Disabling the Intel Management Engine - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Sakaki%27s_EFI_Install_Guide/Disabling_the_Intel_Management_Engine <comment><USER2> It makes me so unhappy that this is what things have come to. They make hardware that we can't control, there's no real alternative to buy, and now we gotta rely on volunteers and wiki pages to give instructions that might work but who knows you might brick it.

I wish there was more widespread outrage over ME and PSP and "trusted computing" so we could collectively tell them to stop selling this garbage. There's so much cynicism out there, though, that I think the public would hardly bat an eye if they knew that all hardware since 2008 or so has secret backdoors. We're just used to this kind of abuse and control.

I haven't bought a new computer since 2007 because I don't want backdoored hardware. If it really is For My Own Safety, as they advertise it to us, then let me control it!

<comment><USER3> It seems strange to me that the European Union is allowing this. The fact that a foreign company has a backdoor in every computer running in European countries is so concerning on so many levels. Defense ministers from European countries should wake up and outlaw this.

Of course, there is no specificity to the EU here -- this applies to Russia, China and other countries too.

Edit: maybe Intel is already eligible to a € multiple Billions fine from the EU based on this? (Disclaimer: I have no clue about how such fine works).

<comment><USER4> The EU has one very strong negotiation point: ASML. Without that company, Intel wouldn't even be able to produce their CPUs.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure that's a negotiation point for Intel, as they own 15 percent of ASML. Might be a rough ride for everybody if the EU had any intention of playing that card.

<comment><USER6> But agreement specifically excludes rights on future development by ASML

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It feels reassuring that you can actually get access and read the assembly of the IME now, thanks to [https://github.com/ptresearch/unME11](https://github.com/ptresearch/unME11). For instance using the the Gigabrix-BSi5ha-6200 IME Firmware update archive:

1\. Download and unzip the Gigabrix-BSi5ha-6200 IME update archive ([http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/BIOS/brix_bios_bsi5-h-a...](http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/BIOS/brix_bios_bsi5-h-a-l-6200_f5.zip)). Use F5_BIOS/image.bin from that archive.

2\. Start "python unME11.py image.bin"

3\. The uncompressed modules are located in image/00004000.FTPR/* after that

4\. You can i.e. load image/00004000.FTPR/kernel.mod in IDA using 80486 in 32bit real-mode or use "objdump -m i386 -b binary -D kernel.mod --adjust- vma=0x80000" with entry point being 0x80000 or "objdump -m i386 -b binary -D bup.mod --adjust-vma=0x2d000" with entry point being 0x2D04C

<comment><USER8> Any insights from the code?

<comment><USER7> I used it to look into Gigabytes response to Intel SA 00075 described in [https://embedi.com/files/presentations/BH-Las- Vegas-2017-Int...](https://embedi.com/files/presentations/BH-Las- Vegas-2017-Intel-AMT-Stealth-Breakthrough-presentation.pdf).

before: [http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/BIOS/brix_bios_bsi5ha(a...](http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/BIOS/brix_bios_bsi5ha\(a\)-6300_f3.zip)

after: [http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/BIOS/brix_bios_bsi5ha(a...](http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/BIOS/brix_bios_bsi5ha\(a\)-6300_f4.zip)

You can see that there is an extra function call added that tests for response.length.

Given the easy availability of the assembler dump you can expect progress towards demystifying IME. I'm not a professional in the security field, but I sense that there is lots of possibilities by just doing a "strings image/00275000.NFTP/amt.mod". Gigabyte might be special, but they have left their assert prints in the code and you can get a sense what the thing is doing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I bet you that the next generation of Intel processors will have patched this workaround from working, and maybe go as far removing the ability to kill IME unless you use some kind of rotating encryption dongle. Unfortunately for consumers, there's no way to escape this as even AMD has their own IME.

<comment><USER10> > I bet you that the next generation of Intel processors will have patched > this workaround from working, and maybe go as far removing the ability to > kill IME unless you use some kind of rotating encryption dongle. > Unfortunately for consumers, there's no way to escape this as even AMD has > their own IME.

What would be the justification for Intel going through all that trouble to do that (besides a conspiratorial "the NSA needs it to spy on everyone")?

The impression I've gotten, to this point, is that Intel just doesn't care enough about people in the general public who are bothered by the IME to publicly support ways to disable it. Governments had enough buying-power to get Intel to implement an unsupported workaround, but I'm not convinced Intel has a motivation to make accessing that workaround hard.

<comment><USER11> > besides a conspiratorial "the NSA needs it to spy on everyone"

Besides the real reason? I dunno.

<comment><USER12> Do you have any specific evidence that the NSA is directly involved in pushing implementation of IME for the purposes of espionage? That's an extraordinary claim; the mere existence of the NSA isn't sufficient evidence that it's true.

Yes, the NSA exists. Yes, it's their job to spy on people. And yes, it's perfectly valid to include mass surveillance in your threat model. But these constant, uncorroborated claims that the NSA boogeyman is hiding behind every rock and tree are starting to become quite tiresome.

<comment><USER13> > the NSA boogeyman is hiding behind every rock and tree are starting to > become quite tiresome.

Yeah indeed, they have backdoor-ed every ISP, nation, router, HDD, what-have- you in existence and these people keep telling boogeyman tales.

Tsk tsk tsk. How tiresome.

<comment><USER12> > they have backdoor-ed every ISP, nation, router, HDD, what-have-you in > existence

This is exactly the kind of hyperbolic nonsense I'm talking about. You can't claim that every HDD in existence has an NSA-installed backdoor installed in it without providing any evidence.

If the NSA's capabilities were nearly as extensive as you're claiming, the US wouldn't need to bother maintaining a military. They could just remotely command all of North Korea's computers to shut themselves off, then sit back and wait around for their surrender.

I'm not saying mass surveillance isn't a problem, or even that the NSA doesn't have a backdoor installed in IME (I certainly don't have evidence to the contrary); just that people need to stop exaggerating the threat, or making claims about the NSA having compromised any specific system without providing any evidence to back those claims up.

<comment><USER14> Remember when the NSA crippled a standardized CSPRNG ? [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-nsa- rsa/exclu...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-nsa- rsa/exclusive-nsa-infiltrated-rsa-security-more-deeply-than-thought-study- idUSBREA2U0TY20140331)

Remember when the US shut down NK's internet ? [https://gizmodo.com/so-who- shut-down-north-koreas-internet-1...](https://gizmodo.com/so-who-shut-down- north-koreas-internet-1674589139)

Remember when the NSA was revealed to have a malware that could infect hard drives, being potentially undetectable ? [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ypwkwk/the- nsas-u...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ypwkwk/the-nsas- undetectable-hard-drive-hack-was-first-demonstrated-a-year-ago)

Remember PRISM ? How about stuxnet, and the other couple of viruses that are almost surely the NSA's.

Sure, those are not backdoors installed by the OEM, rather they are malware that the NSA can use to infect (lots of) systems. But let's not kid ourselves, the NSA _does_ have a ridiculous amount of power, and we have lots of evidence of it.

At this point I'd be rather surprised if the NSA haven't hacked my fridge yet somehow.

<comment><USER12> And I agree, those are some pretty impressive feats. Whenever your threat model includes state actors, it's probably not a bad idea to be paranoid. Let's not carry that paranoia to ridiculous extremes though.

_Could_ the NSA have the ability to utilize IME somehow as a means to infect computers? Certainly. Do they _actually_ have that capability? We have no idea. Same goes for your motherboard's firmware, your hard drive's hardware, and any number of other possible vectors. They _could_ be compromised somehow, yes, but let's not claim that any specific motherboard firmware, HDD model, or CPU processor brand definitely _is_ compromised without evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What caught my eye was "removes (...) Java VM" \- I had imagined the ME to be some kind of very basic maintenance task runner, not a full-blown dynamic app environment.

<comment><USER16> Same here. I was like "what, there's a JVM in there?". But then again, apparently there's a JVM in most (all?) SIM cards ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card))

<comment><USER17> Before Java card, all smartcards were programmed in assembly, Each brand incompatible with others. And even if smartcards were introduced as security devices, their "security" was actually a joke.

Then there was an effort to create a secure interoperable platform for smartcards, it was Global Platform and it uses Java card for implementing their goals. All post 2000 smartcards are compatible with GP:

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

<comment><USER18> I wonder if it really needs the JVM in the chip. It could just contain the compiled bytecode and the phone could have a JVM that runs the bytecode.

<comment><USER19> The whole point of the smartcard is that the outside world cannot access its memories other than through services running on the card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Really Intel/Apple/Microsoft should provide an official and reliable way to do this.

We see you Intel... with your stinky spies peeping out from the depths of our computers....

<comment><USER2> I think it's very likely that the order to backdoor all hardware came from the government and Intel decided to market it as some kind of advanced management benefit for the consumer. Evidence in favour is reverse-engineered functions in Intel ME that have NSA's name in them:

[https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/researchers-f...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/researchers- find-a-way-to-disable-much-hated-intel-me-component-courtesy-of-the-nsa/)

There's no way that both Intel and AMT simultaneously decided to backdoor their hardware out of consumer demand. The order must have come from above.

