Firefox Developer Tools and Firebug - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/10/firefox-developer-tools-and-firebug/

<comment><USER2> Interesting Firebug story: Years ago when Netscape/Firefox was being built, some developers wanted to put a bunch of developer tools into the browser. Mostly so Firefox developers could inspect the browser (remember, websites were pretty bland back then).

However, they were worried about the codebase becoming too big -- after all, 99.9% of people wouldn't need a DOM inspector. So, the add-ons architecture was born. Firebug was created as a separate tool by Joe Hewitt. Add-ons and Firebug probably ended up being the reason why Firefox took off.

<comment><USER3> One of the reasons. I think tabs were actually a bigger deal back then. Although Opera had them first, Firefox was the one that put them front and center. Back then, Opera was still championing a gesture-based interface, and Firefox felt a lot more solid and polished.

<comment><USER4> > Although Opera had them first

Opera had little miniature windows inside the main window. A small difference, perhaps, but tabs are simpler to manipulate at the cost of, perhaps, being less flexible (you can't resize tabs and move them around like you can windows).

<comment><USER5> Actually this is incorrect -- the windows you're referring to were part of the earlier MDI version of Opera. In 2000 Opera 4 came out with tabs very similar to what FireFox would have in its first release four years later (and its predecessor Phoenix had in 2002).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First Id like to say Im a huge fan of firefox and really like what mozilla does.

So I would love to be able to use the developer tools - but for me they're still not quite there (but getting close). Here's some things Id like to see, and then I think I could change over from chromes devtools completely, wonder what other devs think?

1\. speed (becoming less of a problem)

2\. edit html in elements inspector, also dynamically creating styles: \- What I like about chromes devtools is the fact that I can completly alter my html page via the elements panel (styles and html) very fast, also auto-expanding to the selected element and seeing its surroundings is nice.

3\. network panel still not as good as chromes (imho) - mainly because I cant enlarge the detailed inspection of each listed http request.

4\. too intrusive (popups for javascript editor) - make it more compact and use less space, also I like tabs (that are optionally detachable) instead of windows.

And thats it, these are the only reasons for me personally, why I dont use firefox as my development browser of choice.

But again Id like to say the work the mozilla devteam is putting into the devtools makes me think its just a matter of time until I can finally go back to mozilla :)

<comment><USER7> 1) Will be improved in next release, was a platform specific issue, apparently.

2) You can do this already. It works just about the same as chrome dev tools, create a new rule to add a new css rule, etc.

3) I would like this too.

<comment><USER6> \- as far as #2 goes, I have to open up the style editor tab (then i find myself switching back and forth, is it possible to add rules in "rules" panel inside the "inspector" tab to avoid the switching? Also, in my build (maybe a week old or so), When I right-click a node in the inspector I only have copy html options and delete node, no edit html - does a more recent release have this - that would be awesome.

<comment><USER7> yeah, from the HTML tab you can just right click the style on the right hand side of the window and click New Rule. It'll assume that you're attempting to write a new rule for the type of element you currently selected, but just tab to that box and you can change it.

Note, when I say style here, I mean style on the HTML tab, not the style tab itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I haven't been following Firefox all that closely. Is the debugger API they're developing interoperable with Chrome's? It seems like it would be good for the web to decouple developer tools from browser engines. If I could run Firebug on Chrome or Blink's Dev Tools on Firefox, I'd only have to learn one set of tools to be able to effectively create cross-browser projects.

(If you substitute the native dev tools in this thought experiment with Brackets or Sublime Web Inspector, you start to see the power of decoupling tooling from the browser.)

<comment><USER9> (I'm a member of the Firefox Developer Tools team)

Our RDP (Remote Debugging Protocol) is not interoperable with the one in Chrome or any other browser. There are two reasons:

1) Both us and Chrome team would like to iterate on our protocols and tools as fast as we can. Maybe in future, when tools across browsers stabilize there will be a case for a standard but I personally believe that a wrapper protocol is a better answer.

2) RDPs depend on their platform's architecture. Ours is very SpiderMonkey centric while Chrome's is all about V8.

Google organized a nice Summit during the I/O this year and I attended on behalf of our team (video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOO9Kb1-JJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOO9Kb1-JJU)). I shared my thoughts on interoperability and other issues here: [https://medium.com/web-developer-tools/1060a9f69e6a](https://medium.com/web- developer-tools/1060a9f69e6a)

Hope that helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I recently started using the dev tools in FF daily in place of Chrome. One thing I really wish they had (and maybe they do but I can't find it) is a way to format JavaScript code. So much JavaScript is minimized these days so reading it is about impossible. Chrome has a {} button you can click to format the code. This would be extremely useful in FF.

<comment><USER11> That's present in Nightly (FF27). Not sure when it was introduced though.

<comment><USER12> Pretty-printing of JavaScript landed in Nightly just a few weeks ago: [http://bugzil.la/762761](http://bugzil.la/762761)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Firebug story is a good and a bad thing. For starters the only reason I still use Firefox is because Firebug is awesome. In the article at least Firefox gives credit to Firebug where it's due, but it's a bit like OS X notifications taking Growl's idea and leaving Growl to rot. Maybe that's a bit dramatic, but it's a common story now a days. Indie developer develops something awesome for big companies eco-system. Big company takes idea and leaves indie dev to die. I am not privy to the entire story but it sure would have been nice if mozilla could have at least done an acquire-hire for the Firebug team (assuming they wanted it). You know show some love for the greatness they gave to the dev community.

<comment><USER14> Mozilla has been paying the main Firebug developer for a long time to work on it, but I've never heard of an open source project that would like to be "acquired", whatever that means. If hiring all of the project's developers is what you mean, quite a few of them had high profile jobs already, so funding wasn't an issue here. As for the reasons why simply incorporating Firebug into Firefox wasn't a viable solution, see the original post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I develop using firefox/ firebug. I do really like the way firebug works, but its starting to show its age a bit.

The integrated tool are getting better but I often forget they're there. The responsive page resizer/viewer I use frequently

Tools->web developer seems to incorporate firebug and the native tools (confusing...). I like the way firebug puts a little button on the menu bar I can click to turn debuggin on and off.

We'll see how this shakes out.

<comment><USER16> I'm exactly the same, I just forgot to use built-in tools except the responsive, because I have that Firebug button.

However, I mainly use FB to inspect network requests nowadays and if you do a lot of Ajax calls, inspecting the responses and the json could require less clicks IMHO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Firefox was started when Mozilla (Communicator) grew too large. Let's put everything in plugins they said! Do even 5% of users need dev tools? History repeating itself.

<comment><USER18> While I agree with the sentiment, I think bundling developer tools is fine. The other browsers, which are generally leaner than Firefox, include them.

<comment><USER19> Also, bundled developer tools can be nice when you're trying to debug an issue on a user's machine. It's a small thing, but it's nice to not make them install some plugin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So long Firebug. It was like Christmas when we first saw what you did for us.

<comment><USER21> I'm glad to see Firebug being replace with a more modern set of tools, but you're right - Firebug (and the webkit devtools that followed from it) is/was amazing. It was probably the most significant change in front-end web development I've experienced in my 15ish year career.

<comment><USER22> XMLHttpRequest was released by MS in IE 5 in 1999, which is less than 15 years ago. I'd say that the development of ajax was _far_ more significant than some dev tools.

And as a slight nitpick, the IE Dev toolbar came out about 6 months before Firebug and as best I can remember actually had more functionality than Firebug for quite a while.

It's some sort of persistent web developer myth that Firebug came first. Firebug was just easier to find/install, you had to know that the IE6 developer toolbar existed.

NB: I hate IE as much as the next web dev, but credit where credit's due...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I use the Nightlies, and am really digging the new stuff that's coming in. What I want the most is, a DevTools-level universal shortcut to focus onto the Web Console prompt. I know that C-S-k is the Web Console short-cut, but when focus is on the other parts of the Web Console, pressing C-S-k just closes Dev Tools. I like how Chrome uses 'Esc' to focus on the prompt, and I find it a very superior UX.

<comment><USER24> Cmd+Opt+K (or Ctrl+Shift+K) should take you to the console panel if you are in a different panel. For example, Cmd+Opt+S to open the debugger, and then Cmd+Opt+K should take you directly to the console, not close the tools.

If you find this isn't happening for you, please file a bug: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&c...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox&component=Developer%20Tools%3A%20Console)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there any reason for Firebug to continue existing as a plugin? I know it did a lot to further the front-end dev tools in all the browsers, but at this point the default dev tools in FF and Chrome are just as good and in many ways better.

<comment><USER26> They answer that question in the article:

> We thought long and hard about including Firebug wholesale and considered > several approaches to integrating it. An early prototype of the Inspector > even included a significant portion of Firebug. Ultimately, integration > proved to be too challenging and would have required rewrites that would > have been equivalent to starting over.

