Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers - <AUTHOR> https://manualdousuario.net/instagram-photos-videos-unlogged-on-computers/ <comment><USER3> "This is to help people view photos in Instagram and understand how to have the best experience on the platform, be part of the community, connecting and interacting with people and the things they love"

How does blocking access help people view things? How does blocking access help people understand how to have the best experience? Access is a better experience than access denied. Creating an account and lurking does not help anyone be part of a community. Most online communities are almost entirely lurkers. Creating an account doesn't lead to interaction. There's no way instagram isn't aware of these facts; I'm not a professional social network product manager and I know these things. There are other motives here than what instagram claims.

<comment><USER4> This is typical marketing-speak. I am becoming temporarily deaf whenever I hear it.

Read it the following way: We have a reason to do it but we don't want to tell you so instead we will tell you a little bit of righteously-sounding bullshit so that most of sheep base is satisfied. Yes, that's "sheep", because you are not our customers, our customers are those companies we sell your information and your focus to.

<comment><USER5> No, this is their reason, just from within their distortion field. This is helping the user view photos, because the user should be logged in and using the app, the app provides the best experience and this web interface is a distraction that gets in the way of that.

Edit: I guess it wasn't sufficiently clear, the second sentence here is not my own personal opinion.

<comment><USER6> That's not it, the web interface still works as long as you're logged in, no app needed. My guess is they are sick of scrapers and data miners. If login is needed, they can ban and the proxy hustlers will have a hard time.

FWIW, here in Sweden I can still look at feeds without being logged in.

<comment><USER7> They want people like me to register and increase the user count. I happen to get to an Instagram page once or twice a year following some link, look at a few pictures and quit. I remember it stopped me to scroll through pictures after a while or something like that, again to lure visitors to register. But I don't have a use case for Instagram so I won't. I already send pictures to people I care about via whatsapp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's unfortunate that a lot of businesses are now inside of Facebook and Instagram walls.

I know a number of times in recent months I'd end up on Instagram pages for different businesses. I would be scrolling to view their products and suddenly I'd get hit with the sign-up modal that wouldn't allow me to scroll further (well, technically I could if I opened the developer tools and disabled it, but that road block usually stopped me). So, I'd close their Instagram page, move on with my life, and they'd potentially lose a sale.

The same thing happened on Facebook when the page would be covered in overlays and I could barely browse the content. I'd get annoyed and leave.

There's a lot of power you're giving up when you build your online presence inside of another company. The entire user experience of your customer can drastically change at any moment, and you have little recourse aside from rebuilding your online presence from scratch.

<comment><USER9> Exactly my experience. Actually I think it's less irritating to block access to any image from the very first click/scroll, than to perversely let the user dive into an account and, suddenly, BAM!! acces denied!.. Because that's really how it looks for someone who don't have an Instagram account and is just passing by.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some friends roped me into signing up to Instagram, so I did. I got to the sign in process and "an error occurred". I tried to login and it said "account does not exist", but I tried to re-sign up, and it said "This account already exists". I emailed them for help but they said I had to post a photo of myself holding a pad with my username on it.

Which, fair enough, but giving away my face to a faceless corporation isn't my jam. If this is how they treat their prospective customers (or rather their income -- people they make money selling data from) I'm not really interested in signing up.

<comment><USER11> Disclaimer: no affiliation with IG

This sounds like a _very_ unusual experience. Clearly millions (billions?) of people create Instagram accounts with no issues. Why not just create a different account?

> If this is how they treat their prospective customers...

You certainly aren't a customer, which might explain the lack of priority. :)

<comment><USER12> I had a similar experience. Tried to create an account, but it gave me an error, so I tried again, and it said the account already exists. Clicked on forgot password because I didn't know what the password was, and it said the account was banned for violating the ToS. My theory is that it's because I tried to create an account without linking it to Facebook, so it "accidentally" threw an error, hoping I would create a facebook linked account. Twitter does something similar, where they say a phone number is optional, but they'll immediately lock your new account and say that a phone number is the only way to verify you aren't a bot.

I don't think it's an accident that these high-value tech companies regularly have "errors" when you try to create an account using a method that gives them less access to personal data than other signup methods.

<comment><USER13> > Twitter does something similar, where they say a phone number is optional, > but they'll immediately lock your new account and say that a phone number is > the only way to verify you aren't a bot.

Is this recent? I signed up for a Twitter account in late 2017, even used a twitter __ __ firstname.lastname@example.com custom email address for it, and I have never been forced to add my phone number. Twitter still doesn 't have it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I believe any website that is behind the walled garden should be deindexed by Google and other search engines. Whether it's a newspaper, Q/A websites, social media, or anything else. It's only fair. When users search for something, they should only get results of web pages whose content is accessible to all without having to sign up for an account.

<comment><USER15> Google should be returning the highest quality results. If thats a paywalled newspaper, it should not be excluded.

However, I do think some kind of tag, similar to [AD] could appear next to the result, warning you not to click it, [PW] or [LW] for paywall and loginwall.

<comment><USER16> I don't consider anything that's pay-walled to be high quality. If I can't read it, it has no value to me.

<comment><USER17> operative word: i.

<comment><USER18> A lot of search is searcher context sensitive, so I don't think automating this is unreasonable

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I stopped using Quora when I kept getting interrupted to sign in/up when not logged in. I did the same for Pinterest. I had deleted and wiped my LinkedIn account for a long time but recently re-activated it for a job search. I'll delete it again when I land a job.

Reddit is getting there but not so annoying that I will stop using it. I get the most value out of Reddit but there are so many ways to get information and/or waste time that something else, digital or otherwise, will replace it.

I imagine people like me are a vanishingly small portion of users or potential users or the increased data/tracking from forcing accounts and logins is worth the lost users but it makes me sad.

But then I see counter examples like Youtube. You can browse all day long without logging in, click through to a video without getting prompted to login etc. Is it just different philosophies (hard to imagine given how much Google is reliant on data and ads) or is it different business practices?

<comment><USER20> I keep a txt file with a list of the subreddits I'm interest in it. I delete all my posts and my account every few months and create a new one and join the subreddits in the file. If reddit required an email like discord, I would absolutely stop using it.

<comment><USER21> Reddit provides a way to streamline this for you - I use old.reddit.com so it might not be the same in the new UI so YMMV on the specifics.

While logged in, click the subreddits dropdown and click the "Edit Subscriptions" link, it takes you to [https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/](https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/) \- on the right side is "multireddit of your subscriptions" \-- this is a URL string of all your subreddits, just save the URL. When you make a new account, click the URL again and subscribe to them on your new account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a photographer, I urge all other passionate photographers to get off of Instagram. It's more important now than ever to be the authority of your own content.

I know it's not as fancy but just start by hosting your own simple blog.

I made an effort to build my own Instagram like section on my site just to host my own images. It even has a web assembly lib that scales the images client-side so I don't have to deal with image processing and uploads directly to S3.

[https://morphic.pro/snaps](https://morphic.pro/snaps)

The code is open for others to see how I did it. [https://github.com/MorphicPro/morphic.pro](https://github.com/MorphicPro/morphic.pro)

<comment><USER23> I've been slowly piecing something like this together for myself using jekyll. I'm not familiar with the tools you're using, but the demo site looks very nice. Good job!

Are there other examples of turnkey self-deployed sites like this?

<comment><USER22> I'm actively developing my personal site which is built with elixir and phoenix. That said if you are looking for an out of the box solution I would stick with simple and go with a static site generator like you mentioned or possibly Wordpress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think it's actually just some javascript that prevents clicking links from a profile to the individual photos.

Deep-linking still works without an account, so you can just right click a photo, copy the url and paste it into the URL bar.

<comment><USER8> You're right, I noticed this recently as well. Clicking the photo brings up the sign-up modal. However, middle clicking to open in a new tab views the photo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I begrudgingly started an insta a few days ago. I am a photographer and I have resisted for so long. But this isolation just made me want to stay connected to my classmates and other photographer friends.

I have to say, as a photo sharing platform, instagram is awful. Can't upload photos from desktop, no native iPad app (WTF?), and whatever compression they use to display my photos seems to really mess with the quality (not really noticeable from a phone, but from a desktop, yikes).

It's great to be able to keep up with people in a more meaningful way, and I did attend a pretty cool live IGTV session, but all in all I don't really like it.

And as others have mentioned, I think, you can just middle-click on a post to open it in a new tab and it wont ask for a login.

<comment><USER26> > Can't upload photos from desktop

Yes, you can. Open dev tools, set it to mobile, and set it to android. A "+" button will pop up and work fine.

<comment><USER25> Nice! That does work. Thanks for that.

I'm still a little baffled as to why they don't just allow that on the desktop site, though.

