Decision to drop ext support from ChromeOS Files.app reversed due to outcry - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=315401#c124 <comment><USER2> "Thanks for all of your feedback on this bug. We've heard you loud and clear."

Kudos to Google for hearing loud and clear the 127 people in that thread and potentially helped the numerous chromeOS community!

And here [1] are the cries of few thousands of souls that lost full access to their android sdcard. Hope you also hear their feedback louder and clearer! On the upside we learned how "Bring it back" is written in multiple languages. [1] [https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=67570](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=67570)

<comment><USER3> While frustrating, the SD card situation is very different.

With SD cards, the "old way" had serious problems (security and robustness issues because apps could stomp on each other's data, all sorts of complexity and confusion on multi-user devices, orphaning private app data on the SD card when apps are uninstalled, no sensible backup possibilities for apps that depend on SD card data, apps not knowing whether data would be on internal or external storage because "/sdcard" means different things on different devices, etc.) that Google is trying to solve.

Google's solution required a compatibility break, but that doesn't mean they're just dropping all of the SD card use cases. KitKat introduced app- specific private data on external storage, apps can enable some simple sharing by the adding read permissions to their private data, the storage access framework can be used to support more complex structured sharing between and so on. Among other things, Google is even adding a new API in Android L that lets apps properly publish media (images, audio, video, etc.) from their private storage (including private SD card storage, which is when it is most useful) to the shared MediaStore.

Is this transition bumpy? Absolutely, especially for people who upgrade their OS or use an old SD card on a new device. Nevertheless, I don't think Google will go back no matter how loud the cries get. Google tried neglecting SD cards from Honeycomb through Jelly Bean (hoping they'd "wither away", I suspect). That failed. Now they have no choice but to do the hard work of putting external storage on a reasonable foundation.

<comment><USER4> If the problems were so "serious" I wonder how people ever managed to use external storage on their computers, long before Android even existed...?

I think it's really about Google control. They tried to remove SD cards completely and push cloud storage, but since that didn't go over so well, they'll emphasise the "problems" and their attempt at "solving" them by introducing some even more convoluted scheme for access, increasing complexity and furthering their end goal of making it harder to use external storage.

The fact is that letting apps access external storage in the form of a full filesystem means that data can flow freely between apps, just like on a regular desktop system you can create a file with one text editor and view it in another, or maybe the webbrowser if you're writing HTML, etc. You can put a negative spin on it with "apps could stomp on each other's data" or invoke the argument of "security" (which is already a solved problem: use a filesystem that supports permissions, like *nix always had), but there's no denying that it provides for seamless interoperability and sharing without any additional effort. It allows for the same level of flexibility that you would expect a general-purpose computer to have.

For example, I could plug in an SD card from a digital camera, open a file in one app to edit it, and then attach it to an email in another app, upload it to a cloud storage, etc. There's no additional "publish" or "import" steps required, only a way to choose the desired files in the filesystem to work on. Ditto for any other type of file, be it video, audio, text, etc.

Many people are now essentially carrying computers in their pockets which are orders of magnitude more powerful than desktop systems several decades ago, and yet what they can do with them is a shrinking subset of the functionality and generality those had. I think this is a massive step backwards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's really heartening to see a response from a user experience team to "you broke my workflow" that isn't "get fucked". I'd basically found forgotten that was a possibility.

</comment><comment><USER6> Google has been working hard to break compatibility in a lot of places, like XMPP and calendars. They just don't care about interop and want to lock people in. Pretty sad coming from a company that made fun of Microsoft on stage at Google IO for breaking interop. It is sort of like a person who litters and creates an obnoxious environment to live in complaining the other people gets to litter more than them.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wasn't the outcry mainly because of a misunderstanding - thinking Google is dropping support for ext4 for _internal_ storage, when in fact it was dropping for _external_ storage? (microSD, etc)?

<comment><USER8> No. I don't think anyone cares what the internal storage uses; that's just an implementation detail. People want to connect random drives to their ChromeOS machine and have them Just Work, which is quite reasonable.

At least on my main Linux box, the VFAT driver and USB3 driver collude to corrupt everything I store as FAT, so I've been using ext3 for my flash drives.

Actually I gave up on flash drives and just use Google Drive, but that is neither here nor there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slightly on topic. I thought OS X was the only OS the named their applications Something.app. ChromeOS does it too?

<comment><USER10> Something.app comes from NeXTStep actually.

<comment><USER9> Succeeded by OS X.

<comment><USER11> s/Succeeded/Consumed/

<comment><USER12> you forgot the g

s/Succeeded/Consumed/g

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I bet with these types of fiascos, Google will be less likely to publish the source code of their projects in the future. When an uproar like this happens, it's impossible to engage in a technical discussion and find compromise. Sometimes fewer features make a better product.

<comment><USER8> Flamewars are nothing new on the chromium.org issue tracker. Pretty much every bug looks like this one. Ultimately, the transparency and ability to accept external contributors outweighs the effort required to mitigate the flamewar.

It is nice to hear directly from users; something engineers thought was unimportant turns out to be a little more important than they thought. That's useful information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This thread got big in r/linux [http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2iyplo/chromeos_will_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2iyplo/chromeos_will_no_longer_support_ext234_on/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Lack of NFS support in chromeos kernels is also extremely annoying.

<comment><USER13> Lol, nobody uses NFS except lunix tools.

<comment><USER15> The problem is, if you install chrubuntu, you have to share the same kernel with chromeos. Why did not they build an NFS module?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's the native filesystem on a ChromeOS device? FAT32? That can't be right.

<comment><USER17> They dropped support only for external devices. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8444603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8444603).

Don't know what they use for their own filesystem though, I thought it was just ext4, but didn't find that anywhere.

<comment><USER18> They need a filesystem that can support the notion of users; very little of the software on ChromeOS runs as root for security reasons. FAT doesn't support the notion of file permissions on a user basis; so it would be insecure. ext4 is the most widely used and tested Linux filesystem at the moment. Therefor the least effort filesystem to use for your root filesystem is ext4.

On external devices however you'd probably want to "squash" the users (all files are effectively treated as owned by the one user; the user/person who inserted the external device) and also mount with noexec and nodev; don't allow the kernel to run any programs on external devices (avoid malware, hacks etc), and don't allow device files to be used on external devices (you don't want someone to put a crwxrwxrwx copy of /dev/kmem on an external device and allow someone to access it; then an unprivileged user can read all of kernel memory).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Thanks for all of your feedback on this bug. We've heard you loud and clear."

In stark contrast to the same style of comments provided by the chrome/chromium developers regarding two bugs / features identified on the GNU/Linux releases of same:

a) snap-back (move the scrollbar up or down, and then move your mouse more than 50px from the scrollbar, and it instantly flips the position back to where you started dragging -- a very MS-Windows experience), and

b) clicking in the URL / address bar automatically selects the entire address bar -- again, a very MS-Windows experience.

Both these features were added in chrome/chromium about 11 months back, were met with something between disdain and disgust, and though the developers said they heard the complaints loud and clear, discounted these concerns, as MS- Windows users preferred this MS-Windows-centric approach.

Bless.

(Yes, I'm still grumpy about all of the above.)

<comment><USER20> It has been years since I used Windows more than once a month, but a) seems like a convenient feature, while I'm pretty ambivalent about b).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is actually too bad. These kind of decisions, compounded, is why Googles stuff is arguably so much less usable for the average Joe/Jane than Apple and why their ecosystem is such a mess for developers to work with. They don't have the will be ruthless and cut features at the expense of geeks like me in order to make the system more usable for the average consumer.

<comment><USER21> Oh so much disagreement with me on this. Oh well, down-vote away... Did you all read the ticket and the initial reasoning for dropping support for the file format on the _external_ memory card? It was so they could support renaming it more easily. I'm not saying I don't care about the file format (actually I don't) what I'm saying generally is that usability should trump most everything else and Google gets it wrong again and again.

<comment> vertex-four Renaming a FAT filesystem:

        mlabel -i <device> ::<label>

Renaming an ext filesystem:

        e2label <device> <label>

You can detect whether it's one or the other in the mount table. It amounts to maybe a dozen lines of bash code at maximum - maybe a few more if it's C++, depending on what abstractions already exist.

I can't actually see where in the bug report it describes an issue that's specific to extfs?</comment></comment></comment>


The Facebook Era Is Over - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebook-era-over-gina-bianchini/ <comment><USER2> I doubt it's over. Facebook has their constellation of of apps and services. And the cost of switching is not so simple for, say, the average user who's used facebook as their photo and video archive over the years. But most of all they have the opportunity to pivot, reinvent themselves to keep relevant. Something I wouldn't count them out of. Personally, I hope they fail. The last two years have seen my feeds turn into majority hate filled posts full of vitriol for some issue or other. Only a minority seem to actually be relevant for keeping in touch with friends and loved ones.

<comment><USER3> They are going to fade into irrelevance for the same reason nightclubs do, they just aren't cool anymore. They know this which is why they are on a mission to buy, kill or copy every new social service that gets traction.