<comment><USER25> I did read that, but I mean is there a reason it should exist at all? Is there anything Firebug does that Chrome/FF dev tools don't do?

<comment><USER27> Firebug can be really slow, but I just can't change it to Chrome dev tools, which seem unintuitive for me in many places (and which stop me on non- existing breakpoints randomly, no, I don't have "break on exceptions" enabled or anything like this).

Regarding Fx dev tools, they e.g. do not show evaled scripts at all in the JS panel. Also I don't see a way (yet) to have debugger and console visible at the same time. And there are many other tiny Firebug goodies not implemented yet here and there. Firebug will be still essential for me for many months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Firefox devtools have been improving dramatically. I'm looking forward to dropping Firebug completely. The responsive mode is an excellent new feature.

What I'd really like, though is a single set of web devtools that can inspect any browser. Having to learn a different set of devtools for each browser is a pain when you have to test a slew of different browsers.

It's a pipe dream, but I filed a bug anyhow: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=924670](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=924670)

</comment><comment><USER28> Firebug doesn't parse JSON that start with "for(;;);" or "while(1);". Chrome Dev Tools support this.

Please add support, reason why: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2669690/why-does- google-p...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2669690/why-does-google- prepend-while1-to-their-json-responses)

</comment><comment><USER29> > Before the release of Firefox 4 we decided that Firefox needed a set of > high-quality built-in tools.

I don't understand why they did not just integrate Firebug directly. What were the reasons?

<comment><USER30> From the next paragraph:

 _> An early prototype of the Inspector even included a significant portion of Firebug. Ultimately, integration proved to be too challenging and would have required rewrites that would have been equivalent to starting over._

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder what our ( [http://dhruvaray.github.io/spa- eye/](http://dhruvaray.github.io/spa-eye/) ) future is going to look like?

</comment><comment><USER32> Already posted 20 minutes before: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6516587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6516587)

<comment> k-mcgrady You've linked to the same post.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, this is a mistake, and the other post has been deleted since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> We've uninstalled Firefox throughout our domain(s) due to the lack of standard support for the enterprise, and various issues with managing installs, updates, and freaking random crashes on their recent official releases.

<comment><USER34> Does Google provide enterprise support for Chrome?

<comment> mh- [http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/business/browser/](http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/business/browser/)

[https://support.google.com/chrome/a/?hl=en#topic=2936229](https://support.google.com/chrome/a/?hl=en#topic=2936229)

[https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/188446?hl=en&ref_...](https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/188446?hl=en&ref_topic=2936229)

(see user-based policies)</comment></comment></comment>


I'm a Venture Backed Startup Founder and I Had a Baby - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/im-a-venture-backed-startup-founder-and-i-just-had-a-baby-omg-25efb90af7bd#.semniirz8 <comment><USER2> Congratulations! Sounds like you have an awesome investor. Support at that level is huge. But also consider that just because other investors may not fund a woman founder because they are pregnant doesn't automatically mean they are "freaking out" or make them "assholes". At the end of the day it's a business decision and it's someone else's money.</comment>


Skeleton-WP – A Wordpress Starter Theme - <AUTHOR> http://kodehelp.com/skeleton-wp/

<comment><USER2> Looks very handsome. What differentiates this one from all the others out there?</comment>


Ask HN: Can't figure out a NAS solution. Help? - <AUTHOR>

Well I have been looking into pre-built options such as Synology or QNap for Nas storage.
I have contemplated building a desktop from ground up and implementing RAID 1.
Overall I am seeking a backup and redundancy solutions for my terabytes of photographs and personal data.
The attractive part about the pre-built solution is for instance the cloud access for Synology and the mobile Apps. Sounds very convenient and mobile access is a Huge plus for the photos.
Do any of the fellow hackers here have a suggestion for a build or a pre-build sys that would cost a max of $500 Please advise <comment><USER2> I bet the cordcutters subreddit encounters this question quite a bit: <http://www.reddit.com/r/cordcutters>

You also might try /r/gadgets for the same reason. I am certain there are probably a fair number of geeks that hang out on HN, but I suspect there is more of a consumer friendly atmosphere (especially about purchasing decisions) on reddit.

<comment><AUTHOR> sure. I will check it out. Thank you</comment></comment>


Ruby vs. Elixir vs. Go: A concurrency comparison - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@learnitnow/ruby-vs-elixir-vs-go-a-concurrency-comparision-d2330c1fa3a6 <comment><USER2> Regarding the Ruby (Puma) example: It doesn't say how many threads or how many workers were used. Assuming they used the default, of course it's not going to be great.

The author ends with,

> I hope this would help you to understand that how languages would behave > under load.

But it doesn't. Because no developer, when they see that their stack is under load, will say "oh my language might just not be performant enough, I guess I'll switch" without first looking to tune their stack.</comment>


Barnes-Hut implementation of t-SNE – pull request in Scikit-Learn - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit-learn/pull/4025

<comment><USER2> Sadly there are legal issues with the original implementation, as has already been noticed by the Scikit-Learn maintainers [1]. =( I am speaking partially out of personal experience since this is a reason why I have not actually read the original source code, waiting either for a free implementation to appear or enough spare time to spin one myself.

[1]: [https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit- learn/pull/4025#discu...](https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit- learn/pull/4025#discussion_r22305672)</comment>


Android Devs: Borrow a phone, for free, courtesy of SONY - <AUTHOR> http://developer.sonymobile.com/cws/devworld/technology/borrowaphone

<comment><USER2> The idea is good for Sony. A cheap way to make sure that the latest android apps are working on their device.

But the to and fro shipping and the full charge on loss of phone kills the deal.

I wonder what these companies do with the phones that are later returned ? Or better, what they do with the phones that are trade in by customers ?

They should be providing it at a discount to the developers.

<comment><USER3> I think they mostly want to remove those phones from the secondary market, so that they can ensure everyone gets shiny new phones from sony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 30 days, and if you lose it, break it or otherwise they charge FULL price + restocking fee.. I think I'll stick to my 100% free Nokia Lumia 800 courtesy of Nokia Developer Program :)

<comment><USER5> Good luck making money selling apps on the Nokia :) (there's a reason it's free)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> At first glance I really like the idea of Microsoft/Nokia/Android manufacturers giving away free phones to get developers to write for their platform. However it makes me wonder: does a platform where the developer chooses it for their personal phone yield better apps?

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe this will also interest you:

<http://testdroid.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> I'll always remember Sony for screwing the Playstation 3 Linux Kit. I'll pass, _que te vaya bonito_ , Sony.

</comment><comment><USER5> only us/canada.. bummer Do you know of any other manufacturers that let developers test on their phones?</comment>


Seven Steps to Earthquake Safety - <AUTHOR> http://www.earthquakecountry.info/roots/seven_steps.html <comment><AUTHOR> Given the fact that a lot of us are in high-risk zones a review of preparedness would probably be a good idea.</comment>


Why Every Entrepreneur Needs a 2nd Startup - <AUTHOR> http://teachingstartup.com/why-every-entrepreneur-needs-a-2nd-startup.asp <comment><USER2> Appreciate the advice, truly... but if it were any other business I would instantly be skeptical of a company saying "why you need two of exactly what I sell" (Teaching Startups)

<comment><AUTHOR> Crap. That was funnier than anything we said in the video.

<comment><USER2> Funny I can do.. successful startup?... Mehhhhhhh ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Getting started with offline-first using UpUp - <AUTHOR> https://www.talater.com/upup/getting-started-with-offline-first.html?platform=hootsuite <comment><USER2> Its even simpler and less code without the library!

Offline Manifests are easy, but i forget all the time about them. I also assume no user would even get the idea to check if my website by chance is available offline. I guess most users never heard about that feature to begin with.</comment>


London Stock Exchange migrating from .NET to Oracle/UNIX platform? - <AUTHOR> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1787-london-stock-exchange-migrating-from-net-to-oracleunix-platform.html <comment><USER2> I was leading a development team in .Net for a Norway Automobile client and I must say .Net is a big PITA.

<comment><USER3> How so?</comment></comment>


FileNation – A simple way to send files using IPFS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/FileNation/FileNation <comment><USER2> Hey Peer5 (YC W17) did something similar with Sharefest in 2012-2016 [https://github.com/Peer5/ShareFest](https://github.com/Peer5/ShareFest)

It was before I joined the company, but it worked pretty nicely. Now the company focuses on a P2P video (still an interesting p2p problem).