<comment><USER27> Because Instagram isn't really intended for sharing your DLSR-shot, desktop- processed labour-of-love photo. The compression, rescaling and colour mismanagement they apply to uploads should tell you that.

It's quite possibly the worst way on the Web to present photos-as-art yet photographers keep signing up to it.

<comment><USER13> Meanwhile, Twitter, also not designed for this purpose, actually stopped recompressing (jpeg) files when viewed at the highest quality. [https://twitter.com/NolanOBrien/status/1204557498990002176](https://twitter.com/NolanOBrien/status/1204557498990002176)

I was actually pretty impressed by this change from a non-photo site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> ... and this is why those who'd seen the fall of geocities, the demise of myspace, the slaughter of tumblr, keep their own website under their own domain name, either as the canonical copy or as a backup along with the social media streams.

Social media can be useful, but one should never have their content -at least those that are not absolutely ephemeral -, exclusively on a single one of them.

You should all do the same. Start here: [https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started](https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started)

_Trouble is, it's becoming hard to maintain cross-posting or even just copying your own stuff from silos, which I find outrageous._

</comment><comment><USER28> And Twitter requires a phone number for "verification" shortly after creating a new account without one.

Stop using this trash.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, Twitter is never going to get my number, like ever. anybody remembers when Twitter announced in September last year that they would remove "account that didn't post enough"? WTF was that?

But Instragram/Facebook,Pinterest and co simply hate the web. I mean they like it when it comes down to user acquisition but their goal is to make you download their app. If they could do away with the web they would. They are no better than Microsoft Balmer era.

<comment><USER28> > But Instragram/Facebook,Pinterest and co simply hate the web. I mean they > like it when it comes down to user acquisition but their goal is to make you > download their app. If they could do away with the web they would. They are > no better than Microsoft Balmer era.

The web is the real casualty of mobile taking over, more so than the desktop, IMHO.

There was a minute between proprietary mobile app dominance and proprietary desktop app dominance where everything new and shiny was a web service first and foremost.

During that minute _everyone_ was able participate in all the new shiny things, regardless of what operating system or type of device they used - <USER2> just needed a standards-compliant web browser, and nothing ever required your phone number to register, except financial services I guess.

I wish the average person understood how liberating and important that state of affairs is for _everyone_. Based on the few debates I've had on this subject with less technical folks, as long as whatever the average person is carrying in their pocket is supported and they can do/consume what they want today they dgaf how much the walls are closing in on them in the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Instagram is stupid. On desktop, you cannot upload photos unless you fake being an iPhone with developer tools, I kid you not, go ahead and try. Just change the user agent and the screen size with Chrome dev tools and the upload photos menus will show up.

I don't understand this, why in the world would they prevent their users from uploading photos from the their laptops?

These weird UX choices never made sense to me. If you don't want users to do anything in a browser, then just remove your website, and force them to download your app, problem solved.

<comment><USER30> Your laptop probably doesn't have gps location data they can exfiltrate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I thought this had already been happening for quite some time?

In my experience, I was no longer able to browse without an account on either my laptop or my mobile device for a few months now

<comment><USER15> Correct. This is not a new behavior. Also, did the author check for any kind of cookie or fingerprinting? I would guess Instagram is much more likely to allow some sample viewing, and by clearing all stored data, you can get another quantity of samples. I would have tried that first before the user agent.

A more accurate title would probably be (this is conjecture) "Instagram expands loginwall to other countries, eg Brazil"

<comment><AUTHOR> Tested with different browsers, computers, connections, even cities.

Another user here thought the post was about that scrolling limit that's in place for a few months now. That's different. I wasn't able, previous to publication, to confirm if this is happening in other countries, but here in hacker news there are more users reporting the same issue.

<comment><USER15> Im still not convinced that Instagram hasnt figured out a way to identify you and your friends, and has decided theyve used up their trial images.

But maybe you are right, maybe you are part of some kind of A/B test to see if an immediate loginwall, with no trial or sample, increases or decreases sign ups.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a possibility, and I shouldn't doubt Facebook's reach. Anyway, these friends and relatives I've asked for help they all have Instagram accounts and use the app regularly, always logged-in, and yet that popup showed up in their first attempt to see a picture logged off.

<comment><USER15> I would expect all those people to have a cookie or equivalent tracker saying "this person has been to instagram before"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't have an instagram account and just Googled "most popular instagram accounts" and I was able to look at the top 3. Though I did scroll down far enough to hit a "you need to login to view more" wall. Maybe it's a regional thing? I'm in the US here.

And it's Katy Perry, Nike and Miley Cyrus, just in case you were curious. (at least according to the first result from Google)

<comment><USER33> Just tried with my own Instagram in incognito in desktop. I could scroll the grid for a few wheel-scrolls before being asked to log in. Clicking any image yielded a log-in prompt.

This isn't how the open web is supposed to work. (nor is IG's suppression of hyperlinks to a single link within the bio.)

<comment><USER34> _This isn 't how the open web is supposed to work. (nor is IG's suppression of hyperlinks to a single link within the bio.)_

Instagram is owned by Facebook. No one associated with those organisations is interested in an open web, whether they're shareholders, employees, or users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wonder if this will reduce their traffic in any way. At least personally I know I'll never make an account, so I kind of like that this keeps me from procrastinating and browsing the site. The UI is so clunky anyways that I would love to see a better app take over.

</comment><comment><USER36> Note: there are some unofficial IG clients, without paywalls, using the API (however they probably try to kill them when they get too big).

Example: [https://igdig.com/](https://igdig.com/)

<comment><USER37> Note, instagram is pretty trivial to scrape. I'm guessing that is the real target of these changes: removing unauthorized apis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Yet another reason to move away from Instagram. I'm toying with using RSSHub + ttrss to get content from my favourite Instagram accounts in my RSS reader. I hope this doesn't break that.

<comment><USER39> Smart! I will have to look into a solution like this. I want to follow all the artists and creators on Instagram but I don't want to be swamped with all the other inanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Doesn't bother me. The purpose of Instagram for me is to look at my social circle's lives. If everything they do makes them less of a generic public social network Tik-Tok / Reddit / Facebook / Twitter style, I'd prefer that actually.

<comment><USER41> What about when it's on another site that you don't have access to? What about when it's a type of content that is relevant to you? This is hacker news so I'll assume you're involved in technology in some capacity - what if something like Stackoverflow was purchased by Facebook or Google and you couldn't view questions without a valid Facebook account?

You're seeing step 1 and not realizing that step 4 or 5 is the entire web gated behind walls.

<comment><USER40> There is no slippery slope. I'll object to step 4. StackOverflow is CC-BY-SA so I'm not that worried. If they try to change that, I'll kick up a fuss or whatever. It's not like fighting this will help with that. Wholly different audiences.

<comment><USER41> If there's no "slippery slope", then why do 3-4 companies control the entire internet today, when a decade or more ago there were 15-20 players? Go even further back and you had a myriad of choices; now Amazon, Facebook and Google have sucked up and shut down just about all competitors.

If you don't care, then you don't care. But saying there's no slippery slope? It's capitalism. It's happened with internet providers, it's happened with search engines, it's happened with social media, online stores, it's been funneling into a handful of companies for over a decade now. People want things for free and companies are willing to sell your data to finance their payroll. Saying it won't happen anymore is just naive.

<comment><USER40> There literally is no slippery slope because the CC-BY-SA stalls any slipping. You literally cannot lock away that content, and that license aligns StackOverflow's incentives with mine.

The structure of the Internet precludes universal locking away. I am confident in my ability and that of my fellow engineers to always have alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I would say that as a free enterprise they are free to do whatever that want. Why do users think that they should have access to Instagram's data without signing up for an account. LinkedIn does not let you do that so do hundreds of other companies.

</comment><comment><USER43> There are so many instagram "clones". Not sure what the right term is, but basically its just a copy of the entire site with all the pics/vid links pointing back at fb servers. How they manage to keep this stuff running boggles my mind.

I have moved off everything FB related so its almost become a habit now for me to use these sites to follow certain accounts. With noscript on FF and picking the right clone easy to get the simplest page (no js running) with just the pics and captions.

Just google the insta username and you get the sites.

</comment><comment><USER44> Another issue that Instagram has refused to acknowledge has been no-sound-in- stories on Mobile web. It has been this way for more than 6 months[0] and I'm fairly certain it is not a bug - they are intentionally breaking UX to force people to use the app.

[0]: [https://old.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/dezf9g/no_sound_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/dezf9g/no_sound_with_instagram_stories_on_windows_chrome/)

</comment><comment><USER45> Very simply "the experience" is much better on mobile = we track everything you do, your location, we mine your friends info...And sell that for more $$$$. And either you don't it / or you don't care or it is simply too complicated unless you are in Europe (in that part of the world it is more risky to sell your personal info without your explicit consent).

