Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/facebook-launches-its-tiktok-rival-instagram-reels-56460094-88df-4aa5-b6a1-39695c682508.html <comment><USER2> Quoting from the excellent blog post[1] submitted here yesterday[0] that stole my morning workout time:

" Instagram is some strange hybrid mix of social and interest graph, and now it's also a jumble of formats, with a Stories feed relegated to a top bar in the app while the more stagnant and less active original feed continues to run vertically as the default. Messaging is pushed to a separate pane and also served by a separate app. Longer form videos bounce you to Instagram TV, which is just an app for videos that exceed some time limit, I guess? And soon, perhaps commerce will be jammed in somehow? Meanwhile, they have a Discover tab, or whatever it is called, which seems like it could be the default tab if they wanted to take a more interest-based approach like TikTok. But they seem to have punted on making any hard decisions for so long now that the app is just a Frankenstein of feeds and formats and functions spread across a somewhat confused constellation of apps. "

Let's see if they're forced to make any "hard decisions" about their bundled UX in future...

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049676)

[1] [https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the- sorti...](https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorting-hat)

<comment><USER3> As an American who looks at WeChat and sees a massive, unintuitive jumbled mess, you've explained in this comment how that could possibly be so popular in China!

I feel foolish for not having realized that the UX must make perfect sense to everyone who has used WeChat since the days of it being a simple communication app.

By that logic, I'm not sure we could say quite yet that Instagram's bundling _is_ a mistake.

<comment><USER4> WeChat has lots of things hidden behind low impression entrypoints. You can explore them when you want. Its primary features, chat and moments, are dead simple, like WhatsApp. Facebook on the other hand, are mixing lots of stuff into their main feed, making the experience horrible for everyone

<comment><USER5> Marketing/business side always demand prime real-estate to push 'features' instead of just blending them into the UI. This is extra-apparent on mobile apps but FB did it on their website for years (I haven't seen what it looks like recently).

It's not easy to say no as a designer but the best companies are the ones most capable of keeping things as focused on primary UX flows as possible.

TikTok figured this out by making it all about scrolling a simple page of high-density videos, the entire screen is full of the content you want. No extra tapping or side scrolling needed.

Reddit is another company that missed the boat on what made their website great during their redesign. Making it feel top-heavy JS-wise and sparser instead of simple high-density information like newspaper site with simple links. For ex: the first article on old.reddit.com is 100px from the top and can fit 10 articles within 1000px, while the new one starts at 400px and lists 3-4 posts by 1000px (HN is 55px and 20+ posts).

<comment><USER6> Let's ship features! To heck with what users may need or want!

<comment><USER7> The employees want it, management want it, the owners want it – yes, considering user needs can sometimes be very low down on the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I still cannot believe that Twitter bought Vine, couldn't figure out what to do with it, shut it down, then had to bring it back as a read-only archive because there was so much popular outcry.

At the time, the story was that all these other platforms like Instagram and Snapchat were adopting short videos, so Vine could not compete anymore. But obviously it was possible to compete, since an _entirely new service_ \--Tik Tok--was able to rise against them.

That said, I do think there may be a human-oriented life cycle to these sorts of social apps. Once a social platform is around long enough, it becomes the thing that old people use (since its original users grow older with it). Then the next round of teens seek a new platform--even if the functionality is the same--just so they can have it to themselves.

Under this theory, there's _nothing_ Twitter could have done with Vine to make it beat Tik Tok, since a crucial feature of Tik Tok is simply that it's new.

The business strategy in the face of this theory would be to continuously start or buy new social platforms with similar feature sets, but each time with a new brand that is totally separate from the (older) parent brand so teens don't get scared off.

<comment><USER9> My take on it is Twitter just isn't, as a company, very good at making software. This is from external observation and a couple of reports from friends who used to work there.

<comment><USER10> Yeah it really feels like IBM in the sense that it had some really amazing engineers that built the company up, and after they left, they have just been resting on those laurels ever sense. What have they truly innovated recently?

<comment><USER11> The division they have helped foment in the US is pretty impressive.

<comment><USER10> People have been this divided for a long time. Social Media just helps exhume it better. Started in the 50s.

<comment><USER12> My sense is that lots of divided people (mainly fringe) have basically been silenced for years. Twitter has made it possible for those people to have a voice and more problematic made it super easy for malicious actors to mimic those people's ideas to make the situation worse than it really is.

My (probably unpopular) opinion is that they simply shouldn't have a voice. Twitter is bad for society period.

<comment><USER13> I feel similarly. Liberal ideals would say that everyone having a global voice is a good thing, but we haven't really seen things play out that way since social media became so dominant. At least not in the US.

Though it doesn't help, of course, that TwitFaceTube are designed to maximize engagement at the expense of everything else, which encourages inflammatory content. Maybe if they didn't, we wouldn't have this problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Reels' video distribution algorithm will resemble TikTok's: users will see > the most popular videos at the moment, rather than a selection tailored to > their individual profile.

That's not how TikTok works, the feed is really good at tailoring to the stuff you actually like to watch. It's a big part of why it's so popular.

> Reels differs from TikTok thanks to Instagram's augmented reality effects, > which let users overlay images and filters onto their videos.

TikTok has had AR filters for a long time now...

<comment><USER15> I dislike Reel already. I follow wood working, RC cars, and metal fab/3D printing/CNC. Now when I browse it's nothing but women jumping around and showing off their clothes... WTH!? So I start saying, not interested to all of that, still spams me with it.

<comment><USER16> Probably because that's what the majority of the content on Instagram is. It's likely that content you enjoy hasnt been created yet.

<comment><USER17> That's not true, I use Instagram for checking out CNC/3d printing/robotics projects.

<comment><USER18> They meant on Reel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reels isn't going to compete with TikTok in any real way for a few simple reasons.

First and foremost, as a non-Instagram user, I flat-out can't use it. A while back, when I was curious about TikTok, I downloaded it and was instantly swiping through a video feed that was already getting customized for me. I downloaded Instagram this morning and was presented with a wall to create an account. Nope.

Second, TikTok is new. Instagram is old. Young people want to use the newest social app that old people haven't yet infiltrated.

<comment><USER20> > Young people want to use the newest social app that old people haven't yet > infiltrated.

There are actually plenty of people over 30 on TikTok FWIW.

I definitely agree that TikTok's no-login-wall NUX was wonderful. You can even watch on a laptop without logging in.

<comment><USER21> > There are actually plenty of people over 30 on TikTok FWIW.

And the beauty of TikTok is that's okay. People over 30 can join the app without disrupting my feed of age-relevant content. This is unlike a lot of other social networks (e.g. Reddit) where content is shows from outside my social graph

<comment><USER20> Yeah, totally – I love that 90% of the time, I have a teenager-free TikTok experience, and most of what I see is interesting to me. But if I want to see what's hip with the kids or whatever, I can always just open up TikTok in a logged-out state and see the /r/all equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Facebook launched Lasso as its own app two years ago. I'm not sure if there were any differences between it and TikTok, but either way, it failed miserably.

[https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/lasso-facebook-tiktok- shut...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/lasso-facebook-tiktok-shut-down/)

<comment><USER23> FB also has a Stories feature as Instagram, in turn from Snapchat, but I barely see anyone use it while everyone and their cat (literally) use Instagram Stories.

Also, FB took a more advanced friend list concept from Google+ but few use or know how it works. (Like how "Acquintances" are your friends but they are pushed down by the algorithm)

It is apparent that it's hard to just shoehorn different usage patterns due to different social cultures evolving on the respective networks. Let's see how they do this time...

<comment><USER24> For me, I know majority of my younger friends use IG stories and have abandoned snapchat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How to appeal to Gen Z; name the thing after a form of video playback that was totally obsolete before any of them were born.

<comment><USER26> Can't tell if the OP is being sarcastic. Just want to point out that "Tik Tok" is the sound an analog clock makes - which is also obsolete technology - except for the odd grandfather clock.

<comment><USER27> It's closer to the sound of a metronome, which is pretty fitting and likely where the name originated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It seems like Instagram is Facebook's anti-competitive tool. Whenever some new social network crops up, Facebook bolts on a clone to Instagram. Eventually it's going to be such a bloated mess it's going to cease being useful to anyone.

<comment><USER29> Is going to be?

Instagram already lost me a while ago. It started to hamfist Snapchat stories in there. I also believe they tried to force in Facebook Messenger features at some point.

It also totally ruined any proper disoverability. You like one Comic Book post and suddenly you only get stupid text only posts about superhero facts. With no way to manually configure your interests.

And to make things worse, my personal feed got messed up because they thought it was best to no longer show the feed chronologically. Because hiding new posts lower in the feed, and keep showing me week-old posts on top was obviously a good idea.