<comment><USER2> Under that logic (which I don't dispute-- it might be true) all such platforms are ultimately doomed to irrelevance and failure. Some even start out that way (Google+) But I do wonder if there's a model out there that could have longevity. If so, I have to think it's success would in part be predicated on not stuffing every other interaction with ads and paid content. Facebook's mission is to "bring the world closer together", but they really don't do that. Even at their best they've only been a showcase for trite, shallow interactions. That may be an over generalization, there's probably some few who find more value there, but I've seen it cause more conflict and social rifts than getting people closer together.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the model that "could have longevity" is the web, which has longevity precisely because it is a wild west of different viewpoints and competition.

It's the same old cathedral vs bazaar or state owned corps vs free market situation again.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


OpenStreetMap: Welcome Apple - <AUTHOR> http://blog.osmfoundation.org/2012/03/08/welcome-apple/ <comment><AUTHOR>
      "It's also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap's
       contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get
       that on there."

<comment><USER2> Why is that, that if Apple ignores credit/copyright (on a massive scale), that everybody loves their move.

But if anybody would rip of an Apple product, the descendants of mighty Steve would come raining down with swords, axes and lawyers.

Do you really think they did it, to support OSM. Or should I ask myself: "Where is the money?"

The money, they do not have to pay Google anymore for the use of maps, while not crediting all these people, who supported OSM with their time and data- collecting.

<comment><USER3> Better to approach these things positively, than assume the worst case and risk creating resentment.

<comment><USER4> It's idealistic naivete to assume the best of everyone. But you're right, pretending to does make it more comfortable to operate in the world.

<comment><USER5> It can also make it expedient and more effective to operate in the real world. You can always say "we tried to approach them and work with them nicely" when you start making noise and going nuclear after they don't respond.

<comment><USER6> Exactly, it's a very pragmatic move. After all, who has more lawyers? I think that people need to ask the question, "What do I hope to get out of this particular thing I'm about to do or say?" more often, as opposed to, "What am I justified in doing or saying?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Then congratulations Apple, for making a not so great map even worse. I can't really judge map quality in the US, but in Germany it sucks. Cities show up twice or are missing completely, labels are often small, unreadable and ugly. There is no consistency in the placement of lables.

OSM has its fair share of inconsistencies but it's not that bad.

The map is ok for what it is: Just for presentation inside of iPhoto, not for browsing or finding your way. I really hope that Apple doesn't plan to use this anywhere else and hat they just didn't go with Google because they can't customize their maps any way they want.

(That missing credit is also shameful. I was looking everywhere inside of iPhoto but couldn't find it. Stuff like that sould at least be moderately easy to find.)

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, I made a comparison between the two towns where most of my photos are taken as seen in GMaps vs. OSM.

<http://cl.ly/133M1H3W2W362S2F0l13> <http://cl.ly/2P2d3y042N1T0o2p390H>

600k and 60k inhabitants respectively.

<comment><USER9> Interesting. From your screenshots, Apple's maps are so bad it's not even funny. It's just very, very bad. Steve would've never allowed such a thing to ship.

Is this a first sign that without an asshole with taste at the top, the erosion of Apple is inevitable?

<comment><USER10> You may be correct, but I'm not positive. These maps are used to give you an idea of where a photo was taken, not to provide navigation to it, so detail isn't quite as important. The other consideration is this is one data point. Perhaps Apple did a thousand of these and felt OSM was better.

Or, maybe Apple is going to quickly flame out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In addition to the attribution, I'd like to know how they are going to comply with the "share-alike" part of the license. Where can I download "Apple maps"? According to the OSM FAQ, it should contain not only the OSM data but all other data they have merged in.

It also seems like they should be required to release all the styling parameters and/or code needed to render the maps exactly as they appear in iPhoto - does anyone know how far CC-BY-SA reaches in a case like this?

EDIT: for that last part, I guess they probably would be fine just releasing the whole thing pre-rendered.

<comment><USER12> No-one really know how far CC goes, and that's one reason OSM is changing licence to a new Open Database Licence (ODbL)

<comment><USER13> Why wouldn't CC cover this?

<comment><USER12> OSM is a database of geographic facts ("There is a road here. It is called Main Street. It is a primary road." etc.) Copyright of databases is non- obvious, so they are switching to a click through database EULA thingie.

<comment><USER14> Copyright of databases has on several occasions been overturned

See Feist V. Rural

"The constitutional requirement necessitates independent creation plus a modicum of creativity. Since facts do not owe their origin to an act of authorship, they are not original, and thus are not copyrightable. Although a compilation of facts may possess the requisite originality because the author typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the data so that readers may use them effectively, copyright protection extends only to those components of the work that are original to the author, not to the facts themselves. This fact/expression dichotomy severely limits the scope of protection in fact-based works."

Whether or not the street data is copyrightable in light of this decision is definitely sketchy; the tiles etc. clearly are since they have some modicum of creativity.

<comment><USER12> And remember that OSM is a global project, that works in many countries, with different interpretations of copyright law. You don't want it to be open in some countries, public domain in others etc etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are two things that Apple should do in order to avoid being viewed as a jerk once again. Put in the credit to OpenStreetMap and make a sizable donation to the OpenStreetMaps Foundation.

<comment><USER2> Not only credit to OSM. They would have to credit every single contributor (whos data is used).

<comment><USER12> Not really. Yes the Licence is CC-BY-SA, but "OpenStreetMap Contributors" is accepted form. (cf. <http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright> )

<comment><USER2> Thanks for clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this is a temporary quick and dirty solution from Apple, pending a full-scale switch to their own maps in iOS 6.0.

<comment><USER12> "Their own maps"? These are _their_ maps. They are rendering them, they are hosting them. If you mean "their own map data", then that would be silly (& expensive) for Apple to either (a) drive a car around everywhere like Google Street View or (b) licence some third party mapping company. OSM is a good solution for Apple here.

<comment><USER17> They did buy c3 technologies so they are probably up to something map related.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is (for me) a very timely validation of OSMs efforts, congrats to them!

</comment><comment><USER19> Has it been confirmed that they're using OSM data or could the data be a product of their acquisition of Placebase (back in 2009)?

Apple have actually been using this tile set for a while (it's used in the slide show mode of the current version of iPhoto for OS X).

<comment><USER12> Yes, it looks like OSM. There are small roads that I've mapped that are only on OSM, and are present on these maps. The data from OSM is from april 2010 (based on "The road added to OSM on $DATE1 is on these appple tiles, but the the road added on $DATE2 isn't")

And yes, it looks like they've been using it for a while, no-one noticed till now.

<comment><USER20> > And yes, it looks like they've been using it for a while, no-one noticed > till now.

What do you mean by that? This is all from software released today, right?

<comment><USER19> No, the same tile sets are used in iPhoto for OS X (part of the iLife suite) and some people claim they're used in Aperture (another photo editor but I've not used it).

Where they have used it, they used it as hint as to where a photo was taken. The more detailed info panes still use google's maps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I can see a big migration away from Google Maps with Google's new pricing. Google's pricing can potentially get prohibitively expensive quickly. 25000 map views per day and $4/1000 map views that exceed the free 25000 map views. I am starting a new project that is focused around mapping. There is no way Google Maps will work for me with their pricing model. Open Street Maps is great.

</comment><comment><USER22> What is the word I'm looking for, "disappointed"?

The lack of given credit to OSM doesn't seems like an accident, and I was looking forward to see what Apple was doing with that amazing mapping technology from SAAB.

This is underwhelming to say the least, I was expecting much more from Apple.

<comment><USER12> I presume the missing attribution was an accident. They cannot avoid it for much longer. It's legally required under the OSM copyright licence (CC-BY-SA)

<comment><USER23> Yeah. Apple isn't known for sweating the small stuff.

Accident my ass! Incompetence, at best. If this was Microsoft or Oracle, not Apple, HN would be grabbing their pitchforks in three seconds.

<comment><USER24> If this was any other company not a single article would have been written about it in the first place.

<comment><USER25> Provably false: [http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/microsoft-adds- openst...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/microsoft-adds- openstreetmap-layer-to-bing-maps/)

<comment><USER24> Expected an article about Microsoft not providing attribution to OSM but you didn't deliver.

An exaggeration on my part perhaps but when you compare the number of articles written about this compared to the Google contractors that intentionally sabotaged OSM data the difference is staggering.

<comment><USER25> I took the broader class to be articles about <company> using/working with OSM, not <company> misusing OSM data. However, I'd also say that if people are going to write about that sort of low-profile collaboration between Microsoft and OSM, I think plenty more people would have written about it if Microsoft had done anything inappropriate with OSM or OSM data.

As for the Google contractors, I remember that being a big story (especially coming on the heels of the Kenya incident) until Google fired them and apologized.

Similarly, I'd expect interest in Apple's failure to credit OSM to go away once they fix it and apologize. Apple's use of OSM is interesting on its own terms, of course, so I doubt interest in that will die down anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I see this as a favorable move to OSM. Hopefully the OSM's data would be enriched further considering the huge volume of people who would come in contact with OSM. OSM still lacks in a few places like middle east (Kuwait). But what was surprising was, wikimapia has several orders of magnitude better data for the same region compared to OpenStreetMap or other commercial map providers ( That includes google maps, yahoo maps etc )

</comment><comment><USER27> The map for my hometown shows a train station that hasn't existed since the early 1900's.

