkill vs doing it on software and then output to usb to a dumb and extremely cheap LED controller.

<comment><USER7> The author actually has a separate blog post where he talks about this, and uses a modified HDMI splitter to allow the device to work with encrypted content. It involves more soldering, of course. [http://hacks.esar.org.uk/hdmi-splitter-hack/](http://hacks.esar.org.uk/hdmi- splitter-hack/)

<comment><USER6> exactly. its yet another project to jump in :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's also Hyperion. You can do something similar (via screen capture). Here's a Pi running Kodi with Hyperion in the background. There's an Arduino connected over usb to the Pi collecting serial data and sending pixel data via PWM. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nXGoJT2Xdk0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nXGoJT2Xdk0) Not nearly as soon as OP but it's a really cheap way to get into it.

<comment><USER9> Compared to solutions intercepting HDMI output, such solutions have the advantage to only use the original video as input, without the subtitles or the user interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really cool! I've never seen an Ambilight in person, or even heard of it, which I'm surprised by considering this is old (by today's standards) tech.

I have some spare LEDs lying around, so I might even give it a go. I'd like to see how it works for just a regular old movie.

<comment><USER11> I made one for my computer monitor and it looks _really_ impressive, particularly with games. Unfortunately it's much harder to do on a television DIY nowadays because you have to decode the HDMI signal in realtime, which isn't really feasible with a 4K picture on any remotely affordable FGPAs (AFAIK... I'd really like to hear if someone knows a part or combination of chips that would make this feasible at a hobbyist price, even hypothetically).

A computer monitor is easier, though, because you can run a program in the background that does screen capture.

<comment><USER12> The Hue software philips came out with for computers is a cheap way for people to get into this if they already have a computer, bridge, and some colored lights. [https://www2.meethue.com/en-us/entertainment/hue- sync](https://www2.meethue.com/en-us/entertainment/hue-sync)

<comment><USER11> I have a bunch of Hue devices myself, but I wouldn't exactly call it "cheap" considering how much the colored bulbs cost. You can build your own with a cheap Arduino clone and some addressable RGB LEDs for well under $20.

In addition, Hue Sync is kinda different. To me a proper ambilight goes around the edge of a display to cast light on a wall with a decent resolution (20ish or more LEDs), while Sync is more for a few bulbs and synchronizing the room lights. You can get kind of a similar effect with Sync and a couple bulbs behind the screen but it's just not as impressive.

<comment><USER13> Phillips sells hue led strips now, wouldn't that work with hue sync?

<comment><USER11> The Hue strips aren't addressable so all the LEDs are set to the same color.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is hdcp involved and how do you intercept the encrypted video?

<comment><USER15> No HDCP but there is an update on how the poster got around HDCP: [http://hacks.esar.org.uk/hdmi-splitter- hack/#more-3279](http://hacks.esar.org.uk/hdmi-splitter-hack/#more-3279)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Have a look at [https://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Ambilight-with- Hyperion...](https://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Ambilight-with-Hyperion- Works-with-HDMIAV-Sour/) for a video by Scott doing this with a raspi and Hyperion.

</comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of this arcan blog/demo: [https://arcan-fe.com/2017/05/21/playing- with-leds/](https://arcan-fe.com/2017/05/21/playing-with-leds/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Boblightd ([https://github.com/bobo1on1/boblight](https://github.com/bobo1on1/boblight)) is great if your source is a computer. There is a plugin for Kodi - <USER2> personally haven't tried and just start boblight-X11.

Since boblight can use a capture source, at one point I did get something working with a HDMI spliter -> composite -> USB composite capture card so I could use boblight with any hdmi source.

At some point I'd like to pickup one of those android boxes that include HDMI input and try and get boblight built on android.

This is a really cool board however, i'd love to buy one.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've done a similar project in 2008, only it was about the backlight of the LCD itself. Also, we used a CPLD, not FPGA; there was an effort to improve it (and it was supposed to run on a Spartan 3E) but then the customer's own funding ended, and the project was halted.

</comment><comment><USER20> The demo videos are super impressive, wow!

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow this is amazing!

