Linux Market Share on Desktop - <AUTHOR> https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=Linux&qpcustomb=0 <comment><USER2> We switched from Windows to Ubuntu for nearly all desktops here earlier this year. The pain wasn't that great even for those that haven't used Linux before as the main development machine. Ubuntu is great (except for installing NVIDIA drivers [1]) and it leads to better and more robust development experiences for the cloud when using lxc rather than VirtualBox for encapsulated environments.

(Of course many of us still dual boot into Windows often for testing and for using special purpose applications.)

[1] [https://www.google.ca/search?q=nvidia+ubuntu+black+screen](https://www.google.ca/search?q=nvidia+ubuntu+black+screen)

<comment><USER3> May I ask what GUI you use? I really like using linux via terminal and prefer it over Windows in many cases. I try making it my main OS every 1-2 years, but always switch back to Windows. The GUIs that I tried just don't feel right. Last time I gave it 3 weeks of 8 hours/day, and I still couldn't use it as productively as Windows or MacOS (even though I'm not experienced in using the latter). The fonts and symbols alone make it harder for me to work with it.

Didn't you experience any problems with that? Now I'm back again running Windows and terminal sessions to linux machines (for testing/deployment). I wonder if it's just me who can't work with it, but I have the feeling that developing a functional and yet simple GUI is perhaps as hard as the kernel itself. And most linux machines are servers, so there's little incentive, while Microsoft and Apple have spent billions on developing this over the years.

<comment><USER4> You could give elementary OS ([https://elementary.io/](https://elementary.io/)) a try. Got a nice looking GUI but i'm not too sure how mature it is.

<comment><USER5> Sadly they focussed on the beautiful GUI above upgradability of the debs. It lags behind actual Ubuntu by at least one Long Term Release (possibly 2 by now if they still haven't upgraded from 2012) and I've found it a pain to work with beyond the initial "wow this is pretty for Linux".

(I actually ended up using XFCE and then AwesomeWM, so maybe I'm not the market for Elementary!)

EDIT: just checked and their newest release, Loki, is based on Ubuntu's 2016 LTS. I'll be taking another look at it this evening!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always said this but Linux (Ubuntu on the desktop) needed a few applications to ensure that almost all devs didn't need anything else. In my opinion...those tools (which didn't exist) were:

1\. GUI git client (a few exist, but nothing close to Tower or Sourcetree)

2\. A nice UI/UX designer (Figma is awesome but you need the desktop client to upload .sketch files that require external fonts - which is almost always the case for most kits - and that desktop client is only available on Windows & MacOS)

3\. Creator Applications (Tools that you don't really need, until you do - especially if you are a lone/indie dev).

Initially I would have added MS Office to the top of the list, but Libreoffice has gotten a lot better (and people use/are not surprised by Google Docs now)

But that said, as someone who's used Ubuntu almost exclusively for development for the last 5 years, it's been getting better and better.

<comment><USER7> I have been using Linux on desktop since 2002.

1\. git-gui and gitk do the job just fine. I never felt a need for anything else. I have no idea what Tower or Sourcetree does, but doing stuff with git is less than 1% of my development time, so really fail to see what I could be missing?

2\. I developed some cross-platform gui programs using wxWidgets and wxFormBuilder was fine. Not Delphi level of WYSIWYG but did the job quickly.

3\. What's that, care to give an example?

The reason I switched to Mac after 12 years on Linux was because I got tired of having to fiddle with the system. It's nice when you have a lot of time or while you are learning a new OS, but these days I just want things to work out of the box.

I was seriously considering Windows at one point, but then I got a Mac Mini to develop some iOS stuff. Initially, I set it up as dual boot, but I spent more and more time in OSX and finally just stayed there all the time. Installed software I was missing and done.

I wish Linux all the best luck and I'm still using it on servers, but I'm not sure it can reach that level of Things Just Working(tm). Windows has a huge number of payed developers to make it happen. Mac has locked themselves down to just a couple of types of hardware and manage to do the same with less people. It seems to me that Linux tries to cover the widest possible hardware range with comparatively smaller team - and many developers don't care about UX that much. I know, because I developed some open source programs, and I'm guilty of that as well.

<comment><USER8> I think the "Just working" argument is too subjective.

Ubuntu just works, unless you have some specific hardware that is too obscure or new. Then one day someone starts expecting you use files from some obscure source and you need an application that isn't on Linux.

Windows just works, until you need to re-install because of virus and need to track down drivers. Then you realize the version of office was some weird OEM license and need to figure something else out.

I am sure Mac OS X has problems too but I haven't used it much.

All these things are so advanced that they just work... until they don't for you.

<comment><USER9> Mac OS X just works until one day the UI locks up and App store updates hang, and the computer becomes an unusable brick because nothing can be read from the disk after the non-replaceable SSD because it died (happened to me two weeks ago).

Everything just works until the awful built in media management applications corrupts your media collection/destroys their metadata.

Everything just works till their terrible disk format results in an undetectable error that slowly corrupts your files until even most of your backups have been quietly corrupted.

Everything just works till the UI for resolution becomes permanently scrambled and doesn't allow you to switch away from Fischer Price mode on the retina MacBook you use for development.

Using Apple computers has thoroughly disabused me of the notion that there is anything in the world that "just works" for anything but the most hilariously trivial use cases. It's a flawed platform just like all the others.

<comment><USER10> I've been using Macs for years, and these are some pretty amazing problems you've had, I can't imagine ever experiencing them. You've had some bad luck, friend. Sorry to hear it.

