Blackphone - <AUTHOR> https://www.blackphone.ch/ <comment><USER2> The privacy issue in smartphones isn't the freaking application processor running Android. Sure, that ones terrible enough.

But the actual problem is the baseband processor running completely non-free software, with an enormous attack surface and access to all the interesting periphery (GPS, microphone). There is not just opportunity to compromise your privacy, Qualcomm and others actively implement such features at the behest of governments and carriers.

Oh, and if you plug that enormous hole, you get to the SIM card, yet another processor that you have zero control over, but which has access to enough juicy data to compromise your privacy. I highly recommend everyone to watch a talk from 30C3 by Karsten Nohl, where he shows a _live_ attack on an improperly configured SIM card that _remotely_ implants a Java app on the SIM card which continuously sends your cell ID (your approximate location) to the attacker by short message (without notification to the application processor, e.g. Android or iOS):

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B7XyVWgoxg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B7XyVWgoxg)

Carriers can do this today. (edit: that's a bit nonsensical, because carriers of course already know your cell id. Anyone with the ability to run a fake basestation momentarily (think IMSI catcher) can do this.)

<comment><USER3> The solution is for your phone to not be a phone. Strip out the baseband entirely, use usb or wifi to a 4G LTE dongle, do VoIP. Extra benefit that you can explicitly know when you're radiating (and thus being location-tracked).

Blackphone is pretty lame, IMO. There's something better coming from a trusted source in weeks, and plenty of work being done on the "there is no phone" phone concept.

<comment><USER4> "Strip out the baseband" of a dongle and you won't have a device that can connect to the network, authenticate, shift cells or anything else. It's like stripping the firmware off your disk drive.

Fully support the initiative for an open baseband. One reason it's not open is the (fairly legit) fear that intentional and unintentional DoS attacks would occur, affecting everyone in the area. It's really really simple to be an obnoxious cellular network citizen and it's pretty damn hard to police.

Baseband bugs that impact networks are common too due to the complexity. I saw a function point analysis of GSM vs 3G once, seem to remember 1-2 orders of magnitudes difference. Ahh Function Points, you flawed devil of a management metric.

<comment><USER5> _Fully support the initiative for an open baseband._

I would love to live in a world where this can happen. But we don't live in that world.

The carriers have paid billions of dollars for exclusive use of their frequency bands. And their hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue depend upon smooth operation of all devices on the network using those bands. They will use whatever means to protect this.

OK, so let's talk to the FCC (and all the other agencies around the world), and get some other frequency band we can use for our totally open phones.

Well... there aren't any open ones left in the good range of approximately 700MHz to 2GHz. This is the part of the frequency spectrum that has decent carrying capacity, good penetration, and not too high power requirements. It is basic physics. Go lower in frequency, and you can't carry enough bits to be useful. Go higher in frequency and you start getting stopped by walls and such.

All the good bands have been allocated in the USA and elsewhere for TV, existing carriers, military, satellite, and so on. At a minimum, you'd need tens of billions to lobby for and buy a decent chunk of spectrum. And you need to get the current users moved off, which they won't like.

All we have left are the 'crap' bands like 2.4GHz (microwave oven interference). 5GHz isn't too bad (not a lot of other interferers) but it is short range with the current regulations. Another open band for unlicensed use at 60GHz gets stopped by walls, air (oxygen)...

<comment><USER6> I don't understand. If I come to a carrier and say "Here's a codebase for your baseband. It's OSS, well tested, secure, and supported. Buy support from me." why won't they go for it. Surely, an OSS solution is cheaper for them than developing an in-house crap solution that I'm sure it is now.

Also, is there any harm in just open sourcing their baseband code? It seems to me that it's worthless without the license to use the frequency anyways, so who cares if the code is open from a losing business point of view. On the other hand, things like security review are to the carriers' and manufacturers' benefit, no?

<comment><USER5> _If I come to a carrier and say "Here's a codebase for your baseband._

The carriers don't want baseband code, they just want finished products to sell.

 _It 's OSS, well tested, secure, and supported. Buy support from me." why won't they go for it. Surely, an OSS solution is cheaper for them than developing an in-house crap solution that I'm sure it is now._

OK, assuming you get a current-generation baseband chip for free (it actually costs a ton of money to develop) with full documentation, you're still talking hundreds of millions to develop that software. GSM (a 2G technology) is complicated. UMTS / HSPA (one of the 3G techs) is an order of magnitude more complex. LTE (4G) is another order of magnitude more complex than 3G. The baseband code, plus all the testing code, plus all the testing required by the FCC, standards bodies and the carriers is a ton of money.

It costs millions to take an existing chipset (which has already been approved), an existing baseband codebase (which has also already been approved for use with that chipset) and put that into a modem and get that approved.

The chip vendors have their own baseband code now, and they are all in fierce competition with each other. They aren't going to just use your code, and they aren't going to let you use their chips either.

<comment><USER6> OK, thanks for the explanation. So it sounds like this comes down to vendors competing and not wanting to have their code exposed for fear that others might copy their chip + code when the vender is the one paying all the fees to make the chip + code usable. I guess this is similar to Nvidia vs AMD (vs Intel I suppose), except perhaps even more entrenched and without much hope of a community reverse engineering a solution.

This sucks. Do we have any alternatives? Are there any completely open radio chips in development?

<comment><USER5> _So it sounds like this comes down to vendors competing [...] I guess this is similar to Nvidia vs AMD (vs Intel I suppose) [...]_

Yes, exactly. Sometimes just seeing how something is organized, or the API can give significant clues to how it is done. It is much harder to start from scratch.

 _Do we have any alternatives? Are there any completely open radio chips in development?_

See my parent post. First you need a few billion dollars to buy some spectrum.

<comment><USER6> > See my parent post. First you need a few billion dollars to buy some > spectrum.

So that's the tragedy of the mobile computing revolution isn't it then? That communication tech is technically a free market but realistically is controlled by very few corporations with very deep pockets. I did not realize that this is how it was set up and now I am sad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Completely useless web page. All wooly 'feel-good' words and no hard, concrete information. So I guess we just have to take it on trust then?

