Microsoft aren't forcing Lenovo to block free operating systems - <AUTHOR> http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44694.html <comment><USER3> Their spin that it is "our super advanced Intel RAID chipset" really plays in their favor, given that their BIOS uses a single goto statement to intentionally block access to the ability to set this chipset into the AHCI compatible mode that the hardware so readily supports, as evidenced by the REing work and the fact that other OSes detect the drive after the AHCI fix using the custom-flashed BIOS.

So, why are they reluctant to just issue their band-aid patch to the BIOS -- after all, it's really the path of least resistance here?

Yes, there has been some deflection of blame here. The argument that every single OS except Windows 10 is at fault for not supporting this CRAZY new super advanced hardware doesn't make much sense.

"Linux (and all other operating systems) don't support X on Z because of Y" doesn't really apply when "Z modified Y in a way that does not allow support for X."

To state it more plainly, this "CRAZY new super advanced hardware" has a trivial backwards compatible mode that works with everything just fine, but it is blocked by Lenovo's BIOS.

<comment><USER4> Is this really true of all Lenovo systems? I recently bought a P50 (new workstation class laptop) and I could switch the BIOS to AHCI from what I recall. That being said the crap Lenovo pulled with other hardware made me ditch the laptop (of which I tried to return and Lenovo would not take it since I installed an alternative OS and I had to sell it outright for a loss). Things such as disabling the ability for the integrated Intel GPU from driving more than one display at a time was a deal breaker along with downright horrible performance.

I'm going down a new, yet unfortunately similar, path with Dell on a 5510. First unit I had would shut off if you picked it up. Dell decided to "upgrade" my purchase because they didn't have any more 5510 with FHD displays in stock. What I got back was a "better" machine with a 4k display. I've been arguing with Dell support since...

<comment><USER5> I would buy it in a heartbeat if they didnt insist on selling it with the numpad. I find it upsetting that it is virtually impossible to find a 15 inch laptop now that doesnt have the numpad (macbook pro and dell xps15 are the notable exceptions). Not having the spacebar centered and having the numeric keys off center is hard for me to adjust to.

<comment><USER3> Personally, I haven't had nearly of a hard time adjusting to off-centered keys/touchpad as I've had trying to move to Apple-esque chiclet keys (or the resultant cheap inferior copy-cats on all of the Windows 8 touch screen ultrabooks).

To each their own, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also worth noting Lenovo's official statment on the matter [http://www.techrepublic.com/article/lenovo-denies- deliberate...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/lenovo-denies-deliberately- blocking-linux-on-windows-10-pcs/) confirming that they have not blocked the installation of alternate operating systems.

It was a shame to see the initial posts this morning hit the top of the page without any more evidence than a single customer support rep. who was unlikely to realistically have inside knowledge of some kind of "secret conspiracy" to block linux installs by Microsoft.

<comment><USER7> That's just nitpicking. They blocked the enabling of a setting which allows Linux to see the hard disk. They went out of their way to make a firmware change that has the effect that you cannot run Linux - unless you flash your BIOS or you write a driver. In my book, they effectively blocked the installation of Linux.

Now, there are two options. 1) to support this hardware correctly, you'd need to make complex changes to the driver. In this case, I cannot see how it is the Linux' developers' "fault" that this doesn't work. It would be great to have a driver, but it depends on information that Lenovo doesn't give out. Or 2), it is trivial to make a driver, e.g. you just have to look for a certain ID. In this case, I would also blame Lenovo or MS, for there would be no reason to bock AHCI to "ensure a good customer experience" etc.

Whether this situation has come from malice or not, I don't care very much. Anyway, I think it is up to Lenovo to provide a solution (a BIOS update, a Linux driver, or information neccessary to write a driver).

Now, is it a conspiracy or not? I'd say the most likely option is carelessness. Maybe this happenend: "Shall we set this to AHCI or RAID? Currently it is set to RAID and works fine." \- "Do we need AHCI?" \- "Nah, Windows 10 runs fine, maybe for some older OSes" \- "We don't care about those, just leave it on RAID. And while you're at it, comment out the AHCI option."

Did MS give any instructions to Lenovo to block Linux installs? Maybe not specifically, but we have to remember this is a "Signature" edition laptop. (There was the accusation that this only effects the signature edition and not other editions, which would be particularly damning btw..) I wouldn't be surprized if there was an agreement like. "The partner (Lenovo) shall install any crapware on Signature edition laptops. They shall not not preinstall other OSes. And they shall not offer support on installing other OSes." \-- Which would be entirely reasonable for a special "Windows Signature" edition laptop.

<comment><USER8> > They blocked the enabling of a setting which allows Linux to see the hard > disk.

Or, alternatively, they removed a firmware setting that makes their hardware work less well and didn't think about Linux at all.

<comment><USER9> Removed the option from BIOS menu? Okay, stupid and annoying, but well, there's always EFI shell where you can edit variables by yourself...

Writing a piece of code that resets that one particular variable on each boot?

Sorry, but that's just nasty. There is no reason to do that if the goal is just to provide best experience on supported OS.

Although I agree that it's unlikely this was targetted specifically against GNU/Linux and other OSes. The most important thing would be that Windows 7, 8 and older won't boot anymore.

<comment><USER10> > There is no reason to do that if the goal is just to provide best experience > on supported OS.

I don't believe it's accurate to say there's "no real reason", it seems like enforcing this behaviour is very much aligned with the goal you've posited.

This is under the assumption that this was indeed done for the purpose of ensuring Intel specific drivers are used for power management purposes.

<comment><USER9> There is no real reason to write code that goes out of its way to prevent you from switching into AHCI mode even if you know what you're doing (like in EFI shell).

Hiding the option from BIOS menu is absolutely enough to "ensure Intel specific drivers are used for power management purposes". It would be annoying, but workaroundable. There is no real reason for anything more, aside of being able to get months of complains about not releasing a one line fix allowing your customers to use your hardware.

<comment><USER11> > Hiding the option from BIOS menu is absolutely enough to "ensure Intel > specific drivers are used for power management purposes".

It absolutely is not enough, because I can come up with a single contrary case.

If this change was made in a BIOS update, simply hiding the option would leave some users stuck in the "wrong" setting forever. So one might write some code to flip it back at the same time.

This is the simplest way of fixing the problem. It doesn't need any assumption of maliciousness or incompetence. It's just unfortunate for Linux users, since they clearly didn't get any consideration when this fix was written, that's all.

<comment><USER9> The change wasn't made in BIOS update, only newer physical models had this change applied and they shipped right away being blocked.

Aside of that, this couldn't even be a change made in BIOS update, because every OS installed earlier, including preinstalled Windows, would stop booting without being provided with Intel driver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There has been a disturbing level of contempt for the people that were _concerned_ about the future of Free Software. There has been a major shift towards more locked down platforms for years ever since iOS was accepted by the developer community. With Microsoft locking down Secure Boot on ARM and requiring it for Windows 10, it is prudent to be extra _vigilant_ about anything strange that happens in the boot process. The alternative is to ignore _potential_ problems until they grow into much larger problems that are harder to deal with.

Obviously vigilance implies some amount of false positives. It is easy to dismiss a problem once better information is available. It's great that this Lenovo situation is simply a misunderstanding about drivers, but that doesn't invalidate the initial _concern_ about a suspicious situation.

<comment><USER13> Wow. Man, come on.

The disturbing level of contempt is almost the sole property of the "Linux == Freedom" crowd. I mean seriously, the level of outrage about systemd alone is off the rails. Bring up Microsoft and I'm somehow complicit in oppressing people because I use their software? (But somehow the rare earth minerals in devices and the contributions to modern electronics of the defense budget don't somehow make us all culpable of far more. I mean, yeah the GPS in my phone was built for the military but how dare you not give me a compiler!)

I used to be such a hard core Linux fan when I was younger. Man I hope I wasn't as breathlessly shrill as the people I'm seeing today. There is so much wrong with the world that people complaining about this really make me think that we are all so isolated in our little worlds...

<comment><USER12> > The disturbing level of contempt is almost the sole property of the "Linux > == Freedom" crowd.

That's patently incorrect and you know it. FYI: You're showing that kind of contempt right now. My point isn't even related strongly to Free Software; it was an observation that a lot of people don't like early warning systems, which is bad for _security_. Shooting the messenger when they bring a warning of a _possible_ threat is a terrible idea if you want to continue to receive warning messages. Deciding if that was the goal for some people is left as an exercise to the reader.

> I mean seriously, the level of outrage about systemd alone is off the rails.

Off topic and irrelevant, though if you actually read the real, substantive complaints against systemd they tend to focus on forced upgrades from unnecessary tight integration between components and disruption of working code. The contempt in these arguments is usually from the people that try to shut down any discussion that isn't blindly accepting systemd.

> Bring up Microsoft and I'm somehow complicit in oppressing people because I > use their software?

I never said anything of the sort. Pretending to be a victim is unbecoming.

> [stuff about rare earth minerals, the defense budget, GPS]

If there is a point to this word salad, I am not parsing it. It seems off topic?

> I used to be such a hard core Linux fan when I was younger.

Some of us still believe it's a bad idea to sacrifice your principles for convenience and a few shiny baubles.

