Google Rumored To Be Making A Smartwatch, Too - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/22/google-rumored-to-be-making-a-smartwatch-too/ <comment><USER2> The name "Watch" misleads. No one¹ needs a dedicated device to tell time anymore.

What may work in the market is one more tier of information interface. cloud > desktop > tablet > phone > ???.

I keep my phone in a front trouser pocket. I find that the overwhelming majority of the "dig out the phone"² events during the day are to observe a bit of recently arrived information, or, less frequently, to issue a temporally context sensitive command. Both of these actions would be easily handled by a tiny display with enough room for a few touch zones and limited gesture recognition.³

It doesn't need to be strapped to my wrist. I might prefer it clipped to my sleeve or in a shirt pocket. (return of the fob to keep it from escaping?)

It won't work for everyone. It will be useless to people who spend the day with uncorrected farsighted vision. They might as well pull out their phones as their eye glasses.

It only needs enough energy to get through the day, I'll put it in a charger at night. Make it cheap enough and sell it in a two pack and I'll just swap them in the morning.

Do the software right with proximity detection, and I'll have a virtual one on my desktop screen, and a slightly larger one stuck to my car dashboard (solar charger to avoid cable).

␄

¹ except nurses, and…

² I also find that my "drop the phone" events are almost all precipitated by a "dig out the phone". Eliminate the dig, avoid the drop. Women who use purses appear to have similar issues.

³ I'd also like to give it voice commands rather than navigating a complex UI, but that is just feeding a mic to the phone or tablet. And if I could hold it to my ear and let it tell me something that would also be great, but don't make it too big to cram in that feature. Still, we are talking a <$100 device here. Bluetooth 4.0 covers all the communications, tiny touch display, speaker, mic, accelerometer.

<comment><USER3> "I might prefer it clipped to my sleeve or in a shirt pocket."

COTS "Sony Ericsson liveview bluetooth phone remote". $25 from amazon, eligible for free prime shipping too. Comes with a clip holder and a watch holder.

UI is a fail, also charging. Oh and its buggy and the battery life is supposedly dismal. Aside from the 99 other things it can do when its actually working, which is why the UI fails, it can act as a music player remote (hit pause, etc). I wanted one for in my car as a simple remote when I'm listening to music. The UI doesn't do "simple" and is worse than just fumbling around with the phone. Also charging issues in the car. Oh well.

The biggest problem with bluetooth watches and phones is all the marketing is front loaded on R+D, everyone hears about "might be sold next year". No marketing at or beyond launch, no one knows there's a zillion already available. It doesn't help that whats delivered is usually an epic fail if GOOG shipped something that merely met its advertised specs, unfortunately that in itself would be revolutionary in the bluetooth watch field. GOOG is good at that, look a the nexus line, its basically an honest device without the shovelware and thats all you need to beat the competition who have dishonest claims and chock full of shovelware.

<comment><USER4> In this case, it is not just a matter of good execution. The first successful product also must solve the 'why put something on your arm again' problem.

If I had to direct designers, I would send them away with something like 'display that communicates wirelessly with a master device, as thick and as durable as a tattoo, one month battery life, input device desirable, but optional'.

Nobody would meet those requirements, but it helps setting the goalposts. It definitely would direct them away from the one cm or so thick design in the article being discussed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll go ahead and predict that smart watches flop. Hard. I think people want some new thing after tablets are becoming normal, and we thought that was going to be TV, but the content industry has built really good moats around TV so no one can shake it up. So in the urgency to create a new market, smart watches are easy, are direct-to-consumer, have been done in the past and only need polish. That doesn't mean anyone will want one once the "shiny new thing" feeling wears off.

<comment><USER6> > _"have been done in the past and only need polish."_

That's the truly hilarious part. If someone delivers a smartwatch that might work, it'll be derided as being "lesser" than the preceding products. [1]

If they deliver something that throws the kitchen sink at the watch form- factor, it will be derided because people have been doing that (unsuccessfully) for years now.

If you ask me, the killer approach for a 'smartwatch' is fuelband/fitbit-style passive data collection [2] paired with proximity based two-factor authentication for smartphones and computers. [3] You can throw in notifications with swipe-to-dismiss. [4] But much more than that is just never going to work well enough to be worthwhile. [5]

The very idea of prolonged interaction with a watch is silly. It's _going_ to be too fiddly to be faster than just pulling your phone out. So why would anyone even bother?

But the tech press would trash such a device.

[1] polish will almost certainly include stripping away functionality that's currently present on watch-phones, just as tablets had to shed desktop OSes.

[2] just go hog-wild with sensors. the biggest value-add will be in providing more/better data to apps and services accessed on other devices.

[3] e.g. you step up to your PC in the morning, it asks your password. For the rest of the day, when you walk away it auto-locks and when you come back, it unlocks. Similarly your phone only asks for an unlock code once every 4 or 8 hours and in between treats the presence of the watch as a sufficient token.

[4] Also: "swipe to open this on my phone". So one doesn't see a notification on their watch, see something that deserves attention and then have to re- navigate to that notification or app to act upon it.

[5] And, no, no-one wants to talk on a watch-phone like Dick Tracy. And bluetooth headsets & earPod-style headphone/mic combos already have buttons you can press to answer calls without grabbing your phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Google Glass takes wearable computing a step beyond the basic wrist watch. > However, the rate of adoption will almost certainly be lower..._

Nonsense. Everyone I've talked to about Glass has suggested a new use that I haven't thought of yet, and I've only met one person who wasn't excited about the project.

Everyone I've talked to about smartwatches, on the other hand, doesn't understand. "Why? What can it do that my phone can't?" "But I already have a clock on my phone."

This sentiment is mirrored in the tech media. This might be anecdotal at this point, but I'm predicting a flop for watches and a lot of wasted time and money.

But then, maybe I'm wrong like I was wrong about tablets before the iPad started selling.

<comment><USER8> Smart watches can succeed because they have different use cases than phones. Do people look at their phones because there is a clock on it, or for some other reason?

I am using a Pebble now and since I have gotten it I no longer look at my phone on a regular basis. In fact I often lose track of my phone because I so rarely take it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Was there any official statement from Apple that they're working on a smart watch? I don't know, but I just think this is a head-fake from them...Like a few other posters, I just don't see the big deal about a 'smart' watch. I want a simple watch.

</comment><comment><USER10> I agree with most of the people that commented already. I have though about getting a watch (novelty/binary). Then I realize that my phone is always on me and the time is right there.

The only watches I've seen appear to be to signal status. Smart phones do that just as well too.

There are probably special occasions that a watch would be better than a phone but I can't even think of any decent ones. Best I can do is comment that watches are touching you and could include that feedback from your body...heart rate, bp etc. Pretty narrow use case if you ask me though.

<comment><USER11> On just the subject of a watches and status/fashion.

If I'm going to a formal event I'm going to be be wearing a watch with my suit. It's a status symbol perhaps, but I'd put it closer to a fashion. And it's an old fashion - this is not something I see changing in my lifetime.

I would tend to think that a 'smart watch' and a suit is a misstep, more frequently than a winning style. Of course we are talking about products that for practical purposes doesn't exist. However history has shown that taking tech into fashion is a hard go and this is not the slam dunk that Techcrunch is raving about.

<comment><USER12> From wikipedia:

In the early 1900s, the wristwatch, originally called a Wristlet, was reserved for women and considered more of a passing fad than a serious timepiece. Men, who carried pocket watches, were quoted as saying they would "sooner wear a skirt as wear a wristwatch"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here we go. 3DTV all over again.

<comment><USER14> Hundreds of people will want these! Hundreds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting how the 'competition' isn't in smart glasses ala google glasses. Guess there's not much competition when real innovation is involved.

<comment><USER15> While I've heard much about them, I have yet to try out Google glasses. So the innovation is still on the horizon from my perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unfortunately for the smartwatch folks, a friend of mine in fashion, (who seems to get this stuff right with uncanny frequency) tells me that the "watch the size of a dinner plate" thing is starting to play out. The new new in watches is going to be understated and ultra-thin.

They may have missed their golden moment when having something enormous and bling-y on you wrist wasn't dorky.

</comment><comment><USER17> Since smart phones became ubiquitous, most of my friends have stopped wearing watches. The phone already tells you the time. So I find the trend of every smart phone manufacturer trying to built a smart watch as extremely ironical.

</comment><comment><USER18> No one's going to mention that Microsoft again had been there and done it? (see: SPOT watch)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Personal_Objects_Technolo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Personal_Objects_Technology)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm deeply skeptical of the whole Apple iWatch thing.

<comment><USER20> I would LOVE to find out this whole iWatch thing is a huge fakeout from Apple to get the competition distracted.

<comment><USER21> It would be even funnier if competitions tart working on it and suddenly create a market for the device, even if it's small.

<comment><USER20> Well there's no doubt that people want some kind of wearable extension of their phones. The Pebble kickstarter showed that.

