Pro (noun.), abbreviation of Professional: born 1798, died 2019, aged 221 - <AUTHOR> https://www.dpreview.com/opinion/1647317722/pro-adj-abbreviation-of-professional-born-1798-died-2019-aged-221 <comment><USER2> For you youngsters just tuning in, welcome! Today we are going to learn how marketers misuse terms to sell you shit. For folks my age, it was words like "space age" and "turbo". The very first episode of the original _Battlestar Galactica_ had the character Starbuck using the "turbos" in his spacecraft. Those unaware might not know that turbines compress air, which outer space is sorely lacking. But it sounds cool, huh?

Today your generation has to deal with abuse of "pro". Same shit, different generation. Difference is, back in my day we shrugged it off as salespeople doing what salespeople do, went on about our day. Now we can write indignant blog posts, but frankly I don't know that it's worth getting that worked up about it.

<comment><USER3> > The very first episode of the original Battlestar Galactica had the > character Starbucks using the "turbos" in his spacecraft. Those unaware > might not know that turbines compress air, which outer space is sorely > lacking.

It's pedantic, but rockets do have "turbos" actually. They use turbo-pumps to feed fuel and lox from the tanks into the combustion chamber.

<comment><USER2> I will grant you one Pedantry Credit to use, as it sounds familiar and I have no reason to not believe you. But in return I will point out that I doubt that's where Starbuck was going with that. :-)

(And for the second time, auto-correct, the character's name is STARBUCK, singular. FFS, Apple, _Moby Dick_ is a default book included in the Books app, did no one there read it?)

<comment><USER4> If you're interested, Scott Manley gives a good intro to the way rocket engines work, and in particular turbo pumps[1] at ~3:30.

[1] [https://youtu.be/4QXZ2RzN_Oo?t=212](https://youtu.be/4QXZ2RzN_Oo?t=212)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People seem to forget that words can have multiple meanings and those meanings can shift. You can still use the abbreviation "pro" to refer to professionals - a pro tennis player, for example. At the same time, "pro" has been used as an adjective meaning "very good" for a long time, and not just for tech systems, but for people as well (eg, "they're very good, they're a pro").

</comment><comment><USER6> I always loved how the Gudang Garam cigarettes brings a "Professional" label in its box:

[https://www.clovecigarettesonline.com/images/stories/virtuem...](https://www.clovecigarettesonline.com/images/stories/virtuemart/product/gg_professional_4ea6d81ab22eb.gif)

<comment><USER7> You have to be a professional smoker to enjoy them for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've seen so much controversy the last couple days over the Airpod Pro for this "reason" that I'm wondering why it took people this long to learn the basic life skill of not taking marketing at face value. I suppose 2019 is better late than never for these people.

<comment><USER9> > I've seen so much controversy the last couple days over the Airpod Pro...

I wonder if this is a viral marketing play. Maybe I'm too jaded.

<comment><USER10> My first thought too.

I am jaded. Not enough though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What about Porsche with their Turbo trim EV? Turbo, Pro, whatever are just being used to denote something better like plus and premium used to do.

Besides aren't most professional things labeled Enterprise now anyway?

<comment><USER12> We had turbo buttons on PC's years ago, most of them did nothing.

<comment><USER13> They always did something; the Turbo button was switching the CPU frequency on older PC's that ran software with no speed auto-dectection and adjustment. On IBM PC XT the turbo button was switching between 4.77 and 9.54MHz, on AT it was 8-12 or ever 16 MHz. They were needed on faster computers because some games were otherwise unplayable at the higher frequency. You may have had a turbo button on a PC case that was not connected to anything, that is a different story. If you put a 486 in a case from a XT the turbo button "not working" is your fault only.

<comment><USER14> So the question is.....why weren't those machines running at the higher frequency in the first place? Why would you only enable the turbo mode to play games but no to work in Excel?

<comment><USER13> On AT computers you had to go to low frequency to play games built for XT's. For example M1 Abrams tank simulator was a slideshow on a XT at 4.77, slow but almost playable on 9.54, fine on a AT at 12 MHz and unplayable on a 386 at 40 MHz (it was like a movie played on 10x speed). On the 386 with turbo off (16 MHz) was playable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Did people forget about Prosumer? Pro markets are ridiculously niche and have the price to match (Mac Pro). Most of the areas people complaining about pro I don't get. Not everyone wants to have "professional grade" everything at all times. I use to be a professional photographer, but I couldn't justify 2k+ and all my dev budgets at the same time so most of these "pro" products hit my sweet spot. Not over the top where I'm now learning how to use the tool, but just more than enough to be dangerous if i want to take some quick photos to see if I kept my "eye." So far most of this angst is from professionals who don't speak on their own "pro" tools but will in an instant shit on anything mass marketed with the term. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER16> The difference between this and the hundreds of other products using the "Pro" moniker is that this is Apple and it generates controversy (and clicks) better than most other brands. It's a label to differentiate product lines, like "Turbo" on an electric car.

It's enough to do a search for "Pro" on the very same website above to see how many not-so-Pro products they covered over the past 20 years (like phones, cheap SSDs, or consumer cameras).

I do appreciate the article tag is "Humor" though.

<comment><USER17> >like "Turbo" on an electric car.

or on a compiler!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Pro has been added to the name of sports equipment for decades although 99 percent of the pro rackets, pro swimwear and pro boots are bought by amateurs.

</comment><comment><USER19> PS4 Pro lmao

<comment><USER20> There will be more pro esport players with their ps4 pro than professionals using airpods pro for their respective jobs.

<comment><USER21> Nope, I'll bet that many, many professional consultants and lawyers will now use these to take conference calls in even more comfort than the originals. Seriously, if you spend all day on the phone (aka, a professional), they're awesome.

<comment><USER19> Yes, and if quality is better than AirPods 1, they can replace pro wireless microphone kits from Røde, Sennheiser etc., just like iPhone Pro can replace many cameras.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why did someone submit this?

Why is it still here?

A photo site owned by Amazon making dumb jokes based on their misunderstanding of how language works. Insightful.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not the only one to remember the Competition Pro joystick.

This was a long time ago (around 1986).

Back then there were no professional e-sport players.

</comment><comment><USER24> Tech products have a long history of misleading names, though. In the 1980s and 1990s, a very popular compiler was called "Turbo Pascal" and computers often had buttons to change the clock speed marked "Turbo". Obviously, these products didn't have literal turbochargers in them.

</comment><comment><USER25> We do use the `Pro` abbreviation for proffesional quite often in french

</comment><comment><USER26> Where and when I grew up pro was an abbreviation for prostitute. No one would ever have described themselves as a pro with the possible exception of a golfing professional.

<comment><USER27> That's...unfortunate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "pro et contra" precedes.

</comment><comment><USER29> Airpods aren't professional?

At least people aren't telling me that they are also not made of air or shaped like pods.

That would warp my sense of reality to such a degree that I wouldn't know what to do with my life and I would have to write a 7,500 word essay on why everything should be named literally and post it to medium.com, thus bringing shame to myself, my ancestors, and my descendants.</comment>


Ask HN: What task would you like automated? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to start a side project and was wondering if there are any tasks that you'd like to have automated for $5/month? <comment><USER2> Making fun of Justin.</comment>


Perl 5.16.0 is out, with 590,000 lines of changes - <AUTHOR> http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2012/05/msg186903.html

<comment><USER2> 590,000 lines of changes is 30x as many lines as Lua's entire source distribution.

Just thought I'd mention this in light of yesterday's discussion about simplicity/complexity: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3995185>

<comment><USER3> By the definition from Rich Hickey, lua seems to be optimized for simplicity while perl is for easiness.

<comment><USER4> I've been trading-in my habit of writing one-off Perl scripts for writing them in C#. I just clone a template file containing enough to get a "while(<>) { ... }" equivalent and a vanilla regular expression going -- ninety percent of what my one-offs need -- and I'm off and coding.

The result is something that may or may not be faster, or clearer . . . but it's a whole lot easier to debug when something goes wrong.

I learned Perl about a decade ago, and have never felt that plumbing its depths (references were about as sophisticated as I got) would pay off. (I won't get into what I think is broken about Perl, because that discussion definitely won't pay off :-) )

<comment><USER5> The open-source visual IDE written in Perl, called Padre, has an excellent integrated debugger. <http://padre.perlide.org/>.

With the latest version of Padre, I find debugging Perl scripts to be as easy as C#.

Or you can use the commercial Komodo editor which has another high quality Perl debugger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> See <http://search.cpan.org/%7Erjbs/perl-5.16.0/pod/perldelta.pod> for the list of changes.

And if you want a copy of the announcement where the Unicode characters aren't broken, visit [http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing- lists/perl5-porters/2012-...](http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing- lists/perl5-porters/2012-05/msg00728.html)

<comment><USER7> Speaking of broken, that second link you give doesn't contain a meta tag specifying the encoding, and the webserver probably doesn't send it either, because I had to set my browser to UTF-8 manually to see the correct accents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nicely related is the video _New features of Perl 5.16_ from the recent Perl Mova / YAPC::Russia conference...