</comment><comment><USER22> You can do all this with the MagicShifter3000:

[http://magicshifter.net/](http://magicshifter.net/)

.. and more! It has WIFI, MIDI, OSC, Serial I/O, an onboard Webserver for the UI, and more!

(DISCLAIMER: I'm a developer on the MS3000 project .. We'll be releasing a new OS for this soon, which includes a lot of great features .. a MIDI sequencer and arpeggiator, easy remote programming of light patterns..)</comment>


Ask HN: Torn between product and by-product. What to do? - <AUTHOR>

We've been rather busy since early 2010 working on a technology (project) requiring significant amounts of R&D effort.
Of late, it reached a (very interesting) stage where it started spinning-off small (and some not-so-small) by-products, like there's no tomorrow!
(Those who're interested can seen some of the by-products below:
http://www.RapiDefs.com
http://IPLoc.info and http://IPLoc.info/api)
A recent off-shoot of this work gifted us with an idea the commercial potential (and the Whoa! or Golly! factor) of which can easily make the primary project pale into insignificance.
If we move forward with this (the latest by-product), we'd almost certainly have to sort of ditch the original one or, at least, put it on a back burner for a long/ish time.
As the sole owner of the company, I have pretty much a totally free hand in making decisions but I'm not really able to make up my mind on this one.
I'm turning to you all for your opinions/suggestions. What would you do in a similar situation? Please let me know.
ps. I've not mentioned specifics of either project for the sake of brevity. If you need more info in order to opine, please ask. :-) <comment><USER2> Hi, checkout <http://spencerfry.com/on-focus>

Besids that article, what to do in this situation obviously depends on your context of-course. Make sure you a 360 degree view of the situation, the pros and cons of either decisions. The regrets that either decision might bring. I always advice people to think about the regret minimization framework when making major life decisions.

Also the hypothesis is success could come by either route but the "by-product" has higher probability and a shorter road to product. Please try and validate this assumption as soon as possible, just so your not building castles in the air and taking a decision on unfounded hunches.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi, this is not a "what would you do" type of answer, but rather a quick observation. I like your site rapidefs.com (btw, you're missing a dot between www and r in your post). It's fast, it's useful, it looks good. But it's not really anything new. It's a dictionary just like many others. Or have I missed something?

Also, I have clicked on fb like, and then noticed "US patent pending" in footer. Nothing personal, but I immediately unliked your site. I do not claim I know what the patent is about, nor do I care. I'm just, in general, against patents. Too many ridiculous ones out there, wouldn't you agree?

<comment><AUTHOR> > It's a dictionary just like many others. Or have I missed something?

Perhaps, you're a _very_ fast typist and typed the whole word before RapiDefs had had a chance to show its _thing_. :-) Please try typing only a few (beginning) letters of any word to really see it _in action_.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I've seen it the first time. You type a few characters and get a list of matching word/phrases/definitions in your database. My question is still: so what? (or am I still missing it? :) )

Please understand, I like it. I'm trying to give you a feedback in light of your original question, and that's whether you should quit (or slow down) work on your main product, and focus on by-products, of which this is one example. In that light, I really do not see anything worth pursuing.

Or, ask yourself this question: can you make money of it? is that money greater that your main product?

If those kind of answers are yes, than and only than would I ever consider changing my focus.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Please understand, I like it. I'm trying to give you a feedback in light of > your original question

Thank you, and never suspected any _hostility_ or _ill-will_ in your posts. :-)

As a matter of face, RapiDefs is one of the _minor_ by-products, done and put away already. (We _will_ keep expanding it from time to time, but that's about it.)

The major by-product that is causing my indecision is not out yet but it (is _totally_ different from RapiDefs or IPLoc and) has a _great deal_ higher potential as compared to these. Actually, we've assessed its potential to be a lot higher than even the primary project; and hence the indecision.

<comment><USER3> > Actually, we've assessed its potential to be a lot higher than even the > primary project; and hence the indecision.

If you have assessed the potential to be higher than your primary project, why the indecision? Does your primary project already have customers that you don't want to lose?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, nothing like that.

However, it (the primary) project is a technology that can take the current state of the art of information retrieval methodologies just a notch further; something that can have a compelling value proposition for search players to acquire.

