The man who saw time stand still - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140624-the-man-who-saw-time-freeze?ocid=twfut <comment><USER2> This reminded me the description of Tibetan Buddhist teachings about the nature of the mind from the book "The Joy of Living" by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche:

"Later, when I came to the West, I heard a number of psychologists compare the experience of 'mind' or 'self' to watching a movie. When we watch a movie, they explained, we seem to experience a continuous flow of sound and motion as individual frames pass through a projector. The experience would be drastically different, however, if we had the chance to look at the film frame by frame.

"This is exactly how my father [Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche] began to teach me to look at my mind. If I observed every thought, feeling, and sensation that passed through my mind, the illusion of a limited self would dissolve, to be replaced by a sense of awareness that is much more calm, spacious, and serene. And what I learned from other scientists was that because experience changes the neuronal structure of the brain, when we observe the mind this way, we can change the cellular gossip that perpetuates our experience of our 'self'."

<comment><USER3> And since we always require scientific proof, here's the relevant study regarding "mindful meditation" and its benefits:

[http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks- to...](http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to-a-better- brain/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised they don't cite the research of David Eagleman. He's done very solid research to untangle the questions of subjective time perception:

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/25/the- possibilian](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/25/the-possibilian) (posted here before I believe)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkANniH8XZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkANniH8XZE) (A talk by him on subjective time)

</comment><comment><USER5> " _Reviewing the case studies and available scientific research on the matter, Arstila concludes that an automatic mechanism, triggered by stress hormones, might speed up the brain's internal processing to help it handle the life or death situation.[1] "Our thoughts and initiation of movements become faster – but because we are working faster, the external world appears to slow down," he says. It is even possible that some athletes have deliberately trained themselves to create a time warp on demand[2]: surfers, for instance, can often adjust their angle in the split second it takes to launch off steep waves, as the water rises overhead._ "

That might possibly be true for life-or-death situations, but I believe the second statement is overreaching. I don't believe that the individuals have "trained themselves to create a time warp on demand", but rather that it is an effect of having learned the specific skills involved.

Having learned new skills several times over the years, one thing that I have constantly noticed is that, initially, things happen _fast_. Events appear quickly and it is not apparent what is important and what is not. On the other hand, after you have some experience and can recognize what events are important and which are about to occur, and have the skill to respond appropriately, the speed of events is no longer a problem for performance.

In fact, at some point common events cease to be consciously perceptible---the reaction to them is instinctive.

[1] [http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00...](http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00196/full)

[2] [http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00...](http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00209/full)

<comment><USER6> The bit about surfers really is reaching. No time warp necessary. The brain emulates musculoskeletal movement in parallel to actual movement, and compares performance against goal attainment, and against the emulation. This takes milliseconds, quick enough for very rapid musculoskeletal adjustment, before conscious awareness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This does not in the slightest sound like time standing still.

Instead it sounds exactly like the symptoms when the motion-detection parts of the eye are not working.

The brain does not detect visual motion, instead the eye does that. It is one of the "layers" of information sent, and this is the symptom when it doesn't work.

More info: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akinetopsia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akinetopsia)

</comment><comment><USER8> I used to suffer from Alice In Wonderland Syndrome [1]. The first time I noticed symptoms was when I thought my CD player was broken because it was playing music slowly.

I asked other people if it sounded slow to them and they didn't think so. There was nothing wrong with the CD player.

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

</comment><comment><USER9> A while ago, I saw a course offering to improve use of the brain. One trick it claimed to teach was meditation that taught people to control perception of time. The idea was that you could slow time down to have more reaction, training or thinking time. I wrote it off as a snake oil thing with far- fetched possibility of happing to some degree somewhere else.

Seeing these cases makes me wonder, though. Research into neuroscience or neuro-engineering might be able to tap into this effect to do things similar to other claim. My first thought as a former martial artist was combat applications. There's gotta be a DARPA lab working on this exact thing somewhere.

So, applicable questions to this are (a) does their brain just slow down where it takes time to catch up to what happened in reality; or (b) do our brains actually waste effort to preserve a specific, temporal experience. If it's (b), then there's a possibility of re-training or modifying the brain to get more usable time to think or act. I can't be sure from the article if it's (b), though. Anyone have an idea about that?

<comment><USER10> I think the best way to think about this is in terms of frame rate or really thought rate. If only the subconscious portions of your mind were operating at a heightened frequency you would likely only remember making decisions quickly like the pilot in this article. If only your consciousness was operating at the heightened frequency you would likely remember time slowing down without being able to move like "a deer in the headlights." As the article points out, the natural mechanism for this sensory modulation is a complex soup of hormones that increase blood flow and neural activity in your brain. The question is not how fast or slow is the brain relative to one second per second, but how many decisions and perceptions can the brain make in one second.

<comment><USER9> That's a better way of framing the subject than I was even expecting. Excellent and thanks! Yes, my question does boil down to "how many decisions and perceptions" per second plus if these event indicate it might be modified to be beneficial. So, decisions and perceptions per second might be the natural starting point for research field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I once experienced something similar in a beach volleyball match. We were up to a pair of much better...and much larger... players, but we were highly motivated and had a lot of fun.

Suddenly I noticed that everything slowed down A LOT and I could easily receive full blown attacks that were 3m away...not always clean though, as my body did not move fast enough.

It is very pleasing to read something about it here and remember this experience. I hope this "feature" will be researched more, so that everybody could unlock it at will.

<comment><USER6> This sounds like two phenomena: flow during the gave, amplified by time- dilation during later recollection.

On mobile, references awkward. Flow is easy to Google. See my previous comment re time-dilation during recollection.

Incidentally, none of this is meant to disparage your comment. In fact, it sounds awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> SWIM had a very intense experience of time looping which they can't explain brought on by unfamiliarity with a certain substance...they described it as reliving the same few minutes over and over, having the same conversation over and over, and their friends repeating the same bits of dialogue at different spatial locations over a 1.5 hour period...like the _exact same_ bits of dialogue with the same hand motions, intonation, sarcasm, etc.

Could be explained by certain neurotransmitters being disrupted by a drug, replaying short term memories at different times, brain incapable of integrating time correctly.

SWIM isn't sure.

<comment><USER13> What is SWIM?

<comment><USER14> Someone Who Isn't Me. A particularly silly way to refer to yourself while maintaining the illusion of legal deniability, especially popular on certain forums devoted to recreational substances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The example refering to rotating car wheels seeming to stand still can only be seen in "artificial" street light and not in direct sunlight. It is the lights Hz (refresh rate) that causes the illusion and not some "frame rate" in the brain.

<comment><USER16> I also thought so, but the research abstract linked from the article suggests there is a real perceptual effect.

I would be curious to know if they had any estimate of the 'frame rate'

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0002911)

<comment><USER17> ~18 Hz by my own imperfect measurements.

<comment><USER16> Seriously, or only joking? That's interesting. How did you measure it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> perception of time is interesting. I saw something years ago, I believe the discovery channel, where a researcher put a watch-like device on particpants wrists. its refresh rate was such that you could not see the number it displayed. when a person the was dropped from a height on a bungee, they could see the number. the explanation was the adrenaline serge causing the perception of time to become enhanced, thus the refresh rate was no longer too fast to prevent one from seeing the number. I can relate; I had a car fly in a barrel role towards my car in a near head-on collision all action-movie like. Time slowed and I could make out the driver and passenger with high clarity. their facial expressions, the passenger's 49'ers jacket and her necklass dangling in the air... it was quite the experience! (please ignore typos as my phone is not giving me spelling corrections for some reason)

<comment><USER19> It seems like you managed to completely reverse the findings of the bungee study to match your own expectations...

[http://m.livescience.com/2117-time-slow- emergencies.html](http://m.livescience.com/2117-time-slow-emergencies.html)

      "Instead, the scientists found that volunteers could not read the numbers at faster than normal speeds."

<comment><USER18> ha! wow, thanks for the reality check. I woulda sworn that several people made out the number. well, that is memory for you I guess. going through the link, i like the explanation that you "record" more data over the period of time which in retrospect makes it feel like time slowed.

<comment><USER20> Ok, let's do this right:

Research is by David Eagleman [0], who has written about it on the web [1] and originally in: Stetson, Fiesta, Eagleman (2007). Does time really slow down during a frightening event? PLoS One. [2]

[0] [http://www.eagleman.com/research/time- perception](http://www.eagleman.com/research/time-perception) [1] [http://www.eagleman.com/research/110-time-and-the-brain- or-w...](http://www.eagleman.com/research/110-time-and-the-brain-or-what-s- happening-in-the-eagleman-lab) [2] [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001295)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not sure if this is the same thing, Around 12 years ago I was playing on the street with my friends, and got hit by a speeding motorbike, I remember seeing the motor bike coming towards me, I remember all the details it was so slow, but I was frozen, I felt as if I had all the time in the world, and then suddenly I snapped and the bike hit me on the shoulder. Fell to the ground and luckily managed to escape with just a few scratches on my leg.

