Why We Do All-Hands Support at Olark - <AUTHOR> http://www.olark.com/customers/why-we-do-all-hands-support <comment><USER3> I worked at a SaaS startup that did this, and found pretty similar benefit: quicker fixes, and a better understanding of real customer needs.

Eventually we made it optional though, because we found that a minority of our developers _really_ disliked it. Which I can understand- not everyone enjoys interacting with customers and answering dumb questions like "can you reset my password?"

I personally found it really valuable, though. After the hundredth password reset request, I was pretty motivated to make our password reset function easier to find. :)

Some pitfalls to be aware of, though:

1\. This only works when the people doing support feel empowered to improve things, either because they can do it themselves or because they feel they are listened to by whoever can. For example, I can say to our founder over lunch: "People have been complaining about X a bunch this morning. How about we do Y to address that?" Then we'd discuss it, and I could build it that afternoon. For smaller fixes, it was often just posting on our group chat: "Hey, I'm fixing A by changing B" and merging it if no one objected.

Without this ability, though, it could easily get frustrating. If you're being forced to deal with repeated customer issues you have no power to address, it can feel more and more like an unproductive burden.

2\. It can have trouble scaling with the complexity of your product. We were targeting small businesses when I started, and I was able to answer most questions about our product by myself. As we got bigger, though, and started introducing more complicated features aimed at the needs of larger companies, there were more and more features that I didn't have a solid grasp on. I probably could have kept the whole product in my head a lot longer if I were a full-time support worker, but as a dev I only did 5-10 emails per day,a nd didn't have the time to devote to learning some of the more esoteric aspects of our product.

3\. Not everyone is cut out for customer service. We tried to hire good developers with personalities we wanted to work with. That often, but not always, overlapped with the type of communication skills necessary to be an effective support person. We had a few developers who lacked the patience to deal with slower customers, or weren't really good at explaining things clearly to them.

<comment><USER4> >" If you're being forced to deal with repeated customer issues you have no power to address, it can feel more and more like an unproductive burden."

You have summed the standard customer support experience so distinctly.

<comment><USER3> Yep. I worked tech support part time in college- I remember. :)

When implementing an "everyone does tech support" system, though, remember that at least some of your employees won't have much trouble leaving if they find themselves hating the experience. When they have to deal with customer complaints, but can't do anything to fix them, they may well move to a company where that's not the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> National Instruments does something interesting with their customer support. NI is one of those companies that hires mostly college grads then tries to keep people around forever. If you are a college grad hired into NI, will will spend 6-12 months in their customer support division. This applies to almost everyone regardless of degree.

They do this for a few reasons from what I understand. It helps indoctrinate newhires to the NI culture. It also helps the people figure out what department they will enjoy and be a good fit into, as they will get exposure to a large part of the companies product portfolio.

<comment><USER6> The MathWorks (makers of MATLAB & Simulink) do this too. For their new hires coming from an MSc/PhD, you spend the first 12-24 months in the Tech Support group as a Tier I with a rotating schedule of 1 week of phone/email support and the next week spent working on a project of your choice with one of the many Dev/QA/BaT/doc/etc groups. The idea is that once you've completed a handful of different projects, you've had a chance to figure out what you like to work on, what group you'd like to work with, and the groups get a chance to see what it's like to work with you for several months on a real project. Once you've been there for 12-24 months you typically apply for a job somewhere else in the org, although some people find that they enjoy doing support and move up into Tier II/III. It's not like doing support for Comcast, you get to talk to a lot of smart people with interesting/challenging questions and issues :)

<comment><USER7> As Mathworks customer, I've come to hate this, since this involves talking to clueless people with superficial information. Every question that involves something slightly more complex is dispatched to deeper support levels and regurgitated in a more or less screwed up way to me by the tier one guy/gal.

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry your experiences have been less than positive. When I worked there I followed the path that I described above, and the other Tier I folks I worked with were nearly all smart and helpful. And whenever the customer had complex support questions and it was clear they were clued-in themselves, we usually were able to hand them over to the Tier IIIs to work things out directly between them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is in pretty stark contrast to yesterday's article about devops:

> Somewhere along the way, however, we tricked ourselves into thinking that > because, at any one time, a start-up developer had to take on different > roles he or she should actually be all those things at once.

> What began as an experiment aimed at increasing software quality has become > a farce, where the most talented employees are overworked (while doing less, > less useful work) and lower-level positions simply don't exist.

> Large companies love this, as it means they can hire far fewer people to do > the same amount of work. In the process, though, actual development becomes > a vanishingly small part of a developer's job.

[http://jeffknupp.com/blog/2014/04/15/how-devops-is- killing-t...](http://jeffknupp.com/blog/2014/04/15/how-devops-is-killing-the- developer/)

I certainly wouldn't be happy with a developer position that made me do tier 1 customer support. That stinks more of "absurdly cheap" than "connecting with customers."

<comment><USER9> My experience says that if you're responsible for building a product, it's way cheaper to be directly in touch with the end customer so you can fix what you're building. It's better than having a legion of product managers, sales people, business owners in between you and the user.

If you're a developer who is oriented around building products that sell and are loved by customers, it's pretty addictive to talk to customers to find out what they think of what you built.

<comment><USER10> I disagree quite strongly. In theory it works like you suggest - <USER2> see problems, and they're motivated to fix them in a permanent fashion so they won't ever have to deal with them again. In practice, there are multiple equilibria. The good equilibrium is what you describe and what I've summarized above. The bad equilibrium is that the team is short staffed and developers are too busy putting out fires to actually implement the architectural changes required to prevent the fires from starting in the first place. If you're building an organization where developers are expected to do operations work, you _have_ to think about the latter case. If you don't, you can very easily fall into a trap where your core infrastructure stagnates because developers are too busy coming up with the next hack to fix the ongoing outage to step back and think about broader changes that will make the entire system less painful in the future.

In fact, this is one of the things that Steve Yegge cites in his famous essay [0] about how Google, organizationally, is better than Amazon:

        And their operations are a mess; they don't really have SREs and they make
        engineers pretty much do everything, which leaves almost no time for coding -
        though again this varies by group, so it's luck of the draw.

At a small company like Olark, they may be able to get away with this because their product is small, their team is small, and so by necessity they have to do everything. But once their product grows, or their customer volume grows, it's very easy to get sucked into a very painful trap by having your engineers be your ops and your customer support.

[0] [https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX](https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

<comment><USER9> As they say, there are an infinite ways to fail but only a few paths to success. If your engineering is so out of control you're constantly in crisis mode, you have more important problems than customer empathy. I think that's an orthogonal issue.

It's not about asking engineers to do support because you don't have any support capacity. At Olark, we also have a dedicated customer support team. Same thing at FreshBooks where I used to work that also does all hands support. These teams are professionals, and are responsible for ensuring we have world class support practices.

So, we don't ask the engineers (or marketing or design) to be on support because no one else will do it. It's just the way we keep everyone close to the customer.

The Jeff Bezos story in Steve Yegge's post is exactly the reason why I like working at companies that keep engineers close to the customer. It cuts down the BS of opinionated product people thinking they know what customers want when they don't have real experience with customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's pretty interesting to think about how to scale rotations of All Hands Support. It's one thing when you are like 4 people, but as you build a company there are a lot of resource constraints to think about. What's the biggest company you guys have seen that still does rotations?

<comment><USER11> I believe Zappos makes all new employees do a one time two-week rotation on the support team, regardless of their position.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen it done at on-boarding with companies like Freshbooks and Zappos, but I am not sure how often that experience is renewed. (i.e. the rotation aspect being more than one time)

Engineers at Zappos do support for just a few hours a year doing peak season after that onboarding. With a program called "Holiday Helpers" \- [http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/zappos- family/2011/12/20/holid...](http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/zappos- family/2011/12/20/holiday-helpers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is just a note but you guys really need to work on making your chat thingy less annoying. I'm reading this on an iOS device and there was no way to dismiss the bouncy-puppy chatbox that was begging me to talk to someone. It was so distracting that I rage quit your blog post.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm a IT department of one so I get a lot of those "reset password" requests and have to do a lot of hand holding I feel I should not have to do. Its 2014 and a certain level of computer literacy should be expected of you if you want to function in corporate America. (or whatever country you are from). I have a Masters of Science in IT Security, a B.S. in electronic engineering and my RHCE with 10 years experience and feel that being pulled away from "real work" to reset a password is extremely annoying. However its a lot less annoying when the client services team is not available and the receptionist passes the call directly to me. In most cases the client tends to be very friendly and thankful and makes you want to help them.

The problem with this is geeks are generally not business people and do not know if the client is up-to-date on their billing or if they are notorious for trying to get free work and need to be kept in check. When I do take personal interest in solving a clients issue I risk promising things I should not be promising them or putting way more time and effort into a client who is already behind on billing than I should be.

I also have a very hard time quoting a client an appropriate amount. I work for a interactive and design agency and when you work with us you have a team of individuals working for you including but not limited to an account manager, producer, designers, art directors, user experience, strategy, front end developers, back end developers, system administration in some cases. Having a team of 5-10 specialists working for you is expensive. Just having a 1hr meeting with everybody is probably going to get billed at around $1000. I feel really weird giving clients numbers like this and responding to the sticker shock.

