The Town of Innisfil partners with Uber for transit instead of buses - <AUTHOR> https://innisfil.ca/mygovernment/planningforourfuture/BringingTransittoInnisfil <comment><USER2> This is the logical development of what Douglas Rushkoff explained in his last book "Throwing Rocks At The Google Bus". First, they protest as private companies begin to use public infrastructure. Then, they get rid of the public infrastructure.

Emails replaced letters, Messenging apps replaced phones, Uber is replacing buses, etc. But the question is different from the situation where old companies are getting disrupted by new ones such , Airbnb replacing Hotels.

Public Services are associated with a social consensus that is usually expressed through democratic elections. If they are public it's because we consider that they should be available to all, regardless of income, physical ability and/or mental acuity. Of course, there is nothing new with Public Services being provided by private companies. But then, they are usually subject to some regulation.

This leads to think that the replacement of Public Services with new Digital Services is a pretext for deregulation. Code is not always Law. IMAP or POP protocols are no replacement for 200 years of Communications regulations. And Uber Terms of Use are no replacement for Public Transportation regulations. What will happen then? What if we begin to rate citizens as Apps rate users: will someone get blacklisted because he got a bad rating? What about surge pricing: will citizens experience a higher price when demand is increasing?

The City subsidizing the fares will use that leverage to make sure the rules are fair, but will it be enough? Digital Services can provide the same function as Public Services but they are not necessarily equivalent. And we should take in to account both the advantages and the problems of deregulation when making the switch.

<comment><USER3> "Public Services are associated with a social consensus that is usually expressed through democratic elections. If they are public it's because we consider that they should be available to all, regardless of income, physical ability and/or mental acuity. Of course, there is nothing new with Public Services being provided by private companies. But then, they are usually subject to some regulation."

Except for buses.

Buses are a cheap, quick way to pretend like you care about public transportation and check off a few boxes on your development list while providing the absolute worst transit option possible.

The users of transit get shafted with soul-crushing scheduling and performance. The opponents of transit get a convenient "example" of why it's a bad investment. Innocent bystanders like me get an urban environment polluted by big dirty, hulking (and usually empty) buses bonking their way around the city streets.

 _Anything_ is better than bus transit in the US.

<comment><USER4> one reason that buses seem so unpleasant in the US is the current system of laws governing the use of streets/roads. it's not hard to imagine different laws which would improve the experience of bus riders:

what if cars were only allowed to use streets during non rush hour times?

what if two out of the four lanes on every freeway were dedicated to buses and only buses 24/7?

what if individual car registrations were simply capped at a small number?

what if car registration fees/taxes were increased significantly because, per passenger mile, cars wear the roads down and take up more road space than buses?

what if through a combination of better policing, more surveillance, more robust passenger identification, and so on, buses could be made cleaner, safer and more pleasant?

these things sound draconian and anti-democratic, to be sure, but the technology of buses could be far more efficient than they are today if the laws were tilted heavily in their favor. but right now, individual cars rule the road.

<comment><USER3> These are all petty optimizations that we've been conditioned to accept, and work with, because of the anti-transit politics of a car-centric US culture.

What we need are trains and subways - with service levels and cleanliness acceptable to all classes - not new and interesting ways to stockpile poor people into shitty buses.

<comment><USER4> oh. why did those ideas seem like they were intended to stockpile poor people into shitty buses?

<comment><USER5> Not op but I think the shitty buses comment goes like this. No way any middle class person(wealthy,etc) with a car is going to suffer through a bus ride. Unless we has a 10x improvement with a so called Tesla of buses. With government today I really don't see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's becoming more and more obvious how little power is left in "the democratic process". We're slowly moving all actual decision making to authoritarian structures while the responsibility is still supposed to reside with the government, it's not a sustainable situation and the solution is fairly simple imo.

Just declare free software to be infrastructure. It is something everyone needs but no one wants to pay for so we just make everyone pay some amount of their income towards maintaining it (as well as other infrastructure) oh wait I just invented taxes - yes I'm from Europe btw.

When a company owns a platform (like an operating system) it becomes the government of that space, a position that should not be held by a for-profit entity. I know people in the US aren't so fond of taxes and tbh who can blame them when all the money goes to three letter agencies, war mongering and violence. The infrastructure (health care system, electric grid, education...) is in dire need of a reboot meanwhile the mega-corporations just build their own (competitive advantage). The fact is that the classic solution to the tragedy of the commons is to make a "democratic government" (hopefully this class of institution can be redefined in a positive way with computing) which will then regulate exploits and collect taxes for maintenance of infrastructure, all in order to keep society in equilibrium so that we may live.

I don't see how these behemoth creatures we deem too big to fail due to the short term implications of such an event can reasonably justify their existence when they are causing such long term harm to our environment (both metaphorical and physical). They are nothing but fiction and the authors are running out of material, I think it is time to face facts.

Sorry for the rant, it got off topic but I felt a need to put this into writing.

<comment><USER7> > I know people in the US aren't so fond of taxes...

> all the money goes to three letter agencies, war mongering and violence...

> The infrastructure (health care system, electric grid, education...) is in > dire need of a reboot...

So you are advocating to add: _billions of tax dollars wasted on terrible software projects with incompetent management_ to the above list?

<comment><USER6> The way I see it there is a bunch of people already doing the governments job, making free software, just give them the money. It's not a waste and it's easy to spot a terrible software project when all the development happens in the open vs. behind closed doors at DARPA or wherever.

<comment><USER8> You want the _government_ deciding which software projects get funded? Which inevitably means that the _government_ will decide _how_ software projects get _run_? Really?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Regardless of what you think of Uber, it seems like a no-brainer for small towns to subsidize distributed, on-demand shuttles rather than run a public transit system.

We need to see more suburbs do things like this for last-mile transit too.

<comment><USER10> A better complaint is that a company like Uber can profit from it. The service they provide is so banally simple that it could be replicated by a government office or nonprofit, and has been in several markets (RideAustin as an example). This is how communities should move forward; not through Uber.

<comment><USER11> Earlier (30+ yrs ago) a view accepted by most was that commercial companies deliver services much more efficiently than governments and bureaucracies. Profits and all, it is still cheaper for government to buy something than to develop it.

That mindset seems to have changed. I wonder if the companies are different (greedier?) now, governments and non-profits are more efficient or is this purely a perception shift.

<comment><USER12> > I wonder if the companies are different (greedier?) now

No. Stuff like UK rail privatization or US electricity deregulation happened.

It's just that today, even in die-hard free market countries, people have come to realize that infrastructure and private/for-profit don't mix well most of the time.

<comment><USER13> In the US, the government took over public transit, usually after making life hell for it, and then proceeded to not adequately fund maintenance.

NYC is a great example. In exchange for access, two companies signed contracts with the city that limited prices to $0.05. They built a large portion of the existing lines and made a good chunk of change.

But the City wanted to own them, and inflation stepped into the picture decades later. Turns out, a nickel wasn't worth the same anymore and couldn't cover costs. Rather than allow prices to rise, the City bought up the two companies while building a third system (the IND). It also doubled fares after unifying. Hmm....

Then it put out an elected board to vote on fare increases. Guess what the winning stance was? No increase. Eventually the system decayed as the subsidies didn't cover maintenance and deferred maintenance eventually became a major issue. The system _today_ still has 1930s and 50s technology.

If anything, the US public transit systems (which had similar stories in other cities) are evidence against American governments running infrastructure.

We are underfunding other important pieces of infrastructure from roads to bridges to sewers, so the next few decades should be fun as cheaply built suburbs deal with infrastructure costs rising.

<comment><USER14> The new York subway is used often as an example of how well the private sector can build infrastructure. But really, those two private systems (bmt, irt) where the original PPP. New York city actually backed those systems with municipal loans (bonds), which is a pretty big subsidy - and a setup of "private profits, public losses".

In any case, the two private systems are badly designed relative to one another: bad transfers, redundancies. The IND built by the public is overall much better designed.

The fact that both the private and public where able to build giant subway systems in the 10s-40s but it all fell apart after, should give some idea that it wasn't anything inherent to being public or private that allowed building it and made it difficult later, but other factors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At least it's not a huge cost to the town for now, but overall this seems like a giant fail—instead of investing in real infrastructure, they're just pouring money into an unsustainable SV company that's on point of imploding.

I wonder if the town has fully considered what this partnership means as far as liability... who will be responsible if an Uber rider in Innisfil gets assaulted?

In any case, Innisfil is a rural suburb of Barrie, ON, an hour north of Toronto. It's not exactly an urban metropolis: [https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Innisfil,+ON/](https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Innisfil,+ON/)

<comment><USER16> Many small towns do not have anywhere near the population to make large scale public transport feesable.

Sometimes a decentralized approach really does make sense.

<comment><USER17> In Chile they have a shared-ride system called a 'colectivo', where a taxi will pick up passengers along a route and passengers will share a fare.

In Pichilemu, this supplemented the bus routes which only ran at most at hourly intervals. It's a coastal town with less than 15,000 residents that swells over summer to meet tourist needs. Outside those months, a bus service would certainly not be economical.