<comment><USER10> If it's in the current OSM db, you should fix it. That's the great thing about OSM.

<comment><USER28> Yep, and it is even very easy: [http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/openstreetmap- s_user-generated_dat...](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/openstreetmap-s_user- generated_data_wins_when_there_are_changes/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I thought someone compared the terrain with OSM and in certain locations it differs?

Edit: They're apparently combining map data in some places.

<comment><USER12> OSM doesn't have "terrain" (as in hill shading and mountain slopes), but it does have streets and roads. Apple and OSM match up in lots of places.

Apple are not using OSM in USA (maybe canada, i dunno), but are definitly using it outside there.

<comment><USER30> OSM does have terrain, just not in the default map render (which includes most hand-editible data to aid contributers but is often assumed to be the single intended end product). For elevation they re-use SRTM data (and other sources) to create maps with shaded slopes or contours:

<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SRTM>

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Shaded_relief_maps_using_...](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Shaded_relief_maps_using_mapnik)

<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contours>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are some licence and copyright matters to be dealt with, but it's good to see another company switch to OpenStreetMap

</comment><comment><USER31> We know that Apple is working on using their own map technology based on some of their acquisitions. Is it possible that OSM is just a stop-gap until their own maps are ready to go? Perhaps they didn't want to enter into another licensing agreement with Google if they're going to be ready to switch to their own solution later this year with iOS 6?

<comment><USER12> Well these are already their maps. They have styled them, hosting them etc. They are just using the raw underlying OSM data. You have to get data from somewhere, and OSM is probably one of the best sources of data.

<comment><USER31> Interesting. Does that mean that the companies like Placebase (which Apple acquired) weren't generating their own map data? I guess I just assumed that they were, but the small amount of info I can find on them now makes it seem unclear.

<comment><USER12> I don't know anything about Placebase (or the other map company Apple acquired at the same time).

But from a practical standpoint, the world is really really bog. "Generating map data" isn't exactly easy, you don't "generate it", you have to "collect it". This isn't like generating a spell checking dictionary, or a a user generated world for a video game. You have to use reality.

The half a million OSM users has been collecting this data for about 8 years now. Either with lots of GPSs or buy tracing satilite/aerial imagery from Yahoo and now Bing (not Google ☹).

To generate it yourself, you need to reproduce all of that above. Google's Street View is a way to reproduce it, since you'll have GPS traces of all the roads, and photos of what the road is like (for street names). OSM covers twice or more times what Google Street View does, so that won't even get you there.

The other option is to pay companies that have already done this, this is what Google Maps (et al.) mostly is, and is also what GPS/SatNav companies do. They get their data from either governmental sources if possible, or from tracing aerial imagery.

All those options are _expensive_. Why not just use that free OSM data?

This is why OSM was created. To provide a free source of map data to improve humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> With many of these larger map-based apps switching to OpenStreetMap, does anyone know any apps that receive a large amount of traffic that are currently/going to stay with Google Maps? And if so, how are they dealing with the charges (is it doable with a large amount of traffic without a significant source of revenue)?

</comment><comment><USER33> Could someone clarify using a service like OSM or Google Maps vs. using their data for map tiles?

After the announcement I read tweets that basically said Apple was still using the Google Maps service, but the tiles were rendered by Apple?

Based on what I'm reading it sounds like I misunderstood or am misremembering what I read.

<comment><USER12> Some of Apple's software is still using Google Maps. Some is use tiles that Apple render and host, but based on OpenStreetMap data. Basically 2 years ago someone download the OSM data base (you can get it here <http://planet.openstreetmap.org/> ), and then they made up their own style.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Someone at Apple definitely deserves a good spanking..

</comment><comment><USER35> Link is down. I'd ask for a google cache link, but the irony would make me implode.

<comment><USER36> I don't know if you posted this just for pointing out the irony, or if you really don't know: Retrieving the website from the Google Cache is as easy as searching for "cache:FULL_URL" with Google, there isn't even a results page or anything, you get directly to the cached page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Great Apple, do no evil! How can we get better coverage for Asia?

<comment><USER12> With OSM, just start mapping! It's a wiki! <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_guide>

<comment><USER38> That won't help Apple users though -- OP points out that the map data is stale (possibly two years old). It suggests there was a one-off dump at some point which was then used to build the service.

<comment><USER39> I doubt they would dump once and never update it... Eventually they'll need to update or the maps will be useless...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence The Apple tiles are completely missing the street I live on ...

<comment><USER40> Well add it into OSM ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> _Just_ when I thought they couldn't get any more evil.

</comment><comment><USER42> How can a project this cool have such an ugly website? It's shit like this OSM...

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't get it. Where's the evidence that these maps are based on OSM data versus, say, Navteq or TeleAtlas data?

The tiles use terrain data that nobody thinks is from OSM, and when I look at North American cities, the street grids certainly don't seem to match any better than you'd expect.

This post sounds pretty confident but they don't explain why.

<comment><USER44> Don't read between the lines:

 _"The new iPhoto for iOS, however, uses Apple's own map tiles – made from OpenStreetMap data (outside the US)."_

<comment><USER43> Ah, thanks -- I missed the _(outside the US)_ bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It feels a bit silly to fawn over map tiles... and I'll probably be accused of being an "Apple Fanboy"... But I'll be damned if those aren't some gorgeous tiles.

Hopefully, this signals apple will move away from google for the built in maps app and provide something superior themselves with something comparable to the kick ass turn by turn in the current Android devices.

<comment><USER46> One of these is far nicer and clearer than the other:

<http://alastaira.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/image3.png>

<http://alastaira.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/image4.png>

Apple's version comes up really lacking in comparison to the default OSM one, which I would call gorgeous, personally.

<comment><USER47> Meh. I love what OSM is doing, but IMO their tile style doesn't hold a candle to Google's (but then I dislike Apple's style here, as well).

<comment><USER48> Anyone can make their own tiles with things like tilemill (<http://mapbox.com/tilemill/>)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Making $19,000 on the App Store: Video Interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.getspotta.com/spotta-interview-with-nathan-barry-of-onevoice-part-1/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the link to part 2: [http://www.getspotta.com/spotta-interview-with- nathan-barry-...](http://www.getspotta.com/spotta-interview-with-nathan-barry- developer-of-onevoice-part-2/)

Also here is the link to Commit (mentioned in the interview) which was just released: <http://thinklegend.com/commit>

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the HN story about Commit: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3386547>

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Nathan is a cool guy, a very talented designer, and a self-taught programmer.

I really enjoyed our video conversation about how he prototyped his app idea, contacted speech pathologists for feedback, gave them free promo codes in exchange for feedback and online reviews, and worked the linkerati for buzz.

Check out the two-part interview for more insights about his process and marketing strategy.</comment>


A Pythoneers directory - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ziade.org/2013/06/13/a-pythoneers-directory/

<comment><USER2> Is it only me who finds inviting women to be speakers only because they are women wrong and in fact sexist? You shouldn't differentiate people like this.

It's basically wrong in the same way as saying "Im looking for white, heterosexual men who want to speak about Python"

<comment><USER3> But it is sexist/discriminating <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action>

<comment><USER4> Apparently you are.allowed to discriminate against white males as, ironically, they are viewed as strong enough to not need the help.

There are not enough coders presenting over the age of 70. This event is ageist

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh no, to be able to find speakers for my next upcoming conference, I'll have to communicate with actual people. What a hassle. Let's build something to fix this problem.</comment>


Ask HN: Alternatives to Stripe Allowing MSB (Money Service Business) - <AUTHOR> I've recently had a business idea that would allow money to exchange hands between individuals, frequently.
After getting in touch with Stripe - they mentioned it would fall under a Money Transmitters / Money Service Business (MSB) - which is one of their prohibited businesses.
Is anyone dealing with processing payment as transfers? Anyone used PayPal (or others) as a provider for MSB? <comment><USER2> From what I know I am almost positive that PayPal and other standard payment services will not allow you to act as a MSB. I believe you would have to directly interface with a bank or clearing house. A huge portion of the setup and business would revolve around fraud protection and legal structure. Overall from a technical perspective, it is easy to setup ACH clearing, done that a couple of times, and credit card processing is easy enough too. But it is the business agreements with the banks that may be a sticking point.

You could research how Stripe or Balanced Payments set themselves up early on to see some of the work they did.

Also, you say frequently so I also assume you want to make it fast. Just some things I have learned working with payments over the years which you may know already. ACH transactions are batched overnight in general, so to move money from 1 person to another it takes a minimum of 48 hours generally. From party A to the MSB, then MSB to Party B. Credit Cards aren't generally a good idea with this because of the simple fact of charge backs and consumer disputes they bring up. And wire transfers while basically immediate (1-4 hrs normally) within the US, are costly and that I know of there is not an interface into them unless you are a bank because they go through the Fed. Of course this assumes the person doesn't have money in their "account" at the MSB to cover the transaction, otherwise of course it only takes 1 day in general. And this also assumes you aren't providing them some sort of credit extension to cover transactions.