> people complaining about this really make me think that we are all so > isolated in our little worlds

The future will be shaped by those that control computation and the internet. This means defending computation and communication that isn't controlled by one entity is one of the most important tasks of this generation. In the future, everything is a computer. Some of us think it's important to fight for freedom _now_ , before that happens, because the problem is only going to get harder.

If you've given up that fight, that's fine. Just please stand aside because other people are still trying to fight for a free and open future.

<comment><USER13> Some of us believe its a bad idea to sacrifice your principles...

You don't know me friend. That's not the kind of thing that I would ever say to someone lightly.

Your last line reads like some manifesto from the 90's. it's naïve in the extreme. The future will be controlled with force. Just like the past. How do you think the materials that make the computers are mined, extracted, and turned into the parts that make your shiny toy? Force.

The idea that you are a freedom fighter is so laughable. Jesus Christ, that's so pathetic that I'm having a hard time thinking that you aren't trolling.

<comment><USER12> > That's not the kind of thing that I would ever say to someone lightly

That's _your_ claim, not mine.

> Jesus Christ, that's so pathetic that I'm having a hard time thinking that > you aren't trolling.

Ok, I'm done with you. You're either trolling or simply a naive apologist. Either way, I have better uses for my time.

<comment><USER13> Riddle me this Morpheus...in your dystopian cypherpunk future, how are the employees of Foxconn or the miners of rare earth minerals in Africa going to compute their way out of their conditions?

Naïve apologist? I'm telling you that your efforts on "protecting freedom" are a way for you to feel superior about yourself while still participating in the same system as the rest of us. You put nothing on the line, and arguing with people who disagree isn't a sacrifice. (It's a privilege.) Believing this woo- woo is a trick that you play ON YOUR SELF to feel like you have some measure of influence on things that you know...and you do know, deep down...that you don't and this is all bullshit. VIM or EMACS don't make anyone actually more free. It's so fucking insulting that you think by being a shrill know-it-all on a message board that you are personally involved in the struggle for human freedom...AND I'M NAIVE?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The moral of the story is that you shouldn't trust a low-level support engineer as a source for official company policy.

<comment><USER15> Or the uncritical tech press or the rubes on reddit, etc. Its obvious to me that we're living in a time where rumors, falsehoods, and purposeful misdirection are easily monetized and that's what our tech press has degenerated into. Critical voices just get downvoted away for being "shills" or somesuch.

We live in a time where likes and upvotes control what we see and informed criticism being censored away by downvotes and flagging. As someone who often goes against the grain, its god damn obvious our communication infrastructure has degenerated into something horrible where only echo chambers and groupthink rule. Stuff like this will continue to rise to the top until there's some kind of reform. I don't see reddit, HN, or Facebook changing how they rank items up to encourage dissenting opinions, because ultimately dissenting opinions aren't as profitable or 'community minded.'

<comment><USER16> As far as forums go, I find that HackerNews has one of the most civil and thought provoking discussions on the internet. This is most likely due to responsible moderation where differences of opinion are not only accepted, but respected. In fact, this forum practically moderates itself as I've seen many times a post gets downvoted into oblivion for making personal attacks or ad- hominem arguments. Perhaps this has to do with our (HackerNews users) disposition as engineers, researchers, and entrepreneurs. I may be blowing smoke here, but my perceptions has been that to be successful in those professions, one needs to accept failures/imperfect solutions and admit their mistakes more than others. For example, when I graduated from uni and entered my first developer gig, I completely wiped out a production database that hadn't had a backup run in over 2 years. I almost cried because I thought I was going to blow a great opportunity my first week on the job. After the wave of emotion finally washed over me, I realized that other departments had the data. It was just up to me to analyze the business processes, figure out where we fit into the flow, and work backwards to restore all the data. Most of us have been humbled by a superior dev at one point or another in our career and if we look back at code we wrote two years ago we realize just how much there is to learn. In addition, I've found that many brilliant engineers have impostor syndrome and there are far fewer in STEM fields that succumb to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

On the other hand, as Reddit has grown in popularity, the tyranny of the majority has reared its intolerant head. It truly is a hive mind. All the posts at the top are agreeing with each other (the dreaded circlejerk) or are a series of puns. Arguments are considered fallacious if there is a spelling or grammatical error, not ever considering that English may not be the posters first language. And when Reddit gets a hard-on for justice, it is so certain of its findings that it accuses innocent people of terrorism. ([http://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-falsely-accuses- sunil-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-falsely-accuses-sunil- tripathi-of-boston-bombing-2013-7)). I don't know if this is due to its surge in popularity and/or that it became the site of choice for those who outgrew 4chan.

There was a TED talk ([https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...](https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles?language=en)) that warned of the dangers of tailoring services to match our personal tastes. I hoped that the internet would expose people to ways of thinking that were just not available in their own localized social milieu. Instead, online filter bubbles/echo chambers promotes even more speculations, rumors, and lies even though there has never been an era where it's been easy, if one were so inclined to seek the truth. It's just sad that many of the social media sites encourage this behavior.

<comment><USER17> The sane perspective on the db drop experience that you described is that you were simply the innocent victim of a major organizational failure.

Companies with a solid engineering culture will look at the process and fix it without blaming an individual - regardless of if the data are recoverable or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There was way too much rush to judgement here. Suspicion and skepticism are great, let those fires burn. But let's not condemn or blame until the issue has been aired out from all parties.

\- MS shouldn't be blamed based on what the CEO of Lenovo says, let alone what a tech or BB rep says.

\- MS shouldn't be blamed for new crimes based on past behavior

Why care about MS or any other megacorp? Because this salem witch trial shit is toxic and should not be condoned against anyone.

Rush to suspicion and demanding answers is great. There is no downside to saving blame for after the facts are in.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wasn't Lenovo the company that shipped unremovable malware with laptops? Considering the almost impossible to disable Intel management stuff is also there, I can only imagine the kind of parasite living on these machines.

Why would anyone buy their stuff?

<comment><USER20> One of the parts of the MS Signature Series agreement is that there is no crapware, that what you get is pretty much the same if you installed a direct from microsoft copy of Windows. The signature series is probably the only line I would get from lenovo, because it's guaranteed not to need hours of futzing to get it working decently.

<comment><USER21> So get a vanilla install disk from Microsoft's site, install and reuse the license.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For what it's worth, I've had issues with Intel RST under Windows as well in mixed-mode configs. My boot device is an SSD configured for AHCI and I've a 3 drive RAID array. On a soft reset of my PC, the BIOS won't see the SSD. The completely nonobvious solution? Make the SSD hot swappable. Not a Lenovo PC, either. Been going on for years. Had to do a hard reset every time I had to restart for years before I found a solution to this.

<comment><USER23> Also have this on an older Lenovo. I use it as a small server now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Rather than be angry at Lenovo, let's put pressure on Intel to provide > support for their hardware.

<comment><USER25> Like a petition?

[https://puri.sm/posts/petition-for-intel-to-release-an-me- le...](https://puri.sm/posts/petition-for-intel-to-release-an-me-less-cpu- design/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Standard culture of outrage before actually taking more than 5 seconds to think about something and consider other possibilities.

</comment><comment><USER27> What is crazy to me is that Lenovo is usually the brand that people recommend for Linux laptops. They are shooting themselves in the foot here. They may think that the number of people on Linux is too small, but I bet it is bigger than they think. It is just that there is no easy way to accurately census the amount of Linux users on their HW.

<comment><USER7> I used to recommend Lenovo (and before that, IBM) unconditionally for both Windows and Linux use. We called them the "Volvo of computers" because of their longevity, their performance, and their repairability.

Now I'm writing this on a Yoga Pro 2, which is nice in principle, but it's slowly starting to get wobbly, screws are falling out, the color is peeling off the keys, and I can't use Linux because the color yellow is replaced with fricking MUSTARD if you don't load a specific Windows only driver.

I actually poked a bit around in the drivers, and Lenovo fixes the problem by sending a few bytes to the Embedded Controller (a microcontroller on the motherboard). Lenovo doesn't give out the neccessary information, but I could reverse engineer it by kernel-debugging Windows. But the only way to do that on this Laptop would be via a special crossover USB3 debugger cable, which is out of sale. Before I soldered my own, I just gave up, and am now using Windows...

My next PC is going to be an Asus or a Dell (who would have thought a few years ago...).

<comment><USER28> I have heard nothing but rave reviews for the XPS laptops which come officially supported with Ubuntu out of the box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Why not offer the option to disable it? A user who does would end up with a > machine that doesn't boot

The modder that flashed the custom BIOS was able to boot linux on his first try.

<comment><USER8> But which wouldn't have run the pre-installed OS any more

<comment><USER21> It would run Windows though ;-).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Without any comment from Lenovo or Microsoft this guy is speculating the same as everybody else.

<comment><USER30> "This guy" is relatively known for hacking on Linux laptop drivers and a long relationship with Intel hardware and power management in particular, so I'll stop short of appealing to authority and just say I value his speculation even if it is that. (Which I don't think it is.)

<comment><USER29> This guy is so knowledgable that he says

> Why not offer the option to disable it? A user who does would end up with a > machine that doesn't boot

But the modder that flashed the custom BIOS was able to boot linux on the first attempt.