<comment><USER18> I hear tell that once upon a time, you could just be walking down the highway, stick your thumb out, and hitch a fide almost anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've never used uber, but doesn't it have a thing where drivers rate passengers? and with ratings comes blacklisting, does it not? so what happens when people start getting banned from this "public transit" system?

<comment><USER20> Not to mention, uber is far from an (unbiased) public service, who'll ensure the bias? Also public transport should be definition be cheap and not costly, there should be no such thing as surge pricing. Strange that a city is destroying public transport and paving way for exploitation of their citizens

<comment><USER21> Since the city is subsidizing fares, I imagine they would have some influence into the service being delivered. (You can voice your complaints to city hall)

<comment><USER20> I am curious, if the fares are subsidized, then how much Uber will earn? I can imagine that surge pricing makes them a lot of money, are they going to drive away surge pricing? What if it is 2am and uber asks for 400$ ( I am not American, so pardon my analogy) to go for a small distance?

Considering the rebellious attitude Uber has, I can imagine their city hall complaint as "this is how we will behave, else we will go out of your city like we did in Austin"

<comment><USER21> The Innisfil city website mentioned that there will be flat rate pricing to certain major destinations in town.

<comment><USER20> _certain major destinations_

This is the reason this isn't a public transport, there is no such thing as "certain major destination" when it comes to public transport!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Question is - How will Children be able to get a ride ? Can they create account in Uber App (minimum age requirement for Uber ?) And what about their safety ? Normally Public transport drivers are selected carefully while Uber dont seem to have such criteria.

<comment><USER23> They can bike, carpool with a friend, take a cab, school bus, wait for their parents for a ride home (most households there have cars) etc.

<comment><USER24> May be fine for the rich and middle class, and so this town in CA may be ok. But public transit is a survival mechanism for many poor youth.

<comment><USER25> Exactly, what will the kid with no phone do to get around suburbia when there is no basic bus service? What about the senior population?

Essentially, what the city has chosen is a solution for middle to upper class people, while ignoring those less fortunate. Essentially, your going to be paying $10 round trip minimum, whereas a bus would have ran anywhere from $5 to $6 at point of use, and it is not accessible to the poor/lower middle class.

Programs like Safe Place also are hosed with these Uber based solutions. What is the kid who just got beat up by <insert attacker> supposed to do? Their phone (if they had one) is probably busted, and its a couple mile walk to anywhere safe. The city didn't bother to put any call buttons out to hail a ride in these areas either... These aren't rare scenarios, and it is totally possible to do something besides busses and still serve the poor & disenfranchised well.

<comment><USER26> Did you even read the link?

"What if I don't have a smart phone? To accommodate residents who want to utilize the service without a smartphone, Uber will provide the Town with a number of iPads that will be available in community hubs. Using the uberCENTRAL platform, riders will be able to request a ride via the iPad. iPads will be available at:

o Town Hall

o Nantyr Shores Secondary School

o Sandy Cove Acres

o Innisfil Recreational Complex

o Lakeshore Library (Alcona)

Depending on where there is demand, we will examine adding or moving the locations of these iPads."

The alternative was having TWO BUSES. How likely is it that one of these TWO BUSES will be running late at night in this town with 30,000 residents when kids are likely to get beat up?

Unless you get (rather conveniently) beat up near one of the handful of stops served by one of these TWO BUSES, during operating hours - probably 6am to 10pm since it's a small town - you're SOL on public transit anyway.

<comment><USER27> I think posguy is making very fair points for a time a bit ahead of this story. If Uber were to take on even a "minor" city, all the problems they're bringing up would be prescient.

To solve a specific engineering problem though, it couldn't be hard for Uber to create a SMS Uber call system, right? Txt a number, give em an address, have a card reader in the car or take cash. If Uber wants to get into public service, they have to broaden their surface area of coverage. Because what posguy was saying is true - people rely heavily on even the crappiest public transit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Quick back of the envelope calculations. For AC Transit (the primary Bay Area bus system):

      The Annual number of riders is: 54,987,132 [0]
      The average trip is: 3.1 miles [1]
      The budget is: $398.4 Million [2]

This means the cost per passenger mile on AC Transit is: $2.33 (398,400,000/(54,987,132*3.1))

According to [3] the cost of an Uber trip in San Francisco approximately: "$2.20 plus $0.26 per minute plus $1.30 per mile" (I don't use Uber so don't know how accurate this is.

If these numbers are accurate and generalize to other US transportation networks, public bus systems in the US are massively inefficient and are ripe for disruption/better solutions (note that Taxi's which aren't massively VC subsidized, are also ball-park cost competitive with the price of AC Transit on a per mile basis);

(Of course an Uber/Taxi has huge advantages for the user over buses in general, not the least of which include for most points of origin/destination pairs the large time savings compared to a bus.)

[0] [http://www.actransit.org/about-us/facts-and- figures/ridershi...](http://www.actransit.org/about-us/facts-and- figures/ridership/) [1] [http://www.actransit.org/wp- content/uploads/designing_with_t...](http://www.actransit.org/wp- content/uploads/designing_with_transit2.pdf) [2] [http://www.actransit.org/about-us/facts-and- figures/budget/](http://www.actransit.org/about-us/facts-and-figures/budget/) [3] [https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-Uber-charge- passengers-f...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-Uber-charge-passengers- for-a-ride)

(sorry that these numbers may come from different years, don't have a unified source)

Edit: Also when calculating the cost effectiveness of the Uber/Taxi you should divide by the average number of riders. It's probably close to 1, but even something like 1.1 on average would result in a 9% savings on a per passenger mile.

<comment><USER29> Ok now lets imagine peak hour downtown in any reasonable sized city with 60 private vehicles in place of every bus.

Uber and similar definitely have a role to play in transit but really the system is built around the peak loads which uber alone would deal with poorly for a large place

<comment><USER30> Why 60?

A city bus has around 30 seats. To get as many passenger seats from sedans, you need 10 sedans. Standing is, of course, an option, but personally, if public transit has standees for a nontrivial distance it is woefully underfunded, overcrowded, and failing.

<comment><USER31> You're essentially saying that most of Tokyo's transit system during commute times is failing?

<comment><USER32> London too, apparently.

<comment><USER33> Based on personal experience and media reports (but no hard data), I would say yes, it is failing at peak times. In particular, the trains on the commuter lines to and from London.

<comment><USER34> If a train is so full there are many people forced to stand, is that a failure because customers are poorly served, or a success because demand for the product is high?

<comment><USER30> It's the same kind of failure as highway congestion: too many people are using something relative to its capacity, because it's really compelling, and as a result it gets worse for all of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> In many cities of Russia buses long ago had been replaced with "shared taxi" — commercial analog of buses, usually with micro buses. You have to shout before arriving at bus stop otherwise driver may pass it. Driver usually smokes while driving and listens loudly to songs about criminal life ("Russian chanson"). And all this taxi luxury without burden of installing privacy-invasive apps — just pass cash to driver while he drives at 80 km/h.

<comment><USER36> Clear example of free market fixing things.

<comment><USER37> Or, Russia is not a model for capitalism.

<comment><USER36> Not a model for socialism or communism either. Poor Russia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> sid-kap This is probably the best thing you can do in a town that is not even close to dense enough to support public transit (population density 361/sq. mi., 20 times less than a Silicon Valley suburb). Better than nothing because it uses tax revenues to subsidize rides for people with low incomes.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is a _very_ old idea; it's in Christopher Alexander's _A Pattern Language_ as "Mini-buses".

<comment><USER39> Yeah, in places like Russia, this "new idea" has been implemented since the 1930s: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka)

<comment><USER40> I think an online version of this has the potential to be sufficiently different that we can call it "new". Dynamic routing based on real time customer location is pretty fascinating.

<comment><USER41> Dynamic routing is fascinating, but also potentially frustrating for the rider. Your trip to work could take 10 minutes, or it could take 30 minutes, depending on who else wants to ride at the same time and how "dynamic" your bus routing gets. With a scheduled service, at least you know when the bus will show up. Of course, if it only runs once an hour and not at the time you want, you may still opt for the "flexible" option, but it's not guaranteed to be a win in all cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Are these Innisfil Uber drivers going to get anywhere near the benefits that old-school bus drivers get? Such as healthcare, vacation time, pension plans... No, they probably won't. The convenience of Uber makes it easier to miss all the things it "disrupted".

Sure, growing up, cabs were not the BEST experience. But now I realize that they provided a living wage to a human being and provided them with dignity. Uber can be 2-5 dollars cheaper and 5-20 minutes faster, but I don't see how it can provide that.

</comment><comment><USER23> What's more interesting than the story (for me) is the negativity in the comments. It almost seems like people hear "Uber" and go digging for reasons to hate on the idea.

But if you have been to Innisfil, it's pretty clear that this is a good attempt at tackling a transportation problem, Uber or no Uber. This is a rural town of less than 40 thousand people. There's simply no way spending close to half a million dollars per year on a single bus line makes any sense here compared to other cost/coverage models.

<comment><USER42> Innisfil seems ideal for a small busline, if I remember it correctly the "town" is a relatively small rural grid with big lots.

The density can't be great for Uber drivers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It will be genuinely interesting to see what happens with traffic levels.