In all my years using Macs, I've never had any of these, and I push my machines quite hard. They've always kept up like a pro, always reliable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title is slightly misleading -- Linux is WAY above 2% of computing marketshare, it's really only on the desktop that it lags behind. Linux is running on more computers than almost any other OS. The only competition for most popular it has is VxWorks and QNX.

EDIT: The title was updated to be more accurate, it didn't mention desktops initially.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure where you get your numbers from but I would disagree. I'll bet there is more BSD running embedded than Linux. And either of us will be hard put to actually show solid numbers. Everyone can point to their favorite vendors using X.

<comment><USER11> I didn't cite any numbers. However, I do think Linux, VxWorks, and QNX are all significantly more popular than BSD.

As phkahler mentioned there are billions of Android devices running Linux, and that's just to start. Chromebooks are also very popular (outselling MacBooks in recent quarters). Linux is very popular on millions upon millions of servers. Many home routers and/or access points are running Linux (although VxWorks is also popular here). Many other embedded devices in millions of homes are running Linux -- every Roku, Chromecast, Kindle, Nest thermostat, and many more things all add up. I've even put Linux on the firmware of network interface cards (NICs) before. If we are willing to count uClinux, I've put into planes as well. Even not counting uClinux, I've still put it into planes as part of a air-to-ground communication system.

I'm not convinced BSD has nearly the installation count and your argument has not convinced me that it has.

<comment><USER12> The exact same vague use cases for BSD can be listed as well. But it's all guesses. No one knows for sure who is using what in pure numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py For me the adoption story is 100% about wifi drivers. There's pent-up demand for linux laptops but if you installed linux on your laptop 3 years ago, odds are the wifi didn't work. If broadcom decided today to follow intel/atheros and support linux, a huge class of devices would become linux-friendly overnight.

I've bought and returned 5 different laptops this year and driver support has been the story every time. (even for hypothetically linux-based hardware like chromebooks -- the post-broadwell chromebooks have iffy linux support -- for new chromebooks, it's the graphics drivers that are most likely to give you trouble).

Interface-wise, the feature stability of standard linux desktops (I use xfce) is probably a secret _advantage_ over apple/msft/chrome. Every new version of windows/osx gets slower, more complicated, less keyboard-friendly and more notification-focused.

A 2005-era windows user would probably be more comfortable on my mint xfce desktop than on a commercial alternative.

<comment><USER13> It may be that the lack of broadcom Linux drivers is starting to have some effect, at least at the high end? The new Dell 13" XPS comes with an atheros supported wifi device - I guess Dell got tired of having to create an entirely seperate SKU just for the developer editions.

<comment> awinter-py I have an XPS 13 from this summer. lspci says:

3a:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4350 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 08)

The driver works mostly but once in a while I have to `sudo service network- manager restart`, rmmod/modprobe mwifiex_pcie, or worst-case reboot the system. Obviously this happens at the worst possible times -- meetings and in the middle of important work.

Their 'developer edition' uses intel wifi, I think, but is intermittently sold out and weirdly more expensive. You can buy an intel card and add it.

<comment><USER13> New XPS 13" comes with a Killer 1535 Wifi chipset, which is Atheros based I believe. Specs at [http://www.dell.com/uk/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?ref=PD_OC](http://www.dell.com/uk/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?ref=PD_OC)

I think you bought the previous model. It's possible that the UK gets slightly different specs of course, but seems unlikely?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how many desktop Linux boxes are hidden behind corporate firewalls and thus hidden from these stats. My observation when I worked in oil & gas (at a company focussed on the exploration / geophysics side) was that they were almost exclusively Linux on the desktop, those machines being used for scientific visualisation and data analysis.

<comment><USER15> On the other hand, an individual that knows about linux, decides to download a distro, install it, and get to the internet probably is way more tech-savy than your average user. He is thus more likely to spend more time on the web and his browser / OS / hardware will be more "visible" in those charts.

<comment><USER16> Only a foolish "statistician" would count _all visits_ towards population representation instead of _unique visits_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe windows users are abandonning their PC faster than Linux users? They are switching to tablets and smartphones. So in percentage, the increase of Linux market share for desktop could just be a decrease of windows (and Mac OS X).

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been using Linux since high school (late 20 here) and i cannot imagine going back to windows. I'm always surprised when a fellow programmer says they use windows at home.

I couldn't live without command prompt. I love updating everything with one move. Now you can even use Steam on linux. Some apps are lacking, but most people don't edit videos or play with Photoshop. Especially now, since most of the desktop usage is internet and web browser, i see no reason to stick with Windows.

But mostly, i just like being in control. Using some perl i can automate almost any menial task.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was using Windows 2002, Linux from 2003-2006, OS X 2006-2013 and back to Linux since then.

It really depends on what you're doing. I'm doing some desktop app deverlopement and a little webdevelopement in my free time, with git, Emacs, QtCreator, Thunderbird, Firefox, Gimp on Arch. I also record podcasts and master them with Ardour [1] on my Linux machine. I seldom play some game from Steam. I use Skype to call my parents. I also use it to manage my photos with Darktable [2] and RAWTherapee [3]. I listen to my music collection with Gnome Music and synchronize it between my computers with Syncthing.

In my case I basically don't need to use anything which doesn't work on Linux, I bought a computer which was made for Linux [4], so I didn't have any driver problems. I don't do much with graphics.

For me the values with which Linux comes are important, especialle freedom. I am aware that there might be more convinient applications out there but because they don't respect my freedom I don't have the desire to use them. I like that arrangement and it seems to improve a lot with time.