Also, their privacy policy is laughable:

 _We turn the logging level on our systems to log only protocol-related errors_ \- great!

 _the pages on our main web site pull in javascript files from a third party. This allows our web developers and salespeople to know which pages are being looked at_ \- so instead of keeping your own logs, you are outsourcing this to a 3rd party with worse privacy policies, and who can now aggregate your website usage with other sites.

Why didn't they just keep logging on and get rid of the 3rd party bugs?

<comment><USER8> "Blackphone is re-shaping the landscape of personal communications. Pre- ordering begins..."

How is it re-shaping anything before it's started shipping?

<comment><USER9> "Pre-ordering begins..." is letting folks their idea validating strategy. I wonder what the threshold is going to be, 100, 500, 1000 or more pre-ordered phones.

<comment><USER10> It also helps to build a list of people who have something to hide ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd really like a phone that had the following features:

* physical switches for GPS, WIFI, Radio, Camera, Mic, write/read access to disk (go diskless),

* a secondary low power eInk display that is wired directly into the hardware that shows when the last time GPS, mic, camera were turned on (and for how long) and how much data has been sent over the radio and read from disk,

* a FS which encrypts certain files with a key that is stored remotely. If your phone is stolen you can delete this remote key. The key is changed on every decrypt. You also get a remote log of all times this remote key was accessed.

* hardware support for read-only, write-only files,

* hardware support for real secure delete on the SSD,

* the ability to change all my HW identifiers at will (IMEI, SIM, etc),

* a log, stored on a separate SD card, of all data sent and received using a HW tap on the radio/WIFI. The log should be encrypted such that only someone with the private key can read it (public key used to encrypt an AES session key which is rotated out every 5 minutes). If you think someone has compromised your phone you can audit this log for both exploitation and data exfiltration. Since the log is implemented in HW, no rootkit can alter it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, this is just a splash page and says very little.

It's in partnerships with [http://www.geeksphone.com/](http://www.geeksphone.com/) which is FirefoxOS based. But yet the Blackphone splash has an image of a phone with Android buttons.

They claim no hooks to vendors, so if it's Android I can't imagine this is going to carry the Play store.

I'd be interested in knowing how they will secure and make private the core functionality of being a phone and sending email and text, all of which are insecure.

On that, I'd speculate that this is just pre-loaded with Silent Circle apps, and maybe will be announced as having DarkMail and a choice of RedPhone.

But... there's no info at all really, so who knows what this is.

The only problem they really have to solve is the eternal question of: Is it possible to provide real security and privacy whilst providing convenience?

<comment><USER13> From the video: "PrivatOS is the Android you are familiar with"

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As others have pointed out, the baseband is not your friend. Was thinking about this recently, and saw no reason why existing POCSAG (pager) networks couldn't be reused to provide a completely passive receiver. Imagine a phone where the baseband was off by default, unless attempting to make a call. Voicemail/e-mail summaries were broadcast encrypted via POCSAG, and generate notifications just like a new mail summary coming in via GPRS/3G would.

Obviously usability would suffer a little bit (mostly in huge latency when you actually wanted to make a call), but seems like very cheap phone could be built that integrated a pager, allowing complete disconnection from the 'active' radio network, avoiding location tracking by your cell provider, or similar evil tricks by third parties.

<comment><USER15> > _" Imagine a phone where the baseband was off by default, unless attempting > to make a call."_

Except if everyone started using a phone like that, you wouldn't be able to call anyone.

<comment><USER16> You'd page them first!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Secure? They're rewriting the baseband, then? Color me skeptical.

<comment><USER18> Related story here [http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_syste...](http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_system_hiding_in_every_mobile_phone)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I agree with the fact that the website is still a little bit unspecific but this project is backed by Phil Zimmermann, he was the creator of PGP, it doesn't guarantee anything but it definitely means some smart people who are worried about privacy are behind it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Android having the most granular permission system ever seen on any operating system is already the most secure operating system.

The biggest security hole next to the baseband processor and the SIM is _the user_ who installs every app in seconds without checking permissions.

<comment><USER21> Not even remotely granular. Install XPrivacy[1] (which is still not granular enough for me, as it lacks filtering over function arguments) and see that categories are very broad.

[1]: [https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy#xprivacy](https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy#xprivacy)

<comment><USER22> Argument-level filtering would be awesome, but I don't know, the existing app+function level filtering seems to be working fine for me so far. The only real complaint I have with xprivacy now is the atrocious UI, and I'd really like some way for it to automatically fetch filters from somewhere so I don't have to bother with the permissions every time an app updates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://www.blackphone.ch/hello-world/](https://www.blackphone.ch/hello- world/)

I'm sure there's logic there - powering a very basic non-informative landing site with a WP installation that you took the time to customize, but not delete the default post and comment from...

But it certainly doesn't give me warm fuzzy feelings about the people behind this.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't really feel like a slave, maybe I am under reacting here. I am pissed the NSA is collecting data, I am upset at all the recent revelations we have had about data privacy in the last 6-8 months, but I certainly don't feel like a slave.

These products should be advertised on theblaze and infowares.

Sure there is a need for better privacy, but I don't really care for the fearmongering...

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm weird enough to be interested in these kind of things, but the whole site is really .. just fluff. Ignoring that and focusing on the sparse details of the actual thing:

\- High-End Android device

\- Privacy features in the (custom) Android version

\- "Secure communication builtin"

Again, I like the idea. But so far the details match CyanogenMod (with TextSecure for SMS, maybe XPrivacy on top)?

<comment><USER26> Yes, looks like an Android powered device. So, at the end is just another OS right?

One of the big drawbacks when I first started my nexus5 was that I was being spyed. Why the hell do I need a gmail account to get started?!

I wonder if it would be possible to install this Android flavour in a Nexus device ?

<comment><USER27> You don't actually need a gmail account for what its worth - Google just makes it difficult. On the screen where it requests a login you (seriously) need to tap each corner of the screen in clockwise order starting from the top left. That should skip the step.

<comment><USER28> That's useful, and user-hostile. On iOS you can just tap "Skip this step" if you don't want to use an Apple account with it.