* video of Pavel Vlasov talk - <http://vimeo.com/42408505>

* slides from talk - <http://www.slideshare.net/fxzuz/perl-516-new-features>

* conference link - <http://perlmova.org/yr2012/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone using Perl for new projects and why?

<comment> Su-Shee Yes.

Stability, maturity, great backwards compatibility, whipuptitude, a sea of well-cared mature modules on CPAN, the ease and convience of CPAN itself, already installed/available everywhere, Unicode support, creativity and competence of the community, exceptionally good documentation, "the spirit", MOP via Moose if I want to, rarely gets in my way, scales very well in terms of "thinking" and "project" (everything from tiny admin-script up to full- blown financial district application possible), speed, amazing interesting features in perl 6....

And no, you don't write the same Perl as in 1996 anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congratulations to all involved! They've really got things back on track in the last several years. Things stagnated somewhat during the 5.6-5.8 era, but the 5.10 releases brought large positive changes, both to the codebase and to the development process itself.

Perl is still the go-to language for tasks within its purview (as described by other commenters here).

</comment><comment><USER11> Perl, the most humble of languages around. A mere 590,000 lines of code changes.</comment>


Dereferencing a NULL pointer always segfaults, right? Not if you're clever... - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/03/null-pointers-part-i/

<comment><USER2> My first reaction to this headline was "Surely there is never any circumstance where this is genuinely a smart thing to do, no matter how _clever_ " but I confess I wasn't thinking in terms of security vulnerabilities.

<comment> Tuna-Fish I believe some old borland compilers mapped 0 to a guard value, and checked if it ever changed to see if there were accidental writes to null.

I feel that was a stupid approach, and having 0 unmapped is actually the better choice -- instant seqfault is imho a better way to know your program failed.

<comment><USER3> Are you thinking of DOS? I can't imagine a Win32 compiler doing this.

<comment><USER4> Heh, in DOS a far NULL pointer was the start of the interrupt vector table -- divide by zero being first. I remember writing a program that wrote the address of one of my subroutines to a far NULL pointer and then dividing by zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In a related bit of cleverness I've heard that the JVM doesn't actually put NULL checks in it's generated ASM, instead it installs a SIGSEGV handler that catchs the null pointer exception and does the right thing.

<comment><USER3> And C# on .NET disallows non-virtual method calls on null instance locations. It does so by emitting a callvirt IL instruction for the non-virtual method, which in turn is translated by the CLR to:

        cmp dword ptr [ecx],ecx

(Assuming 'this' is in ecx.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure who's the intended audience of this. It is called an Introduction to Virtual Memory that is aimed at C programmers.

How many C programmers are out there that do not know how VM works?

<comment><USER7> Plenty. In fact many get irate when you explain to them that thier nice "close to the metal" language is actualy doesnt talk directly to the memory, it has to go through a (albeit hardware assisted) transform moderated by a couple layers of stuff. The whole point of VM is to keep the illusion of working directly with memory/hw, because it is useful sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll stick around for the second installment, I guess, but this was a bit too basic for my tastes.

<comment><USER9> Same here. I don't see anything big enough to warrant splitting it into two articles.

Goddamn page views.

<comment><USER10> There are no ads on that blog. So not sure why pageviews matter, maybe the author just wanted to take a break.

<comment><USER11> It creates a cool sort of hype actually. I'm not sure if that was intentional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Check it out: <http://lwn.net/Articles/347006/>

These null pointers are sometimes _function pointers_. Wow. You don't even need to muck with the stack and change the return address to get arbitrary code execution.

I admit I'm surprised Linux even lets you mmap 0x0. I suppose most systems won't, since mmap_min_addr will probably be set to a sane address, but it's still a legit vulnerability.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not under HP-UX on a "PA" processor. The page at 0x0 isn't neccessarily unmapped or marked noread/nowrite/nonothing. As I recall one or the other HP C compilers has a way around this, but unless you take care, you won't use that compiler flag, and you end up having NULL pointer de-refs.</comment>


New York Sent Recovering Coronavirus Patients to Nursing Homes:A Fatal Error - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-sent-recovering-coronavirus-patients-to-nursing-homes-it-was-a-fatal-error-11589470773 <comment><USER2> Same error as in Italy. 44% of the current deaths are from nursing care homes.

<comment><USER3> Did they knowingly sent infected people to nursing homes in Italy?

<comment><USER2> Yes, sadly so, to keep free room in hospitals, with the promise they'd be kept completely separate from other patients.

You can guess what happened next.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, I was not aware. I found a reference where someone says that at least in those wards they complied with safety measures and the infection was anyway spread already. But this is definitely not a good idea! [https://www.politico.eu/article/the-silent-coronavirus- covid...](https://www.politico.eu/article/the-silent-coronavirus- covid19-massacre-in-italy-milan-lombardy-nursing-care-homes-elderly/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Automatically Add Loading Bars to Your Website - <AUTHOR> http://github.hubspot.com/pace/docs/welcome/?hn <comment><USER2> I like the presentation and I understand the reason why people would want to use this thing.

That said: Please.. Show static content first. Don't do the Blogger thing. That looks

\- ridiculous

\- stupid

\- like Geocities did

In other words: For 'apps', games etc. this looks really neat. But a website, say a blog..., shouldn't need to show a progress indicator before any content shows up.

<comment><USER3> this isn't doing anything like that!! It's just reporting progress, the content still loads just fine.

do you really need to use a list of adjectives like that, if you don't understand something at least try to be a little polite about it.

<comment><USER4> The poster you are replying to is using those bullet points to describe the loading bar used on Blogger, which probably has nothing to do with this loading bar other than the fact that they are both loading bars. It's being pointed out as a poor usage of loading bars for anyone that might considering using this one (i.e. "please don't use this tool in a place where it makes no sense").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No, please, stop, don't do this.

This is a terrible UI experience. Note: I have been living and working with iOS 7 since the first beta. I know it's new and shiny to everyone else, but this is absolutely the worst thing to add to your site. It serves no functional purpose and just clashes with devices that do this natively.

<comment><USER6> Sincere question: what does this have to do with iOS 7?

<comment><USER7> Putting a thin progress bar at the top of your page is competing with Mobile Safari's thin progress bar at the top of your page.

Aside from the whole Department of Redundancy Department feel, they both display progress at different rates.

"A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."

<comment><USER8> Why not just detect which browser is viewing the site and not show the progress bar for mobile and safari browsers? That should solve this "double watch" issue.

<comment><USER9> Because broswer detection is an anti-pattern , and you dont know in a few years if chrome will do the same... Will you go back to all your projects to fix them ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Or you could just speed your site up so you don't need to show someone a progress bar.

Or use Angular or Backbone and then you really don't need a progress bar.

<comment><USER10> Yes, do this instead. Seriously, unless you're showing me his-res images from The Louvre, just give me the content as quick as digitally possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is fantastic, and surprisingly worked perfectly with my own super complicated browser-side AMD style module loader. I'm very impressed that it "just works" and seems like magic. Thank you so much for making this! (seems like everybody else is complaining, HNers are so ungrateful)

<comment><USER12> Thanks so much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good God, why would I ever want to see Loading Bars on a website.

If you can't front-load enough to give 100 bytes of text to read, don't bother answering my http request.

</comment><comment><USER14> A team related to mine released a new UI for their software. It included a loading bar, of sorts, while it was loading a new page on the tool.

Users complained it was too slow. They removed the loading bar. Users stopped complaining it was slow.

I've since stopped trying to find new ways to add loading bars, and just focused on making my software faster.

<comment><USER12> Smart. There was a study recently that showed that the barber pole style of progress bar in particular did make people perceive things as faster, but I imagine it has a lot to do with how long the delay really is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It looks very pretty, but sadly my Macbook Air couldn't quite keep up with everything happening on the page. My ability to even scroll kind of stuttered to a stop.

Not sure why a loading bar needs to be so resource-intensive.

(Granted, I'm plugged into a high resolution display, but even so most sites I visit don't have issues like this.)

<comment><USER16> I'm on a Pentium-powered Dell, and it works great! HyperThreading FTW!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's my take: this is very valuable on sites that dynamically load new pages without an actual browser navigation (read: pjax).

It is not useful (and indeed it is an anti-pattern) for static sites in which case you'd want to just use the browser loading mechanism, that the user (hopefully) understands and is used to.

<comment><USER17> Second take: whhhhhaaaaaaaat native color pickers!!? That is really neat, must have missed that addition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is just like NProgress except even better and easier to use - thank you for sharing this!

The only caveat I encountered with this was that I had to update the z-index in the generated css file to "999999" for it to work with bootstrap. Notable, NProgress has the same incompatibility with bootstrap.

</comment><comment><USER19> Strange enough, codrops recently published an article with very similar effects and styling: [http://tympanus.net/codrops/2013/09/18/creative-loading- effe...](http://tympanus.net/codrops/2013/09/18/creative-loading-effects/)

I see the article was published on the 18th, and hubspot created the repo on the 11th, so I wonder if this was just a coincidence. Either way, nice work

<comment><AUTHOR> We were inspired by a number of sources. We loved NProgress when it came out, but felt that mixins `Nprogress.set` calls into our code was cumbersome. After we started work on (what was originally codenamed MProgress ([https://github.com/adamschwartz/mprogress](https://github.com/adamschwartz/mprogress)) ;), Codedrops published their article. We were psyched because we thought we had an even bigger opportunity. So we curated and crafted the best themes from all over the web (Codedrops, included) and coupled them with the easiest-to- configure progress bar solution out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not bad - 8kb, drop-in installation, 9 designs for progress bar included.