</comment><comment><USER14> Highly doubt this scales past 30 employees unless your customer base is really small. Customer service should really be summarizing concerns, and you should verify the concerns by looking at data to see if it's really a concern worth alleviating.

<comment><USER15> Etsy does this (or did while I was still there) at 500+ employees. While they have dedicated CS reps, they also rotate everyone in the company. My experience with it was (literally) mixed.

-As an eng I was frustrated by it because I felt it got in the way of "real work" (I don't know if this was right or wrong - it just felt frustrating at the time).

-As a manager, I was frustrated by it because my engineers were constantly disappearing for customer support rotations.

But then I watched one of my friends literally eliminate 400+ hours a month of customer support time (as well as the less measurable corresponding customer frustration) by writing a small tool in an hour only because he had that first person experience with the issue.

<comment><USER16> I had an inverted experience like this at my job. My job title is Technical Support. I do internal and external support for our company. We use Salesforce. By sheer luck I convinced my boss to allot me full system admin access to our Salesforce instance. I've gone to town improving our customer support workflow for our 100+ phone and e-mail reps by creating small tools and tweaks using Apex/VF Pages among other things.

I had no prior experience with Salesforce when I first requested access. I'm no Salesforce Architect, but I have a great grasp on the internals of it now all because my boss had a little faith in me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's a great idea. I'd be really interested to see how this works out as you scale. How do you continue to consolidate and relay feedback from customers to the rest of the team that isn't on the support rotation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Consolidating feedback is a problem for any team at scale regardless of who is doing the support. Dedicated customer service teams have a more complete view of what's going on with customers, than the average rotated employee, but at the same time both need a way to bubble up that feedback to the product team.

More importantly, it's essential to understand the difference between the problem you head about today, verses the problem that customers have been facing for a long time. (I do think that support rotations cause a bit of a recency affect in prioritization for better or worse)

In the long run my argument is the closer you are to your customers the better insight you'll have in general. Because we all make a ton of decisions that aren't clearly specified, and we want everyone on the team to have the best intuition for the customer when they make those decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love this talk by Kevin Hale about their all hands support at Wufoo. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAnl8ZGHVXU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAnl8ZGHVXU) (alternate. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYIH2qTizUU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYIH2qTizUU))

The most interesting thing is that they gave every engineer time to fix the $#@! they heard on support. 30% of their effort was on internal tools.

Disclaimers. I also work at Olark. I also think Kevin Hale is (almost) perfect.

<comment><USER17> I love the talk. It's too sad to see Wufoo these days. All their great ideas about support disappeared after selling it to SurveyMonkey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It means you hire folks who can do customer support. That's definitely not an introverted engineer. Sounds like the benefits might even be worth the extra hiring filter.

<comment><USER19> As an introverted engineer, I beg to differ. If you can't spend 10 minutes in a very directed conversation with a stranger who wants to use your product, that's an attitude problem, not a introversion/extroversion problem.

Introverted doesn't mean anti-social or shy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think doing all-hands support in a way that's efficient (not taking too much out of engineer's time) and scalable requires a well-designed system to support it. Quizlet, where I've worked before, does a good job of this. See: [http://quizlet.com/inside-quizlet/quizlets-incredible- feedba...](http://quizlet.com/inside-quizlet/quizlets-incredible-feedback- center)

</comment><comment><USER21> That's neat, but when you've already optimized your password reset as well as you possibly can, now you're just throwing time and money out the window because of a dumb company policy and probably pissing off your most talented developers too.

Some customers are just incredibly stupid. That's who Tier 1 support is precisely for: the kind of people who would suffocate in a wet paper bag. I walked into my manager's office one day and said enough. I developed 10 products used by over 250k users and I was the only developer at the company. Never again was I going to reset another password. I followed best practices and made it as easy as possible. Any further difficulty on the part of a user was not my problem.

<comment><USER22> Some customers need hand holding.

One thing to consider is an inverse of customer support. Have your dedicated customer service rep handle only repeatable issues with a script.

Then you just say, "I'm going to escalate your issue to our Solutions Department, who are responsible for that type of issue. They will be able to walk you through the process."

But really, whatever you do, if you do email/chat support I'd be feeding every chat session/email exchange into an expert system, and trying to generate responses when possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's a great policy. Stripe was doing this 2 years ago: [http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/stripes- culture](http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/stripes-culture) Anyone know if they still do it, even after growing?

</comment><comment><USER24> my company did this (out of necessity) back when there were ~10 of us. As a young developer, I didn't know any better, but I dreaded it. I was SO glad when we moved to a dedicated support team. Also, in my experience, if you are hiring good people, a dedicated customer support person is going to give your customer a MUCH better experience.

<comment><USER25> Obviously, but being exposed to real issues first hand will certainly give you a better insight on why it should be fixed.

Some kind of reality check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> We considered using Olark for a client's website one time but, at the time, their embed code didn't work properly with Google Tag Manager. Whilst we ended up using another service, I did receive an email from Olark a few months later saying that they had addressed the issue, which I appreciate.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not having to deal with customers is a huge perk for a developer.

<comment><USER28> well, depends. i like having to deal with customers since that makes me able to build a better product -- dealing with customers makes you realize what they want.

(disclaimer: i work at olark)

<comment><USER29> It's also awesome to interact with people who are legitimately happy about the stuff that you build.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This sounds like it works well for Olark.

However, I've seen companies use this to stretch the responsibilities of the development team to include customer support..and not hire anyone for customer support.

It was a disaster and I hated it...and eventually quit because of it.</comment>


Ask HN: Clever Recruiting Techniques? - <AUTHOR> For me, the biggest surprise about running a startup has been how difficult it is to recruit top-notch engineers.  It is shockingly, bewilderingly, impossibly difficult to find qualified web developers.  Granted, my notion of "qualified" is  discriminating, but it's been surprisingly difficult nonetheless.<p>I've tried all the traditional channels for finding developers: job boards, networking events, and my own personal network.  It's time to get more creative.  I'd love to hear about any clever techniques or tactics others have used to identify promising web developer candidates. <comment><USER3> Forget clever. Try providing a place people want to work, doing interesting stuff, with reasonable pay, working with smart people, with the hardware and software needed to get the job done, along with a sense of mission, excitment and purpose. Take a humble attitude to recruiting them instead of requiring people to "prove that that want to for us". Give people a job that the want to rush to in the morning to get started on. Demonstrate during the interview process that your company is smart and understands software development, by asking smart questions that reveal meaningful insights into the candidates capabilities as a coder. It's not all about you - ask them what _they_ want - take an interest. People want jobs that make them feel a sense of mission and purpose, along with reasonable reward for their skills and experience.

<comment><USER4> That's very nice and how it should be.

Still,if noone knows about your ideal workplace, you're still stuck trying to differentiate your firm from hundreds of others vying for attention with all the same marketing-speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Speaking as someone who has started and run both small and medium-sized organizations, i would suggest the following:

1) Hire folks who exhibit good problem-solving skills and possess a good attitude. These folks usually are easily trained and become productive in a short span of time. But you have to invest in your employees - <USER2> training, through remuneration, through building an open culture.

Good leaders work with the tools they have and the people they have - not set improbable standards. You would be surprised by what people are capable of if you support them, encourage them, train them and give them room to learn by making mistakes.

2) Nowadays i usually try to find good open source developers in my area, study their code, check out their blog listings, check out their mailing list responses - and then do my best to convince them to work with me. These folks are among the BEST.

3) In the past, i have conducted coding competitions in universities and collages - and have hired many of the student participants after interacting with them informally, talking to their friends and checking out their code.

4) I would also humbly suggest that Web development has such an enormous set of great tools, books, articles, tutorials etc, that any curious and persistent person can pick up the basics in a short span of time - given the right motivation.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am now using developer IRC channels to recruit.

After exhausting agencies, linkedin, and adverts I was particularly frustrated by what I had seen and the quality of who we had interviewed.

So I asked the simple question, "Where do devs hangout?". And I'm not talking bars, I'm talking those who are busy actually doing stuff, especially if it's stuff they're working on in their own time (a passion for something).

And the answer to myself was in the community channels for a given tech. For the most part this was freenode IRC rooms, but sometimes it's Google Groups.

The important thing with approaching people through these channels is not to go in cold or piss them off. But as this should be an area which you know too (or your CTO does, or other devs you have does), then you should open the dialogue in their comfort zone.

Encourage use of the channels and just watch for a bit to see who is giving answers to other people... they're the ones who know what they're doing, and they're the influencers.

Once you know who they are, ask them if they're looking for work, where they're located (timezones help here, if you're in the UK go in early in the morning and you mostly have europeans, and if you're in the US go in late as you mostly have Americans). Even if they're not looking, they may very well know someone in the channel who is looking and they will recommend a good person.

Does this method work? Yes, for me it has done.

Using HN to hire is one example of this (and we found a terrific graduate who started today), and I did the same with the android-dev IRC channel to get a great Android dev. I've also done the same with hiring a great devops guy (another IRC channel).

Basically... if you can't find them, and if you aren't doing things like airbnb (great hiring pages that go viral), red gate (giving away ipads for good interview candidates), then spend your time and effort to go where they go.