Can't really do that if you use your laptop. At least it is harder and harder to get to it (trend to use Safari, Firefox, etc).

<comment><USER26> This would be true if the site wouldn't work with merely turning on dev tools and pretending to be and iphone.

No, the whole thing is plain bs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I have a theory that we'll get a lot more of these walls going up, not for onboarding users, but to sidestep the legal precedent for allowing webscraping that the LinkedIn case set. I want to say that the LinkedIn ruling hinged on the data being publicly accessible to anyone. If content shifts behind an account signup if imagine that's no longer the case. Can anyone with more knowledge in the area give more insight into this theory?

</comment><comment><USER47> I would like to use Instagram because all my friends are on it, but I have a low bullshit tolerance and stuff like this reminds me why I shouldn't sign up.

<comment><USER48> Instagram is also very liked for people who use it to only follow or be followed by friends, so in that sense it feels like a very private network and does not affect at all. Why would you care if they only allow public profiles to be viewed by people within the platform?

<comment><USER47> Because I want my profile to be viewed by anyone, including non instagram users, or at least keep the capability to do it.

Also, if they do this, it's highly probable that they do other user-hostile things. AFAIK, you can't upload photos from the desktop web version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Yes. Until a couple of weeks ago I would be able to view individual photos but now I can only view the profile until I hit the login restriction.

<comment><USER50> Right click the post and select open in new tab. This doesn't fix the problem of not being able to scroll through the history though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Seems like a good thing. I have wasted time at looking photos, now I can use that time to do something slightly more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER52> I absolutely adore new experience, it's facebook after all. You can't do it on facebook and now on instagram. I didn't use these products for a long time but IG was definitely moving to that direction.

Can't get why some users don't like the change. You're free to decide should you use a product or not. To put it from other perspective, you choose to become a product for instagram to sell or not. If you don't have an account, it's hard to earn more from your time spent in the app. Billions doesn't ROI themselves.

Old web is still there, forums/personal websites isn't banned. You still can do things the old decentralised way probably to a greater extent because internet is even bigger now.

<comment><USER53> > Can't get why some users don't like the change. You're free to decide should > you use a product or not.

Some people aren't quitters. They don't just quit whenever something stops going their way, they try to change it, try to improve it, try to make it better, even if the only way they have to do that is express why its not best.

Be more like them.

<comment><USER52> My point is you're not a customer after all. IG customers are advertisers. Why advertisers wouldn't be happy with a new change?

We do try to improve products we use but in this story unfortunately you don't have a voice because if you're not an advertiser. Think about how much ads you need to sell to earn 1B back at least and sustain operating expenses especially when you're not trying to be lean with your resources.

<comment><USER53> I think you are putting too much stock in the importance of a "Customer". If I'm using a service, i'm a _user_ of that service. As a user, I do have a right to not like the changes to usability of that service.

<comment><USER52> You have those rights as a human not as an IG user.

As IG user you have only one right, to say "yes" to any changes they want and to obey to the algorithm of banning and censoring. You don't have any right if you can't enforce it. They can ban end censor your opinion and can enforce this right, you can't do anything about it. You are the product they're selling after all and they care about you in terms of as much revenue you can generate on this particular platform (macro picture of user retention).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I have not been able to recover my account in about 3 years.

Every time I follow the steps to report the issue, I am linked back to the main troubleshooting start page where the process restarts a la Groundhog Day.

It was hacked and taken over by a Russian account who subsequently realized I have no friends of consequence and so abandoned it. But every single time I try to go through the official channels to recover the account I cannot!

Instagram doesn't care about account recovery because it boosts internal metrics when people make new accounts. I wish concerns like mine were prioritized rather than influencers who need a new way to ask for money from their followers.

<comment><USER54> I am curious how you were able to confirm that "It was hacked and taken over by a Russian account"

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> What are they trying to prevent? Mass image scraping? The people doing that are going to keep doing it regardless of any hoops they make them jump through. This just makes the registration process for normal users more annoying.

<comment><USER56> Mass image scraping after login is a legal distinction in terms of violating the ToS. Also, Instagram wants to make it harder for scrapers, who rely on cheap to maintain pipelines because the overall goal is to monetize massive amounts of photos, not a few thousand. (IE makes it harder for them to scrape to get teh volume necessary to make it a viable scraping endeavor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I sometimes used to browse my friend's instagram feeds just to see what they have been up to, as I don't use instagram due to privacy concerns and personalized feeds being a time-eater. The desktop experience has been degrading for the past year or so, for example you were unable to scroll past maybe 20 photos on someones profile without logging in. That's ridiculous, and I hope that Instagram and Facebook die someday.

<comment><USER58> I mean, aside from the fact that you don't like it, why is that "ridiculous"? It's their platform, can they not do what they want?

<comment><USER57> Well it is their platform, but they are using what I would consider unethical means to force people to create accounts, collecting and selling their data.

Sure, you can say that I should avoid Mark's websites altogether if I want to keep my data safe, but that would probably mean that a huge portion of my social life would be sacrificed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> They've been pretty anal about it for a while now. Yeah you can see photos but scroll down like half a page? Login window in your face with no back button.

Pretty hostile UX

</comment><comment><USER60> There is a way to avoid the login requirement, if you want to enlarge a photo or video, or read its accompanying text. I'm not an Instagram user, and I never will be. But, sometimes I want to read a post by a friend or a business.

While viewing the gallery page for an Instagram user, right click on the post you want to access and select "Copy link location," or whatever your browser calls it, then paste the link into a new tab.

</comment><comment><USER61> Also very annoying: When you login, they want to have your phone number. I tried a couple online services for receiving SMS, but none of them worked...

</comment><comment><USER62> One way to use Instagram on desktop is to change your browser's User-Agent to a mobile one

I made a blog post[1] about it a while ago which is elementaryOS oriented but can be used in any system or browser

[1] [https://asvvvad.eu.org/?page=blog&id=use-epiphany-as- mobile-...](https://asvvvad.eu.org/?page=blog&id=use-epiphany-as-mobile- browser)

</comment><comment><USER63> It's been a slow closing door with access on PC without accounts. They've slowly been rolling back access for years now on the PC side. This is the door finally being closed and latched. I'm sure they believe it will up conversion and increase growth, but I don't think it will.

Twitter has been closing their door for a long time, but I wonder if they ever will?

</comment><comment> Paul-ish I have been unable to sign up for an account without a phone number. That is what keeps me off the platform.

<comment><USER64> You are not missing much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Part of me believes that this is actually to get folks that left instagram back on the platform.

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm quite confused by this article. Instagram has never allowed me to see photos. I have never had an Instagram account and refuse to get one. They'll let me maybe scroll a "teaser" but that pop-up will always happen and always has.

</comment><comment><USER67> I always set anything twitter to untrust in noscript, and just ignore/close anything that comes up linking to them like most common vermin ad/tracking services. Not sure why anyone would link to them as "news", pictures or other.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is how it begins. Then as three or four companies gradually consume all smaller services (which is happening and has been happening for years), you need to sell your soul to them to view anything.

My advice is to just say "no thanks" and move on.

</comment><comment><USER68> What if more users install the browser extension/add-on that automatically changes the user-agent string based on domain name, e.g., for Instagram it changes to a random mobile user-agent. Sorry I forgot the name of the extension.

<comment><USER69> Here are a couple of such add-ons / extensions:

User-Agent Switcher [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/)

Custom UserAgent String [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/custom-user-a...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/custom-user-agent-revived/)

User-Agent Switcher and Manager [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/user-agent-st...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/user-agent-string-switcher/)

and a comment by "99" pointing to an extension-free method to quickly change the user agent:

[https://www.ghacks.net/2019/12/23/custom-useragent-string- is...](https://www.ghacks.net/2019/12/23/custom-useragent-string-is-a-firefox- extension-that-lets-you-set-a-user-agent-on-a-per-site-basis/#comment-4447842)

<comment><USER68> There is also a browser-free method. Localhost proxy, e.g., haproxy, that rewrites User-Agent header according to URL and/or Host header.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> It's been that way for a couple of months at least. This login screen can be blocked with adblockers, but the fact that it's making rounds only now kind of shows that no one was using it anyway

</comment><comment><USER71> I just noticed this a few days ago when checking a friend's dog feed. If you open in private window it still seems to allow. (browse normal to instagram, right-click, open in new private window tab)

<comment><USER72> Opening in a normal new tab should work as well. I think it's because clicking a photo normally uses client-side navigation (navigates with JS), while opening in a new tab will fetch the entire new page.

<comment><USER71> actually normal tab wasnt.. i was a little surprised

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Guess I'm not going to be looking at any more Instagram content.