I always wondered if this memory was something the younger version of me made up in my head or if it actually happened. Never experienced it again unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER22> The experience described in the article is, imho, quite common. The spontaneous positive ones are of the type you experience in sports, when you are in "the zone". Priceless experience. And the negative ones occur in times of danger - you want to forget these, but that's nearly impossible. Meditation gets you there as well, and with some side-effects, I'm told drugs do too. I read a hilarious account by PJ O'Rourke of how still time stood during an ill- advised drugs and dynamite experiment with some of his buddies.

</comment><comment><USER23> If perception of space-time emerges as simplified interface to the dynamics of interacting conscious agents[0], then such 'time glitches' can be explained as abnormal states in the combination of conscious agents that comprise one's mind.

(Can't help trying to look at this through prism of my limited understanding of that research.)

[0] [http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00...](http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00577/full)

</comment><comment><USER24> Surprised the article doesn't reference the stroke of enlightenment [0].

Makes you wonder how much awakening (as described in linked video) is more accident than act of volition/determination (e.g. dedicated meditation/spiritual practice). Perhaps the latter sets the stage for the ultimate accident to occur.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU)

<comment><USER25> The presenter brought out a real deceased person's human brain to parade around in front of a TED talk -- ultimate disrespect, trivializing someone's life where slides or video would have done as well.

<comment><USER24> In what way is presentating a brain "ultimate disprespect"? Do you honestly think the deceased took offense at their brain being put on public display?

Talk about missing the forest (content of presentation) for the trees. Maybe watch the video, it's extraordinary. Presenter had a massive stroke (8 year recovery) and, for some reason, awakened as a result.

Anyway, the wiki [0] may help explain why the presenter, a scientist specializing in the "postmortem investigation of the human brain as it relates to schizophrenia and the severe mental illnesses", would bring a brain on stage at a TED talk ;-)

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

<comment><USER26> Related: [https://soundcloud.com/the-story-collider/bradford-jordan- th...](https://soundcloud.com/the-story-collider/bradford-jordan-the-brain-in- the-trunk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This once happened to me. I'd been up for a few days clubbing and then everything changed so slowly as too seem to stop. It was excruciatingly boring. I could examine the entire scene in as much detail as I cared then there was nothing new to see, and all I could do was wait, and wait, for the next time quanta for something new. Thankfully it didn't last long (in clock time anyway).</comment>


The ultimate post on Startup School 2013 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/91794c78a68b

<comment><USER2> Agree about chatting with people seating next to you (btw, great meeting you!). Too many people were busy browsing HN on their phones, meanwhile they could talk to HNers right there and then.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Aviv! I was actually thinking about you when I wrote that! Nice meeting you as well :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> re: 5.5 Hispanic female here, but wow there were really only about 10 other females in the crowd. At lunch, we thought it was funny. By the reception, we were scratching our heads.

Why do you think women don't attend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I was thinking about it, after having read "Lean in" recently.

I think it's a missed opportunity, first of all. On "why", I truly don't know. I guess that the organizers could do a better job in trying to involve "diverse" groups of people, but I would never blame them for having too many guys and just a few ladies attend.

<comment><USER3> I think the question is "Why didn't women want to attend?"

Some said it was probably intimidating to be amongst an all male group. But the only way that will change is if we (females) show up!

<comment><AUTHOR> It might be true. A way to fix this would be to involve some women groups and convince them to attend "en masse".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet? - <AUTHOR> I recently came home to find the home PC has been bricked - the boot layer has somehow been corrupted.
This is pretty remarkable given that my dad only uses it watch golf videos and edit some photos in lightroom. He may occasionally indulge in some porn cough.
I figured he'd be relatively safe as I installed an Adblocker and had Norton installed on the device but I did not realise how vulnerable he was until I found out he can't tell the difference between a pop up and a genuine desktop notification. He has even clicked through on a "You have been chosen to win an iPhone 7" link recently - he saw no harm in at least seeing what might happen.
He also likes to download videos from youtube so I taught him how to use youtube-dl but ended up downloading some malware-infected ripper because it had a more convenient UI.
How do I educate someone from such a base level?
What can I put on the PC to protect them? I avoided using scriptblockers as I don't think they are tech savvy enough to work out why a page might not be working. <comment><USER3> I am the opposite of most comments here. Don't stupid her away to a mobile device.

We got our mom a computer, a cheap one, and told her to play with it. Break it. Click everywhere.

Soon enough she was playing with windows settings. Soon enough nothing worked. She now knew you can brick computer, she is more careful.

We fixed the computer and she explored the internet. She asked how she could download wallpapers, we introduced her to torrents and file sharing. She got viruses. She learned that you can get virus online and they will delete your hard worked wallpaper collection. She is aware of the dangers of the internet now.

For a while you would download all the free adblockers, anti-virus, etc., she could find and put them on CDs. She learned to clean her own computer.

Right now she is very comfortable with computers and it allows her to have more freedom. She will easily connect with people online, like we do here. I'm certain it has helped her keeping smart.

She even feel out pain now. Whenever one of her neighbours lady has issues with computers they call her.

<comment><USER4> This assumes an interest, willingness, and time to learn. For better or worse, not everyone can/wants to become an expert in managing these buggy and vulnerable messes we call general purpose computers.

It's a big investment, an investment many of us don't remember making since it was effectively part of our childhood. That same investment, in a world with special purpose computing devices, has a very low ROI for people who would rather be doing something else.

<comment><USER5> It's also assuming you live close enough to your parents that you can go over and physically revive a bricked computer.

<comment><USER6> I just thought of a bizarre but interesting idea - an i3/i5-capable server motherboard with IPMI, and a rock-solid router running OpenVPN in front of the IPMI port.

Maybe fractionally higher power consumption, and perhaps you'd need a GPU for it, but if both ends have really decent internet, that could very legitimately work.

<comment><USER7> > a rock-solid router

Make one of these and you'll end up with a lot of money.

<comment><USER6> Where would be a good place to start? OpenBSD? [http://www.skeptech.org/blog/2013/01/13/unscrewed-a-story- ab...](http://www.skeptech.org/blog/2013/01/13/unscrewed-a-story-about- openbsd/) Another platform?

It's tricky. You could for example pick seL4, but then you have no router. That could be interpreted as an amazing opportunity to make a new stack, or a feat significantly less interesting and more strenuous than climbing Mt. Everest.

Then on the hardware side, do you pick x86 (complete with firmware that lets you use fallthru to ring -2! \o/), ARM, MIPS, or what? This is a question I've no idea how to answer.

Also, heh, I'm reminded of this:

1\. Search Shodan for JAWS/1.0

2\. Take one of the results, go to the IP[:port], append "/shell?" and a command, eg "/shell?ls"

3\. Try running "whoami"

4\. Go back and look at the number of results

5\. Visit the IPs normally, and learn that these are DVRs, for security cameras; alternate between dying inside and reattaching your jaw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I second what some others here are saying - get your parents a Chromebook (or Chromebox if they want a desktop).

I got a Dell Chromebook for my mother.

It's nigh on unbreakable, and is great for non-tech parents. Each tab/app runs in its own sandbox, and it allows them to do the things they want (i.e. browsing).

It automatically updates in the background (none of that Windows update rubbish), it has inbuilt malware block lists (via Chrome Safe Browsing), it's fast, doesn't bog down over time etc.

Even if by some magic they brick it, a simple Powerwash ([https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/183084?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/183084?hl=en)) and 5 minutes later, it will be back to a pristine state, they log in with their Google account, and it pulls down their settings again.

Also, if you want to see the latest and greatest coming in ChromeOS - try the Canary channel =). (But be prepared for rough edges).

Feel free to ask any questions.

<comment><USER9> My findings have been that old folks (and even some middle aged folks) are still able to be completely bamboozled by popups on Chromebooks.

Those popups that hijack the back button and pop up an alert when you try to close them are enough to get them calling the phone number they see in the window and pulling out their credit card to "have their computer fixed".

<comment><USER8> Yes, it's unfortunate that crooks are pretty creative and will always find a way. I've seen some pretty innovative phishing scams.

However, the Chrome browser uses a Safe Browsing list which blocks many known malware/phishing sites.

[https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/)

The list is constantly being updated, both by automated and manual means.