All I want is sharing pictures I took with my friends, while also looking at photography from random people.

<comment><USER28> > All I want is sharing pictures I took with my friends, while also looking at > photography from random people.

Sharing pics & stories with friends/ family was why I started using FB years ago. I think Instagram became popular because FB had become a polluted mess before young people even had a chance to try it. Older people just stuck around out of habit.

I never liked IG because generally my FB posts and images are hosted on my blog first and crossposted, something you can't do on IG.

Fully agree that IG is already a mess. But people haven't really abandoned it yet in numbers. They just stopped attracting new people.

<comment><USER29> It's like every Social Media is just doomed at some point.

Most just end up polluting their functionality so much that it destroys the original core.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Jumped on my Instagram explore page to see what Reels actually looks like since the article doesn't show any screenshots..

Of the first three posts I saw, two of them were cross posted from TikTok. Not that it's new to see social media content posted to another app, but is there anything to be said for the fact that Facebook can now monetize TikToks in another fashion?

Seems like even if they don't win in terms of creators moving platforms, it would still be in a creator's best interest to post a successful TikTok again as a Reel.

</comment><comment><USER31> For a moment, I read the word "reels" in the headline as a verb (meaning: "lose one's balance and stagger"), instead of a noun (film reel). But my mind quickly readjusted: "that doesn't make sense, because FB owns Instagram."

<comment><USER32> I know how it's supposed to be read (and I've even seen real reels at old movie theaters!), but I still just think about fishing reels every time I see it.

<comment><USER33> > but I still just think about fishing reels every time I see it.

The goal is to hook you after all...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Comedian Jeff Wright had a great commentary recently on how Instagram has a history of copying upstart social networks (Vine, Snapchat, and now TikTok).

[https://twitter.com/JeffRightNoww/status/1287842365126914048](https://twitter.com/JeffRightNoww/status/1287842365126914048)

(Coincidentally, I think Jeff Wright had his breakthrough TikTok...)

</comment><comment><USER35> Reels' inclusion in Instagram makes the UI confusing for me. Right now it only feeds me three or four videos that are peppered in my discover feed when I scroll down so I have to swipe up to refresh for more videos:

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

Why not have a separate section dedicated to Reels content instead of having it interspersed with photos and regular video posts?

<comment><USER36> I took me doing a Google search to find the original Instagram PR release that had instructions on where even to find Reels. But once you are in any Reel it acts just like TikTok, you swipe up for a never-ending feed of content.

So in a sense, any Reel is a portal into "a separate section dedicated to Reels content".

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have a hunch that TikTok fakes the amount of likes that users post. I've heard people say their first post goes viral. It's an interesting strategy. Young person posts a TikTok, "get famous", keeps posting.

<comment><USER38> I don't think it's faking. That behaviour sounds broadly inline with [https://www.veed.io/grow/reverse-engineering-how-tiktok- algo...](https://www.veed.io/grow/reverse-engineering-how-tiktok-algorithm- works/)

<comment><USER24> Related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24049676)

[https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the- sorti...](https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorting-hat)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I truly hate that Instagram is owned by Facebook. It's genuinely the best, most positive social media platform that I've been a part of. I've made genuine friends and found an amazing community in my niche.

Please don't destroy it, Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER40> How powerful is the video editing compared to TikTok?

</comment><comment><USER41> Instagram is what it always was for Facebook: a clear sign of the decline of Facebook's original product into irrelevance while it slowly mutates into infinite town square forums trapped in valley of echoing stupidity and a less anonymous craigslist/gumtree. The Instagram acquisition was the first clear sign Facebook never could innovate it could only steal and perfect existing ideas. Now they decided that outright copying is cheaper than buying, so they copy Snapchat and now TikTok.

<comment><USER42> Facebook came out with the Oculus Quest last year which is hugely innovative.

<comment><USER29> Apart from Quest being a standalone device, it was just an iteration on the original Rift. And it was another company they bought, and I'd be more inclined to give credits to the Occulus team than to Facebook.

<comment><USER42> > Apart from Quest being a standalone device, it was just an iteration on the > original Rift

In that it's a VR device, yes. But it's a standalone headset with Inside Out tracking. Many people didn't think this was possible.

> And it was another company they bought, and I'd be more inclined to give > credits to the Occulus team than to Facebook.

A significant amount of FB employees developed this headset. It is Oculus _is_ Facebook now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> My biggest wish for Instagram is to stop creating new ways to format content and give users more control over how their content is distributed. For example, I know a few people with private accounts for close friends or fitness accounts, why not create feeds of posts that people can subscribe to? They have a similar feature with stories/highlights.

This is most likely to boost account #s but it's frustrating to have to follow multiple accounts for one person.

<comment><USER44> This, but not just for Instagram. I know people who have separate "pages" on Facebook to represent different interests. I know people who have multiple Twitter accounts for the same reason, and even more that I wish _would_. For all of its weaknesses, Google Plus took a step in this direction with circles. I think streams would be even better.

P.S. Tags could be better still, but only if they're used consistently. My experience with other places/tools that use tags is that never ever happens, so I'd go with streams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I can't help but feel that zuckerberg has unduly influenced the president to ban tiktok in order for them to further corner the social media market.

This feels wrong.

</comment><comment><USER46> Today I tried posting a Reel. This wasn't intuitive as the flow for doing this is similar to creating a Story. When selecting an existing video as a reel I do not have a way to edit it or add overlays and the total reel duration is 15 seconds vs 60 on TikTok.

Discovering reels is tricky also. I have to go to search and click on the word reels within the random suggested reel at the top.

What is more - I want reels to be separate from whom I follow on Instagram. I want to follow certain content creators for their reels, but do not want to see their stories or photo stream. I also don't want them to show up as people I follow on my main Instagram profile.

The TikTok features for creating content, discovering it, replying to it (remix / duet etc) and just the responsiveness of the UI make it much more fun and pleasant to use.

Reels does not meaningfully compete with TikTok. It will only appeal to some of the existing user base, but not attract TikTok users.

FYI I'm 34. I post music, running, travel and random adventure clips to Instagram, TikTok and other places.

</comment><comment><USER47> why does everyone think they can beat tik tok just taking their existing content and changing the navigation to clone tik tok?

people use it for the content, not the navigation style

<comment><USER48> That's what they said about Snapchat

<comment><USER49> What is the status of snapchat? Does it still exist? Does anyone use it? How do they split time between TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and the other half- dozen platforms?

<comment><USER50> As someone roughly in the target age and location audience for all of the things you mentioned, here's my take:

\- TikTok is somewhat mindless entertainment. Keep scrolling, watch funny or informative videos, and the algorithm will tailor more content to your tastes. It's fun and an absolute time-suck, but not any kind of critical communication. I don't personally know anyone who makes TikTok content, but most people I know watch it at least occasionally.

\- Instagram is used for sharing a more public view of your life. While most people I know have private accounts, they usually follow and are followed by between a few hundred and a thousand or so other accounts (think classmates and friends of friends). Instagram is where you post photos of yourself in the best possible light, not just silly and random things. People use Stories to share news and post sillier and less permanent content. Not everyone just scrolls endlessly on Instagram; I only follow people I know in real life but many people follow celebrities and meme accounts as well.

\- Snapchat is more like a communication platform than a social media platform. People send disappearing photos (usually quick selfies or photos of what they're doing at the moment) to their friends. If you exchange a photo or video with someone for any number of consecutive days, you'll start a streak with that person, which further incentivizes you to continue sending photos to them. Snapchat also has stories, but these are usually intended to be even less permanent. Candid selfies with friends or videos of people doing silly things are the main use, at least within my extended group of friends. It's gotten no less popular recently.

\- YouTube continues to be popular. Hopefully this should be self-explanatory. Gaming content is popular.

\- Facebook is basically unused by anyone my age other than for specific groups that haven't migrated elsewhere.

\- GroupMe is popular for college class group chats and whatnot, but not as a place to hang out and talk about other stuff.

\- Twitter is still occasionally used for content consumption, but not as much as Instagram.

\- FaceTime, Snapchat's video-calling functionality, and Houseparty (sometimes) are the usual ways to communicate via video chat between friends.

\- Discord is expanding outside of gaming circles for text and voice chat.

\- Reddit is mildly popular for meme content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> hats off to Facebook for being absolutely shameless and zero ethics

they don't even pretend to be honest (unlike Google) and it's a miracle so far they haven't had to pay damages for all the 'inspiration' they have found from other people's products

<comment><USER52> I'm sure 'Zuck is very sorry.

<comment><USER52> For reference: [https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year- apology-t...](https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-tour- hasnt-fixed-facebook/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This seems like a perfect opportunity since TikTok is banned in India. Most influencers will migrate to Instagram reels. I don't like facebook's business model, but seems they know how to make money.