I am sure other people have way more knowledge than I do on this topic, just thought I'd toss out what little I've learned.</comment>


Drug makers need to disclose more clinical trial data - <AUTHOR> http://www.statnews.com/2015/11/12/drug-makers-need-disclose-clinical-trial-data-study-says/ <comment><USER2> Any time is a good time to support [http://www.alltrials.net/](http://www.alltrials.net/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It should already be all...</comment>


Ask HN: Sunsetting Google Apps Accounts? - <AUTHOR>

Google Apps accounts cost $5/user/month. We have a bunch of "dead" users since we have teachers that start and stop teaching, but occasionally we have to bring them back.<p>I'd love a tool that, for a small one-time fee, backups a user's account and allows it to be restored in one click if they ever "come back from the dead". All the tools I've seen charge a monthly fee for this kind of service. Any ideas? <comment><USER2> When we delete a user on google apps it will offer to transfer drive ownership to another users. We have File Sharing user that will be the new owner of all documents of the deleted user.

For emails you can export data from Google ([https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en)) but I have no idea how to import.

You might also want to look at Spanning ([http://spanning.com/products/google- apps-backup/](http://spanning.com/products/google-apps-backup/))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply! Spanning looks good but charges $40/user/year whereas I'm looking for a one-time fee solution.</comment></comment>


A high-performance, bindless graphics API for Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gfx-rs/gfx-rs

<comment><USER2> Hey there HN! I am one of the authors of this library - if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Kvark, one of our key contributors recently did a talk at the Toronto meetup[0] (starts from ~53:00) discussing some of the design of the API.

Bear in mind that the API still could use more work, and could be documented better, but it is already pretty promising. We currently only support OpenGL as a back-end, but hope to support more APIs in the future. This support is currently blocked on a some language features being fully implemented.

The biggest project built using gfx-rs to date is hematite[1] - a re- implementation of Minecraft. Colin Sherratt is also doing some neat work with it in his engine, snowmew[2], which is more graphics intensive.

If you are interested in having a chat with us, feel free to hop on our gitter room[1] or #rust-gamedev (irc.mozilla.org).

\- [0]: [https://air.mozilla.org/toronto-rust-meetup- october-2014/](https://air.mozilla.org/toronto-rust-meetup-october-2014/)

\- [1]: [https://github.com/PistonDevelopers/hematite](https://github.com/PistonDevelopers/hematite)

\- [2]: [https://github.com/csherratt/snowmew/](https://github.com/csherratt/snowmew/)

\- [3]: [https://gitter.im/gfx-rs/gfx-rs](https://gitter.im/gfx-rs/gfx-rs)

<comment><USER3> Can you tell us a bit more about the history of the project ? Are you a game developer ? Why did you put so much work in such a huge project ? (thanks for that ! That's wonderful)

<comment><USER2> > Can you tell us a bit more about the history of the project?

I wrote an outline of my wishes for a graphics API in a README at the end of last year, then pushed it to an empty Github repo. Nothing really happened for eight months as I worked on other projects in the Rust ecosystem. Out of the blue kvark contacted me wishing to collaborate. He has similar gripes to me with respect to graphics APIs, but unlike me he has had a large amount of experience in professional game development. It is thanks to him that we are where we are today.

We still have a long way to go towards making gfx-rs a polished and production ready. A great deal of the ugliness stems from us lacking a few key language features. Thankfully those are slated to be finished by Rust 1.0, so things will get better soon!

> Are you a game developer?

No, I'm a CS student who is interested in computer graphics and procedural generation. I come from an art and illustration background and my original goal for Rust was to generate my art[0] algorithmically in real-time. Unfortunately most of my time over the last couple of years has been spent helping to build up the Rust ecosystem to a stage where it is a viable choice for game developers.

> Why did you put so much work in such a huge project?

I could sit around battling with clunky tools like C++, but if everyone did that then nothing would change. Instead I have chosen to sacrifice some of my 'project time' towards helping to make Rust look like a viable choice for my peers. I may struggle to ever finish my actual project, but if I can help other people create wonderful stuff in the future then I will consider my time well spent.

\- [0]: [http://voyager3.tumblr.com/](http://voyager3.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER4> > Unfortunately most of my time over the last couple of years has been spent > helping to build up the Rust ecosystem to a stage where it is a viable > choice for game developers.

Unfortunate for you, but fortunate for a great many other people. Thank you for doing this.

<comment><USER2> No worries! I'm glad to be of service. At any rate, my work has certainly helped me land a couple of sweet internships. Doing work on interesting projects always looks good on your resume. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another gfx-rs contributor here. It still has a long way to go, but we've made some solid progress, but some in-progress language changes will enable to next iteration of our API, with a lot of simplification to our public interface. It's still a WIP!

<comment><USER4> What language changes are you waiting for?

<comment><USER2> Associated types mainly: [https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/17307](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/17307)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know a nice Rust audio library to go with this? Should we be wrapping PortAudio or something?

<comment><USER7> [http://rust-ci.org/projects/#audio](http://rust-ci.org/projects/#audio) Here's a list of audio libraries which have travis integration. This includes bindings to SDL_mixer, portaudio, OpenAL, alsa and libao.</comment></comment>


Brian McClendon, Uber's head of Maps, is leaving the company - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/business/jeff-jones-leaves-uber-ride-sharing-president.html <comment><USER2> Active discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13911596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13911596)

</comment><comment><USER3> The article appears to have been deleted. Wonder why.

<comment><USER4> It wasn't; the link was malformed.

<comment><USER3> Ah, nice catch. Removing the `/?` makes it work for me. I've emailed the mods to let them know.

(fixed url: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/business/jeff-jones- leave...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/business/jeff-jones-leaves-uber- ride-sharing-president.html))</comment></comment></comment>


Decertifying the worst voting machine in the US - <AUTHOR> https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/jeremyepstein/decertifying-the-worst-voting-machine-in-the-us/ <comment><USER2> I'm having a hard time understanding the way voting machines are created these days. Why are they complete operating systems? Why do they have ports? Why do they look like they're overengineered in so many ways?

What's stopping the companies from producing a closed box with SoC+board connected to: N buttons, display, card reader/scanner, printer, wifi/ethernet. All you need is to take cards, register the result, add it to some continuously hashing database, print vote proofs, periodically upload data (again, public-key encrypted). If they need to be updated, allow only signed code. (ARM SoCs have secure-boot-like capabilities)

Am I missing something? Why do we get multiple iterations of machines with exposed ports, running XP, having hardcoded passwords, allowing admin access, having physical locks which can be opened without a key, etc. How can these things be created without at least one person saying "this shit is unacceptable"?

<comment><USER3> What you are missing is that the technical part is not the hard part. The hard part is all the rest of it.

For example, here [0] is a link to the 200-page "volume 1" of the federal standards, merely one of a complex web of certifications that these things go through.

One random paragraph is illustrative:

Vote scanning and counting equipment for paper-based systems, and all DRE equipment, shall be able to withstand, without disruption of normal operation or loss of data, electrical fast transients of: a. +2 kV and −2 kV on External Power lines (both AC and DC) b. +1 kV and −1 kV on Input/Output lines(signal, data, and control lines) longer than 3 meters c. Repetition Rate for all transient pulses will be 100 kHz

Now I am a software engineer, and quite frankly I have no idea whether these are large tolerances which would require specialized equipment to withstand or whether e.g. my laptop would sail through this kind of event. Nor do I have any idea how I would demonstrate compliance with these requirements to the satisfaction of a federal examiner.

And _that_ is what voting machines are. They are checkboxes on a specification. That means that you can buy them with confidence that somebody else's ass will be on the line when they turn out to be awful. The fact that they actually record votes is ancillary at best, the primary feature and the reason for buying them is that they tick the checkboxes.

As to why they seem overpriced, the reason is that it costs a lot of money to have an engineer hook the thing up to his fancy oscillator and write you a report that yes, this machine complies with requirement 126.96.36.199.c, over and over again.

[0] [http://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Documents/VVSG.1.1.VOL.1.FINAL.p...](http://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Documents/VVSG.1.1.VOL.1.FINAL.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I used to consult for a company that made WiMax base station equipment in India. Typically, the way government would work, is that they'd send out request for information to multiple vendors. Then, they'd take the list of parameters that they got from each vendor, create a master list of parameters, and pick the "best" under each parameter as a requirement. Then, they'd send out a request for quotes to all vendors with a list of requirements that would be impossible to meet simultaneously.

<comment><USER5> What happens then ? How did they pick up the most appropriate ? Or maybe they wait for one the vendors (the fastest) to produce a product up to the specs ?

<comment><USER4> I really don't know. I wasn't there long enough and didn't have full insight into the workings. But my guess is that they eventually settled on a solution that met most of the specs at a reasonable cost.

However, what that opens up, is a way for corrupt officials to favor a vendor and use the others-did-not-meet-this-particular-spec as a justification.

Just my 2c. I really have no idea if it actually was ever used in this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's very much worth reading the comments on this one, in which a Virginia elections official who was involved with these machines repeatedly defends them in a delightfully earnest but disturbingly clueless manner.

One of the points he's stuck on is that WiFi is short-range and unreliable from outside a building. Thus hacking these things from the parking lot would be impractical because you couldn't get access. Apparently the very concept of directional antennas is completely unfamiliar to this person.