I wouldn't call this clever. It's just very basic head-hunting. But frankly that's what you're doing. Stop expecting that the good guys are out there looking for you, they're busy doing stuff... the average guys are out there looking for you.

</comment><comment><USER7> The most clever I've seen so far is to start with this code:

<http://github.com/mmcgrana/gitcred>

and then work down the list looking for languages and frameworks of interest.

<comment><USER8> I saw that earlier in the year - it's a nice idea, but I can't help but think there's a significant portion of people who aren't on GitHub (for example, I have an account, but the majority of my projects are on BitBucket, mostly due to technology choices).

Still, it's certainly a reasonable initial source of people, and I would imagine you'll find that a lot of the "good" programmers who aren't in this list are only a couple of real-life connections away, at most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe it's not the technique but you, your company, your employees, your location, your pay that is turning off engineers.

<comment><USER3> Hear hear. Perhaps not the poster specifically, but many companies wonder why they can't get good engineers but offer nothing in the areas you identify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was recruited to Spotify through a programming contest. The site seems to be down, but here is the google cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://contest.scrool.se/)

I didn't do great in the competition (67th place or so), but I suppose the main thing was to attract people who actually enjoy programming (and challenges).

A was also on an interview for Propellerhead (<http://www.propellerheads.se/>) in 2003 after they had a (kind of hard) programming quiz that went viral. Didn't get that gig though.

<comment><USER11> I don't consider myself the worlds best programmer, but I feel that it's kind of demeaning with a programming contest. It's like when you go to a job recruiting agency and they run all this shit IQ test shit on you. If they want you in that setting - run like hell.

If you want me, let me show you what I have done - I don't want to compete in a programming contest where the grand prize is a poorly paid job, where you are expected to work unpaid overtime and be subservient. I know my worth, and is pretty happy running my own startup business defining my own terms as I go along.

I looked at a job at klarna but the thought of spending some time re- sharpening my skills at Erlang and then spending some days doing their code challenge _unpaid_ \- not so interested. I'd rather do something else and get my moneys worth for my time. Although I'm kind of tempted for a job where I get a chance to work face-to-face with some more senior people to learn from them.

Some time though I might want to take a job, my plan to be able to skip all these silly programming contests is to have some open source projects or contributions to show. I have a couple of project that I wish I had been able to open-source, but I think that I will go by the route of contributing to some existing project. I feel that recruiting by looking at open source is a very good thing, where the interests of both employer and employee are upheld.

<comment><USER12> The programming contests should be fun! If they aren't your thing, then you are right to opt-out of the process as there likely won't be a good culture match. However, I think it is a little off to characterize them as somehow extorting job applicants.

<comment><USER11> I've participated in several programming contests and think it's a lot of fun. what I dislike is when a company is hiring and expect applicants to do free labour. it's bad for everybody, the company doesn't get to hire people who have got a life or are too busy with other things. and the applicant is welcomed by the message - we expect you to work for free. having a programming competition in the open might alleviate some of the problems of doing work and sending it off into the void.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We can't really help you much unless tell us how you define qualified.

</comment><comment><USER14> How about changing your recruiting strategy from 'top' to 'potential' since it's so hard to reach top ones?

Diff from big-fat-cat company, startup has a big advantage that it's going to grow and employees can really feel it.

This is a good chance to cultivate ownership, loyalty, sense of belonging, etc.

Good luck :)

</comment><comment><USER15> You'll find tons of high quality mailing lists for whatever skill set you are looking for. Python, C etc... Read through the archive and find people that are active and provide solid answers. Get in touch with them and see how far you can go.

</comment><comment><USER16> Go on campus. Do a presentation with a student group, i.e. IEEE/ACM programming SIG...

Join a professional developer organization... Plenty of Linux, iPhone, Android, .Net, etc. developer groups in most major tech hubs...

</comment><comment><USER17> You could always pay more.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure "spend more money" constitutes a _clever_ idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's close to impossible to be competitive with high flyers (the Google, Microsoft, etc) when you're a small company or startup. Just imagine yourself in their shoes : would you rather work for some unknown company, with no benefits, no carrier perspective and little money, or Google? Yeah, you see what I mean. You need to take a different, peculiar approach to recruitment.

So far, my very best way to recruit was through internship. The downside is that it will take long months to get acceptable engineers, then they won't stay with you for more than a year or two once they're competent.

<comment><USER20> _It's close to impossible to be competitive with high flyers (the Google, Microsoft, etc) when you're a small company or startup._

This is utter nonsense. There are plenty of people who aren't necessarily interested in working for Google or Microsoft. Neither does working for a startup mean little pay and neither benefits nor career prospects (assuming that's what you meant by 'carrier perspective')

<comment><USER19> That's certainly true in "the Valley". In Europe, it's nigh to impossible to attract really qualified people in a small company/startup. They all work in safe, warm places :)

<comment><USER21> I pretty much entirely disagree with that. OK, this is a product hire rather than engineering, but this is us:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/sep/22/timetric- fin...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/sep/22/timetric-financial- times-simon-briscoe)

We're obviously delighted, and it wasn't easy, but it can be done. It's more than purely a sales job, particularly if you're trying to bring in someone really good.

We're six full time right now, by the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You have discovered why recruiters exist.

</comment><comment><USER23> It is a really tough problem no doubt. We use interviewstreet.com to screen candidates before spending time on an interview, saves us a lot of time.

</comment><comment><USER24> How about job fairs? Social media?

<comment><USER25> Job fairs from universities are amazing places to find talent (and that cheap ;)). They aren't refined yet, but if you find the right people they are willing to learn, and are usually fast at it.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, the young talent still in school still have a hard time finding work. They are so desperate, they would take basically anything they can get their hands on. Give them a good proposition - a reason to work hard and stay!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> how technically strong is your CTO?

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm looking for alpha employers to find very qualified programmers through Code Anthem. Email me amber at codeanthem dot com.</comment>


Why does Android get credit for being disruptive? It's not. - <AUTHOR> http://sachin.posterous.com/why-does-android-get-credit-for-being-disrupt

<comment><USER2> Since it's like iOS, Android is also disruptive to the old OS models, but on a wider range of devices. I think what he actually means is that it's not _breakthrough_ or anything like that, since iOS appeared "first". But it is disruptive and it's disrupting not only older mobile operating systems, but old desktop ones, too (soon enough).</comment>


Ask HN: Developers, do unexpected ad-hoc requests piss you off? How to avoid? - <AUTHOR>

TL;DR
When you're at work, how often do unexpected tasks crop up from management? And does this piss you off? And does anyone know how to avoid it?
To explain...
My company combines client work and internal product development. The client work can be very reactive at times. E.g. "Can you fix this bug and build and resend it to us within the hour?", "Can you just get this feature done in the next 2 days?" etc.
As a developer, I personally want to know what I'm doing for 80%-90% of the week, and can handle a few surprises. As a manager, my feeling is that I need to reduce or batch the ad-hoc requests from clients as they're pissing us off. Any thoughts on how you achieve that would be appreciated :) <comment><USER2> This is why it's good to have a ticketing system. At first, just create tickets yourself for the ad-hoc work (but make it visible to the requestor). I do this for anything that takes more than an hour or so, or for even miniscule tasks if it's a particularly busy time (just to keep track of everything).

If it's a larger request, then you can say "Sure, I'll fix it, but i'll have to stop working on TICKET-1234, is that OK?"

Eventually people learn to create and prioritize their own tickets.

This is also good because sometimes a "five minute" fix can turn into a huge project because of unanticipated factors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Separate developer days into blocks.

A small block at the beginning of the day for an "open house" where anyone can directly ask questions of devs, come to chit chat, etc.

One block can be support tasks / ticket fixing. Contacting devs is OK here but it's preferred to be in the open house time.

Another block can be heads-down, planned development. Developers don't get bugged here unless there's an active fire burning. The plan should be set forth at the beginning of the week so there's no confusion.

We've been doing this for a couple of weeks (after a department reorganization) and it's been working pretty well.

It's important to get buy-in from the rest of the company on the idea that context switches are actively harmful to development. Joel Spolsky knows it[1]. Jeff Atwood knows it[2]. So do many others. But you have to get management to understand it, or you'll never escape from the constant "just a small fix" interruptions.

1\. [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html)

2\. [http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-multi-tasking- myth/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-multi-tasking-myth/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Might have to start saying no to clients, specifically "no we're booked for the week, but can get that feature request in for you next week".

Smaller things you can still do ad-hoc, just budget in a few hours per dev per day for them. If the dev doesn't use all that time, they can get their other work done faster.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this is probably the root cause. I guess fundamentally we can never get predictable if we don't schedule work.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The "trade this ticket X that ticket Y" is a good approach. I've done that too with _some_ success.

One problem is that we have multiple clients, so each doesn't care about the others tickets.

</comment><comment><USER5> Scrum sprints deals with this. It helped us a lot in that regard.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea.

It will probably take a month for us to determine our velocity, then we can predictably dish out points.

<comment><USER6> It will take much more than a month to begin to understand your velocity</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A library for end-to-end testing Go servers easier - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/agis/spawn <comment><USER2> What is your opinion about using [https://golang.org/pkg/net/http/httptest/#Server](https://golang.org/pkg/net/http/httptest/#Server) for end to end tests? Assuming you're testing a webserver of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> httptest solves the problem of spinning up a new server for use in tests.