<comment><USER31> That comment was clearly referring to the common case of ordinary Windows users, who could easily render their existing systems unbootable by changing the driver mode after Windows was already installed.

<comment><USER32> Random joe user should probably not be messing around with his bios or should at least be smart enough to know what he changed or at worst reset his bios to default.

If not use the tech support you pay for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pushing Intel to provide the drivers or at least documentation would be the best solution - the BIOS lock would become irrelevant.

However, I don't agree with conclusion that Lenovo isn't to blame. They went out of their way to ensure that even power users playing with EFI shell won't be able to switch to AHCI mode.

I don't care about Microsoft here. Lenovo showed its bad side and I probably won't be buying their devices anymore - which is a pity, as I'm writing this on my Yoga 2 Pro, with my company's Yoga 900 (fortunately older, unblocked revision) nearby and I liked those devices.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm surprised at the incredulity expressed here, given MS's history of dealing with OEMs. See [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Window...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows)

</comment><comment><USER34> Somebody should notify the guys who went really deep condemning Microsoft of cutting shady deals.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878)

</comment><comment><USER35> Yeah, sure, Microsoft is now all white and fluffy. Best friends forever.

How about we pay some attention to the second part of:

        Lenovo's firmware defaults to "RAID" mode and
        ** doesn't allow you to change that **

Power savings or not, but locking down storage controller to a mode that just happens to be supported by exactly one OS has NO obvious rational explanation. Either Lenovo does that or Windows does. This has nothing to do with Intel.

<comment><USER36> Why doesn't Linux support it? Is "RAID" mode based on some spec that was only provided to Microsoft and kept secret from everyone else?

<comment><USER8> Windows only supports it if you use the Intel storage driver - even Microsoft don't ship a driver that supports it.

<comment><USER21> > even Microsoft don't ship a driver that supports it.

.....and why do you suppose that is? Fake RAID drivers and hardware are shit that's why. It's an option that is hardly used, if ever, and I never thought I'd see the day when a system had it as its default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Its amazing that Linux can so thoroughly have won in the device world and yet MS is still every fan boys favorite boogeyman. This is such a non event.

</comment><comment><USER37> Meta: It seems really odd that this has been relegated to page two, considering that "MS and Lenovo secret agreement" headlines sat on the top page most of yesterday, largely unsubstantiated.

I could be crazy, but HN's algos seem much too aggressive about hiding articles due to flags. It often feels like the most interesting articles are to be found 2-3 spots into the second page.

</comment><comment><USER38> It sounds to me like it would be quite trivial to run Linux on this laptop, just by treating the "RAID" mode PCI ID like AHCI and employing the regular driver. I believe Linux supports forcing the use of a driver for a PCI device.

</comment><comment><USER39> Click bait. It's one interpretation masquerading as the truth while decrying the other interpretation.

Until Lenovo issue a proper, detailed, official statement we need to keep the pressure on.

Self aggrandising posts like this don't help.

</comment><comment><USER40> Why would anyone ever buy Lenovo? It's malware, spyware, and harmful to users. I buy HP or Samsung laptops to run Fedora. Just accept that Lenovo is not IBM hardware, and that it is lost to us.

<comment><USER41> > I buy HP or Samsung laptops to run Fedora.

Recently, which models? (I was thinking of getting a new Thinkpad... but maybe I should look at HP or Samsung)

<comment><USER40> Currently, I run on a pair of Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus with 8G mem. It looks like they've moved on from the Ativ line. The 3200 x 1800 display works well with awesome+gnome. It also drives an external 1440p display simultaneously (at 30fps).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I repost here the 39th comment, which gives a possible explanation of the issue:

      Storm in a teacup
      Date: 2016-09-22 09:17 am (UTC)
      From: [personal profile] cowbutt

"Intel have not submitted any patches to Linux to support the "RAID" mode."

Such patches are unnecessary, as mdadm already supports Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST - [http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/architecture-and- te...](http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/architecture-and- technology/rapid-storage-technology.html) ) for simple RAID (e.g. levels 0, 1, 10) arrays, allowing them to be assembled as md or dmraid devices under Linux.

However, it would appear that the version of mdadm in shipping versions of Ubuntu (at least - maybe other distros too) doesn't support the Smart Response Technology (SRT - [http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and- tech...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and- technology/smart-response-technology.html) ) feature that's a part of RST and is used by Lenovo to build a hybrid one-stripe RAID0 device from the HDD with a cache on the SSD (I'm sure Lenovo have a good reason for not using a SSHD). Dan Williams of Intel submitted a series of patches to mdadm to support SRT back in April 2014: [https://marc.info/?l=linux- raid&r=1&b=201404&w=2](https://marc.info/?l=linux-raid&r=1&b=201404&w=2) . Perhaps now there's shipping hardware that requires them, there'll be the impetus for distro vendors to get them integrated into mdadm, and their auto- detection in their installers to use the functionality provided sanely.

\---

I should add that mdadm is not present in Ubuntu live images by default - <USER2> has to pull it in by issuing "sudo apt[-get] install mdadm". BTW, I don't know if mdadm would detect the RAID controller/disk immediately upon installation, or it would require a reboot. In the latter case you may wish to use a USB key with enough spare room to save the system status and reboot. I'd use UNetBootin to prepare such a USB key.

The main issue here is, a user who doesn't even see a disk, probably wouldn't know to go as far as installing mdadm. IMHO, given the broadening diffusion of NVMe and RAID devices, Debian, Canonical, REDHAT, Fedora etc. might wish to make mdadm part of their live images by default (and eventually strip it from the installed system if it's unnecessary).

Edit: clarified

</comment><comment><USER13> Of course they aren't but how can I feel morally superior with that fact?

</comment><comment><USER43> The setting is almost certainly because of Microsoft. It is almost certainly part of their license agreement to block installation of anything older than Windows 10.

The fact that Linux got caught in it is just collateral damage.

</comment><comment><USER44> So why i can't install Ubuntu on my Lenovo laptop?

<comment><USER45> Have you opened up a bug with the new new PCI ID so they can be added to the kernel?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> isn't _

</comment><comment><USER21> Seeing a manufacturer use fake RAID, by default, on a single disk system, then unfathomably hardwiring this into the firmware so it can't be changed, then have a Lenovo rep actually admit the reason with the forum thread censored and then see this kind of defence is downright hilarious.

Garrett should be condemning Lenovo for not making a perfectly configurable chipset feature....configurable and defending Linux and freedom of choice on hardware that has always traditionally been that way. But, no, he doesn't. He defends stupidity as he always does.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I wholly disagree with Garrett's attempts to redirect (or should I say, deflect) blame to Intel instead of Lenovo in this case. I've succinctly outlined my argument in most of my other posts in this thread.

<comment><USER21> Garrett has a history of stonewalling and misdirection on these matters. It was the same with UEFI, Secure Boot and when he and Red Hat tried to casually shoehorn support for PE binaries into the Linux kernel, hoping no one would notice.

<comment><USER3> Why is PE binary support a bad thing? Wine gets us mostly there already. Very interesting...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Oh it's funny to see the comments in this thread talking down about people on reddit when the misplaced outrage was just as loud here. In fact, I got buried here for pointing out that the claim was BS and unrelated to SecureBoot where at least Reddit took it thoughtfully and realized it was probably just a bullshit statement from a nobody rep that got blown out of proportion.

Sorry to be that guy, but the elitism is pretty misplaced anymore...

<comment><USER21> It's not Secure Boot - yet. But this is what you're going to find - obsolescence depending on built-in hardware driver support. Not only are you not getting Linux installed on here but Windows 7, or any future version of Windows that does not have this driver built for it. You'll then have to throw the hardware away.

No, it wasn't a bullshit statement from a rep - it was a very clear statement from a rep, in black and white, that has not been retracted or clarified by Lenovo in any way. It's always funny when people choose not to believe verbatim statements and explanations put right in front of them.

<comment><USER47> >No, it wasn't a bullshit statement from a rep - it was a very clear statement from a rep, in black and white, that has not been retracted or clarified by Lenovo in any way. It's always funny when people choose not to believe verbatim statements and explanations put right in front of them.

Literally nothing about this sentence is correct.

Support reps know _nothing_ , and nameless support reps that throw out statements like that with no explanation or link to company policies are even _less_ likely to have a clue what they're talking about. I can't believe I'm having to explain this on Hacker News. It's like people on /r/xboxone that post the dumbest crap from support reps and claim it as Microsoft canon.

And yes, Lenovo has clarified that... as everyone who is paying any attention already knows... no, it's not some bullshit conspiracy, and it is in fact the result of switching to faster storage technology that _simply isn 't supported by Linux today_.

[http://news.softpedia.com/news/lenovo-says-linux-is-not- bloc...](http://news.softpedia.com/news/lenovo-says-linux-is-not-blocked-on- its-windows-10-pcs-508509.shtml) (this includes the statement from Lenovo)

Plus, you know, you could read Matthew's blog post (the HN link that we're commenting on...) that explains this as well.

<comment><USER21> > Literally nothing about this sentence is correct.

Sorry, but literally everything about it is correct. What a great adjective.

> Support reps know nothing, and nameless support reps that throw out > statements like that with no explanation

Errrrr, no. Support reps do not throw out incredible specific, crystal clear and precise statements like that unless they're true. This doesn't come out of nowhere.