You can also submit bad sites here:

[https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/...](https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/?hl=en) [https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?h...](https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en)

If you find one that isn't blocked, I'd definitely encourage you to do your bit and submit it.

Firefox also uses the same Safe Browsing service:

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing- and-m...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-malware- protection-work)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Use Deepfreeze or something similar. You'll mark a their documents directory as excluded and then every time they restart their machine it'll be back to the exact state it was in when you first set it up.

You don't want to have to support them using a new OS for the first time - you'll be in for a headache. I use Deepfreeze for anyone who is a "problem user" and most don't even realize they have it if it's set up right.

<comment><USER11> What does it cost? The faronics website seems to avoid minor details like pricing.

<comment><USER10> $45, I believe there are alternatives I just don't really know anything about them.

You're right about their site though, every single time they've changed it the site has looked more scammy/crappy and been harder to get where I need to go. If I hadn't used their product before I would go to that site and immediately leave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was really hoping for a discussion on how to keep parents from watching videos about the healing properties of crystals and government chemtrail conspiracies...

...but to answer your question perhaps you can get your parents a Chromebook? I'm not sure what photo editing options exist on the platform, but hopefully it's an obscure enough platform to avoid the majority of malware.

<comment><USER13> Related. Conspiracy theory websites are also very dangerous places to browse. My grandfather loves conspiracy theories, mostly the ones related to free energy machines, and he told me some sites that he went to. I was curious so I visited a few of them (using Firefox + AdBlock). This was the first time I actually got a virus just by browsing a site. It used an exploit that bypassed the browser download popup security mechanism, and it just installed itself. I legitimately got owned, and I was pissed because that just does not happen to me. Now I understand why my grandfather's computer is unusable nowadays.

<comment><USER14> I hope you reported the vulnerability to Mozilla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Chromebooks cannot print.

Everyone loves to recommend Chromebooks to older/less digitally literate people, and they're right to do so in most situations. However Chromebooks have one huge downside that makes them non-starters for some of that demographic: Printing is a no-go.

And don't tell me about "Google Cloud Print." Cloud Printing requires a PC or Mac connected to the printer and a copy of the Chrome browser running. In this scenario we're trying to replace a PC or Mac, not add to them, so Google Cloud Print is a non-starter.

Ultimately people who quickly jump on the Chromebook recommendation need to find out first if printing, even rarely, is a requirement. For a lot of people I've tried to move over to a Chromebook, it has been the single thing that killed the entire project.

Printing in general is a huge hole in Chromebook's offering.

<comment><USER16> Well, a cloud-ready printer would solve that issue... One hurdle I've faced is lack of things like Skype. OP mentioned lightroom. Sometimes, the alternatives are not good enough, or not user-friendly enough for parents who insist on say Skype instead of hangouts

<comment><USER17> Some Chromebooks now support Android apps, with more to come over the next year.

[https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems- suppo...](https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting- android-apps)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> tldr: Linux.

I had more or less the same issue (except things still booted) with my parents about 5 or 6 years ago. In a move I thought was insane, I put them on Xubuntu. I moved them to Mint for a while, but they are back to Xubuntu. It's my preferred distro, and the Ubuntu base (for good support) and XFCE (Windows familiarity) made me comfortable it was Mom and Dad proof. Aside from showing them where things are, there have been zero problems. Turns out that Linux is just as good for email, web browsing, Youtube, and solitare.

I haven't used Lightroom, but how does (say) RawTherapee compare?

<comment><USER19> RawTherapee and the other Linux RAW software can't hold a candle to Lightroom. I don't even like Lightroom, but the Linux RAW editors are just not very good.

My advice to the OP is to tell them to buy a Mac, get Apple Care and let Apple Genius Bar deal with it.

<comment><USER20> > RawTherapee and the other Linux RAW software can't hold a candle to > Lightroom.

This is just plain false. I used AfterShot Pro and I think it's better than Lightroom. The only reason that I switched back to Darktable is because I don't want to locked in the proprietary software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> After my mom got scammed online, I had "the talk" with my parents and we agreed that they would just use iPads and iPhones.

I've had no tech support calls for a couple of years now.

I think a chromebook is a good option if a keyboard is required.

It's a losing battle at this point. Your time is better spent educating them against social engineering attacks (I'm still afraid my mom is going to return a call to the voicemail the "IRS" left)

<comment><USER22> > It's a losing battle at this point. Your time is better spent educating them > against social engineering attacks (I'm still afraid my mom is going to > return a call to the voicemail the "IRS" left)

The "This is Microsoft calling..." scams are even worse. Many older people have very little understanding of what is actually installed on their computer and what the various pieces do. My mother in law has fallen for the fake AV popup advert multiple times this year.

<comment><USER23> To go into detail, you'll get a call from "Microsoft", generally with a foreign accent, and they'll have you sit at your computer, screen share, and give them root access. Then they'll do some powershell command that makes scary messages flash on the screen and have you buy whatever plan in order for them to "clean" it. Usually a couple hundred bucks.

My deeper fear is that they rooted my dad's machine and have been up to nefarious stuff ever since, but i'll never know. He won't let me touch it.

Oh and the IRS is now contracting private debt collectors, so there may now be "legitimate" calls regarding the IRS....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Story time:

My father complained of virus and malwares on his computer.

I came home, formatted his hard drive and re-installed windows.

I go to eat lunch with my mother in the kitchen, a few minutes later I hear "[baby], I have a virus on my computer!". WHAT?

The first thing he did was to google for "chrome" on internet explorer and use the first result. The first result is a google ads for a malware containing chrome. Had to reformat his computer one more time. I think that's the moment where he got it.

<comment><USER25> This might be the best argument for using an adblocker indiscriminately.

For whatever reason, the web got to this point where non-technical people get infected within minutes, whatever advertising revenue is lost by content creators isn't worth my headaches providing tech support to family members and friends.

<comment><USER26> It's truly pathetic that Google is selling ads that respond to a search for "Chrome" with malware.

<comment><USER27> _to google for "chrome" on internet explorer_

Is _google_ being used as a generic verb here, in relation to Internet Explorer's default search engine?

<comment><USER28> I prefer to bing things on duckduckgo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How about a Chromebook?

Cheap, keeps itself up to date, fully cloud based.

It wouldn't tick the Lightroom box but it does the internet based stuff extremely well with low maintenance.

<comment><USER30> I got my mom a Chromebook. It's the most successful computing experience so far, but I was quite surprised by a few things.

She didn't realize that the password to log in to your computer was the sync'd to her Google password. So she would type some random password 5 times, until the Chromebook said "use your Google password to reset your Chromebook password", and would then log in with that. Every single time.

Some website managed to convince her to switch to developer mode to install a non-web-store extension that overwrites the new tab page and search functionality with ads. Chrome is a little more aggressive about not letting you change the New Tab page these days, asking you occasionally if you still want the extension to control it (even for the new tab page I use, an extension from Google).

But despite that, she got a lot out of the computer, so overall it worked quite well. And we fixed those two issues, so I don't think there are any problems now.

<comment><USER31> > Some website managed to convince her to switch to developer mode to install > a non-web-store extension that overwrites the new tab page and search > functionality with ads

I'm not even mad, I'm honestly impressed both that your mom went to such lengths and that a website managed to convince a layperson to do such a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think we are doing a disservice if we restrict this question to only refer to the standard malware/technological attacks. The real space for risk to our parents goes beyond damage to the computer or identity theft. There's some seriously weird content on the internet -- and some seriously strange ways it can interact with our parents aging brains.

I had an "oh shit" moment when my mom described a website that added automated popups over a text editor field -- as she typed it would periodically throw up a pop up with encouraging commentary and editing advice "good idea, can you elaborate" etc -- and it took her a long time to realize that the intellectual/emotional support she was feeling wasn't actually coming from anywhere ... she also got severely addicted to the political campaigns and facebook -- and ended up with a news feed that absolutely barraged her with a constant stream of fake political news stories ... got her down from her 4-6 hours per day of internet usage but it was so fast -- really scary stuff.

</comment><comment><USER33> In this respect, the FTC has failed 100% in their mission. Normal, non-tech consumers cannot use the Internet without falling prey to the outlaw landscape that is the WWW.

I think you need to explain to them that the Internet is too much like the Wild West, and they need to stick to trusted web sites, as their "sight" is not tuned to see the dangers. Leaving them too scared to randomly surf might not be a bad thing, in this situation. I have the same type of situation with my 85 year old mother. She is somewhat tech savvy, but not enough. Her browser has every possible 3rd party toolbar, no matter how much I educate her on the situation...