[1] [http://ardour.org/](http://ardour.org/) [2] [http://www.darktable.org/](http://www.darktable.org/) [3] [http://www.rawtherapee.com/](http://www.rawtherapee.com/) [4] [http://www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux- Notebook...](http://www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux- Notebooks/10-14-Zoll/TUXEDO-InfinityBook-13-v3-13-Zoll-matt-Full-HD-IPS- Aluminiumgehaeuse-Intel-Core-i7-Energiespar-CPU-zwei-HDD/SSD-bis-16GB-RAM- bis-15h-Akku-Slim-Book.geek)

[update] I forgot to write that at work, I work within the automobile industry and we do infotainment systems based on Linux (with yocto), in our company basically everyone uses Linux on the Desktop and we have gotten so far that a big portion of our customers moves over from Windows to Linux while they work together with us because they see how much easier and faster developement is when you develop for Linux and at the same time run Linux on your dev-machine. [[http://www.pelagicore.com/](http://www.pelagicore.com/)]

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe user-agent values from Android somehow leaked into the data (i.e. "desktop mode" in browsers)? It includes "Linux" in Chrome [https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/user- agent](https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/user-agent) and builtin browser.

<comment><USER21> Yes, but it also includes "Android" in the string. Still, I question their methodology -- a ~50% increase in market share in 1 year is hard to believe.

edit: Maybe ChromeOS is driving this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Isn't netmarketshare looking at browser user agent ? So if you are using Linux in a VM this is counted as a desktop Linux user ? (which in a way might be true but still...)

<comment><USER23> There's some others in the opposite direction: using linux desktop but running windows in a vm, spoofing user agent to look like windows, or running ie in wine, pipelight/silverlight etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this not the rise of ChromeOS? ([http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11711714/chromebooks- outso...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11711714/chromebooks-outsold-macs- us-idc-figures))

<comment><USER24> My Pixel 2 is the reason I got into Linux. Once I figured out how to run Ubuntu in Crouton, it's the only thing I want to use anymore.

<comment><USER4> I used a linux desktop but needed something a mobile without a hefty price tag. Got a HP Chromebook 13 and with crouton and it's brilliant. Beautiful hardware at a reasonable price. I just wish there was a crouton app launcher but its good enough anyway

<comment><USER25> Make some shell aliases to launch the programs in their own xiwi window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cool, been waiting for this moment for the last, what, 15 years...

The curve ([https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qp...](https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qpcustom=Linux&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=59&qpnp=12&qptimeframe=Q)) unfortunately lacks some "hockey stick" characteristics. But if we wait, I don't know, 63 years, this will be the "year of the Linux desktop" at last !

(Of course, It's been "the year of the Linux smartphone" for a few years already, and "the year of the Linux supercomputer" for maybe 10 years).

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been using Ubuntu on my desktop for three years now. I love developing on it, but the consumer aspect has minor annoyances.

\- If I have a PDF with advanced features, then I need to use Windows.

\- Chrome, VS Code, and a few select applications flash repeatedly once up to a certain window size. Found out the problem has something to do with AMD graphics chips.

\- I think Libre Office is horrible.

\- Linux is still a second-class citizen for certain major apps such as Skype. I wouldn't mind ditching Skype altogether but some clients demand it.

I've never used a Mac, but I can't help but think it's the best of both worlds...but Apple keeps making decisions which I feel sidelines developers.

</comment><comment><USER28> And 95% marketshare for servers?

<comment><USER29> Less than that - there are more Windows server out there than you'd expect [https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2016/09/19/september-2016...](https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2016/09/19/september-2016-web- server-survey.html)

<comment><USER30> That is, Linux is on 90% (ok, 89.8%) of them unless you count the parked domains that MS was paying companies to park on Windows.

<comment><USER29> Are you sure half those nginx machines aren't running OpenBSD?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is interesting for me as I am just in process to try how it would be to jump to linux. I did it several times before, didn't work. I run it in parallels on imac. I use i3wm and I am happy with that.

Issue in the past was that it would take too long time to get it to work and configure properly and you constantly have to fiddle with it.

This time, I managed to install good fonts, and as I am using barebones windows manager, there is very little that can be off. Yet, I had Firefox, which for a change was not super slow, get stuck twice, so I had to logout. I think that is the issue when Firefox can get so confused to be stuck.

I wish I had more space on my desk, so I can have a dedicated machine and work on it.

Oh yes, I like playing games, while not all are ported to linux, sufficient number is. So, that part is fine.

</comment><comment><USER32> Quick reminder that Linux users are _far_ more likely to be running Ad Blockers or NoScript or other blockers that prevent many analytics systems working properly (often just as a side effect, not intentionally).

</comment><comment><USER33> 4 months not 3

<comment><USER34> Did you really create an account just to say this?

<comment><USER33> I did when I saw that the headline was 1/3 too low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> One thing you can try is Windows Subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu on Windows). It works unexpectedly well, even with apps X server.

For the sake of this comment I tried "sudo apt-get install gnome && DISPLAY=:0 gnome". It took 2 gigs and a while. Shame that doesn't work just like that.

</comment><comment> ryan-c [https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology](https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology)

There's nothing here to indicate that they make any effort to exclude bots/crawlers/scrapers/etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder what happened in June.

<comment><USER37> Windows 10 Anniversary Update?

<comment><USER38> That was in August.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can Android be considered Linux ? :)

<comment><USER40> This is looking at browser useragent strings, and as such Android shows up under mobile, not desktop. Now ChromeOS on the other hand may be a interesting question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> How does this compare to the rise of number of programmers?

</comment><comment><USER42> That's nice but ...

Will this year be the year of the Linux Desktop ? Nop ...

How about next year ? Nop ...