>I can't believe I'm having to explain this on Hacker News.

Your working life must be pretty interesting if that's you're attitude to every crystal clear, unequivocal and precise statement you read ;-).

> no, it's not some bullshit conspiracy

No, it's not. An extremely clear statements has been made that is not open to misinterpretation.

> Plus, you know, you could read Matthew's blog post (the HN link that we're > commenting on...) that explains this as well.

I have, and true to form, it doesn't. As usual we get someone who wants to tell us that black is white and that a manufacturer miraculously using buggy fake RAID drivers is now the done thing. For performance. Or power management. Or whatever the reason happens to be.

<comment><USER47> > _" Support reps do not throw out incredible specific, crystal clear and > precise statements like that unless they're true."_

What alternative reality do you live in? A short unsubstantiated single sentence-fragment from an unnamed, untitled support employee on a random fucking forum is not a "precise statement".

> _" An extremely clear statements has been made that is not open to > misinterpretation."_

So let me get this straight... a nameless employee writing a single sentence with no explanation or justification... you'll accept as absolute truth. But the company issues AN ACTUAL PRESS RELEASE describing the technical reasoning... and you're just willing to completely dismiss and ignore that?

> _" As usual we get someone who wants to tell us that black is white and that > a manufacturer miraculously using buggy fake RAID drivers is now the done > thing. For performance. Or power management. Or whatever the reason happens > to be."_

What the "buggy, fake drivers" are you talking about? Just making shit up now? Are you REALLY contending that the NVMe devices don't work better under RAID mode, despite the fact that it's a widely researched and accepted fact with whitepaper to boot?

Please stop, this is embarrassing. Go troll somewhere else. I won't be participating in this conversation further, it's clearly a complete waste of time.

<comment><USER48> You've broken the site guidelines badly in this thread. We ban accounts that do that. Please (re-)read the following, and either post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's so sad to see this. (This entire thread, and its comments are down- voted.)

Let me try again. New Microsoft is awesome! Old Microsoft never happened. Double plus good!

<comment><USER48> Please don't post unsubstantive comments. Also, please don't post comments complaining about downvotes; that's explicitly against the site guidelines ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).

People often feel that their pro/anti MS views are being suppressed by the anti/pro members of the community, but really it's just that the community is divided. Accusations of abuse without evidence aren't allowed here, and someone merely holding an opposing view isn't evidence.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12551876](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12551876) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Some commentators seem to be more keen on labelling others conspiracy theorists than consider the possibility that MS and Lenovo could be up to no good.

The only way to convince these folks it seems would be a smoking gun or even better a signed confession from satya and lenovo admitting to shady behavior.

Since that's not how shady behavior works in the real world presumably many here are supporters of the camel in the sand approach with a zero tolerance policy towards non conforming camels.

</comment><comment><USER51> FTA:

"For a consumer device, why would you want to? The number of people buying these laptops to run anything other than Windows is miniscule."

This is a really poor argument, and slightly disingenuous. Sometimes, people change their use for a device. Maybe they want to explore linux in the future, maybe they want to sell the laptop to someone who wants to use it for linux...

That the blame is being possibly misdirected ought not to detract from the fact that blame is necessary. If users don't vocally oppose measures like this, the industry will assume that this kind of restriction is reasonable. It's not. Yes, power management is important, but anyone who puts linux on their laptop will quickly learn there are limitations to the features of that device that were originally tailored to the OS the device shipped with. That's a good lesson, and a good opportunity for a community to develop around the device (if it's good enough) to mitigate those deficiencies and adapt them for the particular linux distro.

In short, Lenovo is at fault for not being up front about this limitation, for not explaining it, and for not devoting at least some resources to mitigating for their potential linux-inclined users.

Then again, perhaps a linux-inclined user might also be one of the many that don't trust Lenovo after their self-signed certificate scandal.

<comment><USER52> I think you are missing that the 'you' in that argument is Lenovo, not the consumer.

Lenovo doesn't have an interest in how people's use of a device changes, unless it changes they up front purchasing decision. They do have a very strong interest in making sure that reviews and writeups don't say that the battery life is rubbish because the laptop has been switched to AHCI mode. As such, they have a strong incentive to prevent this happening.

Given that the operating which 99.9% of their install base will use supports this, it's almost certainly a net win. They don't support running Linux on it - that's at the customers risk. Why would they devote any resource to this?

<comment><USER21> Correction, they only support on version of that OS - which is the point here.

To claim you're going to get better battery life with a fake RAID driver is also one of the funniest things I've ever heard.</comment></comment></comment>


McCLIM 0.9.7 "Imbolc" release - <AUTHOR> https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/posts/McCLIM-097-Imbolc-release.html <comment><USER2> It took me a while to find, examples of user interfaces made with CLIM can be found by scrolling down on this page: [https://common- lisp.net/project/mcclim/excite.html](https://common- lisp.net/project/mcclim/excite.html)

</comment><comment> lf-non For the uninitiated, McCLIM demo [1] by Jack Daniel is a very good introduction to REPL driven GUI programming using Common Lisp and McCLIM.

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

<comment><USER3> There's also a video by Jeremiah Stoddard that shows a live programming session based on McCLIM where he codes a "snake" game [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdb17YDRTVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdb17YDRTVc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there anything like CLIM available for JavaScript? My time playing with McCLIM years ago made an impact. I've made things inspired by it over the years, but nothing close to the framework itself.

<comment> lf-non Can you elaborate what you would expect from such a system ?

As someone not having much familiarity with CLIM or common lisp, I seem to be lacking the perspective to appreciate the relevance of this technology in 2018.

Things like support for truetype rendering, bezier curves, tab layout etc. are not exactly cutting edge advancements.

<comment><AUTHOR> These things are just improvements to catch up with rendering and things people require from toolkits currently. Where CLIM really shines is its model of presenting things (and this is something developed long time ago).

UI is not just a rectangular area where you slap things (which may be eventually clicked). It is rather a representation of the application state and possible interactions with it.

In McCLIM presented objects have types and inner state. When you activate command you may select arguments (which are typed) on the screen or by doing a particular gesture. Same object may be presented differently based on a view.

Relevance is not about sexy new things from the last month. I don't know JS well, but my impression is that rotation of technologies in its ecosystem is pretty big, what may be a clue, that abstractions may be just so-so. CLIM is a specification which covers many concepts required to build efficient and extensible user interfaces.

<comment> lf-non The rotation of technologies that depend on (and attempt to simply) the abstractions exposed by the browser's host APIs may be quite frequent, however the underlying DOM model seems very similar to what you are describing here. The web standards have a stellar track record of backward compatibility.

> UI is not just a rectangular area where you slap things (which may be > eventually clicked)

Web developers (or application developers) in present day world don't write routines to draw things on canvas (although you can if you really have a use case [1]). We program against the dynamic DOM tree, which presents our application state. We have sophisticated data binding libraries [2] to bind javascript models with the DOM tree.

The emergent web component standard appears very similar to what you describe as "presented objects having types and inner state".

> Relevance is not about sexy new things from last month

When asking the question my objective was not to deride the effort that has gone behind this project. It is just that the current application homepage does not do a very good job of convincing a present day developer the appeal of developing GUI systems using common lisp.

Also an X server is required to run the applications, which, excluding linux users, is not something most people have installed now a days.

[1] For example paper.js implements a scene graph model on top of canvas.

[2] Mobx is a popular library for transparent functional reactive programming in javascript.

<comment><USER5> I'm probably more familiar with JS than Dan is, so let me address some things:

You could, eventually, implement something similar to CLIM presentations with web components. You could also implement something a lot like webcomponents with CLIM presentations. They are quite different though.

I have not used MobX, but I just browsed the intro page (yes it's way better at explaining what it is than CLIM is). CLIM doesn't really compare apples-to- apples with React/MobX, since the abstractions used are different, but they are both approaches to providing simple ways of presenting and manipulating domain state with a gui.

In particular MobX _actions_ and CLIM _commands_ have some similarities, but also significant differences.

Also, (assuming MobX doesn't change this) React is typically used to provide declarative rendering of the full application state. CLIM allows you to do this, but it is more common to have each bit of state declaratively rendered, while treating the UI state imperatively. This was absolutely necessary 20 years ago, and is still often a good idea today (look at some of the gymnastics Netflix has had to do to make long-lists render efficiently in React; with imperative state you can just keep appending and CLIM doesn't care because non-visible state won't get re-rendered until it is needed; granted some of that is also because the DOM is a different level of abstraction than a local GUI window...). On the other hand, after doing some javascript GUIs, I think I'll be more intentional about when I make this divide in CLIM applications; declarative GUIs are almost always easier to reason about.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cuba's First Computer Factory to Make 120K Units per Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Cubas-First-Computer-Factory-to-Make-120K-Units-Per-Year--20161224-0015.html <comment><USER2> Fake News Alert: The article makes repeated mention of a "U.S. Economic Blockade" against Cuba, which implies that the U.S. prevented other countries from trading with Cuba. The U.S. merely had a trade embargo against Cuba that prevented U.S. companies and their foreign subsidiaries from doing business with Cuba. If Cuba's socialist economic system is as awesome as so many people say it is, it shouldn't rely on trade with a greedy rapacious capitalist neighbor in order to provide a decent standard of living for the people of Cuba.