<comment><USER29> Yet you need an Apple account to download anything from the App Store or iTunes... An iPhone without apps is barely useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How does this protect me from my carrier? No matter which phone I use they still need to record who I call for "billing purposes" and know which cell is closest to route my calls.

<comment><USER31> You could use p2p VoIP.

<comment><USER32> Not in Germany, where opening your WIFI makes you liable for all the things that might happen with this.

But only if you are a private person (or a small cafe/venue). If you are an ISP, you can operate hotspots wherever you want and charge whatever anyone is willing to pay. And you do not need to fear being held liable for your users actions.

[Edit] Meant to say, that since this change of law we do not have a lot of open WIFI-Spots anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> No mention of the thing being completely open sourced - or did I overlook something? If not, seems like something they should mention (I am assuming it IS open source?)...

<comment><USER34> Good point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Anyone thinking of making a video to sell a privacy product to mass consumers should probably stay away from creepy music and women walking around in all black hoods. Instead go for soccer moms buying stuff with her credit card or librarians doing research for a school kid. Let's not make secure/private communications something weird and creepy but something normal that everyone does.

</comment><comment><USER36> A site peddling a product that is supposedly about user control and privacy that won't even load without javascript...

The irony is almost too much.

<comment><USER29> Why? Check out the page source, everything is un-obfuscated, there for you to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Mozilla could take great strides towards this type of phone if they cared. Integrate tor, Whisper Systems RedPhone and SercureText, HTML tracking disabled, etc. I'm surprised their Firefox OS looks and works so much like every other phone out there.

<comment><USER38> Mozilla would have an awful lot of security work to do. If you check the CVEs for Firefox, there was, on average, a remote code execution vulnerability each week in the last 3 months.

[http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search- results?query=firef...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search- results?query=firefox&search_type=last3months&cves=on)

<comment><USER37> They have to do that work anyway due to Firefox OS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I would hate to say this, but people here and there, are cashing in NSA fiasco. I would have loved it more, if this was more focused on 'features' than playing with people's emotions. this is valid for everything currently cashing-in NSA issue.

As for, NSA spying how exactly can this phone ensure 100% secrecy. Given a user would have to use the same apps, and above all, the carrier that other smartphone users use.

Point is, US Govt is hellbent on spying on you. And they will no matter what. Either change the US Govt, or suck it up. Nothing else is gonna work.

<comment><USER38> The only thing missing in the video is Julian Assange as the narrator ;-)

Basically, this seems like a lifestyle device for pseudo-"hacktivists". And I expect people to install WhatsApp and Facebook on it. There was this article a few days ago: _" When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you're a hacktivist. Which I would probably be if I was 20. Shuttin' down MasterCard. But there's no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has WikiLeaks caused a look? No! I'm mad about that."_

[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230463640...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304636404577298132546958436)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Geeksphone is doing pretty impressive for a startup that they were launch partners for Firefox OS and now have roped in PGP founders for this project.

Were they successful in delivering on the Firefox phones?, Their website always says 'out of stock'. Blackphone seems to be ambitious too. Is it possible for a startup to sail these two boats?

Also I find it odd that the PR is always just before the Mobile World Congress (MWC) which happens in Spain, last year with Firefox OS and this year with Blackphone

</comment><comment><USER41> I like Mike Janke and all, he's a nice guy. But, he has backed out of RSAC '14 yet [1]? I find it a tough sell to call yourself a privacy advocate and legitimize and fund RSA by speaking at their conference. It also doesn't help Blackphone's cause.

1\. [http://www.rsaconference.com/speakers/mike- janke](http://www.rsaconference.com/speakers/mike-janke)

</comment><comment><USER42> True privacy on a smartphone can only be expected when software and hardware are 100% open sourced. This of course includes the source code for the 3 Os's that typically run on a smartphone. Anything that's running server-side cannot be trusted either. So we need client-side encryption/decryption as well.

</comment><comment><USER43> To even have the theoretical possibility of "privacy & security", both software and hardware must be fully open. And then there must be some way to check that the hardware and software you got in that box is actually the hardware from the spec, without extra chips. Those are pretty hard to accomplish.

</comment><comment><USER44> With all the respect what they have done so far, I can't see any reason why this is securer than the other mobile phones..

With the latest NSA stuff, I came to conclusion that a true secure system can only be built under these conditions and just to put it out there, this is just my opinion;

\- A computer company that manufactures their own hardware such as hard drive, ram, cables, network cards.

\- An OS that is newly written and not based on any other existing operating systems.

\- Building the whole system with INDEPENDENT hardware and software mentioned above.

\- Keeping the mobile device's source code offline from Internet as much as possible

These are just the first steps on developing a secure system, then comes the mobile network architecture and encryption etc.

I admit, it is not an easy job but, trying to develop a secure system with "not secure" development tools is not the right way to go :)

<comment><USER45> You're probably right about what's involved in building a truly secure smartphone from scratch that we can trust.

It's an interesting thought experiment, but I wonder if we can satisfy many use cases without having to build a truly secure smartphone.

For example, if I just want to have voice calls to a handful of people with the content of the calls encrypted, then perhaps I can just plug in a "scrambler box" between my untrusted off-the-shelf phone and my audio headset?

So rather than designing a secure phone where we trust the wifi stack, the baseband stack, the bluetooth stack, the graphics stack, the USB stack, the flash storage stack because we've designed them from scratch, all we have to design is a little scrambler box that just has audio in, audio out, some mechanism for key generation and exchange, and only needs a laughably modest CPU to do the encryption.

Don't really need an OS at all - single process and static memory allocation should suffice.

The audio encoding/decoding and encryption/decryption don't sound too hard to implement from scratch. It's the interoperability with the rest of the world and the UI that makes implementing a whole smartphone so hard.

[I do wonder though how well our scrambled audio will make it through the phone network which is applying lots of clever compression designed for speech.]

If we assume we can mostly trust hardware designs that are at least 30 years old then we can probably avoid designing all the hardware from scratch - e.g. there's probably some sort of Z80 clone CPU we can copy.

The mechanism for key generation and management sounds a bit tricky though. The user would need some way to add his contacts' keys to his scrambler box.

A keyboard and LCD display to type keys in by hand would be secure but impractical for long keys.