</comment><comment><USER74> Use a IG front-end just like how you use nitter for Twitter links:

[https://bibliogram.snopyta.org/](https://bibliogram.snopyta.org/) is one instance.

</comment><comment><USER75> This is simply a continuation of the trend of making Instagram work like Facebook's main product. Of course there's no reasonable justification for it that favors consumers.

</comment><comment><USER76> There is a little trick to bypass this, open your browser console, click on mobile view, and refresh the page, it should load the mobile version of Instagram.

</comment><comment><USER77> You can right click, open photos/videos in new tabs... For now. Probably to satisfy their desire to get new users, if someone links directly to a post.

</comment><comment><USER78> This is a reasonable decision on their part. I don't think people realize how much of their traffic is bots scraping the location of people from photos.

<comment><USER79> well, how much is it? do you have a source?

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> [http://bugmenot.com/view/instagram.com](http://bugmenot.com/view/instagram.com)

</comment><comment><USER81> It actually does, but you have limited time until that pop up appears. You just right click on the photo, and have it open the link in a new tab.

</comment><comment> tushar-r I kinda think this is a decent idea, given the whole ClearviewAI scraping thing. Not that it puts up a massive gate, but definitely a solution.

</comment><comment><USER82> At least now, hopefully, search engines will remove Instagram pages from their results _entirely_. This can only be a good thing.

</comment><comment> hollsted-ifbit Instagram died when they got rid of followers activity status. I liked the interesting things that people liked.

</comment><comment><USER83> I wonder if the purpose of this is legal IP control and not so much to get people to login to the platform.

</comment><comment><USER84> FWIW ublock origin blocks the signup overlay and you can continue browsing like normal.

</comment><comment><USER85> Fk you instagram, I'm blocklisting your site and I'll never visit it again.

</comment><comment><USER86> They will save a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER87> looks like this trick isn't working anymore: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IYZ8mktk7k&t=40s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IYZ8mktk7k&t=40s)

</comment><comment><USER88> I'm fairly sure uBlock Origin removes that banner (it does for me).

</comment><comment><USER89> Interesting. Would it work if you pretend you are using cell phone?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. There's a video in the post showing that. If you change the browser's user agent to any browser in iPhone or Android, photos and videos open normally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Reddit did the same thing. Don't use as much as i use before.

</comment><comment><USER91> Its kinda ironic that their offices lead out to Salesforce Park

</comment><comment><USER92> Middle click still works to open a post in a new tab.

</comment><comment><USER93> So they're going the Pinterest way now.

</comment><comment><USER94> What about on their smartphones?

</comment><comment><USER95> This story seems to be dropping off the front page a little faster than it should "naturally".

</comment><comment><USER96> Hey Instagram (i.e. Facebook)!

Fuck you!

Love,

Me

</comment><comment><USER97> Title rewrite:

 _Instagram Influencers Now Have Even Less Influence Over RDiddly_

</comment><comment><USER98> I hate these walled apps. Having to log in is maddening. Especially Facebook, especially right now...

As a photographer, I have to have some sort of IG presence but I absolutely hate the app, the UX and the whole enchilada. Its the worst viewing experience possible for good photos and yet is the medium of choice for so many... I miss the old web.

<comment><USER99> Honestly, I think I prefer not having access to something like Pinterest[1] which lets you have _some_ access for a bit and then as soon as you try to interact with the site in any meaningful way (usually to leave it) they insist you sign in.

At least with this I know the expectation up front, rather than having it sprung on me by surprise.

[1] I've avoided Pinterest for awhile that this may not be the way they attempt to capture accounts any more.

<comment><USER100> Instagram does exactly this. You can interact with it's site via browser and open a few links until shows a popup saying you have to login (which you can't close).

<comment><USER101> The linked article is about how they stopped doing that and now require you to log in immediately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> This wall was already there in some form or another.

I think what they are trying to do is to get people off of the computer in general because ad blockers would make it impossible for them to monetize the platform.

These ad blockers do not really exist on mobile unless you jailbreak and install some shady third-party shit.

<comment><USER103> How is it preventing people with adblockers to use instagram just like they did before? The experience will be exactly the same as before, regardless of adblockers, as long as you are logged in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> Instagram is riffled with semi-nude photos of women that I seriously doubt it has any real value whatsoever. And it's kind of surprising considering that FB has a very strict policy when it comes to showing nude pics. They should have brought down the hammer long ago.

<comment><USER105> You see whatever you follow.

I know every single person I follow and have never seen provocative photos.

<comment><USER58> This guy's following a bunch of Instagram thots and now he's complaining all he sees are Instagram thots...</comment></comment></comment>


Sparrow shot after it knocks over 23,000 dominoes (2005) - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20051126145855/http://www.dodemus.nl/ <comment><USER2> Non archive link to the same story. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4450958.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4450958.stm)

<comment><USER3> See also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_Day_2005_sparrow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_Day_2005_sparrow)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "I just wish we could channel all this energy that went into one dead > sparrow into saving the species"

Um, mission accomplished? Sparrows are hardly endangered.

<comment><USER5> According to the article, the Common House Sparrow was put on the endangered species list the year prior.</comment></comment>


Selling an extra ticket math puzzle - <AUTHOR> http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2010/04/27/selling-an-extra-ticket-a-math-bargaining-puzzle/

<comment><USER2> The other articles on this blog are fascinating too. It applies math to real life with excellent explanations.</comment>


How  Twitter's New Redesign Makes It More Like Sina Weibo - <AUTHOR> http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/12/09/twitter-redesign-like-sina-weibo/

<comment><USER2> It seems that most of the 'new' features described in this post have existed since the last new Twitter (from a year ago). Some just slightly more recent than that.

I'm not sure that saying Twitter has 'grown more like Weibo' is accurate given that those features have been around since before the redesign.

(disclosure: I work for Twitter)

</comment><comment><USER3> the thing I care more about is screen real estate usage on my phone, now everything is smaller and a vast percentage of space is wasted by that pointless border.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well it seems Chinese startups might not be all copycats.</comment>


7 things we've learned about Project Fi - <AUTHOR> http://officialandroid.blogspot.com/2016/03/from-hi-to-fi-to-goodbye-to-invites.html <comment><USER2> This is ridiculous, like a slice of life from some high fliers</comment>


How a Mistake Gave Us the Word 'Cherry' - <AUTHOR> https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/cherry-history-origin <comment><USER2> Somewhat relatedly, when my daughter was younger she picked off one of the solidified tendrils that flows down the side of a candle and called it a wack. Obviously candles are made of wacks.

<comment><USER3> That is a good one. Here are a few from my 4 yr old:

off-board: as opposite of onboard;

both-turnal: awake in day and night;

sand-boni: Tractor smoothing sand at the beach;

<comment><USER4> I've actually heard "off-board" used by adults in a non-ironic way numerous times, usually in regards to the procedure taken when someone leaves a company (i.e. the inverse of "onboarding" a new hire).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article cites Old English: "ciris" as in "cirisbeam" (the ciris tree) and claims the error from the "Old North French" variant "cherise" but the word is much older. E.g.

Latin, 1 century AD: Cerasus (AFAIK C is pronounced ch as in chain, Edit: thanks to danans for the correction: ch is a modern and k as in king the traditional pronunciation, so it's even closer to the Greek one)

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cerasus](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cerasus)

And even older, ancient Greek:

(pronounced probably like kera-sos):

"κερασός Of Anatolian origin. Compare Akkadian "karšu""

Of course, Akkadian is the oldest Semitic language for which the records exist, at least 4000 years old, i.e. around 2000 BC. Their empire was in the part of today's Iraq -- in the area to which the people who later wrote the Torah (which even later became the part of the Old Testament) referred as "the garden of Eden."

The cherries are our direct connection to the mythical paradise.

(And, when I'm by Eden and fruits, the famous "forbidden fruit" wasn't an apple in the original text, that's a wrong, later, interpretation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_fruit#The_Apple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_fruit#The_Apple) )

<comment><USER6> > Latin, 1 century AD: Cerasus (AFAIK C is pronounced ch as in chain)

In the 1st century, C was always pronounced as "k". The "ch" borrowed from Italian was something that was adopted only in the 19th century: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_spelling_and_pronunciati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_spelling_and_pronunciation#Ecclesiastical_pronunciation)

<comment><USER5> One more nice detail: it seems that the German word and pronunciation for "cherry" somehow turned to have again similarity to the Akkadian "karšu" it's Kirsche, pronounced like "kirše."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems similar to how "a napron" turned into "an apron". More examples here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing)

<comment><USER8> The fruit example of rebracketing (which doesn't seem to be on that Wikipedia list) is "orange". It came from "naranj", but lost the initial 'n' (except in Spanish, where "una naranja" protects the 'n').