</comment><comment><USER34> > _He has even clicked through on a "You have been chosen to win an iPhone 7" > link recently - he saw no harm in at least seeing what might happen._

Show him one of those videos with deep-sea fish that use a luminescent lure to eat smaller fish. The pop-up is the lure. The small fish is him. The Internet is like the deep sea, and it's full of lures like that.

One simple criterion I give non-technical people: if it's unsolicited, it's hostile. End of story. No exceptions.

<comment><USER35> Plus these:

* If it sounds too good to be true, it is.

* If anything related to it says Nigeria, run screaming.

* Nothing is free and you will never win anything.

* Never enter your social security number at any time for anything.

* Surfing the Internet is like walking down a back alley in Hong Kong. They claim to have everything, but you probably aren't going to like it when you get it.

* Illegal software and marginally legitimate sites are breeding grounds for viruses.

* Even if it seems legitimate, make sure it comes from a source you have heard of.

* Always check the URL bar. Just because the website looks like Paypal doesn't mean it is Paypal.

* Get on all of the 2nd factor auth.

* Never download anything.

* Never run anything.

* Learn to close windows without clicking on anything (Alt+F4 or similar)

* If you enter your credit card anywhere, just assume that number is now compromised.

<comment><USER36> _Learn to close windows without clicking on anything (Alt+F4 or similar)_

One has to be careful with this one; this can get you auto-upgraded to Win10, which not everybody wants.

<comment><USER37> This sysadmin/programmer enjoy Windows 10.

Finally I can have multiple desktops on a stock Windows PC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> My mom has had various Windows PCs since the late 90's. About every 3 to 6 months or so I get a call that it's "stopped working" and has either locked up completely or is moving at a crawl.

Nearly every time it takes me hours if not days to do a bunch of scans, install updates and purge whatever garbage has been installed by various malware that she's somehow managed to find. I've done more than a few clean wipes, bought her new machines and yet still she figures out how to kill it again. Most of the time it's caused by her playing some silly online puzzle game, or clicking a link in an email or some sort of fake notification... or AOL, which she refuses to ditch even though it's a huge vector.

It's been decades and she still hasn't learned how to avoid this stuff correctly. I've tried every malware scanner & notification software on the market, and each one of them is eventually bypassed by clever malware or in some cases like AVG or Norton, BECOMES the friggin problem.

Basically, my conclusion is if your parent has a problem like this the only solution is refuse to help them anymore if they insist on using Windows as their primary web device and make them get a Mac and/or an iPad, maybe a Chromebook as others suggested. Then get rid of the Windows PC or simply tell them not to use it for anything other than printing / scanning etc. There is no winning otherwise. Windows for some folks is just plain bad news

<comment><USER39> I'm genuinely not sure this is a Windows problem. They might get infected on pretty much any OS if they navigate anywhere without precautions (as most parents do, including mine).

I'd like to see if a something like DeepFreeze could help here (there are probably alternatives here, DeepFreeze just came first in my mind).

<comment><USER40> It's absolutely not a Windows problem, my dad managed to click through some "malware" (i didn't see it, but i'm thinking it was a cleverly crafted web page) and give his credit card to someone... on his iPad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> An interesting question. I haven't had to do any of this for my folks, but i'd probably do something like the following:

-Setup a network and computers that I can admin remotely. Probably Ubiquiti Unifi gear (great wifi APs, powerful router with DPI / firewall, where I have admin access from my Unifi Controller install. Then I could handle all network troubleshooting remotely, unless their ISP is down or hardware has physically failed (unlikely with the ubiquiti gear)

-Look at something like OpenDNS personal configured on the gateway to help protect against malicious stuff in browser

-Set up any Desktop PC to run a hypervisor, and keep the OS they use as a VM that I could access and administer remotely, and that I could quickly reset to a known-working state.

-Have them use gdrive / dropbox / onedrive to keep documents backed up and accessible across machines

-For laptop / portable, see if I could get them to use chromebooks, or I'd need to replicate the VM setup from the desktop PCs

</comment><comment><USER42> Linux machine, subscribe to more adblocker malware prevention lists - <USER2> mother's laptop has more ticks on the adblock subscription lists than squares - and in case of my father an awkward conversation where I told him a list of safe porn sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> This sounds very useful - do you mind giving some more flavour? What exactly did you implement?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I faced similar challenges with my mom, especially since she lives in a different state. She confessed though that she would only ask me. And I'm able to help because I'm in the tech field. I realized that all her neighbors and my other relatives, and parents of my friends & acquaintances, and millions of others would have absolutely no way to get help and protect themselves against online scams and threats.

So I started a free service [http://www.littlecaution.org/](http://www.littlecaution.org/) where I do talks and seminars about remaining safe online. Since it's just me on my personal time for now doing the workshops, growth and reach is slow. But I continue to work on it.

My belief is that using the right tools is of great importance but raising awareness is a bigger need. All the best tools are no match against human fallibility. So in these talks, the direction I take is about knowing the issues, being aware, and then followed by using the right tools.

</comment><comment><USER44> give them a desktop that is basically xubuntu amd64 (xfce4 desktop on xorg) + firefox + chrome, and then install all of the best adblock extensions in both browsers. Even the most clueless parents can't successfully download and run windows binary malware/ransomeware/viruses on that.

the xfce4 GUI is close enough to traditional windows98/windows2000/winXP models that most older non technical users have no problem with it.

the best thing for non technical users/older users/ignorant users is to give them the closest approximation to a thin terminal web browser, whether it is a linux desktop or a chromebook type thing.

<comment><USER45> That eliminates Lightroom support, however.

<comment><USER46> [https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...](https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=5839) shows it as 'gold' for the currently highest 32 bit version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Here are your options:

Revoke local admin privileges. It will stop a lot of the click-click to install bullshit, but it also means you will get a lot of calls about "access denied" whenever they want to update an app that needs admin rights. Give them an admin account to install/update software separate from their normal account.

Simplify the device by going tablet/chromebook. Probably means you will get a lot of questions regarding how to use/setup the new OS.

Shorten the loop on backup/rebuild and let them hit the iceberg. Good backups and fast imaging with drivers pre-loaded can make cleanup a lot easier/faster.

</comment><comment><USER48> In addition to the stuff you mentioned, for my mother in law I:

removed her user's admin privileges

install flashblock - one of the ones where you have to click on the video to make it run

spent a long time explaining that you will never be chosen to win something, MS support never rings you to tell you have a virus, if something takes over the whole screen and tells you anything suspicious/implausible to press alt+f4

convinced her free music isnt worth the risk of downloading something that trashes the machine. installed spotify

</comment><comment><USER49> 1) No local Admin rights.

2) Chrome + uBlock Origin w/ Malware filters.

3) Sophos Home[1] which has the bonus feature of being cloud-managed and not providing any control to the local interactive user.

4) Sophos XG Firewall Home Edition[2] on whatever $100-ish hardware the pFense crowd is currently in love with. Web filtering for Advertising and Threats, AV scanning.

5) Backups!

[1] [https://www.sophos.com/lp/sophos- home.aspx](https://www.sophos.com/lp/sophos-home.aspx) [2] [https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos- xg-f...](https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-xg-firewall- home-edition.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER50> It makes me smile that while proponents of censorship and blocking of parts of the Internet use the "Think of the children!" argument, I never hear anyone shouting "Think of the adults!"

Of course, in this case we're trying to protect people from themselves rather than the outside world, but still...

</comment><comment><USER51> Have you considered using OpenDNS? They used to focus just on protecting family members from internet threats, and it's still a great (paid) product for that:

[https://www.opendns.com/home-internet- security/](https://www.opendns.com/home-internet-security/)

<comment><USER16> Or private internet access VPN ([https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2016/07/pia- adds-...](https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2016/07/pia-adds-ad- blocker-introducing-private-internet-access-mace/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> A Mac. If you live with him, Ubuntu.

If there's that Just One Piece of Windows software he needs, do try it in Wine - Wine works more often than not these days.

I never did viscerally understand how literally 25% of Windows XP installations could be botnet members until I saw my sister's computer in 2010. Oh my goodness. The disk was full because they never emptied the rubbish bin. And I don't think there's ever been a piece of crapware that my brother- in-law didn't download to try. The only thing saving them was that they were _still on dialup_. They're on broadband now (it turns out the killer use case for videophones is our mother Skypeing her grandchildren), and I shudder to think what it's like. _Normal people do not use computers like we do._

</comment><comment><USER53> Chromebook.

I bought the cheap one (Lenovo) sometime ago. It has a good battery life, very lightweight and compact. I have seen the same being used by many people (in the same category). It is the most trouble free and productive piece of material there is. Ignore all these security software and Linux etc. Just hookup uBlock and Ghostery into the user's Google Chrome account and you're done.