Another strange point is that these defects weren't known when Virginia chose these machines. To him, that seems to mean "therefore it was a reasonable decision." To me, it raises the question: why didn't anyone look into their security as the choice was being made? Apparently the process by which Virginia chooses its voting machines, or at least the process it used at the time, involves _no_ third-party security evaluation. What the hell?

<comment><USER7> _> Apparently the very concept of directional antennas is completely unfamiliar to this person._

IMO that was not the disturbing part. I don't expect elections officials to know anything about RF.

What's disturbing to me is that several experts explain in very plain terms why his assumptions are wrong, and he persists in his misunderstanding.

<comment><USER6> I certainly wouldn't expect advanced RF knowledge, but satellite dishes are a common sight in this country, so I would hope that passing familiarity with the basic concept of directional antennas (even if they don't know what to call them) would exist.

Even barring that, I would at least expect an official to know the depths of their own ignorance. If you don't know anything about WiFi, fine, but then don't try to make arguments about it.

And yes, persisting in making those arguments, not only being ignorant of the subject but after being corrected by people who know, is a special kind of ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Voting machines are a very hard problem from a security standpoint to solve. So even a well designed and audited voting machine might still not be safe enough to use when compared with manual voting (which is not perfectly secure, but at least is more generally understood).

This, however, is stuff out of a Dilbert cartoon: "The wireless connection uses WEP (which we knew). What we didn't know is that a few minutes of wireless monitoring showed that the encryption key is "abcde", and that key is unchangeable"

<comment><USER9> Are ATMs also a hard problem from a security standpoint? Because we have relied on them to exchange currency around the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for decades. And they are basically identical in function to a voting machine, except of course for having more functionality.

Why don't we just use ATMs as voting machines?

<comment><USER10> ATMs are actually a pretty fruitful point of comparison since people have a good idea of how ATMs work in their heads already. Some differences in the threat model come to mind:

\- ATMs and their backend systems invest heavily into making complete transaction records, voting systems must be anonymous.

\- ATM transactions can be undone.

\- ATM operators can better afford to take a reactive approach, monitoring fraud levels and first taking a liability hit, until they can fixing the systems or must do a temporary network shutdown to stop the losses.

\- ATMs get by with fewer controls for insider fraud due to above controls

\- ATMs don't worry about nation state level adversaries

\- Amount of damage from ATM compromise is clearly bounded, unlike legislation/election

<comment><USER11> You're missing the most crucial point: ATMs provide instant tangible demonstrable feedback to the user that it has done exactly what it said it would do. The machine spits out money, and the money is not only the result of the interaction, but also the perfect witness.

With voting machines, so far, there has been absolutely no provable feedback whatsoever that allows you to assure your vote has been counted. Even worse, there is no system that allows you to verify no votes have been counted that did not exist. I'm not saying these problems can't be solved with cryptography, all I'm saying is that so far, they haven't been solved/implemented yet.

Voting ballots don't have the same problem.

<comment><USER12> > _Voting ballots don 't have the same problem._

How so? How do you know if your vote was really counted? How do you know someone didn't slip in a bunch of votes while you weren't looking? How do you know numbers aren't doctored as they're aggregated?

<comment><USER7> All of these questions can be answered by "you have to trust the election officials, and the election officials have to do their due diligence."

Which is true of paper voting as well.

<comment><USER13> Doesn't have to be.

You can have a system with multiple levels of verification. For example in Canada, each party is allowed to appoint an on-site representative for each ballot box to observe the voting process, the count (and ensure it matches the number of voters and ballot stubs) and the paperwork (a copy of which is sealed in the ballot box which can be unsealed in the event of a judicial recount).

Trusting election officials doesn't have to be a passive process like it would be in an electronic voting system.

<comment><USER7> The US also has this; we call them poll watchers.

My point was just that at some point, you have to trust that _someone_ is paying attention. Paper doesn't magically solve that problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why is there the need to use these machines in the first place? IMHO the overengineering started when using a tech solution for a non tech problem.

Voting on paper seems to work for most democratic countries and it's definitely harder to rig than the electronics. I just don't see any siginificant advantage in using technology here (and no, a few $/€ saved every other year is not significant in my honest opinion)

<comment><USER15> Manual vote counting takes significant time and effort, and a properly implemented electronic system would have advantages in tamper-proofness. It also could have advantages in being interactive so users can't fill things out incorrectly, can be guided through the process, etc, which is especially important for people with disabilities.

Unfortunately, all the advantages rely on implementing a _good_ system, so I doubt we'll be seeing them any time soon.

<comment><USER16> Electronic voting machine implementation, testing and deployment also takes a significant time and effort. Tamper-proofness obviously has a original and natural physical implmentations that do not require first chosing two large prime numbers: tape and sign the damn box! Though you didn't raise the point, some argue that the time it takes to manually count is a problem, as if people seriously can't wait an extra half-day. Just WAIT. It's important.

The clear advantage of paper voting is everyone--the entire electorate-- can see and understand the process. The legitimacy of the outcome depends on this understanding and trust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So this machine has now been decertified. Fine. What I'd like to know: How could it ever get _certified_? What does _certified_ even mean if not accountability of a certifier in case a system doesn't do what it's certified to do? Or is the certification process flawed? In that case I guess that should be fixed next.

<comment><USER18> The certification was done by the Election Assistance Commission, created in the wake of the Florida 2000 punchcard ballot debacle. The EAC hastily certified the first batch of electronic voting machines, issued grants to the states to buy them before the ink on the certifications was dry, and then was promptly forgotten about. (There was a 3-year period when the EAC was unable to do business because all the seats on its board were vacant.)

<comment><USER19> Why didn't they just fall back to paper and pencil, and manual counting? We've been doing that in the Netherlands since election machines were discredited after a successful campaign by hackers. Haven't had any real problems with it.

<comment><USER6> Why would an agency create a reliable system for counting votes, when it was created by an administration which came to power because of problems with counting votes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It likely speaks to my ignorance, but my gut reaction to using electronic voting machines has always been that they are inherently insecure and can't/shouldn't be trusted to provide an accurate tally. There is so much money (available) and motive to cheat an election count that I have a hard time believing large and significant races haven't already been victims of tampering in the US (even if we haven't seen hard evidence of such).

Is this cynicism misplaced?

<comment><USER20> At the very minimum, I would expect a voting machine to create two paper receipts after each vote: one provided to the voter and another stored internally. These would hopefully be on something more durable than thermal paper, though that might suffice. The receipt would contain the machine ID, timestamp and vote recorded.

Administrators could get a quick count from the machine memory, then perform a verification by pulling a sample of votes from the printed receipt and comparing them to the electronic values with the same timestamp. And any voter can compare their receipt with publicly-available voting records.

Of course, then you have to worry about exploits that can cause the machine to print votes on demand, because those would appear legitimate, especially if the voter's receipt printout can be suppressed - there'd be no incriminating receipt trail hanging out of an unattended machine.

<comment><USER21> You can't print out a person's vote on a receipt an admin could see; that's not a secret ballot. And, using that receipt, the voter can do little to verify his vote was counted.

Edit: the timestamp gives the voter away

<comment><USER22> No identifying info needs to be printed. Just a GUID. Use a dot matrix printer with triplicate ("biplicate"?), let the voter take their receipt, and keep the other one on the spool.

Yeah, there's still might be some issue with external coercion on the voter to produce their receipt and prove they voted the way they were paid to. I suppose that could be solved by making the voter's copy an XOR of the audit tape, and by only having both copies together, can the vote be verified. Presumably the forces doing the coercion wouldn't have access to the audit tape. If they did, then we're already screwed no matter what system we implement.

Just a thought. Not sure if there's some fundamental contradiction between secrecy in voting and voter-auditability.

<comment><USER23> The machine may not print a log in order.

i.e. the attack scenario is a small town, where you record each person as they come in. Then later you can look at the vote in order and know who voted what.

> Presumably the forces doing the coercion wouldn't have access to the audit > tape.

That is not a valid assumption. Your machine must be resistant even to that attack.

> If they did, then we're already screwed no matter what system we implement.

No. The audit must not be able to be correlated with the person, the order, or the time.

<comment><USER22> So basically the response to my last sentence:

> Not sure if there's some fundamental contradiction between secrecy in voting > and voter-auditability.

Is, "yes, there is"? By "voter-auditability" I mean the ability for any single person to verify that their ballot was cast the same way they intended.

<comment><USER24> "zero knowledge proofs" is a textbook solved problem. Your local college library has books that explain how to do secure voting. It is how AWS and HTTPS works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> so the real question is where is the startup with the solution of $35 tablet "voting machines" on $10 stands and a $30 SBC "voting server" in a $15 lockbox that can deliver 4 "deluxe voting terminals" with a "server" for $2,000? (89% profit)

The references of the current players in the industry I see talk upwards of $3,000 per terminal! The industry standard pricing for this would be $12,000. $12,000 for buggy, insecure, closed-source, non-updateable, unverifiable, crappity crap. Awesomes.