</comment><comment><USER21> Those interested might also be interested in a previous discussion on a similar progress bar.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6246183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6246183)

<comment><USER12> Just FYI, the difference is that this progress bar is monitoring things loading on the page, that one is just an animation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks great - works great! Thank-you!

Notes... To get it over the bootstrap navbar I z-indexed to a million. The ajax calls on my site seem to happen too fast to invoke. Fast pageloads are the benefit of no traffic!

</comment><comment><USER22> It doesn't seem to work with Firefox 25 + Ghostery, I don't see a loading bar and all the examples are empty white boxes. Disabling Ghostery it works properly.

<comment><USER12> Yep, the perils of being a marketing company. Ghostery blocks all of hubspot.com. Shouldn't be a problem for people using the library though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm actually very curious on how they build in the color picker into the site to designate the site's colors. Anyone have any knowledge on this?

<comment><USER12> Sure, it's an input type="color" with some css applied to it. On webkit, it becomes a picker, on other browsers, just a text input.

When it is changed, we loop through various elements and change their background color. The way the themes are generated is a little more complicated, but I don't think that's what you're asking about.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I am pretty sure that you're correct.. This was a new input to me (<input type=color />) - learn something new everyday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks great. I am building an image intensive app currently and will definitely be putting this to use. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER12> Let me know how it goes. We don't specifically monitor the loading state of images right now, (although the document readyState will be effected by images). If it doesn't seem to work right for you create an issue and we'll add image monitoring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ghostery blocks it.

</comment><comment><USER27> > Mac OSX

It's Mac OS X. Plus you shouldn't name it that. Call it Wave or something else.</comment>


5 military phrases for DevOps practitioners - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/article/18/7/military-phrases-devops <comment><USER2> I was expecting FUBAR and SNAFU.

<comment><USER3> BOHICA is a great one for DevOps</comment></comment>


UK council to send obese people 'motivational' texts - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/public-sector/3500310/council-send-obese-people-motivational-texts/

<comment><USER2> ..if they sign up.

Here comes another horrendously expensive government scheme with a total audience of 10 people.</comment>


(A bit of) Decision-making for startups - <AUTHOR> http://venturehacks.com/articles/decision-making

<comment><USER2> _"Rubin looks at the world through the lens of probabilities. A good decision might have bad results. But if you have the chance to do it all over again, you should make the same decision."_

Only if the same exact information is available the second time around... Life can be similar to poker etc., but sometimes quite different.

<comment><USER3> Tactical decisions recur, strategic decisions are one of a kind because, as Heraclitus observed: you cannot step into the same river twice. EDIT: Although experience may allow you to recognize earlier situations the are isomorphic ("history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme" Mark Twain).

One of the key principles I took away from a "Decision Analysis" class was "good decision, bad outcome." I try to separate my analysis of the process from the results.</comment></comment>


Getting Real: Free Book by 37signals - <AUTHOR> http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ <comment><USER2> This is a great book. All of the advice in t is either excellent or at least thought-provoking. Highly recommended.

Now, that being said, I did order a dead tree version through the Lulu.com store (very nice store, by the way) and while I love the construction and print quality of the book, the internal page layout and typography were awful. And the choice of a glossy black cover shows annoying fingerprints after just a few minutes.

I'm glad that I've read this book because it has given me motivation to start something. I'm trying out a couple of ideas right now to see which one I like and will run with.

So, thanks to the guys at 37Signals, but have someone who knows what they're doing, help you with layout next time!

</comment><comment><USER3> The best part of this book in my opinion is the section where they describe every step they have to take when implementing a new feature. It clarifies the advice they give about saying 'no' to new requests initially (because even a seemingly-tiny feature can involve a lot of work to make sure it launches successfully, you have to focus on the most important, most requested features).

You can see that principle at work on this site. Over time they'll know what the most important features to add are based on how we use it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I really enjoyed this book too, you can feel the passion they have coming through in the writing and its contagious.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Getting Real is staying small and being agile.

I couldn't agree with this more. Businesses that give up control, gain in mobility what they lose in command. And mobility is the key to innovation in any startup.

</comment><comment><USER6> Worth the read. Don't confuse 'simplicity' with lack of features. Read Simplicity[0] by Joel for an explanation why.

[0] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/09.html

</comment><comment><USER7> Control + minus a dozen times makes reading the online version so much easier/faster.

</comment><comment><USER8> I owe my perseverance to this book and the team at 37Signals.com !!!

</comment><comment><USER9> Insightful ~</comment>


How Ouya Shows Kickstarter Sucks for Hardware - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2420905,00.asp

<comment><USER2> This person has no problem with Ouya, the article isn't even about Ouya. He has a problem with kickstarter. He doesn't get it at all.

"Don't buy your electronics on Kickstarter. That's the lesson..."

Nobody "buys their electronics on Kickstarter." They support projects they think are cool, or wouldn't exist any other way.

"don't spend (your money) on mystery hardware that nobody has ever laid hands on, built by new teams. Let other people be the suckers, and reap the rewards later."

Are you kidding me? This couldn't be further from spirit of kickstarter style projects.

This is just an non-news article trying to get hits by saying angry things about a popular project. Doesn't belong on the front page.</comment>


"Hardware Tor" Privacy Device Spotted on KickStarter - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winstonprivacy/winston-the-worlds-most-advanced-online-privacy-device <comment><USER2> Shame its only available in the US</comment>


Peter Watts: The Scorched Earth Society [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/TheScorchedEarthSociety-transcript.pdf <comment><USER2> "What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, polkers, or whatever else was at hand?"

\- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

</comment><comment> barry-cotter All in favour of removing the scribd autolinks as scribd are a cancer on the internet please upvote. Karma sink for downvoting will go below. If it hasn't appeared yet feel free to go to my history.

<comment><USER3> I had to use the search to find out why people view scribd as evil.

[http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/quora-scribd- conside...](http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/quora-scribd-considered- harmful.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh! It's the author of Blindsight! That spaceship facing aliens with a vampire novel. It's memorable - it was a Hugo nominee, and I highly recommend it: [http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm](http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm)

</comment><comment><USER5> I was nodding in agreement right up until the point he showed charts of 17 "first-world" nations and started torturing data:

 _In terms of pretty much any metric you 'd care to name — I'm showing you homicide and infant mortality rates, but the same pattern holds for incarceration rates, life expectancy, STDs, teen pregnancy — a whole slew of variables I don't have time to show you — the US is consistently the worst of the lot._

First, 17 countries? WTF? Why is he deliberately limiting the sample to predominantly caucasian countries? The US certainly has its faults, but it comes in at #3 on the UN's Human Development Index. Why not show data from the top 20 nations on that list? Is there really a problem with finding "religiosity" data for Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Israel, and Singapore? (Ireland comes in at #7 in the latest ranking while the UK is #27, behind Slovenia, Spain, and Italy.) It appears he's citing a 2009 Gregory Paul paper that argues the US is a more secular nation than a 2008 Baylor study indicated, which has me scratching my head.

His text refers to infant mortality while showing a chart of child mortality. Not a mistake I'd expect from a biologist, but even Homer nods on occasion. Alas, immediately after stating the US is the worst of the lot in measurements including life expectancy in some manner because of its popular religiosity, he makes the case that religiosity is a social survival trait and shows a chart indicating that religious communes last longer than secular ones. At which point I found myself wondering exactly what point he was trying to make. Atheism is the way forward even though religious nations are more likely to survive? Which is a pity, because I quite agree with his larger points on government intrusions on our privacy.

(Edited for clarity.)

<comment><AUTHOR> >First, 17 countries? WTF? Why is he deliberately limiting the sample to predominantly caucasian countries? The US certainly has its faults, but it comes in at #3 on the UN's Human Development Index. Why not show data from the top 20 nations on that list? Is there really a problem with finding "religiosity" data for Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Israel, and Singapore? (Ireland comes in at #7 in the latest ranking while the UK is #27, behind Slovenia, Spain, and Italy.) It appears he's citing a 2009 Gregory Paul paper that argues the US is a more secular nation than a 2008 Baylor study indicated, which has me scratching my head.

The first world is an outdated term, originally used to describe the countries aligned with the US during the Cold War. I agree that it would have been better to use the top 20 nations on the UN's HDI, but given the term the choice of countries was correct.

>Alas, immediately after stating the US is the worst of the lot in measurements including life expectancy in some manner because of its popular religiosity, he makes the case that religiosity is a social survival trait and shows a chart indicating that religious communes last longer than secular ones. At which point I found myself wondering exactly what point he was trying to make. Atheism is the way forward even though religious nations are more likely to survive? Which is a pity, because I quite agree with his larger points on government intrusions on our privacy.