The level of tech needed to read a key file from a FAT filing system on a USB stick might be too high to be easily implemented securely. Any ideas?

I'm aware of the famous "trusting trust" paper, but I'm not sure we need to worry too much about the compiler used to build the software running on our scrambler box. All we need to do is choose a compiler released before we started out project and never upgrade it. It is hard to imagine a compiler backdoor that would automatically recognize that the intent of our code is to encrypt data and undetectably comprise it (though it would be wise I guess to avoid any existing implementations of cryptographic primitives).

Sounds like a hardware kickstarter project :)

<comment><USER44> "Sounds like a hardware kickstarter project :)" Exactly!!!

We may as well try it out! The concern will be the goal of the project...

What will be the output ?

Will it be just an experiment or business based project?

Never the less, it is exciting to see that a unique device can be made actually!

I would love to see how secure it would be at the end!

<comment><USER45> It is an exciting idea but the two obstacles I can see are:

1) When asked, people may say they want security and privacy - but in practice convenience and functionality win.

2) Among people who genuinely need secure communications, encrypting the content of calls/texts is good, but isn't normally sufficient - they're still vulnerable to traffic analysis.

By traffic analysis I mean that even though the adversary can't read the content, they can still figure out things like:

"Mr X is the ring-leader of the freedom fighters since his phone is used to send encrypted messages to several other phones, which then send messages on to several other phones."

"Mr Y is guilty of orchestrating the protests since we saw a strong correlation between the times of the protests and messages coming from his phone."

So I'm not sure how popular the product would actually be. Unless we can somehow solve the traffic analysis problem.

<comment><USER44> Traffic analysis is not a problem if we could ever gotten that far.

We can solve it by faking the signals and sending it every x timestamp. So they will think there is a traffic but there is not. This is the first came to my mind but i don't think it is a big issue at all.

Marketing of this, is a little bit different. Of course, you will not sell if you say you have the most secure phone. But if you polish it with some exciting features which does not exist yet? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Will the browser be OSS? Will the mail app? Message app? Maps app? If the essential apps that constitute a "smart phone" are not open source, at least the defaults, it's really irrelevant.

Not to mention that none of the providers have the code to the baseband.

I could imagine a phone that treats the baseband as an untrusted entity and encapsulates everything running over it. This would require forcing SSL for all HTTP traffic, and using some standard for SMS and Voice encryption that is on by default when the recipient on the other end also has a supported device. For those that do not you're unencrypted SMS would be exposed at many hops even if they smartphone were full OSS and trusted, even to the baseband level. So silo'ing everything where possible is a valid solution with closed basebands.

</comment><comment><USER47> Will someone please tell them to remove the clips in their video of testing a white phone in the interest of brand consistency? Also this idea seems like a solid game plan for Blackberry? They could rename their company "Black" ala P-Diddy v just Diddy. :)

</comment><comment><USER48> How difficult is it really to make a truly open source phone ? All it takes is one dedicated hardware company and a software company coming together.

Hackers have built some amazing hardware in past and we all know about how open source communities have built some of worlds best software. Google, Apple etc. are building devices where they act as gatekeepers and charge us for all nonsensical stuff. If you make a website there are a gazillion ways to promote it but there is only one way to promote and app. Pay some advertiser and you are totally at mercy of Google or Apple.

Firefox has been doing the right thing so far but they seem to take too much time.

<comment><USER49> The baseband or "The secret second operating system that could make every mobile phone insecure". It's used by _all_ phones and it's unsecure. Do they rely on the same baseband? Source: [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170874-the-secret- secon...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170874-the-secret-second- operating-system-that-could-make-every-mobile-phone-insecure)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> If I desire privacy would I buy a Blackphone, or would I buy another more common smartphone which I would then secure?

If you're "picked up" or detained and you have a Blackphone, or someone observes you using your Blackphone I doubt very much it would help your pricacy concerns.

If however you have a seemingly normal phone it might be overlooked and simply using it wouldn't raise suspicion.

My point is that this type of phone is more for the "regular" person who simply doesn't want to be monitored (as much) and not covert agents looking for a secure phone/platform for communication.

</comment><comment><USER51> This maybe a bit off topic but, why did Switzerland get the .ch domain instead of china. China seems to have a lousy CN domain ,( which reminds me of cartoon network for reasons that are irrelevant here).

<comment><USER52> CH is Switzerland's ISO-3166 code. The full country name is Swiss Confederation (which is Confoederatio Helvetica in latin).

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Does any one else find it odd a privacy centric phone's website won't load without scripts, cookies, etc? I would think they would have a text only version if items failed to load properly...

</comment><comment><USER54> Does anyone else see this as ridiculous attempt to profit off the NSA leaks. The video is about scaring people into believing their being "enslaved" and are coming out with a device that has "never before before created" that is aimed at "for privacy-minded, security-minded people". It's filled with unrelated words like "neutrality", "all walks of life", "innovative thinkers" to make it seem legit.

There is no mention of the methods used by the phone to ensure privacy.

</comment><comment><USER55> I know they are pre-launch and this is just a landing page, but it doesn't tell us much. Questions:

1\. Is this just a stock phone with some privacy-orientated applications built-in, or is the OS and hardware contributing anything?

2\. They seem to be using Android. AOSP or Cyanogenmod? Have they any work themselves to harden the OS? Are they using virtualisation?

3\. Any closed binary blobs in there? What about the baseband firmware? (Does open source baseband firmware even exist?)

4\. Whats the hardware like? Is it hardened in any way?

</comment><comment><USER56> Love the idea of a GSM handset that believes in protecting my privacy, however all their features seem to revolve around a secured Android OS.

Does anyone know if the actual baseband/wireless side has been designed with security in mind? -for example I'd love to be warned when I'm connected to an A5/0 "encrypted" GSM network, but I haven't been able to find a handset build in the last decade that's willing to warn me.

</comment><comment><USER49> "and anonymize your activity through a VPN."

iOS and Android support VPN but it needs to be manually _activated_ each time, making it rather useless unless you're using some public wifi. If I understand correctly there is a possibility for large companies to integrate VPN but for the average guy it's rather useless if you have to activate it. If this phone has VPN really integrated that'd be great.