</comment><comment><USER44> No mention of surge pricing! Public transit doesn't surge price

<comment><USER45> Should think no mention of surge pricing means there isn't surge pricing.

<comment><USER44> Why?

<comment><USER45> Well, it says:

> When residents book a trip to one of the following destinations, they will > pay $3 to $5.

If there was surge pricing, they'd be paying a lot more than $5, therefore the answer to the first question would be a lie. Seems unlikely.

<comment><USER44> There's no mention of surge pricing. Any "conclusion" you're drawing is an opinion, not a fact. We don't know if surge pricing applies here since there is zero mention of it. However, it is likely not being applied, given that a government is subsiding fares.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Uber is providing infrastructure as a service and it is great. Maybe they can turn into a modern day real world AWS.

</comment><comment><USER47> For some local context, the Mayor of Innisfil is really trying to turn it into a tech hub. He is present at a lot of Canadian tech summits and really wants to make Innisfil attractive to tech. The best thing about Innisfil, in my mind, is the cheap real estate. Big homes and big offices for all!

<comment><USER48> I think it could work for remote work, especially for folks with families, but I don't see millennials moving there.

It's about an hour from downtown Toronto on a good day. On the other hand, it's close to Barrie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I dislike Uber but I'm rooting for them on this one.

</comment><comment><USER50> Not a day goes by when i don't see a uber story on HN .

</comment><comment><USER51> Uber is a broker.

Uber can't guarantee service.</comment>


Ubuntu Edge - Less than 24 hours left, $20 million to go - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge#123

<comment><USER2> They kinda screwed it up. They should have went for something more reasonable like 8-10 mil.

One of the rationalization was that 32 million funding goal or 40k devices would give the market validation. But they ignored the part where they are a new player in a very saturated existing market, with a new unproven device.

The plan to only sell device through indigogo is also silly. It kinda back- fired from the intended goal. They thought that having it exclusive to IG would help it make it a successful campaign. I don't see why couldn't they also make it available through Ubuntu shop and sell it in the future like Nexus.

Anyways, it easy to find mistakes when things don't work out as planned. But I genuinely hope, they rethink the brain-fart idea to not sell it if they don't meet the funding goal.

<comment><USER3> I question whether this was anything more than a way to test the waters and see if people would actually put up some money. Maybe they can use this as a benchmark to at least get some leverage with suppliers, and then set a more realistic goal for fundraising.

<comment> why-el Asking for 30+ million to _test_ the waters is kind of a stretch in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> Well I just mean setting a bar _so high_ that if you raise the money, great, it's worth a shot! If you don't, you can at least gauge interest and decide if you want to revise and be a bit more realistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was in Shenzhen in the spring, and there are many companies offering to make electronics for you. Minimum Order Quantity 1000. Many phones were available for under $200 that looked fairly deluxe, clones of the Samsung Note 2 and Galaxy 3, as well as some with more features like FM, TV, Dual Sim.

Why did this project need to raise so much money? And why so high of a price for the handset? I think that this project would have succeeded with lower goals. We are reaching what Bunnie Huang suggested, the era where screens are pixel-filled, batteries are long lasting and improvements are incremental. [http://boingboing.net/2011/09/27/bunnie-huang-the-best- days-...](http://boingboing.net/2011/09/27/bunnie-huang-the-best-days-of-open- hardware-are-yet-to-come.html)

Surely they could have done a phone in the $300-$400 range?

<comment><USER5> Then, presumably, it wouldn't be any different from other phones that exist on the market already, which completely defeats the point. This project is for better phone hardware, not just "Ubuntu on a phone" for which you can already run the development preview on existing phones.

<comment><USER6> But I agree with gregpilling. Why did they have to add all of those untested features to the spec. Is sapphire glass really better or is it just a fancy sounding gimmick? And what's up with "Silicon-anode Li-ion?" More RAM sounded good to me and the whole ubuntu in your pocket thing also sounds great, but premium pricing and new hardware technologies that are unproven worry me.

<comment><USER7> Sapphire glass will be used on several new upcoming high-end smartphones, and is already used by Vertu. So, yes, it is just a fancy sounding gimmick and will be commonplace in 2014.

<comment><USER8> Sapphire glass is far from being a 'fancy sounding gimmick'.

It is, in fact, the "transparent aluminum" from Star Trek. Which was an elaborate joke on the fact that pure aluminum oxide is harder than anything except elemental boron and diamond.

Keep emery boards away from your sapphire screen and it simply will not scratch. I can't wait, personally, and have been disappointed that the camera lens on iPhones is not yet sapphire since the 4.

<comment><USER7> I'm sorry if I was being unclear. By "Fancy sounding gimmick" I meant it's not something that special. Many quality watches have used sapphire for a long time, and the use on phones is a result of scaling up production.

Scratch resistance is not the only measure of a desirable screen material. It has to bend and resist breaking due to flexing and impact. Sapphire is unlikely to take over all phone screens because it is unlikely to have superior properties for all parameters.

<comment><USER8> All true. As I mentioned, camera lenses would be the biggest improvement. Likely universal within a year or two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Despite that, I believe this is already the most money ever pledged to a crowdfunding project?

Pebble raised $10,266,844

Ubuntu Edge currently $12,243,447

<comment><USER10> Star Citizen is at over $15 million. [https://robertsspaceindustries.com/](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's indeed sad to see this die but frankly it didn't stand a chance from the very beginning. $32 million is way too ambitious.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would have been tempted to pay for this, if it was going through.

But with it clearly not going to go through, I wasn't going to put several hundred dollars in, just to get it back again two weeks later.

I wonder how many others thought the same way.

<comment><USER13> But I think part of the purpose of all of this is to prove to phone manufacturers that there is a demand.

If you put your money in for a couple weeks and then got it back, you'd be contributing toward that goal. And it sounds like that's a goal that maybe you care about, since you were tempted to pay for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The idea that Canonical was just testing the market with this crowd funding effort, and that they are using it to prove demand to carriers is absolutely ridiculous! A failed crowd funding campaign is not good publicity. I would bet that after this a significant number of the persons/organizations who pledged will not pledge so easily again.

I would love if this phone saw the light of day. But Canonical were way too ambitious with this campaign. They should have asked for less money, and gotten a majority of it from large investors. But I guess they didn't want to give up any stake in the venture.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm imagining Canonical might chip in the remaining money at the last minute?

<comment><USER5> Mark Shuttleworth has specifically said that he will not do that. From the Reddit AMA:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1j166z/hi_im_mark_shut...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1j166z/hi_im_mark_shuttleworth_founder_of_ubuntu/cba4b3n)

"Lots of folks have speculated I might close the gap if it's close. But I think that would not be in the spirit of the project; rather I would hope someone smarter than me will come up with a better concept that DOES get greenlighted, because I really believe in the idea of crowdsourcing the signal to innovation."

<comment><USER16> I understand that he said this, and I think that he is being honest, but just to point out: if he was secretly planning on bailing it out at the last minute, saying that you will pick up any slack is probably not a good way to run a crowd funding campaign.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It ain't over 'till it's over. Shuttleworth won't "close the gap", but there are plenty of other wealthy people who might really, really want this to succeed. I'm still hopeful.

</comment><comment><USER18> These hardware projects emphasize the product look (and by implication the feel) way too much. The Edge here looks super slick, cool to the touch, and pleasantly heavy, with perfectly smooth edges. The same was true of Ouya and its controller on kickstarter.

But making perfect hardware is hard, and in fact the finished product would never be so delightful. It'd be more realistic to offer lower-fidelity mockups instead of those beautifully rendered images.

But I guess "realistic" doesn't sell.

</comment><comment><USER19> Considering ALL of the contribution packages with limits are claimed in the remaining hours, which would be:

3920000$ + 420000$ = 4340000$,

for the funding to succeed; 15422386$ worth of other contributions have to also be made. That is:

771119,3 Founder or, 514079,5 Forgot International Shipping :) or, 308447,4 Founder With Style or,

more reasonably;

22190 Ubuntu Edge or, 2203 Enterprise Starter Kit contributions in just under 20 hours.

Anyone wanna bet?

<comment><USER20> Unrelated question, but where are you from? I've not seen anyone write numbers quite like this before. It's sort of french, but sort of not...

<comment><USER21> Quite some countries use commas as decimal marks:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Countries_using_Ar...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Countries_using_Arabic_numerals_with_decimal_comma)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If the funding succeeded, I'm not sure how many company will actually let employee use this phone/desktop at work.

Losing the phone is a lot scarier now.

<comment><USER23> Scarier than losing a company laptop?

<comment><USER22> which one is more likely? loosing a phone or a laptop?

<comment><USER23> Having never lost a phone or a laptop, I don't know.

While a phone is smaller, it's something most people check frequently, and typically notice if it's missing quickly.

Plus, don't most phones have email, which is almost as bad as the documents stored on a computer, because most of them are sent over email?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 695 plus taxes(and in Europe it is at least 21-23%) is lots of money for a phone.

Why they don't finance it? It is the only way normal people could buy it.

<comment><USER25> The price was including taxes (VAT), and I guess they would ship it from UK to European backers, with no duties inside the European union.