However, there are cases where you already have a server (ie. your golang program) and you want to end-to-end test the whole binary (ie. execute the binary with the given arguments and test it).

httptest is a good fit when you need a mock server in your tests. spawn is a good fit when you want to test your actual server binary.</comment></comment>


Global Visa Requirements Map - <AUTHOR> https://www.visahq.co.uk/map-requirements/ <comment><USER2> In the case of Mexico information is weird. We Mexicans don't need visa for Brazil.</comment>


Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/06/two-potentially-life-friendly-planets-found-12-light-years-away-teegardens-star/ <comment><USER3> Being that close also offers us a better ability to examine it. The nearer the star, the more arc-seconds (or tiny fractions thereof) the star will appear in telescopes. 12ly is ridiculously close!

It also tells us something interesting. If we presume there's nothing special about our little corner of the universe, then the distance to the nearest potentially habitable planets gives us an estimate of how many habitable planets are out there. Only 12ly away and that one has maybe two habitable planets? That tells me the universe is teaming with potential homes for life.

<comment><USER4> Yes 12 ly is amazingly close!

> If we presume there's nothing special about our little corner of the > universe, then the distance to the nearest potentially habitable planets > gives us an estimate of how many habitable planets are out there

I would put a slight caveat to this - I would argue we _do_ know there's something "special" about our little corner of the _galaxy_ , at least - <USER2> are in the continuously habitable zone - for example, there are billions of stars at higher densities closer to the core whose planets are _likely_ uninhabitable due to toxic levels of radiation, GRBs, etc. So I actually might expect other planets near us to be more habitable on average than at least some other places in our galaxy.

But I also think it's too soon to know how potentially habitable these planets are, until we have a chance to check a bunch of other things on the checklist, like the long-term stability of the sun's output and the planet's orbits, the frequency of destructive solar flares, the frequency of asteroid bombardments (if there are no Jupiters to absorb them), etc.

Regardless the close distance should make it much easier to answer these sorts of questions than it would be far planets much farther away, and I'm excited to see what we can learn in the coming years.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't each system's star do a decent job of pushing back extra-solar radiation? Up to a point, obviously, but it would seem that planetary background radiation levels aren't a direct function of solar density.

<comment><USER6> It's not the density of the star but the density of stars. Dense clusters like those found in the center of our galaxy create a lot of secondary effects like bigger stars pulling matter away from smaller stars (creating lots of background radiation and matter floating around) and then stars plow through those interstellar clouds, creating deadly bursts capable of cooking entire planets, stripping away their atmospheres, etc. In the center of the galaxy, these events happen so frequently that it's extremely unlikely life on any of the planets would survive long enough to evolve beyond simple single celled organisms.

<comment><USER5> I'm talking about the local solar density, not an individual star's density. Obviously that has little effect on the habitable zone of a planet.

My question was about the ability of a system's star's own radiation to ward off extra-solar radiation and what kind of limitations we are aware of.

<comment><USER7> Electromagnetic radiation from one star does not repel electromagnetic radiation from other stars. If it did, we wouldn't be able to see stars at night from the Earth.

<comment><USER8> > If it did, we wouldn't be able to see stars at night from the Earth.

Ha! I love straighforward sanity checks like this. My initial reaction was to ask myself about photon-photon collisions which are im fact possible, but your comment gives a nice Fermi bound on how rare such events actually are. Cool!

<comment><USER9> Photon-photon collisions are still technically possible... I remember a professor mentioning this as one question he got in grad school... draw out the Feynman diagram and you see a vanishingly small probability of photon- photon interaction.

But yeah. Ionized particles like Galactic Cosmic Rays can be repelled by the local stellar magnetic field, but mostly the lower energy rays are deflected. Higher energy -to-charge-ratio GCRs can punch right through the weak stellar magnetic field, just like do for our Sun's interplanetary magnetic field.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for understanding my question before reaching for dismissal :)

I knew low-energy waves are partially deflected, I just wasn't sure about high-energy waves. Makes sense!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The note that it's an old star makes me worry though. If they're older then us, and habitable, were they inhabited?

Our current era is a few hundred years of real, directed technological development. A few thousands years either side of that and who knows what we'd be looking at, but you imagine that - hopefully - the general progression of technology is forward.

So if they were inhabited, what happened to them? Are they _exactly_ at our level of development? Earlier? Hopefully. Because later poses some real big questions - does technology top out about where we are now - no FTL travel, no really big radio transmitters or stellar engineering? No probes to nearby star systems? Did they even make it past the nuclear age, or avoid wrecking their climate?

One thing's for sure - if there's really 2 habitable planets, with liquid water, then we've got a hell of a target to point James Webb at when it launches - an infrared spectrum star should mean any plant life is well optimized to towards the redder end of the spectrum - we should see some type of chlorophyll.

<comment><USER11> > So if they were inhabited, what happened to them? Are they exactly at our > level of development? Earlier? Hopefully. Because later poses some real big > questions - does technology top out about where we are now - no FTL travel, > no really big radio transmitters or stellar engineering? No probes to nearby > star systems? Did they even make it past the nuclear age, or avoid wrecking > their climate?

You get more than one chance. While finding intelligent life would be great, finding any life is nearly as great. We might not catch them at a comparable technological moment, but over 8 billion years, intelligent life could have come and gone many times. All we need are some biosignatures to confirm that something's out there, and exploration will kick into overdrive.

<comment><USER12> > _While finding intelligent life would be great, finding any life is nearly > as great._

That would actually be worrisome. If we found and detected microorganisms on nearby planet e.g 12 light years away from earth, then that means we are probably headed for extinction.

The reason is the theory of the Great Filter. Given that we have not been able to observe any kind of activity outside of our solar system, it means that either life is rarer than we think or that entire civilisations go extinct pretty quickly.

If we find microorganism on a nearby planet, the logical conclusion is that life is not as rare as we think but evolved civilisation such as ours simply go extinct in a relatively short amount of time.

The Great Filter may be ahead of us.

<comment><USER13> Have we done anything that we'd be able to detect from 12 ly?

<comment><USER14> The window for detection at different power levels is probably quite small.

Very early radio would be somewhat weak. The middle phase of analog transmission probably has some higher power levels. The digital phase would coincide with rapid decreases in detectability.

That assumes every planet capable of supporting life a) has life and b) develops intelligent life. If only 1% of planets capable of supporting life develops life and only 1% of those develop intelligent life then it is extremely unlikely these two nearby planets would have any life at all. Even if you bump the odds to 10% or even 33% the odds are still against it.

For sake of argument assume we (or they?) won the lottery and intelligent life exists. Make an even larger stretch and assume that life is technologically capable, has been for 10,000 years, and didn't destroy themselves (achieving a stable population size and reasonable resource usage). Even then the odds are against us detecting any kind of radio transmissions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _" just 12 light-years away"_

I love the "just". I know it's nearby on galactic scales but it's practically about 450,000 Earth years away with current technology :-)

<comment><USER16> > I know it's nearby on galactic scales but it's practically about 450,000 > Earth years away with current technology :-)

If we had the political will, the Orion design could get people there in, what, 200 years, and that's with '70s technology.

<comment><USER17> Imagine being the child born on the ship on a crash course to this new planet.

<comment><USER18> And imagine you're the first ship to arrive only to find out

a) that the planet is not habitable and there were some wrong assumptions about it

b) that the planet is already occupied by a different form of life and there's no warm welcome to us

<comment><USER19> This is also assuming

A) Human engineering can create something that can last 200+ years of space travel. We don't even build houses anymore that can feasibly last 100 years.

2) People don't go mad and kill each other or do a mutiny

III) Any number of stray objects from asteroids to rogue planets that just slams into the ship and causes major malfunctions

d) Food and life support sustainability

I mean... there are SOOOOOOOO many more problems than actual politics. This is where, and it hurts me to say this, the politicians are right to say "are you insane?".

<comment><USER20> > d) Food and life support sustainability

Could we just send frozen embryos of humans and then have the ship auto thaw and gestate them 16 years to arrival?

With another 2-300 years of technological progress this doesn't seem outlandish mission at all.

<comment><USER21> that sounds highly unethical. none of those people agreed to go on the trip

<comment><USER20> did any of us agree to go on our current trip? I do see your point but I think eventually humans might do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And to think that there is likely an Easy Mode system out there.

A habitable planet on the low end of the mass spectrum needed for a stable atmosphere with other habitable planets in-system. And all that close to another star with habitable planets, possibly in the sub-lightyear range.

Basically everything ripe for a spacefaring civilization to grow without too much trouble and with plenty of motivation.

The Earth is hard to leave and everything else in our system is dead rocks with hellish environments as far as we know with the nearest alternative at least dozens of lightyears away

<comment><USER23> Imagine an easy mode planet in a system with multiple habitable planets. Now that I've typed that I'm also considering how Mars would look from 12 light years away.

Is establishing a colony 12 light years away easier than transforming mars into a habitable planet?

<comment><USER24> Harder, I think. We have the technology to live on Mars (not to terraform it, just to survive on it). We have some ideas from physics about how to get to a planet 12 ly away, but not the technology. Nor, I would argue, do we have the social and political setup required for such a project, which would most likely take hundreds of years to get to a basic colony.