<comment><USER19> Which is all well and good; there's a market for hideous stuffed animals with human teeth [1], but that's not an argument for Apple (or Samsung, or Google) to get into it. Basically, it seems really out of character for Apple to do this sort of thing. To be honest, I would expect a Google Glass sort of ubiquitous computer before a "smartwatch"; at least the former has the potential to turn into another pillar for Apple.

[1] <http://www.etsy.com/shop/cathairandteeth> \-- I have one and it's _awesome_

<comment><USER20> Yes, that was the second sentence I forgot to type. There's _some_ need, but probably not one that Apple deems large enough to necessitate a new product category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Smartwatches were cool...in the eighties. Now, not so much, they are too flashy.

<comment><USER23> Flashy? The trend for bigger and bigger watches is going strong for a few years now. (Nixon is one brand that has those, IIRC... young people seem to love them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> if one has google glasses i don't really see a use case for the watch...

<comment><USER25> Remote trackpad for Glass? Seems that would be more convenient/accessible than using a trackpad on the side of your head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> though i'd love to wear a smartwatch, my primary concern is battery life. having to plug it into a charger every other night would be a huge dealbreaker. it would have to use sort of inductive charging (still not optimal since you need a mat everywhere you go). Mechanical watches for decades have used hand winding, kinetic self winding, solar recharging technologies, but would these be sufficient to charge a full -on electronic device? doubtful.

once they solve the battery issue, the idea will be a HUUUGE cash cow.

<comment><USER8> Once you get used to charging it, it's no longer a problem. People were annoyed when smartphones came out and they had to charge them every night instead of once a week or so.</comment></comment>


SASS vs. LESS - <AUTHOR> http://css-tricks.com/sass-vs-less/ <comment><USER2> I think the individual comparisons are good, but the conclusion is wrong. Yes, Sass is technically superior to Less; it can do a lot of things that Less cannot. That does not mean that you should use Sass over Less.

The truth is, for 99% of use cases they are exactly the same. Sass is a bit more mature and it allows more programming, so it is potentially more powerful than Less, but that also allows it to deviate for CSS further, which is not necessarily a good thing if you have to work with people who only know CSS.

I personally use Less because it helps me develop faster. Less is implemented in JavaScript, which means it can run in the browser. Less.js' "watch mode" is awesome for speeding up development: save your .less stylesheet and the browser immediately shows the new styles. This is something SASS cannot do and.

Finally, to correct some factual errors in the article: Less _does_ allow some programming, loops etc. It's just incredibly awkward and barely useful, but you can use JavaScript (I used that to make this: <https://github.com/micheljansen/dynamicgif.less>). Also, the "Helping with CSS3" point is moot if you use <http://lessprefixer.com/> and keep that updated.

<comment><USER3> >Sass is technically superior to Less; it can do a lot of things that Less cannot. That does not mean that you should use Sass over Less.

No, this does mean that you should use Sass. This is how technical decisions are made. You create a list of categories with weights and then you score all available options and add their points. You then use the one with the most points. Y'know, the best one.

>This is something SASS cannot do and.

Sass also has a watch mode. Well, you'll need Ruby, but so what?

If you use a static website generator (like Middleman) for your quick and dirty prototypes, there is zero overhead involved. You use "example.css.scss" as file name and reference "example.css". That's all you have to do.

<comment><USER4> I think making CSS more like a programming language is a bad idea. Insofar as LESS lets you do dumb programming tricks in your faux CSS it's a bad idea. I think SASS is going in the wrong direction of putting more ability to create convoluted rubbish in the hands of people who create enough convoluted rubbish with simpler tools.

And I think the signs of activity on LESS vs. SASS reflect not that SASS is in mor aggressive development, although it might be, but tha LESS is more popular but the developers are more cautious in adding features.

<comment><USER3> >I think SASS [...]

Based on what? Sass helps me to write cleaner, better organized code. Furthermore, it reduces typing work. It's great, really. There is a reason why more and more people are using it.

Did you see the vendor prefix debacle? With Sass/Compass, vendor prefixes aren't an issue anymore. Everyone who used Sass/Compass correctly was not part of the problem.

How do you handle sprite sheet generation? How do you handle cache busting of your background images? How do you handle vendor prefixes? These things are very annoying to handle if you have to do that manually.

<comment><USER4> You don't need dumb programming tricks to handle vendor prefixes. What I'm against is making CSS more complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He uses SASS and SCSS interchangeably. For anyone else not familiar with the difference:

 _"Sass consists of two syntaxes. The original syntax, called "the indented syntax" uses a syntax similar to Haml.[2] It uses indentation to separate code blocks and newline characters to separate rules. The newer syntax, "SCSS" uses block formatting like that of CSS. It uses curly brackets to denote code blocks and semicolons to separate lines within a block. The indented syntax and SCSS files are traditionally given the extensions .sass and .scss respectively."_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scss>

Also:

 _"Sass and LESS both use the standard CSS syntax. This makes it extremely easy to convert an existing CSS file to either preprocessor. Sass uses the .scss file extension and LESS uses the .less extension. The basic Sass or LESS file can be setup like below:

...

As you may have noticed, this is just regular CSS, which compiles perfectly in both Sass and LESS. It's important to note that Sass also has an older syntax, which omits semicolons and curly brackets. Although this is still around, it is old and we won't be using it past this example. The syntax uses the .sass file extension and looks like this:"_

[http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css- techniques/sass-v...](http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css- techniques/sass-vs-less-vs-stylus-a-preprocessor-shootout/)

</comment><comment><USER6> What about stylus?

<http://learnboost.github.com/stylus/>

<http://visionmedia.github.com/nib/>

More?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3945633>

Some compiler geek should create a tool to translate code from one preprocessor to another, so mixin support would not be an issue.

<comment><USER7> We've used both Stylus and SASS. I've even contributed a few patches to Stylus. Ultimately, we decided that Stylus is a bit of a failed experiment in syntax/punctuation minimalism; SASS is much nicer to work with.

The key problem is that Stylus doesn't make a clear visible distinction between control structures, mixins, and other meta-level constructs. With Stylus, you can trivially override built-ins and it's very difficult to "go to definition", so to speak. SASS has very obvious symbols which call out the presence of preprocessor stuff. This makes it much easier to visually scan stylesheets and map what you're seeing in the inspector to what you're seeing in the source files.

Simply put, because the gap between CSS and the preprocessor language is so narrow, it makes sense to call out differences. Unlike, say, C and x86, it's too easy to look at Stylus and CSS side by side and be confused by their similarities.

<comment><USER6> Do you know if the Stylus compiler works any faster than the SASS one? Long compile times were an issue for me when I was using SASS a year or so ago. Although come to think of it, maybe I could've hacked a workaround by splitting my CSS into more than one SASS project.

<comment><USER7> During an experiment, I hit the 4095 selector limit in IE <= 9. Even with that combinatoric explosion of preprocessing hackery, compilation still only took about 2 seconds with SASS. Sooo, I'm not really sure what problem you're having :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always considered SASS the only true successor to CSS.

LESS and SCSS are syntactically conservative. I feel they retain the grammatical conventions of CSS (curly braces) as a way to ease the learning curve for conservative developers.

They introduce developers to the powerful features (mixins, variables) of extended CSS. But retain their familiar CSS curly bracket syntax.

Eventually it makes sense for said conservative developers to take the next step and adopt SASS's clean syntax.

<comment><USER9> I like braces.

There is also another advantage to Less/SCSS, which is that existing CSS files are already compatible, so you can start a gradual migration without effort.

This means for instance that an outside designer, that does not know Sass, can come in and contribute directly to the codebase without his workflow being disrupted and without me having to tutor him in Sass. This is how design works anyway - you start with a bunch of PSDs that get accepted, you transform that into static HTML and CSS (that have to be emailed around and approved), then you start adding dynamic features, you then go back to the designer to fix the design in case the dynamic content doesn't blend well, then you start refactoring the HTML/CSS to be clean and easy to maintain ... but this is only the last step, because the other steps, like getting the design right, are more important.

When you say that Sass should be the true successor to CSS, you're thinking like a programmer. I also wish that Gimp would be the true successor to Photoshop, but that won't happen.

<comment><USER10> > There is also another advantage to Less/SCSS, which is that existing CSS > files are already compatible

Not sure about SCSS, but in my case Less choked on some complex hacks like IE filters. Not arguing about their evilness, but the fact remains—not always you can simply rename .css to .less and gradually start using new features. (In the end I kept CSS as is, with a separate Stylus file with overrides and new styles. SCSS wasn't an option, and I have a feeling it also suffers from these issues.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That was an awkard conclusion on "Active Development". The total number of issues and pull requests on LESS dwarfs that of SASS, so a larger number of open/pending ones is natural. Some more numbers:

        Watchers:
          SASS: 1022
          LESS: 5480

        Forks:
          SASS: 138
          LESS: 731

        Total issues:
          SASS: 390
          LESS: 809

        Total pull requests:
          SASS: 62
          LESS: 199

That's a clear win for LESS in my book.

<comment><USER12>
        Number of commits in the last month in LESS: 11
        Number of commits in the last month in SASS: 35

that's the important part.