I agree that the price was high, but not higher than for other phones in the same market segment (comparable hardware and such). The problem with the price is that it wasn't very attractive either. A new, untested phone 9 months from now, for the same price and with comparable hardware to currently existing phones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How much of the phone will work without non-free firmware? For example GTA04 still requires non-free firmware for Wi-Fi and 3D: [http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/page/FAQ/#wikitit...](http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/page/FAQ/#wikititle_10)

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder how much interest Indiegogo are making right now? Do they share that with Canonical?

</comment><comment><USER28> That's an ambitious goal for crowd sourcing...

</comment><comment><USER29> It's such a shame to see this go away. I really found the idea of carrying around a desktop OS in your pocket really fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's sad to see this die :(. Hope it will rise from ashes some day.

<comment><USER7> It was badly formulated in the first place. Ubuntu on phones is interesting because it's Ubuntu, not because some team with no previous track record in hardware wants to build a high-end phone. Making it about the hardware was unnecessary. How many of you would have bought a pre-configured Ubuntu phone on any decent existing ODM hardware platform?

<comment><USER5> I don't just want Ubuntu on my phone. I want my main Ubuntu desktop running on my phone, so that I can take it with me, with just an external monitor and keyboard needed at my desk. To make that experience really great, we need better phone hardware.

<comment><USER7> Many existing phones have hdmi-out, and can connect to Bluetooth keyboards and mice. Some also have USB-to-go. There was nothing new in the Edge hardware that would enhance that.

<comment><USER5> "We'll choose the fastest available multi-core processor, at least 4GB of RAM and a massive 128GB of storage."

My point is that smartphones today would still be a bit sluggish when used for typical desktop tasks. While basic browsing would be OK, I want to be able open thirty tabs simultaneously like I do on my desktop. And (in my case) run a compiler. Etc.

<comment><USER31> With a projected ship date of May (and who really expected it would hit that, even if it were funded?), the gap would have been narrow at best. It would be over a year after the Galaxy S4 shipped with 2GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and probably 6 months after the expected iPhone 5S ships with currently- unknown specs.

You're comparing it to the current generation of smartphones. It's shipping with the _next_ generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Yeah, that's not Kickstarter. They're keeping that money.

<comment><USER5> False. The money is returned if the funding doesn't reach the goal. From the FAQ:

What if you fail to reach the funding target?

We appreciate every bit of support we receive during the 30 days, and every backer will be welcomed into the Ubuntu community. If we don't reach our target then we will focus only on commercially available handsets and there will not be an Ubuntu Edge. All contributions will be fully refunded.

<comment><USER33> I asked the last time around, but didn't get an answer: who's on the hook for the $300,000 in non-refundable credit card fees incurred by this project? Kickstarter's page on this is unclear.

<comment><USER34> Kickstarter's page is probably _very_ unclear on the policies of Indiegogo. Indiegogo only accepts PayPal for "fixed funding" campaigns.

[0]: [http://support.indiegogo.com/entries/20492953-Fees- Pricing-](http://support.indiegogo.com/entries/20492953-Fees-Pricing-)

[1]: [http://support.indiegogo.com/entries/20566503-Fixed-vs- Flexi...](http://support.indiegogo.com/entries/20566503-Fixed-vs-Flexible- Funding)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A Collaborative Art Canvas (experimental) - <AUTHOR> http://wefiddle.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> The real-time collaboration of this looks cool. I don't understand what the dinosaur (or now penis) has to do with it. I can't make those colors... where did those come from?

I made something called Sketch-a-bit (for Android) [[http://sketchabit.adamsmith.as/](http://sketchabit.adamsmith.as/)] that's a charcoal-like sketching interface that has you start from someone else's drawing instead of a blank canvas. It's been alive for about 3 years and it's interesting to trace back the history of awesome sketches ([http://sketchabit.adamsmith.as/master.php](http://sketchabit.adamsmith.as/master.php)) and see how they evolved. Collaborative along the long-term dimension instead of all in parallel.

<comment><USER3> It's possible to set any color by doing something like: firebaseCanvasData.child(row+':'+col).set(color)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quite interesting how, with something that looks so simple as a concept potentiates when technology is involved in the right amount.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is an interesting experiment - create a "nice" looking rectangle of one solid color. See how long you can go before someone "maliciously" puts a red dot in the middle of your perfectly OCD constructed rectangle. Human nature + anonymity...

</comment><comment><USER6> A somewhat similar site: [http://wecanv.as](http://wecanv.as). Less experimental and artsy, but perhaps more useful.

I've been using unlisted (private) canvases as whiteboards during conference calls. Works quite nice.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you enjoy this, check out www.fatbitsapp.com

It's an iOS app I made that lets you make pixel art and see artwork other people are making at the same time. There's also a little websockets powered view on the website of what people are making.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was playing around with a script that draws on webcanvas.com

[http://webcanvas.com/#-8650,45871,0](http://webcanvas.com/#-8650,45871,0)

</comment><comment><USER9> Well it didn't take long, but it seems it's already been scripted to blast porn image in there. Would it perhaps be a good idea to have a per user pixel throttle?

</comment><comment><USER10> And there's also one paint-chat program here: [http://mrspaint.com](http://mrspaint.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if it can be used to do a stochastic Conway's game of life. Perhaps a large enough grid will approximate it :-p

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing that would be fun is a way to toggle between a few shades of gray.

<comment><AUTHOR> I made it so that even the code is very hackable. Fiddle around in the source+console, and you can add your very own colors too!

<comment><USER7> Cool! For me, reducing the pixelSpacing to 0 really helped make it more artistic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! pixelSpacing is now 0 for all. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Started to make a maze, seemed like many people joined in.

<comment><USER13> Yip, Right Bottom Corner, a guy even righted HN. This reminds me a lot of the first online Minecraft server, keeping in mind Minecraft was a lot more advance.

The only problem with a canvas like this is griefing.</comment></comment>


Ex-Theranos CEO Holmes puts mental state at issue - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-theranos-holmes/ex-theranos-ceo-holmes-puts-mental-state-at-issue-to-be-examined-by-u-s-experts-idUSKBN2612Q3 <comment><USER2> > Davila authorized the examinations after Holmes' lawyers said they intended > to introduce expert evidence from a clinical psychologist "relating to a > mental disease or defect or any other mental condition of the defendant > bearing on the issue of guilt." > > The defense expert, Mindy Mechanic, is a > California State University at Fullerton professor specializing in > psychosocial consequences of violence, trauma and victimization, including > violence against women, and often testifies in cases involving interpersonal > violence, according to her university biography.

Ok, so my theory is that based on the expert her lawyers are calling, they are going to argue that Sunny groomed/abused Holmes over the course of their relationship (probably by calling attention to the age difference/power dynamic difference when they first met), which left her with trauma that led to her making the decisions she made.

So "Battered Woman Syndrome" [1] but applied to fraud instead of assault/murder.

If that's the case, it really seems like they aren't going to argue that Holmes didn't deceive and commit fraud, but that her PTSD is a defense.

Novel. This may have worked in the 1980s, the era of the the Twinkie defense [2] and other ways of arguing diminished capacity, but I'm not sure it'll be successful here.

[1]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battered_woman_syndrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battered_woman_syndrome) [2]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense)

<comment><USER3> It's pretty crazy how rich people get to argue they have mental health issues, but poor people can't. If she were a poor person that robbed a convenience store it would be straight to jail and no one would care about any past trauma.

I also think it's kind of BS to be honest. To me it feels like one step away from "the defendant is a psychopath that feels no remorse, so never developed the ethics needed to understand that murder is wrong, so they shouldn't be culpable."

It's rich people paying "experts" to skew the perception of what's right and what's wrong.

<comment><USER4> And yeah, if someone who doesn't have enough to eat steals from a grocery store we throw em in jail. I'd venture most people in prison were traumatized at some point. Take into account their circumstances. This is an educated privileged woman who defrauded everyone around her for years. I expect her to get community service, frankly. The only reason she'd end up in jail is that she took rich peoples money.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your broader point even if I think this characterization is exaggerated. The system is skewed toward the rich; however, I do think sentencing should factor in the likelihood of re-offending, and I would intuit that rich people (especially white-collar criminals) are less likely to re- offend due to some combination of greater fear of prison ("more to lose") and damage to their reputation ("people don't tend to trust fraudsters multiple times" though there are exceptions to every rule). Poorer people are probably more likely to re-offend due to systemic issues, and at least in my major US city we have a perennial problem of violent gun offenders being released after only a few months or years only to re-offend (typically disproportionately in poorer communities, perpetuating the poverty cycle). I very much doubt that differences in likelihood of re-offending account for the entire sentencing disparity between rich and poor; however, to the extent that it contributes to the disparity, we shouldn't try to solve for that gap by lightening sentences on account of poverty, but by addressing the upstream systemic issues (notably, lighter sentencing often perpetuates systemic issues, as with my anecdote about violent gun offenders).

<comment><USER6> >"however, I do think sentencing should factor in the likelihood of re- offending,"

This is very troubling thinking. The problem here is - not only are you sentencing them for future, 'possible' crimes but you are doing it on the basis of demographics - there are huge issues to consider here.