A trait that causes cells to die at some predetermined time can benefit the organism as a whole, for example by preventing cancer. Similarly, Peter Watts seems to be arguing that although religiosity causes life expectancy and a whole slew of other important metrics to plummet, it strengthens the collective whole by building group cohesiveness. Put crudely, fanatics make useful cannon fodder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Offer data destruction

Isn't this exactly what the right VPN companies do? "We absolutely do not log any traffic nor session data of any kind, period." Source: [https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-take-your- anonym...](https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-take-your-anonymity- seriously-2014-edition-140315/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Nothing short of inspiring. Thank you for sharing this!

</comment><comment><USER8> The Mother of All Games.</comment>


Air Force is looking into Elon Musk's pot smoking: Source - sahin-boydas https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/07/air-force-is-looking-into-elon-musks-pot-smoking-source.html <comment><AUTHOR> It's comical how much drama is emerging surrounding this. If you actually watch the podcast, Musk takes a single puff which doesn't even go past the interior of his mouth as if he's smoking a cigar.

</comment><comment><USER2> The amusing thing, Musks asks, is this legal? And JRE said yes in California. Wonder about JRE's other guests with security clearances now, since he has many military contractors, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> is America turning back time? This article could not be more conservative and prude.</comment>


"hella" proposed as SI prefix for 10^27 - <AUTHOR> http://theaggie.org/article/uc-davis-student-gives-hella-new-meaning <comment><USER2> I once overheard a woman on her cell phone say that it was "hecka-busy" in the store.

I fear there may be some who can't bring themselves to say "hell", and there will be confusion between the hecka- and hecta- prefixes.

The all heck will break loose.

:)

</comment><comment><USER3> you got me feeling 10^27 good so lets just keep on dancin'

doesn't really have the same ring to it...</comment>


Some men just want to watch the World Burn - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/vaielab/full/yoKEF/ Thank you Vaielab for brining back Childhood memories <comment><USER2> The title is awesome. Really awesome. If I ever get around to writing a novel, I will find some way to use this phrase.

<comment><USER3> It's a quote from batman...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A clone of Duck Hunt. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER5> It appears to be done without the use of Javascript.</comment></comment>


AWS Controllers for Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aws/aws-controllers-k8s <comment><USER2> Kelsey Hightower had a good take in [https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/12963119515307048...](https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/1296311951530704896) "AWS Controllers for Kubernetes is pretty dope. You can leverage Kubernetes to manage AWS resources such as API gateways and S3 buckets. Think Terraform but backed by Kubernetes style APIs and "realtime" control loops."

An in the thread he mentions Crossplane as the cross-cloud way to do this [https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/12963213771342315...](https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/1296321377134231552)

<comment><USER3> I thought whole point of running K8S in AWS was to have infrastructure not tied to their offerings.

If you use something like that, why use K8S and not just use AWS services natively?

<comment><USER4> The entire idea of your infrastructure not being tied to your provider is completely lost when you are at any type of scale. I have a feeling that anyone who thinks it is easy or even usually worth it has never been part of planning a large scale migration.

At the same time, you usually end up spending more money and having worse results when you don't go all in.

As far as why use EKS vs ECS - the "native service"? They seem to have feature parity, ECS is easier to use for the unitiated. But, there are so many people who know k8s and your knowledge is portable.

Which brings up my second point. Most software engineers don't care about cloud mobility as much as they claim. They care about career mobility. There is a much better chance that you will leave a company and move to a company on a different provider than your company will. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to focus on technologies that give you as an individual the most optionality.

<comment><USER5> > The entire idea of your infrastructure not being tied to your provider is > completely lost when you are at any type of scale

Pretty categorical statement and I don't find this to be true at all if you avoid using anything managed except block devices and vms themselves. That is unless "any type or scale" is tens of thousands of VMs and petabytes of storage in which case it is indeed a moot endeavor since someone who is still on public cloud at that point apparently likes to give all their money to cloud vendors anyway.

<comment><USER4> If all you're doing is using a cloud provider to host a bunch of VMs, you've already lost the plot. Once you use any cloud provider as a glorified colo without changing any of your processes you're already spending more than a colo and not getting any of the benefits of managed services.

Have you ever budgeted a project plan involving a large migration.

<comment><USER6> "Managed services" in cloud are a Faustian bargain.

It's also totally untrue that you need to adopt any specific proprietary features of public cloud to change your IT processes to break the ITIL straightjacket into a sane process. It's just an abstraction, and there are plenty to choose from that work with whatever you already have.

First of all, they're not actually managed services as we typically expect. The support experience is much more like a "hosted service", with very circumscribed boundaries around feature scope, mostly because it is managed entirely by the kind robots rather than having humans actually manage anything.

Secondly, they're lock in for debatable benefit.

Third, they're almost always the way the clouds make their margin and you're stuck with their design decisions, and have little control plane adjustability. Running Google Cloud SQL is expensive and crappy, I would much rather run my own DB on a Kubernetes cluster via a mature and commercially supported Kubernetes operator. Because it's automated, reliable, and if I need to, I can get into the weeds.

Because the dirty secret is that all of the managed cloud services _are just software_ , no different from what you install, they've just closed source certain components to make it seem magical. And yes you can file a ticket to get them to fix it, but remember the law of outsourced availability: you still own your SLO to your customer, you still own your end to end availability. All the "managed cloud" will do is cut you a check for the wasted pennies on a bill, while your customers leave and business tanks.

If you treat cloud like a commodity player that you can fire (not likely - more "shrink investments in favor of an alternative") every few years if their quality goes down or price goes up, you're in a much better position for cost, performance, and reliability. Same as it always was. The "one Throat to choke" theory of outsourcing was a always business school bullshit line that never really worked, and that now has been adopted by tech experts that want to ensure their cloud-specific skills are always relevant, regardless of whether these all proprietary features are really a good idea.

Speed + having no idea what you're doing = use all the managed services!, this seems to be the cloud pundit elevator pitch. but as with anything, if you don't know what you're doing, at some point you will be caught being a sucker.

The multi-cloud, open source ecosystem continues to grow over many proprietary cloud services for these reasons.

<comment><USER4> You act as if people to manage servers are free. How much time are you spending to avoid "cloud lock-in"? How much money are you spending on the extra support staff or are you making your developers do double duty? Is doing the grunt work of managing servers and services helping you win against your competitors? Is it helping you to go to market faster?

I'm not just speaking about cloud providers. Do you know how many healthcare systems are so tightly "locked in" to their EMR/EHR systems that it would make you cry?

So is "multi cloud" saving you money?

<comment><USER7> Managed Cloud is Oracle all over again.

Engineers who job hop don't care, but they leave their orgs paying Amazon forever.

I'm doing this right now, but I know a boondoggle when I see one.

<comment><USER4> Would you also tell hospitals not to lock themselves into their EMR/EHR? Would you tell Enterprises to get rid of their entire dependence on Microsoft and go Linux only?

<comment><USER6> Don't be patronizing.

Management needs to act, and locking yourself in, if it's the only choice, go for it.

In the case of IT, composing across clouds is pretty common because it solves problems. Note I am not talking about brokerage or constant migration or other such nonsense. I'm talking about treating your clouds as a portfolio where you have levels of investment for particular reasons, and can make long run decisions about upping or lowering investment in. You compose across them. Salesforce for CRM, AWS for my front end apps, Google for my analytics, Azure and O365 for internal apps, whatever. It's reality.

Forcing everything on one cloud, boy I donno. For an SMB, sure.

My point is, don't tell me how tasty and good for me the shit sandwich I am forced to eat is. Users of EPIC hate it, that's a market opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One consequence is the accidental deletion of AWS things...

If a CRD is deleted the CRs described it are also deleted. So, deleting a CRD (even accidentally) could end up deleting resources in AWS (e.g., backups). So, be careful.

Some things being managed by Kubernetes would be really cool. Other things being managed by k8s could break things if something goes wrong. I would plan accordingly.

<comment><USER9> Also, not all AWS follow the same deletion semantics. Example: S3 buckets. The report as being deleted somewhat quickly, but their name may not be available again for hour or so.

In this case the delete will appear to succeed, but the recreation, if done with the same name, may fail.

<comment><USER10> Great example. I worry about adding a layer of abstraction over provisioning resources this way.

Of course we have to _try_ this because it's a badass (tho obvious in hindsight) idea, but in practice it might have some downsides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I started building something along this line a few years ago. the ability to control AWS VM and treat them as pods (i.e. can backend a service, access other services) to have a hybrid (VM / Container) infrastucture that is all managed in the kubernetes way. Future work would have been to try and manage other resources similarly.

Sadly startup interest changed and then went under (but the freedom I was given to explore there was the best experience I have ever had)

[https://github.com/apporbit/infranetes](https://github.com/apporbit/infranetes)

</comment><comment><USER12> Some prior discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24219448](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24219448)

</comment><comment> just-juan-post You can create a S3 bucket but you can't set permissions on it.

Pass, I'll check back in a year.

</comment><comment><USER13> On the one hand this could be such a cool and powerful concept.