By contrast, the major off-shoot (by-product) is in the SN sector, with some unique twists. It will (probably) create a new segment/category in the SN space, _without_ actually competing with any existing player and has a high probability of going viral.

And so the dilemma continues - which way to go?

<comment><USER4> You're not giving anyone any useful information. And when anyone gives you advice you just throw out a few empty statements ("current state of the art of information retrieval..."). If you really want useful feedback stop wasting people's time and just put both products out there so others can give you informed opinions.

Otherwise just work on whichever you prefer. You can build up anything in your mind until it seems like the next big thing but the reality is you won't be acquired and will have to figure out a way to make money with whatever you do if you want it to turn into a business. If you like the work you're more likely to put in the hard time necessary to create something wonderful that attracts and deserves others' attention. So do what you enjoy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


90% Answers (and when they're wrong) - <AUTHOR> http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2010/11/90-answers-and-when-theyre-wrong/

<comment><USER3> If these questions are typical of things the company is going to ask you, they're good interview questions. It's obvious they'd need someone that pays better attention to detail than they do.

However, if the company has a proper structure in place and actually plans things, maybe those qualities aren't quite as important... And maybe the employees would like it there better.

Companies forget that interviews go both ways. If you prove to me in an interview that your company is really messed up, I won't work there. If you take me on a 'lunch interview' and judge me on whether or not I salt my fries before tasting them, I won't work there. That's not a valid test of whether I do proper research or not. It just happens that there is -never- enough salt on fries, so I just add some.

And if you make me 'ask for the job' by calling you back and inquiring, even though you stated you would call me, forget it. I don't play games, and I don't understand why you'd want to hire people who do. Since you've made sure to select an entire staff that plays games, I'm sure I don't want to work there.

Having said, that if the position he was interviewing for really, really needed to do those 2 tasks on a regular basis, he should have known the best way to handle it and what questions to ask to figure out the proper solution.

<comment><USER4> I think part of being a good system administrator is knowing about how far your solutions can be pushed. It's Google; it's not surprising that they want to be sure that you don't reflexively do things that will break at scale.

<comment><USER5> It's unlikely the article's author has ever worked at a scale close to Google's. Without exposure to that world, and the problems you encounter, it would be difficult to give a satisfactory answer.

After discovering rsync wouldn't work I would have just said "I don't know, I've never worked at that scale," and reframed the conversation from one where I'm trying to guess the right answer to a conversation with more give-and- take.

<comment><USER4> Which would arguably be a better reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course the alternative would be a problem as well. If someone comes to me expecting a "90%" answer then they're going to get irritated if my first response is to ask more and more questions. (Unfortunately this is something I often find myself doing!)

In an interview though I'd tend to always avoid 90% answers, or to qualify them carefully. I expect interviews to have "trick" questions or to lead on to interesting discussions, so any question with an answer as simple as "use mysqldump" would raise a red flag in my mind.

</comment><comment><USER7> Where are people applying such that their interviews are riddled with trick questions?

The last four job interviews I've landed really just wanted to know if I could do the job and as such, the questions were very straight forward and didn't test for anything that wasn't actually asked in the question.

INTERVIEWER: What is your experience with source control systems?

ME: I use Git for my personal projects and I have used Subversion and Perforce on professional projects in the past.

It's not as if they are trying to tease out how active my Github account is. They just want to know if there is going to be additional ramp-up time if I were to be hired.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious now: what would be a more appropriate solution for each of the cases he gave (rsync, and mysqldump on a large database)?

<comment><USER9> The first one would be hard to do without writing code. Thats probably what the googler intended, but of course not how a sysadmin is going to approach the problem.

The second one would be a mix of xtrabackup and/or lvm (or san) snapshots on a slave.

I've read this particular guy's blog a bunch of times before (its thin pickings out in the sysadmin blogosphere). His rush to the 90% answer bias is almost certainly a byproduct of his work environment, a small shop where ordering laptops is more a part of his day than performance tuning the website infrastructure. When your job covers a large variety and volume of relatively low-end problems, you would of course develop that reflex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I get from reading that post is that some interviewers are just looking for trouble.