<comment><USER11> Simply looking at commits/month doesn't tell us anything. Want to compare size of commits? Lines affected? Comments vs code? Code vs tests? I think the general picture is much more favorable for LESS. If anything, there's a hundred people ready to pick up development at any time.

<comment><USER12> > a hundred people ready to pick up development at any time.

I really wish that was true. From my experience, almost every time I jump to the forks sections of libraries I'm using (or interested in using) I'm disappointed when I see that 99% of thos forks contribute nothing. Forking by definition was a serious move, now (on github/bitbucket) it's not - most of the time it's just one-click copying the project to your own collection and it's just noise when I'm really looking for an alternative fork. Just my 2 cents why I'm not impressed by numbers of forks as a project sustainability measure, it's not an opinion on less/sass specifically.

<comment><USER11> I've seen this argument a few times. Forking on github is just the fastest way to try something out with the codebase and/or make a pull request. That was happening before, in a smaller scale, you just couldn't see it. I think the number of forks directly reflects the size of the community and traction.

I agree that it's hard to find _real_ forks, watchers are a good indicator but you can't search/filter by that. On the other hand, meaningful forks tend to change their name the moment they detach from the original.

<comment><USER12> You certainly have a point, I just too often came across projects updated 1 year ago or earlier with 50 forks and any further support in there. Maybe code hosting providers could by default hide from the project page the ones that haven't contributed anything (I know they won't do it, they like the big numbers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> LESS became popular thanks to Twitter Bootrstrap and to the fact that you don't need Ruby to use it, which is a big plus for Windows users.

I use them both on daily basis, SCSS & Compass for a Sencha Touch project and LESS & Bootstrap for web dev work, along side with CodeKit to compile them and the major difference that I see is the speed of compiling. The projects I work on are both pretty large and with many .scss/.less files but LESS compiles way faster for me and this is a big plus.

Also, LESS is pretty useful for rapid prototyping since you can use the less.js and skip the compiling part altogether.

<comment><USER14> I use SASS on Windows with no issues and it was rather easy to get up and running. Granted it did require the installation of Ruby of which I only use it for this, but that's a small price to pay.

<comment><USER15> Indeed. IMHO the concerns expressed by some here about relying on Ruby are greatly exaggerated.

For anyone who is curious, the steps required to use SASS on Windows are something like:

1\. Download RubyInstaller from rubyinstaller.org and run it. (This is a self- contained Windows installer for Ruby and the related tools/documentation.)

2\. Run "gem install sass" at a command prompt. (This downloads and installs SASS itself, including SCSS.)

Personally, I'd love it if Ninite picked Ruby up as an option, because I already install many other tools that way in a single step. However, installing Ruby manually is no harder than installing any other piece of Windows software you download, and installing SASS on top is literally a one- liner.

Unless you're developing on a relatively old and low-powered system, I don't see any downside to having the extra software installed either: it's just another tool, occupying a few MB of hard drive and a few characters in your PATH, and IME it's perfectly friendly toward development toolchains for other languages.

<comment><USER14> Your two-part explanation is accurate. The Sass team was nice enough to even point you to RubyInstaller right there on their download page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, at the point CSS becomes a programming language of its own I'd rather just use java script. Somebody should come up with some way to define you style data in JSON, then parse and process the data on load.

<comment><USER17> <http://www.w3.org/Submission/1996/1/WD-jsss-960822>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sass also has Susy, which is just a _superb_ grid system. I can't adequately express in words how much I love this grid system. It's mahtava.

<http://susy.oddbird.net/>

</comment><comment><USER19> This is a really good writeup and I really appreciate the bit at the end about pull requests and issues as I do feel that developers should stay on top of their communities. That said, I like the mixin syntax of Less better and my favorite project Bootstrap uses Less, so I'll stick with Less.

<comment><USER20> Agreed on the syntax, but for me the bigger issue that keeps me with LESS is that I have no interest in using a Ruby project for something integral to my build process because then I can't hack at it without a bottle of antacid. I don't work in Ruby and I have a strong desire not to; on the other hand, while I don't claim to _like_ it, I'm quite comfortable with JavaScript and can work with LESS's code if I need to (and it has come up in the past).

<comment><USER21> This is one the reasons Hampton Catlin (the original author of Sass) created libsass, a port of Sass to C for portability. Check it out: <https://github.com/hcatlin/libsass>

<comment><USER6> Is it safe to assume that this compiles CSS much faster than the original?

<comment><USER20> After some brief testing: definitely. Faster than LESS by a good bit, too.

I'm not sure I'm going to use it, because of the compiled dependency (I'm on a Scala/Vert.x stack and I like being able to just check it out and hit "go"), but it's at least a practical option for me and I'm glad it exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good write-up

Not sure on my history here but i'm pretty sure i remember only the SASS variant being available (no braces among other things) while LESS stuck to a more css-like grammar. later SCSS came along which was CSS grammar for SASS.

It seems like I've run into more projects using LESS -- anyone know of any statistics?

</comment><comment><USER23> IMO, SASS ~= LESS, but Compass > *. Damn shame that Twitter Bootstrap went with LESS.

<comment><USER24> Then there is this:

<https://github.com/thomas-mcdonald/bootstrap-sass>

All the twitter bootstrap mixins available to you in sass format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's Sass not SASS.

<http://sass-lang.com/>

</comment><comment><USER26> The author makes the point that LESS uses the `@` for a variable identifier while SCSS uses `$` (and that he feels this is better) but CSS4 spec today says it will use `$` for parent selectors.

<http://www.w3.org/TR/selectors4/#subject>

I don't do a lot of FE dev but I can count the number of times I've used `@` on one hand. However, I could see myself making use of `$` as a parent selector quite often. How would SCSS adapt to this?

</comment><comment><USER27> As far as I'm concerned, Less, Sass and Stylus all provide the features for the way I like to write styles (DRY, with composability) so the main thing that influences which I'll use on a project is how easily it fits into the workflow. That means Stylus for Express projects, Sass for Python/Flask.

When I'm at my day job I use Less (well, more specifically Lessphp) for the simple reason that there's a Drupal module for it, which integrates very well with building Drupal sites.

</comment><comment><USER28> That looping construct in LESS is rather reminiscent of C++ template metaprogramming. Or ML/Haskell without higher order functions.

</comment><comment><USER29> This comparison distracts from better stuff out there: <http://therain.posterous.com/sass-scss-lessthey-all-suck>

<comment><USER30> I find that harder to read than if it had a : separating the attributes.

<comment><USER31> You can use it if you want, punctuation is optional.

<http://learnboost.github.com/stylus/></comment></comment></comment>


Sipeed MAIX, a $5 dual-core RISC-V board with deep-learning support - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sipeed-maix-the-world-first-risc-v-64-ai-module#/ <comment><USER2> I do not see how they could possibly source the chips at those prices. Currently those chips sell for a lot more.

<comment><USER3> Why do you think they chose indiegogo as their launch platform?

Plus delivery next month for products most of which, so far, appear to exist only as 3D renderings?

Yeah.

Ok.

<comment><USER4> Looking at the listing, only the M1 / m1w board is physical yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, I ordered one. I guess I'll know if it was worth the 20$ in 4 months.</comment>


Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-blocks-anonymous-chat-app-developer-says-2017-2 <comment><USER3> I work at Uber. I was on the wifi yesterday. I was successfully using blind. If business insider would like video evidence, I'm happy to work with their reporters 1:1.

There's a lot of problems at the company and it's been a difficult week for many of us here. Not having access to blind is not one of them.

<comment><USER4> Hmm I downloaded it just to try yesterday and I was not able to access it from uGuest. Not sure if it's Uber or blind blocking it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very much like a sign that Uber again takes an old path of silencing people and problems instead of fixing toxic culture. Makes me think that they also prepare to blackmail Fowler.

<comment><USER6> Seems like they have probably already started:

[https://twitter.com/susanthesquark/status/835193441814392833](https://twitter.com/susanthesquark/status/835193441814392833)

<comment><USER7> This seems to be Uber's modus operandi every single time they're in trouble and it almost always seems to backfire on them, PR wise.

I'm curious though, what tipped her off? While I've worked at tech start-ups before and can believe all the behavior she outlined (because I've seen similar things myself, it's _very_ believable) it still bothers me to continue to take someone's word at face value. I mean I do, I would trust what she says over Uber any day, but I wish more of this type of information was verifiable.

<comment><USER8> Using a throwaway for obvious reasons.

>This seems to be Uber's modus operandi every single time they're in trouble and it almost always seems to backfire on them, PR wise.

From attending all hands meetings I get the sense TK has a victim mentality and sees himself doing no wrong or Uber doing no wrong.

Since we're _clearly_ not wrong, it has to be the critic, right? /S

To be fair, we do get some BS scandals related to surge (they turned off surge for natural disasters! They're profiting off us! They left it on, they're profiting off our misery!) but almost all of our scandals are self inflicted.

>I'm curious though, what tipped her off?