When will the Year of the Linux Desktop occur ? At our current trajectory I estimate that will occur somewhere around the time* of:

a) The Apocalypse b) The Heat Death of the Universe

*whichever comes first

<comment><USER42> Ok, don't get me wrong, I love Linux and I'm not trying to be an ass.

I'm a Linux guy (Debian/Gentoo mostly), but you will never get average users to switch to Linux, the same way you will never get me to use anything after Windows7 for personal use, I have a rage fit with all the icons and no proper command line and they will have a rage fit (or at least have a feeling of angst) if they have to type 3 lines of commands in the terminal to fix or setup something.

Where I see Linux as powerful, they see it as difficult. Where I see Windows and Apple as limited and inflexible, they see it as simple. So it seems people will go for easy 98% of the times.

<comment><USER43> >> you will never get average users to switch to Linux

Last I looked, Linux (in Android) was leading BSD-alike (iOS) -- and those are probably the two most popular platforms around... :-)

 _Especially_ for average users that are cost conscious.

(At a minimum, place one and three of installed world wide base?)

<comment><USER42> Desktop. Talking desktop.

You will never get them to do it by themselves, you have to set it up for them. There is a resistence to switching to Linux, because of the image they have in their mind about it.

Mint and Ubuntu are very user friendly and yes once I dropped them (Ubuntu & Lubuntu) on my familly computers the resistance vanished in a matter of minutes after using them. Biggest problem was "Why is the X on the left top of the window ?"

So I'm saying: without some incentives or guidance, adoption of Linux desktop by average users will remain low because of perceived difficulty, existing familiarity with Windows and Mac OSes and general mental inertia.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New YC Company 8aweek To Help You Kick That Internet Time Wasting Addiction - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/15/8aweek-to-help-you-kick-that-internet-time-wasting-addiction/ <comment><USER2> Too close for comfort is right-- it's pretty much exactly the same as rescuetime, only with fewer features, a worse interface, and new tools that let you interfere with your browsing (which I suppose is its distinguishing feature).

This is confusing to me-- why not just have RescueTime implement these features rather than fund an entirely new company? Did I miss something?

\--edit--

So I watched the video, and it looks like this is a pretty awesome toolbar. The features are pretty cool. The site/copy is cheesy, though.

My comment about RescueTime and the closeness of their businesses still stands though-- I have a feeling this would be fairly easy for RescueTime to implement.

<comment><USER3> _Did I miss something?_

Several. One is that the time-suck of the Internet is a big problem, which means that dealing with it will be a big business, which means there will be room for many slightly differing approaches.

The other is that we can't "have" people implement features. These are startups, not employees.

<comment><USER2> Of course you can't "have" RescueTime implement a certain feature, but you do have clout at y-funded companies, right? I mean, it's in your best interest to push the funded companies into success by suggesting new/complementary features.

The time-suck industry will be an interesting one to watch; I can see why you chose to fund 8aweek. The major problem I see with using a toolbar is that the time-suck, in many ways, is due to internet addiction. And if it's easy to bypass the toolbar, it might not be very useful. Addiction usually wins. Noprocrast fails in that regard, because you can simply launch another browser.

Can anyone share how much they ignore noprocrast?

If you have enough personal responsibility to obey noprocrast/toolbar restrictions, I can see how this would be awesome. But I also think that market is probably small. Snooze is obviously the way 8aweek tries to get around this, but after a while I think it might get annoying. I'll try it, though, and see how it goes.

<comment><USER4> noprocrast works for me big time ..i will be willing to pay sites to implement noprocrast

<comment><USER5> A Greasemonkey script would be a better solution... Even for news.YC, if you have an independent solution pg wouldn't know how likely you are to override the noprocrast setting ;)

I would take on this project if I had any time, which I probably waste now... hmmm... ;)

<comment><USER6> 8aweek works much in the same way, but is its own FF extension to allow for some extra features and ease of install that you can't get through greasemonkey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First impression, it seems very nicely done. RescueTime is not available for Linux, and I prefer local logging, so I'll give this a shot.

<comment><USER8> Local logging is definitely a big plus... I feel a little uncomfortable with having a log of all te websites I have visited on someone's server somewhere

<comment><USER9> Ashamed of those hours in front of msdn.microsoft.com?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm willing to try out 8aweek for the simple reason is if I'm doing work, I'm running Linux. I liked RescueTime, for the little that I experimented with it, but when I'm running Windows I'm usually just messing about.

<comment><USER11> I really wish there was something that, like RescueTime, tracked applications, but did so on Linux. I also use Linux for work and Windows for messing around, but the interesting stuff I'm working on is all gvim/terminal. I'd like to be able to tag those so I get a sense of which subsections of the code take the most time, how much do I spend waiting on compiles or installing software, how much time is spent code-writing vs. research, etc. A pure Firefox plugin doesn't tell me the interesting stuff.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, my work life can be described as a dark room, a huge monitor, and a fullscreen terminal running vim.

Statistically it does miss a lot, but I was looking for a way to try and throttling my online mucking about. I haven't run out of "countdown" yet today. Heck it says: 21.3 minutes remaining...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder what is a reasonable way to count the time on a website? I have simple Greasemonkey script that blocks web sites and have also considered to add the monitoring functionality. My thoughts would have been to stop counting after, say, 15 minutes of inactivity. It would be a shame if a site stays open and counts for hours of usage because the user forgets to close it.

<comment><USER12> 8aweek only tracks time for the current tab that you are active in, and after 5 minutes of no mouse movement it'll realize you're inactive and not count that time.

<comment><USER13> Once it realizes you're inactive, does it add the 5 minutes back to the clock?

<comment><USER6> yup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a certain irony here: web services to prevent internet usage.