</comment><comment><USER54> Never used Tiktok, or Instagram, and Facebook just now seems to be nothing more than a feed of irrelevant ads to, and any friends' or family posts are relegated to the little bell icon.

I barely look at it more than once every few days now as it has lost much of its utility.

Most of my friends and family are on other social networks and sites (twitter, strava, discord) now with fewer, or no ads, or even just whatsapp groups on the phone.

<comment><USER55> Not exactly sure how your personal experience with a company is really relevant, considering that the article is specifically discussing a new product said company is launching.

But transitioning to more intimate forms of social media is a great move, so I'm glad you made the switch. A lot of people do find Facebook (for example) to be too fake, while others need it to keep in touch with their family and communities.

<comment><USER54> You're right my post isn't that relevant.

The product they are launching, for me, isn't relevant either.

We've long since reached peak Facebook, and its social network is fragmenting as they're losing people for the reasons I mentioned previously. They're effectively chasing a new audience to keep their numbers up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is it's worldwide launch. Reels was already launched in India a few weeks ago when the Indian government imposed a ban on TikTok.

</comment><comment><USER57> I find myself never actually using social media. Good friends belong to the same Signal group chats. I have several of these which consists of cliques I have built up over the years in school and at work and that's how I stay in touch. For those that are further out of reach there is email and linkedin if I really need to dig someone up from the past.

<comment><USER58> You seem to have well informed flexible friends, who are willing to try something "new". I wish I could get a handful of my friends to use something like Signal. Best even something not requiring a phone number. It's stupid that Signal wants a phone number. What has my phone number to do with chatting via Internet?

Any advice how to get your friends to switch, when they do not care much about their privacy and have a defeatism attitude with regard to guarding their privacy or simply do not understand, that their actions affect their friends?

<comment><USER57> I find good friends often share similar technological viewpoints right down to the basic level. The people I have on signal are pretty much all cut from the same cloth in that regard. I.E. they tend to avoid big internet corps whenever possible and hack their own solutions.

For people I consider casual acquaintances or just outside of the "inner circle" so to speak, I just use SMS.

<comment><USER48> Are you saying you have no diversity in your friends? They're all technical and they all have the same privacy view as you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> These types of articles are so frustrating and show why media is failing so badly.

This is an article about a product launch that:

* Barely talks about the product at all.

* No demos of what the product does.

* Not even a single picture of what the product looks like.

* Does not link to the actual product's page.

* Very few links at all, and mostly to their own pages.

* Is 50% about the competitor's legal/political issues.

* IS 50% about the parent company's strategy in launching the product.

I don't understand why there can't be 2 articles here:

* Information about the product launch.

* An opinion article about Facebook strategy vs. Microsoft TikTok Trump.

I'm pretty sure everyone just skims these articles because they are so uninformative. Can I be the only person who feels this way?

<comment><USER60> This reads to me like it was written by Facebook PR (indirectly) via a press packet.

A lot of "news" articles are just PR departments lobbying journalists. The journalist tweaks stuff slightly, then dumps it over the wall. This sort of thing is very cheap to produce. And, to be fair, it isn't actually new. The more useful/novel/investigative content has slowly declined, so this is all that's left.

There just isn't any money in writing news. Newspapers were never paid for news content, but rather delivering ads to everyone's doorstep daily. E.g. subscription revenue was much less than ad revenue, to the point that it was never clear to me why subscription prices were non-zero (though they were usually separate departments with their own P&L, so it's probably just historical).

There are better ways to find classifieds, job listings, and brand advertising these days... So now we have this junk. If one could find a way of financially or otherwise incentivizing real journalism, you'd be a folk hero.

<comment><USER59> I'm not expecting investigative journalism here. I just expect the article about a product launch to be mostly about the product being launched. Like pull out your phone install the app and take a screenshot or two. List what it does and how it works.

Save the corporate strategery and political intrigue stuff for another article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> > Facebook launches its TikTok clone, Instagram Reels

FTFY.

I'm being facetious of course. The real clone here is being done by the US gov't, who is copying the Chinese playbook: keep out a foreign company by political means, thus encouraging local competitors.

I guess it's really true that you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

<comment><USER62> > keep out a foreign company by political means, thus encouraging the domestic > tech oligopoly.

FTFY ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Youtube also has one, I don't remember when I first started noticing it, because I scrolled past it for a long time before opening one. On my phone, in the app, towards the top of the list of videos, is a section called "Stories and short videos". So far, there is very little compelling in there.

</comment><comment><USER64> I wonder if they waited for after the congress testimony to launch this. Not surprisingly, Zuckerberg was questioned[1] about this strategy.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyI3ixI1xSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyI3ixI1xSk)

</comment><comment><USER65> Official announcement: [https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing-i...](https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing- instagram-reels-announcement/)

</comment><comment><USER66> I was going to say "I can't wait to have a second row of crap across the top of my Instagram feed that I don't care about" ... and I open the IG app, and now "stories" takes up two rows. haha.

</comment><comment><USER67> "log in with Tik Tok" will be their aim. They'll push their decentralized identity platform with this and advertise that your data is safe and you aren't being tracked.

</comment><comment><USER68> Instagram is the beta test environment/battleground for Facebook.

<comment><USER69> Haha no. Facebook is where successful instagram features go to die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Ahhh yes. More cringeworthy content for us all!

<comment><USER71> Meh, comments like this are cringeworthy. Let people enjoy what they enjoy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I read this as "Instagram reels" from the fact that Facebook launched a rival...

</comment><comment><USER73> What a huge favor to Microsoft, which now can acquire TikTok for a lot less!

</comment><comment><USER74> Instagram has a real shot at out-doing ticktock here. It's got much better penetration among youth and can take serious advantage of that. Ticktock is basically a subculture, used by the same people that used vsco a few years ago. Just my two cents.

</comment><comment><USER75> Not a catchy name at all. I'd forecast failure on that alone.

</comment><comment><USER76> The Congressional antitrust hearings were a week ago.

<comment><USER77> Which is probably why Zuk is doubling down on Reels instead of trying to buy TikTok - he know it'd never get approved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> it's amazing to me that the same group of people that consistently whine about unfair treatment of businesses and also china are likely the same group of people applauding the administration's taking tiktok hostage, forcing a sale with the threat of ban and wildly making up claims of what's owed to the government while u.s. companies swoop in to release competing features and for a bargain buyout.

</comment><comment><USER79> >..popular karaoke app TikTok..

Never heard it that way.

<comment><USER80> The entire article is filled with things that are flat-out wrong, I'm not sure how this made it past an editor.

> Reels' video distribution algorithm will resemble TikTok's: users will see > the most popular videos at the moment, rather than a selection tailored to > their individual profile

TikTok is _all about_ showing you content tailored to you. Compare your TikTok feed to any of your friends' and it'll be super different.

> Reels differs from TikTok thanks to Instagram's augmented reality effects, > which let users overlay images and filters onto their videos

TikTok's had this forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> They should've chosen better name.

<comment><USER82> Instagram is gonna be constantly surprised and reeling from successive announcements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> wow we can finally get back to being spied on by the US as usual instead of china!

</comment><comment><USER84> I read this as "Instagram reels [from the blast]" and was super confused about why Instagram was being hurt by products launched from its parent company.

<comment><USER85> Ah, but the headline is written in sentence case, not title case - as can be seen in the words "launches", "its" and "rival", which are read before "Instagram Reels". Rookie error ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> "Instagram Reels" in this headline reads like present simple tense. But then you realize that Instagram isn't a competitor to Facebook, and well...

</comment><comment><USER49> How can there be room for so many social media apps? One option is that all of them carve up the social media demographic in such a way that they have enough users to be profitable, but no majority. Another outcome is that teens are fickle, but if the platforms move from content creators to individuals, then it is no longer a social media platform and just the new MTV(s). I have no idea how this is going to shake out and I am fascinated by it, despite HN being the only social media platform I use.

<comment><USER87> I think influences, celebrities and other people that teens look up to have a massive effect on these platforms. Look at clothes, streetwear brands that celebrities wear instantly become popular and sell out. The purpose of social media is to interact with your friends but also see celebrities and their pages. Even if a platform is better or cooler than another, nobodys going to switch because none of your friends are on it and there's no point. But if your favorite artist and a couple of popular youtubers get on, you might make an account to see their content. And then you see that some of your friends have it, and start using it more. After a while, maybe people stopped posting on the old social media app and you delete it because the people you follow aren't active on it anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Ugh

</comment><comment><USER89> I wonder if Zuck included the Suppress Biden Tags feature?