I'd wager an employee.

Employees are very angry now at leadership, and in our last few all hands / CTO speaking to everyone (something they put together just for this week I think) people questioned publicly what's been questioned in the shadows for a while.

For instance, Uber has a list of stupid "cultural values" that include values like "always be hustling" (yes, it's a direct quote) and I've been in private conversations with people who find these values obnoxious and poorly written. Never raised to management though.

But this all hands people threw these bullshit values at TK and Thuan and pointed out how bad they are, including this specific "always be hustling" value. The questioner even referenced Zootopia ("It's called a hustle, sweetheart") to skewer it.

Also it was pointed out how our perf review process doesn't reward collaboration between teams at all (hence the politicking).

Felt almost like a press conference with ace reporters fighting against an unprepared, incompetent politician. Our CTO even cried, which was a little dramatic for me.

Happy to see I'm not the only angry employee.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the insights. Question about the inside view - do people really buy Kalanick's fake apologies/victim act at this point? We've gone through this ruse so many times, from the outside it just seems like a laughable caricature of malignant narcissism. From your comments about the CTO, I'm guessing he surrounds himself with "empathizable cover" after the classic abusive pattern (if you come after me, think about the damage it will do to the nice people around me).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "Our activity at Uber has gone up 3x since they blocked us on their WiFi," > Shin says.

Streisand Effect in 3... 2... 1...

It's 2017. Have we really not learned this lesson yet?

<comment><USER11> It's really not more surprising than the thought there are still new, well- funded and high profile companies that have seriously misguided ways of dealing with sexual harassment complaints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like there's a pretty simple work around, just use mobile Internet not wifi.

(You shouldn't use corporate wifi for a personal phone anyway)

<comment><USER13> Yeah, this move is just stupid. It's 2017 California, there are umpteen connectivity options.

It's literally an admission that what is written on Blind is actually true and leadership is in panic mode. The right response was to dismiss it all as gossip and act nonchalant; moving from the "laugh at you" step to the "fight you" step means they're on their way to defeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> First time hearing of Blind, can anyone share their experiences?

(working at a startup so can't just sign up and see it myself...)

<comment><USER15> I'm on the Microsoft Blind forum as a former FTE as they don't (yet) revalidate accounts.

MS was amongst the first, or perhaps the first, Blind forum. It started off as a successor to MiniMSFT so people used it to compare comp (salaries, raises, bonuses, stock awards) since then it's massively expanded into other companies all with their own private forums, there are also forums visible to everyone.

The most popular thread in the shared Tech industry forum is "What is your age and base salary?" and it makes for some soul-crushing reading (e.g. late-20s kids at Uber SF with $200k base, $400k stock).

Back on the MS forum, it's usually layoff rumours (one regular poster who comments on layoff rumour threads claims to be in HR), people asking how to get VSA severance, and people complaining about why Skype, OneDrive and SharePoint are so terrible.

<comment><USER16> > and people complaining about why Skype, OneDrive and SharePoint are so > terrible.

I'm glad that people at MS themselves complain about how awful Skype has become. This proves that there are still sane people over there, for a moment I thought that me and my colleagues who still rely on Skype (Slack has never caught on with us) are not paranoid when we complain among ourselves about it.

<comment><USER15> Pretty much everyone at the IC-level at Microsoft is well-aware of the systemic issues plaguing many products - lower management too - but these issues don't get fixed because of whatever decisions being made at the Director level (mostly of the "evil" kind, like how improving UI responsiveness won't raise profitability but adding video ads will, or how no- one will switch to OneDrive-for-Business simply because the desktop client actually works - it'll be because the sales team drove a hard bargain with an enterprise customer and now their poor users are stuck with it).

I like to think I did my part - I made small UI/UX improvements that I snuck into my official feature work (it all passed peer-review and testing, don't worry) - things like bad margins/padding around controls, something with the wrong color scheme, etc.

<comment><USER17> Can you please also fix the "escape key closes chat without any warning" feature too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The only source of the story seems to be Blind's founder.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can I somehow register to be an Uber employee on the app without actually being one? Would love to read all the crap employees are going through as lessons learned when I start my own company (one day). Any ideas? The blind app requires an uber.com email address. Any employees want to help out a fellow HN'er?

<comment><USER20> WTF how stupid is that? You use a company address to sign up, leaving trails within an internal mail service...

<comment><USER21> Yeah, I wondered the same thing. Verification by company email reduces spam/noise, so I understand why it's done. Probably useful to have non- employees filtered out. But there's no way I'd trust the service enough to use it. Not to mention my latent fear of a data breach/leak ruining my career.

<comment><USER19> Aren't there any company mailing list addresses someone can provide? Someone inside uber needs to have some connections with IT - could be done easily I think. No email will be sent I am assuming? Or is there a verification step where one has to click on a link? Someone who has the app should verify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Even in 2017, we are still not understanding that if you block something it becomes more exciting just for the fact that it was banned, ignore it and it'll die.

<comment><USER23> China's a counterexample. Their censorship efforts are pretty damn effective.

<comment><USER24> China's government has a degree of ubiquitous control that no Western company can hope to match.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What's "Blind"? Never heard of it. So far I have never encountered anything blocked internally at Uber. Nor is anyone is talking over anything secret at Uber. People normally talk in person, but there isn't even much of that going on.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is really saavy marketing by Blind App

<comment><USER27> Well, until people awake from their righteous fervor and ask why the anonymous Blind app knows there are 2000 Uber employees using it

And god beware they start asking what Blinds business model is going to be!

<comment><USER28> Because you are required to sign up with a company email. It's anonymous for the users, not for blind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So employees are trying to chat "anonymously" on a tech company's wifi network? Seems remarkably dumb for tech employees.

It should be assumed as a given that any company or hotel wifi network is monitored and HTTPS is quite possibly is MITMed.

<comment><USER30> An employee's personal phone wouldn't accept the certificate if HTTPS was MITMed.

<comment><USER31> You don't really have to MITM, you could just check the logs of the DNS server that the network DHCPs to the WiFi clients for queries to Blind's IP addresses.

This doesn't tell you the content but if an employee uses the app. Make of this what you want but given Uber's previous actions I don't think they would just ignore this.

<comment><USER32> I don't use the app, but messages appear to be timestamped, that's probably enough to deanonymize many conversations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This will definitely help fix things.

</comment><comment><USER34> What makes Uber uniquely asshole-like?

</comment><comment><USER35> This is hopefully a prelude to a Streisand effect type situation here, but my biggest reaction to this came in the ad below the piece: an "article" describing the reason behind the F and J bumps on any keyboard. Does there really need to be an article about that? It seems like common sense, or something you might learn in any typing exercise ever.

<comment><USER36> There are probably enough younger people around who've rare even used a physical keyboard, let alone have formal touch-typing training. I imagine mentioning the 'home row' would usually just get you a blank stare.

<comment><USER37> Do they no longer teach typing as a mandatory class in ~6th grade? It seems even more relevant now than 16 years ago.

<comment><USER38> Would you teach typing on a physical keyboard, or on a virtual phone keyboard? A lot of young people don't use laptops/desktops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> >Many do on an anonymous chat app called Blind.

...

>And over 2,000 Uber employees in total use Blind, says Blind's head of operations Alex Shin.

Jebediah O. Springfield! As the "head of operations" at an "anonymous chat app" you have ONE JOB, Alex Shin! And you just blew it.

(To be explicit, I am saying Alex is way out of line for disclosing this information. An anonymous app should not have such information revealed even in the aggregrate - you can see what just happened as a result. Instead his public, and private, statements should have been "We do not disclose - <USER2> or deny - any users who may or may not use Blind, their affiliations or locations.")

In point of fact I do agree with sharing this news, however it should be presented disclosing as little information about employees as possible. Plus the app isn't doing a very good job if its traffic is easily distinguishable from other apps' traffic (technically making it possible for Uber to take the actions we've just read about, or directly monitor based on telephone MAC addresses, the exact employees using the app and the timing of their doing so).

But there's not so much that can be done about that. However, revealing the number of users at a company is not information that should be given out, in my opinion.

<comment><USER40> What if Alex was bluffing? An average Uber employee reading this would think that some massive congregation of his/her peers is happening on Blind and would rush to install it.

<comment><USER39> Very interesting, though as an officer I'm not sure if he's allowed to make specific numerical misstatements like that. :)</comment></comment></comment>


AngularDart hello world demo loads 2MB of JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://angulardart.org/demo/

<comment><USER2> This is because Angular uses reflection, which requires that the dart2js compiler retain a lot of code and metadata unless it's told what it can safely discard.