</comment><comment><USER3> is there authentication? or the generated link is the secret

what happens if I lose the link?</comment>


Ronald Jenkees 3rd CD Teaser - <AUTHOR> http://www.ronaldjenkees.com/2011/01/13/rjcd3/ <comment><USER2> I love his youtube personality, his videos, the novel sense of "hey look what I just cranked out!" that permeates his presence. Unfortunately, I found his last couple CDs rather generic and lacked that sort of excitement and rawness that made his youtube videos so great.

As instrumental music it was sadly just average.

He's got the potential for a great sound, he just needs to find it.

<comment><USER3> Maybe he just needs to do a live show.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Woah.. He's been quiet for a pretty long time. Nice to see him being back with great tunes.

</comment><comment><USER5> This guy is awesome</comment>


Microsoft is retiring TechNet subscriptions - <AUTHOR> http://technet.microsoft.com/subscriptions/ms772427

<comment><USER2> I'm rather saddened by this.

As an infrastructure engineer, TechNet has been perfect for building demo labs and proof-of-concepts. In my home virtualization environment, I love the ability to throw up a domain today, a SQL cluster tomorrow, wipe it all out the next day and build it all back up again.

Losing that flexibility will be rough. Getting eval keys from say, VMware, with their 30-60 day timers means picking and choosing what I want to try playing with when, and feeling SOL if some interruption comes about in which I'm not able to use the time to the fullest. I'm pressured to their schedule, and not my own, and damned if I want to revisit something or simply learn at my own pace.

It was a great way to simply buy into the Microsoft ecosystem and familiarize ones self with a whole range of products with no fuss. MSDN is a much more expensive proposition, and while ideal for the development community, not geared for those of us who's experience is in deploying solutions and performing integration.

I suspect this was a move to help close a loophole in which technet licenses were used in production environment, and that's a fair assertion to make. But being forced to eval in a sterile "Free Lab" is no substitute. I really think this is a unnecessary move to close what has been one of Microsoft's best programs at promoting adoption.

<comment><USER3> Same here. Today, I can build a test image with version X of software Y in preparation for an engagement, then archive the image; 18 months later, when customers come back with an issue, I can fire up that image and figure out fairly quickly what "fabulous customization" they've done that broke my setup.

In the cloud, this exercise would likely cost me $$$ every month, since I'd have to keep around hundreds of GB of virtual volumes. Clearly I have to rethink my workflow, or I could go back to piracy, like I used to when I was a penniless minion.

Microsoft: finding more ways to be hated and irrelevant since 2003.

<comment><USER4> _> In the cloud, this exercise would likely cost me $$$ every month, since I'd have to keep around hundreds of GB of virtual volumes._

Personally, I'd rather pay some cloud provider a few dozen dollars per month to hang on to a bunch of volumes and snapshots that I can access/redeploy trivially from anywhere than maintain all the same in my home.

<comment><USER3> I guess I'm special: most of my engagements drop me on-site without real connectivity (even 3g is often poor).

But yeah, I see your point. As a company, we're a bit behind on the whole AWS thing, mostly because of fear of ungodly bills at the end of the month. Funnily enough, I'm the only one here trying to actually use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not terribly surprising.

MSDN subscriptions are still around and a good option for anyone who makes a living on via MS software.

<comment><USER5> It's still a short-sighted move by Microsoft. People who train using this software will find it really annoying to reload every 180 days.

If a college grad wants to learn new skills, will he/she: 1) reload the whole stack (Server, SQL, etc) every few months or 2) not be bothered with stupid notices and just learn Linux, OSS.

Technet was great program for learning. I am not willing to spend $6k on a MSDN subscription for learning to use Microsoft products. Instead, I will use this opportunity to learn more OSS software. Thanks Microsoft!

<comment><USER6> Well doesn't most IT-students qualify for a free MSDN subscription or at least Dreamspark (which has Windows Server, SQL, VS and so on for free for any student)? My experience with Microsoft is that they are very generous with their software in regards to students since they have a lot to gain and really nothing to lose by letting soon-to-be-professional-developers get comfortable with their stack.

<comment><USER7> You don't even have to be an IT-student to qualify for Dreamspark, the only thing that matters is whether your university is a member.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Okay, I could get used to the whole time-limited eval thing, but the real killer here is removing the back catalog. It's going to be even harder to do comparability testing now.

<comment><USER9> You still have time to download the shitload (it should only be a 2-3 digit amount of gigabytes if you only pick the stuff you actually need) and generate enough keys to get by once the service closes down.

That said, I have to agree. Where else in this world can you get MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows For Workgroups 3.11 these days?

<comment><USER10> > That said, I have to agree. Where else in this world can you get MS-DOS 6.22 > and Windows For Workgroups 3.11 these days?

I hope some enterprising fellow would archive significant portion of what is available from TechNet. It might be the last moment many of the software there is available for public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That actually makes sense. Developers developers developers in no longer the MS mantra. Visual Studio is stagnating, Servers are very cheap for evaluation on Azure and with the majority of the toolchains being open source there is non trivial amount of developers using mainly linux.

So the world now is not the world technet was created.

<comment><USER12> Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers - use MSDN, not TechNet.

<comment><USER10> MSDN seems significantly more expensive than what I remember TechNet being, $1200 if you need SQL server, $6200(!) if you need Office. And WTF are "Tech support incidents"? Are they billing for bug reports?

<comment><USER13> They generally refund if they confirm that it is a real bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You would need an MSDN Premium subscription to get access to all the Operating systems.

There is a new "MSDN Operating Systems" subscription [http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/productI...](http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/productID.254639900)

<comment><USER3> That's a whopping 400% increase from my Technet sub.

EDIT: and of course it doesn't include SQL Server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A little sad to hear.

I've been a TechNet subscriber for a number of years now. I probably don't utilise it as much as I could.</comment>


Andy Kaufman Still Alive According To Brother, Woman Claiming To Be His Daughter - <AUTHOR> http://gothamist.com/2013/11/13/andy_kaufman_is_still_alive_accordi.php <comment><AUTHOR> The thing I love about the "Andy Kaufman isn't dead" meme is that, true or not, it's completely in keeping with the Andy Kaufman spirit.

"What's real? What's not? That's what I do in my act, test how other people deal with reality." — Andy Kaufman

</comment><comment><USER2> Haha, that's so like him!</comment>


Videos for "Learn Enough Ruby to Be Dangerous" - <AUTHOR> https://news.learnenough.com/learn-enough-ruby-to-be-dangerous-videos? <comment><AUTHOR> These are the videos for _Learn Enough Ruby to Be Dangerous_ , an introduction to Ruby that's designed as a complement to the _Ruby on Rails Tutorial_ (good either before or after).

I generally recommend getting the videos bundled with the ebook, so that you'll have them all forever, but an online version of the book is also available for free here:

[https://www.learnenough.com/ruby-tutorial](https://www.learnenough.com/ruby- tutorial)

Enjoy!

<comment><USER2> Dr. Hartl, I'm so thankful for all of your ruby / rails tutorials. They were literally transformational for me earlier in my career. Glad to see you continuing to put out good content.

The supportive community around Rails made it my framework of choice. (That and active directory!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy to hear it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Might want to reword that title to:

Videos for "Learn Enough Ruby to Be Dangerous"

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel like there's an obvious joke here:

IRB> "some string"[/look a regex!/]

[https://xkcd.com/208/](https://xkcd.com/208/)</comment>


The Anti-MacBook Air Has All the Necessary Ports - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/348097/the-anti+macbook-air-has-all-necessary-ports <comment><USER2> I'm curious about how it handles air-flow/cooling.</comment>


Crypteron Launches Free Community Edition. Encryption and Key MGMT for C# / Java - <AUTHOR> https://www.crypteron.com/blog/community-edition?utm_source=hackernews&utm_campaign=community_announcement <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a co-founder at Crypteron and we're really excited about this community release to help developers without a budget secure their backend applications. It's 100% free...forever...and has no speed limits. In a matter of minutes, with just a couple lines of code, developers unlock encryption, tamper protection, key management and one-click response to data breaches.

I'm really hoping the HN community can help spread the word and join the fight against data breaches. Any feedback is welcome! Thanks!</comment>


Show HN: Module-graph-webpack-plugin - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/module-graph-webpack-plugin <comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I built a plugin for webpack [0] which can produce a GraphML file of your module dependencies. It will also annotate each graph node with the module size, so that with a suitable viewer application (such as [1]) you can scale/colour your nodes by size.

On the bitbucket repo [2] I've provided some formatted graphs that I've produced for a personal React project: [3].