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/instagram- relat...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/instagram-related- hashtags-favoring-trump-over-biden)

</comment><comment><USER90> That's a reel bad name.

</comment><comment><USER91> Has anyone noticed the emergence of axios.com articles trending on HackerNews in the last week?

Is this being engineered or is it because of the Trump interview on Axios?

<comment><USER92> Random spot check and they all seem to be shared by users with high karma, so I think the site is just more popular? And it's not some sort of marketing push by them.

<comment><USER93> They've been around for a few years with really solid (in my opinion) daily email news digests, and the in depth reporting they've done seems solid too, so I generally trust what they publish.

<comment><USER94> How would you rate them to APNews or Economist?

<comment><USER93> Do you mean trustworthiness?

APNews is only good for the fact that something happened, not for any degree of interpretation, and you have to be on your guard for what isn't being said and what facts haven't been mentioned.

The Economist is different because they talk about only a few things and usually add a whole lot of opinion, but when I do dig deeper I find that they generally take defensible stances even if there are problems with their arguments. And if Hacker News is any indication, you'll never be able to assert anything with confidence, however well researched, without someone else asserting the exact opposite with more confidence.

My experience with Axios is that they generally avoid taking editorial positions that are obviously partisan, though they are clearly left of center on the American political spectrum (then again, I think America's current political spectrum has moved so much that the bounds of reality are now mostly left of center). When I dig deeper, I usually find that they aren't guilty of selectively presenting information. Their business model is still ad driven, so they are not immune to the classic problems of money influencing news, so I still view Axios with default skepticism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> > The new product will be embedded within Instagram

Oh god. It means that, like Instagram TV or whatever it was called, it will be forcibly shoved down your throat for the next half a year with nagging reminders for another year.

<comment><USER96> I check Instagram most days and I had never heard of Instagram TV before this post. They can't possibly have been shoving it down everyone's throats that aggressively.

<comment><USER95> You didn't use Instagram when they rolled out IGTV then. There were multiple inline promotions, aggressive hints for the dedicated IGTV button, then they made this dedicated button red (in an otherwise gray-and-white interface) for several months.

It still failed, of course, and got relegated to a small button inside the explore tab, but it the push was aggressive nonetheless. Expect the same for "Facebook's TikTok".</comment></comment></comment>


Google Assistant Runs Circles Around Siri - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-google-embarrassed-apple-2016-10 <comment><USER2> What I would really, really love to have is application that performed many of the functions Google Assistant and Siri offer but which did not send any info to external parties unless it was absolutely necessary (i.e. performing as much of the compute and analysis locally as technically possible).</comment>


How Madoff Did It - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/24/news/newsmakers/madoff.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009042406

<comment><AUTHOR> There are lots of pointers for entrepreneurs: Things you should _not_ let yourself slide into. What may seem like "little" ethical lapses that you _seem_ like you could get away with... but may start you down a path for misery (and possibly is wide distribution to others).</comment>


Democracy at 4 AM: What unprecedented protest means for Taiwan - <AUTHOR> http://4am.tw <comment><AUTHOR> I'm an software engineer from Taiwan. Taiwan is one of the countries in east asia that has democracy, and we're super proud of it. However, the current government tried to pass some laws that has deep impact to our economy secretly. They tried to pass the law in congress restroom, and passed it in JUST 30 SECONDS.

This is something that Taiwan people can't stand for. We need to fight for our democracy procedure. A law like this cannot be treated this way. The students in taiwan occupied the congress hall (Legislative Yuan). Following up we have so many volunteer from all professions joined us. The doctors started to help people who were injured; the lawyers defended for people who were caught by police; hackers who like you and me helped the wifi and real time streaming to be stable and robust, and also built this website for more visibility from the world.

It's 4am at Taiwan. WE NEED YOUR ATTENTION. WE NEED YOU to spread what happened in taiwan to the world. Take a look on those photos and videos. It's dark in Taiwan, but we believe the dawn will come.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIAe3DREUhI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIAe3DREUhI) [http://instagram.com/p/l-Duu5By7B/](http://instagram.com/p/l-Duu5By7B/)

Some recorded video of how police beat people

<comment><USER2> that's a pretty standard riot control tactic, executed quite well. I don't agree with the beating tho :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The protesters are made up of three overlapping groups:

1\. Those who resent the way the ruling party reneged on its promise of legislative review and forced a this trade services pact with China through.

2\. Those who have economic concerns, e.g. they worry that Taiwanese small and medium sized businesses would be acquired by Chinese capital thus massively raising the barrier to entry in some industries. Another worry is that Taiwan may face a massive brain drain to China.

3\. Those who have national security concerns because the trade services pact opens for e.g. some parts of the telecommunications and publishing industries. China claims Taiwan as a renegade province and has said it'd use force to unify the motherland if necessary.

So far this is still a Taiwanese domestic issue though with the U.S. and China watching closely. One WSJ report goes[1]:

"U.S. officials might consider all this as they prepare to resume bilateral trade talks with Taiwan next week. Advancing bilateral trade—and encouraging eventual Taiwanese accession to the Trans-Pacific Partnership—would help quiet nerves on all sides of Taiwanese politics. The U.S. has largely ignored Taiwan in recent years, but Taipei's current crisis highlights the extent to which trouble still lurks in that corner of Asia."

[1]:[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230441840...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304418404579464670045528380)

<comment><USER4> I would be scared of annexation if I were a Taiwanese citizen. Heavy-handed states (including China) have not been kind to dissenters.

<comment><USER5> Taiwan may get "Putin-ed", step 1 cause citizen outrage, step 2 citizens revolt against their corrupt government step 3 China moves in to help stabilize the country without a government.

<comment> guard-of-terra There is another scenario: 1 cause citizen outrage, step 2 government successfully ignores outrage/beats protesters/tells lies to general public step 3 you're Putin-ed still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV8JDbtXZm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV8JDbtXZm4)

We video taped and written a song for the occupation. Even compare to other protest in countries, we are so proud our people in protest is peaceful and well organized. People who have profession (like doctors, hackers, lawyers) setup stations to help people. Other volunteers got organized and pick up trash and send out food.

Still, we are terrified. The government sent out police to beat up people who don't have weapons. Even though we have videos to prove it, the government is still denying it.

This is the worst moment for us, but also the best. We see hope from people, and we're looking for your help.

<comment><USER6> Keep posting video. They can't deny it if it's all over youtube. Also, post links to video on newspapers sites if they have a comment section

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Background: On March 17, the ruling political party in Taiwan passed a wide ranging services trade pact[1] with China through extraordinary legislative maneuvers. On March 18, a few hundred protesters, mostly college aged, stormed and successfully occupied the legislature. Once the news got out, a larger crowd of tens of thousands surrounded the legislature building.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- Strait_Service_Trade_Agre...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- Strait_Service_Trade_Agreement)

</comment><comment><USER7> The web site does not do a good job of explaining what their concerns are with the agreement.

But the pie chart shown (setting aside sample bias...) is stunning: it says that only 1.6% of people asked said they support the agreement.

This in a country where people believe in democracy as a strong part of their national identity, and as the main thing that makes them different from mainland China.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for advice. We have a lot discussions of the agreement, but written in Chinese. We'll translate those to English and expose the context to the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another "colorful" part is that there have been gangsters showing up at the protest site, threatening the largely college aged protesters. This coincides with the return to Taiwan of a mob boss with close Chinese ties:

[http://thediplomat.com/2014/02/the-return-of-gangster- politi...](http://thediplomat.com/2014/02/the-return-of-gangster-politics-in- taiwan/)

He's been spotted at the scene (the last photo): [http://www.appledaily.com.tw/realtimenews/article/new/201403...](http://www.appledaily.com.tw/realtimenews/article/new/20140319/363147/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Democracy in Taiwan is crucial.

The President of Taiwan is nicknamed President 9% (his approval rating). 70% of Taiwan people favor the students, which is why they have had difficulty removing them from the Congress (Yuan).

A huge protest is planned tomorrow, March 30th.

Here's some Twitter hashtags to follow events:

#Taiwan

#TaiwanOccupy (they are occupying the congress)

#反服贸

</comment><comment><USER9> The trade agreement between China and Taiwan that's currently on the table contains two parts, one concerns publishing and the other has to do with ISP. Taiwanese in general, like to preserve their own identity, culture, language, etc. The agreement MAY alter the market dynamics, for example, squeezing out Taiwan's native publishers. The biggest concern is the control of digital information. No need to explain on this. Overall, Taiwanese are just afraid of what-ifs. Personally, I'm OK with publishing but not the digital information pact.