AngularDart 0.10.0 has an option to remove the use of reflection for release builds which drastically reduces the compiled output size.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And the javascript source code is : [https://angulardart.org/dart/examples.dart.js](https://angulardart.org/dart/examples.dart.js)

</comment><comment><USER3> So? How much is it minified & compressed?</comment>


Ada, C, C++, and Java vs. The Steelman (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dwheeler.com/steelman/steeltab.htm

<comment><USER2> For those interested in this, SPARK 2014 (a strict Ada subset of sorts) might be worth a look:

[http://docs.adacore.com/spark2014-docs/html/ug/spark_2014.ht...](http://docs.adacore.com/spark2014-docs/html/ug/spark_2014.html)

[http://docs.adacore.com/spark2014-docs/html/ug/tutorial.html](http://docs.adacore.com/spark2014-docs/html/ug/tutorial.html)

Apparently the commercial version was released on the 8th April, and a GPL version should be out this month:

[http://www.spark-2014.org/entries/detail/spark- pro-14.0-rele...](http://www.spark-2014.org/entries/detail/spark- pro-14.0-released-today)

<comment><USER3> They released the GPL version last tuesday: [http://libre.adacore.com/download/configurations](http://libre.adacore.com/download/configurations)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since this was written in 1997 and C, C++, and Java have all evolved considerably since then (And Ada?) I'd be interested to see an updated version of this.

Also, I remember hearing/reading somewhere, possible in a class I took on compilers, that the Ada language was so complex that it very likely would never have completed development if it were not backed by the government.

<comment><USER5> > Since this was written in 1997 and C, C++, and Java have all evolved > considerably since then (And Ada?) I'd be interested to see an updated > version of this.

Ada has seen 2 major updates to its standard -- the Ada 2005 and Ada 2012 standards.

> Also, I remember hearing/reading somewhere, possible in a class I took on > compilers, that the Ada language was so complex that it very likely would > never have completed development if it were not backed by the government.

There's a lot of weird myths floating about about the complexity of Ada. By the standards of the early 80s its certainly somewhat more complex than, say, C or Pascal, but it's orders of magnitude less complex than the C++ standard, and certainly easier to parse and compile. By modern standards its certainly a simpler language than Java.

<comment><USER6> At least in Europe its use seems to be rising. At least that is my feeling from the Ada sessions at FOSDEM in the last years.

I think it is helped by having a FOSS reference compiler (GNAT) and the required increase in terms of secure software quality, specially when human lives are at risk.

<comment><USER7> >I think it is helped by having a FOSS reference compiler (GNAT)

It should be noted that the free version of said compiler may only be used to produce software released under a GPL compatible license. This is unusually restrictive and rules out Ada for most people right away.

It is either Free Software only or an expensive commercial subscription to AdaCore's services. I mean the "expensive" is a guess, but given that they do not list prices on their website but ask you to contact their sales department, we can assume they are far from cheap.

In a world where you can develop commercial, closed source software in all popular languages using free tools this seems anachronistic. I understand that AdaCore needs to make money somehow and this is probably the best business strategy for them, but still, it seriously limits the appeal. The appeal of Ada in general too, because it seems there is no (truly) free, modern Ada compiler.

Interestingly enough the situation seems to be similar for most of the failed languages of days gone by. If you look for implementations you only find DOS era stuff and X thousand dollar "solutions" which milk the enterprise/government legacy code market.

<comment><USER8> > _It should be noted that the free version of said compiler may only be used > to produce software released under a GPL compatible license._

No. No. No.

GCC GNAT is under GPL 3 with GCC runtime library exception, the same license as the rest of GCC.

Before GPL 3 it was licensed under GMGPL -- GNAT Modified GPL, which was very similar to the the current license as the "runtime library exception" is intended to unify similar exceptions from several GCC compilers, for example if you're using C++11 on GCC you are bound by the exact same license.

I'm sorry if i'm not as nice as I could be. Every time Ada is mentioned someone chimes in with mythical license woes. You're doing harm by spreading misinformation. This myth needs to die.

<comment><USER7> >You're doing harm by spreading misinformation.

Blame AdaCore. I based my statement on the information on their website [1]. They certainly try to convince people that you have to buy GNAT Pro if you want to build non-GPL compatible software.

Based on the other comments here, it seems it is actually possible to use GNAT, with an alternative FSF runtime, to build non-GPL compatible software without a license. Great, however AdaCore certainly likes to keep quiet about that possibility (for understandable reasons). Also as a potential user I would be worried about the quality of said runtime, given that it probably has no serious users and very little manpower behind it.

[1] [http://libre.adacore.com/tools/gnat-gpl- edition/faq/#licensi...](http://libre.adacore.com/tools/gnat-gpl- edition/faq/#licensing)

<comment><USER2> I agree there may be some license surprises (a natural consequence of marrying a language with a runtime with the GPL, for better or worse) -- it might be worth to note that the code is under GPL, not AGPL -- so for most modern (read: SaaS) uses -- it doesn't matter. If you really are deploying a drone or something, it likely doesn't matter either, because a) you need to give your customer the source code anyway, b) your customer will gladly pay the fee for the commercial license -- and c) the project will be classified, so adacore could never legally sue you anyway (without risking indefinite detention as enemy combatants ... ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow:

* 2C. Syntactic Extensions. The user shall not be able to modify the source language syntax. In particular the user shall not be able to introduce new precedence rules or to define new syntactic forms.*

Sounds like somebody had had a bad time with LISP at some point. Or maybe the point of that requirement is to combine with this one:

* 1E. Simplicity. The language should not contain unnecessary complexity. It should have a consistent semantic structure that minimizes the number of underlying concepts. It should be as small as possible consistent with the needs of the intended applications. It should have few special cases and should be composed from features that are individually simple in their semantics. The language should have uniform syntactic conventions and should not provide several notations for the same concept. No arbitrary restriction should be imposed on a language feature.*

To make LISP programmers explode with outrage.

Joking aside, requirement 2C sounds good to me. Having dealt with macros in a few languages, and DSLs in Ruby, i'm not convinced they carry their weight in the long run.

Nitpick:

 _5E. Initial Values. There shall be no default initial-values for variables._

 _Java: partial. Java defines initial values for all types, though recommends against using them and Java compilers attempt to warn of such use._

Eh, no. Local variables don't get initial values, and you can't read from them before their first definite assignment. Fields in objects get initial values, and i'm not aware of any standard recommendation against, or compiler warning for, their use.

That said, common best practice these days is to declare fields final, which means they get vaguely similar semantics to local variables - they have to be assigned values in the constructor (or their declaration, or an instance initialiser), and they can't be read from in the constructor before that assignment. The minor difference is that if the constructor calls an instance method, that instance method can refer to uninitialised final fields. It should be noted that although the compiler allows this, Joshua Bloch doesn't, and if you do it, he will come to your house and beat you with a sock full of billiard balls.

</comment><comment><USER10> The paper says that C and C++ don't support fixed point numbers, though with C++ you can write a fixed point class that's nearly the same as a native version. However, it would still be nice if C or C++ supported a native fixed point type.

<comment><USER7> C's standard library is meant to be small and only include essential things. I remember the C99 standard being widely criticized for including support for complex numbers, a feature considered to be special purpose and thus unfit for the C standard. The following C11 standard addressed this, making support for complex numbers "optional" i.e. a standard conforming C compiler is no longer required to support them.

C++ used to follow a similar mindset but this has changed. So we might see built-in fixed point support there in future.</comment></comment>


Netherlands makes trains free on national book day for those who show a book - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/netherlands-free-train-national-book-day-tickets-travel-tickets-ns-a8849606.html <comment><USER2> It's a fun tradition. We like to complain every opportunity we can about the dutch railways. But it could be a lot worse. Traveling on that Sunday by train is always fun, because it feels that with a lot of companion travels you share this love for books, creating a different atmosphere from traveling different days.

"Boekenweek" is one of the most memorable "commercial celebration" weeks for me at least, remember fun activities at libraries when I was a kid.

<comment><USER3> I don't have a lot of data points, but comparing the Dutch railway system to the one in the UK, there is a very clear winner. The trains in the Netherlands have a fixed price and are rarely delayed or cancelled.

Also, the OV-chipkaart is great - you can use the same card on trains, trams, buses and underground across the Netherlands.

<comment><USER4> Comparison with UK is going for an easy win. Dutch should compare their trains with German or Japanese trains. Then, they suck!

If you use them occasionally you think they are amazing and much better than most other networks but if you rely on them everyday then you quickly realize how bad they are. Lots of random delays and unpredictable behaviors. Smallest change in weather causes disruption. And they are actually expensive even in comparison. (I cannot find the EU report that showed that, I'll update the comment with it)

<comment><USER5> I think the rail network just lacks redundancy. Everything is super efficient with just single track each direction but when something breaks down a replacement train (or an engine) is far away and won't fit in the busy schedule.

Also there is so little space for luggage or prams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This has been a tradition for decades now, but the title makes it seem like a new thing. Also, as renholder already mentions, you can only travel free by train with the book you get as a present when buying a book during the yearly "book week".

</comment><comment><USER7> The title is misleading: "A book" tends to inclinate that it's not a specific book, which is the anithesis to the fact that the _Boekenweekgeschenk_ very much is.

<comment><USER8> Well you're not wrong, but not only is that in the article, it's literally the next line below the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Once you experience the US public transportation system (trams, busses.. dit I mention Caltrain?), one realizes how good the Dutch system is. Practically none of my Dutch friends have a car. I don't know any one in the bay area without at least one.