(Okay, sorry, that's as much of a conspiracy theorist as I get to be.)

<comment><USER21> That's a blatant misinterpretation of that article. Here's the main quote:

"According to a highly technical blog post, Positive Technologies experts revealed they discovered a hidden bit inside the firmware code, which when flipped (set to "1") it will disable ME after ME has done its job and booted up the main processor.

The bit is labelled "reserve_hap" and a nearby comment describes it as "High Assurance Platform (HAP) enable."

High Assurance Platform (HAP) is an NSA program that describes a series of rules for running secure computing platforms.

Researchers believe Intel has added the ME disabling bit at the behest of the NSA, who needed a method of disabling ME as a security measure for computers running in highly sensitive environments."

TL;DR the evidence is that the NSA made Intel give them a way to DISABLE the management engine on their machines, not a backdoor.

<comment><USER22> I interpret that to mean that the NSA said "Add this and give only _us_ a way to turn it off"

<comment><USER21> So, your comment is as good a place as any to put this. There's a ton of allegations about ME being a backdoor for the NSA or some other government entity, but very little in the way of good evidence, at least that I've seen. Many proponents seem to provide circumstantial evidence or simple accusations as opposed to what I would consider substantial evidence.

Here's some examples of solid evidence

\- Leaked documents either from Intel or the NSA documenting the NSA pressing Intel to provide backdoors, and Intel accepting

\- One of the APT groups believed to be associated with the US government is found using an ME vulnerability in the wild, before the vulnerability became publicly known

\- Refusal or extreme reluctance on the part of Intel to fix a discovered vulnerability

\- A vulnerability which is clearly intentional, like having ME automatically execute any shell script sent over the network signed with a particular certificate or something.

Examples of circumstantial, but still quite compelling evidence:

\- A vulnerability which appears intentional, as in it doesn't require any buffer overflow or shell code injection or abuse of certain registers, but rather seems to be a part of normal operations.

\- Intel pushes a change to fix an ME vulnerability, but that change simultaneously introduces another vulnerability.

\- Evidence that Intel, while giving the US government the ability to disable ME, refuses to give such an ability to other large customers (Google, Amazon, other governments, etc.), for any amount of money.

Seriously, if someone comes forward with evidence like the above, I'm completely open to accepting the possibility Intel ME is an active backdoor for the US government.

<comment><USER23> Re: Evidence that Intel, while giving the US government the ability to disable ME, refuses to give such an ability to other large customers (Google, Amazon, other governments, etc.), for any amount of money.

I'm not intimately familiar with the situation but I heard some chatter a few years ago about Google (which likes to use Coreboot on its Chromebooks) asking Intel for documentation and source code for various firmware components including the IME and being turned down.

Researchers recently found an undocumented bit can be set in recent IME versions with a name ("High Assurance Program (HAP)") said to be associated with the US government which disables most functions of the IME.[1]

[1] [http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel- me.html](http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel-me.html)

<comment><USER21> I'm completely aware of the hap bit, I explicitly linked it in the GP, and so did the OP.

If you have a source to back up the claim that Google offered money for access/documentation for disabling ME and were rejected, that's something, though.

<comment><USER23> Ah, I was reading quickly and didn't realize that "while giving the US government the ability to disable ME" was a given, not one of the things that had to be shown.

I did some quick searching (I mostly skipped the coreboot mailing list which is probably the most interesting place to look but I didn't want to spend too much time) and every reference I've found alludes to someone from Google or Coreboot _asking_ for Intel's assistance in the form of documentation or source code, which Intel has plenty of non-NSA-related reasons to refuse to provide for free (licensed code, preserving competitive advantage, DRM shit, etc.). I couldn't find any references to anyone offering to _pay_ Intel for ME firmware source code or similar but then again such an offer would hardly be public. So this is weak circumstantial evidence at best.

I find AMD's refusal to cooperate with the FOSS community on the matter of its management coprocessor to be slightly suspicious as well as it's an area where it could possibly gain a significant competitive advantage vs Intel but a lot of Intel's reasons for keeping the IME locked down apply to AMD's insistence on black boxing its PSP as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We know that Intel CPUs have IME and AMD CPUs have PSP, but is anything known about VIA processors ([https://www.viatech.com/en/silicon/processors/](https://www.viatech.com/en/silicon/processors/)) and boards ([https://www.viatech.com/en/boards/](https://www.viatech.com/en/boards/))? Are there any other producers of x86-64 CPUs?

</comment><comment><USER25> This is particularly relevant in light of the pending BlackHat EU presentation (Dec 2017):

How to hack a turned-off computer, or running unsigned code in Intel ME | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15298833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15298833) (Sep 2017, 239 comments)

<comment><USER7> If there is a IME firmware update popping up before this talk, dont apply it if you want to be able to run unsigned code yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Reading through this thread, I can't help but long for the days of it only being a crackpot theory that everything everywhere is owned.

</comment><comment><USER27> Since you're playing with your Flash chip anyway, install Coreboot too: [https://github.com/bibanon/Coreboot- ThinkPads/wiki/ThinkPad-...](https://github.com/bibanon/Coreboot- ThinkPads/wiki/ThinkPad-X200)

</comment><comment><USER28> This is off-topic, but the Gentoo installation guide that this page is a part of is one of the most comprehensive and accessible Linux guides I've ever read. It taught me a lot of Linux concepts that I never needed to use before when setting up cloud VMs, and now I have a fully working installation of Gentoo + GNOME (with an encrypted root partition) that I'm confident in managing and upgrading. I definitely recommend checking out the rest of the guide.

[https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Sakaki%27s_EFI_Install_Guide](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Sakaki%27s_EFI_Install_Guide)

</comment><comment><USER29> Disabling IME and similar bugging subsystems is only a temporary solution: vendors will create a different one with next gen CPUs and all those brave folks dedicating their time to the task of removing/disabling it will be forced to go back to square one: study again, reverse engineer, reflash, brick, try again, etc. That way CPU makers will always be ahead.

We instead need a platform (CPU+peripherals) which is open by design; no more ME or closed device drivers, blobs etc. No matter if it's 10 times slower than the equivalent by Intel or AMD or draws 10 times more current than the corresponding ARM processor; the point is funding such a development, producing it and selling it even to a small fraction of users will send a heck of a message. Also a well crafted PR campaign could do the rest (does your boss know that all his/her files and communications can be accessed by Intel, AMD and every government with ties to them? What about making him/her aware?). If someone starts a project like that, I'm pretty sure I won't be the only one ready to donate a few quid right now.

<comment><USER30> New Intel chips have only had minimal improvements to previous chips, so there isn't a huge incentive to upgrade if you don't mind giving up a little performance in exchange for security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can I get a serious alternative view on this? What purpose does Intel have for things like this exactly? Also, are AMD chips an alternative that can help here?

<comment><USER23> The IME, like Computrace which is similarly awful[1], is intended to be used for enterprise management. It's nice for someone in IT to be able to remotely wipe a company laptop that was left in an airport, but there's absolutely no reason why consumer devices should be burdened with these backdoors.

AMD has something called the PSP which essentially serves the same purposes of the IME which is also undocumented and cannot be disabled.

[1] [https://securelist.com/absolute-computrace- revisited/58278/](https://securelist.com/absolute-computrace-revisited/58278/)

<comment><USER32> > there's absolutely no reason why consumer devices should be burdened with > these backdoors.

Beyond the obvious economy of scale argument, why don't consumers want that? I thought things like Apple's remote lock/wipe feature were selling points for anyonel concerned with theft.

(As an aside, it doesn't feel accurate to term this a backdoor without evidence that it's being used without the owner's consent)

<comment><USER33> The article mentions they've already found a remotely exploitable security hole. Backdoor or not, nobody wants that.

We would all be fine with IME if we had access to it, could define the keys, and enable/disable features of it. Locking users out of their own hardware is not acceptable. I'm the only one that should be able to remote lock/wipe my phone. It should not be possible for Apple. They shouldn't have the keys. It's my phone. Even if I did trust Apple, I don't trust the government.

<comment><USER32> Look, I'd also like this to be open and documented but hyperbole isn't helping that. If it's undocumented, say that rather than pretending anyone is locked out of their own hardware — nobody has lost the use of their device due to IME. Similarly, calling it a backdoor and implying that the NSA is behind it without any proof is only going to reflect badly on the person making those claims.

The other thing to remember for effective advocacy is thinking about what normal people experience. If you say Apple shouldn't have the keys, you're also saying the average person has to be good at key management; most people are happy to outsource that. Conflating the issues of mass surveillance with control over your own hardware is great if your goal is confusion but I don't see it producing results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Let's say I disable or pull out all the network/wireless cards I have. Then what? Any ideas how to connect to the internet otherwise?