And what would it buy that isn't accounted for by using something more individual and predictive of re-offending -- like whether (and how frequently) they have offended in the past -- which _is_ used in sentencing guidelines?

<comment><USER5> You're confusing correlation with causation. Sentencing someone because they are likely to reoffend will affect poor people differently than rich people in aggregate due to aforementioned systemic effects but it doesn't follow that someone is being sentenced on the basis of their individual poverty or wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If people would read the article, it says

"The defense expert, Mindy Mechanic, is a California State University at Fullerton professor specializing in psychosocial consequences of violence, trauma and victimization, including violence against women, and often testifies in cases involving interpersonal violence,"

...which might give a clue as to what the mitigating mental issue could be. Obviously they are not going to say she's a psychopath.

<comment><USER2> Right. As I wrote in another comment, this seems to be a way to argue diminished capacity, probably by arguing that she was a victim of battered spouse syndrome. It's the modern day Twinkie defense.

<comment><USER7> I think that's probably trivializing it. I happen to be reading the (or a) book about Theranos, "Bad Blood", and it seems like something worse might be the issue. Maybe not just with one person either. She founded the company at like 19. And had a relationship very early with Sunny who was like twice her age.

<comment><USER8> What is the decision procedure for distinguishing between a woman who is being taken advantage of and a woman who is exploiting those around her? If she doesn't flag as an exploiter is our decision procedure useful?

<comment><USER7> I don't think those things are mutually exclusive in a given person, and may or may not happen at the same time.

I'm not sure I understand the question overall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, if I'm putting on my rose glasses I'm just hoping that if she wins by this argument, she might just set a precedent for all the youth offenders of crime?

Why would this case be any different of say, someone that grew up in an extremely poor neighborhood and had most of their life working against them, and then turn to crime. Instead of just throwing such young offenders into jail for a long time, a lawyer might argue that this high profile case is a precedent for the young offenders - because they couldn't help themselves.

It feels really unfair, though.

<comment><USER10> What is unfair here exactly? There hasn't been anything close to a ruling. These hypotheticals in this thread are getting way ahead of reality here.

It sounds like the courts are preempting the defense strategy by forcing a gov psych review instead of one paid for by the defendant.

In criminal law cases it's not an instant get out of jail free card if you're found to have some mental issues. Nearly every lawyer brings up mental states in serious crimes. These judges aren't stupid.

<comment><USER11> Judges don't decide cases, juries do.

There are some people with medical degrees in this world who will say anything for money. Wealthy people pay these individuals to try to get them out of jail. Normal people can't afford that.

<comment><USER12> > Judges don't decide cases, juries do.

Even with jury trials, that's not really true, except that alignment with the jury verdict is required for criminal conviction (but not acquittal, or any civil judgement.) Because summary judgement/judgement as a matter of law/judgement _non obstante veredicto_ is a thing, and even if one isn't issued in a particular case, it's because either no one petitioned the judge for it (unlikely) or the judge decided against it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> bra-ket oh, the good old "i'm not a criminal, i'm just crazy" story.

Actually fits the profile of someone who sends an army of lawyers to intimidate a whistleblower.

</comment><comment><USER13> Look I don't mind that defence.

But can we like all get such good defence. Where do I sign up or who to vote for so every American citizen gets a legal representation like this.

Normally if you defraud somebody, you are going to prison for a long, long time very very quickly.

<comment><USER14> Not sure I understand. Any defendant could claim this defense and get psychologically evaluated.

<comment><USER15> Good luck if you don't have the money for a good lawyer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would think she suffers from psychopathy. Would it matter in court?

<comment><USER17> Psychopathy is not a valid insanity plea. Killing someone and feeling good or nothing is inequivalent to not comprehending your own actions.

<comment><USER7> Of course your first sentence is correct, I assume.

But...you're saying feeling bad is not a type of comprehension? That is, empathy is not comprehension?

<comment><USER18> _> empathy is not comprehension?_

Not in the sense in which the law requires you to comprehend the consequences of your actions. An insane person could feel bad after killing someone because they respond with empathy after the fact, but still not have comprehended before the fact that what they were doing was going to kill someone. The latter, if established beyond a reasonable doubt, would mean they would not meet the legal comprehension requirement.

And, conversely, a psychopath could comprehend perfectly well before the fact that what they were doing was going to kill someone, but feel nothing because they don't care. They would still meet the legal requirement for comprehension.

(Disclaimer: IANAL.)

<comment><USER7> I think you're implying that somehow one has comprehension only before, and empathy only after. Why can't you have either in either order?

<comment><USER18> _> I think you're implying that somehow one has comprehension only before, and empathy only after._

No, I'm just saying that to establish legal comprehension, you can't look at empathy, because they're two different things. They might go together--in normal, sane people they almost always _will_ go together, both before and after--but you can't rely on it, since the people you are going to ask the question about in the first place--the people for whom you might have to evaluate a possible insanity defense--are precisely the people in whom you can't rely on them going together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> IANAL, but what I haven't seen mentioned here is that, in my understanding, in US federal court "diminished capacity" is not a defense against guilt, but only a factor that can result in a lower sentencing guideline.

This seems like a real Hail Mary from the defense, I'd be shocked if she is able to avoid jail time.

</comment><comment><USER20> Assuming this strategy works, or almost works, will a requirement need to be implemented that every year company directors must declare they are of sound mind, and have that signed-off by a medical expert (so they cannot claim that their mental unsoundness caused them to make a false declaration)?

</comment><comment><USER21> Holmes swindled and loooted from the VCs and her employees now the lawyers are going to take it from her.

<comment><USER22> Yes but there is a chance of them actually providing an incredible service in exchange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If the state puts you on trial, do you automatically qualify for state- provided mental health services?

I assume incarceration also comes with psychiatric care. If I went to prison I'd probably need a lot of therapy even if I accepted my punishment. More, if I didn't.

<comment><USER24> Incarceration is punitive. Psychiatric "care" in prison is sedative drugs and physical restraints to enforce compliance, not cures.

<comment><USER23> No. If someone falls and cuts their finger _in prison_ , I'd hope it was bandaged.

The mind is a bunch of fingers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What could the mitigating mental issue be? She's clearly not incompetent. She's crazy like a fox!

<comment><USER26> I read John Carreyrou's book on the Theranos debacle, and I know someone who worked there. At risk of violating the Goldwater Rule, I'd say Ms. Holmes has some serious psychological issues that make her incompetent, primarily her capacity for self-delusion. And not just the "I'll skip my workout today and run extra tomorrow" type of self-delusion that so many of us are capable of, I mean a truly bizarre distortion of reality as she sees it.

I also read an article about her childhood and family life. It was sad, overwrought with anxiety, and a formula for the exact kind of pathology she appears to have had at Theranos. Even if she had lost my investment capital instead of other people's, I'd still feel sorry for her rather than angry.

<comment><USER27> So what are the examples of delusions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here's to the Crazy Ones

</comment><comment><USER29> I saw something on twitter about her ... pet horned beetle eating her other pet horned beetle?

<comment><USER30> You send me on a wild Google chase and I found nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Being a high functioning sociopath is not a valid defense.

</comment><comment><USER32> The typical cop-out excuse.</comment>


Yegge Strikes Back from the Grave - <AUTHOR> http://langnostic.blogspot.com/2010/09/yegge-strikes-back-from-grave.html <comment><USER2> Whether Common Lisp or Racket comes out in front in a comparison, it always strikes me as amazing what the Racket people get done given their manpower. I don't know how large the team exactly is, and how many external contributors they have. But looking at their site, they have everything from a modern Scheme with libraries, a web server, modern packaging, experimental sub- languages, a module contract system, and so on. And that's besides doing their academic work.

</comment><comment><USER3> This post is not about Yegge. It's a little comparison of Common Lisp and Scheme (Plt Racket). I think a post with such a bad title should not be read no matter its content but YMMV.

This is all it contains about Steve Yegge: The quote from Yegge goes something like "Most newcomers independently come to the same conclusion; Scheme is the better language, but Common Lisp is the right choice for production work." Bottom line, I remember disagreeing a long time ago, but I've uh... independently come to the same conclusion.

<comment><USER4> A while ago I noticed that I was suddenly doing more coding in SBCL than PLT Scheme. When I thought about it, I realized that Steve Yegge said the same thing a long time ago and I remember reacting with dismissal. The post wasn't about Yegge, it was about the idea (which I've heard elsewhere too, he just happened to be the one I remembered at the time) that Scheme is the "better language" while being paradoxically less "useful" than Common Lisp.

In defense of the lame title, I tend to write in order to get things out of my head. Had I known that someone would post that article on Reddit and Hacker News, leading to Jay McCarthy dropping by and asking what, specifically, was wrong with his server, I might have proofread it more than 0 times before posting it anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When did Yegge die?

<comment><USER6> He got married; much later, he stopped blogging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm deeply curious where Clojure would fall in this comparison. Is Compojure as suave as Hunchentoot? Is string formatting just as flexible? In practice, is it a pain to have to fail over to Java library documentation when Clojure doesn't suffice, versus having plentiful but scattered docs for a single language?