[0] [https://www.npmjs.com/package/module-graph-webpack- plugin](https://www.npmjs.com/package/module-graph-webpack-plugin)

[1] [https://www.yworks.com/products/yed](https://www.yworks.com/products/yed)

[2] [https://bitbucket.org/doughammond/module-graph-webpack- plugi...](https://bitbucket.org/doughammond/module-graph-webpack-plugin)

[3] [https://bitbucket.org/doughammond/module-graph-webpack- plugi...](https://bitbucket.org/doughammond/module-graph-webpack- plugin/wiki/Home)</comment>


Former co-founder sabotaging  - <AUTHOR>

I work at a company that got acquired a while ago. One of the co-founders who used to be my boss and a C-level executive, decided that he didn't want to be a manager after the acquisition and stepped down to a low demanding role.
The problem is that this person is really bad in his new role and he's not interested in getting any better. What's worse is that he's making errors that affect the entire team and might get the team fired and the errors seem to be on purpose. When he gets confronted with making obvious errors, he makes up an excuse like that the instruction weren't clear when everyone else understood them well. Sometimes he disappears from his workplace for a couple of hours to talk with the other former co-founders or do other things. During our team meetings, he mostly occupied with his phone and seem to be absent. When we meet with our new owners, he's very fast talking about the difficulties that the team has and that makes the team's efficiency bad, most of the things are issues that he has. The new owners are located in a different location so they can't see his bad behavior, in fact they trust him as one of the better members in the team since he used to be the co-founder and are listening more to him than his new boss.
We can't figure out a reason for his behavior rather than that he has a contract that prevents him from being fired without heavily compensation (we have verified this to be true). So he is much better off if the team is shut-down since he will get compensated without having to work. No one is telling about his behavior to our new owners for one reason, he and the other former co-founders are really tight buddies and they will make sure that we'll have difficulties finding other jobs in the future if this gets out. I'm not sure what to do, but he is making everyone's job much more difficult. <comment><USER2> Game theory at work. If the contract is like that, it is hard to do something.

I don't know what I'd do, but here's a story that might be happening: Maybe he tried to do contribute but was constantly hampered by the new owners, then realized it's not worth the effort and since the "retired".

FWIW, I don't think he's really "sabotaging" the thing, he just stopped contributing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think he thought that he would be much better in his new role, but one he found out that he needed to learn some stuff that were new/difficult, he just gave up and started to make life worse for everyone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like he can't quit and can't be fired. Most likely he is coasting to the end of his contract and doesn't really give a crap because he has already cashed out. Your best option with someone like that is to sideline them and get them out of the way as much as possible.</comment>


TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie discusses social entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2010/02/toms-shoes-founder-blake-mycoskie-discusses-social-entrepreneurship

<comment><USER2> I've worked with Blake a lot, my company developed their current e-commerce site. He's a great, passionate and fun guy. One of my favorite stories about him is when we were asking how he gets thousands of pairs of shoes through customs in Africa. All he said was "Oh, Bill Clinton helps me take care of that." That in itself can tell you how powerful his socially conscious business model is.

He's the kind of guy that would fit in perfectly at HN, he's not technical but he's extremely entrepreneurial. He had a variety of small successes, some failures, and finally hit it big with TOMS Shoes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great add to the community. I'm coming from a social entrepreneurship background but now building a web startup and seeing just a ton of flow between those two communities. Actually run mixers for startups in SF that explicitly connect both - people seem to really dig em. Thanks for sharing this.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just don't return your shoes or else he has to take a pair back from a child in need!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kypYXanAv0Y>

(disclaimer: that may or may not be me wearing the special helmet in that video.)</comment>


Ask HN: Web Hosts or Colocators who peer with AWS? - <AUTHOR>

With the recent discussions about the costs, benefits, and risks of cloud computing thanks to the AWS outage, I've seen a lot of folks promoting a dual strategy of hosting a foundation through a traditional colocator (or at least a provisioned hardware service) and handling additional buildout or other services through a cloud service like AWS.<p>My question is - does anyone know of (or is there published anywhere) resources to identify companies who peer with an AWS region?  I had heard while back that in Seattle or Portland it was possible to buy upstream bandwidth through certain colocators that peered directly with AWS, and had cheaper or free bandwidth directly to their services.  Can anyone verify that rumor? <comment><USER2> I've seen no evidence that it's possible to get cheaper bandwidth from AWS (on the AWS side, at least. Perhaps some ISP will sell AWS transit cheaper than regular transit). Anything outside AWS apparently counts as "the Internet".

For Amazon's peering, see [https://www.peeringdb.com/private/participant_view.php?id=14...](https://www.peeringdb.com/private/participant_view.php?id=1418) <http://bgp.he.net/AS16509#_peers></comment>


Install IE6-IE9 virtual machines on OSX and Linux using one liner script - <AUTHOR> http://opensourcehacker.com/2011/12/15/install-internet-explorer-6-ie9-virtual-machines-on-any-os-using-one-liner-script-and-virtual-box/

<comment><USER2> Pretty useful, but I've always been curious on the legality of circumventing the 30 day limit on use. I remember when I was in college my instructors would recommend this to get around the trial periods of Adobe products so we could work from home.

<comment><AUTHOR> Microsoft allows you to re-download the virtual machine after 30 days. I am not sure how sensible the system in the place is, but I believe Microsoft is happy that their browsers get support from the web developers.

<comment><USER2> Good point. I suppose that given that there is considerably more competition these days and that IE 6 left them with a bit of an unfavorable reputation, they should be happy. Things like this are certainly in their best interest.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you been rejected by Stripe Atlas? - <AUTHOR> Few days ago I received a rejection from Stripe Atlas, because they deemed the business "too risky". What was your experience with Atlas? Have you reapplied after initial rejection? I want to apply in the future with a different business, but I am afraid that this rejection will negatively impact my future application(s). <comment><USER2> Card networks and our financial partners have restrictions on the types of businesses we can support: [https://stripe.com/docs/atlas#cannot](https://stripe.com/docs/atlas#cannot)

Businesses are looked at individually, and you should totally start a new application if it's a new/different business (that's not on that list). You can always email us ahead of time (email@example.com) if you need any advice.

I'd also like to take a closer look at your first application. Could you email me at email@example.com?

<comment><USER3> It's kind-of surprising to see "computer technical support" on the list of high-risk businesses.</comment></comment>


Daring Fireball: Apple's System Apps - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2010/06/apples_system_apps

<comment><USER2> Why can't system apps go in the app store? They could be installed by default, but able to be uninstalled and then reinstalled from the app store. Think Apple's Remote app.

What Gruber says makes sense for apps like Mail and Safari, but Stocks and Weather feel so grandfathered in.

<comment><USER3> The thing is that some SDK functions are dependent on those apps and thus need to exist somehow. Because a third-party app can use the SDK to send an email from inside the app, Mail needs to be around. Same thing with Maps, Safari, Photos… (and of course, the App Store)

On the other hand, you're correct, Stocks, Weather, Calculator, etc. are completely independent, thus could be deleted without causing trouble, but I wouldn't be surprised if the decision went down to the simplest one (at least for now): no default app gets deleted, period.

If you don't like having the extra system apps, (I don't for some of them), to quote Steve Jobs on an unrelated topic: "not that big of a deal".

<comment><USER4> This demonstrates exactly why Gruber completely misses the point every time he tries to nitpick the Android team's statements about not using private APIs. While Gruber wants to make it about hollow point scoring, what the Android guys are getting at is that they've made a conscious design decision to have a clear distinction between what is system level and what is application level specifically to avoid getting stuck in this sort of situation.

Yes, your Android phone has apps you probably can't uninstall, but that's a _distribution_ decision rather than something that was forced on them by technical limitation.

<comment><USER5> [http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/29/exclusive-android- froyo-t...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/29/exclusive-android-froyo-to- take-a-serious-shot-at-stemming-plat/)

Android Froyo onwards, a lot of system apps are going to be downloadable separately, just so that you dont have to wait for your service provider to build an OTA update for you.

<comment><USER4> Well, like Engadget mentions, they'd already broken Maps out like that a while back. The entire reason they _can_ do this is because they've kept their first-party apps out of the system level and exposed the functionality they need publicly.

The official Facebook and Twitter apps integrate with system contacts, for example, not because Google integrated them at the system level, but because Google provided an API to allow this with the Android 2.0 release.

One of the things that continually impresses me about Android is the fact that Google took so much care to create a clean architecture that opens up the door to a lot of cool opportunities for any application developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do not understand at all why there needs to be any distinction whatsoever between "system apps" and "app store apps".

Yes, it's _the way Apple does things_. But why? Linux distros have used package management to push updates for everything from the kernel to the mail client for over a decade now. It's not like the technology is new. Internally, there can't be much of a distinction between the two categories of apps. So why can't they be pluggable like everything else? I get that they're an integral part of the device's UX, but I can't think of any reason why they can't be upgraded through the package manager all the other apps use.

Maybe the reason is maximizing the wow factor upon upgrading, and even that seems like a minor benefit compared to the advantages of, y'know, rapid security patching.