<comment><USER3> My approximate knowledge is that a ship that lands in Cuba is forbidden from entering a harbour in the US for several months after.

This means that Cuba is effectively cut off from international container traffic.

I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I think that this is relevant information when judging if there is an "Economic Blockade".

<comment><USER4> I know nothing about the container shipping industry, but why can't specific ships only be used for deliveries to countries besides Cuba, with other ships being used to countries besides the US?

<comment><USER5> It surely makes the management of ships more complex. When a country is small and trade volume is small, it's vastly simpler just to drop it off from the logistics chain when entering U.S. ports is important and volumes big.

This was surely the point of the embargo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Telesur is a propaganda website. Just to inform those that haven't looked at the source yet.

<comment><USER5> Wikipedia: "TeleSUR ... is multi-state funded, pan–Latin American terrestrial and satellite television network sponsored by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Bolivia that is headquartered in Caracas, Venezuela".

You could perhaps say that it provides the point of view of those countries and their covernments. (Argentina used to be there as well, but withdrew.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lol, just looking at the titles of other news in this site is enough to pass.

</comment><comment><USER8> If anyone could benefit from Raspberry Pi, that is Cuba. With so many smart and educated people, with state mandated program, they could have spread those across the island for great benefit to all.

</comment><comment><USER9> The fact that Cuba managed to reach the standard of living that it did while almost completely disconnected from the world economy is remarkable, regardless of what you think of its political situation or what could have been if Batista held on to power. It will be interesting to see how their economy evolves as political and economic isolation is slowly phased out. I would not be surprised however if the United States refused to change its position without Cuba making great concessions to privatization and international investment considering those are the terms neoliberal powers have imposed on any developing country that wants to participate.

<comment><USER10> > The fact that Cuba managed to reach the standard of living that it did while > almost completely disconnected from the world economy is remarkable

How would you describe Cuba's current "standard of living?" You imply the country has a high standard of living but first-hand experience suggests otherwise.

<comment><USER9> For example, a lower infant mortality rate than the United States.

Also, this is a statement about a _relative_ change. What was the standard of living under Batista? Pretty bad unless you were one of the people who owned property or participated in the kleptocracy. There's a reason why Castro could gain the support required to overthrow that government in the first place.

<comment><USER11> Another thing to take into account is that similar countries fare much worse. Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, the countries that are somehow comparable to Cuba are worst in every imaginable way, even when they were not economically attacked for over 50 years by the biggest economic power in the world.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ChessMe board game 2nd Edition – chess without board - <AUTHOR> http://mancereus.github.io/schachen/ <comment><USER2> This is an interesting concept, but I don't see the point of the lack of a board. The key elements appear to me to be the drawing of and placement of pieces. The lack of a board just seems like it will lead to confusion in practice. It wouldn't be an issue in a tournament at a slower time control, but it would in casual games, even between top players, as pieces get accidentally nudged or slightly misplaced.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your are right that the key element of the game is the drawing and placement of tiles. I use the lack of a board as an eyecatcher, because it is easy to explain.

ChessMe keeps the essence of chess, but one play lasts only up to 20 minutes. The placements of tiles provides a new twist to the game.

We've done a lot of play testing over the last vears and got great feedback even from expert chess players.

misplaced pieces are really not an issue.

(Disclaimer: i'm one of the game designers of chessMe)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As an avid chess player, this looks surprisingly fun :)</comment>


Cities Where Job Growth Is Outpacing New Homes - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/09/affordable-home-jobs-building-employment/595195/ <comment><USER3> Same thing happens in Poland. There are only 4-5 rather small cities with good jobs + shitload of skilled and unskilled Ukrainian immigrants (like really, there are days when I walk through town and 80% people I pass by speak Ukrainian) + Airbnb craziness + no regulations + shitty politicians = it became impossible to rent or buy even small apartment if you are not highly skilled or not willing to share room with someone you don't know. It all happend in last 4-5 years. I was born in one of these towns (Krakow) and it just hurts me to see huge division in society, clearly there are lots of rich people that are getting richer every month, buying multiple houses and renting, and there are shitload of (some of them university educated) people living in tiny old Soviet era apartments (imagine whole family and dog in 400-450sqft). Actually many people don't even dream about own place. Both my parents and my grandparents were able to buy apartment without having any sort of education, today if I wasn't Software Dev I would be homeless. We are talking Poland here, can't imagine how much worse it must be in other actually real countries.

<comment><USER4> I worked on a project here in Norway, and I'd say that about 60%-70% of all construction worker on active projects here are Polish workers. Everyone said that buying an apartment or house is just too expensive on Polish salaries, but doable on the salaries they were making here.

The Poles here are extremely aggressive when it comes to work. They will gladly work 7 days a week, 12 hour days, if they get the chance. And many will share apartments with 3-5 other guys, to minimize living costs.

<comment><USER5> What else they can do in a depressing dark cold exorbitantly expensive place? Such foreigner is quite literally feeling paralyzed. Use all available time to exchange it for money. Any place to stay they get will be an overcrowded shithole anyway, which is yet another motivation to stay in work.

Meanwhile young Scandinavians flood Polish coastal cities for binges with cheap and freely available alcohol, and staying at airbnb at prices ridiculous for Polish salaries.

We build your stuff, you cover our streets with vomit. Yet you still feel superior.

<comment><USER6> > Yet you still feel superior.

$$$.

I'm Romanian so I'm kind of in the same boat regarding your situation. Might makes right. Make more money and prove them wrong.

Well, money's just a summary: get a better education, better living conditions, etc. Money well spent earns you respect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a housing problem in Berlin now, because there are a lot of tech workers are immigrating from India, Turkey, Russia and many other countries for work and the rents are over the roof.

<comment><USER8> I am not sure about Berlin, but for example in Milan (Italy) there are nonsensic prices for homes (London level prices with salaries of about half of the half of what you get in London) and they are driven up just by the movement of other italians from other (poorer) regions, or even other close cities, looking for jobs.

The main problem is that most high level - high skilled jobs are now in 2-3 of the biggest cities in Italy, and now everyone is trying to move there and so even more companies try to move their HQs there, and so on. I think a similar problem is happening also in others EU states.

<comment><USER5> Italian economy is so miserable and few opportunity hubs so competitive that most Italians in their 20s and 30s end up in Germany and UK. Meantime rich Europeans visit Italy each summer searching for _dolce vita_ and forgetting that 60s and 70s are long time gone. What an absurd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I live in such a city here in Norway. There are many reasons, but here are some:

\- Decades long centralizing policies, which have effectively removed gov / state jobs from more rural areas and districts, and centralized them to a select few larger towns. Lots of smaller towns and areas are dying, while everyone's emigrating to the same cities.

\- Explosion on college education. Our local University has a 10%-15% growth rate, every year. Students in turn need to live somewhere, and there aren't being built nearly enough student housing / dorms.

\- More tourism; We've had a boom in tourism, especially among Asian tourists. This has lead to expansions of hotels, and more people renting out their apartments etc. to airbnb

\- Other economic growth in private industries, which means more workers

\- Construction workers that need places to stay - we have thousands of construction workers coming here every year, none of them which own - or plan to own - housing themselves.

When I moved here, rent was around $400 for a small studio apartment. 10 years later, the same studio apartment is rented out for $1200...it's grotesque.

The lucky people are either those who's owned units since the 80s, or those that bought right after the last recession. I know so many people that have made hundreds of thousands, just because they bought at the right time - <USER2> renovations needed.

Edit: Just to give an example; In the city where I now live, a decent house will cost you around $600k-$700k. A "starter" apartment will cost you minimum $180k-$200k.

If you drive 1 hour away, the prices will be cut in half. If you move 1-2 hr flight time away, you'll probably pay 20% of those prices. And we have 15% down-payment here in Norway! Lots of young people will spend a solid 3-5 years just saving up for the down-payment.

One "life-hack" among fresh grads is to simply move somewhere rural if you can get a relevant job, save aggressively for a couple of years, and then move back to the city.

</comment><comment><USER9> Correct me if I'm wrong, but this methodology seems flawed. Using building permits per 1000 residents only provides an accurate comparison metric if the density of the housing is the same.

If the move is (as it seems to be) towards large multi-unit housing complexes, shouldn't we be looking at residential units created?

</comment><comment><USER10> Based on title alone, sounds like cities where remote work is going to play a prominent role.

<comment><USER11> Yes it's interesting that the SF area has such high demand for technology workers yet almost no space to actually house them (let alone all the down- and-out people living in parks & alleyways).

Sounds like kind of a disconnect between the business community and the government as well as the geographic realities of a city crowded onto a little peninsula, albeit of course with many suburban towns nearby but very heavily developed already.

I couldn't imagine being lured to the bay area for a job even for double my current salary (standard software engineer very low 6 figs). I have maybe $210K of equity in my current home; how much of a house is that going to get me there? I'd never afford a million dollar mortgage. Would have to be full time remote.

<comment><USER12> > I'd never afford a million dollar mortgage.

Well if HN is to be believed, $350K of total compensation isn't out of the ordinary for FAANG, so that would get you in a million dollar house.