</comment><comment><USER10> Within a few hours, there will be a protest event in Taipei. Accroding to the facebook event page, more than 60000 people have signed up to join the event. We believe more people would standing out on Sunday to ask government to legislate supervision regulations on Cross-Strait Trade. We advocate transparency of the trade agreement including review, signing and execute process. [https://www.facebook.com/events/1471107093105919/](https://www.facebook.com/events/1471107093105919/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been to the protest. One good reporting source is [https://twitter.com/JMichaelCole1](https://twitter.com/JMichaelCole1)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a website developer from Taiwan. There'll be a protest movement 9 hours later. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV8JDbtXZm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV8JDbtXZm4) This song is made during these days, might explain what happened these days.

</comment><comment><USER12> More links to the news:

Taiwanese Occupy Legislature Over China Pact, The Diplomat [http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/taiwanese-occupy- legislature-...](http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/taiwanese-occupy-legislature- over-china-pact/)

Taiwan Stands Behind Use of Force Against Protesters, New York Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/world/asia/taiwan- defends-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/world/asia/taiwan-defends-use- of-force-against-protesters.html?_r=0)

</comment><comment><USER13> Have you ever noticed this is the brightest moment of Taiwan's Internet community? It surely is, and it's ongoing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Taiwan's democracy is being threaten by China.

Please help us and share.

We really need international attention.

<comment><USER15> Threatened by China, or your own politicians?

<comment><USER16> Most politicians in Taiwan are either threaten or bribed by China. The ruling party is heavily corrupted, and large enterprise highly influenced, by the huge economic power of China, while most average citizens are worried, but powerless of the situation. This is why the majority of Taiwanese sympathize with the students' action of Occupying the Congress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Someone care to explain the geopolitical situation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Taiwan is a small country next to China. Although people on both side speak the same language, the culture and government system is different. China, officially the People's Republic of China, is a sovereign state. Taiwan, however, is democratic. The Taiwan government originally based on mainland China, but was defeated by People's Republic of China, and moved to Taiwan.

Officially, Taiwan and China is in war. We never signed up armistice agreement. Taiwan politicians can be separated into two groups. One believe if we stay close to China, we can have better economics. A few of them even want to unite with China. The other group believe we should stay as a country of our own, and China government hates it.

With those background information you can see, making a economic agreement with china is sensitive to people, but the current government tried to pass it without standard procedure in congress. This is why people are so angry about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really hope this doesn't become another Ukraine. Obviously the context is different but still.

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone from Taiwan care to comment?(I'm sure someone from there frequents HN)

<comment><USER20> [https://www.facebook.com/sunflowermovement?ref=stream](https://www.facebook.com/sunflowermovement?ref=stream)

Here have a lot of information translated into different languages. Hope it might help you understand what's going on in this island. We really need supports and international attentions :) Thank you!</comment></comment>


Linux 4.5-rc5: efivarfs fixed to avoid "rm -rf /" bricking UEFI - <AUTHOR> https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=0389075ecfb6231818de9b0225d3a5a21a661171 <comment><USER2> For context, this is in reference to a bug that was discussed a couple weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10999335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10999335)

      Systemd mounted efivarfs read-write, allowing motherboard bricking via 'rm'

Essentially, systemd defaulted to a configuration where the computer's motherboard could be permanently destroyed by removing a 'file' from the command line. The bug reporter argued that this was unduly dangerous, but the systemd developers thought that systemd was working as intended.

Here's a reasonably impartial discussion on a FreeBSD list that gives an overview: [https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/54951/](https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/54951/)

And from that thread, here's a link to Matthew Garrett (the creator of efivarfs) saying that efivarfs is at fault here rather than systemd: [https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/693494314941288448](https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/693494314941288448)

<comment><USER3> > but the developer's thought that it was working as intended

Really? Is that evidenced by Lennart's response to this, which stated "The ability to hose a system is certainly reason enought to make sure it's well protected and only writable to root."[1]? I think it implies the _opposite_.

1: [https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/2402](https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/2402)

<comment><USER4> It happens rarely, but actually I totally agree with Lennart on this one. Maybe not for the very same ultimate reasons, but nevertheless, I agree.

Being able to brick hardware through a very oftenly used action (unliking a filesystem entry) throws us back into the times where one could damage display devices beyone repair by feeding them scan frequencies outside their operational range or by destroying hard disks by smashing the heads into a parking position outside of the mechanical range. We left those days behind us some 20 years ago: Devices got smart enough to detect potentially dangerous inputs and execute failsafe behaviour. It's just reasonable to expect this from system firmware.

When talking about (U)EFI variables we're not talking about firmware updates, which are kind of a special action (and even for firmware updates its unacceptible that a corrupted update bricks a system¹). Manipulating (U)EFI variables is considered a perfectly normal day-to-day operation and the OS should not have to care about sanity checks and validity at boot time. (U)EFI is the owner and interpreter of these variables, so it is absolutely reasonable to expect the firmware to have safeguards and failsafe values in place.

IMHO (U)EFI is a big mess, a bloated mishap of system boostrap loader. And I'm totally against trying to workaround all the br0kenness in higher levels. The more and often systems brick due to the very fundamentals of (U)EFI being so misguided, the sooner we'll move on to something that's not verengineered.

\----

¹: Just to make the point: When we developed the bootstrap loader for our swept laser product we implemented several safeguards to make it unbrickable. It's perfectly fine to cut the power or reset the device in the middle of a firmware upgrade. It safely recovers from that. Heck, the firmware in flash memory could become damaged by cosmic radiation, the bootloader would detect it and reinstall it from a backup copy in secondary storage.

<comment><USER5> I completely disagree. I looked at the patch above. I personally don't like. mounting efivars rw is akin to mounting boot rw by default.

A sane linux distro will mount it ro and switch to rw whenever need. Defaulting to rw efivars is, excuse the language stupid.

I've done a fair share of efi debugging even removing some of the variables that the kernel will now protect you from breaking.

If the issue is that users should be able to remount efivars as rw whenever needed then that should be addressed, not prevent you from doing stuff to it because there is a rogue init system doing crazy stuff.

EDIT: BTW, i don't think systemd does anything besides write to the various Boot* variables, but I may be wrong. I don't see why that can't be addressed with a remount. If you replace the boot.efi you still have to remount the efi partition anyway.

While Matthew may be right that there is an issue that needs to be addressed, but in one of his tweets he basically says the kernel should fix it because tooling isn't and bioses suck. Well, maybe tooling should be forced to fix it.

or from the issue:

        Matthew-Jemielity commented 24 days ago
        What needs efivars mounted at all anyway? So far I've seen:

        grub
        systemctl --firmware-setup reboot
        efibootmgr
        Since those likely need superuser, couldn't they handle (un)mounting it themselves?

        @annejan
        annejan commented 23 days ago
        As long as distribution that are aimed at consumers remount it ro and on updating kernels wrap grub with remount this is a complete non-issue.

<comment><USER4> > I personally don't like. mounting efivars rw is akin to mounting boot rw by > default.

No, it's not the same. Mounting `/boot` rw by default does not put your system in the danger of getting damaged beyond repair. If you hose the boot partition you can always start a recovery system (live Linux or similar) to repair the damage.f

But if deleting efivars renders a system inoperable on a firmware level you're essentially SOL, save for rewriting the contents of the system firmware flash using an external programmer and a clean image. That is an absolutely inacceptable situation. The year is 2016 and hosing a firmware by writing malformed values into the firmware API is, simply put, a software vulnerability that allows to permanently DoS a system. As such this is a security issue that must be fixed at where the security issue happens. And in case of efivars the issue is that certain input is not properly validated and/or sanitized. If a system firmware can not properly start with certain variables being unset or removed or set to invalid valued, its should be a implementation requirement to validate input on such variables before executing the change.

> Defaulting to rw efivars is, excuse the language stupid.

It probably it. But it's not the responsibility of the OS to sanitize values that are not intended for being used by the OS. efivars are intended to be used by (U)EFI and hence it's the (U)EFI implementation's task to properly sanitize access to them.

Essentially we're talking Bobby Tables here, just with a different API.

<comment><USER6> > (U)EFI implementation's task to properly sanitize access to them.

If the implementation is bad (which it is), that doesn't excuse reckless userland software that refuses to acknowledge flaws in the firmware.

<comment><USER7> There's a layer between userland and firmware where those things should be handled, and indeed everyone agreed that it should be handled in the kernel

Saying that Lennart is wrong has become a rather popular sport, let's not go overboard to say it even when he's right by all accounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a case of a _leaky abstraction_ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_abstraction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_abstraction)). The "everything is a file" philosophy is the real problem here.

Specifically, the way a mental model of a hierarchy is broken by mounting a higher-order ressource (UEFI variables) as a subordinate of a file system that is itself a subordinate of the OS.

UEFI vars are just hardware resources. Mapping them as a file system object is just unnatural and, yes, stupid.