</comment><comment><USER8> _It also always returns its result, and doesn't have the option of printing to standard-out (you have to use printf for that)_

(format t "hello world")

From PCL: "T is shorthand for the stream _STANDARD-OUTPUT_ , while NIL causes FORMAT to generate its output to a string, which it then returns."

<comment><USER9> He was complaining that the _format_ in Scheme (and in PLT Racket) doesn't have that CL feature.

<comment><USER4> That's exactly what I meant. The CL version has options, the Scheme version just takes a format string (which has fewer possible directives than its CL counterpart), which makes it less flexible and slightly more verbose.

To be fair, it's not exactly a straightforward paragraph, and I was talking about two different functions both named "format", so I can see how it might have been confusing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I almost can't believe the #3, restarting a webserver for minor changes? That reeks of static, batch-language oriented solution. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with static batch-languages, but I wouldn't have thought Scheme is one.

<comment><USER4> The other points about the web server (which Jay ended up focusing on more) are really side issues; my biggest gripe was that lack of iteration during the development phase. If I could change code on the fly, I'd be a happy camper.</comment></comment>


It may already be too late for Blackberry Playbook to recover - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383631,00.asp

<comment><USER2> I desperately want an iPad competitor to come out. I don't own an iPad, but would like to make a purchase on a more open bit of kit. But the very basics are being ignored. Apple has spent time researching and has built a large team to put it's products out. Why is it so hard for these other companies to just spend the time and do the same, and for just the basics at least. Touch that works, email, browsing, maybe music. Lets start with that, and take baby steps to more functionality.</comment>


Quotebacks – Quote the Web - <AUTHOR> https://quotebacks.net/ <comment><USER2> There's also a nice blog post at [https://tomcritchlow.com/2020/06/09/quotebacks/](https://tomcritchlow.com/2020/06/09/quotebacks/)

(via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467586). There were a few comments there but we moved them hither.)

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds very similar to Xanadus concept of Transclusion, I'm kind of sad this kind of context-preserving inclusion never really made it into the modern web. But due to the nature of Xanadus fixed and versioned documents, transclusions can't be broken. :(

<comment><USER4> Metabrainz and their wiki/documentation/data sites do this. See [https://musicbrainz.org/doc/WikiDocs](https://musicbrainz.org/doc/WikiDocs) for how they implement it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I decided to take this out for a test drive, and see how it worked.

Verdict: it's nice! I'll be using this.

I tried it out with an HTML page here, for some JavaScript tutorials taken from medium, dev.to, and one illustration (also embedded) not using this library from Pinterest.

[https://www.mediazed.com/learn- javascript.html](https://www.mediazed.com/learn-javascript.html)

Disclaimer: That's my own page. Normally if I could I'd also provide a link or explanation of the content, that doesn't link to my own page. However, the content here is pointless without being embedded in a webpage. But if you just want to see what it looks like without following the link, I took a screenshot.

[https://imgur.com/43AOji5](https://imgur.com/43AOji5)

I could see this being useful for me for quotes in an article. It looks nice and does what it says on the tin. For a quote or two, I'd recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't tell, from the blog post or comments here, how the web component is an improvement on just using <blockquote> and <cite>. The styling does look nice, but is that the only real difference?

<comment><USER7> Nope, beats me. As far as I can tell it's just text with a hyperlink. Clicking the link doesn't even take you to the location on the page the quote is from.

<comment><USER6> I just discovered this from the same author: [http://subpixel.space/entries/open- transclude/](http://subpixel.space/entries/open-transclude/)

It's a much more interesting development in the same direction! The implementation currently only seems to work when transcluding content on the same domain, rather than quoting anything from across the web. Having discovered this, I feel I have a bit more context for where the creator is coming from!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice. How to handle dead links? A growing problem with hyperlinking across sites in general.

An idea: when you take a quote, send the webpage through archivebox.io and pin the resulting artifacts to IPFS... or other repository the author can maintain. Key feature: the quoting author maintains the copy of the document they are quoting. The embedded "quote" fixture on the page will always point to the original URL and citation date alongside the author's "copy" of the page if it happens to die or change.

<comment><USER9> IPFS was designed to solve this problem of the impermanence of the current web.

This article kind of says it all: "The InterPlanetary File System Wants to Create a Permanent Web"—[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/78xgaq/the- interplanetary...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/78xgaq/the- interplanetary-file-system-wants-to-create-a-permanent-web)

<comment><USER10> But in practice what that means is that if you hold a reference to some page in your article you can/should keep it alive by seeding it.

<comment><USER9> Yes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I usually quote webpages by writing a <blockquote> with a hyperlink to the original, and avoid embedding tweets for privacy and performance reasons.

If the source supports [Webmentions][[https://webmention.net/](https://webmention.net/)], I'll send it too.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love the quoted UI! Can't wait for the Firefox extension, if you need help, I'm happy to pitch in!

<comment><USER13> We're working on a FF version! Turns out porting the chrome one is fairly straightforward. Watch this space!

<comment><USER14> Nice! Will definitely use once Firefox version is available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shouldn't the demo quote link to [https://sometimesright.com/2020/04/25/blogging-vs- twitter/](https://sometimesright.com/2020/04/25/blogging-vs-twitter/) ? (instead of the homepage)

<comment><USER13> You're right! Just fixed it. Good catch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of Microformats, which is an exciting throwback to when I was just getting into web development.

[http://microformats.org/wiki/what-are- microformats](http://microformats.org/wiki/what-are-microformats)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is one more example of my federated blogging idea I've been asking for here on HN. I want blogging with the independence of the original but the discoverability of a well-done aggregator (more human, substance over SEO or outrage, depth over trendiness).

Blogging could be so much improved if there were ways to discover other writers doing interesting things from one writer that you enjoy. Modes of intertextuality like this are key to building healthy, interesting communities.

<comment><USER18> Have you looked at the [http://IndieWeb.org](http://IndieWeb.org) tools and Webmentions? [http://micro.blog](http://micro.blog) offers it all with little hassle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice to see this. Was using highly at some point, before Twitter bought it [1] and shut it down.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/17/twitter- highly/](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/17/twitter-highly/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Anybody know any good JavaScript-free alternatives to this? Or should I just stick with quoting people and linking their content the old-fashioned way?

<comment><USER21> Quotebacks falls back to a basic <blockquote> if JS is not enabled.

<comment><USER20> Ahh, cool! Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Fantastic work. Are these stored in a searchable way? I couldn't tell from the page what database the quotes are stored in and whether there is an easy way to access it other than exporting to JSON.

Edit: Looking at the code it looks like they're indeed searchable with the help of fuse.js (fuzzy search library): [https://github.com/Blogger-Peer- Review/quotebacks/blob/maste...](https://github.com/Blogger-Peer- Review/quotebacks/blob/master/fuse.js#L2).

</comment><comment><USER23> For another previous effort, @bradneuberg built some stuff around this a while back. See [http://forge.blueoxen.net/purple- include/](http://forge.blueoxen.net/purple-include/) and [http://codinginparadise.org/weblog/labels/purple%20include.h...](http://codinginparadise.org/weblog/labels/purple%20include.html).

</comment><comment><USER24> I like the idea of quoting other sites in a standard way, and the browser extension looks great, but I really don't want to have to deal with JS just to include a quote in a post. Since it doesn't ping the author (like a Pingback) I'm not sure the presentation format has a lot of value...

Where is the JS pulling the title and image from? OpenGraph?

</comment><comment><USER25> How can these be forged? Say a page no longer exists, it could be possible to forge a quote and play a little game of disinfo?

<comment><USER26> Given that we're just talking HTML, I don't see how you could meaningfully prevent bad actors, absent storing screenshots of the original text -- and even then (see any number of fake tweets that circulate). Hypothetically, instead of linking to the original source, I suppose it could link to the Wayback Machine version of the text, but I don't think that's a helpful default way to link to people's work. As a fallback when sites disappear, sure, but otherwise...

<comment><USER27> Here's one possibility. Creating a quoteback could: 1\. tell archive.org to create a snapshot of the page 2\. store a link both to the human-friendly version of the page and the archive snapshot 3\. then the reader's browser (rather than the webpage hosting the quoteback) could verify that the quote is present either at the linked source or at the snapshot of the linked source.

In the happy path (where the quoteback is genuine) the browser could indicate to the user that the quoteback is genuine and the link would take the user to the normal website if it still has the quote, otherwise to the archive snapshot.

In the unhappy path (where the quoteback is disingenuous) the browser could notify the user that the quoteback is disingenuous.

<comment><USER28> Great path, a few hundred lines of code, less if you can use the ia python library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The first example links to an index page; it should probably link to the specific page itself.

I suggest trying out ScrollToTextFragment [https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to- text-fragment](https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment) if you haven't already I know it was a little controversial and it's currently Chrome-only, but it might improve the UX for some people.

Very cool, though!

<comment><USER13> Firstly - good catch. I updated the link.

Secondly - I wish I could get ScrollToTextFragment to work reliably. I've tried integrating this into Quotebacks and every time it just works so sporadically that I roll it back. Somehow Google thinks this is robust and stable enough to put into production but my experience is very hit/miss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> love it! a leap forward in usability. I'm already using some Open Transclude javascript on my own site and am looking forward to using this :)

<comment><AUTHOR> woah you are? hell yeah which post?? Link me!!