 _EDIT_ : Timothee above mentions that other apps depend on them, and I suppose it's true, version-based dependency management does seem a little overly complex for such a device (it's definitely not like Apple to say something like "This application requires Mail 2.53.x to run").

<comment><USER7> What would happen if you delete the App Store app itself?

If nothing else, a couple of the apps _have_ to be handled differently, to prevent bricking the device (or, at least, force an iTunes sync to restore functionality). Unlike the Finder, Springboard has no menubar or some other location to provide UI independent of apps. So, the App Store and Settings apps have to be protected at a minimum.

<comment><USER8>
      # apt-get remove apt
      Reading Package Lists... Done
      Building Dependency Tree... Done
      The following packages will be REMOVED:
        apt apt-utils base-config
      WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed
      This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
        apt
      0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 to remove and 17  not upgraded.
      Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 3183kB will be freed.
      You are about to do something potentially harmful
      To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as I say!'

<comment><USER9> Yes, because your average joe user is going to have any idea what they're doing. The simple fact of the matter is that the iPhone is made for mass consumption, and things like this would outright deter many users from using the iPhone — let alone _wanting_ to use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gruber writes that it'll be "un-iPhone-like" to hide unwanted system apps from the home screen through the Settings app.

You can show/hide the bundled Nike + iPod app through Settings app. And it's not even new in iOS 4. "Un-iPhone-like" indeed.

<comment><USER11> It's very much un-iphone-like. They should put it in the App Store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When you consider a huge portion of the user base - especially the iPhone user base - the simplicity of 'deleting' an app is fairly dangerous. It's not totally impossible to remove an app in your pocket by accident. I'd hate to have to explain to my mother why her mail app was suddenly missing. That said, allowing for some sort of on/off toggle in settings would be welcome.

</comment><comment><USER13> For what it's worth, if you jailbreak your iOS device, there's a few ways of hiding apps from your home screen (both Categories and SBSettings do it, and I'm decently sure the Winterboard settings do it too).

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow! Daring Fireball is indeed an Apple Fanboy!

He advocates the fact the the world's best tech company cannot really solve such a trivial issue like removal of built-in apps and instead suggests a workaround and hide them!! Any programmer could tell you that Apple can build the apps just like any other apps in the AppStore and have them available for free. Guess it is too hard of a problem when you don't want to solve it!!!

<http://thecaseagainstapple.blogspot.com/></comment>


Dead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wall - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2015/mar/08/dead-drops-what-to-do-if-you-see-a-usb-stick-sticking-out-of-a-wall <comment><USER2> If I wanted to do something like this I'd create open WiFi access points called something like "DeadDrop". They wouldn't be connected to the internet. Instead they'd forward you to a locally hosted site that let you download and upload from local storage.

WiFi has a lot of advantages. You eliminate the risk of USB attacks, physical damage to the device, and the actual location is unknown. The downside is that it would require power.

<comment><USER3> The Pirate Box[1] firmware is the perfect thing for this. The problem is finding power to keep the box running, but with wifi, you can hide the box somewhere out of site.

I have always thought it would be cool to set up a piratebox somewhere running from a solar panel. Then in daylight hours the dead drop would be there, but it would be gone at night.

[1]: [http://piratebox.cc/](http://piratebox.cc/)

<comment><USER4> There's an Android version in case you have old smartphones lying around. They're more powerful than the OpenWRT routers and they do have their own power. You need to root your phone first though.

[http://piratebox.cc/android](http://piratebox.cc/android)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > If you spot a USB flash drive cemented into a wall or kerb, you may have > stumbled across a Dead Drop, part of a global art project borrowing tricks > from the world of espionage

Or, you might have stumbled across 240VAC wired to a USB connector.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if that would be worse than carefully crafted malware.

<comment><USER7> Since sharing USB flash drives is pretty much the equivalent of having digital unprotected sex anyway, I'm sure you'll get that soon enough.

And it can get much, much worse than plain old viruses too:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article mentions USB attacks/exploits...but even more dangerous would be child pornography,at least in the US such a crime does not require _intent_ (as automatic as it gets in a criminal context) simply being in possession or even constructive possession would lead to a conviction and a lifetime registration on the sexual offender list.

<comment><USER9> >The article mentions USB attacks/exploits

I'm not sure that it does. The countermeasures mentioned are for protecting against good old file-based executable exploits. I don't think they even understand the concept of firmware exploits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not a good idea. This risks getting owned from the BadUSB exploit.

<comment><USER10> In the article it's said that's explicitly part of the idea - it's supposed to be dangerous.

<comment><USER11> It's supposed to _appear_ dangerous. The first time anything actually dangerous happened the user would immediately stop using them. Or worse, they'll end up in prison. Copying a random zip file of the Anarchist's Cookbook on to your PC will get you a few hours of questioning by the police and a caution not to be so stupid as to be a pretend spy again; why you downloaded an archive of several thousand child porn pictures is quite a bit harder to explain away as a bit of fun.

<comment><USER12> > Copying a random zip file of the Anarchist's Cookbook on to your PC will get > you a few hours of questioning

Not in the US. I could download a hundred copies from every sketchy warez site on the internet without violating any laws.

<comment><USER11> The same is true here in the UK. It's not a crime to have the file, but it'd be reason enough for the police to request you 'voluntarily' answer some questions about where you got it from and why. If you refuse to answer questions however, then it's a crime.

<comment><USER13> Since when has it been a crime in the UK to refuse to answer questions from the police?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So I found one of these in my city. The Dead Drops homepage has a list of all known locations: [https://deaddrops.com/](https://deaddrops.com/). Took a while to find the exact spot, and when I plugged in... nothing. The drive was completely exposed to the elements without much protection, so it was rusty and as far as I could tell useless. I have a hunch that most of them suffered similar fates.

</comment><comment><USER15> A more surreptitious spy would have a piece of hardware that can manipulate a USB drive without needing a full laptop. Any small USB host would do, from an old MP3 player to a Sony PSP.

<comment><USER16> Tutorial? :)

<comment><USER17> Start here:

[http://youtu.be/D8Im0_KUEf8](http://youtu.be/D8Im0_KUEf8)

See also:

[http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2012/07/emulating-usb- de...](http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2012/07/emulating-usb-devices-with- python.html)

[http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2012/10/emulating-usb- df...](http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2012/10/emulating-usb-dfu-to- capture-firmware.html)

[http://goodfet.sourceforge.net/hardware/facedancer21/](http://goodfet.sourceforge.net/hardware/facedancer21/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks like a pretty good way to break the USB connector off. Wouldn't a short length of wire be better?

<comment><USER19> It seems you are already one step ahead of german law enforcement: [http://www.express.de/image/view/2015/1/23/29952904,31875408...](http://www.express.de/image/view/2015/1/23/29952904,31875408,highRes,maxh,480,maxw,480,01K+22_71-80870384_ori.jpg)

m(

(From the german tabloid article: [http://www.express.de/koeln/eingemauert-in- einer-fassade-bom...](http://www.express.de/koeln/eingemauert-in-einer- fassade-bomben-bauplan-auf-oeffentlichem-usb-stick-in-der-koelner- suedstadt,2856,29952848.html) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was really into this about a year ago, so I placed one in a brick wall near my apartment. The device probably made it three days before being completely covered in rust.

</comment><comment><USER21> So its a USB glory hole?

</comment><comment><USER22> Or you might fry your laptop.

</comment><comment><USER23> i'm pretty sure this is an old concept from the early usb storage days... (found this on archive.org from 2010 [https://archive.org/details/Net_At_Night_175](https://archive.org/details/Net_At_Night_175) ) wonder why its becoming a "thing" again

<comment><USER24> The article explicitly states that this project started in 2010.

<comment><USER23> fair cop....still wonder why its come back up again after so long

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Or you can raise suspicion, get caught on surveillance camera and have a talk with a police officer. Yeah, there might be ways to avoid that, but in case of failed attempt there will be one more thing to explain.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a meta comment, but does it seem like this post is attracting a more- than-usual amount of new posters? Maybe the site in general is getting more popular, I don't know, but on ~30 comments, there are four useless comments from green accounts, and the submitter is a green account. Just seems to be more than average.

</comment><comment><USER26> tl;dr: Admire the ingenuity of it all for 10 sec; move along.

</comment><comment><USER27> e-geocaching

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd take it. Free USB stick! /s</comment>


Cold calling is Dead – Try this instead - <AUTHOR> https://sales.prospecting.io/cold-calling-2-0/

<comment><USER2> Apparently down right now. So what was it about?