Trying to use a permission model ("only root can do it") overlooks the real problem: The user do not _expect_ higher order objects to be mapped as subordinates of the file system.

When you delete from the file system, you expect objects to be deleted from the _disk_ \- not UEFI variables to be altered or deleted! And because the user does not expect such behavior, there's a good chance she/he will override warnings and go ahead with the operation expecting only file system objects to be affected.

This is "everything is a file" taken a bridge too far.

<comment><USER9> Where does Linux promise that files are bits on a disk? As a user I certainly don't expect that. Perhaps you have a problem with the name "file" but the abstraction itself still seems useful. (And yet I do find it quite odd when I have to do something like `echo "TPAD" > /proc/acpi/wakeup` to disable wake- on-trackpad.) That said I don't disagree with you that UEFI variables should not be delete-able, but there are many files on Linux that you can't delete.

<comment><USER8> It is a _file_ system, consisting of file system objects, like files and directories.

Already exposing processes as files is an abstraction. It somewhat works because you can imagine the file representation being maintained by the process. But it is an abstraction, because a process _is not_ a file.

But what is more important: A file system is a _hierarchy_. At the root is the most fundamental object. Each level has _subordinate_ objects. That the model you expect.

Having UEFI variables mounted as a file is a surprising loop back to something even more fundamental that the OS itself: The firmware of the physical computer. It a breach of the mental model.

It breaks one of the most fundamental principles that should be followed in man-machine interaction: The principle of least surprise.

I have a machine. I have installed an operating system on it. The OS manages several disks. On the disks the OS manages file systems. I expect the files of that system to be managed by the OS.

I _do not_ expect that regular file system actions have effect _outside the hierarchy_ of the directory on which I perform the actions. Specifically I _do not_ expect files on that system to manage the physical computer.

<comment><USER10> > _Already exposing processes as files is an abstraction._

No. The _file system_ , is the abstraction. Adding /proc onto it is a use of that abstraction.

There's two basic extreme positions, and you're adopting one, your parent is adopting something closer to the other.

a. The filesystem only exposes filesystems actually on disk, mapped to some hierarchy. As you say, " _On the disks the OS manages file systems._ "

b. The filesystem is (roughly) a hierarchical container of named binary blobs (called "files") with some defined associated metadata, such as permissions.

While you can adopt (a), and that's fine, some of us (myself included) see a lot of value in (b). The biggest problem with only exposing "real" file- storing FSes in the file hierarchy is that it leaves you with a ton of questions about how to expose all the other things. Taking the stance that we're only going to expose "real" files in the file hierarchy leaves us with several classes of objects that aren't files-on-disk, and you need to name them s.t. the user can interact with them. It is certainly possible to expose each different type of thing in a completely separate namespace. You'll probably also need to be able to associate permissions with those objects¹, as so now you've got a named, ACL'd list or hierarchy of objects, and it's starting to look a lot like a filesystem. You now also need another set of tooling to work with each of these classes of objects. You need another set of syscalls for each of these objects.

The great thing about having a unified file hierarchy in the (b) abstraction is that tooling works on all of these different classes of objects different. It's really just the "CRUD" idiom, and normally it allows things to interoperate quite smoothly. I can write a bash script that draws a progress bar of my battery, and it requires no knowledge other than where in the file hierarchy the battery is.

This is, of course, a case where the power is somewhat biting us. That doesn't make the abstraction wrong, nor does it mean the abstraction isn't leaky. (In fact, in this case, the abstraction works really well, I'd say. Any other implementation of UEFI variables is going to have a "delete" call, AFAICT. What bit us here is that all the objects are in one bucket together, and thus rm -rf / removes more than just files.)

> _It breaks one of the most fundamental principles that should be followed in > man-machine interaction: The principle of least surprise._

While I agree, that doesn't mean we need to throw out all the power of having a unified file system, but it might beget some way of ensuring the user understands what `rm -rf /` actually does. There's certainly more than one way to solve this, some of which don't involve limiting what can be done with the FS. (As some examples: perhaps rm shouldn't recurse to a different FS, and objects of similar types are on different FSs, which prevent the very error that got us here; perhaps some files force "user acknowledgement" of their removal; perhaps it really does get mounted read-only.)

¹While you might be able to get away with "only root accesses UEFI vars" in the scenario that they're not in the file hierarchy, if you remove all non- real-files then you've got a lot of other things to deal with: unix sockets, block devices, terminals, all the various I/O ports, temp sensors, battery data… the list is extensive.

<comment><USER8> > No. The file system, is the abstraction. Adding /proc onto it is a use of > that abstraction.

Agree that the file system is an abstraction. Makes us think in terms of directories (containers) and files (items). Everything in the file system is designed around the idea of files and directories. Permissions (rwx), operations (create, move, copy, append, delete).

However, already adding /proc challenges that. What does it mean to have "execute" right to a process? It is already running? What does it mean to append to a process? to move it? If processes are "files", why can I not kill the process by deleting the file? Processes are not naturally files. Yes, it makes somewhat sense if you think of /proc as status information being maintained for each process, i.e. they are extracts, owned by the OS.

But UEFI vars makes absolutely no sense. It is a true leaky abstraction. If one need to be able to write to UEFI vars, then create an API for it, possibly some utilities. That way I need not risk altering fundamental firmware settings by performing seemingly file system operations whose effect I expect to be limited to the hierarchy!

> The great thing about having a unified file hierarchy in the (b) abstraction > is that tooling works on all of these different classes of objects > different. It's really just the "CRUD" idiom, and normally it allows things > to interoperate quite smoothly. I can write a bash script that draws a > progress bar of my battery, and it requires no knowledge other than where in > the file hierarchy the battery is.

But it actually just sweeping complexity under the rug. I need documentation for _what_ the file contains on each "line" \- what it means to write to it, etc. It is not discoverable at all. If you expose system resources as actual resources and do not try to map them onto files, you can actually make a discoverable system. An example of such a regime is CIM. On Windows, PowerShell (or Python or VBScript or ...) can be used to interact with such fundamental system resources. To use your example of a progress bar of the battery, here is an example of how the entire process from _discovering_ the correct ressource (the battery) to displaying a progress bar on Windows _without_ consulting documentation:

    			PS C:\> #there's probably some class for batteries. let's look for it by name
    			PS C:\> get-cimclass *battery*

    			   NameSpace: ROOT/cimv2

    			CimClassName                        CimClassMethods      CimClassProperties
    			</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>                        </comment><comment></comment><comment>---      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
    			CIM_Battery                         {SetPowerState, R... {Caption, Description, InstallDate, Name...}
    			Win32_Battery                       {SetPowerState, R... {Caption, Description, InstallDate, Name...}
    			Win32_PortableBattery               {SetPowerState, R... {Caption, Description, InstallDate, Name...}
    			CIM_AssociatedBattery               {}                   {Antecedent, Dependent}

    			PS C:\> # the Win32_Battery probably offers the most specific information

    			PS C:\> Get-CimInstance Win32_Battery

    			Caption                     : Internal Battery
    			Description                 : Internal Battery
    			Name                        : DELL 1C75X31
    			Status                      : OK
    			Availability                : 2
    			CreationClassName           : Win32_Battery
    			DeviceID                    : 647Samsung SDIDELL 1C75X31
    			PowerManagementCapabilities : {1}
    			PowerManagementSupported    : False
    			SystemCreationClassName     : Win32_ComputerSystem
    			...
    			BatteryStatus               : 2
    			Chemistry                   : 6
    			DesignCapacity              :
    			DesignVoltage               : 12992
    			EstimatedChargeRemaining    : 94
    			EstimatedRunTime            : 71582788
    			ExpectedLife                :
    			MaxRechargeTime             :
    			...
    			ExpectedBatteryLife         :

    			PS C:\> # yep - that's it. lets save this instance in a variable
    			PS C:\> $bat = Get-CimInstance Win32_Battery

    			PS C:\> # display a progress bar and update it continually every 10 secs
    			PS C:\> for(){ Write-Progress Battery -PercentComplete $bat.EstimatedChargeRemaining -Status "Charge remaining"; sleep 10 }

> This is, of course, a case where the power is somewhat biting us.

No, what biting us is a leaky abstraction that surprises us: We can accidentally delete firmware variables because file system operations are not constrained to the directories/files they operate on.

> That doesn't make the abstraction wrong

It is an abuse of the abstraction.

> Any other implementation of UEFI variables is going to have a "delete" call, > AFAICT.

Indeed. In PowerShell you can discover the commands for manipulating by gcm _UEFI_

> What bit us here is that all the objects are in one bucket together, and > thus rm -rf / removes more than just files.

No, what bit us is the broken expectation (a surprise) that a higher-level resource was mapped below some file system directory.