If you're going to ask probing questions, you have to probe correctly. Rsync is the correct answer, and mysqldump is the correct answer, for the problems as given. If you want those not to be the correct answer because you're fishing for something else, you have to be specific as to why not: "But suppose the patient has lupus, and that treatment will kill her, what would you do THEN?"

These are interviewers that are blowing the setup for their joke and then expecting you to laugh at the punchline. If you're going to be a "smarter- than-thou" interviewer, you have to at least set your questions up properly so that "rsync" and "mysqldump" are not, in fact, the correct answers.

<comment><USER11> It's never lupus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Giving the "90% answer" in an interview just shows familiarity with technology platforms/software.

Need a web app? Rails. Want a database? MySQL. Need queuing software? AMQP. Version control? Git.

And giving these answers in an interview is...alright - you don't want to hire people that aren't familiar with what's happening in technology, but you do want to show that you're somewhat of a critical thinker. Most good developers I know ask tons of questions and say very little.

If you can model that thought process during an interview - web app, eh? Does it need to talk to a DB? Are the requests short or long-polling? How are you hosting it? How much view work is there? Will there be an API layer? - <USER2> shows you know how to research problems and solve them correctly.

This isn't to say I wouldn't hire someone who answered my web app question with a simple, "Rails," but it immediately starts to raise red flags for me.

</comment><comment><USER13> This kind of makes me want to fight fire with fire and return any such question with an exhaustive (and exhausting) list of probes for edge conditions: "How big is the database? What OS are you running? Do you have shell access? How is the database encoded? Are you backing up to the local filesystem or to another database? If another database, is it local or remote? Do you have physical access to the machine? If not, is it a dedicated server or VPS? How close to Daylight Savings Time are you? What is the current phase of the moon? Is the machine currently on fire? Are you grass or rock type pokemon?"

</comment><comment><USER14> > "Oh hey, by the way, what would you use to back up a MySQL database?" "Oh, > mysqldump."

In the context of a normal conversation, that is the correct answer. If someone is ignorant enough to ask such a question, they probably have the sort of MySQL instance where mysqldump will perform adequately. If they don't, at least they'll figure it out soon enough. On the other end of the spectrum, you might spend an afternoon holding forth on the merits of various backup strategies only to find out they really just needed the name of the dump command. 90% solutions are good starting points in real life.

</comment><comment><USER5> Would it be fair to say a 90% answer at a company like Google would be considered a 10% answer everywhere else?

<comment><USER15> Not necessarily. You really need to probe a little bit to understand the context of the question.</comment></comment>


This Silicon Valley company wants to 'make better humans' through biohacking - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/06/hvmn-wants-to-make-better-humans-through-biohacking.html <comment><USER2> HVMN seems like your regular old supplement scam company riding a yuppie consumerist wave, probably the same consumers who were all excited about Soylent...

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/hvmnafterall/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/hvmnafterall/)

From the TechCrunch article: "There's also a snake oil stigma attached to the industry, often overlooked by the FDA. The various pills, oils (and coffees) out on the market can get expensive, and a lot of the claims out there need regular Snopes checks to protect consumers from getting suckered."

</comment><comment> wu-ikkyu >Brandt, the company's co-founder and COO, told CNBC at his San Francisco office. "You have inputs. You have outputs like your productivity, your reaction time, your happiness even.

By better human, they appear to mean more productive. Happiness being an after thought.</comment>


Frontback Shutting Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.frontback.me/ <comment><USER2> What's interesting is that they were able to raise $4 million, and rejected a $40 million acquisition by Twitter (according to [http://www.businessinsider.com/frontback-app-shuts- down-2015...](http://www.businessinsider.com/frontback-app-shuts-down-2015-7))

<comment><USER3> This should be somewhat instructive to founders of companies that get far enough to receive a buyout offer. Try to realistically evaluate your startup's place in the world; in most cases, a buyout offer is something that should be seriously considered. Your company is almost certainly not the next Facebook or Snapchat.

<comment><USER4> This is a specious comment because you now have the value of hindsight. I suppose you also probably advised Mark Zucherburg to not sell?

<comment><USER5> > This is a specious comment because you now have the value of hindsight.