I am seriously thinking going Stallman because of this and not connecting to the internet at all, at least not from all the machines.

<comment><USER35> rfc1149 is your last option.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149)

<comment><USER34> This is much closer to what I have in mind then what you can expect :)

Current draft involves two monitors, two cameras, and protocol crazy enough to confuse any firmware.

<comment><USER35> If you are serious, I would recommend using local firewall rules to modify your outgoing packets so that they are in some way non-standard, and then filtering all but the non-standard packets at your networks firewall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't know why everyone thinks doing this much is safe. If I was the NSA/CIA director, I would put this in as a first level and if anyone figured out how to hack this backdoor, I would have a 2nd and 3rd hidden backdoor or maybe more. Maybe a particular sequence of instructions which opened a backdoor.

</comment><comment><USER37> Having to build a modchip for your PC exacerbates the need for open source hardware.

</comment><comment><USER38> Does anyone know if AMD PSP can be disabled?

<comment><USER23> It's entirely possible that there exists something analogous to the HAP bit[1] or that something like me_cleaner could be developed for the PSP but AMD is not the market leader (and is frankly negligible when it comes to laptops) so much less research has been done on the AMD PSP. I remember that when excitement was building for the release of Ryzen there were petitions for AMD to open source the PSP and some talk that it might actually happen but they eventually shut the idea down during a Q&A.[2] It's a shame because it would have given AMD something to really distinguish itself from Intel and would have been viewed very positively by a lot of different communities/market segments. Really makes you think about why they didn't do it...

[1] [http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel- me.html](http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel-me.html)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803373)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can someone point me to an explanation of exactly what this is, and whether I need to worry about it? Particularly on a home server I built myself from parts?

<comment><USER40> In short, the Intel Management Engine and AMD Platform Security Processor, which are on many motherboards, allow for remote power on and remote control of a PC if connected to Ethernet, are closed source and have known vulnerabilities.[1] This website has a more elaborate explanation: [https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel](https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel) [1]: [https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and- tec...](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and- technology/intel-amt-vulnerability-announcement.html)

<comment><USER39> ...but this varies depending on motherboard? ie if I buy an Intel CPU, and (say) an ASRock motherboard, is this still a thing?

<comment><USER41> Any Intel CPU has Intel ME, independently from the MB vendor

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What advantage do I, as a lowly user, have from the ME?

<comment><USER43> The management engine is the little computer that is used to get the big computer running.

Back when I was a kid, after hiking to school in 4 feet of snow uphill with no shoes, if I were building a PC or adding a new card, I would spend a bunch of time flipping little DIP switches to set things like addresses and assign IRQs. I'd reboot and my Gravis Gamepad controller would work, but the SoundBlaster wouldn't. So I'd power down, flip some switches and try again until I could get everything working.

Those switches went away, but the underlying issues remained. The new method was some firmware that did a bunch of pre-boot configuration. That was refined over the years and now today there's an entire computer running it's own OS that manages all this stuff. It works amazingly well.

However, once the machine is up and running, most people (especially consumers) have no need for it after that. It would be nice if it just powered down and waited for the next reboot. However, a little hidden computer was too useful to be ignored and it's used for a bunch of things including DRM (it can have _secure-enclave_ -like functionality) and remote management. I'm not sure we have an exhaustive list of what it can do.

<comment><USER44> > Those switches went away, but the underlying issues remained. The new method > was some firmware that did a bunch of pre-boot configuration. That was > refined over the years and now today there's an entire computer running it's > own OS that manages all this stuff.

I'm really impressed about how people manage to self-convince themselves so much about something they don't know about to the point they can explain their imaginary tech stack with such aplomb.

The ME is not needed to do PnP conf (or whatever it has been renamed too those days), and to the best of my knowledge is not used to do that and has never been.

ACPI/EFI & their friend are sufficiently hosted on the CPU, and can run platform code at so called negative privilege level at runtime. I expect those computers with ME disabled to run as well as if ME would not have been disabled, including if you add or remove an extension card.

However you are right about remote management (that's the main advertised application of ME) and probably DRM stuff.

<comment><USER43> So, as I understand it, the first the ME does on boot is run a module that configures everything. It's called the bring-up (or BUP) engine. I _thought_ that it was doing IRQ and other conflict resolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm wondering if someone could clear something up for me. There's the me_cleaner project that the above guide relies on in order to generate the new BIOS image. However, I thought me_cleaner could be run directly without dumping, modifying, and reflashing an image using the Pi. What's the difference in efficacy between the above guide and just using me_cleaner directly?

<comment><USER41> me_cleaner is Python script that operates on a dump, it can't modify the firmware without the help of other tools; this guide just explains in detail the complete process of using me_cleaner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Does this require a system with coreboot support? If not, I'm super tempted to try this on my Dell XPS 13 9333..

<comment><USER47> It doesn't, but because the IME is so undocumented and most firmwares are so horribly written its dangerous to remove these parts of the firmware image because it might brick your system for completely nonsense reasons (all it takes is the firmware randomly misaddressing into an IME area where there is now no data and failing to make your system unrecoverable without the ability to operate on the flash chip by hand).

Make sure someone else has managed it with your same board to know it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Imagine the havoc if (when?) Intel's code signing keys for IME are leaked? Sure it might be _possible_ to update keys in all the world's post-2006 Intel computers. But in reality it'd be a free for all that makes botnets of home routers look like a needle on a football field...

</comment><comment><USER49> The feature is sometimes also available over the Internet btw. Here is an overview of publicly-accessible Intel Active Management services:

[https://www.shodan.io/report/PuIRbQpt](https://www.shodan.io/report/PuIRbQpt)

</comment><comment><USER50> I think I'm gonna order the hardware and finally do this on my T420 and W530.

<comment><USER51> If you port coreboot to w530, please post it somewhere. I am interested in it, but the information about coreboot on w530 is a bit scarce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> i remember when it was found that me had a "kill switch," wasnt it found that this kill switch still leaves a rather lot of power in the hands of the IME?

</comment><comment><USER53> In order to test if this breaks any silicon workarounds, someone should run comprehensive benchmarks on their CPU pre and post-IME disabling.

</comment><comment><USER54> Makes me happy I am moving to AMD not systems and staying away from their pro line that has this nonsense built in.

</comment><comment><USER55> I wonder how should I go about finding a service center/technician competent enough to do that for me?

</comment><comment><USER56> It says raspberry pi 3b. Can I do it on a pi 0?

<comment><USER57> I don't see anything that would make it specific to version 3, except that you might have to build your own version of gentoo. It would be nice if anyone else has an idea because I'd like to do this with the raspberry pi2 I already have.

<comment><USER56> Well again, I don't see why the pi _has_ to run gentoo. It could run any other linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Does that ruin the BMC/iLo/IPMI?

</comment><comment><USER59> Aww, Gentoo's still a thing, how cute.

<comment><USER60> Even if enthusiast Gentoo wasn't a thing, Google's ChromeOS is a customized Gentoo[1] which has grown in market share fairly drastically in K-12 schools especially in the US[2].

[1]: [https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/ChromeOS](https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/ChromeOS) [2]: [https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/02/apple-ios-market- share-k-12-e...](https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/02/apple-ios-market- share-k-12-education-chrome-os/)</comment></comment>


The chip that changed the world: AMD's 64-bit FX-51, ten years later - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/167168-the-chip-that-changed-the-world-amds-64-bit-fx-51-ten-years-later

<comment><USER2> This chip brought me the same kind of joy as the celeron 266 which I was easily able to overclock. The bang for buck (at the time) of these two chips was epic.</comment>


Images and Chroma-Subsampling - <AUTHOR> http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2015/why-arent-your-images-using-chroma-subsampling/ <comment><USER2> I worked on video encoding for a long time. And chroma-subsampling is no longer necessary.

In short, chroma subsampling was performed because it matched the data more closely to how the eyes work, at the cost of losing certain colors.

Today, modern video and image compression algorithms can compensate without using chroma subsampling. Starting with the full image actually gives the encoder more to work with, and it can optimize better.

Because the software has improved (at least, the cutting edge open source tools have), chroma subsampling is obsolete, and will produce inferior picture qualtiy at larger byte sizes than their rgb444 compressed alternatives.

If you are seeing improvements by doing chroma subsampling, either you are hurting quality or you should use better compression software.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a worst case test image for chroma subsampling:

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARicardo_Quaresma_%...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARicardo_Quaresma_%28L%29%2C_Pablo_Zabaleta_%28R%29_%E2%80%93_Portugal_vs._Argentina%2C_9th_February_2011.jpg)

I first saw this in Fabrice Bellard's BPG demonstration at [http://xooyoozoo.github.io/yolo-octo- bugfixes/](http://xooyoozoo.github.io/yolo-octo-bugfixes/) ("Soccer Players"). Every lossy format fails to reproduce the red dots on the green stripe because they all use chroma subsampling. Until I see tools that can automatically deal with images like this I think the anti-subsampling attitude mentioned in the article is correct. "Unless you are willing to evaluate each image, the thinking goes, you should avoid subsampling."</comment>


Goodbye, OpenStack - <AUTHOR> http://gigofham.com/archives/47 <comment><USER2> So I've been in the OpenStack community for a while [3+ years] ([http://stackalytics.com/?metric=commits](http://stackalytics.com/?metric=commits) yes that's me down there in the pie chart); and I'd like to answer any questions anyone has...