<comment> mike-cardwell I understood that this had been fixed in Android a while back so it would start up automatically? Personally, I'm still on 2.3 which requires a manual startup...

<comment><USER57> If you could tell me how to do it that would be great. I'm still stuck turning it on all the time. Auto-on would be awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Isn't the problem more connected to the hardware and the fact that most people are already willingly using tons of applications who are giving information about you to companies like google (maps) twitter, facebook etc. If you install the apps with consent on your phone, and those apps have access to the linux or ios kernel runtime and syslogs then you're basically fucked from start.

</comment><comment><USER59> It's interesting that all the work being done on this "secure" phone is being done on non-secure hardware and networks. Presumably if interested parties think this is a threat, they can access all comms/data about this new phone, inject themselves where they see fit and compromise the final product.

Oh, and never mind compromising the people involved.

</comment><comment><USER60> No Play store in this I hope. I'm currently running Cyanogenmod without Gapps and I'm wondering what this will offer me.

</comment><comment><USER61> Looks like there will be several players in this market - an alternative is Indie Phone; [http://indiephone.eu](http://indiephone.eu) .. If it ever ships it should be a better alternative privacy-wise as they are building everything from the ground up (their own OS instead of relying on Android, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER62> This is not the 'first' phone to do these things. I had an idea along these lines in 2003, and some searching turned up a German company that was already doing it. Somebody bought them a couple of years later, and I don't know what happened to the phone. This sure isn't the 'first' though.

</comment><comment><USER63> Would it be possible to do the encryption outside of a normal phone, via some AD/DA converted plugged into the standard 3.5mm-headphone minijack?

I started a thread to discuss this idea:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7066792](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7066792)

</comment><comment><USER55> Renowned cryptographer believes his 'Blackphone' can stop the NSA

[http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/15/5310710/phil-zimmermann- si...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/15/5310710/phil-zimmermann-silent- circle-geeksphone-blackphone-launch)

<comment><USER10> Unless it's possible to power down the communications processor, install fully open source software on it (from the boot and up), and disconnect it from any antennas, I don't trust it at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> "You can make and receive secure phone calls; exchange secure texts; exchange and store secure files; have secure video chat; browse privately; and anonymize your activity through a VPN."

People. It's really secure, private, and anonymous, ok?

</comment><comment><USER65> I get the feeling this phone was designed by a marketing group, and not competent engineers. Unless they completely design every chip in the phone, including the SIM and wireless chipsets, the device will never achieve their stated goals.

</comment><comment><USER66> Their trailer seems a little too "inspired" by this First ELSE promo video from 2009: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHghZnOH8dA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHghZnOH8dA)

<comment><USER67> Exactly! I thought this whole black thing was some kind of spoof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> One should be concerned about privacy and digital footprints , but more or less it depends on how many people are looking forward to adapt this concept. People still use Gmail and facebook .

</comment><comment><USER69> They should probably work on the mixed-content SSL warnings on their own website. It's obviously not related to the security of the phones, but it doesn't instill much confidence.

</comment><comment><USER70> Unless they have some really special hardware in this, I don't see how its that much different than running cyanogenmod + secure applications on top, such as textsecure.

</comment><comment><USER71> >> _" Enabling revolutionary communications"?_

Eh? Wouldn't "Enabling secure/private communications" be a better, albeit less grand, descriptor?

<comment><USER72> Presumably they mean that literally: enabling the type of communications you need during a political revolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Please not another long scrolling page without any real info... shame, I might have wanted one if they had provided any specs or technical details at all...

</comment><comment><USER74> I thought it was funny, considering the top comments, that if I cntrl+F for "zimmerman" it takes me all the way to halfway down the page

</comment><comment><USER75> I stopped watching the video at 'Android'.

</comment><comment><USER76> How usable is Android without a continual involvement with Google? If you have to be involved with Google, there's no point.

</comment><comment><USER77> I am not getting it, how do you prevent the carrier from knowing where you are if you sign up to it with your number?

</comment><comment><USER34> While I see the reasoning, the name "Blackphone" just has too much of a racist connotation in America.

</comment><comment><USER78> Since NSA/FBI can reroute shipping boxes and install malware in them - do they have any plans against that?

<comment><USER79> Tamper evident holograms above each and every screw?

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> For a project concerned with privacy and anonymity the news subscription form is asking way too much.

Also, why is domain on .ch ?

<comment><USER81> I think it's just a (clever) part of their branding; Switzerland has long had an explicit policy of neutrality.

Not a super-reputable source, but succinct: [http://www.wisegeek.org/why-is- switzerland-regarded-as-a-neu...](http://www.wisegeek.org/why-is-switzerland- regarded-as-a-neutral-country.htm)

Official Swiss propaganda, but has more info: [http://www.vbs.admin.ch/internet/vbs/en/home/documentation/p...](http://www.vbs.admin.ch/internet/vbs/en/home/documentation/publication.parsys.0008.downloadList.9934.DownloadFile.tmp/neuteebook.pdf)

<comment><USER82> There's also a strong branding presence of Swiss products in UAE and China (including some brands you'd never hear of in Switzerland itself), there seems to be a very strong association of "Swiss Made" with luxury product. I've even seen opticians advertising "Swiss Glass"(?) in Hong Kong. Thinking back to a talk by the founder of Virtu, I wouldn't be surprised if the middle and far east are key markets for this type of product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> The phone image is missing. Check "images/teaser_site/img03.jpg", css #phone style.css line 396

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER84> I would personally be interested if they would provide security updates over a long period of time.

</comment><comment><USER85> Isn't this kinda moot if you're using any services that is domiciled in the States?

<comment><USER86> remember: as long as you are outside the US, you are safe from espionage

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> The website doesn't really tell me anything about the phone.

</comment><comment><USER88> I loved it when they asked for my full name to keep me informed.

</comment><comment><USER89> Is it an Android phone?

</comment><comment><USER90> Ouch, don't try this one on a slow connection.

</comment><comment><USER91> > Use the apps you know and love.

Ok, so how do they stop Facebook et al from abusing our contact lists and location data as they do on existing smart phones?