How about this ... a voter walks into the polling station and can either use a terminal or their own smart-phone - connect to the open wireless "voting hotspot" where they can enter in an anonymous token at something that we use as the "hot spot sign-in page" that they are given by the people who volunteer the polling station that they can use to cast their ballot without waiting in line.

It's not like secure voting is an open problem. There just needs to be some crotchety capitalist company with people in suits selling it. Open source, anonymous, verifiable voting machines on open hardware with an optional paper trail (cups + network printer). We can do this making comfortable profits and at atleast a 60% savings to the tax payer.

The best part is that if the company goes out of business, everything is open source and documented, so we don't put communities at risk of the security issues with code rot.

So ... who wants to make some money? email me: kristopolous (at) gmail

<comment><USER26> How about this: A voter takes a paper ballot. The voter marks the ballot with a felt pen a deposits it in a bin. Polling place staff mark the voter's thumb with indelible ink.

Electronic voting is a problem looking for a problem. You need voter verifiable ballots with a high degree of tamper resistance. As far as trustworthiness goes it's hard to complete with ballot boxes and adversarial observers.

<comment><USER27> The attack on paper voting is not flipping votes, it is invalidating votes. In Chicago, election officers counting the votes used to hide a small piece of pencil lead under their finger nail. If there were too many Republic votes, they would start putting an extra mark on some of them, thus invalidating the vote because of stray marks.

I think the solution is to crowd-source verifying the vote. If every ballot were given a unique number or code, and when the ballot was counted each ballot with who it was counted for as available for download on the web, third parties could verify that the numbers were counted correctly. And each voter now has an anonymous number that he can use to look at how the vote was counted and verify that it was counted correctly. If it wasn't, he complains. The political parties would be happy to urge their loyal constituents to check that their vote was correctly counted and to sue should they have a sufficient number of members claim theirs was wrong.

<comment><USER24> Modern paper voting involves a thick black markers, OCR computers, and election monitors from both parties. The 1880s are long ago history.

<comment><USER28> Not in the UK it doesn't. All pencil and human counting here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> An interesting documentary is "Hacking Democracy" (2006) [0] that championed open voting machines and open election processes to help prevent election fraud. The documented fraud that occurred in the early 2000's really lifted some of my childhood innocence from my teenage brain.

When mistakes that happen are chalked up to "computer glitches", but it only takes such a few bugs in a few key locations to change the outcome of an election, the results can be game-changing.

The full documentary was pretty concerning, and I have carried very little faith in the voting process since.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qk95SVRdEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qk95SVRdEo) (Last minute contains the section where the grandmother "steals" proprietary Diebold Election Systems code off an open webpage)

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

</comment><comment><USER30> Why does America have alove affair with voting machines? What is wrong with paper and pencil?

<comment><USER31> Paper and pencil aren't a perfect solution either. This page shows a few examples of where things have gone wrong.

[http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2008/12/timewasters_the_bal...](http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2008/12/timewasters_the_ballots/)

In the case of the Florida Presidential vote, they ran into the problem of "hanging chads" where parts of the page that were intended to be fully punched-out so a machine could detect the vote were still attached to the page, leading to further scrutiny over deciphering the true intent of the voter's ballot.

<comment><USER32> That was not a pencil but still a lot of technology/mechanics. But you're right, paper and pencil are not perfect, just the most secure we can practically achieve these days and probably for the upcoming decade. See this video of J. Alex Halderman on e-voting in Estonia and about electronic voting in general [0]. (Halderman is a professor also known from the cold boot attack and the more recent vulnerabilities in a lot of Diffie-Hellman implementations).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I kind of feel like "worst voting machine in the US" is a meaningless standard without knowing how much better the "best" such machine is. Or, to restate, are there any of these electronic voting machines that _aren 't_ crap?

<comment><USER21> Without giving details, the author says Diebold machines are 100 time more secure.

<comment><USER27> And still horrendously bad. [http://gizmodo.com/200693/how-to-steal-an- election-with-a-di...](http://gizmodo.com/200693/how-to-steal-an-election- with-a-diebold-machine)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I feel the need to share this video again:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI)

</comment><comment><USER35> This is unbelievable. How did they even get certified in the first place? What standards are there for voting machines in the US?

A couple of years ago, a Dutch group of hackers (led by Rop Gongrijp) argued very strongly against the use of any kind of voting machine. Not because they're so easily hacked (I assume the Dutch voting machines were fairly secure), but simply because they're a black box and you simply have to trust that whatever comes out is correct, and there's no paper trail you can verify to check whether it actually is correct. If they've been tampered with, you most likely don't know, and even if you do know, there's no way to correct it.

Netherland has very specific voting laws to ensure that elections are reliable and verifiable, and when voting computers were introduced, an exemption was added to the law because voting computers couldn't possibly meet those rules.

The hackers successfully argued their case, so we're back to voting with pencils again. Cumbersome, but we know (and can verify) that it works.

</comment><comment><USER36> It would be fascinating to see if there is a correlation between potential signal strength of an external attacker, and votes for a particular candidate. This seems like the only good way to see at this point if there was any tampering by a (somewhat limited) adversary. While this would only work to detect external wifi based attacks, those seem like the most likely.

Perhaps a "simple" first pass could be done by looking at building type (concrete vs. wood?) via aerial maps, and correlating that to local polling data. If anyone does do an analysis like this, I'd love to see the results!

</comment><comment> maze-le Voting machines should be called voting computers. That is what they are, they "compute" a vote-count (with all problems and fallacies that word implies).

</comment><comment><USER37> I'd say that for most people if you aren't hacked, or had your identity stolen, it's because no one has tried.

</comment><comment><USER38> 50$ android tablets with USB tethered networking and WiFi physically removed (take out the antenna). Software solution has been described ad nauseum both in this thread and elsewhere. This would be at least as secure as the current state of affairs and you could actually get this up and running quickly.

</comment><comment><USER39> Why do you need voting machines, when everyone got smartphone, tablet or computer? [http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/economy-a- it/e-voting.html](http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/economy-a-it/e-voting.html)

<comment><USER40> Some controversy on that topic [https://pacsec.jp/psj14/PSJ2014_Hursti- MacAlpine_Estonia-Pac...](https://pacsec.jp/psj14/PSJ2014_Hursti- MacAlpine_Estonia-PacSec.pdf)

<comment><USER32> Mirror in the Netherlands, Amsterdam: [http://controleerbareverkiezingen.nl/pub/PSJ2014_Hursti- MacA...](http://controleerbareverkiezingen.nl/pub/PSJ2014_Hursti- MacAlpine_Estonia-PacSec.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "If an election was held using the AVS WinVote, and it wasn't hacked, it was only because no one tried."

Ouch!

</comment><comment><USER42> It's going to be interesting to see who suddenly gets voted out, as soon as these are replaced.

</comment><comment><USER43> Most voters aren't relevant anymore.

Princeton confirmed it in a study earlier this year. It's neatly summed up here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig)

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm curious, what security measures are in place for human vote counters?

<comment><USER45> One member from each party, minimum of two, involved in the count.

<comment><USER46> Thats pretty much how they do it here in Canada. One member from each party plus an Elections Canada official. The ballot box is sealed in front of at least two voters , who determine that it is empty before sealing and then sign the seals. ( I know this because I was so early to vote the last election I had to wait for another voter to show up).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Is this really America you are talking about? O.o</comment>


The Fortran Automatic Coding System (1957) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Fortran/102663113.05.01.acc.pdf <comment><USER2> Compiling used to be called "automatic coding".

The word "compiling" existed and referred to more or less what we now call linking: making a program image by catenating together the needed smaller programs (subroutines).

The terminology made sense: translating isn't compiling.

Programming in a higher level language wasn't considered "coding": "coding" referred to taking the higher level specification and encoding it or the machine: writing machine code. This was done by hand, and when software started doing it, that was then, naturally, "automatic coding".

Today, writing a shell script to rename your MP3's is "coding". :)

<comment><USER3> And that mp3 renaming shell script probably uses orders of magnitude more CPU time than the most complex FORTRAN simulations in the 1960s did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My mother was a programmer in this era. She got her degree in math in 1954. Rather than being a teacher, she went to work for Union Carbide in Buffalo to work on "this new thing called a computer". I have a great Union Carbide PR photo of her up on a stool, moving a jumper cable on a room-sized computer. I really need to digitize that.

She learned FORTRAN shortly after, and was a FORTRAN programmer for her entire career, later working at Calspan and then a spin-off defense contractor. She used FORTRAN for her entire career.

I fondly remember her making her grocery lists and taking notes on the used punch cards that she'd bring home from work.

My first internship in the late 80s was at another defense contractor, and I had to program a GUI in FORTRAN (!!) on a VAXstation. I remember coming to her for help, since I knew C and Lisp, and the whole FORTRAN column number thing threw me for a loop.

<comment><USER4> I remember seeing the VAXstation GUI bit in late 88 or so in grad school. It was weird interfacing Fortran and C calls back then.

I forgot the name of the interface, but I remember that creating a window to start working in was a very long function call in Fortran. Basically it opened an X window in the framework. You then set up a canvas and did more operations on it.