<comment><USER3> [https://archive.is/pAfDb](https://archive.is/pAfDb)</comment></comment>


Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Linux Ultrabook review - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/it-just-works-dell-xps-13-developer-edition-linux-ultrabook-review/ <comment><USER2> I'm impressed that Dell have created a laptop aimed at developers, but I've stopped buying Dells completely as I've had an endless string of issues going back ten years with their power supplies.

And it isn't just me either, everyone I know has had similar issues with the power supplies splitting (and eventually failing) right at the bend as it enters the laptop... Then the replacements are $100.

I'm buying laptops to last. Dells simply do not. Even their "high end" Latitudes and XPS laptops are cheaply made.

I won't buy another Dell until I see an improvement in the quality of the power supplies and ideally a single universal power supply across their entire range (why does one range have two new incompatible PSUs a year?).

Apple and Thinkpad/Lenovo both have much higher quality power blocks and both have universal power supplies within the same range. I buy two Thinkpad Txxx or Macbook Pros I can interchange the power supplies!

<comment><USER3> Every macbook power supply (cable) will split and fray within two-three years (depending on use). However, here in Norway they have a 5 year (goverment mandated) warranty, so no problems just bringing it in and going back out with a brand new adapter.

<comment><USER4> You can't use "every" and "depending on use" in the same sentence, as that could be said of anything. I have a four year old cable of said type which, except for a little dust, is looking as good as new.

Were you to say that it occurs during average usage however, I agree that it would be an issue.

<comment><USER5> I read "depending on use" as a modifier to 2-3 years not on every. That is to say the cable will break sometime between 2-3 years with heavy use being sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER3> That's what I meant yes. Although I guess if you are really careful it would probably last longer. However the heat from the adapter (and the magsafe plug) will slowly degrade the rubber and glue.

<comment><USER6> The one I'm currently using is 6 years old. My boss had to replace his within a couple years and they showed him how to properly wrap the cable. He taught us and it's been fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > It's an impressive achievement, and it's also a sad comment on the overall > viability of Linux as a consumer-facing operating system for normal people. > I don't think anyone is arguing that Linux hasn't earned its place in the > data center—it most certainly has—but there's no way I'd feel comfy > installing even newbie-friendly Ubuntu or Mint on my parents' computers. The > XPS 13 DE shows the level of functionality and polish possible with extra > effort, and that effort and polish together means this kind of Linux > integration is something we won't see very often outside of boutique OEMs.

This is not extra effort, though. The same effort is required to make their Windows computers work. What you are experiencing is the realization that for most computers, there is _no_ effort made to have them run linux well

Linux's biggest problem is one of perception. Because people are used to their Windows and Mac computers "just working", they think that is the steady-state of OSes, and that Linux is somehow failing to achieve normalcy.

<comment><USER8> I think the extra effort he means is that Dell had to hack in additional fixes for the trackpad, wifi, bluetooth and monitor brightness: [https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe- team/+archive/sputnik-k...](https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe- team/+archive/sputnik-kernel) . They were all merged upstream, but if Dell had not done it, it would have been the customer spending hours on google or reading through threads on the ubuntu forums (I can speak from experience).

<comment><USER7> Dell also has to make sure its drivers work on Windows.

<comment><USER8> I thought Dell submitted most of those patches to fix bugs in the kernel, not its own drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have one of these for work (but I have the first iteration, with the lower resolution.)

I agree with just about everything in this article. When I first got my machine, it would literally hard-freeze several times a day. I tried playing with kernel PPAs, upgrading my BIOS, etc. Eventually I contacted their support, and the next day a technician came and replaced my motherboard. It works almost perfectly now (still hard-freezes maybe once a month, but what can you do.)

I have not used any of the neato-sounding "developer tools" this computer comes with (the cloud thinger, the profile tool thinger, etc.) Perhaps I would, but then again, chef/puppet/vagrant are the de-facto standards for setting up dev environments, and they translate better to how I'd deploy something on prod.

EDIT: okay I just looked at juju. seems absurdly cool and useful. has anyone else used this?

</comment><comment><USER10> > The trackpad does two-finger scrolling (with inertia!) without having to add > some random crazy guy's PPA and install extra packages. It picked up my Wi- > Fi network and joined it without requiring me to do anything other than > supply the passkey.

> Is it bad if I say that I was impressed that sound worked right out of the > box?

> The XPS 13 easily handled repeatedly being put to sleep and awakened without > throwing a kernel panic or otherwise exploding.

Is this the usual experience installing Linux on a laptop?

(Not trolling, I've only ever used Linux on desktops/servers)

<comment><USER11> Linux just doesn't seem to do laptops very well.

I used to have a little Asus EEE PC, for which I downloaded a community- generated EEE-specific Linux. EEE Ubuntu, I think it was. All your EEE- specific drivers pre-loaded, no extraneous junk, no funny business! So I had high hopes for this one, on account of the very limited number (3!) of different hardware configurations the distribution had to support. Surely nothing could go wrong!

Once I'd installed it, I found trackpad touch-to-tap didn't work. At all. Well, OK, the trackpad has buttons, so I suppose I'll have to live with that.

It wouldn't detect my wi-fi network, and in fact as far as I could tell wi-fi simply didn't work in the slightest. Fortunately, I have a long network cable, and I mainly used it fairly near the router anyway.

When I tried to suspend to disk, it claimed it was out of swap space, and proceeded to just shut down normally. Hmm, never mind, I can just close the lid and leave it plugged in, it's no big deal.

When I closed the lid, it crashed.

<comment><USER12> > Linux just doesn't seem to do laptops very well.

Linux doesn't do 'random, low-priced consumer laptops' very well. It does regular business laptops very well. I've been installing Linux on Thinkpads from the T20 days all the way to the current T430 and I've been incredibly impressed with how well everything runs.

Even cheap laptops run pretty well these days, at most you'll wrestle with the wifi drivers. The problem is the low-end market for laptops is so varied you don't get a lot of developers who get hands-on time to get the drivers working well.

Popular laptops will usually have great support unless they've got some hardware where the vendor doesn't want to play ball. But any cheap machine that's sold a lot of units will have a forum where users explain everything they've figured out.

In the old days you could buy two network cards, keep one and send one to a developer as a gift, and you'd end up getting a working driver out of the deal. Some people did that with entire laptops.

<comment><USER13> That's much too sanguine.

Have been running Arch and Ubuntu on Thinkpads for over 4 years now, which are known for being Linux friendly. And, to be fair, it works, but it doesn't just work. Power management issues abound: out of the box, Ubuntu on my Carbon X1 was regularly using over 10W, and it was only with substantial tweaking that I could get it to 5.5W-6W consistently. Anytime I need to restart, I need to go through the Powertop suggestions again. Certainly could write a script for that, but it doesn't just work. Suspend doesn't work all the time: I've had days where I've charged the computer overnight, thrown it in my bag, and by the end of the day it was entirely dead, complete with some minor but obnoxious filesystem corruption. Using the hardware mute button fucks up PulseAudio.

I'll point out that the Carbon X1 is hardly some "random, low-priced consumer laptop." Probably a bit less Linux friendly than more traditional ThinkPad offerings, but if you go any more higher end with Sony or whatever, I would be very pessimistic about it working, just or otherwise.

Now, for my purposes, other alternatives just don't work. I don't know an easy way to have a Windows or OSX system to throw up a private virtual cloud over LXC on your notebook so you can work from a networkless Koh Rong beach. Linux (and Ubuntu in particular) makes this trivial. Everyone else has shitty window managers, while dwm is heaven.

In that respect, Linux works. And nothing else mainstream does. But universal mediocrity isn't an excuse for mediocrity.

<comment><USER14> >> Now, for my purposes, other alternatives just don't work. I don't know an easy way to have a Windows or OSX system to throw up a private virtual cloud over LXC on your notebook so you can work from a networkless Koh Rong beach.

Run it in a Linux VM?

<comment><USER13> I've been thinking about doing that, actually, so not knowing of any easy way was a bit of a fib. Very tempting, to say the least, but free software and all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had my boss order one for me and it should arrive next week. I'm really looking forward to it after reading this article. It feels good to not pay for a Windows license that will never be used and instead support a company that appears to see the benefits of FLOSS.

<comment><USER16> Got a link to the Dell site? I cannot find it. I did a search for "XPS developer edition" and it shows up, but the link is a 404. :-/

<comment><USER17> US: <http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd.aspx> UK: <http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Developer" ultrabook but still with an uncomfortable left slanted keyboard layout. When will we see a programmer friendly laptop with a symmetric keyboard layout like the TypeMatrix or TECK?