No it isn't.

The problem is to accurately put a value on your company and it's future.

It isn't rare at all to find founders that are in the most literal sense of the word delusional about what the value of a company is.

I've had this with one of my co-founders who held out for a much larger buy- out offer than one that we had on the table and then subsequently ended up being extremely upset when after blocking that particular deal he could not find a better one and ended up taking _much_ less from the company than the offer that had been on the table already.

I'm sure that his hindsight told him that maybe his valuation wasn't all that accurate after all.

Hindsight being what it is - 20/20 - if you remember that a price is never right (sell it: you're too cheap, don't sell it: you're too expensive) that there is room on both sides and overlap between the ranges is required to make a deal.

If you always hold out for better you will _never_ make a deal. So knowing when an offer is 'good' is the key and being realistic about valuations will help you to figure out what is good.

> I suppose you also probably advised Mark Zucherburg to not sell?

Mark Zuckerberg (not Zucherburg) never intended to sell at all, that's a key difference.

<comment><USER6> > It isn't rare at all to find founders that are in the most literal sense of > the word delusional about what the value of a company is.

Agreed. Example:

him: "Got an idea!"

me: "Let's hear it..."

him: 'splains idea

me: "neat - hold on"

me: build quick mvp to get initial users - 2 days

him: "oh but it needs xyz"

me: "not until you talk to customers"

him: weeks later, a bit of traction

me: "cool - you know, if you/we can get some more users in this area, maybe up and down the coast, this would be a nice little acquisition from someone like 4square"

him: "what?? i'd never sell"

me: "we'd probably be looking at a couple million for less than a year of work, assuming you can get the traction"

him: "this is going to be _bigger than Facebook_ \- this will be everywhere! don't you understand the _value_ here?"

me: "you're serious, aren't you?"

Yes, he was deadly serious. Over the years, he's mellowed a bit in that intensity, but still seemed to hold on to the notion that having an idea and someone building an MVP = ownership of billion dollar marketplace. The notion that other people considered the idea and deemed it not worth pursuing, or perhaps have _actually tried it_ and learned it's not the market that was assumed... genuinely never crossed his mind. Ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I first saw the Interview (Mike Arrington did the Interview at Tech Crunch Disrupt), I was really disappointed with their answer to something like "So When is Android Version scheduled?", CEO went on saying how great iPhone is.

This was 2 years back. How can you not be working on Android version by then?

<comment><USER8> I have sympathy for the idea of focusing on one platform until you've got something people actually want. You'll move faster that way.

Sounds like they never quite got there.

<comment><USER9> I disagree for social apps that rely heavily on the network effect. Cutting out a major mobile platform doesn't just cut your userbase by half, but it also significantly reduces the utility for the other half too.

If you're making an app where it's value heavily stems on how many of your friends use it, then only working on one platform is a great way to "never quite get there".

<comment><USER10> > doesn't just cut your userbase by half

Even more, considering Android takes up about 80% of the market share. Focusing on iOS first is a well known strategy, but if you gain any traction - Android release should be out quickly. There is no excuse to ignore that big amount of market share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Apropos of nothing relevant to the actual content of the page, the sand effect easter egg on the logo was really cool. One of the more lifelike effects I've seen.

<comment><USER12> I also thought it was very cool - extracted the source from the minified JS if anybody is interested in taking a look how it works: [https://jsfiddle.net/powers/cy5fhLnk/](https://jsfiddle.net/powers/cy5fhLnk/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What was the business model for this? Get a lot of users and get bought like Instagram? $40m for $4m seems like a great return for something that doesn't have revenue.

<comment><USER14> I doubt the $4m was for 100% of the company. It's unknown what the ROI would've been for the investors.

But still probably something the founders are regretting.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, wasn't implying that - basically, if the investors have a controlling stake, it's a pretty okay return for something that seemingly had no business model besides "maybe sell ads/filters?".

If the investors didn't have a controlling stake, then the founders would be pretty damn rich.

<comment><USER15> Anything that can accumulate attention can be easily monetized. The hard part is accumulating attention. Wondering about business models is exceedingly tired.