<comment><USER25> > We have the technology to live on Mars (not to terraform it, just to survive > on it).

I'm not convinced this is true intergenerationally without a maternity ward in a centrifuge; the low gravity mouse embryo experiments don't look promising. Maybe 1/3rd earth gravity is enough, but I'm doubtful. If we're granting centrifugal habitats as something doable with current technology, an Orion/Daedalus style nuke-propelled spacecraft seems in the same ballpark. It's been sketched out and tested with models, it's clearly possible, but nobody has really made one yet and it's a hell of an engineering problem still.

<comment><USER26> We should be colonizing the moon first, then Phobos or Deimos. Then, once established, we can conquer the martian gravity well with local resources.

<comment><USER25> I like Musk's plan of using Mars as a fuel-planet, I just don't expect a self- sufficient colony for some time. Mars is like an oil rig or a mineshaft; no place for children.

<comment><USER27> In fact it's cold as hell.

And there's no one there to raise them if you did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Habitable" in also relative to our Earthly form of life. There may be other architectures that prefer different temperatures and pressures, perhaps.

<comment><USER29> Also, from 12 ly away, I'm sure that Sol would appear to have at least 3 habitable planets (Venus, Earth, Mars).

<comment><USER30> Sol does have three habitable planets. Plus some moons, at a push.

Habitability isn't a Boolean. It's hugely dependent on history, context, and resources.

The more Boolean distinction doesn't have a name - but if it did, it would be something like Stable Evolutionary Potential.

Mars and Venus both fail on that. The moons fail on it now, but may pass when the Sun turns into a red giant.

The Earth has offered it for long time, with some uncertainty about the near future.

There's no reliable way to distinguish SEP at a distance. But noting that a star has planets in its habitable zone and making some estimate of how many planets in stable systems are likely to offer SEP is a decent start.

<comment><USER31> >The Earth has offered it for long time, with some uncertainty about the near future.

What uncertainty is that? Nuclear winter won't even wipe life off the planet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> How common are "life-friendly" planets (Let's say: on a ratio of Life-Friendly Planet:Non Life-Friendly Planet)? And is there any way to check if life- friendly planets contain life without actually going there?

<comment><USER33> There are plans for doing spectrography on the atmospheres of these planets. This would allow us to get a pretty good picture of the chemical composition. Biological life as we know it should leave a different footprint than a lifeless planet but in the end we can only extrapolate what we already know about life.

<comment><USER34> Yep! And more specifically, if we found a planet that had an atmosphere with O2 in it, that would be highly indicative of life. Although it's not the only option, O2 is pretty reactive, and you need a constant O2-producing force to maintain it. An O2-producing force would be something like plants or some life that is creating hydrocarbons from CO2 and H2O.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I saw a study recently, unfortunately I can't locate it now.

It discussed the possibility of there having been past civilizations on Earth, hundreds of millions or even billions of years ago. The conclusion was that this can't be entirely ruled out. It noted how few actual fossil remains we have for what we know of dinosaurs, and that there's a _lot_ of space left in those gaps for all the evidence to have been destroyed.

<comment><USER36> Maybe it was this?

Gavin A. Schmidt, Adam Frank: The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?, [https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03748](https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03748)

I found it through an article in The Atlantic that may or may not have been linked on HN recently.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are- we-e...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-we-earths- only-civilization/557180/)

<comment><USER37> Indeed, there was a discussion about this article, about a year ago. As a fan (and amateur writer) of science fiction, I greatly enjoyed learning about this hypothesis.

Was there a civilization on Earth before humans?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837120](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837120)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Waiting for the moment where we actually find a habitable planet with intelligent life. Next thing you know, we'll be developing ways in order to communicate with them, not just observing them.

</comment><comment><USER39> Stop teasing me, Universe - and show me the aliens already!

<comment><USER40> Check out the Dyson Dilemma for a well-reasoned theory as to why it is a high probability that there is no space-faring intelligent life anywhere in our galaxy or even perhaps our super-cluster.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfuK8la0y6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfuK8la0y6s)

<comment><USER41> There are holes wide enough to fit a solar system through that argument. Reductio ad absurdum.

Here, I'll construct an argument in a similar form. People don't like mosquitos, for various reasons including that they transfer deadly diseases. Therefore the presence of mosquitos says there's a high probability that the planet isn't actually inhabited by us, because we would have killed them by now. After all, we have the technology.

Maybe, by the time we get around to wanting to construct a Dyson Sphere, we will have found a better alternative. Maybe they aren't a good idea for any number of reasons (if you need one, read the Cixin Liu "Dark Forest" series).

Any argument of the form "X is inevitable but hasn't occurred, therefore Y" first needs very strong proof of the inevitability of X.

<comment><USER42> To be honest, I've never really understood how a Dyson sphere would be superior to many nuclear fusion reactors that you can move around / turn off and on / build more of / etc

<comment><USER43> The sun is 99.9% of the mass in the solar system. Most of the rest of the mass is in Jupiter.

If you are ultimately bounded by energy requirements then solar is where most of the available energy is even if you literally cannibalize the gas giants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> There was a paper recently that argued that the habitable zone is smaller than anticipated because either the concentration of carbon dioxide will be too high (and thus toxic at least to life on Earth) or - for small stars like this - there will be (toxic) carbon monoxide in the atmosphere.

[https://phys.org/news/2019-03-complex-life-require-narrow- ha...](https://phys.org/news/2019-03-complex-life-require-narrow- habitable.html) (good article with link to the paper)

<comment><USER45> Life on Earth lived in CO2-dominated atmosphere for 1.5B years. If anything, CO2-rich world which is not overrun by SO2 and chlorine and phosphoric anhydride and scorching heat, like Venus, is as "potentially life-supporting" as it gets, save for a world with actual oxygen-producing life like ours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I was under the impression that planets to be life-friendly have to be close to their red dwarf star to a point they'll be tidally locked (one side always light other night), meaning their atmosphere would freeze on the dark side and planet would end up without an atmostphere.

<comment><USER47> This was indeed the prevailing wisdom for some time. However, more recent research is somewhat more optimistic. Even an atmosphere 10% as dense as that of earth can circulate heat to the dark side efficiently enough, given the right composition. The night side temperature could be within the parameters required to sustain some form of life.

Furthermore, tidal locking is dependent on oceans and atmosphere, and can take many billions of years to occur, or even never. Mercury has plenty of time to tidally lock but is in a 3:2 resonance with the sun. There are even other options; for example, moons of gas giants within the habitable zone would be tidally locked to their primary and thus have a day-night cycle.

<comment><USER48> "However, more recent research is somewhat more optimistic."

I am deeply skeptical of that "recent research", which AFAIK is "computer models, where we have zero capability to verify the computer models against even a single data point".

The incentives to keep kicking the computer model until it provides something publishable, with no countervailing force provided by real data to be explained by the model, are just too strong for me to take that too seriously.

<comment><USER49> Physics models are often checked against other models (which might have had some confirmation) in simple cases, and there are a lot of other sanity checks you can make on them to ensure they are providing reasonable results.

Obviously, one shouldn't blindly accept them without experimental confirmation, but one shouldn't also be wildly pessimistic in believing calculations grounded in three centuries worth of validated equations.

<comment><USER48> Yes, I'm sure the simulations don't have results like making these atmospheres suddenly collapse into black holes due to errors in the simulation or something. They'd notice.

But these atmospheres have to stable across cosmological scales in a highly iterative, chaotic environment. There is a mathematical lower bound on the rate such simulations _must_ leak bits as a result of those things. I don't think we have enough bits of real information to make up for that, as it would take rather a lot.

Against the mathematical argument, I set the human argument that, like I said, there's all sorts of incentives to report the one simulation that produced the result that there may be an atmosphere and maybe it could even sustain life! That's a lot of high-profile articles and probably a promotion for getting my department some public attention. Even if hundreds of other simulations all result in "Yeah, the atmosphere freezes out".

Between the math saying we can't really expect this sort of simulation to contain meaningful information and the human factors involved, I can't put a lot of confidence in a model which can't be validated against real data.

I do find it amazing how people who probably think they're really in favor of science and support it will jump up to defend a methodology that literally runs off of _zero data_. Can someone explain the scientific process to me clearly that involves having no data at any point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Feels like we're playing the first round in "Master of Orion" when you start scanning the stars around you ;)

<comment><USER51> I still love that game.

<comment><USER52> I remember around 2003, making huge battleships in that game and squaring up against the AI's armada. The AI made about 500 tiny ships with weapons incapable of breaching my shields, and with their own shields incapable of surviving my dreadnought blasts. I would kill 5 with my big ships, take no damage from 495 shots, rinse and repeat. The battles took hours! I had to skip tactical battles, couldn't stand that much time, just had the AI simulate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> > The team calculates that one of the planets, called Teegarden's star b, > completed an orbit in a mere 4.9 Earth-days; the other world, Teegarden's > star c, has an orbit of just 11.4 days.

I wonder how our understanding of orbital mechanics would have evolved differently had our planet orbited the Sun this fast?

If the planets have long days, then they could potentially see in one night what it takes us a full year to see!