[1] [http://www.bonappetit.com/test- kitchen/ingredients/article/t...](http://www.bonappetit.com/test- kitchen/ingredients/article/the-etymology-of-the-orange) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(word)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_\(word\))

<comment><USER9> I also like how the color was named after the fruit, not the other way around.

(there's a similar example with "escalator" and "escalate"; the latter was named after the former)

<comment><USER10> Well, of course it is. Who would name a fruit after a colour?

It only seems surprising because the colour is more mentally salient, so there's a cognitive bias toward assuming it's the original ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic)).

By the way, "pink" is also named after a plant ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_%28flower%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_%28flower%29)).

<comment><USER11> Well, some fruits are sort of named after colors. "blueberry", "blackberry", "Red Delicious", etc. But point taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Now I'd like to know how the French word for "shampoo" (the noun) came to be "le shampooing".

<comment><USER13> [http://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/shampooing](http://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/shampooing)

<comment><USER14> I don't know if you read it (because it's in French) but it basically says that it comes from shampoo (which comes from the Hindi champoo) but not why it comes from the gerund shampooing.

I googled for a good half hour and came across that link in my searches, but no clear consensus on why it stems from the gerund form.

The only thing I can think of is that the original Hindi word is "to lather/massage" so maybe the French took the English transliteration and merged it with its Hindi gerund origin to end up with shampooing?

<comment><USER15> According to the CNRTL link, in 1877 it was used in the same way we would use the gerund in English, to refer to the action ("signifying the washing of hair") then in 1890 became the word for the product used in that process (shampoo) as well.

That seems to happen from time to time in French, when the gerund also becomes the name of an object involved in the process, as with "le parking".

Sometimes it happens in English too, like "building" and "booking".

<comment><USER14> Have an upvote, that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Kind of like how the word "pirogi" is plural (a single dumpling is a "pirog"), but in English multiple pirog are usually referred to as pirogies.

<comment><USER17> And along the same lines, in Italian a sandwich is a _panino_. In English we call a specific type of sandwich a panini (or, "a sandwiches").

<comment><USER18> I recently ordered the Arancino at a local Italian restaurant, and was confused when I got only 1, then I remembered how Italian plurals work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think I am going to start calling cherries cirisapples to annoy my kids.

<comment><USER20> In modern Icelandic they are called "kirsuber" (ciris berries).

<comment><USER21> In modern Danish they are called "kirsebær" (kirsu ber, ciris berries)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Similarly the word mango comes from the Malayalam word māṅṅa (pronounced: "manga"). The European traders mispronounced them into the now known mango.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango#Etymology)

<comment><USER23> Curiously it's manga in Portuguese I believe.

<comment><USER24> Yes, it is... So it was not the "Europeans" who misspelled the word, it was the British. The Portuguese were the first to get to that part of the world from Europe, so they might have brought the word to Europe themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This wouldn't have happened if William the Conqueror was known as William the Conquered.

<comment><USER26> If he'd lost he wouldn't be known at all. Nobody remembers who William conquered.

<comment><USER27> But we do remember the Battle of Hastings.

For those who are curious, the loser in the Battle of Hastings was Harold II of England (or Harold Godwinson as his father was Godwin, Earl of Wessex).

Interestingly enough, we do remember King Cnut, whose sister married Harold II's uncle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The same mistake is in the process of giving us the word 'kudo'.

<comment><USER29> In computing, it also gave us the mip, as in "a one-mip workstation".

MIPS came from millions of instructions per second, so a mip would only be "millions of instructions per".

In the early 1980s, "a one-mip workstation" was a very expensive thing you bought from Sun ;-)

<comment><USER28> Good point. I've also seen people talk about a singular megaflop.

<comment><USER29> Good point ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> An article about a grammar mistake contains a grammar mistake in the first sentence:

>unless we start hacking away them.

</comment><comment><USER31> For a moment I thought it's about git and cherry-picking.

</comment><comment><USER23> Abogado (lawyer) --> avocado.

</comment><comment><USER32> Pretty neat to look at this wikipedia link [https://goo.gl/kAR1LW](https://goo.gl/kAR1LW) and see the descent of a ton of words of English!

<comment><USER33> Please don't post URLs from shorteners as they obscure the destination URL.

<comment><USER34> They also increase link rot (full urls give you at least some information like: the domain, date, and title slug) and deteriorate the open nature of the web by locking a link behind some company's proprietary database that is liable to disappear without a trace. Please just share the full link next time, even if it is long.

> URL shorteners may be one of the worst ideas, one of the most backward > ideas, to come out of the last five years... To someone in the future, it'll > be like everyone from a certain era of history, say ten years of the 18th > century, started speaking in a one-time pad of cryptographic pass phrases. - > Presentation at PDAC 2011 by Jason Scott</comment></comment></comment>


Jeff Pulver opens up on Silicon Valley's scorn for old entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/10/09/jeff-pulver-opens-up-on-silicon-valleys-scorn-for-old-entrepreneurs-and-why-every-start-up-needs-a-lead-singer/

<comment><USER2> _I was in Silicon Valley two years ago meeting a partner of one of the most famous VCs in the world and when he told me to my face, told me "Jeff, look, you're not 25 years old having just left Facebook as a product manager, because if you were I have $5 million for you." He looked at me and said I was worthless._

Facebook actually has 25 year-old "product managers"?

<comment><USER3> > Facebook actually has 25 year-old "product managers"?

Yup. Also: engineering managers of the same age.

Edit: I don't work there. I happen to know someone who is 27 and a PM at Facebook, who has been there for 4 years (as a PM).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "When I meet a start-up I always ask them who is the lead singer. Because in > a band the lead singer doesn't have to play an instrument. They just have to > lead."

Who was the lead singer of Peter, Paul, and Mary? Of The Beatles? David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar were lead singers of Van Halen, but were not the leaders of the band.

It seems a bit odd, in an article about ageism, that the topic should veer so quickly to trying to fit a startup into a certain model of rock band, given that several extremely successful rock bands don't follow that model.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the easiest way to comply with corporate minutes? - <AUTHOR>

What is the simplest way that you use to keep the required* corporate minutes of shareholder/director proceedings?<p>When there is not a lot going on in terms of funding, board changes, etc., I'm wondering what you use out there. Is there a template?<p>[*] at least in California, section 1500 <comment><USER2> Your board needs to elect a certain specific set of officers, one of which is the Secretary. That is still required even if there is only one board member, as is commonly the case for consulting corporations.

Within I think ninety days of your incorporation, you need to file an Information Return with the Secretary of State, that names each officer. It's not a tax return in that you don't send any money with it, but if you don't file it on time, you'll be fined five hundred dollars, and if you don't file it at all, your corporation will be suspended.

It's a felony for a suspended corporation to actively do business, as that is considered a form of money laundering.

Once you've filed your information return, you're not specifically required to ever hold any board of director meetings. If you don't then you don't have any minutes that you need to keep at all.

One thing that you will need though - you can do this in the same meeting as when you elect the officers - the board needs to name a bank for the corporate checking account, as well as to authorize who gets check signing priveliges. Some banks don't enforce this but I encountered one bank that was quite adamant about it and that actually did accuse me of money laundering when I tried to open an account with a Royal Bank of Canada check written by a government agency.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. My question was more for an on-going basis.

I think here in California one is required to keep minutes (of at least a C/S corporation) at least annually.

I do not think this is enforced or when it comes into play.

<comment><USER2> The terms "C Corporation" and "S Corporation" have to do with how you pay federal taxes. That's orthogonal to the duties of the Secretary.

I honestly don't know how often you have to keep minutes. If I had to take a guess at it, I would say that corporate bylaws commonly require that a stockholder's meeting be held once per year. Honestly I don't know but I don't recall ever reading that even a stockholder meeting was required by law.

However - and again I am guessing - my expectation is that, were minutes required at all, failure to do so would be a civil rather than a criminal offense, and that the only ones with standing to sue would be the stockholders.

Whether that's a problem depends on the nature of your specific corporation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The biggest aid to preparing minutes is to prepare and distribute an agenda before the meeting. Then run through the agenda briefly noting the outcome of any decision and briefly outlining any new business.

Meeting minutes are not a transcript. They record actions not process or speeches. What matters is what is binding. Keep the minutes brief and to the point. Distribute them to attendees for comment immediately afterward and you're done.</comment>


What hardware do Full-time Linux users use? - <AUTHOR>

I have been trying forever to search and find the best hardware for linux as my primary OS, and running virtual machines of Mac OS and Win7x64. I have come to no solid conclusion based on my findings. What do all the Linux gurus use for ultra portability and power. My current configuration is: MBPro 2011, SSD, 16gb RAM, core i7. Work assigned, but I customized it. Linux and Win7 virtual machines I want to swap my VM of linux for the host device and swap in a vm of OSX. Thanks! <comment><USER2> If you want something powerful and portable, check out Lenovo's X series. I am a 99 percent full-time Linux user and Lenovo consistently impresses me with their product's durability and longevity.