<comment><USER54> Very similar here. Got a Chromebase for my Mum (77) who has previously had an original iMac (she loved) and a Windows 7 PC (which she tolerated). Both iMac and PC had issues, and I'd often have to fix stuff. There was a bit of a learning curve for her (cloud print is a mystery to her, not helped by it breaking about 2 weeks in and needing a powerwash to sort that), and she couldn't have Skype on it which was the one initial sticking point, but since her getting going with it I've not had any issues.

Indeed, a couple of weeks ago when she thought she'd killed it because she'd fallen for clickbait that then said she had viruses on the computer, she was pleasantly surprised that powering it up again showed it was fine. For the £220 it cost, it was money well spent - she can do what she needs/wants to online without issues, and TBH I think that a LOT of "normal computer use" people would be better off with one rather than the PC they think they need (usually when asked it turns out that internet and email with the odd bit of word processing and printing is what people do).

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> While I'm loathe to recommend a walled garden solution and not a particularly big Apple fan, this is exactly where such a solution shines. An iPad is perfect for this situation.

<comment><USER56> I feel conflicted about such advice too... but honestly I've resorted to using my iPad for stuff like streaming video just because it's safer out of the box. I figure if I'm doing that, I might as well suggest others do the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Install them Ubuntu, KDE Neon or Mint. Works for my parents since... I dropped Windows XP.

<comment><USER58> Idem for me. I have installed Ubuntu-gnome. sshd, wine and powerpoint viewer are the main customization. When the computer is started, I receive a SMS so that I can perform updates or backups.

<comment><USER57> I did similar. PC has static IP in LAN, there is raspberry pi with duckdns and ssh waiting for me. I just login on rpi, then ssh to parents PC and do what I need. I can do updates, remove files, monitor activity and all other things, easily, for free. It's Ubuntu, they don't have sudo/root password so can't break anything, ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> A virtual machine might be a solution, just leave it full screen for them when you leave home. I've given up trying to educate my parents best practice with pc's, it doesn't seem to work.

<comment><USER60> That's what I've always thought, haven't tried it with my parents. Idea is, set up a vm, snap shot it, have their save folder somewhere outside of the VM, and then if they manage to mess up the VM, just restore the snapshot.

Honestly, it is when I am trying to teach my parents how to use computers do I realize how annoying computers are. I mean, some of the simplest things we take for granted are pretty dumb if you have to explain it to someone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I think all the people recommending Chromebooks or Linux are entirely missing the point. Those are only viable alternatives within small niche uses for people who literally only use email and facebook. It's the 80/20 fallacy. 80% of the people only use 20% of the features, but for each person in that 80% they use a slightly different 20% subset. It's the same here. Most people only use a very small subset of the internet, and most things they do would work fine on a Chromebook, but each of them has that one thing they just can't live without that only works on Windows.

I have this exact problem with several family members PCs who come to me regularly with messed up machines.

It's not just old people either. One problem person for me is a 10 year old who always insists that all he downloaded was just that one minecraft mod and it was definitely a safe mod, honest, because he downloaded found it on google, or he saw stampy using it on youtube, oh and a java update because the mod says it needed it, oh and forge, and optifine, and, and, and... He's loosely tech savvy, but in a way that doesn't make him any safer, he still gets his computer into a mess. He's not going to switch to a Chromebook. No minecraft, and none of the other games his peers are into. (On a related note, the minecraft modding community is one of the most vile den of scam-mongery I've ever had the misfortune to stumble into)

The older people all require MS Word/Excel (And don't tell me LibreOffice is a replacement, it's not even close if you expect file compatibility with other people who use MS products).

Windows only plugins for specific websites, that's another one that is hopefully getting much rarer, but I still do see from time to time.

I've tried setting up restricted accounts and keeping the admin account password secret, but it always eventually has to get given out. Last time it was because their son needed to do submit his homework on the schools website, but the submission processes required a Windows only plugin which needed admin access to install. They were all panicked because I hadn't been answering my phone and his homework was due the next day. After that I gave up and stopped using restricted accounts.

I've tried disk imaging software, but it's typically a lot more work than it's worth with the images quickly getting out of date and needing redoing with new versions constantly.

This is a big big problem that I just don't have a good solution for.

<comment><USER62> Even if it doesn't work for everything, a backup computer in the house might still be useful? If you get a Chromebook, they will have a browser to use when the other one gets messed up and you can't fix it right away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> You can start with ubuntu that is immune to most of malware and enough if your parents needs are internet + video palying and downloading + office suite

</comment><comment><USER64> Maybe replace his pc with an android powered device like [http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=101695486](http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=101695486)

<comment><USER65> Unfortunately Android has its own malware :( and plenty of sites redirect to the Play Store.

I've seen Android phones constantly opening popups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I am going to answer that pretty much nothing will save your parents from the internet.

While I agree a chromebook won't get owned your parents will still likely get phished. I have no idea how to solve that.

[http://blog.greggman.com/blog/getting- phished/](http://blog.greggman.com/blog/getting-phished/)

[http://blog.greggman.com/blog/how_to_detect_e_mail_scams__ph...](http://blog.greggman.com/blog/how_to_detect_e_mail_scams__phishing_/)

</comment><comment><USER67> There are some good suggestions here but I will give you one based on the assumption that your parents won't want to leave the familiarity of Windows.

0) Deny them admin rights to the machine. 1) Create a second profile for each of them 2) Write a quick batch or PowerShell script to copy the contents of their Desktop, Documents, Favorites, Pictures, Music, and Vidoes folders (not the entire profile) from their profile to the second profile you created for each of them. Make sure your script only copies new or changed items (so it runs faster) Store this script outside of either profile. 3) Schedule the script to run every hour on the hour. 4) In the event that they brick their profile with adware, malware, etc, simply login as an administrator, delete the first profile, rename the second profile to whatever the first one was called and then create a backup profile with the same username that the previous backup profile had (so you don't have to edit your script).

Notes: For your script if you are more comfortable with batch scripting then use "Robocopy". If you are more comfortable with PowerShell use "copy-item". I cannot stress enough how important it is that you ONLY copy the folders I mentioned above. If you get lazy and copy the entire profile you will bring over the folders viruses, adware, and malware hide in (like AppData). For the love of God make sure you have up to date antivirus on the machine. That's so basic that I didn't mention it above but I feel compelled to do so here. If you don't want to spend money just install Security Essentials or AVG.

<comment><USER68> I'm gonna have to disagree with this one. There are tons of great, battle- tested backup tools out there -- rolling your own solution seems to just be asking for something to go wrong.

<comment><USER67> This isn't backup. It's user profile element duplication on the same machine. As long as they are not admins or power users on the system then they can't do much damage outside of their profiles.

Backup is another matter entirely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> In my experience, don't. Offer them your best solution for a novice user, which for me is usually an up-to-date machine with an ad blocker, and make sure that you're open for

Ultimately, they're adults, and the last thing your father will want is to be treated like a child on his own machine. If he fucks something up, fix it, and tell him what he can do to not have that issue come up again.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is good advice in principle but my parents are from a different world they grew up in a world without fridges, TVs or electronics.

I am all for them learning and making their own mistakes but I know them well enough to know that this wouldn't really work in their case - I know them well enough that ultimately they want something that just works with minimal effort, the stakes are also high in that I don't want them bricking a PC (100s of $) or getting hit by identity fraud.

I'd go mac if my dad didn't hate it so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> If simply educating them on what not to do (clicking on 'free' stuff, downloading without discretion) won't work, I'd suggest switching out the OS to something a little less targetted by malware. I recently got my mom a chromebook, which she loves. You say your dad uses lightroom though, so that might not work for your use case.

</comment><comment><USER71> I've got 2 computer-illiterate parents and I can confirm the following works very well:

1) Create a user account in Windows that is NOT an administrator account, that way they can't install things without an admin username and password. The PCs admin account should be password protected.

2) Enable the highest level of windows alerts (those "this program wants to make changes or modifications to this PC, cancel or allow" messages). Teach your parents to always click no/cancel/do not allow.

3) Ad blockers like uBlock. Remove shortcuts to, or uninstall Internet Explorer.

4) Use software like DeepFreeze [http://www.faronics.com/products/deep- freeze/standard/](http://www.faronics.com/products/deep-freeze/standard/) it restores the computer to a snapshot you saved every time you restart it. No matter what they mess up or install or screw up, it'll be fixed with a restart.

</comment><comment><USER72> I am currently working on experimental Linux distribution for my parents that would be a bit ChromeOS-like.