<comment><USER54> Just imagine the astrology columns in the local newspapers

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> _" Seen here in an illustration"_

This half-hearted attempt to say that the impressive-looking image of _The Nearby Star_ was in fact an artist's impression of what a Red Dwarf might look like, made me laugh. Is it seen here? Or is it an illustration? I suspect someone changed the copy just before publishing

<comment><USER56> If you see a picture of the surface of a star that's not our sun, it's certainly an illustration. No such image exists of any other star.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Wouldn't planets orbiting this close to the star be tidally locked to it? If they are tidally locked to the star, they are also likely to have extreme temperature variations between the two sides. This could rule out life.

<comment><USER58> If that's true, as it is true for planets in the TRAPPIST system, then at least there is a potential for life to develop around the thin longitudinal slices located more centrally, where climate may be more temperate.

Also see this comment below, something I wasn't aware of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=20212953&goto=item%3Fi...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=20212953&goto=item%3Fid%3D20212374%2320212953)

I'm curious- at the end of the article, one of the scientists remarks that the stars might be "zipping around" their host star faster than measurements predict, which could rule out potential for life. Is this referring to your suspicion re: proximity => tidal locking => extreme temperatures? Or is there some way that speed of orbit can affect potential for life?

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> As for interesting consequences of a vastly different planetary age: in one SF novel (could be Peter F. Hamilton's, I can't remember right now) humans colonized an Earth-like planet only some 2 billion years old or so. Its uranium ores had so high U235 content (as opposed to Earth's 0.72%, which requires costly enrichment), that you could simply smelt it and put straight in a reactor (cheap nuclear-powered locomotives anyone?).

</comment><comment><USER60> By the time our technology reaches the point that we could feasibly travel to and inhabit another distant planet, and with all the challenges with that (space travel, terraforming, radiation protection), couldn't we feasibly create or move a planet or gigantic space station built from materials of another planet into whatever orbit we want?

<comment><USER61> Yes, possibly, but my curiosity about the natural life on those other planets outweighs that thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> For those that wants to live on another planet, you will unlikely like how things look under another suns sunlight. It is hard to have a planet that will have day light like our sun and be habitable. Think of a yellow-reddish, or a light that is cold blue when you walk out. Human eyes evolved with earths lighting conditions.

<comment><USER63> You assume that any of us ever go outside to see the light on Earth, anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> If there is a Life friendly planet, which is much older than where we live, shouldn't there be life forms?

Shouldn't those be searching for other life supporting planets, vigorously than us since they would be much mature and advanced?

why no one found us?

WHAT IS THE PROBABILITY OF US FINDING AN ALIEN VS AN ADVANCED RACE FINDING US AS ALIEN?

<comment><USER45> "We can be either alone in the Universe, or not alone. Both possibilities are terrifying" (quoting from memory).

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> > Teegarden's star is a stellar runt that's barely 9 percent of the sun's > mass. It's known as an ultra-cool M dwarf

Is it too late to change the name to Tyrion Lannister?

<comment><USER66> Tyrion Lannistar _

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> What are the consequences of a star that mostly radiates infrared light for habitability? Would it restrict what kind of life could evolve there?

</comment><comment><USER62> What I'm interested in is if somehow there is a planet almost exactly like earth, if so would they have evolved humans similar to us.

<comment><USER68> I too like this thought experiment! Checkout the movie Kpax with Kevin Spacey if you haven't already, it touches on the subject — "Why is a soap bubble round? It's the most efficient form"

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Assuming we have technology to reach a new planet 12 ly away, is going to a red dwarf star a good investment strategy?

<comment><USER70> If you have the money and technology to go, you'll just hop to the next solar system

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Perhaps habitable planets will be necessary for human migration and colonization, rather than finding aliens.

</comment><comment><USER72> Is it possible to determine the atmospheric composition of these planets? How much water for example?

</comment><comment><USER62> Why aren't we discovered? Probably because an advanced civilization but barely reach for the first time would be wise not to fly in risk getting detected and captured. So they wait till they have overpowering cloaking ability before re attempting a sighting. Maybe by that time, we are no longer interesting because of their own advances

<comment><USER62> Also there is probably a super small probability where both civilizations are in similar advances that they can brave a encounter without worrying. If one is way more advanced, either one may not be interested, or the less advanced one chickens out/ gets destroyed because they want to hide their location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I don't think there is redundancy in Universe

</comment><comment><USER74> Do these planets have their own moons?

<comment><USER75> Moon-size objects are probably not detectable with current technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> How do we check about life that far?

</comment><comment><USER77> Only 70 trillion miles away...

</comment><comment><USER78> Calling than A and B

</comment><comment><USER79> "nearby"

</comment><comment><USER80> Telephone Sanitizers and Hairdressers back your bags!

</comment><comment><USER81> The trilogy _Three Body Problem_ is a good read, and has something to say about this. :)

<comment><USER82> I had high hopes, but TBP is a terrible novel. It certainly has some fascinating ideas, but just as many ludicrous ones that are equally central to the plot. Not to mention Liu is absolutely terrible at anything relating to characters: dialogue, character development, etc.

<comment><USER35> Over in the s-f subreddits, this novel gets so much love. So I feel left out that I - like you few here - really hated it.

My big thing was that the science is just _wrong_.

Most fundamentally, it's not a three-body problem, there are (at least) four bodies: the three suns and the planet.

And the real world isn't going to follow any theoretical solution to TBP anyway. There is atmospheric drag, microscopic gravitational perturbations from the rest of the universe, decreasing solar masses as the stars age, and so forth.

In a system as chaotic as was described, any of these things make the problem intractable.

That said, I did enjoy the description of a digital computer implemented with "people" acting as the logic gates.

<comment><USER83> I don't understand your opposition to the name. The three body problem is so named precisely _because_ it's intractable. In physics with two bodies you can perfectly model the evolution of a system, but as soon as you add a third it becomes chaotic and requires numerical simulation to approximate solutions.

<comment><USER35> _I don 't understand your opposition to the name. The three body problem is so named_

Look at my first objection, that the problem described in the book has (at least) _FOUR_ bodies. Yet the idea that it's a three-body problem is pervasive throughout the book.

Surely that in itself is enough to justify some aggravation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> How long will it take until the next planet is overpopulated and resources are consumed?

I mean: birth control? Socialism? Rules to obey?

If it is a competitive race it will end up pretty much the same. The question is then only: how long will it take?

Over to the next one ...

</comment><comment><USER85> You got me. I'm from one of those planets.

A group of us decided to move to earth for the warmer weather. It's also why most of us live in California and Florida.

Tan Mom is our leader.</comment>


Show HN: Slack app to control your team's Amazon purchases - <AUTHOR> https://www.controlhub.com/preview/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi. We've built this Slack app for startups to control what products and services they buy and keep expenses 'at check'.

How it works: \- Your teammates make a purchasing request directly on Slack. For 'physical stuff' we've built integration with Amazon considering that's probably the most used retailer. \- Approvers then authorize, inquire about, or decline the requests.

The starter version handles a simple approval flow with two approvers which should be enough for small startups. We've built more complex and robust approval flows in the other versions.

Please, feel free to share your feedback, we'd really appreciate it!

</comment><comment><USER2> All my requests to your site timeouts (tried from multiple locations). Is it online?

<comment><USER3> Sorry about that, it seems that the HN traffic broke our site. We've fixed it now, so you can try again. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks interesting, I'll try it later. Do you have any future plans besides Amazon integrations? Maybe something like linking to credit cards or similar?

<comment><USER3> Yes, we also offer virtual as well as physical cards to control your team's purchases.

Check out our payment features here: [https://www.controlhub.com/payment- features/](https://www.controlhub.com/payment-features/)

<comment><USER5> Noticed a typo: "Turn then On/Off instantly" then should be them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The site is all wonky on Firefox

<comment><USER7> Seems to work ok for me. Firefox Dev edition (76.0b7)

Ubuntu 19.10</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Will you be interested in Beta Testing Hacker News ios client - <AUTHOR> I have created a hacker news iOS client.
* It uses the Hacker News API.
* You can upvote, follow and comment on stories / comments
* Receive notifications as stories/comments you follow update
If Yes, Please sign up for the beta by visiting:
http://karanjude.github.io/hnbuzz/ <comment><USER2> Android please!

<comment><AUTHOR> Once I fix the iOS client I will try working on the android client ( need to learning android programming for that ) . This was my first stab at a project using objective c . For now I will be closing the Beta , but thanks everyone for signing up , appreciate the feedback . Have fixed a lot of issues , added new features , will be launching soon on the AppStore - |via [http://bit.ly/hnbuzz01](http://bit.ly/hnbuzz01) |

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's ugly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which part you didn't like ? Have you installed and tried the app ? Any suggestions as to how I can improve the landing page or the app UI ?

<comment><USER3> I should have been more precise.

The aesthetics doesn't match the standards introduced by Apple, nor does it match the quality of apps you're competing with.

There is an obvious lack of consistency, concerning icons, colors, margins, etc. It seems like it has not been polished in any way.

Here are specific design decisions that I don't agree with in your application:

\- Why is the title of your pages black while icons are black?

\- Why is the overscroll color gray?

\- Why is there a padding/margin at the left of items that reveal that gray background?

\- Why alternate the colors of the items?

\- The right side of the title of items is cut.