<comment><USER10> The best thing about US public transit is that it makes UK transit look good by comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The specific book is: Jas Van Belofte

Which has pretty atrocious reviews on [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44283944-jas-van- belofte](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44283944-jas-van-belofte)

I used Google translate to check that it's not brigading or something because of book week, but no, people really do seem to hate the book.

</comment><comment><USER12> Do e-books count? I hope so, they have the same capability or even better (search), and no environmental impact

<comment><USER13> Boekenweek is organised by book stores, if you buy a book in that week you get an extra one free, the "boekenweek present". It's exclusively written for that edition boekenweek and can be used as a train ticket on sunday.

E-books have great features no doubt, but people buy them online, and traditional book stores aren't fans.

<comment><USER14> Sounds like a massive subsidy to bookstores.

Ironically, I bet people today read far more than ever, as that's how they interact with their phones.

<comment><USER13> Subsidy? I don't think there is much government money involved, except that the railways are state-owned.

<comment><USER14> I don't know specifically about the Dutch railways, but government operated utilities usually are subsidized by the taxpayers. It's certainly true in Seattle, where the government transportation network operates at massive losses made up by the taxpayers.

<comment><USER13> In the Netherlands it's a bit complicated. The rail infrastructure company (ProRail) is subsidized (just like e.g. highways), but the national railway company (NS) that runs most of the passenger trains on it actually pays for the privilege and isn't subsidized.

But this sponsorship just makes sense as marketing for them, they want to be seen as a way to travel that can be combined with reading a book, since you can't driving a car. That is not "massive subsidy".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They should give an extra day's travel if the book-holder is _not_ carrying a smart phone.</comment>


Ask HN: How come quora.com blatantly violates Facebook auth terms? - <AUTHOR>

When using quora's facebook authentication, they copied my email address to their database (rather than using fb tokens) and copied my facebook profile photo to their own cdn.
This clearly violates facebook's terms of service for third party authentication (i know this because i was working with a company that actually read the terms and decided not to use auth with facebook because of it).
Do they have a special deal with facebook or am i missing something here? <comment><USER2> I've had a hunch that Facebook is planning to buy Quora at some point, perhaps once a certain benchmark is reached; Quora received a very large investment at one point, giving them a very large valuation - similarly as Instagram received, and then Facebook bought them. I think this all in part is an effort to reenforce psychologically / show the perception that Facebook et al are worth the numbers being thrown out for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> this actually sounds very logical!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I found a quora topic related to your question.

[http://www.quora.com/Does-Quoras-profile-picture-importer- vi...](http://www.quora.com/Does-Quoras-profile-picture-importer-violate- Facebooks-Terms-of-Service)

I guess the answer is yes, but only if facebook cares, which I guess they don't.</comment>


Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/grand-jury-indicts-12-russian-intelligence-officers-hacking-offenses-related-2016-election <comment><USER2> Two things stand out to me here:

(1) CrowdStrike, for all intents and purposes, failed. Russia had access to dem servers for four months after they were hired

(2) Donors trying to use ActBlue (fairly major way dems raise money) were taken to a spoofed Russian site. Stealing democratic campaign donations feels like a very direct attack on the democratic process

</comment><comment><USER3> > At trial, prosecutors must introduce credible evidence that is sufficient to > prove each defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, to the unanimous > satisfaction of a jury of twelve citizens.

> This case was investigated with the help of the FBI's cyber teams in > Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and San Francisco and the National Security > Division.

Assuming this never goes to trial, could the DOJ ever be compelled to release the evidence used to attribute the defendants? Or will it remain "pending arraignment" indefinitely?

I'd love to see an in-depth technical analysis of how they were able to substantiate these allegations

<comment><USER4> My guess is that Russia will fund one charged guy to hire a a top US lawyer and fight the charges.

A Russian company--allegedly doing Russia's dirty work--hired top US lawyers and they are giving DOJ a heartburn...they must share evidence (can tell how it was obtained) and get ready to go to trial. [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/05/09/concord- manag...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/05/09/concord-management- arraignment-russia-investigation/594454002/)

<comment><USER5> I think the US intelligence community is competent and influential enough to get the DOJ to drop the charges before Russia gained significant knowledge that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Full indictment document: [https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download](https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download)

<comment><USER7> So GRU, during Moscow work-hours, searched for terms like: "worldwide known", "think twice about", "some hundred sheets", and "company's competence".

And those terms happen to all show up later that day in this post: [https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/dnc/](https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/dnc/)

We all here talked about that release at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11912412](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11912412)

Our top comment suggested, "The media (and CrowdStrike) blame Russians for it [0]. Heh... yet this blog and the hacker himself, says he did it alone. // Yes, APTs definitely do happen but I'd bet they happen a lot less frequently than the media and security companies would want us to believe."

Those same computers controlled the twitter accounts, @dceaks_ ([https://twitter.com/dcleaks_?lang=en](https://twitter.com/dcleaks_?lang=en)), @Guccifer_2 ([https://twitter.com/Guccifer_2](https://twitter.com/Guccifer_2)) and the now-suspended, @BaltimoreIsWhr.

Those computers also negotiated bitcoin transactions for VPN services, made numerous encouraging facebook posts, transferred data to WikiLeaks, and registered relevant domain names.

And finally those computers communicated with:

1) a candidate for US Congress,

2) a registered state lobbyist,

3) a reporter,

4) a senior member of the Trump campaign.

Additionally, on July 27, Trump suggested in his speech, "Russia, if you're listening. I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing." And those same computers, that same day, "attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts... used by Clinton's personal office."

<comment><USER8> > Additionally, on July 27, Trump suggested in his speech, "Russia, if you're > listening. I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing." > And those same computers, "attempted after hours to spearphish for the first > time email accounts... used by Clinton's personal office."

Anyone who has seen the actual video for that blurb that doesn't take it as a joke should re-evaluate their sense of humor.

<comment><USER9> Statements are statements. Obama should have arrested Trump the moment he made this statement.

<comment><USER10> You'd have to pretty majorly change the US Constitution before that is even remotely legal.

<comment><USER9> Not really. Criminal conspiracy is already a crime.

<comment><USER11> Alone, the comment may have been solicitation, but couldn't be conspiracy.

But solicitation is also a crime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Replying to an unfortunately killed comment which raised common, potentially legitimate (given the success of various spin efforts) though naive and poorly informed questions:

> Just checking... But in the Russian Hacking Scandal... Was any of the > information released to the public wrong or fake?

It's the Russian _election meddling_ scandal, the _hacking_ was just one piece of it, and, yes, much of the information fed to the public in the course of that operation was false.

Some of that has been covered in the special counsel's previous indictment of Russian organizations and individuals involved in the propaganda end of the operation.

> Because if the issue is that "Russia meddled!" by showing true things

It's not; the issue is that a US Presidential campaign actively collaborated in an influence operation by a hostile foreign power directed against the US (that is itself part of a larger operation being conducted not only the US but the entire Western Alliance), that that influence operation was integral to the success of the Presidential campaign, and that the US President (who is, by virtue of that position, also effective head of a major US political party) may, therefore, effectively be an agent of a hostile foreign power working against the interests of the US and her allies.

<comment><USER12> > It's not; the issue is that a US Presidential campaign actively collaborated > in an influence operation by a hostile foreign power directed against the US

That's a bold claim given that this indictment is exclusively of Russian agents and the special counsel has explicitly stated that said President is not a target of the probe [0]. When you say "active collaboration" what does that actually mean? And could you present some evidence of it?

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-19/rosenstei...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-19/rosenstein- said-to-tell-trump-he-s-not-target-in-mueller-probe)

<comment><USER13> Yes, only Russian agents are indicted this time, but someone who might be Roger Stone makes a brief appearance (#44) in the document, too, probably to be targeted in future legal action.

<comment><USER11> In addition to Stone, there's also the Congressional candidate mentioned at Paragraph 43.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "On the evening of June 15, 2016 between 4:19PM and 4:56PM, defendants used their Moscow-based server to search for a series of English words and phrases that later appeared in Guccifer 2.0's first blog post..."

That has got to be one of the scarier things I've read in some time as to the depth and breadth of current surveillance.

<comment><USER15> Depth, certainly. Breadth, not necessarily (though I don't want to have much illusions regarding breadth). It could very well be that this information was gleaned from when the dutch hacked Cozy Bear. If that's the same group. [https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/dutch-agencies- provide-...](https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/dutch-agencies-provide- crucial-intel-about-russia-s-interference-in-us-elections~b4f8111b/) (link copied from another comment)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what the folks that kept claiming an inside job have to say about this?

<comment><USER17> In particular Assange and Wikileaks.

He publicly supported the claim it was the DNC and every day it looks like Wikileaks was just being used as an information laundering service for the Russians.