Yes the OpenStack community isn't perfect (but I've heard the same thing about other communities, so meh).

Something I've found interesting to read over:

\- [https://lwn.net/Articles/647524/](https://lwn.net/Articles/647524/)

Overall, no the community isn't perfect, yes there are issues, yes it burns some people out, but software isn't rainbows and butterflies after all.

<comment><USER3> > Overall, no the community isn't perfect, yes there are issues, yes it burns > some people out, but software isn't rainbows and butterflies after all.

Are people trying to make things better? If so, how?

Software isn't rainbows and butterflies, but it shouldn't be endless floods and caterpillars, either.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I think they are getting better (at what rate, I can not measure, but forward progress IMHO).

One example; the project/group I work in ([https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Oslo](https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Oslo)) basically is a bunch of well-known people in the software community (author of sqlalchemy included, authors of python books, myself...). Libraries I (and others) work on are trying to help solve the tech. debt of the various projects (good practices and all that). So I think this has helped make things better...

Obviously progression is relative and certain projects in OpenStack move at different rates (depending on complexity, vendor involvement, or lack of vendor involvement, number and quality of developers doing reviews/commits...).

There's always work to be done (and yes I know the operators pain, I work at yahoo! and sit right next to the operators running our OpenStack based clouds, vm and baremetal...); things aren't always easy but then what software really is in the end...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> OpenStack isn't perfect, for sure. Huge community, big corporate players, huge code base. I do feel the barrier to entry into the community is very high; using the stack is not a small undertaking, particularly in a production capacity. The APIs are mess, but I have high hopes that the new OpenStack SDK will bring some ease of use to the stack that boto has done for AWS.

Overall, even though I feel like a reasonably competent coder with a lot of experience as a user, I don't feel like I could ever contribute to the project in a meaningful way - and I don't think I want to.

Working at an Openstack cofounder, I do have a lot of code deployed into an OpenStack cloud, and have written a lot of automation around the stack and APIs. I still have high hopes for the platform.

</comment><comment><USER5> As someone who's only been on the outside of OpenStack's community, but interested and learning about it a little here and there, could someone give a brief overview of major players and why it seems a number of individuals involved in the OpenStack community have burned out?

Is it really as bad as this post suggests? Many technologies become heavily burdened by too much (non-development) investment and companies doing a land grab on a hot new product; is that the case here?

<comment><USER6> _Observation:_ The OpenStack board is controlled by board seats which are mostly held by people employed with large publicly traded companies. At one point I calculated these companies to have a combined market cap of ~US$1/2 trillion.

 _Blaming Statement:_ Make no mistake, the companies who control OpenStack are "in it to win it". That's probably not good for innovation or optimization.

 _Reality:_ Everything above is a moot point because Docker. Or more specifically, everything above is a moot point because LXC containers. Containers are a better solution layer for developers than instances. Instances are still a good solution layer for providers, but those guys are few and far between, and their margins are thin. No clue what that means for OpenStack, but it can't be good.

 _Disclaimer:_ I've helped ~25K people install OpenStack with my scripts. I'm biased and am spending most of my time now with containerization technologies.

<comment><USER7> > _Everything above is a moot point because Docker._

OpenStack does more than containerise.

Docker Inc. are racing up the stack to catch juicy value, but so is everyone else.

Red Hat, Pivotal[0] and IBM are already at the top of the stack with OpenShift and Cloud Foundry, so it's getting crowded.

But in the middle there's an awful lot of mechanism required to run an IaaS and OpenStack is the only serious opensource contender around.

[0] disclaimer: I work in Pivotal Labs.

<comment><USER8> 'the only serious opensource contender around', have you heard of Apache CloudStack? It has seen some serious usage: [http://cloudstack.apache.org/users.html](http://cloudstack.apache.org/users.html)

<comment><USER7> I haven't, thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand why this is on the front page. Take a look at his contributions: [http://stackalytics.com/report/users/carlp](http://stackalytics.com/report/users/carlp) [http://email@example.com...](http://firstname.lastname@example.com)

I've met Carl Perry several times at a couple of OpenStack summits and mid- cycle operator's meetups. He's a nice guy, and seems like he's pretty smart, but he's got an opinion about everything and likes to hear himself talk. The last time we were in the same room was when we were in the same working group. I don't remember what our topic was, but all I remember was Carl completely derailing any kind of discussion we had in the room.

I've been part of the OpenStack community for about two years (working for an OpenStack operator) and I've had nothing but good experiences. Developers that I've met seemed genuinely interested in hearing our pain points and other operators are interested in sharing their experiences running OpenStack and learning from our experiences.

It's really not that hard to contribute to OpenStack, you just have to play by the community rules, learn to listen a little, and don't piss people off with arrogance. Oh, and about the price of attending a conference, $600 for a full access pass. Is that a lot?

<comment><USER10> What a nice project, comes across as something from the government..

"Anonymous sources in the Administration say the author was a junior staff member with no access to classified material who was fired due to poor performance"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah when too many players with overlapping vested interests join in, it will be a disaster. Can you believe VMWare is part of the board Ha ! Ha!

Why not move to other opensource projects like opennebula.org ? By the way I work for Megam - [https://www.megam.io](https://www.megam.io) another opensource PaaS project [https://github.com/megamsys](https://github.com/megamsys). Let me know if you are interested in any of those.

<comment><USER2> That other big opensource project (the one called linux) I think would disagree with you, its management style might be different (more of a hierarchy with linus at the top) but saying 'when too many players with overlapping vested interests join in, it will be a disaster' seems disingenuous IMHO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Know what outweighs all of those problems and makes it worth it over even the medium term? It's open. You don't get tied to a provider who has your business at their mercy.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reads to me like "massive software project is massive and I can't influence it in the ways I want to".

Much like your ability to influence "Windows" is quite limited, your ability to influence "Openstack" is limited. Pick a neighborhood and you'll likely be successful if you're doing a good job. Pick a continent and you might as well ask the Sun nicely to stop giving off radiation.</comment>


Concurrency kit – Concurrency primitives and non-blocking data structures in C - <AUTHOR> http://concurrencykit.org/ <comment><USER2> I have nothing but praise for this library... it's a great resource for writing high-performance parallel programs.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this compare to omp? It just started learning about this in my HTC course.

<comment><USER4> OpenMP is a bunch of compiler directives (and a runtime library) for easy data parallelism. E.g. #pragma omp parallel for.

This library is a bunch of concurrent data structures (hash map, producer/consumer queue, etc) for multi threaded applications. This is more oriented to task parallelism than data parallelism (e.g. servers and such). You'd use this library together with pthreads or other threading library.

Does this answer your question?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I looked at this library in the past and I could not find any usage of it in any open source project. That made me a bit scary, how a library like this with the supposed well thought construction is not used anywhere ?

<comment><USER6> It's used in a lot of mission-critical commercial applications which I think is a stronger indicator. It just so happens those aren't open-source. This ranges from mission-critical enterprise software to internal infrastructure tied directly to revenue generation. There is a serious cost to failure there (money, liability, jobs, etc...).

Few software uses these advanced techniques in general, and it isn't so much about Concurrency Kit. There is a barrier to entry as folks have to invest non-trivial amounts of time in learning more about these techniques.

Some open-source examples: [http://www.machinekit.io/](http://www.machinekit.io/) [https://labs.omniti.com/labs/reconnoiter](https://labs.omniti.com/labs/reconnoiter) [https://github.com/Litres/turboxsl](https://github.com/Litres/turboxsl) Aerospike

I'm sure there are others, if there's anything I'm missing, would love to hear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like a lot of these data structs are not thread safe. Other than ck_bitmap which seems to be read/write thread safe, ck_array, ck_hs, ck_ht, and parts of ck_ring only allow a single writer in the presence of many readers. Did I misread something here? Still a lot of good stuff here, but not sure if these data structures can be used without external locking.

<comment><USER8> They're mostly all some combination of lock-free/wait-free single-producer multi-consumer datastructures, meaning one thread can produce some data (think, an epoll/kqueue I/O thread) and then many other threads can consume it (think, threads that actually perform your server logic).

I've found that the "SPMC" concurrency model tends to fit into my pipeline perfectly when I'm working on problems that need a specialized library like this. CK is for achieving unimaginably fast data-parallelism, like the kind you need when writing high performance drivers atop some DMA slab, or (in my case) using userspace networking to do something useful with millions of packets per second. Check out [http://concurrencykit.org/articles/ck_hs.html](http://concurrencykit.org/articles/ck_hs.html) for a better idea about just how fast this library aims to be (spoiler: tens of nanoseconds per op).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> OK, but where do I start?