On the other hand my brain segfaults on the recursive loop of how the layer- inversion gets modeled as IaC with a CI/CD pipeline. I guess if you were very strict about having your provider-infra layer (cloudformation/terraform) do only the bare minimum to get your kube environment up, and then within that kube environment you used something like ACK to provision any cloud-provider resources that your kube-managed apps/pipelines needed.

Yet another case where I'm like "I don't know if kube should be the answer to everything, but I sure as shit won't miss <x>".

<comment><USER14> Yes, the goal is very much to bring provisioning & operations of all resources on to the core platform we're using, Kubernetes. I mentioned in another reply how excited I am to be able to manage things like SQS queues now with my app, via Helm Charts, rather than need separate machinery to manage/operate my app & the various resources it needs.

And now there is a control loop. So if Ben in support accidentally deletes my queue, it'll get recreated.

Breaking away from the proprietary platform underlay is going to be great. Managing things more consistently is going to be really great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> See also KubeForm - [https://kubeform.com/](https://kubeform.com/) which will do a lot of this already, via Terraform.

</comment><comment><USER16> I Terraform Kubernetes Operator sounds like a better idea.

</comment><comment><USER17> How is this different than Terraform?

<comment><USER18> Traditional Infrastructure-as-Code solutions were based on edge-triggers. Like create ingress, delete ingress. But what about when ingress misbehaves or is in an unrecoverable state?

Kubernetes introduced edge-triggered level-driven with resync reconciliation based "controllers". User defines a state and the controller does it's best to keep the infra in this desired state all the times. (Although Terraform has also moved to this same design in recent times)

This establishes a consistent experience. Everyone knows you just need to do kubectl get my-resource to check your desired state. All the issues will be logged in status and controller. You can combine multiple controllers to achieve your desired application design. For example, Knative has their own kind called "Service" which has some custom components, some inherited from istio and things like replicasets from default kubernetes controllers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me of this classic comic. [https://www.catmuseumsf.org/images/print/comix/bill.jpg](https://www.catmuseumsf.org/images/print/comix/bill.jpg)

<comment><USER20> Or almost any Cathy strip [https://mirabiledictu.org/cathy- ack-2/](https://mirabiledictu.org/cathy-ack-2/)</comment></comment>


You've Built a Great Technology, Now What? (A Dilemma) - <AUTHOR> http://thecodist.com/fiche/thecodist/article/youve-built-a-great-technology-now-what-my-dilemma

<comment><USER2> I think he meant to say Quandry as he has multiple options instead of dilemma

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can empathize with this quote: _"I'm not Ycombinator material"_</comment>


Ask HN: As a developer, how do I get into recruiting? - <AUTHOR> In the past year, we have discussed at length on how tech recruiting is broken, all the irrelevant cold calls/mails that we hate, the interview process taking too long, etc.
I have been a developer for more than a decade, I have been heavily involved in hiring/interviews at companies that I have worked for, and I have always wanted to take a stab at innovating in the tech recruiting space. I think getting to know the nitty gritty details from the recruiter's point of view is important, so I was thinking of working as a recruiter or starting  recruiting agency.
Does this sound like a reasonable step towards innovating in the recruiting space? How does one go about transitioning from a developer to a recruiter? What would be a typical day for a recruiter? <comment><USER2> > Does this sound like a reasonable step towards innovating in the recruiting > space?

Yes, if you want to learn the trail...then saddle-up next to an Old Trail Horse.

Suggest by reaching out to friends in the community, ask who is the best 3rd party tech recruiting firm they know and why? Pro-tip, it's almost never the big national firms. Most often its a small boutique shop that can really hustle. Check out these folks > [http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon- valley-best-recruiter...](http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-best- recruiters-2013-2)

Additionally, you can do an advance search via Linkedin to create your own hit list of target firms. Think of this as the Discovery Process, set up a Skype call or even better go see them in-person. Be prepared for an exhaustive process, upwards of 100+ individual conversations.

Develop a scorecard to help you determine a good match. For example you might probe for sophistication, tech savvy, and curiosity to see if the firms leadership is truly open to innovation. And importantly, if they're receptive to coaching a new hire in the Dark Arts of recruitment. A good firm is one that takes a consultative approproach with clients and candidates, that's rare these days.

Recruiting blogs is good for basic info on the space > [http://www.recruitingblogs.com/](http://www.recruitingblogs.com/)

Scott Love for solid professional development content > [http://www.greatrecruitertraining.com/](http://www.greatrecruitertraining.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://blog.alinelerner.com/if-youre-an-engineer-who- wants-t...](http://blog.alinelerner.com/if-youre-an-engineer-who-wants-to- start-a-recruiting-business-read-this-first/)

<comment><USER4> I stumbled across this post a while back, some legit suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You probably already have, but if not you'll certainly want to take a look at what @patio11 and @tptacek did with Starfighter and reach out to them for some interesting viewpoints on the matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I had heard about Straighter but never really read much into it. It looks interesting, will definitely take a look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suppose it can't hurt, but recruiters don't really impact recruitment processes, in a lot of cases.

The biggest problem with my company's recruitment process is their hiring process.

You can get all the applicants not he world. Of you can't hire them, or won't, what good is it?

External recruiters, are like black box testers for your hiring process.

Feel free to drop me a line of you'd like to discuss.</comment>


Why is AWS so expensive? - <AUTHOR> AWS is much bigger than its peers, yet commands a much higher premium in pricing in comparison with peers. Are economies of scale not at play here? <comment><USER2> I don't know how you quantify that.

For instance if you use "uninterruptable" instances in GCS it is cheaper than using comparable instances in AWS to train neural nets on a GPU.

On the other hand I hear the "uninterruptable" instances in GCS get interrupted all the time, but I know the interruptable instances make training inexpensive in AWS (eg. $8 to build a simple but strong language model) It is a pain to deal with interruption but any job that could run more than 8 hours needs serious attention to crash recovery no matter what kind of kit you're running it on.

I shut down all of my mysql instances in Amazon because I was not happy with the value, but I do have a "CAN-SPAM compliant e-mail marketing system" which uses Lambda, Dynamo DB, SES, SNS, SQS and all that and it costs under $10 a month to run if you have a list of 10,000 people or so and e-mail them a few times a month. It runs trouble free if I walk away from it for a month, whether or not the number of subscribers explodes.

Could you make something like that with the other clouds? I am sure you can. I'd imagine the cost would be similar.

The reason I don't investigate the other clouds when working on my own dime is that I know how to work AWS on a deep level, I know it won't blow up my Python install the way GCS does, etc. I know or have embodied in code the details to create a staging environment in some region and availability zone, placement group, subnet, etc in AWS. It is the same on GCS and Azure but I can save work by not replicating it.

What bends the needle for me is working for someone who is using some other cloud. I think those people are motivated by what cloud their customer uses ("hybrid cloud" rings about as true as "luxury sedan") The pricing factor I see is that it is easy for academics, startups, VARs, etc. to get free credits to use on GCS or Azure. AWS had to do that long ago, but today they are the standard and GCS and Azure have to pay more to get the customer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like there are lots of pricing optimizations that I could figure out if I really worked on it or had an army of quants to help. They're not applied automatically, though. One thing I like about GCP is that they seem to work out the best pricing for you.

<comment><USER4> As someone who does this for a living, you're not wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Because they can?

The right price is not the price it cost to make something, but the price the market can pay and you can get away with.

</comment><comment><USER6> MS and Google are actively trying to steal share from Amazon, so they're willing to lose revenue by having low prices.

I will say, though, that it looks more like an arms race to me. AWS is rarely the most expensive option for long before Amazon announces a price drop.</comment>


Dismay as Alzheimer's drug fails in clinical trials - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/23/dismay-as-alzheimers-drug-solanezumab-fails-in-clinical-trials <comment><USER2> It's a pity that this didn't work out, but it's good that this was covered in a newspaper, because it's useful as an example for other discussions.

There are a lot of drugs that have a nice idea and perhaps a promising preliminary test, but in the final double blind big clinical try they fail.

* Don't believe blindly the overhyped new magical drug that is tested only in vitro, or a few patients.

* The cost of the drugs is not only the cost of producing it. They have a lot of cost in research, trials, and also the cost of the research of all the other drugs that flopped.</comment>


Ten years with DragonFly BSD network stack [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/AsiaBSDCon%20-%20Dfly.pdf <comment><USER2> If anyone could summarize what makes DragonFly's stack different I'd be obliged.

I understand FreeBSD's networking stack has been well-regarded since the 90s[1] and has shipped in many environments and consumer devices. Now that it's 2017, it's interesting to see what else is out there.

[1] [https://people.freebsd.org/~andre/tcpoptimization.html](https://people.freebsd.org/~andre/tcpoptimization.html)

<comment><USER3> Literally the entire section 2 of the linked to file discusses exactly what you're interested to know. It details the evolution of the DragonFlyBSD's network stack, which started as the FreeBSD network stack.

<comment><USER2> I saw that, cheers.

I'm more interested in the higher level takeaway. Why should developers use Dragonfly?

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the ability to peruse the kernel implementation narrative in the first place. As I'm not a kernel developer I'm left wondering what it means.

e.g. better multicore performance?