</comment><comment><USER92> Too bad they couldn't get the url blackphone.sh

;)

</comment><comment><USER93> Just get an old Nokia feature phone

</comment><comment><USER94> I think the Blackphone is a fantastic reaction to the problem of corporate and government spying. It will build awareness of privacy issues, and pave the way for other more secure offerings. A great first step.

</comment><comment><USER95> Personally, if I were really worried about privacy I would use burners or get a lineman's handset. It seems like a smart device that you use all the time is going to have the same problems.

So, yeah you can encrypt the voice channel. That's great. You can send encrypted text messages. The people involved are serious cryptographers. All of it sounds good.

You have to ask your self though, what is it you are trying to do? Who is your adversary? Other people here have mentioned it, but what about apps on the phone? Facebook is still Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER96> nowhere near as secure as a burner phone purchased in cash.

</comment><comment><USER97> Funny how there's a twitter link at the bottom.

Jokes aside, I think it's a great initiative, looking forward to see what comes out of it.

</comment><comment><USER98> It would be nice to order Chinese food anonymously with this phone. Looking forward to the release!</comment>


What Adobe's new pricing for Flash means for social game developers - <AUTHOR> http://brianrue.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/what-adobes-new-pricing-for-flash-means-for-social-game-developers/

<comment><USER2> We recently started using the Unity3D plugin in addition to Flash. We considered packaging Unity in Flash, but there are some missing features so we went straight for the plugin.

Our site is for 8-12 year old kids, so it's not the most technical audience. The Unity plugin installs in a few seconds without requiring admin rights-- even most computers under corporate lockdown can install it. We've had a total of one customer service complaint, which was resolved with a little explanation.

In conclusion, just for 3D content just forget flash and go straight to the Unity plugin.

<comment><USER3> "The Unity Web Player is not currently compatible with the operating system that you appear to be using."

Linux (Mint 12 / Ubuntu 11.10)

<comment><USER4> Frankly, even if the plugin is available, IMO the GPU drivers are so unreliable that it would be a hell to support and work around all the different bugs for such a limited audience, and I'm writing that on OpenSUSE 12.1 developing in gVim and experiencing random Gnome Shell crashes every 30-60 minutes (shell just shows background image then comes up in 2-3 secs) on ATI drivers. Opensource drivers are stable but have terrible performance with 3D. So even if it runs I don't expect it to be usable on my PC.

<comment><USER5> That's been my experience with the ATI drivers myself. Nvidia is far far better, but you can't exactly change a laptop graphics chip. I'm using the open source ones just so that I've got a usable system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jim-greer As far as I know there's no way for anything written in ActionScript to use ApplicationDomain.domainMemory, so this really does only apply to C/C++/Unity games targeting the Flash runtime (something that's not even possible yet). It wouldn't affect any game currently on Kongregate as far as I know.

Still not a good sign though. If you've got great developer tools, then charge for the tools!

<comment><USER6> The funny thing is that Adobe does charge for the tools. Flash Professional retails for $700!

<comment><USER7> <https://www.adobe.com/products/flex.html> <\- free. All the other tools can be found for free too, specific swf packaging, etc. But now it is down to sprite sheets so...

<comment><USER6> Very true. The SDK is free, but it's not like you're getting XCode or Visual Studio with that download. Their IDE (based on Eclipse, right?) is $500.

<comment><USER8> The flex IDE is based on Eclipse and it's awful to use

<comment><USER7> FlashDevelop and Flex work out fine for some people. Let us not allow one IDE to spoil all the fun out of something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the last time I was this angry about a software pricing scheme it was when movable type started charging — that really pushed a generation of folks into the wordpress camp for good. my bet is that we could be watching the decline of adobe. and not for nothing for you folks looking to start a business the entire adobe product line is waiting to be disrupted — the time may be right for a Photoshop or an InDesign killer. The entire CS line is bloatware at this point...

<comment><USER10> Why do we need a Photoshop or InDesign killer? I have never heard any designers complain about Photoshop, or any of the top Adobe products (Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks) for that matter. Flash is definitely on it's way out, but Adobe isn't going anywhere.

<comment><USER6> As a graphic designer with many designer colleagues & friends, I can tell you that we complain bitterly about Adobe software.

Since they purchased Macromedia, their tools have stagnated in features and yet somehow managed to get slower. That, plus their high price is reason enough to hope for a viable competitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra How would that even work? How would they charge a share of revenue for the use of the runtime? From both technical and legal sides?

I actually think it would be a huge hassle for development; it would cost more than those 9%: increased cost of development, less skilled developers, disasters when the complicated scheme doesn't work, sales ping-pong expensive in both time and money.

I think would especially hurt overseas developers (think Asia).

Over the net, any process that requires approval from both sides (a contract perhaps) goes hundred times slower than process that doesn't (the current distribution of flash player and tooling doesn't). Increasing the distance, in form of borders, cultural difference and raw miles, slows it down even more. And certainly Adobe would hurt their potential partners by understanding their business poorly and trying to apply the same set of expectations worldwide.

It seriously would not fly. Bye bye flash.

<comment> guard-of-terra Also it seriously would not work: Take google street view. It obviously does want the advanced 3D rendering. But what do they have to pay Adobe? Street view itself displays no ads (does it?) but it boosts the Maps which do generate revenue, but they also boost Search which generates a lot of money. What would that 9% be calculated from? Would there be a long ping pong session between Adobe sales and the customer? How long before the customer (google in this case) decides SCREW YOU GUYS, I'M GOING HOME?

Now, imagine it's not google but some local player (think DAUM) Adobe would naturally react to their queries as if they were some indigenous people calling. They would for no second care what's they up to. They'll cite some entirely unrealistic demands and then lose their mail; it would not end up good.

<comment> shock-value No, they would only have to pay if they used 3D rendering AND "domainMemory". I don't even think domainMemory is available for access in regular AS3 unless Adobe recently opened that up (I know Alchemy C++ and Haxe can use it). For something like Street View using domainMemory would likely give no appreciable performance gain, since StreetView would use just a few unchanging textures and vertices which would already be handled efficiently by stage3D.

The fact that they are charging only if 3D is used in conjunction with domainMemory really limits the kinds of apps that would be subject to this revenue sharing--although it's true that memory intensive games would likely want both of these features.