PS I may be dense today.

<comment><USER10> if you already have a need of concurrency in your project and want to know how to utilise the library there is a documentation section on the linked page

a good starting point would be the man pages

if you want to know where to start on getting info on how or why you would use a library like this check out the articles or slides section, or wiki around unfamiliar words in the man pages

<comment><USER9> I was hoping for a mini usage showcase / sample. Maybe I'm spoiled, but I was looking through man pages and it was a meaningless dump to me as a newcomer to the library. I then looked at the articles, but it was a long read I didn't want to do at first.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Such an article would be more emphasizing use-cases for different advanced synchronization techniques in context of Concurrency Kit. You may just not have a use for it too.

I'll put up a presentation soon that may be helpful in these regards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a macro fest: [https://github.com/concurrencykit/ck/blob/master/include/gcc...](https://github.com/concurrencykit/ck/blob/master/include/gcc/x86_64/ck_pr.h) [https://github.com/concurrencykit/ck/tree/master/include/gcc](https://github.com/concurrencykit/ck/tree/master/include/gcc)

This might not be the intention of the author, but if you want someone to use/hack with your library, please make it human-readable. Those macros reduce the amount of duplication, at the cost of legibility. At least include useful comments... /rant off

<comment><USER12> To each his own. As far as macro fests go, that file looks very reasonable and legible to me. It's a single pattern repeated consistently for each function family. Writing out a dozen variants of each function explicitly would not only be much more error-prone, but would also be much harder to read and understand as a whole IMHO.</comment></comment>


Yelp Hires Goldman and Citigroup to Lead I.P.O. - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/yelp-hires-goldman-and-citigroup-to-lead-i-p-o/ <comment><USER2> It's a shame about Yelp. A great product with truly valuable content, entirely stagnant.

For one thing, it's awful for discovery of new places. Want to find a high- rated restaurant near you that serves a specific dish? Well, have a good time wading through random crap entirely unrelated to that. My favorite recently was searching for ice cream and getting a _hospital_ , because someone's review mentioned how the cafeteria _didn't have any_.

Beyond that, what's the point of contributing all this content to Yelp? The value of the site remains constant whether you review zero businesses or 100. Back to discovery, Yelp is working with an enormous corpus of data at this point. You're telling that we can't compare my review behavior against others who've reviewed the same spots and shake out a few recommendations? Users and businesses both would really benefit from this.

You could even make things more interesting for more accomplished users, handicapping individual restaurant scores based on past review behavior.

It's a great tool for vetting if a restaurant you've already discovered is actually any good. But when you look at all the unique opportunities it has to really redefine how people find and choose food and other businesses, it's hard not to shake your head and sigh.

I discovered Yelp when I moved to the Bay Area nearly two years ago. The product has only plateaued in that time, while my opinion of it has steadily eroded thanks to its flaky search boning me during mobile food quests. Don't even get me started about its obnoxious nagging in the mobile app to get you to use social features.

Is it really worthwhile for investors to buy part of a company with a mostly bi-coastal, American userbase whose product's best days seem to be behind it? Is it just a "Hey, invest in us, we're kinda Groupon-y because we make money from local businesses" kind of thing?

<comment><USER3> >Beyond that, what's the point of contributing all this content to Yelp?

This Quora post lists a few reasons: [http://www.quora.com/What-are-the- incentives-to-write-review...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-incentives- to-write-reviews-on-Yelp-especially-for-those-early-users). (Some reasons include using it as a food journal, narcissism, reward/punish for good/bad service, and getting invited to Yelp Elite parties.)

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, the majority of the reasons you listed all boil down to the same one: narcissism.

This winds up being why I find Yelp reviews to be useless; the poster is trying to tell me about themselves, rather than actually tell me something useful about the restaurant.

"Believe me, I know -- my grandma is a south east indian polar bear, and I _know_ good vegan low-carb empanadas! Also, the service was terrible after I told the waitress she looked fat in that outfit. How rude. Did I mention the parking situation is just horrriiible? 1 star! I know it's always hard to park in the haight/midtown/wherever, but pleeease."

<comment><USER3> You may find it interesting that Yelp encourages the story telling. At <http://www.yelp.com/elite>, they say: "the more people can relate to you, the more your reviews and opinions start to matter."

I think the idea is that as you use the site, if you find someone whose tastes seem to match yours and you can relate to the stories/backgrounds that they include on the site, then you can better trust their reviews for places you haven't been, similar to how you might trust a friend's recommendations over that of a random person; it also gives you a guide on how to filter their recommendations.

In this case, the personal information can be helpful to you in that you know you can place less emphasis on the review.

<comment><USER4> That's interesting -- I'm surprised that Yelp would encourage this.

The result seems to be reviews that value the restaurant relative to the effect that visiting and reviewing the restaurant has on the writer's ego.

This seems to result in a dearth of objective reviews about the food (or service), and means that I largely can't identify with _any_ of the restaurant reviewers on Yelp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yelp does not have a powerful network effect like Facebook, its main distribution mechanism was SEO via Google search. Unlike Google+/Facebook, in this case Google is in an excellent position to compete, if they smartly integrate a mix of user-written and Zagat reviews into Android and iPhone maps (it will take a better product manager than Marissa Mayer though- so the outcome is highly internal politics dependent)

</comment><comment><USER6> if Groupon can do it, we can, too! ;-)</comment>


The eternal optimism of the Clear mind - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/23.html <comment><USER2> Maybe it's just me, but Clear always pissed me off. You shouldn't be able to pay _the government_ to cut to the front of the line.

I'm perfectly fine with paying more to the airline to cut to the front of their line. But everyone should get equal service from the government.

<comment><USER3> Well, you can already pay extra to expedite your passport application. I've paid the DMV a couple extra dollars to renew online instead of in person or via mail. It's equal service to those who pay for it.

By the same token, why not have an "Oh, crap!" kiosk for passengers running late? They can pay an extra 20 bucks and get a pass that allows them to use a shorter line. Maybe airlines could include it with first class tickets (you certainly pay enough for them, it's not like you'd notice the extra $20). And if you don't want to pay, you use the longer line your taxes bought. If they price it right, they could hire more people for both lines and everyone wins.

<comment><USER4> Not sure how airports in the US work, but aren't first class tickets already supposed to give you a shorter line? I am pretty sure the last time I booked a flight (extra-low economy class - easyjet) there was an option to pay for a shorter line.

<comment><USER5> You can buy your way out of the line at the gate (first class boards first, despite the fact that this is decidedly non-optimal from an operational perspective), but the security checkpoint is not at the gate. The gate line is managed by the airline and is primarily concerned with ensuring passengers get on the right plane. (They saved me from an impromptu trip to Seattle when I was to the JavaOne conference. International travel does strange things to the brain.) Another concern is earning the airline money through rigidly enforcing the class system. (+)

The security line is managed by the TSA (an arm of the government) and its (stated) primary purposes are to ensure bad people and bad things do not get passed it.

(+) I watched the 2nd to last person onto the plane get yelled at for going through the left priority boarding line when she was holding an economy ticket, and holding an infant to boot. They made her back up three feet and go through the economy boarding line. It someone could have telepathically read my thoughts they would have probably taken away my Vast Right Wing Conspiracy card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Now, the TSA doesn't even trust _pilots_

I'm sure they trust _pilots_. It's random people wearing pilot uniforms they're trying to stop.

<comment><USER7> How does funneling pilots through the screening line do anything to prevent non-pilots from dressing as pilots? Real pilots ride as passengers, in full uniform, all the time.

I expect the reason is even simpler than you suggest; a total lack of exceptions to the screeing rules makes for simpler screening, simpler training, fewer chances to make mistakes, etc. And it's easy.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't prevent non-pilots from dressing as pilots. It just means (ostensibly) that even if you can pass as a pilot, you can't bring shampoo on the plane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And I'm sure dropping the background check would actually make the service more attractive to people.

I'm sure that there is tons of personal info that could be found by someone motivated enough, but I'm still not comfortable giving out detailed information on myself. So I would be hesitant to use a service that required a background check, especially if I don't think the information is needed.

And not requiring a background check would have let them be more flexible. For example, they could have started selling at the airport one-time use of their lines.

</comment><comment><USER10> The background check was probably necessary to get TSA to let people cut in line.

<comment> brown9-2 But the fact remains that it doesn't make much logical sense as a requirement (to do background checks of people who go thru the same checkpoint as those who don't get background checks); if they were forced into a bad business plan by the government, they were still silly enough to stick with a bad business plan and pray that one day it would suddenly start to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A simpler version of 'Clear' -- just paying to 'cut' in line -- could be run on 'Paris Metro Pricing', as described in this paper about network routing:

<http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/paris.metro.minimal.txt>

Specifically, make two lines. They are identical except one costs a small fee. As long as people can accurately observe queueing times, they'll choose appropriately to get a value in time saved greater than the out-of-pocket costs.