And while the whole "logging time" concept may have some appeal for HR & accounting types (so yes, there _is_ a business model), it's hardly the kind of inspirational startup I come here to read about.

<comment><USER15> Well, there is a book about not reading books, after all.

But, like Joe Kraus likes to quote, "you make what you measure," I think worktime analytics companies like RescueTime and 8aweek are 100% inspirational.

To your point, you don't have to be a bean-counter to run RescueTime or 8aweek. All you need do is run it and reflect once in a while on what it tells you.

BTW, you do need to have a certain personality to maintain a time log in Excel. I did that for a month but was dying that I didn't have time to write software to make it easier and more useful. It was really cool, but it was hard because it wasn't more integrated into my workflow.

<comment><USER14> It is inspiring if you as an individual decide you want to be more disciplined and use a tool like this.

I was referring to their plan to sell the product to businesses, who would then impose it on their employees en-masse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just curious about all the YC companies that have been launching recently. Techcrunch has all of them as being fonded on January 1 2008. Is that the date of incorporation, or is that when they officially got together to start developing the apps?

<comment><USER16> Its a nice round number for techcrunch

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I do not like that I cannot customize the toolbar. Not only can I not move or delete the widgets supplied by 8aweek, I cannot even add a widget of my choosing to the empty space on the 8aweek toolbar.

<comment><USER7> It's definitely becoming crowded in the toolbars area. Now that I think about it, I don't know why 8aweek needs a toolbar at all, as it is not really interactive. An item on the menu would be sufficient.

<comment><USER13> Well, I like having constantly in my visual field the meter that shows me how much restricted time I have left for the day, but that requires only an inch and a half of toolbar linear real-estate, not a whole toolbar!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Honestly, my first impression: "channel 8 weekly news!"

Haven't tried the toolbar yet, though. Actually, ironically, I find myself wasting more time in Firefox (combination of slowness of the browser on my PowerBook G4 and the extensions I have), so I've switched to Safari for the time being. Of course, as this post demonstrates, it's not foolproof... Back to (home)work!

</comment><comment><USER15> It won't install on my PPC Mac running Tiger, unfortunately ("download error (-228)"). Works fine with my Intel/Leopard MacBook, but I still kick it old school on my desktop. Here's my User-Agent string: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:18.104.22.168) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/184.108.40.206

<comment><USER15> Works now, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know it's been 4 days, but ... I've also found that 8aweek is sorta handy for keeping track of time spent on a client website.

</comment><comment><USER19> The primary evidence that "internet addiction" is bad, or a waste of time, is that _people like it_ more than the other things they could be doing.

Just like the primary evidence that video games are bad for children, is that _children prefer them_ to what their parents want the children to be doing.

<comment><USER17> It's not an internet addiction, it's market research!</comment></comment>


A very casual introduction to Fully Homomorphic Encryption (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/01/02/very-casual-introduction-to-fully/ <comment><USER2> Oh hey, this is something I've actually done some real work on!

> Just try converting that into a circuit

Hmm. I think this article is a little behind the times. Loops are not a problem with Homomorphic encryption, as we can create circuits that work exactly like a transistor-based CPU.

In fact, I've got an implementation of one that I've been working on here: [https://github.com/mmastrac/oblivious- cpu](https://github.com/mmastrac/oblivious-cpu)

The trick to making this work is that you may not know how long the computation is going to take, so you need to either add a set number of iterations to run (ie: clock cycles), or send back encrypted updates as you run to give your trusted computer a chance to determine when the calculation has finished.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what specific scheme you have in mind, but while FHE for Turing machines does exist, it is really, really hard to instantiate. A construction with some restrictions and requiring a massive amount of preprocessing is given in Goldwasser et al.'s famous paper on reusable garbled circuits, and it already uses succinct functional encryption as a building block; and for the stronger notion of FHE for TM you basically need obfuscation. So thinking about implementing any of this seems somewhat premature to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One limitation of Homomorphic encryption, as far as I can see, is that there is no way for the encrypted program to _choose_ to communicate some data in the clear.

Which means it can't be used to allow an untrusted party to run your encrypted server, and have the server communicate with parties that it doesn't trust. Which is what most servers do. Unless I'm mistaken, or there has been an advance?

<comment><USER5> There is no encrypted program, there is encrypted data. You can operate on this data, and it will reflect on the plaintext after decryption. I think what you're thinking about is functional encryption?

<comment><USER4> I'm not thinking of functional encryption. I thought I'd read somewhere a plan to use homomorphic encryption with an encrypted program by simply applying an interpreter to it.

<comment><USER6> You're not thinking of Indistinguishability Obfuscation per chance?

[https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/02/21/cryptogr...](https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/02/21/cryptographic- obfuscation-and/) seems an interesting article.

<comment><USER4> That might be it - Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a very interesting read, highly recommend! I'm currently reading the excellent book Cryptography Engineering [1] and this article definitely adds to my newborn interest in cryptography!

[1] [https://www.schneier.com/books/cryptography_engineering/](https://www.schneier.com/books/cryptography_engineering/)

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2012/5/alice- and...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2012/5/alice-and-bob-in- cipherspace)

<comment><USER9> Link to the PDF of the content: [http://www.americanscientist.org/libraries/documents/2012861...](http://www.americanscientist.org/libraries/documents/201286159329266-2012-09CompSciHayes.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Was there ever a followup blogpost?