In 1990, I switched over to an SGI Irix machine, and graphics became much easier. We had a molecular dynamics viewer called "shaker" that was written in Irix GL at the time. Hard to use, and my thesis advisor and I didn't have SGIs in our office. So, I wrote my own version using Watcom Fortran(!) and called it "mover".

My thesis advisor shook her head at that ... as our visualization was with "mover" and "shaker".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice looking cover of the manual [http://i.liketightpants.net/and/the-fortran- automatic-coding...](http://i.liketightpants.net/and/the-fortran-automatic- coding-system-for-the-ibm-704)

</comment><comment><USER4> What is interesting to me is that Fortran is still relevant 62 years later. It's changed, dramatically.

I taught myself Fortran 77, then Fortran 90 in grad school. F2008 looks quite good. If it had a REPL, it could be a very interesting environment.

Honestly, I am using Julia more and more, but I've got 30 year old Fortran code that still compiles/runs nicely on my linux boxen, that started out on Vaxen and Cray supers.

<comment><USER6> I just opensourced LFortran that provides a REPL for Fortran, among other things: [https://gitlab.com/lfortran/lfortran](https://gitlab.com/lfortran/lfortran), only a subset of Fortran is supported for now, but it's a start. Here is a demo in a Jupyter notebook: [https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/gist/certik/f1d28a486510810d824...](https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/gist/certik/f1d28a486510810d824869ab0c491b1c).

The motivation is precisely as you described. In fact, Julia was my initial motivation too: but I didn't want a new language, I wanted the modern interactive environment for Fortran.

In order to get first users and before full Fortran 2018 is supported, I figured out how to parse GFortran's mod files and can interface to GFortran's array descriptors, I am now integrating it in the interactive compiler / REPL. After that is done, for a subset of Fortran, I think this will already be usable (one could use GFortran to compile production code, and use LFortran to use parts of it interactively) and I will announce it more widely. I think this will happen in the next few months.

<comment><USER4> Nice! Will check it out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love how we're still making the same mistake of thinking that, whatever our next innovation in programming is, it will finally "automate" or "eliminate" coding.

Nope. If you write or draw something and it then executes, you are programming, you are coding.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, the compiler (as well as the Cobol compiler) did reduce the effort by a factor of perhaps 10.

So yes, you weren't coding in machine language any more, but the compiler was.

<comment><USER7> Yes, all these things are massive improvements.

It's just an illusion that this somehow eliminates coding as an activity. You just code using a different, hopefully more productive language and/or mechanism.

<comment><USER8> Coding back in that day had a different meaning. Today it means any kind of coding--then it meant generating the assembler language.

<comment><USER9> It's interesting to me how the word coding has mostly replaced programming in many contexts. We now hear of efforts to teach kids "coding" when not long ago that would have been teaching "programming". It would be interesting to delve into why that change in language took place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It took 6 minutes to compile a 47-line Fortran program.</comment>


Announcing Kata Containers 1.0 - <AUTHOR> https://katacontainers.io/posts/kata-containers-first-release/ <comment><AUTHOR> Kata Containers is a novel implementation of a lightweight virtual machine that seamlessly integrates within the container ecosystem. Kata Containers are as light and fast as containers and integrate with the container management layers—including popular orchestration tools such as Docker and Kubernetes (k8s)—while also delivering the security advantages of VMs.

The Kata Containers project has six components: Agent, Runtime, Proxy, Shim, Kernel and packaging of QEMU 2.9. It is designed to be architecture agnostic, run on multiple hypervisors and be compatible with the OCI specification for Docker containers and CRI for Kubernetes.

Kata Containers combines technology from Intel® Clear Containers and Hyper runV. The code is hosted on Github under the Apache 2 license and the project is managed by the OpenStack Foundation.

GitHub repo: [https://github.com/kata-containers](https://github.com/kata- containers)

<comment><USER2> This actually looks really slick. Do you have more information on how this works under the hood? I found [https://katacontainers.io/media/uploads/katacontainers/uploa...](https://katacontainers.io/media/uploads/katacontainers/uploads/katacontainers/kata- containers-1pager.pdf) but it is a little light on details.

For example, memory and storage - with a traditional VM solution, you must allocate the desired memory and storage at the time of VM creation. With a traditional container solution, the container uses only what it needs. Where does Kata fall on this line?</comment></comment>


School is Just a Formality - The Personal MBA - <AUTHOR> http://personalmba.com/school-is-just-a-formality/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+personalmba+%28The+Personal+MBA%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> The apprentice type of professions can get by this way but it's a little harder with some other professions. No professor in physics or math will be your advisor if you are not actually in their department or affiliated with the university in some way.

<comment><USER3> I agree that some professions do need formal education. I'm thinking of medicine for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sadly, what Corey did was probably illegal:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html></comment>


Why rural Americans are so pissed off - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2018/3/13/17053886/trump-rural-america-populism-racial-resentment <comment><USER2> This guy found a handful of the dumbest people in America and concluded people in rural areas are morally degraded and their problems are their own fault.

The arrogance of dismissing their contempt for the government is overwhelming. Just because they don't express their hatred of the elite class of people who rule them in just the right way doesn't somehow add up to their anger being misguided. They're using "the government" as a lightning rod for the myriad elites who do basically dictate the shape of their lives--the media they consume, the state of the market they could never control, and what options for their future they have. It's not expressed clearly, but it's not hard for someone with an ounce of empathy to suss out.

I could come up with a laundry list of the moral failures of the white rural poor, sure. My family tree is full of people just like this. But this researcher and people just like him cannot see past their own ideology. They want to believe they're objective, but they're not, they're caught up in the same sort of scientistic neoliberalism that can't help but see anyone outside of their elite class as a curious primitive and any other value system from theirs as a totemic anomaly. They want to know what character flaws led people to do such a horrible thing as to vote for Trump, but cannot for a moment consider how it was that we got to this position. Hint: it's not the rural poor's fault.

<comment><USER3> I think a bigger problem is the unholy conflation of fiscal and social conservatism, by the interviewer, possibly by the author, and quite likely by the people being studied themselves.

It is one thing to support fiscal conservatism. The very nature of these towns lends itself to the ideology, and it has its merits - cf. tech leaders who supported Trump.

It is quite another to have "outdated" (for lack of a better word) moral beliefs (anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-<whatever>), to _know_ that the majority of the country does not agree, and still somehow _expect_ that these views to be enforced in their little part of the world. It's a kind of selfishness that is not unique to small towns or their people by any means, but it is there.

I wish the author did more to differentiate the two, although the interview is pretty terrible overall.

<comment><USER4> > It is quite another to have "outdated" (for lack of a better word) moral > beliefs

There are plenty of better words. "Unfashionable" works.

> anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-<whatever>

I find it interesting that the left think of the right as the "anti" crowd, while the right think the same of the left.

> to _know_ that the majority of the country does not agree, and still somehow > _expect_ that these views to be enforced in their little part of the world. > It's a kind of selfishness that is not unique to small towns or their people > by any means, but it is there.

First, the assumption that social conservatives are a clear minority and reside in a "small part of the world" doesn't really hold up. Second, minority or not, since when is a political group advancing their own interests "selfish"?

<comment><USER3> I thought about the "anti-" phrasing after posting, and of course you're correct. It's not really relevant to my point, though. I agree "unfashionable" is a better term too.

As an example, less than 20% of Americans believe abortion should be totally illegal (2015) [1]. Granted, this is only one "social issue", but I think it's somewhat representative of my point.

There's a difference between advancing your political beliefs and not accepting the current status, and participating in antisocial behaviour in response, as the article suggests. Whether or not this behaviour is commonplace, is, well, a separate point entirely.

[1] [http://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx](http://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx)

<comment><USER4> > There's a difference between advancing your political beliefs and not > accepting the current status, and participating in antisocial behaviour in > response

I'm a little unclear on what you're talking about here. What antisocial behavior in particular? I'm part of that 20%, and wondering at what point does expressing my opinion become "antisocial".

For reference, roughly 6% of the population is vegan[1]. Are they antisocial for protesting what is, in their opinion, murder?

[1] [https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4959853/top-trends-in- pr...](https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4959853/top-trends-in-prepared- foods-2017-exploring-trends-in-meat-fish-and-seafood-pasta-noodles-and-rice- prepared-meals-savory-deli-food-soup-and-meat-substitutes.html)

<comment><USER3> A few weeks ago I walked past a group of people with huge (2m x 3m) posters of aborted fetuses outside one of the biggest buildings of my university campus. These same people have been accused of berating people who disagree with them. I find that behaviour and form of protest. Do I think it should be illegal? Definitely not. Do I think it's anti-social? Yes. As a mirror to this example, if in my (liberal) home state anti-gun nuts were to lobby for a change in gun policy with pictures of dead school kids from shooting <x> outside my university, I'd be similarly displeased with the nature of that political rhetoric.

There are leftist groups that protest in anti-social ways to varying degrees, so it's by no means unique to the right. An extreme example would be groups masquerading as Antifa destroying property. (Like I said, varying degrees of anti-social behaviour.) One of the positions of the author, it seems, is that anti-social political discourse is particularly dangerous in small towns, due to the echo chamber effect.