</comment><comment><USER12> What kind of background check can you get for $200? I doubt they could find out anything less obvious than past convictions or frequent visits to countries associated with terrorism.

</comment><comment><USER13> Amazing how people take the externality of what Joel is trying to say and yap uselessly about that whilst completely disregarding the main point.

</comment><comment><USER14> Its classist thinking like this that produces the most despotic societies yet.</comment>


The Angle of repose - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_repose

<comment><USER2> This also happens to be the title of a novel by Wallace Earle Stegner, for which he won the Pulitzer. Now that I know what the phrase means in engineering, I'm sure to have some great insights into the book. If I ever read it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is of particular importance to Sarlaccs.

</comment><comment><USER4> ...okay? Neat, I guess.

<comment><USER5> I think we need a web app and perhaps a start-up to address this important repose thingy ;)

<comment><USER6> Well that would be the hacker news angle.</comment></comment></comment>


EU committee will vote on an apocalyptically stupid, copyright proposal - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2018/06/07/thanks-axel-voss.html <comment><USER2> The quoted article discussed yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17260148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17260148).

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the chance of this actually passing? Aren't there are a lot of stupid proposals in most legislative institutions that never make it out of committee?

The article is light (read: empty) on details regarding its chance of passing. Even details like which committee are we talking about are missing. Which MEPs sits on it?

<comment><USER4> Last time I read about this it sounded like the chances of it passing seemed high. Check the "Where the member states stand" chart on this MEP's blog: [https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax- fi...](https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-finish-line/)

<comment><USER3> But was that with the amendment introduced on 25 May? The original article says the proposal was introduced on GDPR Day, I assume that means 25 May. That blog post was last updated on 25 May. Was that before or after they had taken the temperature for MEPs' stance on this new proposal?

<comment><USER4> She has an updated post here: [https://juliareda.eu/2018/06/saveyourinternet/](https://juliareda.eu/2018/06/saveyourinternet/)

Quote:

> It currently looks like there is a razor-thin majority in favor of Article > 13

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the link.

Is it possible this is a negotiation ploy? Introduce something outrageous, so people will focus on that, then 'give in' on that proposal just before the vote, it will be seen as a victory when the main bill - without the proposal - is passed, despite the bill itself being heavily flawed in its own right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like this is even less thought out than SOPA and ACTA.

It's only a pity there is not a comparable banner and outage campaign for this as there was for those. Made them impossible to miss and just about everyone knew of them. Ensured all the politicians were getting dozens of calls. Above all it worked. Dozens of non-US sites joined in.

This time around? A few news pieces on tech sites have cropped up otherwise a lot of silence. That's surprising as it seems like this will affect everyone too. Yet it's barely rated a mention in the mainstream media, here in the UK at least. Admittedly most of our EU news has been the idiocy of Brexit for the last year.

Would probably be helpful not to lose the topic in yet another discussion of GDPR too.

<comment><USER6> SOPA and Net Neutrality got the benefit of US-based partisan PACs funding PR staff (which translates into blog/news article volume) and social media posting/resharing/upvote bots. If it's policy made by the EU those organizations do not activate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This will create a super-DMCA where there are zero penalties for false claims, no counterclaim, and no recourse for false claims. All content sharing is DEAD in Europe.

<comment><USER8> It is not only that - basically even a message you post on a forum could contain copyrighted text so that would have to be filtered too. It is a dead of internet as we know it.

<comment><USER9> It will have to go to ministry of originality for inspection and approval.

<comment><USER7> The ministry has been privatized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That placement of comma is apocalyptically stupid, one.

(If I am wrong and that's actually acceptable, please convince me otherwise.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd edited the title for length and, stupidly, retained a now, redundant comma.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How is this even compatible with GDPR? Is this not sharing protected data with a third party data processor? Would the legal basis for regulatory compliance or something else?

<comment><USER12> The GDPR does not prohibit sharing data with third parties. It prohibits sharing data without informed consent or any other legal basis. Compliance with laws and regulations is explicitly listed as valid basis for data sharing. You can't deny your employer to share your income information with the tax authorities either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would this speed up movement towards decentralised, p2p services? If you can't point to the entity that is hosting the content because it's decentralised (think dat, ipfs, your favourite blockchain technology or p2p network), can it even be enforced?

<comment><USER14> > _If you can 't point to the entity that is hosting the content because it's > decentralised (think dat, ipfs, your favourite blockchain technology or p2p > network), can it even be enforced?_

Yes. This "if a law becomes difficult to enforce, law enforcement will just ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯" meme is fiction. History suggests the law will become stricter towards end users and mercurial in its enforcement.

<comment><USER15> Yes. You get selective enforcement against dissidents. And you don't get to decide you're a dissident: the method they'll use will surprise you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't see this as a realistic threat, because it seems like it'd be so easy to abuse that merely swamping the detection system with everything we can find will be so disruptive to politicians themselves that if they're stupid enough to pass it, they'll reverse it just as quickly. E.g a suitable attack would be to claim every tweet, press release and speech from every politician and watch them deal with being censored.

</comment><comment><USER8> It will be another useless law - once user clicks through accepting cookies, then accepting gdpr stuff, then will have to log in and the page will be acting as a partner in conversation end to end encrypted. What you upload will be then distributed by that virtual person to other users in form of messages. That way unless they also want to filter private messages it will be unenforcable.

</comment><comment><USER17> It links to a page to call "my MEP" by Mozilla that will call me and have me say some dull words to them. Has anyone done that? I'd rather _know_ who my MEP is, call them, and personally explain them the issue. Any idea how to figure out who "my MEP" is and call them?

<comment><USER18> Google <yourcountry> meps and you'll find a Europa Parliament site with a list of MEPs for that country. You can then find who represents your area

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Doe the EU parliament have recall provisions for ministers? Put every sponsor and yes voting MEP up for recall.

</comment><comment><USER20> Europe wants to protect everyone's privacy, like the GDPR. Lets applaud their effort ;p

<comment><USER21> Don't forget to dull the point of your kitchen knives! Wouldn't want to accidentally own a weapon :D

<comment><USER22> No 3D printers for the EU.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Patents "Slide to Unlock" – Android Phones in Trouble? - <AUTHOR> http://gadgetizor.com/apple-patents-slide/8648/

<comment><USER2> I wonder how the Apple "Slide to Unlock" patent will affect the Windows Phone slide up unlock action.

I'd argue that the Windows action is easier and a nicer interaction. If you haven't used it, you don't have to actively stretch a slide from one side of the device to the other. A 'flick' up the screen is enough to unlock the device. Though I wonder if patent law will see a difference between a 'flick' and a 'swipe'?</comment>


Benefits of social networks to disaster response questioned - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200528160559.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Link to paper: [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2019.068...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2019.0685)</comment>


Stack identical flat objects so they project over an edge as far as possible - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161202-overhang-puzzle-solution/ <comment><USER2> I've long enjoyed making impossible looking things out of Jenga blocks. For example [https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvEpe.jpg?s=328&g=1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvEpe.jpg?s=328&g=1) has no glue, no nails, and is entirely balanced on a single Jenga block!

It looks impossible, doesn't it? But it is really quite easy.

Step 1: Find 5 blocks with 4 short and one long. You can test by putting several upright on a table with one laid across with pressure. The ones that slide are short, the ones that don't are long.

Step 2: Put the tall upright in the middle, the 4 short around it in a base. Place 2 blocks whose middle crosses the tall one, standing on the others as a base.

Step 3: Pile up your structure. Try to keep it from being off balance as you go, but you have a surprising amount of leeway.

Step 4: Test the base, find which are loose and which are tight. Manipulate the pile until all 4 at the base are loose.

Step 5: (Expect a 50% success rate.) Slide the base out. Everything is now balanced on one!

Step 6: (For fun.) Put the remaining 4 on the very top.

Step 7: Take pictures, show people, etc. Your structure is unstable and can collapse very easily. Which gives you opportunity to build another. :-)

A fun variation is to have 2 starting points, and build piles that extend both ways. You can make a surprisingly long bridge!

<comment><USER3> Balancing symmetric objects isn't that hard, try something like this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Eo4gbLhYP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Eo4gbLhYP8)

<comment><USER2> That's amazing!

And yeah, what I do is just a trick. The end result looks impossible but not much skill is involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have kids below 10, I heavily recommend the Kapla bricks[0]. You find them in nearly all Kindergarten in Germany and kids love them. Our 6 year old son built a 1000 piece bridge with only 4 bricks at the base.

[0]: [http://www.kaplaus.com/](http://www.kaplaus.com/)

<comment><USER5> Vielen Dank, that looks brilliant. Just spent AU$188 on a Kapla 280 Box + Art book, as well as architect book for my 6 year old. Kind of pricey, but it's the right time of the year for it and quality looks great.