Ideally for my mom ChromeOS device would be ideal. For my dad it would be not enough as it seems in your case. Maintaining my parents computer is something that always gets back to me. Now I am also living few hours worth of travel from them so it is even less convenient.

Older computer couldn't handle Ubuntu of the time. So always something was not working correctly. Updates on every system are constant source of headaches. My dad got used, but much more powerful machine. I installed Windows 10 for them thinking that Windows is now better and that with perpetual updates it will be out of trouble for me. I installed also Chrome Remote Desktop for service. My dad preferred Linux experience. I hoped that he just needs to get used to it. He was happy with Windows Store for a while, until few of the games he enjoyed playing failed in strange ways. It would not be that bad, but updates on Windows 10 are huge and with 20-30GB free space left after installation it does not update anymore. It only downloads the update, tries to update and fails - on every reboot. My dad bought an external HDD so probably it could be resolved. However he still would like to have Linux in there - old computer was very slow, but it did not fail in such magical ways. For now I plan to install Ubuntu for him and see how it will behave.

For my own learning experience and a bit of enjoyment I started working on my own Linux distribution. The most important thing for me is to have hassle-free updates like on Chromebook. I prepared squashfs image with Firefox and intend to have two partition scheme for rootfs. Updates would be then just download and restart away - completely automatic and in case of failure you would still have previous working image. I could test the image locally and optimize it for fun and profit. For now I base it on Gentoo to build lean system in a similar fashion to ChromeOS build.

[slight EDIT]

</comment><comment><USER73> I bought my dad a chromebook. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER74> I'd recommend you sandbox his favorite browser in sandboxie: [http://www.sandboxie.com/](http://www.sandboxie.com/) I believe the free version allows you to use one sandbox session.

Run him through the process of recovering downloaded files and you should be a lot safer.

</comment><comment><USER75> Here's what worked for me:

1) Install GNU/Linux, most click adds target windows users.

2) Install an ad-blocker at DNS level. I use a custom variation of this: [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/) (by default logs DNS requests, mind you. You can disable logging though).

3) Spent some time to educate him on what to avoid online

4) Lastly, I have an RPi running on a VPN exit node (actually I have an RPi cluster, but anyway). When I had an openWRT-based router, I had a script which was fetching porn/torrents/etc. IP addresses and adding routes to the router redirecting connections via VPN.

5) A separate guest network with radius accounting can go a long way into securing your network and help control access (I have a radius RPi server but my APs do not support accounting. I felt kinda screwed when I realised)

<comment><USER76> Put your parents on a VPN, great idea, instead of the other way around where I am the sole VPN user and pay _more_ for my Internet connection because surfing without a VPN just feels weird these days. Also five minutes of OSINT on Google tells me I share my ISP-Issued IP with at least 1000 other paying subscribers, whereas a VPN can run into the millions of users, albeit not all using that VPN-Issued IP at the same time.

<comment><USER75> Putting everything behind a VPN might a bit too drastic as it might start disrupting services relying o geolocation for fraud detection etc. But at least _some_ traffic, for many reason, it's better to be shipped via vpn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> This is a very important conversation for this decade. Do post your solution on HN once you have it.

</comment><comment><USER78> * Set a password on UAC (windows sudo equivalent) and teach him that if the background ever goes black and asks for a password he should be very aware. The default is just a yes/no popup and is very easy to just click yes, even accidentally for tech savy users. For extra protection, don't give him the password.

* Remove the anti virus and tell him that you did so. It just gives a false sense of security and introduces more popups which teaches users to ignore prompts. If he knows it's not there he might be more careful.

* Install ublock origin. It blocks known badware domains and reduces the amount of clutter/ads on almost every web page you browse, making it easier for him to identify weird stuff.

</comment><comment><USER79> I made a really simple UI for youtube-dl in WPF a few weeks ago. It just has a text field for the youtube link, a "download" button and a checkbox for downloading audio only. If you like I can chuck the source and binaries on github.

<comment><USER80> I'd be interested in this

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> You dont need to even buy a new chromebook. Just install cloudready (which is compiled from chromiumOS) for all generic PC/laptops. Many schools are even using this. www.neverware.com/ I am not involved with them. Just a user.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great post. My father is similar to yours, but is also incredibly vehement about his privacy. A few years ago he fell victim to a fake microsoft support scam (foreign accent, cc details over the phone, etc.) and gave them full root access over whatever screen share software they used. He paid a few hundred bucks for them to fix fake problems on the PC, and I could never convince him that it was in fact a scam.

I've since given up completely on locking down the computer or protecting them from themselves in that regard. I occasionally get talked into basic tech support, but thats it.

It's really a relationship problem if anything (IMO).

</comment><comment><USER82> Use Linux. If he only uses his computer for browsing the Internet and editing photos linux mint (mate or cinnamon) will do fine. Show him how to use darktable instead of lightroom and that's it. No more problems.

<comment><USER83> I have (had?) one client that every week or the other would come back for a Windows reinstall. Since he only browsed the internet and did not use any particular software, I installed Linux Mint and he never came back! I lost that steady 'revenue' though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lightroom is on Android now:

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/9/13577740/adobe- lightroom-a...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/9/13577740/adobe-lightroom- android-raw-file-support-photography)

If you have a recent Chromebook, they can run Android apps =):

[https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/7021273?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/7021273?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER84> A friend of mine once explained to me, that in order to make the internet and computing environments safer we have to stop making things easier but educate the people (e.g. don't put the single-point-of-failure antiviruses on the computers teach people not to trust links/emails/usb/devices but to check the source and acutally think). I think you should educate them on the topic, and help them to learn it.

</comment><comment><USER85> One way would be installing some good GNU/Linux (Mint is good for windows users, or Debian Stretch with GNOME classic mode).

And thus your dad can't install any software he just downloaded from some random website. And the GNOME sofware center is great in Debian Stretch (to be released though, sorry).

create scripts using zenity as a GUI for youtube-dl (and any other command you wish him to run)

Also, I would recommend uBlock to Adblockplus.

</comment><comment><USER86> There are already good solutions below. The one thing I would add is that this may not be a "silver bullet" kind of problem. I'd throw everything I can into the mix to create layers of protection. Educate them but also add software solutions to the mix.

A small addition, how often do they need to install new software after initial setup? Maybe take away admin privileges?

<comment><AUTHOR> Should hardly ever need to - but I am rarely at home so would prefer not to be in a position where any time they need to do something I need to be present.

The only real software he would need at the moment is for photoediting

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> I installed Ubuntu on my parents' laptop years ago. They didn't notice the difference until they tried to print something.

</comment><comment><USER88> Not the answer you want but an ipad might limit the damage that can be done. It would remove the need for education.

<comment><USER89> Is it still true? I would have thought that by gaining popularity Apple devices would become the target of malwares as well.

<comment><USER90> It's not that easy to break into the walled garden. There are fundamental differences between a iPad and a PC (or a Mac, if the distinction still makes sense).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> I'm sort of in the same boat with my folks who are pretty much computer- illiterate. After wiping malware a few times I ended up simply installing a VM image for them for internet browsing and downloading content. It takes a bit of getting used to but after explaining how to use it it's worked out great.

</comment><comment><USER92> The best thing I can suggest is regular, invisible backups. Ensure that it's very difficult for them to avoid doing the backups, and make sure that what ever holds the backups is a battle-hardened.

Social engineering is a broad problem right now, and all you can really do is be prepared to pick up the pieces after the fact.

</comment><comment><USER93> Get them a Chromebook - perfect for their needs and no yearly formatting required from my side

</comment><comment><USER94> You could limit his user rights, make him a Standard user and don't let him install new software.

Also, have a look at how suitable a Chromebook will be for his workflow (simpler to maintain from your perspective and harder to infect).

</comment><comment><USER20> > This is pretty remarkable given that my dad only uses it watch golf videos > and edit some photos in lightroom. He may occasionally indulge in some porn > cough.

Teach him how to use Linux. He can use Darktable instead of Lightroom.

</comment><comment><USER35> Linux? Or a Chromebook.

They'll only be able to do like, two things with it, but at least Google has tools that replace most office-type apps. I'm going to say Chromebook is the slower but simpler solution.

</comment><comment><USER95> I've started remapping certain file types to open with Notepad instead of the default. I covered all the .js variants but does anyone have a more comprehensive list of file types to address?

</comment><comment><USER96> I will suggest you put together some tutorials on some of the basics. Preferably keep them to one page and include screen shots.

You cannot protect people from their own ignorance.

</comment><comment><USER97> I have the same problem. For now, I use Firefox + adblock + noscript + public fox (to disable download and exe). Not fool-proof but it's enough

</comment><comment><USER98> I made myself admin and my dad a regular user so he'd stop installing malware. So he threw out his computer and bought another one...