Never seems to occur to anyone that crazy high salaries might be driving crazy high housing prices, not the other way around, though...

<comment><USER13> >Never seems to occur to anyone that crazy high salaries might be driving crazy high housing prices

It's the only logical conclusion. Married couples, each making well over $100k, competing with each other will obviously result in higher home prices, unless you increase the supply of the homes that those married couples desire. If you look at a map of recent home sale prices on Redfin or the real estate websites, you can easily see where all the doctors/programmers/business owners live in a town.

<comment><USER14> It's never one thing. Also consider crazy low interest rates and lax borrowing controls making it easy to borrow large amounts of money. This makes it easy to invest/fund companies, easy to pay more to your employees and easier for the employees to borrow more or pay higher rents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I ask the honourable HN readers, how much are you into all that real estate talks? I feel that second to computer stuff, the biggest interest of the tech people is property market.

Is it such a big concern even for so highly paid people?

<comment><USER16> Yes, because we're competing with each other. If there's 5 houses and 6 well- paid developers bidding on them you still have a problem.

(Pity the poor teacher, nurse, etc. who's just SOL)

<comment><USER17> Not just with each other but if landlords and real estate companies far more wealthier then us, which inflate the demand to a level that doesn't make any sense. That's why even earning a top 5% salary you still can't afford a home close to city centers.

<comment><USER16> I don't really see how I'm competing with real estate companies and landlords, though. How exactly do they inflate demand for housing?

I mean, if there's 5 properties for rent instead of sale in the example I gave you still have the same core problem.

If 100 people need homes and you only have 50, then the people with the most money they can/want to spend on housing will get it.

It's attenuated by the willingness of people to have roommates, move in with family (if around) etc. so there can be more latent demand than is immediately present. Even if you have no homeless but a whole city is 4 rich tech workers per 3 bed apartment, there's still plenty of demand.

<comment><USER18> They don't inflate demand, they inflate pricing. To buy a house you are competing with all the peope + all the companies that see it as an investment opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cities Where Job Growth Is Outpacing New Homes *(In the US)</comment>


Automatic REST API for Any Postgres Database - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/begriffs/postgrest <comment> steve-rodrigue Creating an API directly on top of your database schema brings the problem of impedance mismatch in all the client applications built directly on top of your new API.

However, if you create an Endpoint (Objects) based RESTful API on top of your database schema and then use this new API in all your client's applications, you will have the problem of impedance mismatch in only 1 application: your REST API.

For more information related to impedance mismatch: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object- relational_impedance_mis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object- relational_impedance_mismatch)

It might be a good idea to create a "build and forget" application on top of a RESTful API built directly on top of a database schema. I would probably use it for a movie website, since movie sites are normally built to promote the movie and forgotten after.

However, building client applications you need to maintain on a longer term, on top of a RESTful API built directly on top of a database schema is a terrible idea. It will get harder to maintain as the database schema evolves and the amount of client applications grows.

<comment><USER2> I don't see how this tool automatically introduces impedance mismatch? It is certainly possible depending on how the application is written, but I don't see how it _must_ happen?

<comment> steve-rodrigue Impedance mismatch happens often when directly mapping table's data to an object. When working with an API that match perfectly a database table, the user will have 2 choices (inside his client's applications):

1) Building an object from the data received from a REST call (which is the same as mapping a table's data to an object).

2) Create 1 or multiple REST calls to the API, transform the data and creates an object.

The chances that #1 happens is far greater... since #2 is normally done when building an endpoint (Object) RESTful API. So, if you would do #2, it might be a better idea to create an endpoint API and comsume it in all your client's applications...

If you do #1, your client's applications will be exposed to impedance mismatch.

<comment><USER3> I don't see how these problems from the object oriented paradigm necessarily translate to this tool. It assumes a lot about how one plans to use their REST API.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Overall this is great, and I am thoroughly impressed. I have a couple criticisms though.

1\. The API documentation is incomplete. I know this is fairly new, but information about upsert and the other operations mentioned in the intro video would be helpful.

2\. I don't like abusing schemas for versioning. I understand the purpose and I think there are many use cases where this is desirable. However what happens when you need to query tables and views in multiple schemas? There are cases where you could use schema search path tricks, but there are cases where you can't and I have such a use case. I would prefer being able to disable versioning and set the schema in the route.

<comment><USER4> Why wouldn't you be able to query tables/views in multiple schemas?

<comment><USER2> You can. I didn't say you couldn't absolutely, rather there are cases where you can't. Using the schema search path and/or joining multiple tables into a view allows you to query multiple schemas. The internal schema and relation structure doesn't matter. But since this tool takes over setting the schema for versioning at the API level, the end result is that, from the API's point of view, there is only one schema in the database. My question remains, how do I expose multiple schemas in the REST API?

I certainly could have missed something, but it doesn't seem like it is possible to expose multiple schemas in the REST API itself. This tool seems more geared toward providing a public REST API where the data happens to be stored in Postgres rather than a more generic REST API for Postgres. I would like the latter, but if that isn't the goal then that is okay.

<comment><USER4> I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "expose multiple schemas in the REST API" \- you mean pg schemas or how the API is structured?

(I wish pg named schemas "namespaces" or something else, schema is an overloaded term)

<comment><USER2> Yes I agree with using the term namespace instead of PG schema. I have also never understood why the default schema (namespace) is called "public". Why not "default"? Anyway let us say how do I expose multiple namespaces in the REST API?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting that it can handle versioning, and could be something to look into.

But generally, DO NOT tie your external APIs to your data model unless you can can commit to never changing them. (hint: you can't).

\--- Edit: The versioning is whole API versioning instead of resource versioning and works by using a different db schema for each version. This is a terrible idea and I wouldn't recommend using this at all

<comment><USER4> It's not whole API versioning. If you have a resource that has different behavior, you can bump the version just for that resource.

There's no reason you can't change your data model with this. Why do you think you can't?

<comment><USER5> The version numbers are tied to the schema. So if you have two resources, foo and bar, then they're both at version 1.

You create a new schema called "2", change the foo table and release it. As a side effect you also have two versions of bar that are identical. If a client creates a bar+v1 then it goes into the first schema, and if a client creates a bar+v2 then it goes into the second schema.

So you think "fine, I just won't publicise that, clients will only know bar+v1". You continue to make a few more changes to foo, bumping up the version number each time, and then you want to make a change to bar, so you do that and you then have a bar+v1 and a bar+v8.

\-- "There's no reason you can't change your data model with this. Why do you think you can't?"

You can with this through the versioning and different schemas. I meant more generally that exposing your DB and then making changes would break consumers of your API, forcing you to freeze your data model instead. Using schemas is a novel solution, horribly hacky but I guess it works.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you mean by "it goes into the first/second schema".

My understanding is that you use views to manipulate the data going in and out. The views are in the first/second schemas, but the tables that hold the data don't have to be.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. So instead of having a full copy of the database in each schema you would only create the delta and then simulate the rest with views?

And then creating a bar with version 1 to 7 would use the views in each schema to insert it, but it would actually be inserted into the database in schema 1?

<comment><USER4> The database tables don't have to be in schema 1, they can be in any schema, probably the default "public" one.

But yes, you don't have to have copies of the data in each schema. You only put the view definition into each schema, and the view definition is responsible for reading/putting data from/to the right place. And you bump the version whenever the view definition's columns need to change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a use for this. I'll be evaluating it. Anyone know of any similar projects?

<comment><USER7> You should probably consider OpenRESTy.

<comment><USER8> Another +1 vote for OpenRESTy, its simply brilliant ..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't really understood: it _generates code_ for your REST API based on db schema, or it is an app which magically turns urls into db requests by itself?

I don't really see any reason whatsoever to use the latter if I can use the former instead. It's simple and scalable approach, unlike relying on the lib would "do everything just right".

</comment><comment><USER10> How easy would it be to add Hypermedia support? Haskell does have some libraries supporting it.

</comment><comment><USER11> What's the usecase for this?

<comment><USER5> 1\. People that have an application and want to insta-create a REST API for it

2\. A backend-as-a-service for people that don't want to do any backend coding (mobile apps, web sites)

<comment><USER12> Those people need to think a bit harder before smashing out some automagical API that things will rely on for basically forever.

<comment><USER5> They sure do. I've written clients for services that have been autogenned from a database like this, and experienced pain repeatedly because every change they make breaks their API.

At least this product realises that and attempts to deal with versioning. Unfortunately that way is by pushing the complexity into the database.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> nice. this is really awesome as I've been looking to build a REST API just now using the data in Postgresql.

Video seems to be down.

Does this support hierarchies? Ex. a table with material path.

</comment><comment><USER13> What I really want is actually a way to turn a xlsx or a csv file into a REST API. For example if there's a subcategory column, I want it to be hierarchial.

<comment><USER14> You should be able to achieve that with this tool paired with postgres foreign data wrappers!

<comment><USER13> do you have more information on this?

or do open source solutions already exist that convert spreadsheet into API?

<comment><USER14> I'd start here:

[http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/file- fdw.htm](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/file-fdw.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems relevant.

[https://twitter.com/philsturgeon/status/544965192883261441](https://twitter.com/philsturgeon/status/544965192883261441)

<comment><USER6> I think most people here would prefer if your link had a better explanation/defense.