<http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/x-series/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I had been looking at Lenovos, but when i saw they charged 1k for 16gb of ram, when you could buy the same ram on newegg for 120, I stepped back quite a bit.

<comment><USER3> I think overcharging for RAM (or HDD/SSD) upgrades is one way that OEMs make more money off of their machines. I am a bit amused that this is the reason you give for reconsidering Lenovo when Apple (the maker of your current machine) is notorious for doing this: [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/just-whats-so-special- abo...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/just-whats-so-special-about-apple- ram-to-justify-the-crazy-price/1095)

One good thing about ThinkPads is that most of them do not have their RAM soldered to their motherboards, so it is easy to buy your own RAM on NewEgg and then augment or replace the machine's original memory.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just did a comparison. A 16 GB upgrade with lenovo is $1,060 for DDR3 pc3 12800. With apple 16gb is 200 on the retina. Granted its soldered on. While I see your point, a priced out lenovo from the manufacturer to equal the specs i have right now is clost to 2.8k

<comment><USER4> Who cares? Buy the RAM separately. That's what you do when buying Lenovos. With Lenovos, you get minimal RAM, minimal hard drive, maximum screen resolution, and Ultimate-N wifi, and then upgrade RAM and HDD separately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most generic hardware will win over the least generic. That's because most hardware is supported except maybe edge cases.

But as far as I know, unless you go with some obscure distro, most things work.

There are often quirks about laptops going to sleep or hibernating, and sometimes integrated sound cards, but it's really hard to predict in advance, I found. You could look up each hardware pieces by brand and see how well they're supported on linux. Often you should find results in google by using the model number, the brand and 'linux'.

To sum up, based on my experience with debian's, slackware and openbsd, it will depend on the distro and the exoticism of your hardware.

HTH

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been using Centos 6 for primary when doing web related items, but would prefer something more user friendly with wider support. It seems to boil down to these choices right now: Centos, Ubuntu, or Mint. What have you been using?

<comment><USER6> Out of curiosity, why CentOS? The software in the repositories is antiquated. If you want RPM, just go for Fedora.

<comment><AUTHOR> All of our production servers run centos, and it makes it easier to just run the same system and use nx/nomachine for compat reasons. I have not had the chance to play with fedora yet though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have you seen System 76 _'s notebook? I don't use one, but it looks really nice._ <https://www.system76.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I already bought one to test and was incredibly disappointed. Given the SSD, I would have thought it to be super quick, but it is sub-par to my dell d630..really.

Also if I price it out, it equals a T530 or W lenovo with specs. I would buy ssd and ram externally from newegg

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Right now I'm using a Dell Inspiron(17R) and am very happy with the Ubuntu support. Everything "just worked", the only thing that I had to tinker was changing a text file to make sure the headphones work, other than that absolutely no problems.

I had an HP dv7 series machine before this and that was a great Ubuntu machine as well, although it required a little more tinkering. This series of laptops have major overheating issues though with temperatures going north of 100 degrees Celsius if you put it on a flat surface without a cooling pad.

<comment><USER9> It's crazy that in 2012, you still need to tinker a config file to make headphones (a feature used by virtually 100% of users) work under Linux.

<comment><USER10> Not really. Just a different mentality where an autodetect script or a GUI interface would be considered bloatware when you could simply edit a .conf file instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've had bad luck with video drivers for AMD and Nvidia cards on most distros, so I'd stick with Intel whenever possible.

<comment><USER12> Me too (with Nvidia, never had an ATI card). I had Thinkpad T510 with Nvidia and used it with two monitors plugged into docking station. Nvidia's proprietary driver is absolutely horrible when it comes to switching between laptop screen and monitors when docking/undocking. Open source driver for nvidia is marginally better in this regard, but is incomplete and unstable and not really an option. Now I have T520 with Intel graphics, and it works very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Get ready for Project Sputnik: [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2012/07/dell-l...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2012/07/dell-launching-sputnik-the-ubuntu-developer-laptop-this- year/)

</comment><comment><USER14> www.usesthis.com has a nice format that answers this sort of question. Ex: <http://lou.montulli.usesthis.com/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Thinkpad W530. 32GB RAM! Intel SSD + 750GB HDD.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a marketplace for small working businesses? - <AUTHOR> I just realized I'm good ad getting ideas and bringing them to profitable but horrible at scaling them. For instance: - I started an online apartment reservation website in 2001 only to keep it small and to be destroyed when Airbnb came along. - I tried to build a co-living before there were enough digital nomads. - I was a travel coach before the word even existed (I taught people to travel independently in Bali).
But I never made these things big.
I'm Italian and we have this "keep it small and pass it to your son" attitude. Think espresso bar and Starbucks, or pizza and Pizza Hut. Honestly, I don't think I can, or should change, this attitude. That's what I do best.
So the question is: How to sell a small but profitable running business with a lot of growth potential to someone who has the drive and capabilities to make it big?
I couldn't find a marketplace, so maybe here's another idea for a startup. <comment><USER2> FEI: [https://feinternational.com/](https://feinternational.com/) ([https://feinternational.com/blog/saas-metrics-how-to- value-s...](https://feinternational.com/blog/saas-metrics-how-to-value-saas- business/))

</comment><comment><USER3> Try flippa.com -- seems to fill exactly the role you're looking for.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks, I checked them out and they seem to be interesting</comment>


Rework: The new business book from 37signals - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/rework/ <comment><USER2> I wish I could market a _product_ as well as these guys can market a part-time book project.

<comment><USER3> You just need to turn your "security for Startups" presentation into a nice set of 20 separate blog posts over the course of three months. Don't blog about your products; blog about your expertise and let people find your products. (There's a reason they keep a separate product blog to SvN.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jason is going to do a live audience interview about it on Mixergy soon. Hit me up if you have idea for how I can make the program more useful for you.

<comment><USER5> Try and get some interesting numbers out of him :-)

<comment><USER6> If there's anyone that can pull some numbers out of Jason, I think it's Andrew. Look forward to the interview on Mixergy!

<comment><USER4> Thanks guys. Last time he came to Mixergy he gave some numbers, but not as many as I tried to get.

This time, I'll work a little harder to convince him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Comes with its own scratch & sniff axe body spray cover.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if the black background on their book's icon at the bottom is supposed to be there or not. Since it's a PNG and everything else has a transparent background I am guessing it is a mistake. Silly little detail..I know...but I am a designer so this stuff jumps out at me. I can't wait to read the book though.

<http://37signals.com/images/icon-crumple.png>

<comment><USER9> What's the problem you see? Looks fine to me.

<comment><USER10> The background of the icon is #000 but the footer background is slightly >#000, something like #111 or #222.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting they decided to take the route of going through a publisher instead of the self-publish route as they did the first time around.

<comment><USER12> Possible reason: They didn't want to deal with publishers insisting they're "unproven" with their first book; better to do it on your own if you're sure about your fan base etc. Now, they have proven success and can demand much better terms.

<comment><USER13> There's also the alternate argument of doing it yourself the first time just to help build your community, then once you've pushed that as far as it can go, use mainstream media to help push you to the next level, since they have connections you likely can't get in any sane amount of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What do they mean by "pick a fight"?

<comment><USER15> They mean drawing inspiration from the competition by taking a strong stance about what they're doing wrong; make their approach your enemy: <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Have_an_Enemy.php></comment></comment>


The 5 Best Arguments Against Remote Working (and How to Overcome Them) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@PukkaTeam/the-5-best-arguments-against-remote-working-and-how-to-overcome-them-83b13c800d8d <comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure: I'm the lead developer on PukkaTeam. I also helped edit this article.</comment>


Uber employee arrested in Amsterdam - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.at5.nl%2Fartikelen%2F141769%2Fuber-medewerker-gearresteerd&edit-text=&act=url

<comment><AUTHOR> Transport Inspection arrested an Uber employee in Amsterdam for not coorporating with providing the Inspecting documents Uber says are classified and helping competitors. Currently being detained. This after a raid in the Uber offices by the inspection last week.</comment>


[erlang-questions] erlang for programming a text editor - <AUTHOR> http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2009-November/047298.html <comment><USER2> > text is stored in lists and list processing is blindingly fast

Except just parsing and discarding space-formatted file in Erlang is slower than parsing the file, reconstructing the (simple) structure in memory, and storing it in BerkeleyDB in Perl. Hard to call it "blindingly fast".</comment>


How Insects Breathe - <AUTHOR> http://noticing.co/how-insects-breathe/ <comment><USER2> One reason insects breath differently than we do is that the surface to volume ratio between us is so different. Naturally, volume increases as the cube of the linear dimensions of the organism and the surface area only increases as the square of the dimension. This means that the ratio S/V is directly proportional to the size of the organism. A mouse has a much lower terminal velocity when falling than a human, for example, because they have a higher surface to weight ratio (weight of course is related to volume). Insects are so small that breathing doesn't require the mechanisms that we require because their S/V ratio is so so much larger. On the other hand, desiccation is a much greater problem for insects as is surface tension when wet. For these reasons, insects often have waxy coatings or other means of protecting themselves from drying out or being trapped in by a water drop, but an ant doesn't have to worry about falling out of a tree.