<comment><USER11> Off-topic, but imo HN needs more PS-promoting posts like this. I have the impression there are still tons of people out there who're stuck in the 'windows has no proper command line so administration means ugly batch files and registry hacks' mindset. Examples like this should open their eyes. Sure you can't pipe text around (and go through hoops to parse it corectly) like in bash so it takes some getting used to depending on your background, but one you get a hold of it you realize it really is _power_ shell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A lot of people are busy arguing who to blame, I just think it's interesting that sometimes you need to support non-standard software. Actually, I think it's interesting that highly successful programs are not the ones who go "not my fault, you should just implement the spec better".

Raymond Chen talked[1] about the importance of supporting that ran on Win95 but broke on WinXP, even if they weren't complying to Microsoft specs.

I also remember reading that web browsers had to go to great length to render completely non-compliant web pages.

In your experience, when should you decide to support "non-complying" behavior?

[1]: Unfortunately I cannot find the original article by Chen but I could find extensive mentions of it in [this article by Joel Spolsky]([http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html))

<comment><USER13> This may be the Raymond Chen article you are referring to: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031224-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031224-00/?p=41363)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Instead of flaming systemd developers for mounting efivars read/write, the kernel is the right place to fix the problem for everybody!

<comment><USER15> No, the firmware is the right place to fix the problem. A BIOS that bricks itself because of within-specification deletion of variables via a standard API is just plain broken.

But in the real world no one ever fixes firmware bugs, so this is the best we can do.

<comment><USER16> > But in the real world no one ever fixes firmware bugs, so this is the best > we can do.

PREFACE: This is an anecdote, but I do believe it reflects on general state of hardware vendors, because when I Google'd, it showed that people had similar, if not worse problems than I did.

And this is so incredibly sad. Especially when you buy a $2.5k laptop which only works with Windows (with quirks).

I bought a laptop^[model] on which you couldn't even install another OS because of a crippling firmware bug. It wasn't until a shit storm on their forums that they released a firmware update which fixed the issue (which was that the SATA controller was stuck in RAID mode, and you couldn't change it to AHCI), which prevented any OS from being installed (even window, that _was_ installed already, which is bizarre) because no OS could recognise the PCIe NVMe M.2 SSDs.

After the update was released, I did happily install Linux on it, but the ACPI DSDT was so broken, I didn't know where to begin with fixing it (apart from this whole hardware stuff being outside of my domain). Other than that jack detection is jack shit (pun intended). I literally can't use my headphones without special OEM or Realtek software (forgot which) on Windows, and I can't use them at all on Linux because there's no equivalent. I tried playing with various modes^[modes] and output configurations, but to no avail.

Also, on Windows I hear a subtle scratchy sound from somewhere in my laptop, but I don't hear it on Windows. I noticed it the most while moving my USB mouse or when there's a lot of CPU intensive work. No, all the solutions recommended online didn't work, and this is apparently an issue with Windows on Asus/Realtek for _years_ , if not decades.

Furthermore, there's a bizarre flicker which subtly intensifies and then subtly goes away on Windows (and it interestingly happens only in some applications which appear to use GPU acceleration) which doesn't happen on Linux (even during an intensive OpenGL benchmark followed by a WebGL benchmark).

The things I thought I'd have most issues with (the GPU and the Skylake processor) turned out to be the _least_ of my problems. Actually, 0 problems with them. So, kudos to NVIDIA for their proprietary Linux drivers (the novueau ones worked great, too, but I devcided to go for the proprietary ones due to the slight performance benefit).

So, no this isn't a Linux issue to anyone who wants to scream "boohoo linux is bad for consumer PCs". This is all an issue of shitty hardware vendors. There's probably over a hundred models documented on the Archlinux Wiki[archwiki] with all their various quirks and what not. Most of those are actually hardware problems, and there's no way for Linux to fix all these problems without there being some giant database with each laptop model and its quirks and applying configuration fixes, and this would also have to be distro-agnostic or cover various distros to work properly. The only reason why most of it _kinda_ (not flawlessly) works on Windows is because the various Vendors actually cooperate with the Windows developers (I imagine), and its rare that I see them even trying to cooperate with Linux developers; maybe I just missed it, but each time someone _does_ cooperate, it's met with this grand praise that's quite hard to miss, so I doubt I missed it (this excludes certain vendors who have always cooperated with Linux devs, or who specifically write drivers for linux in the first place).

It's so, so solemnly sad that people blame most of this, if not all, on Linux. Especially considering Linux does its best to try and patch this endless stream of oncoming shitty hardware and nobody (not literally nobody, but a very small percentage) sees or recognises that effort.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>----

[model]: ASUS ROG G752, for anyone wondering

[modes]: [https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD- Audio...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD-Audio- Models.txt)

[archwiki]: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:Laptops](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:Laptops)

<comment><USER17> The DSDT problems aren't just for the high end laptops either - I have a $350 Z3735F system that requires a DSDT edit which I don't understand [1] [https://gist.github.com/voltagex/eec041092d719c77483e](https://gist.github.com/voltagex/eec041092d719c77483e)

systemd can't take all the blame either - I bricked (yes really bricked) one of these by grub installing a "stub" that only booted into grub-rescue on my EFI partition. I can't get into the firmware settings and the rescue loader can't read the partition tables -> bricked unless I can corrupt the EEPROM somehow and force a menu (no CMOS battery in these low-end devices to pull)

<comment><USER15> FWIW: that DSDT hack is replacing a constant return value from the first method in the "HAD" device. It was specified to return 0, but now returns 0xf instead. This is almost certainly the _STA (status) method, which informs the OS about the operational status of the described device. I forget the exact meaning of the bottom four bits offhand, but 0xf is the standard value for "device present and operating normally -- use it!".

That it was returning zero would cause the linux ACPI framework to ignore it and not probe its driver. My vague understanding is that windows works differently, and calling _STA is done by the driver, so it's possible to just not do it and still have a working system.

I don't know what the device itself is, but given that the script says "audio" in there it's probably the audio codec.

<comment><USER17> PendoPad 11" 'laptop' running Windows 10 Home 32 bit (despite having a 64 bit capable processor).

I replaced the bricked device and I'm going to be a lot more careful this time.

Booting Ubuntu Wily works, but there's no battery (status/charging?), wifi, audio or touchscreen. So if you use the XDA scale it's working perfectly!

I have another Z3735 device (MeegoPad T01 - Intel Compute Stick knockoff), but it's unusable because the clock runs fast, then slow, then fast - enough that an NTP sync makes the clock go backwards and then everything breaks.

These chipsets are turning up everywhere and most of the time the implementation is garbage. I hope Intel did better with the reference implementation/s but I can't afford them at the moment.

<comment><USER18> The idea of multiple vendors making the same "beige boxes" and only competing on price is bad. One of the things on my wishlist for an Intel/AMD branded laptop is a high quality UEFI implementation.

<comment><USER17> Keep wishing. Even a $1400 Lenovo X1 had terrible UEFI when I used it - what's the point of re-implementing your old keyboard-only BIOS UI exactly if you have mouse support? Dell does better, at least in the business grade products.

<comment><USER18> I am talking about an Intel/AMD _branded_ laptop.

<comment><USER17> I get you now - do they exist outside of CES and the Intel employees toting around prototypes?

<comment><USER18> I know it does not currently exist. The point is that it would be a better idea than what we have now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This commit message shows why I like the Linux Kernel team:

      >These fixes are somewhat involved to maintain
      >compatibility with existing install methods
      >and other usage modes, while trying to turn
      >off the 'rm -rf' bricking vector.

They go out of their way to make sure changes are backwards compatible.

<comment><USER20> Like unbricking ftdi chips, the kernel team has a great track record of taking care of users where the vendors fuck them over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It shouldn't be possible to brick UEFI if it was sanely designed. That's a bad firmware.

<comment> semi-extrinsic As usual when someone mentions "UEFI" and "sane" in the same sentence, I post this quote from Matthew Garret [1] (of Linux EFI maintainer fame):

""" UEFI stands for "Unified Extensible Firmware Interface", where "Firmware" is an ancient African word meaning "Why do something right when you can do it so wrong that children will weep and brave adults will cower before you", and "UEI" is Celtic for "We missed DOS so we burned it into your ROMs". """

[1] [https://lwn.net/Articles/444666/](https://lwn.net/Articles/444666/)

<comment><USER18> [http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8693705&cid=514191...](http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8693705&cid=51419159)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So if I understand this correctly, now instead of bricking the system it will just fuck up the bootloader, even if the bootloader is completely unrelated to the linux install you are `rm -rf /sys`ing. Since the useful efivars that set up bootloaders must be on the whitelist.