<comment><USER13> PHP seems to attract the bottom of the barrel "brogrammer" types.

Kayne West of PHP. That says it all.

<comment><USER15> "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "If you're used to servers written in interpreted languages (or named after precious gems), prepare to be pleasantly surprised by PostgREST performance."

then

"Ultimately the server (when load balanced) is constrained by database performance. This may make it inappropriate for very large traffic load."

ROFL. Bragging about performance, then "but don't use it for anything big". So instead of getting a solution which scales out with app servers in the "language named after precious gems" (straightforward), you get to scale out Postgres servers (not straightforward).

<comment><USER17> Hold on, do you think the Ruby implementation would _not_ be constrained by database performance? That would be impressive indeed.

The author's point is just that the implementation is fast enough that it will never be the bottleneck.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure if this is exactly where al2o3cr was going, but a Ruby (or whatever) application would normally include such things as caching and queueing. Despite the slowness of Ruby et al, I actually would expect a modern application with these layers to handle load much better than straight database calls. So I guess I would consider the PostgREST implementation a bottleneck because you can't add any of these layers.

<comment><USER19> Why couldn't you add a plain HTTP caching layer (e.g. Varnish) on top of PostgREST?

<comment><USER18> Yes, you could. My only point is that PostgREST limits you in what you can do in terms of handling load.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Google Maps Interface - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.fr/2013/05/new-google-maps-interface.html <comment><USER2> Looks nice.

One of the first things I do when using Google maps is hide the side bar until I need it. I want full maps, looks like I'll get it.</comment>


30 advertisers write letter of protest to Microsoft over IE10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.ana.net/content/show/id/analetter-microsoft

<comment><USER2> Because the only people who click advertisements use IE

<comment><USER3> Well no. But you wouldn't write a letter to those people about Chrome or Firefox would you? And also it's an option for Chrome and Firefox afaik. Whereas it's on by default in IE. Hence the letter.</comment></comment>


How 2 Guys Built Power in 8 Months for Less Than $500 - <AUTHOR> https://www.pixelsgaming.com/news/how-2-guys-built-power-in-8-months-for-less-than-500/ <comment><USER2> >> Leveraging their long-standing relationships with Mark Thimmig and Hunter Decker of Esportz Network and Alex of Pixels Gaming, it allowed them to secure a global partner with strong media coverage and a publishing partner with a large network of over 50,000 streamers.

I suspect this is the primary reason for success.

<comment><USER3> Also the 'less than $500' is misleading at best. I would understand not factoring in time if it was built in a weekend, but it was two guys for 8 months.

<comment><AUTHOR> The team was frugal and did what they could on their own to arrive at success. Less than $500.00 came out of their bank account and the time was spent willingly.</comment></comment></comment>


Saving Android From a Second-Rate Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2012/09/reviews-column-saving-android/

<comment><USER2> 1) True Android is the one that runs Android apps - difference in glow or purity not counted. They run, it's Android.

2) You cannot force your definitions of Android on people to get them to buy "the one true Android". People buy what they like. They like the S3 better than the Nexus. Talk about different priorities. S3 is starting to get the Jelly Bean update too.

3) There is something called emphasis in good designs. Android was designed to let people have choice. It was designed such that Samsung can ship TouchWiz and users can effortlessly install $ANOTHER_LAUNCHER to get the experience they want on the same phone.

4) Developers have dealt with complexity arising from diverse devices before. It is not a big deal. If you are crying about testing effort you aren't doing it right. If you care about reaching to 50% and growing number of Android users you are just going to have to do it right and invest in testing your app on most phones by releasing timed betas or buying your own dozen of phones. Remember it's been done before, done right and done by god knows how many developers that have good apps in the Play Store.

5) You can't crib about higher maintenance costs if you buy a big house. You similarly can't crib about differences in Android skins if you bought into a diverse ecosystem. Good news is you have a choice - care about purity, updates etc. - get the Nexus. Care about bleeding edge hardware, 2GB RAM, quad core CPU - get the S3. Care about iPhone-esque build quality - there is One X. As long as there is something I like there is no problem. If I don't like something in iPhone land - I have no recourse. That's their emphasis in design - less choice.

Android is working as designed - sure there are those upgrade issues that can be made better - but for the most part it is not the normal users who are complaining. As long as they can get things done with their Gingerbread phone they are happy. The next one down the line will get them a Jelly Bean phone that can still run the stuff they bought.

<comment><USER3> Android isn't just about apps. From utilities like Google Now, to aesthetics like resizable widgets. The android experience isn't waiting for your carrier to update your phone when folks with nexus devices are getting updates a couple of days after the update is announced. S3 might be getting updates but I doubt US owners will see one this year.

Why can't we get iPhone-esque build quality of the One X with regular updates and purity of the nexus?

I say manufactures should leave the customizations to the users, focus on hardware, and getting timely updates to the phone.

<comment><USER2> How do you think Google should do what you are asking it to do? Remember Microsoft is trying and going nowhere - their upgrades are still a fiasco - despite having a limited set of devices. It is simply not possible for Google to update those hundreds of SKUs out there to the latest version, all at once. The only way they could do that is by limiting hardware choices. People don't seem to like that.

There are rumors that Google will have as many as 5 manufacturers build a Nexus line that they will sell like they do the Galaxy Nexus today. May be that's as close as we will ever get to regular updates for a variety of hardware.

<comment><USER3> I like the avenue that Google is taking. Hopefully the hardware they use for their nexus devices is on par with their flagship heavily customized handsets so not to stifle competition between their devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get it, is he complaining about the Android OS or the UI skins that manufacturers choose to install on their devices?

Does this mean that if I apply a custom theme to my Windows7 install it is no longer "true" Windows7?

Older phones not getting Jelly Bean is a silly complaint at this point, can't we get past this?

I just really don't get these type of articles, I can only assume they are link bait since they rarely make any sense. Then there's the entertaining comments as people argue over their phones as if it matters somehow in their lives.

And here I am commenting on it, argh, the cycle never ends!

Is this guy trying to convince me of something? What's the point of this article?

At least the author justified his stance by describing the devices he's purchased. This has become the tech industries "I'm not racist because I have black friends" statement that is starting to appear in so many places now.

<comment><USER5> "Older phones not getting Jelly Bean is a silly complaint at this point, can't we get past this?"

I would imagine we can get it past it when every phone capable of running the newest Android version is allowed to upgrade to the newest Android version. Until then, it is an issue for developers who want to use the latest APIs.

<comment><USER4> I can't necessarily disagree, when it comes to developers. Just curious, what are these latest and greatest APIs that's preventing developers from producing quality apps because they don't exist on older phones? Is it because of security and/or functional updates to the OS or is it truly app APIs that some apps just can't exist without?

<comment><USER5> One example from the graphics APIs / changes:

"Earlier this year, Android 3.0 launched with a new 2D rendering pipeline designed to support hardware acceleration on tablets. With this new pipeline, all drawing operations performed by the UI toolkit are carried out using the GPU.

You'll be happy to hear that Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, brings an improved version of the hardware-accelerated 2D rendering pipeline to phones, starting with Galaxy Nexus."

[http://android- developers.blogspot.com/2011/11/android-40-gr...](http://android- developers.blogspot.com/2011/11/android-40-graphics-and-animations.html)

You can walk your way from <http://developer.android.com/about/versions/jelly- bean.html> backwards to see what is missing on older phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Once they get the manufacturers to stop using different launchers and dialers, then they'll also have to stop users from selecting different apps for each intent to preserve the purity of Android as Matias and Andy intended it. Or they could just not bother and let people buy whatever phone they like and install whatever they want on it.

Is TouchWiz Angry Birds really that different from MotoBlur Angry Birds or CyanogenMod Angry Birds?

</comment><comment><USER7> Android is second-rate because it's only in Jellybean that they've conquered the latency issues. People are using Android devices for passive consumption, rarely for any kind of content creation, because virtually all the content creators are and content creation software are already on iPad and have given up on Android, in much the same way that musicians almost exclusively used Macs for 10 years because nobody took audio seriously on the PC. That was OK because PCs had many other uses, but since tablets are more lifestyle than business devices, ceding all the early-adopter and tastemaker types to Apple was a huge mistake on Google's part.

Fragmentation is not that big of an issue among the Android users and developers I know. A craptastic multimedia stack was a much bigger negative.

I say this from a household with 4 Android devices and no Apple ones, incidentally.

<comment><USER8> I run a startup, we do iOS and android development. I switched from iOS to android last year with the galaxy nexus, now back to the iPhone 5. I can tell you we spend a ton of time dealing with fragmentation. Here is the issue. It takes you something like 2x the front end time to test on some devices (40 or so, which we own some and use services and friends for others). After you finish and release, you get about 10x the support request for all kinds of random devices, and it is nearly impossible to debug without the device. Fragmentation is huge part of the effort in android. As a user, I found many of my favorite apps didn't work. I had to use my old iPhone 4 for music, as Spotify didn't work for bout the first 6 months I had my phone.