<comment><USER3> Surface/volume ratios are responsible for a lot of other things in nature, like the size/metabolism of mammals compared to the mean temperature of their habitat. (Eg, even within the same species, larger specimens are typically from colder climates)

EDIT: go figure, they have a related article: [http://noticing.co/on-size-and- metabolism/](http://noticing.co/on-size-and-metabolism/)

<comment><USER4> Yup, we also have another post that's specifically about the idea you describe: [http://noticing.co/on-size-and-warmth/](http://noticing.co/on-size- and-warmth/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi, I'm one of the authors of the piece. Thanks for voting us up here. Hope you like what we're doing, and let us know what you think. If you're looking to read more of our posts, you can follow the blog on twitter @noticingblog (or on RSS). Cheers.

<comment><USER5> Your website is extremely well done.

1\. Great typography. 2\. Useful illustrations and 3\. A great single column layout, which is easy on the eyes. 4\. No annoying popups asking me to subscribe to mailing list. 5\. Loads super fast.

And to top it all, the actual content is amazing. I am subscribed!

<comment><USER6> * your persistent banner is thoughtless

* AdBlock : noticing.co##HEADER.site-header

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you enjoyed this, you will probably also like J.B.S Haldane's essay, "On Being the Right Size": [http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right- size.html](http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> So, are the conclusions based on science? Not speculation or correlation re: size of insects and oxygen density. 35% oxygen to 21% doesn't seem to account for a millipede going from 8 feet to 15in.

<comment><USER9> The oxygen level is only a single factor here, there are probably many more that influenced the size.

<comment><USER10> There's compelling evidence for a causal link. Hundreds of millions of years ago the atmosphere was much more oxygen-rich than it is today. Insects were also far bigger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I enjoyed the piece. It felt like reading an episode of RadioLab.

</comment><comment><USER12> I guess this explains why you don't need to buy expensive and dangerous wasp spray. A squirt bottle with a thick mixture of soap will kill them in seconds by cutting off their ability to breath.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wish at least beginning science and math books had been written like this :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Given that there are various ways to breath, I wonder if an artificial means might ever be substantially more efficient than natural lungs?

</comment><comment><USER15> Nicely done. I would love to see such a schematic for fish too.

<comment><USER16> The circulatory systems of different creatures would be neat to see. Frogs have a weird, sponge-like heart, for example, and plenty of little critters have their entire bodies filled with "blood."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh my god that header is huge

<comment><USER18> I agree; it didn't work well on a half-small browser window. Either make it even smaller and the header goes away automatically, or open the JavaScript console and run

        jQuery('.site-header__wrapper').hide()

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interestingly, humans breathe in a second way not mentioned in the article. The eye's cornea actually receives its oxygen directly, through the process of diffusion. [https://www.quora.com/Do-our-eyes- breathe](https://www.quora.com/Do-our-eyes-breathe)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is incredibly well done. Kudos to the author for the attention to detail and the informative read!

</comment><comment><USER21> What would happen if you bred insects in a 50% oxygen environment?

</comment><comment><USER22> What a great article!

</comment><comment><USER23> all the smugness of RadioLab mixed with the talking-down-to-ness of VOX. Thanks, #content internet!

<comment><USER24> > [...] smugness [...] talking-down-to-ness

I read the entire thing and I didn't get the impression of either. In fact it even said they didn't know for sure how the passive system works but that this is one theory and then explain it.

Seemed like a good read overall and I didn't feel talked down to or anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is for children, right? All of this stuff is taught in school.</comment>


Tsipras Signals Greece May Accept Bailout Terms - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/02/business/international/greece-bailout-tsipras.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

<comment><USER2> I'm currently in Europe and following closely the coverage. It's unbelievable how this greek government ruins the whole country. They seem to take the piss out of the EU and Mr. Juncker. Only few can understand Juncker's patience. Tsipras and Varoufakis seem to play communist comedy. But as always with communism, it's ending as tragedy. In the end the greek people will suffer a lot. No medicine, no goods, no toursists. The long term consequences a severe. That's a shame. Europe and the financial markets are much less affected by a so called Grexit than Tsipras assumes.

<comment><USER3> If Greece bankrupts, vacation will be really cheap so many people will travel there because Greece is nice country so tourists destinations will recover fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bloomberg terminal headline, 10:46: Greece's Tsipras calls for a 'No' Vote in July 5 Referendum

10:47 "Merkel says no new situation; Greece must hold referendum first"

10:48 "Renzi says decision for Greek people to make"

</comment><comment><USER5> > _with small modifications to some of the central points of contention on > issues like pension cuts and tax increases_

It was always about small modifications: I retirement a few years latter, cut 200M euro on military budget... I think at this point he is just trying to keep door open, if referendum say yes to euro.

Another problem is accounting in Greece. Statistics from last few months from Greece are not that reliable. It might be hard to verify in near future, how Greece is actually implementing the reforms.</comment>


Google launches Y Combinator-like Umbono in South Africa - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.co.za/umbono

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll honestly say I'm not hugely familiar with YCombinator, but this project Google just announced in South Africa sounds quite similar. What do fellow hacker news readers think about this initiative? Would you apply?</comment>


Ruby on Rails with Interactors - <AUTHOR> http://guillecarlos.com/adding-business-value-with-interactors.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I understand the point of this. Am I just dense? Can someone explain in some detail?

To me this looks like a superfluous layer of indirection that causes you to have to manage your object method calls through an "interactor" instead of the object itself. That's just breaking the encapsulation pattern of OOP and I imagine this is nightmarish in terms of its impact on reusability of your code.

did I get it wrong or is this actually just a huge anti-pattern?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes methods don't fit neatly into a specific model object. They may cut across multiple model objects, or call out to external libraries for logging and metrics.

When this happens, you can either have model objects that know too much about their surrounding environment, or you can put the code somewhere else.

In Rails, that "somewhere else" is usually a controller. But that's messy because now your application's logic is spread between a controller and multiple model objects.

Interactors are a way to clean that up. It allows you to put _all_ of the code to accomplish a use case into one well-named place.

Good programming is about managing complexity. In practice, interactors have served us very well in managing complexity.

(Note: I work on the same code-base as the author of the article.)

<comment><USER2> do you find the Interactor pattern preferable to implementing a different re- use pattern for Controllers though? Why not use, for example, use Abstract Controllers and just include them as a Mixin to your Controllers.

e.g. CommentMixin would be an abstract controller class that is included in any controller that has an object that can be commented on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interactors are not always triggered by a user event. Many of our interactors are triggered by a scheduled job or some other system process that doesn't touch a controller.

Also, as the article describes, interactors are plain old ruby objects, so are straightforward to test. An Abstract Controller, being a Rails construct, would require you to jump through some Rails hoops to test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pedantic question here: Which of the classic Gang of Four patterns does interactors fall into? Mediator?

[http://geekswithblogs.net/subodhnpushpak/archive/2009/09/18/...](http://geekswithblogs.net/subodhnpushpak/archive/2009/09/18/the-23-gang- of-four-design-patterns-.-revisited.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER4> Once upon a time the Rails Brogrammers laughed at Java, where there was endless design pattern abuse and needless armchair architecture. Now the same has happened to Rails.

When you even think you might need to use Inter actors, it's time to roll onto a better and maybe newer platform, as it's downhill all way from now on.</comment>


Easy to use cloud backup with local file server? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there; friends of mine run a small business with a local Windows file server and were looking for a backup solution.
I was going to move them to a cloud storage solution, except that they also need to maintain local copies because (1) their internet connection is unreliable, and (2) some of their files are very large, and they need local access to work with them reasonably well.
Alternatives I've thought of:
- Dropbox for teams syncing folders on their local PCs -- ideal, but expensive
- Use a cloud backup service on their Windows file server -- works fine, but isn't exactly turn key. Plus, eventually the Windows machine will melt down and need to be rebuilt.
- Cobble together something on my own using a NAS, rsync, and some remote storage from S3 -- lots of effort, and someone would have to maintain and support it
Does anyone out there have an easy to use solution that lets you setup a local, multi-user file server, transparently backs it up in realtime, and comes with consumer/SMB level support? <comment><USER2> If you want to cobble something together, an old PC running Bacula and USB drives might even do the trick. Together with VChanger, you have can have a full backup plan in effect without much investment. Just remember to rotate the USB drives and store at least one of the full backups offsite (e.g., in a steel casette in the basement).