<comment><USER11> Nope. Seny Kamara managed to write such a good series that you're better off treating his posts as the follow up:

[http://outsourcedbits.org/2012/06/26/applying-fully- homomorp...](http://outsourcedbits.org/2012/06/26/applying-fully-homomorphic- encryption-part-1/)

[http://outsourcedbits.org/2012/09/29/applying-fully- homomorp...](http://outsourcedbits.org/2012/09/29/applying-fully-homomorphic- encryption-part-2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption)

<comment><USER13> Non-mobile version: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption)</comment></comment>


How to Sell a $35,000 Watch in a Recession - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203517304574304322707126380.html#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB10001424052970204261704574273873845674870%26articleTabs%3Darticle <comment><USER2> Have any serious economists looked into the matter of hugely mis-priced luxury items? There are the mostly-comedic treatments (as by Veblen) but it would interesting to read a serious study. When you have something that costs (maybe) a few hundred to produce, and sell it for $35,000, what is the actual effect on the economy?

My guess: Very little. It's basically an idiotic millionaire writing out a check to an intelligent millionaire, with a little token for remembrance.

...

Fun fact: The results in Amazon's "Sort by Price: High to Low" are algorithmically identical to its "Sort by appearance: Shitty to Attractive":

[http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1248405570/ref=sr_st?keywords=wa...](http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1248405570/ref=sr_st?keywords=watch&rs=377110011&page=1&bbn=377110011&rh=n%3A377110011%2Cn%3A%21378516011%2Ck%3Awatch&sort=-price)

<comment><USER3> I'll comment on this. I came from basically nothing, and now I do pretty well. I've seen a lot of luxury, that people from my background don't usually see. I used to think it was just capricious and wasteful.

A few years ago, one of my mentors took me on a ski trip with him and friends - I was the only person there under 30 and who wasn't a millionaire. The guys are wearing Rolexes, Cartier, Patek Philippe, nice clothing, etc. One owns a helicopter, many own boats, most own multiple cars and properties. Money made in different fields - construction, commodities, finance. There was a risk assessor/professional handicapper, my mentor was running one of the most profitable architectural firms in Dubai. Stupid money at the table I was dining at.

Another: One of my closest friends was a self made millionaire at 24. He's 29 or 30 this year. Lives in a 3 million dollar beautiful modern house with all the nicest conveniences.

When his earned income dipped from $800k/year to $200k/year a few years ago, he had to _scramble_ to replace it. He got into a couple not-glamorous businesses, undercosted competitors, paid suppliers huge signing bonuses ahead of time to get great rates and some exclusive locations, and so on. His gym membership is over $200/month for a luxury place that's not much nicer than my $40/month gym. He spends over $1000 a year on orange juice.

But I had a realization one day - first, these fellas are spending a smaller percentage of their money on luxury goods, consumption, etc, that then average person does. Someone who makes $4k/month and eats out a $20 meal now and then is spending a heck of a lot more than someone who makes $200k/month (as my mentor was) and eats out at $200 meals every other night. The extra consumption for many of these gents fuels extra production.

When my work started to fall apart during the banking crash, I had a year of savings in the bank, and I'm quite frugal. I didn't hurry to get into anything - but if I'd had super high expenses, I would've, and I'm capable. My lower consumption meant I wasn't forced to produce right away.

Beyond that - nicer things actually are much higher quality. I try to buy clothes that are meant to retail for a lot. I look to go to Saks Fifth Avenue during Summer Sale or Winter Sale for the 80% off, or go to fashion sample sales. I tell you, $300 jeans look better, fit better, and hold up better than any $40 jeans. (And I buy my $300 jeans for $60-$120 on sale anyways). Well made watches last forever. Good scuba gear and skis last forever.

You get diminishing returns after a while, big time, but a 2010 Skyline or a Cayenne does drive a lot nicer than my 1995 J30. I'm Captain Frugal over here. I only spend a lot on quality tools, experiences, and gifts for other people. But I understand why wealthy people do. You get better quality, it pushes you to produce more. It's also a signaling thing. I have an Andrew Marc leather jacket I got for $300 that normally retails at like $1200. I remember going in to talk to a VP of Citizen's Bank, the head of that particular branch. I wanted to get a loan, and he said, "Hey, that's an Andrew Marc jacket." I said, "That's right, yeah." I look more successful. I always wear that jacket when I go to a bank.

Finally, some expensive things mean you know everyone in the room will be of fairly high caliber. I don't like haughty places so much, but actually, the really exclusive nightclubs have much friendlier people in them to strangers than run of the mill less restricted places. People know that by virtue of being in, you're probably alright.

Eh, I'm rambling. Long story short, I used to think the way you did. But there's some legit reasons to spend lavishly on certain things, and you might actually wind up closer to your goals if you do. Certainly if you produce at a high level, intelligently increasing your consumption can at times make you wealthier than being ultra-frugal and hoarding. I'm only recently learning this lesson.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that the early rich, tend to spend the same way as the ultra rich, in order to fit in.

Why? Conditioning. Anywhere you look, you see lavish lifestyles being advertised. And after you hit a few mil, you start thinking "hey I'm rich, I should spend that money, like those rich guys spend".

Just because you hit a jackpot, doesn't mean you need to spend 10% of your newly found wealth, buying a Ferrari

<comment><USER5> That's a self-correcting problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I laughed when I saw the title...anyone remember this scene from "Trading Places"?

Fifty bucks? No, no, no. This is a Rouchefoucauld. The thinnest water- resistant watch in the world. Singularly unique, sculptured in design, hand- crafted in Switzerland, and water resistant to three atmospheres. This is _the_ sports watch of the '80s. Six thousand, nine hundred and fifty five dollars retail! _You got a receipt?_ Look, it tells time simultaneously in Monte Carlo, Beverly Hills, London, Paris, Rome, and Gstaad. _In Philadelphia, it's worth 50 bucks._

<comment><USER7> Looking good Louis!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the most important lesson here is buried deep into the article - " _Mr. Brücker was never disdainful of customers - in fact, he championed the need for better, more thoughtful service that makes the customer sense caring and quality - the stuff of luxury.