<comment> guard-of-terra Thanks for clarification; I've missed "both".

I'm not sure 3D graphics is a key for social games. And more serious games like MMORPG usually have no trouble making players install a dedicated client program.

It's just me or they are targetting a pretty narrow market here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> IE 10 touch and iOS won't work with Flash anyway, so I would hope social game developers are at least looking at HTML5 for their next projects.

I sometimes wonder why their isn't a cross platform "game browser"? It seems one of the cross platform game engines could do a much better job than flash. Adoption is a problem, but people seem to be able to download a lot of apps these days.

<comment><USER12> A big reason that Flash still wins for game development is that audio support sucks in HTML5 and silent games are no fun. An example - Mobile Safari only lets you play sound on one channel.

<comment><USER13> Flash is also anywhere from 2 to 3 times faster then html5+javascript for high performance games.

<comment><USER11> I'll take that as a given, but that isn't the whole story anymore. A PS/3 has better performance than Flash, but it is harder to program for, harder to distribute on, and has a much smaller market share. Flash has been losing market share for a while, and now the cost of distribution is going to be an issue. The likely successor is HTML5 (at least for browser market share). It is not as performant and the tools are not as good, but its what we got unless someone does something interesting and radical.

<comment><USER14> Flash isn't harder to program for or distribute on. It's so easy to build in kids make games, and it's so easy to distribute since they're a single self- contained file that those kids can make games that get country-sized volumes of traffic playing them.

<comment><USER11> I said programming & distribution on the PS/3 are harder than Flash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm an Adobe Flash fanboy, but even I'm starting to become pro HTML5 for rich media. I can't understand why Adobe is making these decisions when they're competing with an upcoming technology that has a such large & growing fanbase.

This 9% completely changes the distribution model. Previously when you made a swf, it's yours to keep and do as you want. You paid for the tools to make it, in the same way you pay for a hammer. Now you're being charged for running the swf in certain ways, which will make policing it hard, scare off new developers and cause pointless lawsuits.

<comment><USER16> "I can't understand why Adobe is making these decisions when they're competing with an upcoming technology that has a such large & growing fanbase."

I think Adobe is currently a divided company. Part of it want to remain with Flash and view HTML5 as a competitior, while the other part is into HTML5 and see it as the future. Adobe makes their money from development tools, after all. The technology used to present the content is less important as long as people use their tools, even if Flash player gave them a sort-of monopoly on it's creation.

<comment><USER17> I don't see a division between Flash & HTML. I see it as a division between their legacy as a creative platform vs. their focus on enterprise SaaS.

<comment><USER18> I see it as a bunch of MBAs hearing of Facebook's user base, Zynga's Flash games, and Apple's app store revenue and being driven mad with jealousy and using the term "uncaptured revenue" to convince themselves that this course of action is right.

Of course that's silly and I'm revealing my biases here a little, but sometimes this degree of cynicism turns out to be right.

<comment><USER7> A lot of times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Adobe just figured out a new scheme to make themselves even less appealing. Bravo.

<comment><USER18> I wonder how long Oracle is going to be able to hold themselves back from doing the same to Java?

<comment><USER20> Get your first 10 JPanel()'s free!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The author does point this out, but it might not be clear to everyone...

 _"Games and applications using either hardware accelerated Stage3D or domain memory individually do NOT require a premium features license."_

So if you're just using Stage3D you're fine.

Also...

 _"Net revenue is calculated as revenue after taxes, payment processing fees, and social network platform fees are subtracted."_

Personally I don't think taking a percentage of sales is a bad thing considering the R&D that Adobe have continued to invest in Flash. Having said that I think 9% is a ridiculously high percentage.

</comment><comment><USER22> Flash is getting less and less useful for web-browser development. Javascript + HTML5 is so much better.

<comment><USER7> I think that was always the natural order for it. Only some special commercial/marketing projects called for Flash. You ended up with menus made in Flash at some point for no other reason than an actionscript coder got the job... it happens. Web-browsing and rich content got mixed back there... let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Before we start another huge chain of people saying this is the death of Flash because all the developers will leave the platform due to revenue sharing, please read what the requirements actually are. This will only apply to very specific apps and developers. Unless you are planning to use Unity or UnrealEngine in Flash, this will most likely not apply to you.

<comment><USER24> Right now it applies to very specific apps and developers. Tomorrow, if this model shakes out favorably to Adobe, it may not. The frog boils slowly.

<comment><USER25> This is not particularly enlightening. Any number of things are possible. It was possible for Adobe to institute unreasonable pricing terms before this announcement too.

EDIT: Uh-oh, somebody downvoted this. Quite worrisome, because right now it only applies to my comment, but tomorrow, it may not. Right? Because apparently one data point constitutes a trend.

<comment><USER26> well, now there's less doubt about it for one thing.

<comment><USER27> Exactly. They could ask for all tech to be covered, not just the two in question.

<comment><USER25> They could have done it five years ago too. And you could shoot your grandmother tomorrow. We can play the "So-and-so could potentially do X" game forever. There is an almost infinite range of possibilities in the universe. Pointing out mere possibility is uninteresting at best and deceptive at worst.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> while this move by Adobe looks bizarre, I'm worried about the random numbers thrown up in the paragraph about revenue. He's claiming it takes $2.50 to acquire a user, leaving $0.50 for everything else (development, support, hosting, etc).

Am I missing something, or does he really spend 5/6ths of his income on marketing his product?

<comment><USER18> How else could a software developer like Zynga with record revenue (up 59% to $311M) take a loss?

<http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/14/zynga-earnings/>

Reading statements like this

 _"And average daily bookings per average DAU increased from $0.055 in the fourth quarter of 2010 to $0.061 in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 11%_

makes the new 9% of net demanded by Adobe sound absolutely outrageous.

<comment><USER28> Your link says the loss includes "$510 million of stock-based compensation expense for restricted stock units issued to employees" - that's not marketing.

<comment><USER18> Good point, that must be it. It seemed consistent with something I remember reading last year where they had made some implausibly small profit. For example, the article says:

 _Non-GAAP EPS was $0.05 for the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to $0.09 for the fourth quarter of 2010._

I think what this really proves is that I don't understand GAAP or SEC accounting and things look especially mysterious to me around the time of an IPO.