There is no redeeming quality to the left slanted keyboard layout unless you are making typewriters in the 19th century: <http://loup- vaillant.fr/articles/better-keyboards>

<comment><USER19> I've mentioned this in other threads but my gripe is that they got rid of the pgup/pgdown/home/end/etc. column. I have no idea why, and it even looks like there's plenty of space on the laptop for it. I use those keys all day, every day, and the sad trend of laptops aping Apple's keyboard layout saddens me greatly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really hope Google can make a chrome pixel like Linux laptop. I think it will be hugely popular among her own engineers. MacBookPro used to be perfectly fine for software development for years but after upgrading mine to one with retina display half a year ago, I no longer believe that's case. It's 2D rendering performance is sluggish, crashes couple of times every week (probably caused by some glitches during switching between integrated and discreet display). I don't mean to blame Apple, they no longer focus on PC and software development workstation laptops was never their business goal.

<comment><USER21> It is, in fact, possible to run Linux on the Chrome Pixel bare metal; Linus himself has one and likes it (and has posted about it quite a bit on Google+), mainly because of the screen. The main problem is that the SSD is sized to be a local cache for cloud data. The 32 GB SSD you get with the base model could wind up very cramped, these days; you do get a 64 GB SSD with the LTE model, but that's even pricier, and still a bit skimpy.

<comment><USER22> The 64GB Pixel is priced nearly the same as the 13 rMBP and other than the unique aspects of a touch screen and LTE, is almost half the performance of the Mac. And if something happens to your laptop, who do you really want to call for support, Apple or Google?

I'd love to see some serious competition to Apple, but it's not there yet.

<comment><USER23> "Half the performance" what the what?

<comment><USER22> Compare the specs between the two, half the RAM and a much lesser CPU. GPUs are the same, but the storage is halved too. No Thunderbolt or USB3 even. Battery life is significantly better for the MacBook. All for basically equivalent prices. It's a nice looking machine, an I'd actually prefer the Pixel screen ratio to the Mac's, but the performance to dollar ratio lies clearly in Apple's favor, and if you have any hardware hiccups, the value of Apple's support vs Google's notoriously absent support cannot be ignored either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >> I've struggled before with using Linux as my full-time operating environment both at work and at home.

More or less than Windows? [http://superuser.com/questions/142873/windows-7-not- recogniz...](http://superuser.com/questions/142873/windows-7-not-recognizing- camera-nor-iphone-as-camera)

>> It's an impressive achievement, and it's also a sad comment...

Huh?

>> Linux is not yet "ready for the desktop," and I'm doubtful it will ever be—at least not in the sense that an average person could use it full-time without any assistance. >> but there's no way I'd feel comfy installing even newbie-friendly Ubuntu or Mint on my parents' computers.

My wife is as non-techie as you can get, we bought an Dell Laptop which came with Ubuntu for her sometime back, she has no trouble, logging in, browsing, using Open Office for simple documents and spreadsheets, Skype, Google Voice, email. Hmm, when I read stuff indicating that modern Linux especially Ubuntu is hard for ordinary users it honestly makes me question the true motivation of the author when the author is a blogger who pretends to have a clue.

<comment><USER25> To be fair, I'm a pretty _new_ blogger, so maybe my cluefulness is still developing. That being said, what do you think my motivation is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have a dell xps 13 and the trackpad responsiveness is a disaster. I have tried endless combination of drivers (both Dell and third-party) and sunk 20 hours into debugging. I strongly recommend you do not purchase an XPS 13 if you do not plan to use it primarily with an external mouse.

<comment><USER24> Speaking as a developer I keep my own mouse in my laptop bag because using trackpads is irritating, Windows or Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have an xps 13 and a MacBook air.

The MBA died 2 months out of warranty, and had to have the logic board replaced. Apple comped this, thankfully. Lately it's been getting flaky and requiring forced-restrts.

The xps 13 is still under warranty and had a hdd failure requiring a new unit from dell. I also find the trackpad extremely annoying with cursor jumping from thumb bumps, so much that I cart an extra keyboard around for it.

In the end I favor the MBA for better build quality and finish but I'm not super excited about either.

And no, I'm not a laptop killer. I still have a 15 year old compaq working, though with no battery life and the DVD is dead. I've just had a rotten run of luck with these two.

</comment><comment><USER12> A few questions:

Ruby 1.8 - I thought we were dinosaurs for still using it

How is the hi-res display handled on the 13" screen? Does Ubuntu have display scaling or something built-in? I have it on a machine at home but never noticed any settings related to that.

Glossy display - is it as glossy as the classic MacBook Pro, or more like the Retina, which is still pretty glossy and will make you hate being stuck by the window at Starbucks.

I want one of these, but Dell isn't doing the one thing that makes people buy their hardware - offer it a BIG discount compared to other in the market (Air, Carbon X1, etc)

<comment><USER28> I don't know about 12.04, but display scaling was part of the Ubuntu Touch announcement. Their plan is to stop defining everything in terms of pixels and start working in "grid units", which they will rescale in response to pixel density and the type of device you're on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _> The screen is glossy, which I like, a choice that will no doubt illicit [sic] an immediate "I HATE THIS AND WANT TO THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW" response for a lot of people._

This just exasperates me! The article is not bad but I reflexively lose confidence in the author when I notice spelling mistakes like that. Maybe because they're not typos but actual mistakes. I know it's arrogant and overly dismissive but I can't get over myself on this point. Sorry, you lost me at "illicit"…

</comment><comment><USER30> The common wisdom that "linux will never be viable on the desktop" is frustrating. How user friendly and problem-free does ubuntu have to get before people stop claiming this? All drivers working by default isn't good enough? To install software on windows you have to buy it or download shady .exe files, how is this better or more user-friendly than graphical software repository?

<comment><USER2> Linux has come a long way in the context of driver support. It has not come very far at all in terms of ease of use.

When something goes wrong on Ubuntu for example, the advice is 99% of the time to open a terminal window and start running commands. This is impractical/unworkable for the majority of users.

Ubuntu might be the most forward thinking Linux distribution in terms of ease of use, but for every step forward they take two steps back.

With Unity for example doing relatively "simple" things like configuring the firewall have seemingly disappeared (as well as much other settings). They seem to have just deleted the majority of the UI and said "we'll just use search for everything!" Without thinking through discoverability.

I think Linux is great as a server operating system. But the people behind it just aren't capable of thinking like "normal" users and thus are completely unable to produce something for those users to use.

Right now the most likely contender for a Linux desktop is some kind of Android fork that extends what Google has managed to accomplish to a larger hardware set (or just take Chromium and expand that).

<comment><USER31> Usually that advice isn't badly intentioned but just because people are used to doing things that way. Just as an example, if you download a package or something even if you _could_ use GDebi Package installer to install it with the gui, every tutorial you ever see will probably tell you do `sudo dpkg -i` or something. Nearly every Linux problem a 'regular' user is likely to have falls into this category - there's _probably_ a semi-sane way to do it with the GUI, but everyone who uses Linux will think it's 10x easier to just give someone a command instead of clicking through some lengthy graphical process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Glossy screen...

<comment><USER33> That would be my biggest turnoff. I would say more developers dislike that anyone else, so I'm baffled by the fact it has one.

<comment><USER34> More baffling is the fact the author likes it.

Even more baffling is the mention in the article that the trackpad is unsuitable to grab window's frames and yet this fact isn't mentionned in the pro/cons section.

I wish the author had given a word or two about fan noise under different loads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How do you do a laptop review without discussing battery life?

<comment><USER36> Second page:

"Because the XPS 13 is mature hardware, I didn't do any complex benchmarking. Battery life for a constant simulated load average of about 1.3 was almost exactly three hours, which isn't awful, but it isn't particularly great. The Ultrabook fared better under a real-life workload of light Web browsing, e-mailing, and writing, yielding about five-and-a-half hours of time spread across a day of work. This included a few transitions from home office to Panera Bread (or as we Ars editors like to call it, "the other office")."

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm not a designer, so this may be terribly ignorant, but looking at some of the packaging materials in those photos made me wonder: did Microsoft's push for "flat UI" design start a trend? Or did someone else do it before them? I feel like I've been seeing it everywhere now.

<comment><USER38> Unity pre-dates Windows Phone 7 (the first appearance of the UI concept formerly known as Metro) by some months, but the idea was around before; Adobe was quite keen on it for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I actually had to return two of those and got my money back at the end. The screen can never be truly black which is a "no go" if you spend half of your workday in the terminal. Other than this, it's not so bad. Oh, some of the keys are unevenly illuminated. Anyway, it's definitely a bit cheaper than MacBook Air, but for a good reason, I think. Unfortunately, only Apple pays tons of attention to every little detail. The only great (but heavily underspec'd) laptop I've found was Aspire S7. The new Kira laptop from Toshiba looks decently, but we gotta see and touch it to tell.

<comment><USER12> > The screen can never be truly black

Is it blue or brown or just gray?