"You're selling pure emotion," he said._"

The rest is tips and tricks - interesting and useful perhaps, but by focusing on them the article comes across as scummy sales instead of the ongoing relationship that is essential (and very profitable!) in the $35,000 Watch market.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting piece - learned a lot. This part was the most insightful to me:

\--

Mr. Brücker looked the part of a luxury customer, wearing Car Shoe moccasins and an IWC Big Pilot watch, which has shock absorbers to help it keep time under rough flying conditions. He used PowerPoint to impart what he calls the "macaroon technique," referring to the sandwich-like French macaron pastry. This can be applied to most any product (including, presumably, a Xerox machine) and goes something like this:

"Madam, this timepiece (or diamond or handbag) comes from our finest workshop and it has a value of $10,000. If you buy it, your children are sure to enjoy it for generations to come."

That pesky number is sandwiched between the product's more romantic benefits. "We sell luxury—it's an emotion," Mr. Brücker instructed.

<comment><USER9> This is the line that stuck with me as well. Mention of children is a very clever technique; it removes the guilt of spending the kids' college money or inheritance; it makes shopping feel like an investment.

<comment><USER10> A friend of mine has been shopping for a nice watch with the expressed purpose of being able to pass it to his son one day as a family heirloom. So what seems a "clever technique" to you might actually be "being aware of your customer's needs". Of course if you're determined to stay cynical, one could argue that my friend just fell prey to their ingenious marketing message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I know I'm supposed to feel class envy when reading about watches which are more expensive than salaries I have recently worked for, but I've got to admit fascination with the linen glove treatment. The psychology of putting the old watch between two new ones and having a wingman distract the wife is very amusing.

Now if I could just figure out a way to do that for software which costs a thousandth as much.

This sort of makes me want to put on my best business suit, walk to the luxury jewelry store I pass on the way home from work, and take some notes on their tactics.

<comment><USER12> I think part of the point is that the products are high margin enough to promote that level of individual attention. If guys selling $5 watches spend that much effort per watch, it'd never pay off.

Carrying that over to software, these techniques would be most useful for the $100k per seat packages rather than the $5.99 packages. Although software is rarely sold on the notion of romance, so I don't know how sustainable these methods would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How do you go about finding someone good to fix an obscure Swiss watch when you are living in a city that is not in your country? The issue is - once you hand it over for service there's no particular reason for you to get it back except for the honesty of the repairer. How do you guage this? Or is it better to freight it back to manufacturer?

</comment><comment><USER14> Here I thought the real news of the article was how high-end jewelery sellers' skills had atrophied over the boom years.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think the issue is why is there a watch worth $35000?

I have a cheap Casio $10 which is functional. I don't even use that half the time (I have a clock on my phone).

I want the time, nothing else.

<comment><USER16> The same can be said about laptops. Why buy a $2,000+ Macbook Pro when you can get similar functionality in a $400 Acer?

Simple answer: It's nicer.

<comment><USER15> Personally I prefer the Acer. It allows me to:

a) Not require the work to gain the remaining $1600 meaning more time with my family.

b) Alternatively if it is from money surplus, it allows me to do more activities with my family.

Plus does it help you get from problem A to solution B any better or is that down to your abilities?

The MacBook is an Acer in a pretty box. If you're interested in the box, you lack any real meaning in your life. Real beauty is in the mind.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure the Acer serves your needs perfectly well. Have you ever considered that other people's needs are different from yours?

 _If you're interested in the box, you lack any real meaning in your life. Real beauty is in the mind._

Let me rephrase what you just said: to have any real meaning in your life, you have to be completely uninterested in physical appearance. So if I have a passing interest in design, architecture, or art, my life lacks meaning?

<comment><USER15> It's a functional device. Not a piece of art.

<comment><USER10> You're absolutely right, the Acer is not a piece of art.

<comment><USER15> Thank you. My point entirely. Whilst working, my mind dissolves into the concepts being represented on the screen, not what is around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> very carefully.</comment>


New law: Kansas cops can't have sex during traffic stops - <AUTHOR> http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article210902319.html <comment><USER2> Wouldnt that, and any other cop/citizen interaction, already covered by stautory rape, unless the law was on the books specifically allowing traffic stops as an exception?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not if the police claimed it was consensual (see the article)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The law doesn't say anything about breathalyzer testing blondes, though.</comment>


JQuery fluid fill width plugin   - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/craigspaeth/jquery.fillwidth

<comment><USER2> Not to be confused with flood fill (for some reason I read it that way the first time through)</comment>


Junk Food Is Bad for Plants, Too - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/34/adaptation/junk-food-is-bad-for-plants-too <comment><USER2> Everyone knows that ... In a future US distopia that's eerily possible given the sad array of candidates vying for the presidency, famine becomes a crisis as crops are irrigated with Gatorade. (if it's good for atheletes competing in the heat it must be good for plants too right"?)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/)

<comment><USER3> > irrigated with Gatorade

Well I guess thats better than irrigating crops with fracking wastewater.

[http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-drought-oil- wa...](http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-drought-oil- water-20150503-story.html)

[http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/08/organic- crops...](http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/08/organic-crops-can-be- irrigated-fracking-wastewater)

<comment><USER4> no electrolytes!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.brawndo.com/](http://www.brawndo.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> All this stuff from subway over starbucks to mcwhatever tastes like the same sugary industrialised matter with differently blended densities. Dislike at first encounter.