<comment><USER16> Can you please tell me how to convert attention into money? Genuine question, since it seems like the business model of a lot of B2C startups out there.

<comment><USER15> Ads, sponsorships, in-app purchases, membership, suscription, pro features, sell the data, premium features, etc, etc, etc.

<comment><USER16> i consider membership, subscription, pro features, in app purchases and premium features to be almost equal. Same for ads and sponsorships. In other words: that leaves you with ads, premium featues or selling the data. Which can be quite hard to sell, depending on your audience (I consider Twitter a good example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Their thing seems to have been that they recorded (video or image I guess) the subject as well as the publisher at the same time, recording with both cameras. Nice idea.

Image preview here:

[https://pando- assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2013/10/frontb...](https://pando- assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2013/10/frontback1.jpg)

<comment><USER18> You took one with the front facing camera, then one with the back facing camera (or vice versa but not at the same time). AFAIK (haven't used it in the past year+) you couldn't shoot both at the same time.

<comment><USER19> You're correct

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love how you can destroy the logo / title by playing with the mouse over it.

<comment><USER21> Me too..wonder how it can be done. Is this a javascript library?

<comment><USER22> Doing a little digging, there is a handler attached to the mousemove event on the canvas element. There is a credit here: Thanks to Giovanni Difeterici ([http://www.gdifeterici.com/](http://www.gdifeterici.com/))

... but it's minified and I can't hunt down the source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how much it costs to keep this type of thing running? There's really no one out there stepping up to take it on?

Edit: after reading the shutdown notice, it was a little vague about what's happening. It says the iOS app will convert to a camera app. Does that mean they are gonna try to retain connections to all the existing users and roll out out some new concept?

<comment><USER23> I understood it in a way that they will convert the app so that it will still have the "front+back" functionality, but only save the images to your camera roll. Basically an offline frontback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a cute feature but hardly something that you could build a company around. Like Yo.

In a case like this, do they ever transfer the service over to someone who might be interested in having a go at it (without any money exchanging hands)? Always seems like people would rather shut something down than hand it over which is unfortunate.

<comment><USER24> A 'cute feature' does become a company once enough people are using it. In a parallel universe you could have said the same about a shutdown notice of Twitter or Snapchat.

<comment><USER25> A lot of people still do say the same about Snapchat. It just goes to show that it is really really hard to predict which ideas will catch on and which won't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm an active user of this app. I really enjoy scrolling through app feed and discover people around the world by not just their selfies but also a proper image context attached with it. I'm in love with the idea of this app. Really sad to see they are shutting down the service :'(

</comment><comment><USER15> The shutdown notice seems to suggest that this feature is available elsewhere. Anyone know where?

</comment><comment><USER27> What was it?

<comment><USER28> This was my question too.. I wish deadpool sites would keep something up there about what they did in their "So long and thanks for all the fish" statements

Edit: Ah. From what I can tell, snapchat/instagram/genericPhotoApp except it takes a picture with both cameras [http://web.archive.org/web/20150715211337/http://www.frontba...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150715211337/http://www.frontback.me/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sorry to read about this.

I too regarded Frontback as a feature rather than a new messaging paradigm. But I can see how you might say the same about Snapchat.

<comment><USER30> Honestly, Snapchat felt more like a feature till they brought in stories. That interaction has been a game changer for them. In fact it's unique from the entire plethora of networks around. Especially when centered around an event or a country (their UFC mega stories are incredible).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Barely one month to be able to download your stored photos - that seems ... Short. Especially for a service that was not used often enough. I don't clearly have any details but keeping an AWS account up for another 3-6 moths seems ... Not unreasonable.

I understand it's a crushing time for the founders, but one of the things I seem to see on HN is the more respectably you wind down your startup, the more respect (and future deal flow) you seem to get.

Just 2c

<comment><USER32> Jeebus dude, why exactly you need 3-6 months to get your photos from a service you didn't use often enough? AWS cost real money. How long of a warning do you need to exit a service? A year?

<comment><USER31> the exact period of time was not my concern - the perception of calm and orderly shutdown is. What matters is how the founders are seen to handle that last few moments. Doing nothing would be bad. Doing this is fine and decent. Even better would be to say "hey it did not work, but even so our last act is to <maintain high perceived value coz we are the good guys>." It might be download your contacts, it might be grab your dogs' friends circle. Whatever - if it was important enough for users to give it to you for safekeeping that should be treated with kid gloves.