<comment><USER4> I would look here:

[https://www.dragonflybsd.org/features/](https://www.dragonflybsd.org/features/)

and here:

[https://www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/](https://www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      3. The parts of the DragonFlyBSD's net-work stack that can really enjoy help hands.
      ...
      - The IPv6 stack; though I am making progress, the progress is slow.

Ouch. I'm guessing this means IPv6 is just slow and not that it doesn't work at all, but it seems like something that's going to be a problem in a couple of years.

<comment><USER6> You are confusing developer bandwidth with network bandwidth.

He's not saying IPv6 network performance is slow, he's saying he doesn't have as much time as he'd like to work on it.

<comment><USER5> He's saying it is in a poor state and development is slow. My supposition is that this means there are missing features and a lack of performance optimization. Presumably the DFlyBSD network stack is now different enough that they can't just pull in the FreeBSD IPv6 stack and drop it in.

<comment><USER6> More people using IPv6 on DragonFly would help tease out issues... but then again more people using IPv6 in general would help, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This post shows some interesting benchmarks between dragonfly, freebsd and linux

[http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/2017-March/313...](http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/2017-March/313254.html)

Submitted it a couple of weeks ago but it never reached the frontpage

</comment><comment><USER8> I was a diehard FreeBSD user around the time of the fork. Everything is just so well documented, the layout of things is sane, there was just so much order for a newbie like me. Eventually I moved to Linux but am still fond of *BSDs.

<comment><USER9> Why did you move to Linux?

<comment><USER8> To gain experience on the platform for potential jobs. Honestly though I'm not sure. I guess I toyed with fedora and liked it well enough. I might move back and give trueOS a try.</comment></comment></comment>


Programming language for novel biological circuits - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160331154001.htm <comment><USER2> It is not a programming language, rather it is a hardware definition language (Verilog).</comment>


I don't trust Signal (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/08/Signal.html <comment><USER2> I trust Signal's end-to-end encryption promise, but I have a problem with the application not offering anonymity or privacy. By demanding users to provide a cell phone number to enable their accounts, they are connecting actual people to the Signal accounts and consequently also allowing them (or someone else) to visualize social networks; in intelligence gathering, data such as who speaks to whom, at what hours, with what message frequency etc. is highly valuable. It's also important that users ask themselves how Signal manages to finance all the SMS costs and the infrastructure when the application is gratis and free from ads.

<comment><USER3> The exact opposite privacy thing is happening with Signal. They use your phone number because your phone links it to your contacts, which Signal uses as its "buddy list". By repurposing your contacts as a buddy list, Signal avoids storing any of that information itself. Virtually every other competing service stores a plaintext buddy list serverside, where it can be subpoena'd and NSL'd. The data in that buddy list is of equal value to state-level adversaries as the contents of the messages themselves.

I think --- I have no special knowledge here --- that nobody wants to do away with phone numbers more than Signal itself. That's what the "secure value storage" drama is about: using SGX to optionally vouchsafe an encrypted contact database, which would allow Signal to operate with opaque identifiers rather than contacts.

<comment><USER2> Applications can request access to the contact list at any time. They don't need to incorporate some sort of "ask for a phone number to send an SMS to" functionality to enable this. Additionally, there's nothing preventing them letting users confirm accounts by e-mail instead of SMS.

<comment><USER3> The Signal project itself has repeatedly explained why they use phone number identifiers, which are the most controversial feature of the platform. I'm not misunderstanding them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 Original from 2018, 467 comments [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17723973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17723973). Not commenting as snark (reposts are ok after all) more to save Dang digging out the link and also to see how many more or less duplicate sentiment comments are made and / or how perceptions have changed.

<comment><USER4> I thought that first comment had some inappropriately personal things to say about ddvault and his article. It also seemed like they didn't really respond with substance to the what the article said.

<comment><USER3> What substance in the article did I miss? Unlike the author, I stand by what I wrote originally.

I'll note the irony of calling my critique overly personalized, when the original article is based on the logic that Moxie's disagreement with DeVault's opinion about F-Droid --- a controversy that is meaningful to less than 1% of Signal's Android user base --- implies inexorably that Moxie is untrustworthy and disingenuous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love Mr. DeVault's work, and think he consistently shows integrity in his work, to say nothing of his incredible productivity and engineering.

That said, in my time following his blog and Mastodon toots, he's prone to making these hot-takes that take down successful projects that do a lot of public good, but don't tick every check. His repeated criticism of Mozilla is a good example of this.

It often feels like cutting off ones nose to spite the face. Without the Mozillas and OpenWhispers of this world, we've no hope for the DeVaults which create incredible feats of engineering that tick all the ideal boxes but lack some of the creature comforts (e.g. sr.ht, wayland, etc..)

I'm optimistic for the future, and the projects started by Moxie and DeVault are a large part of it.

<comment><USER6> I appreciate your feedback, and I try to be more balanced with this kind of article these days, and publish them less often. However, I'd like to point out that I've always strived to find other resolutions to these problems first - I spoke with Moxie and others involved in Signal at length before writing this article, and only wrote this as a last resort. With organizations like Mozilla, I have also spoken directly to some of those responsible, though it's more difficult with a larger organization, and waited until a long-term pattern of bad behavior had been established. I make these criticisms because I want them to live up to the ideals they proclaim - it's with the hope that they'll change for the better.

<comment><USER5> I'm sorry you're getting downvoted. Though I disagree with some of your stances on OWS and Mozilla, your articles are always thoughtful and there is never a doubt you're earnestly fighting for a better world w.r.t software.

<comment><USER7> I've been seeing him get downvoted frequently, often for well written and thought out comments. I suspect there is a non-negligible number of people who just vote based on username.

<comment><USER8> Do you have any examples of well-written and thoughtful comments by ddevault that were downvoted?

Many of the comments I see from him violate the guidelines at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Many of his blog posts (4 out of the last 5 submissions from drewdevault.com) are ill-informed and angry rants about a technology or company. These discussions generate a lot of heat but little light; it's not surprising that they are downvoted.

<comment><USER7> >Many of the comments I see from him violate the guidelines at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Having gone back and re-read many, I have to agree about most of the downvoted items though not all. I do agree with most of them though, so that's why I felt this way.

That being said, most of the comments I saw that could be considered to be breaking the guidelines do have substantial content, but are ended with/include non-negligible snark.

> Many of his blog posts (4 out of the last 5 submissions from > drewdevault.com) are ill-informed and angry rants about a technology or > company. These discussions generate a lot of heat but little light; it's not > surprising that they are downvoted.

None of these were posted here by ddevault. His statement about writing them is above, so presumably you've seen it already.

I would like to add, I use much of ddevaults software on a daily basis, and have found it to be some of the absolute best I've ever used. As such, I tend to give what he says at least a moment of thought.

<comment><USER7> Also, I still stand by my earlier statement, as [0] was at at least -2 before I originally found it.

I honestly can't understand why it would be downvoted otherwise.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24122834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24122834)

<comment><USER8> I agree that the post you linked to was downvoted unfairly.

Many of his subsequent posts have been fairly downvoted.

I think some of his downvotes are from people who have interacted with him elsewhere. His reply to one of my comments is why I'm using this alternate account.

His recent post about pkg.go.dev misrepresented the facts.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24023998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24023998)

He frequently takes an absolutist stance, often assumes negative intent, and is at best abrasive.

Here are some examples:

[https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for- good/issues/357](https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good/issues/357)

[https://github.com/kisslinux/repo/issues/100](https://github.com/kisslinux/repo/issues/100)

> I would like to add, I use much of ddevaults software on a daily basis, and > have found it to be some of the absolute best I've ever used. As such, I > tend to give what he says at least a moment of thought.

It's your call but I would be hesitant to use anything by him. How would he respond if I report a bug or open a feature request?

<comment><USER7> > Many of his subsequent posts have been fairly downvoted.

> He frequently takes an absolutist stance, often assumes negative intent, and > is at best abrasive.

I don't disagree about this. Having gone back and reread many of his comments, they do come across as aggressive, even if I agree with much of the contents.

> It's your call but I would be hesitant to use anything by him. How would he > respond if I report a bug or open a feature request?

I don't know to be honest. That being said, his absolutism/idealism make me a little more comfortable with using his software, as I can be reasonably sure it's being held to a high standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Signal falls into an uncomfortable place for me.

I like pre-paid cellphone plans which give me a small number of text messages, a small amount of airtime. Using these I can communicate with people when I am not near a WiFi AP. I do not want to pay for data and would prefer to use my and my friends' access points and the free wifi in the small number of commercial locations that I visit.

In Canada all of the major carriers disable WiFi Calling² on pre-paid plans. They essentially only enable it as crutch to leach off public infrastructure to take up the slack on their insufficient private infrastructure.

So I infrequently (but enough to be annoyed) find myself in the situation that I am not near a WiFi access point and wish to communicate with someone else. Currently Signal will only allow me to do this via insecure SMS messages.

I read their original explanation in 2015 for disabling this functionality. Namely SMS leaks too much metadata¹ and we are only catering to needs of real- activists in real-dictatorships, and anyway SMS is too expensive there so this is a 1st World Problem.