<comment><USER18> I had not been aware the the government had ever obtained access to the DNC server. I assume that will be a key piece of evidence for prosecution and for defense, so they must finally have it. That's good. Would have been better two years ago, but good that they have it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's been a longstanding struggle between the design principles of cryptocurrency - i.e. private payments - and the public policy goals of monitoring our payments infrastructure for criminal activity. What are cryptocurrency advocates saying now about e.g. FinCEN's jurisdiction over exchanges? Is KYC now standard? Do they submit SARs? Do they agree with the principles, or are they opposed to any sort of oversight?

</comment><comment><USER20> Rod Rosenstein said he briefed the president that this indictment was coming today. The president chose today to attack, from Buckinghamshire, Mueller and the probe as a rigged witch hunt yet again. The White House statement amounts to "it proves we did nothing, Americans weren't involved" but no statement pushing back on Russia at all. No condemnation at all.

But this is from a president who has said about Putin:

"He said he didn't meddle. He said he didn't meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times"

"Every time he sees me, he says, 'I didn't do that"

"And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it."

"I think he is very insulted by it."

The timing of this indictment is obvious to probably most people, but in particular to people who have studied or are professionals in international relations - it is to give the president the option to cancel the meeting in Helsinki. To give him the option to recalibrate and criticize Putin.

But instead what we've got so far is more "witch hunt" paranoid conspiratorial nonsense which is _identical_ to the single public contribution of significance Trump produced before becoming president: five years of the racist lie of birtherism, followed by an admission otherwise while simultaneously lying again by blaming Clinton for having started the conspiracy. This is a man who will make up anything, do anything, lie about anything, and blame anyone for all of it without any reluctance whatsoever.

And it will continue that way.

</comment><comment><USER21> The storyline behind the charges is self-contradictory -- according to Muller's indictments:

a) Russian intelligence tried to hack Hillary's personal email system for the first time on July 27 2016.

b) Russian cutout Joseph Mifsud told George Papadopoulos on April 26 2016 that Russia already had thousands of her emails.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally I have no doubt that many US persons (R.S. is probably one of them) sought the aid of Russia to elect Trump. They thought that Hillary was corrupt or whatever and Russia could unmask her. The fact that Russia did it, to them is irrelevant, the "truth" was revealed. I am also certain that the end didn't justify the means in this case, USA is right to through the kitchen sink at the people involved...we have elections every 2-4 years and a message should be sent. (USA did the same is not a moral equivalent to me)

</comment><comment><USER20> From the indictment with my comments in []

 _22\. On or about July 27 2016 the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a 3rd party provider and used by Clinton 's personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign._

[July 27 2016 is the date on which Trump said on national TV "Russia if you're listening..." and invited Russia to commit a crime to hack and find Clinton's 'missing' emails.]

 _34\. In or around Sep 2016 the Conspirators successfully gained access to DNC computers hosted on 3rd party cloud-computing services. These computers contained test applications related to the DNC 's analytics. After conducting reconnaissance, the Conspirators gathered data by creating backups, or snapshots, of the DNC's cloud-based systems using the cloud provider's own technology. The Conspirators then moved the snapshots to cloud-based accounts they had registered with the same service, thereby stealing the data from the DNC._

[Trump claims the DNC did not turn over the hacked (physical) server to the FBI. And per this indictment it's clear it was a virtual server hosted in the cloud and at least Mueller's team does have quite a bit of forensic evidence to show how the theft occurred.]

 _43a. On or about Aug 15 2016, the Conspirators posing as Guccifer 2.0 recieved a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate 's opponent._

[Let's pretend this candidate didn't know Guccifer 2.0 was the GRU. He still knew he was asking for and receiving illegally obtained documents.]

 _72\. In or around July 2016, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators hacked the website of a state board of elections (SBOE 1) and stole information related to approximately 500,000 voters including names, addresses, party affiliation, social security numbers, dates of birth, and driver 's license numbers._

There are quite a few Americans "involved" either by being affected by ID theft by a crime organization purporting to be a government[1]; an American soliciting a foreign government to commit a crime the proceeds of which would likely benefit his campaign; and at least one American who solicited materials obtained in course of a crime who then received those materials to use against a competing candidate for Congress.

So the idea that American's aren't involved is nonsense. There are no Americans indicted for crimes in this particular filing, however.

[1] This is diplomatic. The less diplomatic version is that this is one nation attacking another, and is an act of war. That's how spy games get characterized when you get caught and revealed to the public.

<comment><USER22> > [July 27 2016 is the date on which Trump said on national TV "Russia if > you're listening..." and invited Russia to commit a crime to hack and find > Clinton's 'missing' emails.]

Trump's words were "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing"[1]. In my view, interpreting that as a call to commit a crime is a stretch.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald- trump-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-russia- clinton-emails.html)

> [Trump claims the DNC did not turn over the hacked (physical) server to the > FBI. And per this indictment it's clear it was a virtual server hosted in > the cloud and at least Mueller's team does have quite a bit of forensic > evidence to show how the theft occurred.]

Trump's claims are supported by Comey's testimony on March 20, 2017 that the FBI never got any kind of access, physical or virtual, to any DNC machine.

> HURD: [...] you have still been -- never been given access to any of the > technical or the physical machines that were -- that were hacked by the > Russians.

> COMEY: That's correct although we got the forensics from the pros that they > hired which -- again, best practice is always to get access to the machines > themselves, but this -- my folks tell me was an appropriate substitute.

[http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1703/20/cnr.07.html](http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1703/20/cnr.07.html)

<comment><USER23> The FBI only stated that they believed Crowdstrike but they themselves never obtained or examined the server despite multiple attempts.

<comment><USER24> Crowdstrike imaged the server and the FBI absolutely had access to the imaged server -- The mindless conspiracy theory is that the FBI needed the physical server.

> _" The DNC coordinated with the FBI and federal intelligence agencies and > provided everything they requested, including copies of DNC servers," Watson > said. She added that the copy contains the same information as the physical > server._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hopefully Craig Murray is not on suicide watch.

</comment><comment><USER26> What will be America's next move here? They are looking awful weak right now.

</comment><comment><USER21> Expect some countries to start charging US IC operators, for hacking and interference in their own electoral processes.

Reminder: the NSA has been hacking into governments and businesses all over the world.

<comment><USER11> > Expect some countries to start charging US IC operators.

Start?

It's hardly as if US intelligence officers have never previously been charged by foreign governments.

<comment><USER21> Yes, for torture [1], assassination [2], rendition [3], and war crimes [4][5]. Never merely for propaganda.

[1] [https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/04/14/spain-to-indict-the- bus...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/04/14/spain-to-indict-the-bush-six- over-torture/)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/05/cia-long- his...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/05/cia-long-history-kill- leaders-around-the-world-north-korea)

[3] [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05italy.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05italy.html)

[4] [https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/nov/15/us-army-and- cia-...](https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/nov/15/us-army-and-cia-may-be- guilty-of-war-crimes-afghanistan-says-icc)

[5] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2017/12/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2017/12/08/the-icc-will-investigate-alleged-u-s-war-crimes-in- afghanistan/)

<comment><USER27> Really? And you know this how? Just because the Chinese or Russian government's don't make a public spectacle, doesn't mean they haven't indicted US citizens for espionage. I'm willing to bet there's more than one US government employee who would be arrested the second they cleared customs in one or both of those countries.

<comment><USER21> Your argument might have at least some weight if it didn't rely on super- secret, invisible gremlins.

<comment><USER27> Based on your post history, I can't tell if you're a troll or actually believe what you're saying, but 30 seconds on google would alleviate you of your ignorance.

This has ALREADY HAPPENED. Russia has enticed people they secretly indicted on spy charges back to Russia, and then stuck them in prison.

[https://abcnews.go.com/WN/russian-spies-swap-cold- home/story...](https://abcnews.go.com/WN/russian-spies-swap-cold- home/story?id=11134463)

<comment><USER21> Come on. I'll ignore, for now, your attempt at insults.

These Russian spies in the US were not US IC agents.

<comment><USER11> They were in fact charged as US IC agents; they weren't US IC _officers_ , though.

<comment><USER21> Now you're pretending that Obama delivered 10 "American" agents to Russia...

Farce, idiocy, or trolling, I can't tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Prosecutor in [*] Files Charges against American NSA Officers" Just a question of time, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER29> >The Internet allows foreign adversaries to attack America in new and unexpected ways,"

>"Together with our law enforcement partners, the Department of Justice is resolute in its commitment to locate, identify and seek to bring to justice anyone who interferes with American elections.

Sounds like Don Quixote is fighting the internet now. Unless you just shut it down how is it possible to not have world wide "interference" on the world wide web? Perhaps we need to think about how the instantaneous global communications network is obsolescing the concept of the nation state which was formed as a result of the printing press.

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

>Free and fair elections are hard-fought and contentious, and there will always be adversaries who work to exacerbate domestic differences and try to confuse, divide, and conquer us.

That sounds like a fitting description of mass media/news corporations everywhere.

<comment><USER30> Thanks for your genuine opinion, 4-day-old account in a heavily bombarded thread.

<comment><USER31> From the comment guidelines [1]:

> Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and > is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at > the data.