<comment><USER2> In the last ten years especially, I've noticed that commercially grown tomatoes look perfect but have absolutely no flavor.

<comment><USER7> They're bred to survive the trip from another continent to the grocery store. Canned tomatoes are still flavorful, but you have to watch the ingredients list. Depending on what you're cooking with them, you may need them to fall apart into sauce, and calcium chloride prevents this from happening.</comment></comment></comment>


Fire and Fury Is Out of Stock. Blame a Depression-Era Publishing Policy - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/10/16875330/fire-and-fury-out-of-stock-depression-era-publishing-policy-henry-holt-macmillan <comment><USER2>
      All of which means that print runs are already inflated just to cover the returned books that publishers don't expect to sell

That makes no sense. Why would you _intentionally_ overprint when it's common that they'll just come back at your expense? The rest of the article's narrative says that publishers print _fewer_ copies than they would otherwise for that exact reason.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Which means that the difference between the third-best-selling book of the year and the No. 1 best-selling book of the year can be more than 500,000 books, an increase of 100 percent."

This feels quaint in the startup world, where your #1 winner can easily return 10x your #2 winner, and everything else returns zero.

</comment><comment><USER4> I got the audio book... "Stock"?</comment>


Designing with Behavioral Economics - <AUTHOR> http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2010/06/designing-with-behavioral-economics.php

<comment><USER2> Austrian economics states that preference drives economic decisions, is behavioral economics supposed to be an offshoot? Is behavior not a resultant of our preference for a desired outcome?

<comment><USER3> I'm nearly certain that the vast, vast majority of living economists would agree that preferences drive economic decisions.

<comment><USER4> In that case, what would they say drives economic decisions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can take a look at Dan Ariely's fascinating talk about the topic from DLD [http://www.dld-conference.com/videos/video/predictably- irrat...](http://www.dld-conference.com/videos/video/predictably-irrational- dld09_aid_1284.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> He also has a really good TED talk - [http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code....](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html)

He talks about how people's moral standards and decisions are influenced by the environment they are put in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hard to believe that the video is real. Some of the other findings are pretty interesting though.</comment>


RFC: Automatic variable initialization - <AUTHOR> http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2018-November/060177.html <comment><USER2> It's a pity the flag -ftrivial-auto-var-init=zero is eventually going to go away (there is -enable-trivial-auto-var-init-zero-knowing-it-will-be-removed- from-clang). I understand their motive, but it would be great to use that flag and others like -fno-strict-aliasing etc. to make a "safe and friendly C" dialect. I.e. turning undefined behavior into "obvious" behavior when possible.

<comment><USER3> I thought you writing `-enable-trivial-auto-var-init-zero-knowning-it-will-be- removed-from-clang` was just satire. Nope. A little humorous that it's a real flag. [https://reviews.llvm.org/D54604?id=174471](https://reviews.llvm.org/D54604?id=174471)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Already in Lisp for decades: (let (x y z) (list x y z)) -> (nil nil nil).

However, nil has a distinct type. Thus:

      (let (x)  ;; not initialized
         ;; ...
         (when condition
           (setf x ...))
         (numeric-code x)) ;; still blows up if condition was false

In other words, this initialization doesn't create a big risk of hiding errors due to initialization with a correctly typed bogus value that could be inappropriate.

 _nil_ is the empty list. The risk of a bug where a local variable holds an empty list that should have been initialized to some non-empty list seems low.

 _nil_ is also Boolean false. The risk of a bug where a local Boolean variable was implicitly initialized to false, but should have been true, also seems low.

</comment><comment><USER5> Even if projects choose not to adopt this (~3% performance impact might be too much?) I'd love to have this as a sort of "lightweight address/UB sanitizer" to check for uninitialized variables.

<comment><USER6> It actually accomplishes the opposite; hiding uninitialized values from tools such as Valgrind. If you're trying to find uninitialized variables then you would specifically _not_ enable this flag so that the detection can work.

This is why I intentionally leave variables uninitialized rather than put bogus initialization values. Example:

        int x;
        if (cond) {
            x = foo();
        } else {
            x = bar();
        }

Some people when they see my code, have the urge to modify it so that x is initialized to 0 before the branches. But this hides bugs. If for example, I later made the if-else chain more complicated, and one of the branches failed to initialize `x`, better to find out with Valgrind than to have a hard-to- find-bug where an invalid value of 0 was used in an unexpected place.

This would be a flag to enable on release builds; a bug mitigation technique rather than a debugging technique.

<comment><USER7> The debug builds in VC++ used to initialize memory with a certain pattern. That was pretty useful to see problems in the debugger.

I think in general a defined default value is a good thing. Maybe it shouldn't be 0 but something like INT_MIN so you clearly see what something is wrong.

<comment><USER4> That approach is great for uninitialized pointers, but not so hot for numeric code.

<comment><USER7> It's still good to see that all uninitialized ints are something like 12345678 instead of random numbers. Not perfect but helpful.

<comment><USER4> True! trivial_object.ref_count is 0xDDDDDDE. Oops!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sure, but why the trivial prefix? Doesn't sound too ensuring then.

<comment><USER5> I'm assuming the "trivial" refers to "trivial" types.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but it's unclear what the benefit of leaving auto C++ objects uninitialized is.

<comment><USER10> IIRC, auto C++ objects aren't uninitialized, they're default-initialized, but said default-initialization may leave them with uninitialized fields. I would hope that this new automatic variable initialization would also apply to those fields of default-initialized auto C++ objects.

<comment><USER4> Built-in types like int are also "object"; only C++ _class_ objects can have constructors that initialize them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>