</comment><comment><USER99> I've never seen someone screw up a Chromebook and it takes less than 120 seconds to reset it to scratch and reload your profile.

</comment><comment><USER100> May be propose for them to use Linux. It should cope better. No lightroom for it though, but there are other good photo editors.

</comment><comment><USER101> If you are stuck on Windows or Mac you can try a program that restores the computer to a safe state on reboot, like Deep Freeze.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a bad idea.

What are your thoughts on file-syncing using DropBox? Solutions have to be easier than breathing - I used to take a regular image of the PC for backup purposes but then my dad would complain he couldn't actually view the files.

<comment><USER102> File syncing should not be confused with file backup. You should leverage both as apart of a comprehensive solution.

[https://www.us- cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/dat...](https://www.us- cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/data_backup_options.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> Use Linux. Seriously. I installed Fedora 24 in my dad's PC and I haven't had a support call in 3 years.

<comment><USER104> Does he use it?

I installed Ubuntu LTS on my mom's. If it weren't for the SSH connection that always calls a server I have and I can use it to log back to her computer, I would have to get a sister to drive there in order to walk me through what she's seeing.

With the SSH tunnel, I can just SSH to her computer through my server and fix almost everything.

<comment><USER103> its brilliant. It has gnome and he loves it - he says its better than hunting through "my programs".

Windows 10 and Gnome have fairly convergent UI. And all the software is already built into Linux

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> maybe try this? [https://ma.ttias.be/pi-hole-dns-based-blacklist-ads- tracking...](https://ma.ttias.be/pi-hole-dns-based-blacklist-ads-tracking- raspberry-pi/)

</comment><comment><USER106> Get them iPads

</comment><comment><USER107> Ditch the PC and get them an iPad.

</comment><comment><USER108> Another vote for a Chromebook.

</comment><comment><USER109> Kids filter?

</comment><comment><USER110> Here's a couple of things you can try:

* Drop linux on it with a simple GUI on it and lock the machine down. Don't give him root access or admin rights. Make sure the machine updates and backs itself up without intervention. * Set up his browsing inside a vm that gets recreated on boot (any host OS, linux as guest would be ideal but any will do).

</comment><comment><USER111> Take it away from them. Really, if it means that their identities are at risk, I would not put your parents at risk and persuade or force them to not use the interwebs until they get educated.

Btw, a chromebook does _nothing_ to protect them against identify theft. Don't get them anything, better teach them what they might lose.

</comment><comment><USER112> Get rid of Windows. Problem solved.

<comment><USER113> And replace it with what?

<comment><USER68> Nothing. You can't brick the OS if you don't have one! /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> I specifically wrote my book, Digital Survival Guide, to help address this knowledge gap in digital security and safety that our society has. However, education may not be enough for everyone and you may need to take a sandbox approach. Have them use a VM and expect to refresh it from a snapshot often. Check out my book, you and your parents will find many useful tips.

[http://amzn.to/2fkervN](http://amzn.to/2fkervN)

<comment><USER114> No ebook version? In current year? Are you even serious right now?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Create css/html images that can't be blocked by email providers - <AUTHOR> http://www.imgtocss.com

<comment><USER2> I was just going to say I don't see any practical use-case, but you outlined one I didn't think of. One problem I foresee is the cross-email compatibility problems. It's a magnitude worse than browsers. This problem is obviously extenuated by the fact that misalignment could produce unrecognizable images. Assuming the technical side is rock solid, I could see people using this for logos in their email signatures along with social icons. I still don't see many people paying for this, much less understanding it. I also hate seeing company logos and facebook icons in email signatures since I just think it's useless and annoying.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey,

This is pretty damned useful! I'm the Product Manager of PostageApp (<http://www.postageapp.com>), we deal with outbound transactional email, and I have to say, this is probably a godsend for our clients.

The only problem I can see is the significant size increase in emails - transactional emails need to get to the recipient as soon as possible. Saving the Firefox icon as HTML/CSS was about 647KB in TextEdit as a plain text file!

That would be my only reservation for using it.

REALLY love the idea though. Great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> _REALLY love the idea though. Great work!_

Thanks! That's really nice to read.

 _The only problem I can see is the significant size increase in emails_

One of the big contributors to the size is the inline CSS, which is required if the images are going to be included in emails. That said, there is alot of work that can be done on optimization.

Right now I use a list with ~pixel-high items and paragraphs. It makes it easy to represent the image in html, but I'm not so sure that it's the most efficient way. Tables or divs might have a smaller footprint, but I haven't had a chance to investigate.

It's potentially a very interesting problem. My analysis professor told me that he likes image processing because it's one of the rare fields where you can apply the more abstract concepts.

Unfortunately, the prospect for making money off of this thing is pretty bleak. Newsletter publishers could be my biggest customers, but they like external images for tracking purposes. Right now, I'm waiting to see if it gets traction before I do any more work on it

<comment><USER3> If you could make the output size much more manageable, and have it actually be usable for larger images, I think newsletter publishers would love the hell out of this. The only external image I can think of that they would want for tracking is the one they use for open tracking, otherwise all other images are fair game, AFAIK.

Definitely something that I would love to keep tabs on if you do continue to develop it, do you have a github repo I can watch?

<comment><AUTHOR> _do you have a github repo I can watch?_

<https://github.com/dwwoelfel>

My github repo is pretty barren. I probably won't put any updates there.

However, I have your email from your profile. If I make a decent improvement to the output size, I'll send you an email. I won't forget. I put a reminder in my gmail drafts folder and my calender prompts me to check it once a month.

You have me more excited about this then I was when I released the app, but I'm still not certain that a market exists. My hypothesis is that the people who make the email newsletters include extra external images on _purpose_ so that the recipient will think he's missing something. Then he'll be motivated to click the "display all images from this sender" link, enabling the tracking image in the process.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps that is what happens, and it may even be true for transactional mail, but having icons and small images show up without having to click that button seems to be much better for the UX.

The tracking image is wildly inaccurate anyway, but whatever, that's just my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I made this because I needed to include a few small images into emails I'm sending for a separate project. I didn't want to annoy the user with the "allow images from this sender" message, so I needed them to be pure html/css. I couldn't find a tool that would make the conversion with inline css, so I made one myself.

It can't handle large images because the css is inline, but that's the trade- off for being able to email them.

Can you think of anyone who would pay for this? Is there a feature I could add that would make this worth paying for?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> One cool thing is that a converted transparent PNG will display properly in IE 6, even though the original doesn't:

<http://imgur.com/XA6OE>

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there a reason you need to involve css here? what's wrong with just embedding a data: url inside the html?

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you sure that won't be removed by the email client?

<comment><USER4> Email clients avoiding going out to fetch external images, because that may be used to track user reading (when the image has been fetched, you know that the email was displayed on screen, so you can code every email you send with a unique URL, and get a date & time & ip & operating system etc. signature for every time it is read).

They have no problem with inlined images, whether that is css or data: url. Thunderbird (for sure), and Gmail (I think) will display data: image urls inline; not sure about other clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tested it in a few web-mail clients. The data: uri images get blocked in gmail, yahoo, hotmail, and aol web-clients. I think that they just indiscriminately block "img" tags.

The css images, on the other hand, continue to display even when I put the emails into the spam folder.

Edit: All of the web-clients knew how to display the data:uri image.

<comment><USER4> I'm confused. So, data: image uris work in web clients?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I wasn't very clear.

The web client knows how to display the images, but it blocks them if it doesn't trust the sender.

Basically, they work exactly the same as regular old external images.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sharks cope with levels of heavy metals in blood that would kill other animals - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/april-20-2019-human-brain-genes-in-monkeys-urine-archaeology-evolving-human-faces-and-more-1.5101867/sharks-cope-with-levels-of-heavy-metals-in-their-blood-that-would-kill-other-animals-1.5101887 <comment><USER2> Sharks are said to have not evolved for tens of millions of years. This is probably true of their basic physicality - they are the apex of the sea predators - but I bet they have spent tens of millions of years evolving to not die from all the other things that can kill you.

<comment><USER3> > they are the apex of the sea predators

Orcas are known to hunt and kill sharks [0], and afaik, Orcas have no natural enemies.

[0] [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-04/great-white-killed- by...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-04/great-white-killed-by-killer- whales-in-sa/6069168)

<comment><USER4> True, but IIRC it's more of eliminating competition or maybe even a blood sport; sharks aren't major part of their diet[1]. Would make sense given that heavy metals and other toxins bio-accumulate up the food chain.