This is sadly one of the more high profile moments a start up has - Handle it well, the founders will be seen as a safe pair of hands, do the equivalent of dropping the casket into the ground and walking off, maybe not so much.

It's not great that this is a metric, it's not great that more VCs will see how they shutdown than saw how they started up - but this is just another startup. The founders have 30+ year careers ahead. Good for them for making something, good for them for trying, and good for trying to land it at all. Many just told up tents and steal away.

We as a community are trying to learn the dos and donts of startup life cycles - seems to me this is one of the more high profile and often ignored donts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> that's too bad. it was cool. on the other hand I didn't use it often so I guess I'm part of the problem ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER34> I've never heard of them. Almost all of the "xxx is shutting down" threads on HN is always the first time I'm finding out about the company. Only exception was Homejoy but if I hadn't watched the startup lesson videos I would've had no idea what it was about.

<comment><USER35> Even from the shutting down message it's not clear what they did. It sounds like a service for organizing your selfies.

<comment><USER36> The app took two photos simultaneously, one with the front camera and one with the back. It allowed you to show a combination of where you are and what you are doing in the same instant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tails 3.14 Is Out - <AUTHOR> https://tails.boum.org/news/version_3.14/index.en.html <comment><USER2> I have upgraded to Tails 3.14 from (2) different Tails ( 3.12.1 ) & ( 3.13.2 ) from (2) different local networks protected with passwords. One of which I am not associated with. The 2 downloads occured at a 24 hour interval. THe release was on May 24th. I upgraded on May 25th and 26th.

Upon being prompted by the system that an upgrade is available and do I wish to upgrade, I proceded as usual. Then, I verified the integrity of the system via the 3 methods described on :

[https://tails.boum.org/install/download/index.en.html](https://tails.boum.org/install/download/index.en.html)

1 - Firefox Tails verification Extension

2 - Open PGP

3 - Command Line

All gave me " Bad or forged Signature " data compromised ...

I then ran a md5sum && sha256sum for good measure, No match.

I send a bug report via the integrated whisper back feature ( in the compromised system yesterday : / ) it may or may not have gotten through to the devs.

I sent one today using another uncompromised version of an older release.

Takeaway ; verify your checksums and please someone look into this.

Since it happened on 2 networks and 2 systems, this might be a compromised mirror site serving that to many users.

Eastern Canada.</comment>


The Fatal Mistake That Doomed Samsung's Galaxy Note - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fatal-mistake-that-doomed-samsungs-galaxy-note-1477248978 <comment><USER2> As an avid iPhone user who does want to see Apple succeed. I genuinely feel horrible for Samsung. You can say whatever you want about corporate management at any company but at the bottom of the pole are hard working engineers who put so much time and effort into their work. The team that built the iris scanner must have worked incredibly hard with cutting edge technology to make that work in time. So the whole team deserves a ton of credit for the device. I really hope they don't discontinue the line, I hope they just keep doing great work and I believe customers will give them a chance.

The tech industry is awesome because of the beautiful (and incessant) competition. But at the end of the day, I think we all feel for the challenges that come with this line of work. When a device bends, melts, explodes; a product leads customers astray or doesn't live up to hype; that's really unfortunate.

<comment><USER3> > I really hope they don't discontinue the line

As in, stop making a 5.5"\+ phone with stylus? They definitely won't. They'll just have to come up with a new name because the Note name is tarnished

<comment><USER4> Is it? I would've thought the samsung brand was tarnished more than the note brand.

<comment><USER5> No just the note brand people are still buying Galaxy S7 by the millions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I expected the article to say what made the phones catch fire.

<comment><USER7> Defective battery according to CNet: [https://www.cnet.com/news/why-is- samsung-galaxy-note-7-explo...](https://www.cnet.com/news/why-is-samsung- galaxy-note-7-exploding-overheating/)

Even replacement phones caught fire, they blamed the batteries.

<comment><USER8> Even this article is inconclusive... There has been no definitive cause.