<comment><USER4> Yes, they are expensive, but they are very precisely cut and they do not deform with the time. You will not be disappointed and your kid will have a lot of fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. The precision with which they are made is great. Also those blocks will still be around for your grandchildren.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The genie lamp configuration shown seems to have the top two bricks in a position that would have them trivially topple. It leaves me wondering which results in the article and mentioned paper are actually correct.

<comment><USER7> The article fails to mention that the genie lamp configuration relies on additional "point weights," which are blocks of zero height and width and non- zero weight. In the figure, those are represented by arrows.

[http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22...](http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22/Robbins/Patterson2.pdf)

<comment><USER8> I'd really like to buy some of those zero-height, zero-width, nonzero-mass blocks!

<comment><USER9> You'll have to wait for the Singularity when they go on sale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Given that the blocks are connected only by gravity, how could that bottom block possibly help?

<comment><USER11> It's only used to for the logical induction. It doesn't help the blocks above balance any better.

The bottom block hanging over the table with a heavy weight on the top right edge means the whole system is prone to tipping, and moving the bottom block back so we're just worried about the next edge higher up means that the system is, on average, less prone to tip over. It turns out to be easy to calculate the difference in tippyness/torque between these two cases, so we can use this to calculate how far the block can hang over.

One block obviously balances at 1/2, and has a center of mass at the edge. Two blocks obviously still have a center of mass at the edge - else they would tip, or could go closer to the edge without tipping. But how far out is this second block hanging?

If we put the second block flush with the edge of the table, it has a center of mass at -1/2 and a mass of 1, and the top block has a center of mass at 0 and a mass of 1. So the center of mass of the system is at -1/4 and we can shift it this far to the right. With 3 blocks, we have a mass of 2 blocks with the center at position 0, and another block below with a center of mass at -1/2 and a mass of 1, for a system centered at -1/6th (and so on for more blocks). We always shift it over in the end, but it makes the math of how far to shift it easier to compute if we start with it backed up a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How to run an early 21st century science magazine like Quanta: Raid article subjects from the back of late 20th century Scientific American articles.

[http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22...](http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22/Robbins/Patterson2.pdf)

<comment><USER13> This example is found as a problem in pretty much every introduction to series in calculus and discrete math books.

I didn't realize popular science magazines get to call dibs on such problems.

<comment><USER12> Evidently, they don't.

<comment><USER13> Are you suggesting they should?

<comment><USER12> That's ambiguous, isn't it? Maybe I'm just miffed I didn't think of it first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The title alone brought immediately to mind a scene from childhood of insanely stacked Nat Geo magazines, and the phrase "The Crazy Cantilever". Turns out it the phrase (and I have no doubt the stacked Nat Geo magazines) came out of this book:

[https://www.amazon.com/crazy-cantilever-other-science- experi...](https://www.amazon.com/crazy-cantilever-other-science- experiments/dp/B0007DO308)

</comment><comment><USER15> What is the author referring to when he says it looks like a 'kingfisher'?

<comment><USER16> The bird: [http://i.imgur.com/9A1wwRs.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/9A1wwRs.jpg)

<comment><USER15> Thanks, yeah I am familiar with the bird but I guess I didn't see it.

<comment><USER17> There's a photo of one made of glass blocks in the comments that made it click for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been doing exactly this with my 2yo nephew lately. I build it out, he yells 'CRASH!!' and send the Jenga block flying. Keeps us both amused & out of the way.</comment>


Digg's nickb - <AUTHOR> http://www.invesp.com/blog/social-media/an-interview-with-digg-top-user.html

<comment><USER2> I love the title for this submission :) I wonder if Digg's top user is an alter ego of Kevin Rose.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice little "business" model he's got there, but at least we know he's no hacker.</comment>


Office comparison: 37signals vs Zappos - <AUTHOR> http://thinkvitamin.com/web-industry/37signals-vs-zappos/ <comment><USER2> I wouldn't want to work in Zappos's office. It just doesn't look appealing to me at all. On the other hand, the 37s offices feel _cool_. The Zappos offices are Office Space-like cubicles covered in random crap. The 37s offices send a very different message; if you're going to work in an office (hopefully, not all the time), I'd much rather be in that environment.

I think it comes down to this: the style of the 37s offices (like many other designed offices) is more like what I see when I think of the "future". And I'd much rather be living and working in the future than cubes covered in random crap.

<comment><USER3> I'd also imagine the people who work at 37s are generally introverted developer/designers while Zappos is packed full of extroverts.

I'd expect different environments for both.

Does the Zappos engineering dept look the same?

<comment><USER4> Also notice the different gender makeup:

* only men are in the 37signals pics

* only women are in the Zappos pics

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 37signals' office seems to say, "You're in, you're out." Fried has, on multiple occasions, suggested that offices are the downfall of work. You're more productive in your natural environment. Their office seems to reflect that: You come in to work, quickly and efficiently, and then you leave and head home to get your real work done.

In contrast, Zappos' office seems to say, "You're already home."

[edit] It's also worth pointing out that these companies are employing very different people. Zappos has a huge focus on customer service, and their "people friendly" office reflects that. The engineers and designers at 37signals, however, very well may appreciate the minimalism and simplicity of their environment.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, I'm pretty sure those 37signals pictures were taken right after they moved in. Imagine what cubicle hell Zappo's would have looked like when they first moved in.

It would be interesting to see any changes made after a year or so once everyone has settled in a bit.

<comment><USER7> They were, you're right. The office will change over time as we settle in. It's already a lot more lively than those pictures showed. We have plants and fresh flowers and art and books and some other things starting to make their way into the space. Time takes care of the personality.

<comment><USER8> I really like that 37S chose actual chalkboards.

<comment><USER9> What about dust?

<comment><USER8> Canned air should be as fine as it is for other kinds of dust. Chalk is basically inert, so there are no worries about affecting electronics or anything like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Zappos would drive me crazy. I have been in an environment like that. It's "cute" at first, but then you realize you're just living in a messy corporate cubicle. It really inhibits work if your job is something such as development or design, in my opinion... just too much visual noise.

37signals office seems virtually distraction-free. If you need groups of people to work together efficiently in an office environment (that is still comfortable and not a cubicle farm), this is the kind of space works well, I think. Because they have so many remote employees, I think they want their real "office" to be Campfire anyway.

There is a significant difference in philosophy with how the companies operate, I think. Zappos wants people to be comfortable (or 'at home') where they work, and 37signals wants people to work wherever they are comfortable.

<comment><USER11> "Zappos wants people to be comfortable where they work, and 37signals wants people to work wherever they are comfortable."

What a great way to summarise the difference between the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Pixar offices take an interesting middle ground. They have the flair and joy of Zappos but avoid the generic cube aesthetic: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/veerles-blog/461586084/>

While I like 37signals, their sterile office would drive me nuts, but so would the extreme state of disarray at Zappos'. The Pixar model keeps the craziness slightly organized and not all in view at once.

<comment><USER13> I love these offices. They have the sophistication of the 37signals and yet without the sterility. There's warmth and inspiring comfort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Apples to Oranges. Zappos is a support oriented culture whereas folks at 37s need a lot of quite time. I can't imagine Jamis Buck writing all his awesome maze algorithms while surrounded by balloons and tents everywhere.

<comment><USER15> It's definitely apples-to-oranges.

If you're a phone/email CSR, you might enjoy being in a slightly more stimulating environment because you're daily job duties are less stimulating and more mundane.

If you're working on software, you might enjoy the options of quite space, cleanliness. For a company like 37signals, where design takes such a focus, having a nicely designed and organized space might help inspire the company's output. Also, 37s had previously blogged about holding events in their office, so their physical presence must gel with their online image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Zappos pictures make me think of someone getting called in "we need to talk about your flair".

<comment><USER8> It seems apparent that everybody is striving to emulate Tony. I would also venture that their hiring process filters for people amenable to that culture. Could be a distinction without a difference, but some of those "streamers tucked into the dropped ceiling" look a little forced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like the Zappos approach - in theory.

However (and maybe I'm a control freak) the imposed clutter of the Zappos office would drive me nuts! No place to think and concentrate because of a constant barrage of visual noise.

Similarly, in theory I also like my roommate.

But some of the mess he imposes on my life drives me mad.

</comment><comment><USER18> _Something tells me that if someone at 37signals put up a huge green and blue tent around their desk, they wouldn't get a high-five in the hallway. The unspoken message to 37signals employees is this: "Don't touch. Don't put your stamp on this office."_

Or maybe the 37signals employees had the good taste to pass on turning their workspace into a kindergarten classroom when given the option.

</comment><comment><USER19> Zappos workspace is bad from programmer point of view. Open space with lot of crap, phones on tables. May be this workspace is good for communication, someone could feel more happy in this workspace and so on but it's terrible for hacking. It looks like this envirement encourage interraptions. 37s office much better for productive work.