As an explanation it leaves me wondering why I would bother with Signal: if I bite the bullet and sign up for a circa CA$50/month plan with data I may as well just use Element Matrix over WiFi. Signal brings nothing to the table except the possibility of accidentally sending an insecure SMS message and incurring a 30c charge for it.

1\. [https://signal.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted- sms/](https://signal.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted-sms/) 2\. [https://support.signal.org/hc/en- us/articles/360007321171-Ca...](https://support.signal.org/hc/en- us/articles/360007321171-Can-I-send-SMS-MMS-with-Signal-)

<comment><USER10> In Canada, Fido has $10/m + tax "Tablet Plan" which can be used on phones and gives you 4GB/m data

<comment><USER9> I appreciate the suggestion but had already experienced the issue that WiFi Calling did not work with my unlocked Nexus5, similar to this: [https://forums.fido.ca/t5/General-Support/Wifi-Calling- worke...](https://forums.fido.ca/t5/General-Support/Wifi-Calling-worked-amp- stopped-working/td-p/98186)

 _As noted on this article, your compatible device must have been purchased from Fido. If you have a non-Fido device and no conflicting services, Wi-Fi Calling may work, but we can't assure that the feature will work properly!_

Without WiFi Calling enabled sending Secure Signal messages will not work. The only option left is sending a normal insecure SMS to which the message text has been input using the veneer of the "secure" Signal app.

<comment><USER10> No experience in Wifi Calling but I use the 2ndLine app for (very rare) calls and SMS. It gives you a local number. Data-only is the most cost effective imo

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the response. One more question: when I look at those plans on Fido¹ they seem to suggest that I need to be an existing postpaid customer. The plan seems like an add-on to other plans. Is this accurate or did you sign up from scratch with no other commercial relationship with Fido?

 _Make sure that you are an eligible Fido customer. You must be an existing, postpaid, mobile customer._

1\. [https://www.fido.ca/consumer/tablets](https://www.fido.ca/consumer/tablets)

<comment><USER10> I have a friend who's a Fido customer so I used their plan for signup.

I found out about the deal on a Redflagdeals post where some have successfully got the plan without being a Fido customer

[https://forums.redflagdeals.com/fido-4gb-tablet-plan-cpo- tab...](https://forums.redflagdeals.com/fido-4gb-tablet-plan-cpo-tablet-5-mo- existing-customers-only-2-yr-agreement-ymmv-2385712/)

<comment><USER9> Thanks. Guess I have to start making some new friends: "Heyyyy... you look like Fido kinda guy..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm so proud that a family member managed to get all of my extended family on Signal. My grandparents are even on Signal.

I wouldn't trust such an app for anything actually secret due to the mentioned issues (and phone number req), but I think it's great that we're using high grade encryption to talk about what we had for dinner.

Encrypted and private should be the default no matter what!

<comment><USER12> Plus cross-platform video chat and nice (large) multimedia attachments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Trust it to what?

I use Signal because I think it protects my SMS messages from:

a) being harvested and read by other apps on my phone

b) being read by someone who unlocks my phone

c) being passively intercepted and stored by carriers and their snoopy employees

d) opposition researchers or private investigators targeting my friends, acquaintances, and business associates.

For anything targeted and state level, all bets are off anyway, so it's not a solution for people who have that problem. What am I missing?

<comment><USER9> _I use Signal because I think it protects my SMS messages_

It depends. I think calling them simply SMS messages instead of being more precise is misleading because: _Text messages sent through your mobile SMS /MMS plan are insecure and need your phone to be connected to your mobile network._

and

 _Signal Desktop does not send or receive SMS /MMS messages. Only Signal messages will be sent or received. The desktop app is an independent client that works whether or not your mobile device is present or online. We also want to encourage users to move away from insecure legacy protocols._

[https://support.signal.org/hc/en- us/articles/360007321171-Ca...](https://support.signal.org/hc/en- us/articles/360007321171-Can-I-send-SMS-MMS-with-Signal-)

I find it very confusing.

<comment><USER13> It has other features, but the main point of using Signal is to send encrypted messages to people using the PSTN directory service (e.g. phone numbers). You are still in that sandbox.

The secondary feature it it ostensibly encrypts messages at rest on your device so they cannot be decrypted and read by other apps. (Assuming that's true.)

If you want a more secure messenger, use Wickr, Riot/Matrix/whatever it's called now, or protonmail or something similar, as these don't depend on the phone directory for identity and so they resist some traffic analysis and contact tracing as well.

The threat model is both the business model and use case for security products, so talking about the features or implementations outside the context of the threat model is going to just add uncertainty, imo.

<comment><USER9> Sure. Agreed. I was responding to your statement that you can send encrypted SMS messages using that handy PSTN directory access provided by Signal.

You can't.

I think this is a common misconception.

<comment><USER13> Open loop criticisms are why I often can't stand other security and crypto people.

To be clear, if someone is a Signal user, you use their phone number for directory discovery and initializing identity, then Signal messages themselves are encrypted and transported via Signal servers using WebRTC as a transport protocol?

I think without a sequence diagram, most discussion of security protocols is pointless.

<comment><USER9> Signal does not send encrypted SMS messages. Period. It can send encrypted messages but they are not SMS.

I think that without using the same words that other "security professionals" (which I would not class myself as) use most discussion becomes absolutely pointless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As to the interjection that Signal is lacking a FBI canary - Moxie was clear on the subject:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20141027143819/https://github.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141027143819/https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/issues/34)

<comment><USER4> The EFF reference at the bottom of that link provides a useful alternative position:

> What's the legal theory behind warrant canaries?

> The First Amendment protects against compelled speech. For example, a court > held that the New Hampshire state government could not require its citizens > to have "Live Free or Die" on their license plates. While the government may > be able to compel silence through a gag order, it may not be able to compel > an ISP to lie by falsely stating that it has not received legal process when > in fact it has.

> Have courts upheld compelled speech?

> Rarely. In a few instances, the courts have upheld compelled speech in the > commercial context, where the government shows that the compelled statements > convey important truthful information to consumers. For example, warnings on > cigarette packs are a form of compelled commercial speech that have > sometimes been upheld, and sometimes struck down, depending on whether the > government shows there is a rational basis for the warning.

> Have courts upheld compelled false speech?

> No, and the cases on compelled speech have tended to rely on truth as a > minimum requirement. For example, Planned Parenthood challenged a > requirement that physicians tell patients seeking abortions of an increased > risk of suicidal ideation. The court found that Planned Parenthood did not > meet its burden of showing that the disclosure was untruthful, misleading, > or not relevant to the patent's decision to have an abortion.

> Are there any cases upholding warrant canaries?

> Not yet. EFF believes that warrant canaries are legal, and the government > should not be able to compel a lie. To borrow a phrase from Winston > Churchill, no one can guarantee success in litigation, but only deserve it.

<comment><USER15> As counterpoint, the US Supreme Court held that Idahoans are obliged to advertise "famous potatoes" on their license tags. But potatoes really are famous (at least by Idaho standards) so it is just a fact and not an opinion. I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This post has been on Hacker News several times. For instance: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17723973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17723973).

When it was first published, it included an emphatic recommendation to use Matrix, and, later, Tox --- in fact, the post even included a changelog at the bottom recording the inclusion of Tox. After it was pointed out to the author that Matrix didn't even do E2E by default, the recommendations (and the changelog) were ghost-edited out of the post, but you can still see them on Archive.org.

I don't understand why people take this post seriously.

<comment><USER6> Ah, once again with the insubtantive rebuttal of the last point in the article, the point which has the least relevance to the meat of the article. And this time, your rebuttal is out of date, because Matrix _does_ have end- to-end encryption by default for all chats! Always _lovely_ having you around on HN, tptacek.

<comment><USER3> Recommending a tool that wasn't even end-to-end encrypted over Signal because you didn't like the way Signal's leadership responded to your demand to support F-Droid is the most relevant thing you wrote. Just because it was malpractice doesn't make it out of bounds.

<comment><USER6> Look at this guy, he was wrong! Wrong wrong wrong WRONG! Look, he retracted his statement, that's how WRONG he was!

<comment><USER3> Once again: you did not retract your statement. You ghost-edited it out of your post. The purpose of a retraction is to inform your readers of your mistake, and a retraction would be a good thing to add to your post.

The distinction is especially germane in a thread on a post that purports to discern how trustworthy someone else is. You set the bar, now clear it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I reacted to previous posts about this by installing Element (was Riot.im; search for both words) matrix client, setting up a periodic donation to privacytools.io, and making accounts with that as homeserver (chat.privacytools.io) for me and for the rest of the family.

(Previously, I had a Librem.one account, but they don't maintain their server, so I dropped it.)

It works... Still waiting for anyone else I know to come over.

Element really needs to set up as an optional SMS handler, on phones. Probably building in a Signal gateway is needed too. Signal would be nowhere today if it didn't also do SMS. Separate gateways are too clunky.

<comment><USER6> Matrix does pretty well in terms of privacy these days.