It's an improvement, but it seems like we should do this _in addition to_ default mounting read only.

<comment><USER23> It still seems to me that Linux should follow FreeBSD and not mount it as a filesystem and just use a library to manipulate the values. It clearly has some huge problems with being a filesystem. This isn't Plan 9 and everything does not have to be a file.

<comment><USER24> FreeBSD actually doesn't have any support for EFI variables at all! It just installs the loader into the default location (bootx64.efi) and the loader does everything.

<comment><USER23> I guess I counted the loader as part of the system. Its installed by FreeBSD to do the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And so, when we say " _permanently destroy_ " do we really mean that something is " _destroyed_ " and so done with " _permanence_ "?

This motherboard... It refuses any sort of reflashing of the firmware? Taking the button cell out of the battery slot, and removing all power from the board does nothing? The motherboard won't enter BIOS, upon pressing F10 at power on?

What is this... " _bricking_ " we speak of, here?

<comment><USER2> Yes, this is one of the rare cases where "brick" is being used in the correct technical sense of rendering the motherboard permanently unusable without repairs involving a soldering iron. There is no reset option.

<comment><USER26> Depends on the package used it may be possible to reprogram the UEFI chip in situ with test clips[1]. But of course one will still need to acquire a reprogrammer and a know good copy of firmware.

[1][https://www.digikey.com/product-search/en/test-and- measureme...](https://www.digikey.com/product-search/en/test-and- measurement/test-clips-ic/2294786)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ok, so I was wrong when I said Lennart Pottering's original response was "pretty appalling".

Unlikely he saw it, but my apologies nonetheless.

<comment><USER28> Poettering gets shit on a lot. While his software does often have problems, he is really well-intentioned and working on really hard things that really do need fixing. New software simply has bugs and problems, and while the transition period can be rough, I think things will be really improved when we break through to the other side.

<comment><USER29> People don't hate systemd because it has bugs. People hate it because it's clear that it thinks it owns your system and that its manifest destiny is to contain all software that exists.

<comment><USER30> No, they hate it because they think hating it is a good way to troll people.

It isn't honest hatred, it's just dancing around making ugly faces, like a six-year-old.

<comment><USER27> I really like systemd, but I think that's not accurate. People have well thought through reasons for disliking systemd

<comment><USER28> However, "it's clear that it thinks it owns your system and that its manifest destiny is to contain all software that exists" is not one of those well- thought-through reasons :P

<comment><USER27> I don't disagree :-)

It would be hilarious for it to take over LibreOffice or FireFox.

<comment><USER29> Well, it's already taken over your logging system (storing things in a binary format, which means you're fucked if it gets corrupted), your bootloader, top, it provides an alternative container runtime, etc. It's just a matter of time. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It seems to me that the real issue is that "rm -rf" should by default not recurse into mounted filesystems, but should at most try to unmount them.

In addition to clearing EFI variables, the current behavior will also attempt to clear any mounted removable drives and any mounted network drives, which is usually even more harmful than messing with EFI.

Of course that would be a backwards incompatible change, although I don't think many scripts rely on this behavior.

<comment><USER32> To be fair "rm -rf /" doesn't just work. You have to confirm that you really do want to delete everything. Destroying / in itself is pretty harmful. If you're planning to do that you should already know not to have anything you want to keep mounted.

<comment><USER23> For the few use cases where a system admin wants to "rm -rf /", there are hundreds of bad scripts that can screw up a system. I believe Solaris did the right thing and made it not work.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6XQUciI- Sc&t=81m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6XQUciI-Sc&t=81m)

<comment><USER32> To be clear, the problem described in the video is not something that can happen. "rm -rf $1/$2" where $1 and $2 aren't defined (therefore making it "rm -rf /") will not run. If you really want to destroy your root directory you have to specify the --no-preserve-root flag. No more accidents from scripts that assume things poorly, but it will still do exactly what the user asks.

<comment><USER23> Yet, I can still delete my home directory by accident (e.g. Steam patch). The idea that any rm can kill the directory I'm in is just bad. A flag on rm is the wrong solution. It should just fail.

<comment><USER32> I disagree with this almost completely. If I tell my computer to do something it should just do it (possibly after some complaining). You cannot delete the directory you are immediately in, so that at the very least is prevented. But as you move away from just root the usefulness of deleting nearby folders and files actually becomes useful. And putting those kinds of things is absolutely a reasonable solution. It keeps you (and scripts) from shooting yourself in the foot but lets you do things as long as you acknowledge what you are actually doing.

<comment><USER23> I said "The idea that any rm can kill the directory I'm in is just bad. A flag on rm is the wrong solution. It should just fail."

you say "You cannot delete the directory you are immediately in, so that at the very least is prevented."

I have no idea what the rest of your comment is in relation to what I said other than I'm pretty sure you can accidentally delete a directory your in given what Steam did.

Deleting you current directory is against the POSIX standard. It should not be allowed.

<comment><USER32> What I was saying was that "rm -rf ." just won't work. You cannot delete the directory you are in directly ("." and ".." are not valid options).

If however you delete a directory that is higher up the directory tree (e.g. the parent directory), it will be deleted.

As far as I can tell this does not violate the POSIX standard[1], as that situation is left as undefined (since in theory the directory you are deleting will chain to the directory you are currently in which is open in the tty).

Edit: The rest of my previous comment was trying to say that the utility of being able to self destruct the current directory is arguable. Why should it be prevented (especially when it could just be hidden behind a flag to prevent accidental destruction)?

Edit2: D'oh. Forgot the reference:

[1] [http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/rm...](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/rmdir.html)

<comment><USER23> "If the current working directory of the process is being removed, that should be an allowed error."

Ok, I read that wrong a long while back, but "allowed error" is really odd. I guess I still side on an error is an error and it should not be allowed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've never actually seen or had the courage to attempt "rm -rf /". Does anyone know what would happen if it were run?

<comment><USER24> You wouldn't be able to run any programs from the hard drive, and when you reboot, you'll end up with no operating system.

Unless you're running FreeBSD (or Illumos) with ZFS and Boot Environments, in which case you'd just select a backup boot environment and continue working :-) Probably without your home directory though, as that is usually excluded from boot environments. But you can set them up however you want.

But if you're running Linux (before this update) on a laptop with terrible piece of shit firmware, you'd end up with a brick.

P.S. found a cool post about rm -rf / in my bookmarks: [https://lambdaops.com/rm-rf-remains/](https://lambdaops.com/rm-rf-remains/) – you can recover a running rm'd Linux machine by using a running shell and /dev/tcp :D

<comment><USER34> I wanna try it out but I'm not brave enough to do it directly in my OS. WHat would happen if I did it in Ubuntu inside a VM? What if VirtualBox has mounted some directory on my system to the guest? I'm afraid to try this too :/

I once tried 'format C:' on a Windows 10 laptop I didn't care about and I just got a boring error message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> good

</comment><comment><USER36> Well that is a nice follow-up! However I can't remember if I read someone arguing this was a feature...

</comment><comment><USER37> They disabled kernel feature to prevent systemd bug? It doesn't make any sense.

<comment><USER3> It's not a systemd bug, it was just _exposed_ by systemd. This was what most everyone seemed to completely miss in the prior exchanges.

Another thing that was missed was that Lennart wasn't being unreasonable, nor was he saying it wasn't a problem (he specifically stated the opposite, in fact). I had a feeling at the time (based on his responses) that the reason he wasn't specifically stating he was going to fix it or open a bug report for it in systemd was that he was going to push it up-stack to a more appropriate place, and it looks like that's what happened.

<comment><USER38> > Another thing that was missed was that Lennart wasn't being unreasonable, > nor was he saying it wasn't a problem (he specifically stated the opposite, > in fact). I had a feeling at the time (based on his responses) that the > reason he wasn't specifically stating he was going to fix it or open a bug > report for it in systemd was that he was going to push it up-stack to a more > appropriate place, and it looks like that's what happened.

This. It's really hard to blame this on systemd (not that people didn't try anyway).

<comment><USER20> My bsd init and sysv init machines do not have this issue. They don't automount every damn filesystem they see at boot for no reason.

<comment><USER39> It seems to me like it's a bad thing that an accidental rm in an efivarfs filesystem can brick the system, regardless of whether the filesystem was automounted or not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


On being a better developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.andreiboar.com/career/on-being-a-better-developer/ After working for two years on Magento I come up with a plan to be a better developer within a year. <comment><USER2> Well, sounds like too much too soon. You'll most likely fail new-year- resolution style. Don't try forming so many habits at once; I once tried this, and it is not the best approach. 'Just do it'. Don't write about it, don't make lists of changes every day, just do it. There is no such thing as burnout if you have a goal and 'just so it'.</comment>