So, to answer your question simply: ideally, political discourse is well- reasoned, and measured in its intensity. One person expounding on their political beliefs with the intention of causing genuine emotional distress in another individual would be anti-social, in my view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My politics are on the left wing of the political spectrum, but as I sit here in my home in rural America (pop 30,000, farm based economy, nearest city of 250,000, 1 hour drive away) it would seem to me that people are mad because:

-There are very few high paying jobs -There is limited access to medical care -Local government ineptitude has a very real daily impact -Small tax base means surprisingly high taxes, but real struggle to maintain infrastructure (especially schools) -"Traditional" upbringing, often religious based, that breed skepticism toward anything "foreign" - which means everything from non-white people to AirBnB. -A fear that Washington DC really is a threat to their freedoms. For example, there is a view that gun laws aren't really about guns, so much as a perception of a slippery slope toward totalitarianism.

Those are just kinda off the top of my head… but having now lived here in small town, rural America for eight years, I can sympathize with some of their views. People in small towns are not all the slack-jawed yokels city dwellers like to believe they are - many are well-informed and well-educated. By and large, they have legitimate concerns, even if they can be misguided in their beliefs about the potential solutions — and politicians to help them achieve those solutions.

My $0.02 — small towns need to be more entrepreneurial. The government isn't going to fix it for you. Trying to recruit Amazon (for example) to put a warehouse there isn't going to bring the desired economic outcomes either. Do it for yourselves.

<comment><USER4> > There are very few high paying jobs > There is limited access to medical > care > Local government ineptitude has a very real daily impact > Small tax > base means surprisingly high taxes, but real struggle to maintain > infrastructure (especially schools)

Sounds like poor white and poor black Americans face fairly similar issues.

> "Traditional" upbringing, often religious based, that breed skepticism > toward anything "foreign" - which means everything from non-white people to > AirBnB.

The xenophobia of rural whites is vastly oversold. I've never heard of anyone around here afraid of AirBnB. The level of racism I've seen in white communities is on par with the level I've seen in black communities. Which is to say that there's an undercurrent, but not a hysteria.

> A fear that Washington DC really is a threat to their freedoms.

Do urban Americans really not feel this way? It certainly seemed otherwise during the summer of surveillance.

> For example, there is a view that gun laws aren't really about guns, so much > as a perception of a slippery slope toward totalitarianism.

It's not that gun laws aren't about guns. It's that the rights of citizens to defend themselves against a tyrannical government _should one arise_ is important enough to be included in our Bill of Rights. I still don't understand how those who believe that our current president is a totalitarian monster can't sympathize.

<comment><USER6> Slightly off topic, but to your last point: I've done some thinking about this, and the idea that a civil liberty granting you access to firearms will help in a government coup or if the government really comes for you seems laughable on it's face. Your best bet is not a wild-west style shoot out, but alliances. Local government, corruption in the national guard or local sheriff's dept. When the federal government comes for you, you don't need one (or 15) firearms. You need friends in high places.

<comment><USER4> I actually agree with a lot of this. If I thought that 15 random wild-west fantasists could pull of a coup, I'd see more of an issue with the right to own guns.

But the point isn't that when the government comes for me in particular, I can stop them. It's that when the government does something so horrific that the citizenry as a whole decides to do something, they can. Local, ad-hoc militias across the country could definitely get the job done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems the article wants to make the case that it's not about economic issues but things like values. This may play a role but when things don't work well economically people are susceptible to attacking scapegoats like foreigners, atheists or whatever.

I am sure these people would be less angry if they perceived to be in a prospering part of the country and not a decaying one.

<comment><USER8> Exactly this. It is a lot harder to convince people that illegals are stealing your job when you and all your friends have good jobs and a pretty good standard of living.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What an oddly combative interviewer. Are you asking questions, or are you soapboxing?

<comment><USER10> I agree. Empathy in main stream media seems very scarce to me nowadays.

<comment><USER11> Vox is awfully far from mainstream media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Such nonsense. What would Vox know about rural America?

Rural Americans are mad about being called 'flyover states', about being called racists (really for voting against Democrats) and for being portrayed as backwards.

Rural Americans are great people, the same as urban Americans. If you can't see the good in other people, the problem isn't with them.

</comment><comment><USER13> For 8 years of work, the conclusions don't seem very insightful.

</comment><comment><USER14> Many of these articles point to the a white working class populace unsettled over demographic changes (read: an increasing non-white immigrant population). Wasn't there such unease even when immigration was almost entirely "white"? The Irish weren't white for a while, neither were the swarthy italians, poles, jews etc. How is it different this time around?

<comment><USER4> If you actually listen to conservatives, we are continuously, clearly saying that we care about _illegal_ immigration. We want to vet who we allow into our home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "I know a lot of people who don't live in rural America are tired of being told they need to understand all these resentments."

Well, nobody _needs_ to do anything. But if you really want to solve a problem, it usually helps to understand it. Overpowering the other side only works for so long.

</comment><comment><USER3> This analysis (or treatment of it) seems pretty superficial. I was curious about the conclusions... but they were pretty dissatisfying. The question is an important one, though.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe if cities had building codes that resulted in more privacy within residences (isolation from outside disturbance; usually better insulation and an actual ventilation /design/; often lacking or incorrectly implemented.) as well a an overall urban plan that encouraged 'organic' development of commerce within planned and interconnected human-scale areas (with transport and cars/etc on a different level entirely) there'd be a place for warm communities within cities that the rural residents would feel welcome within.

</comment><comment><USER17> tl;dr; - As a former rural American now living in Chicago I rant about a couple of reasons I think the author being interviewed is wrong.

I think this interview, and inferring from the interview, the book in question have largely glossed over a number of issues, these are just to name a few:

1\. Not all rural people are ultra-conservative bible-thumping hicks. Sure, some are, but they're usually a highly vocal minority. Most rural folk just want to be left alone to go about their day. I grew up in rural Montana and now live in Chicago, and I'm an atheist, fiscally conservative, social libertarian (I don't care what you do in your personal life as long as it's between consenting adults and it doesn't infringe on my rights). I'd go back in a heartbeat if I could make a decent living there and if not having step- kids and joint-custody in Chicago.

2\. Rural people tend to be largely self-sufficient and transitively, largely independent. They don't dependent on the government for day-to-day things. Sure, they may depend upon the government for roads, but truly rural (and I'm sorry, a town of 25,000 is not rural - that's a regional city) don't depend on government for water or sewer. They'll have either their own or a community well and septic systems. Police & Fire services? You're probably fucked if you need them. Response times may be an hour or more. Same for EMT services. Hell, depending on the time of year, emergency services may not be able to get to your home - you may have to meet them part way. I've certainly seen that first hand growing up - an elderly neighbor had to get her husband, who was suffering a heart attack, into their SUV and meet the ambulance at the nearest paved road as it couldn't get to their house.

3\. Rural people perceive urban areas as getting preferential treatment for government services, especially for natural disasters and infrastructure improvement. Yeah, a bridge in say the Twin Cities of Minneapolis (and this is not even local) might only serve a portion of only 3.3M local residents, but when that fails, a lot of cross country trucking routes fail, need to be rerouted. But, what about a closure of I-90 between Spokane, WA and Missoula, MT? A lot of freight and post travels that route. First hand, my parents lost their rural home in a wild fire this past (2017) fire season. Why? Not from the natural lightning-caused fire, but because the Federal Forest Service set a back burn at the worst possible time of day (afternoon) and then let it run rampant while my parents' house and a neighbor's house burned to the ground. And from other neighbors that didn't evacuate, the fire personnel just stood there and watched. This after having cut a fire break and running water pipes miles over the hill side to protect against such a circumstance. Fast forward to the wildfires outside of LA, and they pull out all of the stops there, while basically committing arson on my parents and their neighbor. So far, no criminal charges or government settlement, but there certainly ought to be. So, yeah, sometimes the Fed comes in and literally burns your house to the ground and you have no recourse.

4\. Rural people just plain don't like being told what to do from people thousands of miles away. The DC politicians largely don't know what it takes to live a rural live and likely never have lived a rural life. They may have made a token visit to a rural resort, but have no idea what it is like to live where the nearest "town" to which you live has a population of 1 and is your grocery store, gas station and post office (and probably a few other things).

Sorry, this turned into a long-winded rant; I did not mean it to. I think the author being interviewed had preconceived conclusions and did his interviews to support those conclusions without actually digging into the meat of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER18> That's complete bullshit. The reason is 100% because of the economy. Many of them will say it's not, others will also believe it, but if you dig down to the truth, it's absolutely and exclusively all about the economy.

<comment><USER19> I don't think you are WRONG, exactly, but the article (poor as it was) represented the results of actual research. Do you have anything to back up this claim?

<comment><USER20> Did it though? It really sounded like a persons opinion. Maybe I didn't read it carefully, but I don't recall any numbers or data backing any of the claims he made.

<comment><USER19> Line 1 of the article:

> Robert Wuthnow, a sociologist at Princeton University, spent eight years > interviewing Americans in small towns across the country.

Now, that isn't peer-reviewed research, and it doesn't necessarily prove anything, but it's a decent start toward being authoritative (even if I find it quite unconvincing).</comment></comment></comment></comment>