<comment><USER7> Totally - I only know a small subset of developers, and that was low on their list of complaints.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The author seems to be stuck in 2011 when device UIs were rough, behind the curve, and the promise of a pure Android device would save the platform. The "second rate" Galaxy S3 is now massively outselling the Nexus and is the only Android device to outsell iPhones last summer.

<comment><USER3> It's just marketing. IMO, the GSIII is not a bad device, but pure nexus with Jelly Bean from google (hspda+ version, not the verzion nexus which should not be called a nexus device) is the best android (or any mobile OS) experience.

<comment><USER9> That's just opinion. I have 2 stock JB Nexus devices and yetprefer to use my GS3. If the sims were the same size I would use both since JB has the better voice stuff right now.

My point is numbers don't lie. The author laments the GS3 as second rate yet it's clearly the most in-demand device. The author is either deluded, had writers block (and dredged up an old premise), or hoped this might be a popular new link-bait topic.

<comment><USER3> Just saying, those numbers are driven by marketing, and the s3 is a newer device with better tech specs, plus the fact you can't get a JB device from any cellphone carrier.

<comment><USER4> And JB is required for a good experience how? How is JB required over ICS for that matter?

<comment><USER9> JB actually kicks ass. It's faster/smoother and has outstanding voice recognition. There's a number of small upgrades as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google doesn't care if android is a "second-rate" OS. Google makes money from people using google. More smart phones = good for google, regardless of the OS the phone runs. Android has been hugely successful in getting phone carriers away from their antiquated systems (remember life before the iPhone?).

Yes, the iPhone is massively successful, but there's billions of people in the world who will never own one, and that's the market that Android is capturing so well. And to do that, they don't need to be perfect.

<comment><USER11> Yes! People often lose sight of what is Google's goal compared to what is Apple's goal. The bulk of Apple's profit is in iDevices (hardware) and services (iTunes, AppStore, etc).

Google's core business is ads. They sell ads by getting as many people to use their services as possible. More devices running _any_ Android directly translates into more money from ads, and I think this article entirely misses this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article contains a common error:

"Every iPhone comes with iOS exactly as Steve Jobs intended, which means developers know precisely what they're getting."

On Android, that's not the problem. All Androids, as uglified by OEM add-ons as they might be, are highly compatible with applications. All Androids running the same API level of Android, even the Kindle Fire, run all the applications that use those APIs. There are optional APIs that some apps depend on, but those dependencies are also completely unrelated to OEM customization of Android.

The problem is that "customized" Androids are hard to upgrade. That means that, while all the iPhones that can run iOS 6 will be running iOS 6, there are many many models of Android devices that will never be upgraded to Jelly Bean. And that reduces the value of a lot of the Android installed base relative to Apple products in the field.

<comment><USER13> >The problem is that "customized" Androids are hard to upgrade.

Why are they so hard to upgrade?

<comment><USER14> Because after 6 months the supplier forgets they soled you the phone and doesn't release any more updates. You might be able to update by rooting the phone, but most people can't get bothered.

I've been once burned by HTC (Wildfire). One update after 3 months and that was it. Still runs Android 2.x. with countless major bugs, like 'when you click on one SMS message, it opens a completely different one'.

Is Samsung better in terms of update policy? Otherwise I will probably go with an iPhone this time.

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately, I don't see Samsung as much better. I was burned while holding a Galaxy S (Maxed out at 2.3.5) and Galaxy S2 (Maxed out at 2.3.5[US version]). As far as I know that is the end of the road for the S2.

<comment><USER16> I have a GSII (T989) in the US, and the latest official release is ICS (3.1).

<comment><USER15> I stand corrected. 3.1. sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Android was designed, I believe I read somewhere, to be the most carrier and OEM friendly OS possible for smartphones. It was meant to be skinned, loaded up with software by OEM's ad carriers, but still to act as a kind of compatibility layer between devices.

That alone solves the dev problem with Java ME that you would potentially need to do hundreds of separate builds for different devices and so on. With Android you have one version for all devices.

From that perspective, Android has gone beyond Google's wildest expectations and it solved at a basic level many of the Java ME problems, but that's not even close to the same goal that Apple had when they made the iPhone.

Why are people surprised that a system that was designed from day one to be what it is today isn't the same as iOS?

<comment><USER15> "It was meant to be skinned, loaded up with software by OEM's ad carriers, but still to act as a kind of compatibility layer between devices."

You are right, but this is definitely not understood by the masses or even tech-savvy users. iOS was built to separate the phone OS from the carrier, Android is some a bridge between carrier iterated phone OS and compatibility between the bunch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As an Android users I agree with the article. The very _least_ Google could do is get Motorola to use the "stock" Android. They really shouldn't care what the other manufacturers think about it. First off, they aren't using stock Android anyway, so why would they be upset about it? And second, they seem to be very willing to adopt a very "stock" WP8 OS on their phones, so again I see no reason for them to get mad over Google using stock Android on Motorola devices. Now, the hard part seems to be actually convincing Google to do this.

<comment><USER19> One of the weirdest things about this article is the fact _it does not mention wireless carriers once_. If Motorola makes phones with stock Android, but no carriers decide to carry it in their stores and on their websites, it is no different from a Nexus phones.

Former Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha previously suggested that phone skinning and customization was heavily driven by wireless carriers, as well as phone manufacturers: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697939/motorolas- sanjay-j...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697939/motorolas-sanjay-jha- verizon-and-at-t-dont-want-seven-stock-android)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Has anyone seen the Motorola phones they're criticizing? The DROID line is really, really good. The newer DROID releases have a Blur that is even more minimal than the already very-minimal recent Blur. When I watched the demo of the RAZR I (with Intel), I was floored at how clean Blur was and how close to stock it was.

Turns out, the RAZR M that's available like, everywhere, is also the same way. Huge screen, smallest bezel I've ever seen, same form as the iPhone 5.

I was a lot, lot, lot more worried about Android a year or two ago. A year or two ago Blur was god damn awful. And irremovable. And there were NO phones on the market that offered an updated experience or an unlocked bootloader. Today, we have the Nexus line. We have Motorola and Samsung offering "Developer" edition phones that we can load our own OS onto.

tl;dr Android customization has been reigned in, though likely because of consumers buying in patterns and HTC/Moto/Samsung realizing that fewer and cleaner modifications in Android allow them to perform updates faster.

(also, I think Google would do themselves a favor in more than one way by accepting T-Mobile Theme Chooser into Android proper so that Motorola/HTC/Samsung could use that to provide visual differentiation instead of brewing their own theming jars.

<comment><USER21> it's also not just about the skin being bad, it's about quickly getting updates. That's the bigger problem IMO. Both the phone manufacturer and the carriers seem to hold up updates, sometimes indefinitely. More important than getting TouchWiz/Blur/Whatever off the phone is getting the latest Android bits on the phone. If the manufacturers pushed their skin updates as quickly as Google can push release-ready Android updates I wouldn't care as much (although the recent Samsung security issue still gives us plenty of reasons to hate these customizations anyway)

<comment><USER20> I understand this frustration as a developer, but users don't seem to care, or else Nexus would be selling like hot-cakes. More to the point, as Android slows release cycles and focuses on things like "Project Butter", having the absolute latest becomes less important.

I mean, you're right and I do NOT want to be making excuses for the version fragmentation out there when Apple does such a better job with updates (granted, it's much easier for them).

<comment><USER4> But that's the very thing that people who should know better keep forgetting or are ignoring, the market doesn't care!

Find any random person that has a phone running Android v2.3 and ask them if it bothers them that their phone, which works perfectly fine every day for their needs, is not running the latest and greatest version of Android. I'm willing to bet most of them would not know what you're talking about and that they have no idea what version they are running anyway. You might as well ask them what version firmware is installed on their TV.

I'm also willing to bet this is true for most of the market for iPhones as well.

The average consumer most likely DOES NOT CARE. As long as the phone is in their price range, a carrier they like, and that it works for them then they could care less about the OS version. Whether it's Android or iOS.

Why can't people just be happy with the amazing things we have?

<comment><USER20> I agree that the average customer doesn't care but "Why can't people just be happy with the amazing things we have?" is a terrifically awful outlook. If people thought that way, we'd still be using Motorola RAZRs. The flip-style one, not the smartphone one.

<comment><USER4> I disagree, technology tends to move forwards regardless of the market's feelings towards it. Granted a great deal of technology is driven by the needs of the market but to say we would stagnate on one phone for a long period of time just doesn't work for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who will be the new face of openness at Google? - <AUTHOR> http://opensource.com/business/11/4/who-will-be-new-face-openness-google

<comment><USER2> Companies Change. Walmart had a Buy American program following the 1990's recession. Google's policies are no more immune to economic incentives.

Rosenberg's values From The Meaning of Open:

> _Open information means that when we have information about users we use it > to provide something that is valuable to them, we are transparent about what > information we have about them, and we give them ultimate control over their > information. These are the things we should be doing. In many cases we > aren't there, but I hope that with this note we can start working to close > the gap between reality and aspiration._

Schmidt's values:

 _"The Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it."_

[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wal- Mart#Imports_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wal- Mart#Imports_and_globalization)]

[[http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of- op...](http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html)]

[[http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon- valley/technology/122121-s...](http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon- valley/technology/122121-schmidt-google-gets-right-up-to-the-creepy-line)]</comment>