I posit the high heavy metal levels is a defense mechanism for sharks: a slow acting poison.

[1] IIRC again, orcas will leave a shark with the tail cut to just die of asphyxiation, somebody please correct me on this one

<comment><USER5> I believe the article posted yesterday pointed out that Orcas will eat shark liver, which is about 25% of a shark by weight and also very calorie dense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> makes sense, they live at the top, even before we showed up this must have been an issue.</comment>


Web App Speed - <AUTHOR> http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2015/05/31/web_app_speed/

<comment><USER2> Flash sites, apps and games also earned a bad reputation for eating up CPU, loading too long, doing too much and running poorly. And it was mostly due to the culture of the developers.

In the Flash vs HTML5 iPhone wars, people argued that if Flash was hated because of the developers who abused it, what's going to stop the same thing happening to HTML5/JS/canvas?

It's happening. Usually not on some interactive visualization game but on simple articles. And the response are things like Facebook Instant that introduce a babysitter against ambitious developers and dysfunctional organizations.

But it's really something that should be built into the web. Sites that eat up a lot of bandwidth and CPU can be marked. Sites that legitimately require more resources, are experimental in some way, can be marked by the developer as such, warning users. An article would rarely be one of those.

If no centralized measures are taken against poor UX, only relying on culture to maintain UX across the board, the web stack will meet the same fate as Flash. Competitors like Facebook Instant will route around it.

<comment><USER3> On a related note, Google penalises websites with longer load times. [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2010/04/using- site...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2010/04/using-site-speed- in-web-search-ranking.html)

<comment><USER4> I understand the reasoning but I don't agree with their implementation, because it essentially favours large sites run by those who can afford the faster infrastructure, while penalising the small ones that may actually have more relevant and detailed content but not very fast servers. Sites which load much faster get a ranking advantage even if they offer only superficial lower- quality content.

Maybe if they didn't look at server response time, and only counted things like JS execution time, it would be a fairer ranking to those looking for substantive content. I'm quite willing to wait a lot longer, if it means I will spend more time reading a lengthy page once it loads, than to find a fast-loading page with little content.

That article was written 5 years ago, and while speed might not have been a huge factor back then, they could've changed it since --- certainly there is no evidence to suggest otherwise, and my experience with how Google's results have changed over time agree.

<comment><USER5> Interesting take.

I'd hedge that 95-99% of alexa top 1000 sites could be delivered under 30kb -- just content+ css. (assuming ajax/video/fonts are asyncronous in google's algo and not counted towards load time).

In which case it's easy even for the cheapest AWS server to host and server instantaneously. I think the bigger sites have a distinct disadvantage -- they have so many tracking and ad resources, that it kills their load time.

<comment><USER6> Yup. For my company website I made sure that most pages require just a single request to render: CSS is inlined and (small) scripts are loaded at the bottom of the page. This means that even when hosting it on a crappy host, without a CDN, you get stellar page load performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The root of all evils, as you commented: "People don't want to learn JavaScript".

However, I think it's because DOM/BOM API sucks. JavaScript, namely the language itself, doesn't even specify any event driven or asynchronous things. Not to mention why NodeList horribly isn't an array, or the need to write the long and annoying 'getElementsByClassName' rather than a simple $( ).

(Yes I know things like 'querySelectorAll' are much better, but it's too late for most of prejudices)

<comment><USER8> someone at Google or Mozilla should already have been writing an API that's similar to jQuery that just "compiles down" to the DOM methods so that the loading of jquery isn't necessary. I'm surprised no one's pushed for using jQuery's API as an additional DOM API. Old browsers you load jquery, new browsers you don't and your code doesn't change. It would cut down on a few seconds of load time for sure and it'd be better than using a CDN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> People are using the canvas now to achieve fast speeds on mobile web. See Flipboard's post on this [1]. The big issue ppl brought up was that using canvas instead of DOM meant losing accessibility. Btw Flipboard released an interesting framework called React-Canvas[2] based on their efforts.

1\. [http://engineering.flipboard.com/2015/02/mobile- web/](http://engineering.flipboard.com/2015/02/mobile-web/) 2\. [https://github.com/Flipboard/react- canvas](https://github.com/Flipboard/react-canvas)

<comment><USER10> Flipboard assumed DOM is slow. I don't even think they created a prototype to see how slow DOM is.

I implemented this in few hours. Works on iOS, Android 4+ and WP

\- Demo for mobile: [http://premii.com/play/flipboard-style- news/](http://premii.com/play/flipboard-style-news/)

\- I am using it in real app here. [http://reddit.premii.com/#/r/news/](http://reddit.premii.com/#/r/news/)

<comment> squeaky-clean Your demo works, but I get an average of 10fps on my LG G3 and 20fps on my iPad, with the occasional freeze. The Flipboard demos are incredibly smooth with no lag or hanging at all.

<comment><USER10> iPad was released 5 years ago. I have iPad2 and iPad air 2, and both works fine.

I don't have LG. I have tested on Asus, Samsung S3, and Nexus 5. Try it on Chrome browser, and see how it works.

Some images (Washington post, latimes, etc) are bigger than 20 MB each. All browser freezes when you render those images. My demo specifically includes those to see how bad it performance on different devices.

One of the benefit of being a big company is you can control everything. Flipboard scales down those images to 300kb before sending it to browser. I use original images.

<comment> squeaky-clean iPad Mini 3 if you really want me to be specific. I was trying it in the latest version of Chrome on my LG, that's where I get 10fps. Using the stock browser it freezes every other slide (and won't progress past slide 4).

> Some images (Washington post, latimes, etc) are bigger than 20 MB each

Why not use resized ones for your test? Sort of invalidates it if you can't tell if it's being janky because of the DOM or because of image size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Regarding native complexity: surely, using CoreGraphics is just as easy as canvas?

2\. That game looks like it's running at about 15fps. I'm not sure that constitutes very good proof of the argument. The best apps and games run at 60.

3\. I'm not sure who's using web MVC frameworks en masse and to what end, but I would NOT want to write a data-driven web app like Discourse from scratch.

<comment><USER12> Agree, similar arguments came to my mind when I read the article. Two other relevant points:

4\. Even if a game like the one in the article performs reasonably well using HTML5 Canvas + JavaScript, that still doesn't mean it's 'efficient'. A native application could be much smoother still, use less battery, etc.

5\. The article is titled 'Web App speed', but it's only (somewhat) relevant in the context of sprite-based games. With WebGL it's possible to do quite complex 3D-based graphics in the browser as well, but anything non-game related is a whole different matter. Surely 'boring' apps with lots of buttons, scroll bars, other widgets etc. will not be easier and more efficient running inside a web browser, compared to using native controls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Absolutely agree with respect to ads. While the steady state performance of most banner ads is fine, loading new ads often force large javascript files to be fetched and parsed as well as needless reflows. On our game building site [1], we try to refresh ads only during natural breaks in gameplay (level changes). While this doesn't improve the loading time, it does help to shift the disruption to a time when it is less likely to be noticed.

1\. [https://www.1dash1.com](https://www.1dash1.com)

<comment><USER14> well, it's not surprising web apps are slow. as an example, 1dash1.com mentioned above: 57.480 lines of JS across 8 separate domains. and the result? site is loading slow (at least on my 500MBit/s fiber connection) and the browser is executing a lot of stuff, most of which is not really efficient or time sensitive (or required). this is how most sites does it, it has to be better ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sunspider does next to no processing, it's really not a good benchmark for judging computation speed of a device. Arguably, it's not a good benchmark, period. Kraken or Octane are more interesting benchmarks for compute-heavy workloads such as games.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reading this article was a fresh breeze.

The Canvas is very easy to work with. You can forget about JQuery and everything else concerning the DOM and just write pure JavaScript. I've even started working on a canvas based text editor.

<comment><USER17> _I 've even started working on a canvas based text editor._

Careful! Mozilla tried that as far back as early 2009 (the project was called Bespin, you can google for "mozilla bespin canvas" to find out more).

The canvas-based approach was eventually abandoned and the project merged into Ace, a more traditional DOM-based editor.

<comment><USER16> I did some research before I started and read about Bespin. I don't think they merged into Ace because of the Canvas. It was probably because another team on the same company also worked on an editor, witch had the same goals, and aimed for the same market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are issues however with the way that some browsers render canvas, particularly stock browsers. I've had wildly different fps on different browsers.

</comment><comment><USER19> But how would one implement e.g. progressive rendering in the background?</comment>


Xsteer: Use your smartphone as a controller for HTML5 games - <AUTHOR> http://www.xsteer.com/

<comment><USER2> That's a neat idea. But I'd like to see it integrate with Unity3D.</comment>