\- Every time I refresh the items, a dark overlay is added (and never gets removed)

\- The horizontal swiping interactions between the side menu, the sliding to reveal comments and the fact that the content of an item itself scrolls, make these interactions difficult to predict and non-intuitive.

\- Why is the HN logo different when you're in the item details?

\- Why is the comment icon different in the details?

I'm sorry, there are just too many things wrong with this app. I lack the patience to go through every issue, and I'm now convinced that it's not worth the trouble.

If you ever want people to use your software, seek the help of a person that understands design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the feedback , I will work on fixing some of these issues . Some of things were made specific based on user feedback but you have raised some valid points

<comment><AUTHOR> Have fixed a lot of the issues, will be launching soon in the app store - |via [http://bit.ly/hnbuzz01|](http://bit.ly/hnbuzz01|)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone else use "and" and "or" in C (iso646.h)? - <AUTHOR>

Just trying to settle a friendly "coding style" debate I'm having with some colleagues. :-)
They're keen on using the spelled-out "and" and "or" as per iso646.h in our code, rather than the standard && and || operators. Admittedly they do look nice, and match well with our Python code. But it's weird to see them in C, and I've never seen them anywhere else on The Internet.
(If you've never seen "and" and "or" used in C, you can read about them and iso646.h here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iso646.h)
So I'm just curious: Does anyone else use them? Either yourself or in an open-source project you've seen? <comment><USER2> Wow ... I consider myself reasonably well-versed with C, and I had never heard of that header.

I would of course, bias and all, consider any programmers deciding to use it to be well out of touch with reality.

I don't see a real-world benefit either, all it does is make those guys feel macho and elite for knowing something (of little value, in my opinion), _and_ making the code hugely harder to maintain.

Ask a manager, while providing some kind of statistical data showing how common use of this header is in C code "in the wild".

A quick search with code.google.com gives _0_ hits for "iso646.h", that tells me something.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd think using those forms would be analogous to using different variable naming conventions in the same codebase or having no conventions for "{" placement.

That in itself is not so bad, but it can possibly lead to the sort of environment where everyone has their own little version of common helper macros / function / libraries.

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazing. the wikipedia says: "which, without the header file, cannot be quickly or easily typed on some international and non-QWERTY keyboards"

Anyone have one of those keyboards?</comment>


Ask HN: Books vs. MOOCs - <AUTHOR> What do you think is more valuable in learning new subjects? What should one focus on?<p>Personally, I learn more easily with MOOCs but retain more with books. Just want to know what is your preferred medium and why? Is there any research about it? <comment><USER2> As a Java trainer/coach, I find books to be a great resource for learning, and are woefully underused (under-read?). However, depending on what you're learning, feedback of whether you're on the right track is important. MOOCs are also useful, but the dropout rate is high, so be aware of that and ask for help.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love this question. I like both.

I find MOOCs difficult to finish if there isn't a community angle + strong carrot or stick. YC Startup School offers carrot of getting into YC and the stick of having certain privileges removed if you don't attend group sessions.

I love books but find it's harder to read a book front to back when there are so many more engaging digital experiences out there.

Currently working on a startup called TLDR which summarizes the world's best books for startup founders and teams.

Check it out if interested: [http://www.hellotldr.com](http://www.hellotldr.com)</comment>


LinkedIn's OAuth page allows you to set an Access Duration of 1, 7 or 30 days. - <AUTHOR> http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/?foo

<comment><AUTHOR> Here it is in action: <http://d.pr/uohd></comment>


Landlords who also want to be your Investor, start a VC Fund (a sign that the Bubble is Back?) - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2006/03/17/amidzad-the-rug-merchants-turned-venture-capitalists/ <comment><USER2> Though the article is recent, they've been doing this for a long time.

<comment><USER3> So they got lucky because PayPal leased their space.

Yeah, you can survive a long time with a payoff like that.

But do they really understand tech investing?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's essentially what I was thinking: the whole equity-instead-of-rent phenomenon is a holdover from the last bubble.

While I'm glad to see they've done well for themselves, I'm not quite sure I'd welcome them as investors.</comment></comment></comment>


Edit your code in the cloud with bitbucket - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bitbucket.org/2013/05/14/edit-your-code-in-the-cloud-with-bitbucket/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm really hoping they give us a way of organizing our repositories next.

[https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issue/2323/create-a-way- to...](https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issue/2323/create-a-way-to-group- repositories)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also related: [https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/128202/is-there-a- wa...](https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/128202/is-there-a-way-to- categorize-or-tag-repos-within-bitbucket?page=1#179676)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I don't find such feature very useful. Without a way to execute code or run tests it seems too easy to break something.

<comment><USER3> It is nice at least for editing .md files to update readme/instructions/etc.

Sometimes I want to do a quick edit without having to cd directory, make sure I'm up to date, edit file, add/commit/push just for a md file in the repo

<comment><USER4> Exactly.

It's only a useless feature, if you think people who don't think a service by BitBucket will ever be used by people unfamiliar with git and programming.

I for one am very pleased with the opportunity for crowd-sourcing fixes and improvements to open-source websites and projects - especially for people whose interest in them is not grounded in the programming aspect.

<comment><USER5> how many non-programmers are poking around in code repositories?

<comment><USER6> I don't really know how to use git, but I am a programmer. I use github a little bit though. To me, this is great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For the life of me I cannot comprehend why they din't use a CSS & HTML based button with native text for the "Create a free account" button. Or is it supposed to look that cheap?

<comment><USER8> They probably use a CRM which only allows for image-based CTAs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great if you are stuck somewhere needing to change something. I really like bitbucket, about the only thing I miss on their site is a "gist" like functionality.

</comment><comment><USER10> I want them to open an API for this, maybe I want to make edits my own way, or write a tool for others?

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a good alternative for online pairing or even interviews!

</comment><comment><USER12> I was hoping they'd leapfrog GitHub and allow you to stage actual commits and use something like CodeMirror to edit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't that exactly what they did?

<comment><USER12> I guess I always expect UI chrome around CodeMirror, but yeah, it obviously says CodeMirror right there, DOH, I missed the color syntax highliting when I skimmed through. I still don't see how to do multifile commits all from the web-ui which is what I meant to reference. I can do one-off files on GitHub but they're a commit a piece.

Both GitHub and BitBucket are really close to letting me do significant editting of code from my browser which is still very useful for me. There are tons of times I'd love to be able to fire up GitHub and hack on some files without having to actually commit to persist changes. But then again, maybe I'm projecting feature creep on what is ultimately a VCS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I still find Bitbucket less usable than Github. The price is right, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sweet! So the NSA can find holes in your code even before you release it!

<comment><USER15> Are we really going to do this on every comment thread?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I fail to understand why I shouldn't use my favorite editor, I'd call it a non-feature (useless, not available from the competion because it is useless).

<comment><USER17> I know that I've used GitHub's online editor a few times in situations where I see a quick typo I need to fix or want to make a one line change without the hassle of opening up the right directory, pulling the latest code, opening up an editor, etc etc.

<comment><USER16> Sorry to hear that your IDE totally sucks - scnr.

It just depends on how you approach it, since I prefer to work local and upstream revisions with change notes, the main reason for revision control.

Given the featureset of github, it makes somehow sense, it just contradicts revision control to work directly in the repository.

<comment><USER18> How does it contradict revision control? You can make a change and add a commit message all in 1 fell swoop. Then the next time you `git pull` that commit will be pulled down, just like any other.

As others have said, it's amazingly useful for quick and small changes. I don't see how that means someone's IDE sucks. I work on many projects and don't have all of them open in my IDE with the latest code always on my machine. This totally beats opening that project, running a `git pull` (which may take a while on an active project which I haven't visited in a bit), making the change, then committing and pushing.

On top of this, it's useful for non-technical people using these tools. Not everyone can move around through multiple repositories and pull down updates as easily as you or I. However, now they can easily help keep documentation up to date without leaving their browser.

<comment><USER16> It makes sense if you are on the same social coding platform.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Encrypting Your Laptop Like You Mean It - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/27/encrypting-laptop-like-mean/ <comment><USER2> I think the best / most secure computer you can use today is a libreboot GM45 thinkpad with FDE, including /boot. The implications of this are big, both in security and in plausable deniability. Look at the case of Jeff Feldman [1], and how having a detectable OS made him liable for the hard disk. If they can't show that the drive contains some kind of OS or that it's not gibberish, you cannot be forced to unencrypt them (don't quote me on this, I'm not entirely sure if I'm speaking the truth.)

But if I'm right, having a visible /boot partition is enough to show that there is some kind of OS.

With Grub2 written to the board itself, you can get around that. [2]

[1]: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/28/in-reversal- ju...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/28/in-reversal-judge-orders- child-porn-suspect-to-decrypt-hard-drives/)

[2]: [http://libreboot.org/docs/gnulinux/encrypted_trisquel.html](http://libreboot.org/docs/gnulinux/encrypted_trisquel.html)

<comment><USER3> I don't see how the article you linked to [0] indicates a detectable OS in any way shape or form.

Rather, the issue is that if it cannot be shown that you _do_ know the password, then ownership of the drive cannot be determined. Entering the password is equivalent to admitting ownership, and therefore would be self- incriminating.