<comment><USER12> You say that, but Zappos' offices look more like most hacker personal spaces I've seen (just replace streamers with cables and turn the lights right down..) I know more geeks who live in a mess than those who adopt a stylistic, minimal approach. But maybe I know too many Unix nerds.. ;-)

<comment><USER20> You are confusing gamers with programmers

<comment><USER12> That's not the case (though admittedly most of them were _also_ gamers ;-)). Most Unix beards I know live in, well, not exactly filth but "jumble."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I visited the Zappos office while I was in Las Vegas recently (proof: <http://dis.tl/haPmaA>) and must attest to how unbelievably amazing and awesome their offices are. The culture and morale is simply breathtaking.

That said, I think that it's tied much more closely to the culture than to just the nik-naks that litter the office (though clearly they are a part of it).

I like this post and it's good to get a look at the two offices but it would be great to get more of an understanding of HOW the office environment affects the office culture.

</comment><comment><USER22> _Your office ≠ your product_

Not sure this is true. I think it has to do with culture. I'm sure a lot of the adjectives one would use to describe 37signals's office could also be used to describe the company and/or their products.

</comment><comment><USER23> What a reflction of the attitudes of each company towards their customers. Zappos is all about coming down to the level of their users and having fun with them. 37Signals has finally built their ivory tower, and they want customers to think of their product as a door into that tower.

If they were political parties, Zappos would be the FDR Democrats and 37Signals would be the Libertarians.

</comment><comment><USER24> Having worked in two disparate offices; a Capital One debt recovery phone bank and Electronic Arts; both of which follow the Zappos model, I'd say that if it doesn't get in the way of production be it code or money collection then why waste time on non-productive issues. To me this is much the same as insisting on suits for programmers...

<comment><USER8> I worked at EA as well and it's exactly what I thought of when I saw the Zappos offices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Office design should reflect what the employees in the office are trying to accomplish. As a developer, all of that crazy stuff in Zappos' office would be a huge distraction to me. I haven't checked, but I'd be a little surprised if developers' cubes/offices were as over-the-top at Zappos as those for their customer service reps.

</comment><comment><USER26> Look at the markets they sell to. 37Signals needs to remain professional and appear competent, because they routinely buck established business "truths" and this draws attention.

I wouldn't listen to a person telling me they have a better way of conducting business from inside a green tent. Sorry, I'd think they were an immature kid...

...which is exactly why Zappos' approach works. They distribute a hip, cool product to people based on other businesses' reputation. The only thing they need to do is ship something once the right way to convince a retail customer they are competent enough to take a pair of shoes (or whatever) from point A to point B.

People have very different expectations with regards to the deliverables of the companies. The office space simply flows from that.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting to compare these with [http://positivesharing.com/2006/10/10-seeeeeriously-cool- wor...](http://positivesharing.com/2006/10/10-seeeeeriously-cool-workplaces/) \-- especially Pixar's office which is downright beautiful.

Personally, while I'm not so fond of the total mess Zappos's offices look like, I find 37s a bit too tidy, cold and uninviting.

Bottom line - it is more important who are your neighbors (assuming you are working together) than what the place looks like. Smart and friendly coworkers are priceless!

</comment><comment><USER28> I think the styles are more similar than Ryan makes it out - both have control over their environments, but in different ways. At Zappos, they have standard half-height cubes and they control their environment by sticking things on the wall and hanging it from the ceiling. At 37signals, I recall that they designed that office - they had a deeper influence on their environment than Zappos. Same thing, but a different style, and each one very much demonstrates the company culture.

<comment><USER29> Okay, but if you are hired after the new offices were designed, you now have no input into the design and no "right" to customize the environment. I"m not a fan of the Zappos office (it would drive me bonkers) but I do think folks should have a right to express their personality in their work environment so that they can feel more at "home". 37signals doesn't just look clean, it looks severe, sterile and unwelcoming - I remember a lot of dot-com marketing firms having offices like that in New York (anyone else remember the shark tanks at KPE?)

As I look around my work space right now, it's reasonably "business-like" but it's also obvious there is a lot of WORK getting done - white boards covered in post-its and sketches, index cards with stories tacked to the wall, etc. Those artifacts allow our team to cooperate better, but they're also part of how we "own" the space and make it ours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would like to see what the 37signals office looks like after a year.

</comment><comment><USER31> Both have positive notes but I think if the two offices bred the offspring would be closer to what I consider ideal. There is a lot of noise with all the flair at Zappos but the 37s space lacks fun & individuality. So something with the clean aesthetic of 37s with a shot of Zappos individualism would bring it home for me.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think if I had to work in the Zappos office, I'd probably develop at least one nervous tic by about lunch time. I don't see how anyone could concentrate to get actual work done, with all the visual and likely auditory distraction of such a cluttered, bright, flashy space. I don't just get distracted if there's a lot of clutter around me, I actually get depressed, become extremely introverted and irritated, and the part of my brain that cares about stuff just shuts down. I'm the same way if I'm around a lot of noise. I probably have some sort of sensory issue there.

My home office is quiet and free of clutter, but still warm and inviting, with about 8 different adjustable levels of lighting, depending on my mood. It took me a while to get it the way I want it, and it is by no means fancy, but it's the most comfortable work environment I've had so far.

</comment><comment><USER33> This seems like it is because 37signals is a primarily design driven company, while zappos is more of a backend engineering company.

The design folks, like the article says, are more concerned with a clean presentation and tidy appearance, the programmer style is more concerned with being a place that they can feel is surreal and comfortable enough that they can just work there continuously and feel comfort in the geekiness.

That being said, I work squarely in the latter camp and am glad that I don't feel obligated to take part in the corporate sponsored 'whackyness'! Maybe because I don't like feeling obligated to be in the office more, than necessary. I like having random stuff at my desk, but this reeks of Office Space style flair.

</comment><comment><USER34> Zappos and 37signals hire (for the most part) different kinds of people for very different jobs. I, for example, would be much more likely to work for 37signals, and I also find their office much more appealing. I don't think that's a coincidence.

</comment><comment><USER35> I guess 37signals hires employees that like the design of the place. i.e. personally, I really like how 37signals is designed and I wouldn't even think of putting something weird on the wall.. so in a way, 37signals let me design the place how _I_ want it to be (clean and empty). So, by working in a clean place, I control my environment by letting it stay clean.

In contrast, working at Zappos's office, how would I be able to control my clean environment?

</comment><comment><USER36> 37signals office is similar to left-brain: ordered, clean, and structured.

Zappos office is right-brain oriented: a bunch of spontaneous stuff everywhere.

What this actually means is that Zappos overload and "shutdown" right brain, making left brain talk to people (verbal communication is the left brain's job).

37signals overload the left brain, making right brain hack software and come up with out-of-the-box solutions to problems.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't really care what my office looks like. The most important thing to me is the team I'm working with followed closely by the things I'm working on. The appearance of the office space is so far down the list of my priorities as to be negligible.

As long as I'm excited to go to work, the actual appearance of the office makes very little difference to me.

</comment><comment><USER38> 37 signals looks like a library, especially with the study booth style desks at the sides of the windows and the carpet style. The wide hallways add to the public lobby effect. I love the hardwood flooring, the central walls and the meeting rooms. The phone booth rooms with rubber sound dampening panels are genius

</comment><comment><USER39> I've worked in a zappos like office. The problem is not the mess on the cubicles -- I was ok with that. The problem: it was too noisy. You could hardly concentrate or think. And the work sucked. The technical infrastructure was horrible.

</comment><comment><USER40> Interestingly, Rackspace--another very service-oriented company--has an office culture very similar to Zappos. I wonder if it's common to more companies highly focused on customer support as a differentiator.

</comment><comment><USER41> Summary: "Look how different these offices are. But wait, it turns out the way offices look doesn't matter."

</comment><comment><USER42> Awesome post ! thanks for this !

</comment><comment><USER43> shoe sales vs programming

big difference in type of people needed and what those people need to be happy and productive.

</comment><comment><USER43> summary: too much flair vs not enough

(Office Space movie reference. Hilarious must see.)</comment>


MyTextarea - a simple online text editor - <AUTHOR> http://www.mytextarea.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> There's been an incredible amount of traffic today and 17.4% of you bookmarked myTextarea :)

Thanks everybody!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Feedback is welcome!

<comment><USER2> 1\. Language support, at least bash and php. 2\. Line numbers on the left 3\. par lines (0,2,4,etc) being a bit gray non par lines (1,3,5,etc) a lightish gray 4\. Option to make everything darker, to work during the night and not make your eyes suffer so much.

That would be all =)

Looks awesome by the way and good luck on the project, only remember to fix the

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback!

A hacker mode including all the functions you mentioned might be a great idea, don't you think?

<comment><USER2> Oh sure! three buttons: normal mode, hacker mode and night mode, either normal or hacker can be on, not both but night mode can be on or off.

If it's not too much to ask, also font options, not much, only three, monospace (the one it has now i believe), the ubuntu font and consolas which im not sure it's exactly as mono.

That would be it, looks great as it is!</comment></comment></comment></comment>