<comment><USER39> Here's another from the same thread here: <https://twitpic.com/cjbzvr>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Something went terribly wrong. It has the Windows key on the keyboard!

<comment><USER41> And "PrtScr" instead of "SysRq". Fail.

<comment><USER42> May be "PrtScr" is more relevant because Ubuntu uses it as shortcut key to take full and window screenshots. Also according to wikipedia "SysRq" has no standard use.

<comment><USER41> But it does have one on Linux, which is what ships with this model. If you're developing or even just tinkering and things go haywire, SysRq is much more useful than the power button. But Dell clearly copy-pasted the design from existing models. Had they consulted with a developer, it would've had Meta and Line Feed on it as well. Perhaps even a compose key, før tḣöse fūññy chàráctèrs. (Because dead keys are annoying when you have to write more than one string literal in a day.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Did they really have to use the Spiderman logo font for the keyboard?

<comment><USER44> and, did they really have to use the Windows logo on the system key of a Linux laptop?

A nice touch would have been to make it a penguin key. Or, even a spiderman key to match the font.

 _I was especially happy to see that the palm rests were not gunked up with the typical annoying explosion of multicolored stickers—with the exception of a white-on-black Intel Core i7 sticker (which actually looks quite nice!)—so there's nothing to visually distract you from working._

Another nice touch would have been to put the Intel Core i7 sticker beneath the XPS badge on the bottom of the Ultrabook with the service tag, serial number, and the neat little Ubuntu sticker.

<comment><USER42> Those Intel (or may be Windows) sticker are there because it subsidize cost for manufacturer. They are paid to stick it in front of user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Looks pretty good, but I basically stare at my computer all day long, and sometimes well into the night. I'm not sure 13" is enough screen. Opinions?

<comment><USER46> I have a ThinkPad X201 convertible with the 12" 1280x800 touchscreen. (The screen's nothing amazing; rather dull.) But it's a great device, apart from the repeated fan weardown (replaced 3 times already) which makes it get a bit hot. If Lenovo made a decent upgrade, I'd buy it in a minute.

Anyways, I've noticed no problems working on the 12", other than the lack of pixels for virtual size (like IDEs and stuff). A 1080p resolution fixes that.

<comment><USER45> 1080px is a downgrade for me - I have a 15" screen with 1920x1200. However, a similar resolution on a smaller screen might be a bit more than I want to subject my eyes to. But I don't want to give up screen real estate, either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Insert obligatory "year of the linux desktop" wisecrack.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's great that it works and all, but it still seems like a shameless attempt to sell what ought to be a $900 laptop for $600 more because it's for 'developers.' Maybe give them the benefit of the doubt for needlessly using an i7, but even then the mark up is still $500ish...

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm very happy with my XPS 13 so far. I'm running 13.04 and I've encountered a few issues... however, Dell has been very responsive to my bug reports. Also, on 13.04, there is no need for the PPA. Dell's changes have been incorporated into the standard kernel.

<comment><USER48> Out of curiosity, have you had any trouble with backlight bleed?

This is the screen on the first XPS 13 I received: <https://twitpic.com/cjbzvr>

Since then, it's been replaced twice, each subsequent system having similar issues in different areas of the screen. I'm working with someone at Dell corporate now to provide details for their engineering team...I have to imagine all three systems were from the same manufacturing run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> "the laptop's bottom surface is coated in soft checkerboard patterned plastic"

Looks like carbon fiber to me.

<comment><USER50> Many things that look like carbon fiber are not, in fact, carbon fiber. In the case of computer enclosures, it's even more so since "whoa, it's carbon fiber!" is a desirable response when doing the design.

Note that actual carbon fiber is a very hard and brittle substance (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_%28fiber%29>), and you're quoting text that says it's "soft" ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think this article shows that Ubuntu is suitable for the desktop world if manufacturers support it. Am pretty impressed that someone who seems to have had problems with Ubuntu before actually likes it.

</comment><comment><USER52> Can't wait for the third rev with (hopefully) higher res display, more ram and battery life, newer ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER53> Does it have a docking connector?

<comment><USER12> No, only the Latitude line has that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> battery life fail.. i'd go for Macbook Air .. (disclaimer proud Dell latitude owner)</comment>


GNU tar extract pathname bypass - <AUTHOR> http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2016/Oct/96 <comment><USER2> This reminds me of a over 10 year old security hole I noticed in tar: [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=290435](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=290435)

<comment><USER3> Wow. I never thought I'd have to write an AppArmor profile for tar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How come the GNU tar maintainer was ignoring this for 6 months? Shouldn't someone better take over then? Huge fail.

<comment><USER5> From what I can tell they didn't ignore it they just don't think it is a bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd say that the issue is only a vulnerability if you're doing tar -C / (which would be dumb). The actual issue appears to be that the filtering features of GNU tar are applied _before_ pathname sanitisation (which is the actual security bug). The title (and some of the wording in the disclosure) lead me to believe that GNU tar would let you extract to paths _outside_ the -C directory (which would be very bad).

So I kinda see the PoV of the maintainer, though I don't agree with the filter ordering.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. I wonder if this kind of bugs could be found automatically, via fuzzing. It would be nice if someone found a way to add a definition of unexpected behavior to fuzzing with AFL...

</comment><comment><USER8> Linux is supposedly secure because everyone can access the source code and find a serious bug.

The question is whether anyone will _fix_ it.</comment>


Groupon marketing results - customers are out there - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/03/19/groupon-marketing-results/ <comment><USER2> With a man-in-the-middle between product and service providers, both later are at a loss. Customers could get a higher discount, while the providers could make (more) profits. Exposure is overrated imho with groupon's army of clones, as the crowd is nomadic and isn't loyal. Moreover it may bend perceptions and expectations for the future.

Long term effect of these deals are none to negative, as they may easily cannibalize regular business. Volumes of customers in the services business essentially requires time. That's obvious for the article above where costs of paralel servicing are very high (other helicopters).

Shameless self-promotion: our startup is changing that by removing the intermediary and seller fees with a simple widget for web shops. Unlike others with restricted applications in services, we've made it universally applicable to anything that sells online and offline, above $30 most likely. It's meant to work as sister button to the _Add to Cart_ \- _ _Join Group Buy_ _.

It is more than a marketing/advertising tool. It is a new way of seeing shopping.

While the exposure comes through the clever system of incentives, we're working on much more by opening the deals information to the world in real time.

<http://www.syncfu.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems Groupon is hot right now but I'm still not on the bandwagon. Most of the deals I see appear to be along the lines of _"2 week membership to gym/yoga/karate for $X"_ or _"Some tourist attraction for $X (normally $2X)"_

Basically, stuff where the vendor is trying to get your foot in the door or simply selling you an attraction where the "an $X value" may or may not be accurate.

The helicopter one is interesting, particularly because this is something those 2,600 people would never search for in Google. But then end result shows that deals like this benefit Groupon much more than the vendor.

If stuff like this keeps happening, are people going to want to continue offering deals on the site?

<comment><USER4> They made $100 MM last year, their first year being up in more than a handful of cities. I think they're in good shape.

It's funny, there's a ton of Groupon people here in Chicago and at parties they all whine about the local media not covering them more. Yes, I'm sure they want to heap praise upon a business hoovering up all their advertising dollars..

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 2500+ sales from an email sent to 200,000 local Groupon members.

That's a 1.25% blind conversion rate from email send which is UNHEARD of outside of very targeted newsletters.

Where can I invest in Groupon stock again?

That blows my mind wide open.

<comment><USER6> I think the driving factor is "OMG 2-hr helicopter lesson and I've never even flown as a copter passenger before for only $69!" -- not Groupon's magic pull. And PhilG makes it clear they're selling these initial lessons far below cost.

<comment><USER7> I wonder what Groupon's repeat business is like. Do they convince some small business to price their service incredibly under cost, take their rip, and leave the business to deal with 2,000 loss leading customers? I'd love to hear from this helicopter company again in a few months after they've worked their asses off to give out 2,000 cheap lessons all for 2 or 3 repeat customers. That model simply isn't sustainable.

<comment><USER5> Yah, very interesting if you measure in that context.

Lots of the restaurants seem to be doing a "food at cost" type offer and make it up on the booze sales. For a restaurant that could be a great strategy -</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Corruption: Brazil's Giant Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/brazils-giant-problem-1461359723 <comment><USER2> Good article. However, there is one thing that is never mentioned in the mainstream press when discussing why some countries are doing better than others: the intelligence of the populations. The average IQ in Brazil is 87, while it's 98 in the USA.

[http://www.rlynn.co.uk/uploads/pdfs/Intelligence%20and%20the...](http://www.rlynn.co.uk/uploads/pdfs/Intelligence%20and%20the%20Wealth%20and%20Poverty%20of%20Nations.pdf)</comment>