As for privacytools.io, I can't really agree. They have made a number of suggestions which are less about actual privacy and more about a trend I've come to think of as "privacy roleplaying" \- trendy software & services which use privacy and security as a selling point but whose implementation doesn't back it up. An example is Protonmail. When it comes to the privacy vs usability debate I come down _hard_ on the side of privacy. Doesn't matter how pretty it is if it's going to get you rubber hosed.

<comment><USER15> This is useful information. So, not librem.one, not privacytools.io, then... Maybe that leaves a homeserver of my own? I guess I am glad no one has picked up my current address. But it doesn't bode well for adoption.

I had thought that parking on a homeserver was not trusting them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd love to hear/see the 2020 reasoning for not being on F-Droid.

<comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 Not relevant but since F-Droid has been mentioned in the context of it. F-Droid is based in the UK and their accounts are over-due. 'Free' does not exist forever. [https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08420676](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08420676)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's the alternative to Signal then? For iOS users?

<comment><USER18> There is no alternative that provides the ease of use and privacy guarantees.

I think the OWS/Moxie hate is misplaced. They're competing with iMessage and WhatsApp and Instagram and Facebook, and Signal is a much better option than all of those.

Let's be honest: the alternative is that Facebook gets all of our chats in cleartext.

<comment><USER19> I don't buy it. I've been running my own Matrix homeserver and giving access to non-techy members of my family for years already. Setting up e2e is not automatic, but nothing that my mother couldn't do after 5 minutes of hand- holding.

It is on us with tech skills to help others to get out of any centralized alternative. Ease of use will come with the less technical user base.

<comment><USER20> It's on us as tech users to create solutions that don't require 5 minutes of hand holding with every user of software and call it an achievement.

<comment><USER19> Yes, you are absolutely right. No, it does not invalidate what I am saying.

If we keep expecting underfunded and under-resourced parties to come up with software ready and with absolute feature-parity over what is being pushed by the companies that have time, money and marketing teams, we are never going to make a dent on mindshare of the general public.

If on the other hand are diligent in refusing for centralized alternatives while willing to learn and emulate what they do right, then we will _at the very least_ be in a state of steady progress. Matrix and Synapse from two years ago where way worse than they are today. I am confident that in two years from now it will be even better and easier than it is today. Facebook/Google Meet/MS Teams/Skype from two years ago was centralized and closed, just as I expect them to be closed two years from now.

<comment><USER20> > absolute feature-parity over what is being pushed by the companies that have > time, money and marketing teams

Signal started as any other startup. And yet ;)

> while willing to learn and emulate what they do right, then we will at the > very least be in a state of steady progress

In total agreement with you

<comment><USER19> > Signal started as any other startup. And yet

Not sure what you mean here. To me Signal is just another startup that wants to keep control over the market and uses excuses such as "federation leads to fragmentation and bad UX" in order to put its own interests ahead of the users. To me they are no different than FB or Google.

<comment><USER20> They also started "with no money and recognition" and ended up defining what e2e means for consumers.

<comment><USER19> Forgive me for being dense, but I still don't get the point you are trying to make. Do you think Signal is worthy of some praise that the alternatives are not? Was their software ready to compete with the status quo of the time in features?

<comment><USER20> What was the point of this statement: "If we keep expecting underfunded and under-resourced parties to come up with software ready and with absolute feature-parity over what is being pushed by the companies that have time, money and marketing teams"?

My counterpoint is: Signal started as any startup. Now it basically defines e2e encryption. Why can't other "underfunded and under-resourced parties" do similar things?

<comment><USER19> Because "defining e2e encryption" is the case of building a feature and not a product, and a startup creating a novel feature is a lot easier than bringing a whole product with feature-parity against the dominant market leader?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really don't think OWS has the authority to stop forks from using the Signal servers, any more than YC has the authority to dictate that I use Chrome to view HN.

There is, of course, the vague language of the CFAA, so I'm not sure I'd want to test this theory, but his demands that forks not use the main centralized servers are, in my opinion, unenforceable bluster.

<comment><USER6> This doesn't have much value without _federation_ , which would require active support from OWS.

<comment><USER3> You can literally just look at Matrix, the tool you recommended, to see the problem with federation, fragmentation, and market demands to support lowest- common-denominator security. It took years after your recommendation for Matrix to have universal default E2E, the table-stakes feature of a secure messenger.

<comment><USER6> Are you going to back this up with evidence, or is it okay when _you_ use axiomatic arguments?

"It took a while" is not actually an argument that the procedure is wrong or less correct, in case you were unsure.

<comment><USER3> In fact, it is an argument that you were wrong, and the evidence for that is that when you made the argument, and for two whole years afterwards, your recommendation would have put vulnerable users on a platform that was for many users default-plaintext.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Funes- I only use phone calls (sync) and e-mail (async) nowadays.There's no other communication channel I would need. I'd only be willing to substitute them with their encrypted, P2P, and open-source counterparts, if they ever come into existence.

Texting, on the other hand, used to be the bane of my existence, as-- especially in its current form (free, nested layout, etcetera)--it's one of the most distracting, inefficient, absurdly redundant and useless communication mediums I know.

<comment> core-questions You could have substituted email for its encrypted, P2P, open-source counterpart for almost 30 years now. It's called PGP / GnuPG. What more do we really need? It actually has more legal protection and formality, and way more clarity, than any centrally managed "E2EE" chat platform.

We just need a really good app that uses SMTP as the underlying protocol to send messages that aren't MIME / HTML email, but rather are a simple new format for chat, and then start using email as a chat mechanism. There's no real reason why it can't be fast enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> After the PIN/Intel SGX debacle, I trust Signal even less.

<comment><USER22> Seems like I missed this a month ago. I'm now catching up from Matthew Green's blog post. [1]

[1]: [https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/07/10/a-few- th...](https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/07/10/a-few-thoughts- about-signals-secure-value-recovery/)

<comment><USER23> Thanks for posting this! I had been waiting for Matthew Green's reaction.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Office Mobile for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.officehub

<comment><USER2> Is that good ?? tried it ??</comment>


Ask HN: Why so many throwaway accounts here - <AUTHOR> It seems awkward to me so many opinions must be shielded by a throwaway mask here on HN. I understand there are interests at stake but what kind of message are you thinking to promote when half comments on every slightly controversial topic are made by throwaway accounts? It's detrimental to this site reputation imho, other than the people in need to speak covered by a mask. <comment><USER2> On-line comments can have devastating real-world implications. Consider the very recent case of the unremarkable person who happened to stop the WannaCry attack.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/15/media...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/15/media- hounds-wannacry-ransomware-hero/#694850305091)

[https://theoutline.com/post/1536/uk-tabloids-doxxed-the- hero...](https://theoutline.com/post/1536/uk-tabloids-doxxed-the-hero-hacker- who-stopped-a-global-cyberattack)

[http://www.networkworld.com/article/3196812/security/reporte...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/3196812/security/reporters- doxed-wannacry-ransomware-kill-switch-guy-no-good-deed-goes-unpunished.html)

[https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/15/doxing-hero- stoppe...](https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/15/doxing-hero-stopped- wannacry-irresponsible-dumb/#.tnw_qOS3wwqM)

The risk is minuscule, but the consequences are devastating. I have house insurance, life insurance, /etc.,/ because while the risks are small, the consequences are life-destroying.

A simple comment on-line can destroy your life if the crazies get hold of it, even if it's right, even if it's innocent, and even if it was a genuine mistake.

Ask Justine Sacco:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one- stupid-t...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet- ruined-justine-saccos-life.html)

<comment><USER3> I'm not picking on you specifically for this, because many people do it, but you're actually contributing to the problem you're describing. When you make a distinction between "on-line" and "real-world," you reinforce the notion that these things are separate. They aren't.

The notion that anything goes online because it's "not real" or somehow separate from "real" encourages all kinds of reckless behavior. I'm not saying we should all use our real names or anything, just that nothing about the consequences of speech changes by nature of having been transmitted to the Internet.

"Comments can have devastating implications." That's the nut of it. Don't fall for the mirage of the Internet as a separate space, because it isn't. Can you be anonymous? Sure, to varying degrees of success. But the anonymity you might presume isn't guaranteed, just like putting on a mask doesn't make you immune to handcuffs. When you're found, you're found.

<comment><USER2> I feel like you're actually just supporting everything I've said. I'm not claiming that the "real world" and the "on-line world" are separate. I'm saying that things you say on-line can be spread far and wide, much further and wider than pre-internet, and hence become known to a wider audience. That audience is therefore more likely to have people in it who are unbalanced.

I never claimed that the internet is a separate place, but it is certainly true that you can reduce the likelihood that things you say in one place are connected with you personally. It's not 100% secure, but I never said that.

In short, you seem to be in agreement with me.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I do agree with you, but I was taking issue with how you framed your point. I get that you probably set up the online vs. real frame to underscore your point, but I think it actually undermines it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's fine. If they were hurting discussion quality, would we all keep coming back here? Plus, throwaway accounts are necessary for some of the best comments, which are insider information about a story.

Being able to use your real name on social media, while still getting value out of using social media, is a privilege most people don't have. Most of us are googled by prospective employers or could be fired for what we post.</comment>