<comment><USER30> hah sure: [https://www.iantay.dev/post/open- transclude/](https://www.iantay.dev/post/open-transclude/)

<comment><USER31> It doesn't look good on mobile. Just letting you know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is exciting! Thanks for doing this.

</comment><comment><USER33> I love how Quotebacks can be used together with Hypothesis. I blogged about Quotebacks and its use with Hypothesis here: [https://niklasblog.com/?p=24912](https://niklasblog.com/?p=24912)

</comment><comment><USER34> Really appreciate the work. I'll be circling back once the Firefox plugin is out.

</comment><comment><USER35> Some related earlier concepts from the Web: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkback](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkback)

</comment><comment><USER36> How does this compare in practice to things like dissenter?

</comment><comment><USER37> Sort of reminds me of a one-sided webmention.

</comment><comment><USER38> It is not working for me in Linux.

</comment><comment><USER39> this is great, now we need another one for comments and another one for subscription

</comment><comment><USER40> Ted Nelson who coined the term _hypertext_ in _1963_ claimed in Werner Herzog's documentary "Lo and Behold" that his original idea for "copy and paste" would always link back to the original. This article below based on the Herzog interview has more context but not the exact _quote_ (context pun intended) that I remember from the documentary.

Full interview of Ted Nelson from "Lo and Behold": [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqx6li5dbEY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqx6li5dbEY)

> Nelson, who was featured in Werner Herzog's latest film, Lo and Behold, > believes that instead of the existing formats we use online, where text > often mirrors the constraints of paper, we should have a system of two-way > links that would allow readers to see the context of any quotation...

> There are a few offline examples, such as the Talmud and the Rosetta Stone, > where text is read side-by-side. Nelson believes this is how online > documents should be constructed.

> "As far as I'm concerned, this is the way literature should develop," he > says. "I don't consider this technology, I think it's literature. Being able > to see visible connections between pages seems to me absolutely > fundamental."

> Nelsons says this setup would be the ideal format for reading annotations, > additional details, correspondence, and disagreements: "It's essentially a > different genre of writing."

> As Nelson sees it, our current use of online documents is very limiting. > He's particularly disturbed by how we use the words cut and paste. When the > Macintosh was introduced in 1984, cut came to mean "hide this piece that > I've just marked in an invisible place," and paste became "plug whatever's > in this invisible place to where I'm pointing."

> "To me that was an outrage because no one has yet got a decent re- > arrangement system that allows you to see the all the parts of the > arrangement as you're writing," Nelson says. "Those words meant something > entirely different until 1984.

> Balzac, the French novelist, carried a razor blade around his neck for > cutting up his manuscript. Tolstoy would cut up his manuscripts and leave > all the pieces around the floor. This is true cut-and-paste, where you're > re-arranging on a large scale and able to see the relationships between > parts."

> Ironically, Nelson is friends with Larry Tesler—the man responsible for our > modern use of cut and paste—but still calls their mislabeling "a crime > against humanity."

[https://qz.com/778747/an-early-internet-pioneer-says-the- con...](https://qz.com/778747/an-early-internet-pioneer-says-the-construction- of-the-web-is-crippling-our-thinking/)

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


Housing tips back to a buyer's market as sellers cut prices - <AUTHOR> https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/housing-tips-back-to-a-buyers-market-as-sellers-cut-prices/ar-BBM0CCF <comment><AUTHOR> I have seen a lot of price cuts lately on the redfin list in Houston area although it has been increasing a lot for the past 5 years.

How are other markets?</comment>


SQL Injection Fools Speed Traps and Clears Your Record - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2014/04/04/sql-injection-fools-speed-traps-and-clears-your-record/ <comment><USER2> Except that's just an image, and the driver never drove with it on the streets for obvious reasons. Did you even read it before posting?</comment>


Counting Cycles of a Permutation in Parallel - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/counting-cycles-of-a-permutation-in-parallel/

<comment><USER2> This has really become my favorite blog. Lipton is great to read to get a survey of different math/cc topics. Plus he's holding out hope P=NP!

</comment><comment><USER3> For anyone who is curious why the theorem is true, here is a quick sketch of a possible proof.

First prove that both sides of the equation are (mod 2) invariant if you swap the labeling of (i, i+1). (That is if we keep the permutation alone and swap the two labels, we don't change either side.) This allows us to rewrite any permutation so that it takes a canonical form where each cycle takes the form i -> i+1 -> ... -> i+j -> i. Then prove the theorem for permutations of that form.</comment>


Tizen to merge with Samsung's Bada - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/241959/tizen-merge-samsungs-bada

<comment><USER2> At first there was Meamo, then there came Moblin. After a while the two merged, thus creating MeeGo. All was good until Nokia and Intel divorced, and Intel made Tizen based on MeeGo.

Now Tizen is incorporated into Bada, Samsung's platform. What will happen next?

<comment><USER3> It feels like this project is like 2 guys at Samsung and Intel and 2 PR departments just wanting to generate press releases.</comment></comment>


A new, easier approach to documenting SQL Server databases - <AUTHOR> http://www.livedoco.com/a-new-approach-to-documenting-databases

<comment><AUTHOR> Rather than generating a static data dictionary document LiveDoco provides a Web browser based interface to SQL Server's metadata.</comment>


Show HN: Network Manager for docker containers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vmulas/docker-netmanager <comment><USER2> Why not just bridge if the NAT is 1:1? Am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this code in order to make the script work alongside the default docker options. A custom interface is a plus to keep things clean and separated at the same time</comment></comment>


A better command line tool for the todo.txt format - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bram85/topydo

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this project a while back. I started putting TODO files and .topydo (config) files in my git repos while I work on them.

Much better than having your todo list in your README.

        alias pydo='topydo'</comment>


Is The Free Ride Over For Web Startups? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=101338

<comment><USER2> My sites have done OK w/ advertising since Fall 2008, but I'm more weighted towards PPC and CPA.

Web advertising has it's challenges, but it's clear that advertisers are wildly overspending on offline advertising, and that much of that spending is going to disappear.

I used to work for the largest web consulting shop in a small town. My accountant and other small business people would ask how much a site from us would cost: I'd say that a site with custom design and CMS would start around $2k.

Often they'd be shocked... They'd expect to pay more like $80.

The same businesses have been spending $100 a day for tiny display ads in the local newspaper... Add that up for 365 days, and you could afford rent for a modest storefront or an extra employee. You could spend less than half of that (once) and have the beginnings of an e-commerce site that would bring in recurring and measurable income.

Businesses are wising up and pulling their ads out of the local daily: some of that money is going to get funneled into advertising models that work for advertisers, such as PPC and CPA.</comment>


A Cryptoeconomic Traffic Analysis of Bitcoin's Lightning Network - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.09432 <comment><USER2> From the paper [1]

> A core value proposition of LN is that Bitcoin users can execute payments > with negligible transaction fees. This feature may be cherished by payment > initiators, but in case of insufficiently low network traffic, it could be > unprofitable for router entities.

Relative to the purposely (and ingeniously) wasteful process of mining, LN will always be faster and cheaper.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.09432.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.09432.pdf) (PDF)

<comment><USER3> Also from the paper:

Our findings on the estimated revenue from transaction fees are in line with the widespread opinion that participation is economically irrational for the majority of the large routing nodes who currently hold the network together.</comment></comment>


Finally it is possible to run Windows 3.11 in ReactOS without any other software - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH0n88vdnxs <comment><USER3> This is fantastic.

I think ReactOS is one of the most amazing projects ever. Windows NT has a pretty interesting design, which is absolutely worth preserving both for historical purposes and as scaffolding for future OS work, and with this in mind, having an alternate and open source implementation does the humanity some real good.

It's too bad FreeVMS isn't actively being developed.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, preserving the design does not seem to be - and cannot be - <USER2> of the goals of the project, since in order to stay relevant they need to follow the ongoing development of the original, which is a rapidly moving target. Even the _internals_ of the original have been changing over time, albeit somewhat slower than the UI. The initial design of NT was very interesting indeed; if I remember correctly, it included a message-based mechanism of interaction between the base ("native") OS and "subsystems" (Win32, Posix, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Coming from Windows, seeing graphics in the cmd window is shocking.</comment>


Subuser turns Docker containers into normal Linux programs, limiting privileges - <AUTHOR> http://subuser.org/ <comment><USER2> This is really cool! The first time I tried to run a GUI app in a container, I discovered there's a LOT of practical gaps between "okay I have containers" and "I want to run a graphical application". Subuser bridges those gaps nicely.

My favorite part of reading the docs for subuser is how completely direct and honest they are about security of various features. E.g., if you enable some features of X bridging, you're accepting security risks, because that's how X works. (And if you don't need those features, don't enable them; it looks like subuser has it down to a one-word config flag, which is _amazing_.) By comparison, if you start out on your own... there's lots of brief tutorials on the internet about using xephyr, or xpra, or doing something really wildly unsafe like just plain mounting the X sockets in. But not only are all these things rough to get started on by yourself, the brief explanations thrown around are often not clear on the security implications. Subuser seems like a great way to do the right things... out of the box. And with excellent truth in packaging.