Also, your own account is all of 40 days old and you have a grand total of 8 comments, so you don't really have a leg to stand on here.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Feds pin brazen kernel.org intrusion on 27-year-old programmer - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/feds-pin-brazen-kernel-org-intrusion-on-27-year-old-programmer/ <comment><USER2> Obligatory post on SCM security that these people still haven't learned from:

[http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/scm- security.html](http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/scm-security.html)

Since then, researchers have also made compilers for memory-safe C, many forms of append-only storage, parser generators for secure configs, secure web interfaces, etc. Mainstream proprietary and FOSS havent adopted or tried to build on about any of it outside one or two outliers. And random people can still achieve compromises like this with ease.

Hard to make fun of the Russians for bringing typewritters back given the situation. I also know people moving stuff through high-assurance guards consisting of real-time FSM's on 8-bit CPU's a few bytes at a time specifically because an exploit couldn't fit in the RAM or overwrite the ROM. Muphy's Law says if it's stupid and works then it aint stupid. I'll spare you what Murphy's Law says about Linux kernel or SCM security. Murphy's too profane sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Linux officials

... wat.

Anyways, besides this bizarre bit of---I don't know what to call it, the childlike need to set apart some authority figure as greater-than-ourselves even when those people claim no such privilege; or the need to be subject to a paternalistic or authoritarian system---I was surprised to learn that the promised postmortem was never released. On the other hand, I'm also surprised that the feds care one jot about the breach.</comment>


I, McRobot - <AUTHOR> https://hmmdaily.com/2018/12/26/i-mcrobot/ <comment><USER2>
      the clerk handed across an empty plastic cup, thumping hollowly on the counter, another job outsourced to the customer.

I seriously disagree that moving the drink fountains out to the customer is a disadvantage to the customer.

I _like_ that I can have more or less ice. I _like_ free refills. I like that I could sample bits of other drinks or intermix.

McD is mostly irrelevant to me nowadays, as all McDs around here are horribly run. The "fresh beef grilled to order" claim is an outright lie, and hygiene is problematic.

The menu board thing is also fatal to me. One has to wait 90 seconds for the full menu to rotate through, and even then, finding sandwich-only prices is like playing a bad video game.</comment>


VCs Who Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/05/vcs-who-code.html

<comment><USER2> There are VC's who code. If you want to call Graham a VC (does he like that title?), there's your archetype.

Then there are VC's who spend their 1-2 years in "industry" before applying to a top b-school to go into investment banking, and that industry time is spent with a software development title.

Beware VC's who claim to code.

<comment><USER3> _Beware VC's who claim to code._

You can sort this out like you sort out anyone else who makes this claim -- "oh, what's your github page". If they use the word "gitwhat?", then you should be suspicious. If they show you their page, then there's nothing to guess about.

<comment><USER4> Ha. Because all serious coders across all industries use GitHub, or have at least heard of it. Come on.

<comment><USER2> I think the people downmodding jrockway are reading him way too literally. He has a point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's Bill Joy, too :-) <http://www.kpcb.com/team/joy>

<comment><USER6> Just came here to check for that reference :)

I'm not sure how much hacking he actually does these days though; the last interview I heard from him (a few years ago) he said that he doesn't any more but still could, and even his investment focus is on renewable and alternative energy technologies (using the luxury yacht he was building at the time as a test bed!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've read about billionaire hacker (forth one?) - can't remember his name.

<comment><USER8> Did you mean Charles Simonyi?

\-- edit --

I couldn't figure out why someone voted down this comment. Did I offend someone just by mentioning one name?

From wikipedia:

"He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford in 1977 with a dissertation on a software project management technique called "metaprogramming". This approach sought to defeat Brooks' law by requiring all programmers to communicate through the manager rather than directly. Simonyi remained at PARC until 1981."

And from Forbes 2006 [http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/54/biz_06rich400_Charles- Si...](http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/54/biz_06rich400_Charles- Simonyi_VMOW.html)

"Net Worth $1.0 billion Source Technology, Self made"

<comment><USER9> > "Net Worth $1.0 billion Source Technology, Self made"

Didn't he make his $billion at Microsoft? If so, how is that "self made"?

<comment><USER10> "self made" means not inherited from your parents.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


[Show HN] Look Gmail! MetisMe makes it super easy to search & share attachments - <AUTHOR> http://www.metisme.com/for-hn-readers/

<comment><USER2> This looks like a soft launch just for HN. The homepage [http://www.metisme.com/](http://www.metisme.com/) still asks people to signup for an early invite.

Nice idea. It has been a pain trying to search for an old attachment within gmail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes.. We're preparing for a launch in the next 2 weeks...

Many thanks...</comment></comment>


The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/ <comment><USER2> It's a long read, but interesting. The first section is a lot of review of tactics you've probably already heard about post-2016.

One thing I hadn't heard about before was the use of potemkin local online newspapers. Apparently there are a lot of them. The idea is to make them feel like authentic local newspapers with coverage on neighborhood schools, etc. People trust local papers more than national media. When you're ready to push an agenda, you have a venue.

HN isn't the place for politics, but there's an interesting thrust to this piece that's more generally about information and disinformation; noise as a tactic for overwhelming truth; the relativity of truth; etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Many politicians will lie and most will stretch the truth to win votes. Trump and the Republicans are not unique. This article reads like an effort by Democrats to explain away in advance their possible failure in 2020.</comment>


East German coffee crisis - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_coffee_crisis <comment><USER2> Man, this article implies that Germany, starting in 1970, was largely responsible for Vietnam's coffee production industry, and remains a huge international market for Vietnam's production. But this other article says the French introduced coffee production to Vietnam in 1857, that the industry peaked in the early 20th century, and that production actually crashed in the 1970s due to the Vietnam War--and it doesn't even mention Germany:

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

Pretty rare to see two linked Wikipedia articles contradict each other that much.

<comment><USER3> > Pretty rare to see two linked Wikipedia articles contradict each other that > much.

It isn't contradictory. The french did colonize vietnam and force cash crops on vietnam ( like all colonial empires did ). But during the indochina war ( 1st and 2nd ), vietnam's coffee industry ( and all non-war related industry ) crashed due to the war itself and sanctions levied by the US/France. Vietnam was pretty much barred from trading with the western world, their primary market.

As the indochina war drew to a close and the coffee industry revived because of friendly soviet-vietnam relations and the opening of markets in soviet dominated europe. It wasn't just coffee, lots of vietnamese immigrated to soviet dominated to work and study as well. At one point, the largest non- white communities in eastern germany, poland, etc were vietnamese.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is fascinating. I didn't know the history. I now live in Saigon. I can vouch for the quality of the coffee beans here. I buy mine from a small farm near Da Lat, who I've personally met, and I drink a cup or two daily. I even spent a decent chunk of money on a proper burr conical grinder and I'm a huge fan of the aero press. =)

</comment><comment><USER5> I learned recently that acorns were commonly used as a coffee substitute in the former Soviet Union. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_substitute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_substitute)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is why I love HN. This random WikiPedia article is great, and the flow on affects of this one quirk of history are really fascinating.

I remember an article in the WSJ by a Pakistani man ~2006, saying "the entire history of my country is a footnote in the history of US foreign policy", and it always stuck with me how much some events can have wide reaching and odd effects, disproportionately felt by specific groups.

</comment><comment><USER7> sidenote: in 1785 there was another coffee crisis in the German city of Paderborn. When the prince-bishop restricted consumption to nobles, clergy and officials, people protested successfully with noisy meetings where they drank coffee in public. This tradition should be revived.

[https://books.google.de/books?id=QZovusQ1SjYC&pg=PA241](https://books.google.de/books?id=QZovusQ1SjYC&pg=PA241)

[https://de.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Der_Kaffee- Lärm_in_Paderbor...](https://de.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Der_Kaffee- Lärm_in_Paderborn_1781) (German)

</comment><comment><USER8> I do like Wikipedia articles that change one's view of how the world works. This is one of those articles, I didn't even know coffee came from Vietnam and that Vietnam were number two in the coffee growing business. Most coffee I see has the 'Nescafe' label on it with no mention of Vietnam. I am now wondering what other commodity items I take for granted with no idea of the origin.

<comment><USER9> If you haven't tried Vietnamese coffee you're in for a treat! While many people probably consume coffee from Vietnam in the "usual" way, I think if you order a "vietnamese coffee" you'll likely be talking about this:

[https://www.lonelyplanet.com/vietnam/travel-tips-and- article...](https://www.lonelyplanet.com/vietnam/travel-tips-and- articles/a-guide-to-vietnamese-coffee/40625c8c-8a11-5710-a052-1479d2761b3b)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A perfect example of the butterfly effect [1].

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

<comment><USER11> ...No. Not, it's not.

<comment><USER10> Care to explain why not?

Article describes how some probale unfavourable weather pattern derives in coffee issues in Brazil, then is producing effects ( including political!) in East Germany then in Vietnam. Which said effects might even now influence the present.</comment></comment></comment>