The article indicates that the FBI decrypted one drive and found evidence that it belonged to Feldman:

>According to the order (PDF), after devoting "substantial resources" in the case, FBI agents apparently have been able to decrypt one of the drives. The government argued that because it had found "numerous files which constitute child pornography," "detailed personal financial records and documents belonging to Feldman," and "dozens of personal photographs of Feldman," Feldman therefore has "access to and control over" the set of drives.

Edit: Forgot link.

[0][http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/28/in-reversal- ju...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/28/in-reversal-judge-orders- child-porn-suspect-to-decrypt-hard-drives/)

<comment><USER4> In an adversarial judicial system, can a judge trust the prosecution to not tamper with digital evidence? What can the defense do in a situation where the prosecution plants an identical storage device (hard disk drive, ssd, flash drive) that contains cp specimen?

Does the judge simply take prosecution's word? If so, why can't they just take the defense's word that they don't know the password?

<comment><USER5> > In an adversarial judicial system, can a judge trust the prosecution to not > tamper with digital evidence?

The judge doesn't have to trust the evidence, the judge just allows the prosecution to present it, and allows the defense to present whatever they have to rebut it, including challenges to its provenance, counterevidence, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Recommending BitLocker and OSX HD encryption I feel is a diservice to the public. I wouldn't put it past them to already have backdoors built in. Let alone they are both proprietary and not open to public audit. I guess we are suppoed to take their word [1]???

[1] [http://mashable.com/2013/09/11/fbi-microsoft-bitlocker- backd...](http://mashable.com/2013/09/11/fbi-microsoft-bitlocker-backdoor/)

<comment><USER7> I'm a typical developer and I think I speak for the vast majority of people when I say that my concern is not with top level government agencies decrypting my hard drive. My concern is with me losing my computer or having it stolen by a petty thief, in which case I feel that the proprietary built-in encryption tools offered by Microsoft and Apple are perfectly suitable.

<comment><USER8> > when I say that my concern is not with top level government agencies > decrypting my hard drive.

It's great that you have risk-assessed your needs.

It's a shame that the title says "like you mean it", and not "for tamper resistance against most people, but probably not well funded government agencies".

<comment><USER7> The title is off, but typically sensational. I wonder what disk encryption look like if you don't "mean it"?

<comment><USER8> "Enclosed but not encrypted" is a nice article about bad encryption.

[http://www.h-online.com/security/features/Enclosed-but- not-e...](http://www.h-online.com/security/features/Enclosed-but-not- encrypted-746199.html)

> A new generation of inexpensive disk drive enclosures using hardware > encryption and RFID keys do not fulfil the promises of their publicity. The > adverts claim 128-bit AES hardware encryption, but they don't tell us how it > is used

She does a nice write up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're crossing borders with electronic stuff, simply don't bring anything personal. Access it remotely. You'll only be out hardware should the hardware be confiscated, and you'll have no big privacy breach should you have to boot the machine to show to customs.

Clear cache / cookies beforehand, or use the browser in a mode that clears on shutdown. Use suspend / hibernate when not crossing borders, but do a proper shutdown when going through borders.

Carrying valuable data around then trying to protect it by encrypting it, while simultaneously going through borders, is just asking for trouble IMO. You'll look like a complete freak should you be picked on, very suspicious.

<comment><USER10> Well it's probably easier and cost effective for "them" to access your remote data (and they probably already have with their dragnet surveillance programs) than to decrypt your laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > But unfortunately, laptops have ports that have direct memory access, or > DMA, including FireWire, USB, and others.

USB doesn't exposes DMA.

"Examples of connections that may allow DMA in some exploitable form include FireWire, ExpressCard, Thunderbolt, PCI and PCI Express." – [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack)

<comment><USER11> Related from 2006:

Schneier on Security — Hacking Computers Over USB [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/hacking_compu...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/hacking_compute.html)

The block-quote incorrectly mentions DMA over USB, but the described attack uses Windows AutoRun. The comments discuss a demonstrated FireWire iPod based DMA attack, and that USB doesn't expose DMA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those who use BitLocker: although it is set up to use numeric-only PINs by default, you can configure this to allow any character - which would presumably increase the search space of brute force attacks against the PIN.

The relevant Group Policy setting is "Allow enhanced PINs for startup", and can be found in Windows Components → BitLocker Drive Encryption → Operating System Drives.

<comment><USER13> The big question is: is your PIN used only for TPM access? Or is the PIN itself combined after unlocking the TPM?

How it should work is that one hash of your PIN is used to unlock the TPM. Then another hash of the PIN is used to mix into the key the TPM provides. That way directly compromising the TPM doesn't provide full access.

This is probably strictly obsolete by using a long PIN. But it feels nice to have a TPM, as it's one more piece the attacker needs. If they steal the disk or fuckup the TPM, then the data's gone, even if you reveal your PIN.

(ATM, I use Bitlocker, then encrypt my VMs with EFS keyed off a certificate stored on a smartcard. Then I Bitlocker the VM drive itself. It's silly, but that way I get a range of hardware plus brain-stored password. [I don't need it any more, it's just a leftover setup from my BTC experiments.] I also put tamper proof seals all over my laptop, but it requires active work to check them and note the serial number on each one.)

<comment><USER12> I wondered that too - apparently in Vista the PIN was only used to authenticate to the TPM and retrieve the volume master key (which in turn protects the key used to actually encrypt the drive).

More pleasingly however, in Windows 7 and onwards it is used to encrypt the volume master key as well, in pretty much the way you describe.

Microsoft's submissions for FIPS validation have some good detail on this - Windows 7 [see section 7]: [http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cmvp/documents/140-1/140sp/1...](http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cmvp/documents/140-1/140sp/140sp1332.pdf), others: [https://www.google.com/search?q=site:csrc.nist.gov+inurl:140...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site:csrc.nist.gov+inurl:140sp+microsoft+bitlocker)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a Linux desktop/laptop user and just wanted to point out that LUKs encryption is built right into the RHEL / Fedora installer and works like a champ.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just when I though I know everything about how computer works, here they are talking about freezing ram attack. I didn't even imagine this as a possibility.

<comment><USER16> So, it's obviously hard to defend against a freeze attack when the computer is sleeping - because the key is still needed.

But I feel like disk encryption software should, when the computer is being shut down, prepare some random data and write over the encryption key to prevent information leakage in the moments after shutdown. This, combined with some hardware intrusion detection system would help a lot, wouldn't it? Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER13> There's a neat implementation of AES that uses only registers and never has the key in RAM after boot. I forget the name right now, but it's pretty fucking awesome. IIRC it puts the key into debug registers, then disables access to those registers. It calculates the key schedule on-the-fly for each block it encrypts, and it performs decently with AES-NI. So neither the key, nor any of intermediate pieces, are ever in RAM, just in registers.

Edit: Here it is: Tresor: [http://www1.informatik.uni- erlangen.de/tresor](http://www1.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/tresor)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Note that with FileVault on, backups are not automatically encrypted. Time Machine is a smooth backup experience, but should be encrypted as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> > _Unlike in Windows and Mac OS X, you can only encrypt your disk when you > first install Linux._

That is obviously simply not true. There is no user friendly GUI way to do it, but it is definitly doable, and that's what they should have written.

Also, recommending BitLocker, and not having the main guide for something more user friendly and open source?

<comment><USER19> out of curiousity, what would you recommend as a user friendly open source disk encryption product in place of Bitlocker?

<comment><USER18> Well, back when I used windows TrueCrypt was still a thing.

Depending on your threat model, probably still TC though. If your threat model is the NSA, I'd advise you to not use windows anyways. Plus, if it does turn out TC has a major flaw, someone abusing it might make a noise. And as far as I'm aware the TC audit also hasn't found anything serious so far.

If you aren't betting your life on it, I think you're still fine with TrueCrypt, Plus, encrypting your full drive with it is something my mother could do. Next, next, next done, at least that's how I remember it.

Edit: Thinking about it, this is firstlook.org, maybe they know something we don't, but recommending BitLocker over TC sill seems like a stretch.

<comment><USER20> TrueCrypt doesn't support EUFI which pretty much all laptops use these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The other approach is to not leave anything on your PC that you care about someone else having access to.

This could mean keeping a lot of data encrypted online, with keys being remembered (and possibly backed up in a safe at home incase you forget)

<comment><USER22> This would at minimum leave your cache exposed...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How's OPAL support looking on Linux these days? Last time I looked all I could find was: [https://github.com/r0m30/msed](https://github.com/r0m30/msed)

</comment><comment><USER24> Are any major computer vendors enabling this by default? Phones are encrypted by default, seems obvious to do the same for laptops and such.

<comment><USER19> Some phones are encrypted if you add a passcode, but won't be unless you do. Also AFAIK android still isn't by default event when a passcode is set.

One of the problems with doing it by default is the consequences of a lost password. On a consumer device (where there's unlikely to be an admin backup password) a lost/forgotten password can result in the user losing all their data.

Once people get to the point of storing all personal data off machine (e.g. OneDrive / icloud) it would make more sense to have this kind of thing enabled by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> What are people thoughts on where to keep your encryption password? Is it fine just to keep it in lastpass/one pass?

</comment><comment><USER26> And slow it down like it's 1999.

<comment><USER19> with hardware support for encryption in CPUs and directly on the drives themselves the hit on performance isn't anything like as bad as it used to be with pure software solutions</comment></comment>