I've accumulated a lot of scripts in my personal `~/bin` over the last couple years that do stuff like "mount cwd and interesting dir $x, make sure image with $prog is here or fetch it, now pass args and invoke $prog with $HOME=..." \-- and while these have been really useful to _me_ , they've been ad-hoc and almost impossible to usefully share with others. Subuser's format for making valuable configuration like this _sharable_ is extremely interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> FWIW I think this is pretty cool. The main docker use-case is not desktop software, and some of it's choices are unlikely to suit that use-case well.

So, good to see a project look at that aspect. I would quite like to be able to run all my apps which access untrusted services (e.g. all browsers) in a container which I can easily wipe/reset.

<comment><USER4> You are correct that Docker has some server centric designs. But luckly, the Docker project has split of runc (Docker's container runtime) and since images are just bare directory trees, there is really no claustrophobia about Docker being a bad choice...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> spectacular. now build a package repo, and give me "sbu-get install postgresql-9.5" which runs on both fedora and debian... and we are golden.

I wonder how it compares with zeroinstall or nix

<comment><USER6> Are you used you download a zip or tar.gz from upstream full of bundled dependencies?.

I don't like that.

As this is opensource and I get the source, I will download a full OS image or containerized binaries from third parties. Mmmm so spectacular.

Apps running on chroots? We've that since the 90's, the relaxed security model of Xorg and it's client/server architecture was there already, and it was the reason to left windows 3.11/95 behind.

But marketing campaigns are spectacular in effect in current money surrounded culture. Yes. Their network effect is spectacular. I would say so.

Edited: missing question mark

<comment><USER4> Subuser is not a revolutionary peice of software. You are right that it is a LOT like a zip file or tar.gz file full of bundled dependencies. It is, however, a big improvement on just that. Subuser contains the subusers, so they cannot mess with the rest of your system, making a lot eisier to trust those bundled dependencies. It also provides some rather primitive update mechanisms for those bundled dependencies. But it's main advantage is the containment and the "blank slate".

In the future, I would like to expand on the vision, to include the ability to do deduplication, so that all those zip files with bundled dependencies take up less space. And deduplication done right, will save bandwidth too. Indeed, when you have these "deduplicated zip files", with deduplication done algorithmically, you'll save even MORE space and MORE bandwidth than with a traditional dependency resolving file manager. Take for example debian. Debian uses packages. These packages have dependencies. The dependencies are shared. This saves space over a case where you have a bunch of zip files with unshared dependencies. But when you update a dependency, even if only one line of one file has changed, that dependency must be downloaded completely anew. But with algorithmic de-duplication, updating one line of one file means you only have to download one line of one file anew.

Space savings are there for a similar reason.

<comment><USER5> It is revolutionary - if you manage to build the ecosystem. Remember that Docker itself was not considered revolutionary ("yawn.. Use lxc").

I would really recommend you look at nix, zeroinstall, click packages and [http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together- linu...](http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linux- systems.html)

<comment><USER4> zeroinstall and click are interesting. But zeroinstall doesn't do anything on the security front. Click is rather confusing, I haven't found a webpage for it yet, or any information about how to like install and use a click package on Debian(I think that this is because it's not possible/supported). However, I don't see nix or redhats various efforts(they have annoced a new universal package format every year or two for a decade now) to be very serious. The problem with these efforts is that they always want to impose some opinion on HOW things should be packaged. And I don't think that is useful as a global standard.

<comment><USER5> you should really kickstarter this project if you are really serious. I think this can really be something if pushed hard. For all its hate, systemd is a one man effort that changed Linux. And so was git.

There are people out there who would love to financially support this if you ask and have a good sense of what you want to do. IMHO your post above (about zeroinstall and click) are jumping the gun.

Would love to see what you come up with.. once the excitement has died down ;)

<comment><USER7> I keep wondering how much traction systemd would have gotten without having a long standing project like udev latched onto it (never mind the consolekit replacement logind).

I'm just waiting for some project to be wholly dependent on the existence of networkd or some such...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome! Now that I know this I can finally get to learn docker. The functionality provided by this tool is exactly what I was doing with several shitty Python scripts. Thanks mate!

<comment><USER4> I hope you find it useful. Please file a bug report if you have any problems!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great so you made capisicum with docker .

[https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/capsicum/](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/capsicum/)

Docker docker docker docker

<comment><USER4> How does capisicum solve X11 insecurity? Subuser uses XPRA...

<comment><USER10> The X11 part would be solved by xpra. Capsicum, however, feels like the better tool for the job of privilege isolation here. One of the more important things is that you're able to lock down access much more finely than you can with docker. You can use this to ensure that the locked down application can only communicate with xpra and put files only in certain folders, for example, without being able to see or interact with other processes.

Your approach has the problem of needing the inherent insecurities of docker. Because everything within docker has to be managed either by root or someone within the docker group, you have a greater surface area exposed where if an malicious app is able to get hold of the docker socket file, it now owns your system. A capability-based security system, on the other hand, wouldn't be able to touch the docker socket, even if it was run as root.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> but wouldnt it be easier to chroot / limit a program with a pre / post hook script and leverage existing package managers ?

<comment><USER12> Of course not! The existing package managers don't have a cute logo and an unrealistic valuation.

<comment><USER4> Unrealistic valuation? Is that what you call a couple hundred "stars" on github? If you ask me, stars aren't hardly worth squat. Perhaps a pull request every month or two... But I'm glad to see subuser getting some attention on HN now. Perhaps the PRs will start rolling in :D

<comment><USER12> I guess it would only be fair for Docker to cut you a couple of million, seeing as they're swimming in cash (apparently?)

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately for me, I was asked to leave the Docker project after I got upset about SUSE wanting to add EULAs to Docker images: [https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/7153](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/7153)

So I guess I don't get any millions. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Like I said: Docker wants to be a linker and a binary format:

[http://adamierymenko.com/docker-not-even-a- linker/](http://adamierymenko.com/docker-not-even-a-linker/)

If everything (mysql, pgsql, etc.) were a library you could achieve much of what it does with -static and privilege dropping on launch.

</comment><comment><USER14> How is Docker + Subuser different than just using firejail?

<comment><USER4> firejail is security centered. It allows you to secure the apps you already have on your system.

Zeroinstall is distribution centered. It allows you to easilly distribute software across distros.

Subuser is like zeroinstall + firejail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was always taught that Docker is not suitable for securely separating stuff, just for compartmentalisation. Something about running as root iirc?

<comment><USER16> > Something about running as root iirc?

The daemon runs as root, so your containers are only as secure as the daemon itself.

<comment><USER17> > > Something about running as root iirc?

> The daemon runs as root, so your containers are only as secure as the daemon > itself.

This is not correct. The daemon only starts and monitors processes in this case. You can start a process as a different user. You can also use user namespaces to make "root in the container" not root on the host.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I would very much like is a program that allows me to run a Windows program like Photoshop on Linux through something like Docker. I know I can run PS for instance with Wine and CS2, but due to professional needs I need CC .. Gimp won't cut it. This would free me up to great extend from Microsoft and Apple.

I understand this is solely for Linux programs?

<comment><USER19> [http://askubuntu.com/questions/530110/how-can-i-install- phot...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/530110/how-can-i-install-photoshop- cs6-on-ubuntu-14-04)

<comment><USER2> So wine can do it? That's pretty sweet.

It seems like it would make sense to combine this with subuser to make sure you keep a known-good version of wine and its configuration. I've known wine compatibility to drift unpleasantly from time to time, or accidentally lost obscure config changes I made once...

(I have fond memories of a time when I could play Supreme Commander on linux in wine... but I've since lost that machine, and I haven't been able to reproduce the dang setup again since :( If subuser had existed back then, I'd probably have a snapshot and I'd be happily playing right now...)

<comment><USER20> > So wine can do it? That's pretty sweet.

Probably not. Technically, wine was able to run various versions of Photoshop for years. But it was never stable nor complete enough to use it professionally, with wacom tablets and such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I still can't understand why can't this work in docker-machine in osx. Or can it?

<comment><USER4> There is not any really strong reason why it cannot work. I just haven't got an OSX machine, and now PRs have come in yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very cool stuff. How compatible is this with docker-machine?

<comment><USER23> Only for Linux: [http://subuser.org/installation.html](http://subuser.org/installation.html)

<comment><USER24> From that page:

Warning: Being a member of the docker group is equivalent to having root access.

Not a great way to limit privileges.

<comment><USER25> The user using this has to be in that group, the programs being run do not.

For a single-user machine, it may be okay. But I don't trust Docker's security very much.

<comment><USER3> any particular reasons you don't trust Docker security?

<comment><USER17> The daemon has had many security issues. They also only recently grew support for ACLs (which are only available as plugins), so any user that can write to the Docker socket is essentially equivalent to root.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The New Event Listing Page of Eventbrite - <AUTHOR> https://www.eventbrite.com/e/this-is-the-new-listings-page-of-eventbrite-tickets-16855091031

<comment><USER2> Ooh! How does one go about using this template? Thanks!</comment>