My initial presumption was shoddy batteries+ quick charge 3.0 extra fast charging + hot Qualcomm 820 just to add.

It was first Samsung phone to use quick charge 3.0. If there was a battery defect, rapid charging didn't help.

<comment><USER9> This is what I'm wondering. Did they fail to adequately test the quick charge feature or do they have a supply chain issue? The Nokia phone explosions were caused by Nokia accidentally buying counterfeit batteries because they sold more units that they had anticipated. A startup I worked for back then was created to solve that particular problem (Verical).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> what a click-bait title! tl;dr: Recalling early based on the assumption that the fault was with one of the batteries' suppliers. Nothing about the root cause issue in this article.

<comment><USER11> They don't know the root cause.

<comment><USER12> Which is what made me interested in reading the article--from the headline I thought it had finally been found.

<comment><USER11> I'm curious too, and I'm probably going to stay interested until they finally conclude something. Hundreds of thousands of handsets returned, billions of dollars lost, and nobody knows why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> According to the article, the mistake was admitting there was a problem and recalling the phones.

If that's what Wall Street calls a "mistake", then I don't know what they'd call the engineering problem(s) that caused the fires in the first place.

<comment><USER14> According to the article, the mistake was saying it was the batteries and then doing a recall to replace the batteries, even though they weren't actually sure that's what the issue was. When it turned out they were wrong, and the replacement phones were catching fire as well, it made Samsung look a lot worse and led to them killing the product entirely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Obviously, the battery is the fire energy source since it is the only part housing a massive energy.

Is it be possible the software (e.g. the battery management firmware) causes this? A bug is never far away, nor is an intended malfunction (hack).

</comment><comment><USER16> To get around the Subscribe block just copy the title, use google.com and put the title in quotes. The reference from Google.com will get around the subscription wall if your IP has not viewed too many articles that month

<comment><USER17> Or just use the 'web' link under the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's no "right move" in this situation. If they delayed the recall and it was proved the battery was the culprit, then then there will be reports that the company knew it was the battery weeks earlier and didn't do anything about it. They had a tough choice to make, and they took the option that puts the consumers' well-being first, and that is the right choice in my opinion. It might be the right choice financially, but not everything is about money.

</comment><comment><USER19> Following the 'web' link doesn't seem to get me through the paywall anymore. How am I supposed to read this article?

<comment><USER20> Don't bother. The article doesn't actually deliver what the headline promises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had the first note 7, LOVED it to bits.. then sent it back for a replacement, got a S7 Edge loaner.. hated it. Got the Note 7 replacement, Was back in heaven.

Sent the Note 7 back, and have now got a Note 5 64GB. I like it and will keep using it... but I still miss the Note 7. Am eagerly awaiting the Note 8 or whatever is coming next from Samsung.

</comment><comment><USER22> My understanding is that the problem is trying to speed up the charging cycle and the battery not being able to dump the excessive temperature. For normal use I assume the phone is able to cope.

</comment><comment><USER23> I imagine that if the managers had delayed the recall and the problem turned out to be as they originally suspected, that would have been their fatal mistake.

<comment><USER24> The article suggests that the other option wasn't "delay the recall" but "kill the phone". The fact that "kill the phone" came after "send supposedly safe replacements" is what was fatal, not the early recall.

i.e. they thought they had enough evidence to damn one battery manufacturer, but the truth was the problem was elsewhere, and they still don't know. Faced with continuing problems and no known cause, if they'd pre-emptively pulled the phone, the hope is that they'd be seen as looking out for their customers.

<comment><USER22> 'Dendrites and Pits: Untangling the Complex Behavior of Lithium Metal Anodes through Operando Video Microscopy'

[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.6b00260](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.6b00260)

<comment><USER24> Anything specific you'd like to highlight?

<comment><USER22> I'm not knowledgeable enough to say, but there are problems with these kind of batteries overheating, especially on recharging. Pumping electricity through a material produces heat. If it has nowhere to go then you end up with a fire and toxic fumes. The solution on airplanes being to put the battery in a sealed metal box with a pipe to vent any toxic fumes to the outside of the hull.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_problems)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>