Thanks for pointing that out.

<comment><USER28> As I don't speak much in the way of financespeak, that was about all I could understand from the link anyway :) "Non-GAAP EPS" doesn't ring any bells to me... it just reminds me of whatever acronym-of-the-year my last company would use to 'prove' we weren't making a loss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> From what I understand at this point, Adobe's decision seems to want to nail Unity by confusing its developers when it comes to the new licensing scheme. It is very important for Unity to (over)explain the terms.

The cases where the new terms will apply seem to apply primarily to paid flash-based games. The problem is: who does pay for flash games? These games are not on mobile devices and on my browser I have never felt the need to purchase a Flash-based game.

So, to me, it looks more like a scare tactic aimed at Unity's developers. This will protect the development tools that Adobe is selling. Let's be frank: you either provide the tools for free and charge for the distribution (the Apple way)or you charge for the tools and provide the runtime/distribution for free (the Adobe way). It might be a generalization, but the gist is there. Is Adobe planning to give the tools for free? I am sure as hell they're not. So, we should start complaiing that Adobe is not open and that they are imposing unfair controls on developers. (Does it ring a bell? – Adobe vs Apple)

<comment><USER30> People using the likes of Unity or UDK to create Flash games would not need the Flash tools. Adobe's Flash division simply does not sell tools to create the kind of content that requires 'advanced 3D' features. It therefore makes sense to expand their business model to include their most successful product (the Flash runtime).

I think it's absolutely fine for them to try that, but going for royalties rather than a fixed fee may just blow up in their face.</comment></comment>


Biggest causes of instability on Windows: malware changing Chrome data on disk - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting/posts/2NnYuCKsGzG <comment><AUTHOR> The immediate implications of this are bad enough: that there exists what's essentially a state of open warfare between applications and processes _running under the same user state_ on Windows.

More generally, though, is the question of whether or not the concept of a general-purpose computer, in which a user launches applications, without any central vetting of those applications, or sandboxing of them, is viable.

We've seen earlier models of cooperative co-existence of applications in memory and processor resource claims give way, through protected memory and preemptive multitasking. Now the challenge is that individual processes cannot be trusted to leave well-enough-alone the data of other processes, even under the same userID.

The questions of how Google chooses to respond to this are interesting (better armour, more aggressive protection, countermeasures, seperate userspaces... ?). As what this suggests for both OS design (much the same) or software ecosystems.

I've noted before that the Google Apps store had over 2 million applications as of 2-3 years ago, a number that's all but certainly grown since. Whilst Linux is somewhat notorious for having a large number of applications (I counted 178 entries for "text editor" via 'apt search' on a recent Debian Jessie install), the same search reveals nearly 260 entries on Google Play. And several of the Linux entries are support and related packages, not applications as such.

At what point does a competitive applications marketplace backfire in encouraging, intentionally or otherwise, Very Bad Behaviour?

Be careful what you incentivise for.</comment>


A scientist just turned 104. His birthday wish is to die - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/04/30/a-scientist-just-turned-104-his-birthday-wish-is-to-die/ <comment><USER2> It won't be long before there are millions of centenarians.

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

It's unfortunate that we know so little about aging.</comment>


Islanders Who Killed American Have a History of Guarding Their Isolation - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/asia/andaman-sentinelese-missionary.html <comment><USER2> I was recently in the Falkland Islands and met a local guy, maybe 35, who had traveled to London (and off the island for the first time in his life) for medical treatment. They have internet access and all kinds of modern technology available on the Falklands, though it's kind of slow, but this gentleman had never been in an elevator before. He'd never even heard of them. And he was simply fascinated by the concept of a little room that moves from floor to floor that replaces stairs. He said he just never thought about how people got to the top of tall buildings in a city. I've honestly never thought about elevators more in my life than I have in the 20 minutes I talked to this guy. It was incredible.

Reading about the Sentinelese and Chau recently I can't help but wonder what sort of things Chau had in his backpack that they're now looking at for the first time. I wonder what they'll do with the stuff. Bury it? Destroy it? Use it as we do? Come up with different ways to use things that we've never even thought of?

A ziploc baggie, for example. These are maybe the only people in the world who have no preconceived notions of what a ziploc baggie could or should be used for. Can you imagine being a fly on that wall as they all brainstorm its potential functions?

<comment><USER3> JFYI, there is a wonderful little book by Eric Scheurmann about an islander (a chief in his community in Samoa) that traveled in Europe in the first years of the 20th century.

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

Whether it is real/accurate, or just a fiction/hoax:

[http://www.thelooniverse.com/strips/realfreepress/papalagi.h...](http://www.thelooniverse.com/strips/realfreepress/papalagi.html)

it remains very pleasant to read.

I don't think an English full version is easily findable, here are some parts of it:

[http://www.nonduality.com/papalagi.htm](http://www.nonduality.com/papalagi.htm)

<comment><USER2> Awesome! Thanks for sharing! I'll definitely check it out</comment></comment></comment>


Fork in the road for Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://gigaom.com/2014/12/05/fork-in-the-road-for-node-js/

<comment><USER2> I haven't followed io.js development at all, so don't know what all the projects goals are, but I really hope this doesn't lead to different server implementations/stdlibs for js on the server, the rate of change is insane in js land as is.

Do js devs not go insane? I mean you have grunt/gulp, webkit/blink/gecko, atom-shell/node-webkit, backbone/react/angular, ecsript harmony, one year from now I can almost garanty half of those things just listed will be out of date if history is any indicator of the future. The only place of solace in the js world that has remained a standard for a prolonged period of time is jquery.</comment>


Why you should contribute to Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://shalinsays.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-you-should-contribute-to-open.html <comment><USER2> shouldnt be new to most people, but worth repeating

<comment><USER3> FWIW, I agree that it's a thought-provoking and interesting article that deserves to be well known. However, it's not only not new, but it was posted just 12 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=916530>

Still not entirely sure I completely agree with it ...

<comment><AUTHOR> The submission url is the same so I am surprised I was not redirected to the originally submitted thread.</comment></comment></comment>