From there you can add cloud storage as another pool.

Just never forget to save your catalog, too. Full backups are always usable, even without a fully set up Bacula installation, but incremental/differential backups need a catalog.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've fallen in love with EaseUS Todo Backup Server, super simple backup software made to run on a windows server. You can back up to multiple locations including cloud, so you can back up to an external hard drive and to various cloud services in the same backup job.

I believe it's $199.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've heard good things about AeroFS (YC S10), which is sort of like Dropbox except it runs on your network of computers. It's a peer-to-peer filesystem.

</comment><comment><USER5> Crashplan? I helped a small business do it on the cheap, he keeps offsite storage at his house.

</comment><comment><USER6> For the realtime backup component use Acronis. For storage, Amazon AWS.

<comment><USER7> We just switch to Acronis, haven't had any issues. I have no clue with the storage provider is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How big are the "very large files"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Objectively, not that large :) ~100MB CAD drawings for instance.</comment></comment>


HN Announce: Meetup in Munich - <AUTHOR>

"We are proud to present..." the next HN Meetup in Munich. :-)
Based on the poll answers (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3670514), several emails, and comments with suggestions, we fixed the date, time, and location as follows:

  Date: 	15 Mar 2012 (Thu)
  Time: 	18:30 - open-ended
  Location:	Couch Club
  		Klenzestrasse 89
  		80469 Munich
  		http://www.couch-club.org/
 The HN crowd will have the bar to itself until 20:00 when it will be opened to the general public.
Skoobe (https://www.skoobe.de/) has generously agreed to underwrite the minimum cover.
That means 6m of free pizza for everyone.
If you are interested in giving a short talk, please leave a comment or mail me at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Hope to see you all next week! <comment><USER2> I've added it to Lanyrd's list of Hacker News meetups: <http://lanyrd.com/guides/hacker-news-meetups/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Wasn't aware of that one. Great, thx!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Excellent!

@HSO: Thanks a lot for putting that together!

@Skoobe, thanks a lot for the sponsoring! Btw, very cool idea your app! I'll give it a run later today :-) !

</comment><comment><USER4> Ich werde dort sein (that's my ration of poor Deutsch for the week)

</comment><comment><USER5> Great that it worked! I'll try every trick in the book to be there!

</comment><comment><USER6> Yeah! Looking forward to see you all there.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very cool, thanks for organising this. Will try to be there.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool, will be there.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anybody from Regensburg who wants to share a ride?

</comment><comment><USER10> A meeting on a thursday... x_X next time please make it a Friday or Saturday ;/

<comment><USER11> No, please don't. Those are reserved for different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> sounds good!</comment>


View facebook friend list (hidden or not hidden) - <AUTHOR> http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4726/view-facebook-friend-list-hidden-or-not-hidden

<comment><USER2> Found a way to break it:

Uncheck the "Public Search Results" box in your Search settings. It's pulling from info you make public by checking the box.

That said, that box DOES NOT imply it's making your entire friends list public. It seems to say that only what's on the preview page is visible, but that's entirely wrong.

<comment><USER3> But even people who have unchecked that box show up when I make the same request authenticated as a Facebook user.

<comment><USER2> So, you're authenticating yourself, and searching other non-publicly- searchable people's ID? Or you're authenticating, searching your own, and seeing people who don't list themselves as public? Or, you're seeing people who aren't public, but in your friends list, and you're publicly searchable?

If it's the first, then that's definitely a problem, as anyone can be a FB user. In that case, care to post the command somewhere? This should be made known, as it's definitely a privacy concern, and FB tends to do nothing unless threatened.

<comment><USER4> Ouch, it is the first option; if logged into facebook it seems you can see any old friends list (including ones you can't normally see). The "command" is just to go to the URL in the shell command in your authenticated browser (or to faff about with cookies if you want to use lynx/wget/curl).

FB also removed the option to completely opt out of their application API at the same time they messed this up. Not impressed.

<comment><USER2> Joy.

That does it, I'm off FB for good. Not for any real feelings of invasions of my privacy, it's just because they're careless and/or practically malicious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe this has to do with the privacy changes last month, which made it so that Friends Lists can no longer be hidden.

After an initial backlash, Facebook made it relatively easy to remove your friends list from public search results, but it sounds like it isn't actually blocking access to them — they're just harder to find.

From Facebook's blog post ( <http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=197943902130> ):

"In response to your feedback, we've improved the Friend List visibility option described below. Now when you uncheck the "Show my friends on my profile" option in the Friends box on your profile, your Friend List won't appear on your profile regardless of whether people are viewing it while logged into Facebook or logged out. This information is still publicly available, however, and can be accessed by applications. "

<comment><USER4> This is really dishonest of Facebook. Most people will have a reasonable (but incorrect) expectation that if a user can't see a friend list on their profile page then Facebook will stop that user from accessing that information. Why else would Facebook provide a tool that lets you see how your profile appears to other people?

Facebook should properly authenticate access to the URL given in the post, and reenable blocking all applications. That is, actually respect people's privacy, not just patch things up to superficially look like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oops. Rule #1 of client-server computing: _never_ trust the client. Kids these days have forgotten what we knew in the 90s.

<comment><USER7> To be fair, friend lists aren't considered very private on facebook.

<comment><USER8> Which didn't used to be true, and pretty much sucks if you're say, an Iranian dissident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thought experiment: If you had the full social graph, what would you build?

<comment><USER10> Restriction: you can't say a Facebook competitor/clone.

<comment><USER11> I'll build an Orkut clone then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think that's normal, there are no longer "hidden friend lists" since last update.</comment>


Unlimited fast and free web hosting service - <AUTHOR> http://ncomputers.org/hosting/free <comment><USER2> "Not found"

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks :D</comment></comment>


Attacking hardened Linux systems with kernel JIT spraying - <AUTHOR> http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2012/11/attacking-hardened-linux-systems-with.html <comment><USER2> Fun! If you're interested in Linux kernel security, you should read the whole post, rather than jumping to conclusions about what it means right now.

SMEP is a processor feature that will disallow execution of instructions from pages marked as belonging to userland when the CPU is executing in CPL0 (kernel mode). SMEP makes life annoying for memory corruption exploit authors because it prevents them from using the userland memory they already control to hold shellcode.

BPF is part of the network monitoring code in the Linux (and BSD) kernel; it's what tcpdump expressions compile down to. BPF is a trivial two-register VM that implements matching on packet fields to select which packets will be shuttled (at great expense) into userland for pcap programs to look at. Modern Linux kernels have BPF implementations that compile down to native code.

JIT-spraying is a technique Dion Blazakis invented (and my friend Chris Rohlf, formerly on the Matasano team, spent several years working with). It notices that systems implementing JITs often give attackers control over executable code, even though the system is being careful not to allow data to be treated as instructions. JIT-spray attacks give a victim JIT code that when compiled will help abet an exploit; it's "sprayed" because the attacker does this repeatedly in order to fill the victim's memory with malicious code to make it easier to jump to during an exploit.

The coolest trick in this post is how they've accomplished the "spraying"; because there's a limit on open files and only one BPF filter can be attached to one, they need a way around resource limits. So they use explicit file descriptor passing, which is an obscure Unix feature that allows unrelated processes to send and receive open files over Unix domain sockets using sendmsg(2). By sending sockets with malicious BPF code attached, the technique forces the kernel to keep those BPF filters resident, while allowing the exploit code to close its own copy, freeing up space for a new socket.

The point of this post isn't "OMG Linux is doomed"; it's that it's difficult to blunt memory corruption attacks with simple countermeasures. 15 years ago, researchers thought they'd killed memory corruption code execution off for good with stack cookies; the years that followed have been a story of new countermeasures introduced, hailed as a single bullet, bypassed by clever attacks, and then fit into a patchwork of defenses that have made exploits progressively harder, but not close to impossible, to build.

<comment><USER3> But at least hardware vendors (Intel in this case) are giving software (Linux) more tools to protect themselves. Unfortunately, just like with the great hardware security provided by IBM for the PS3, software bugs mitigate many of these hardware protections!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Luckily pax anticipated that attack when releasing the KERNEXEC patch and fixed it a while ago.

<comment><USER5> i remember reading something i guess in the grsec forums about it (by "paxteam" afair). i cannot find it right now, care to send a link? the only thing i found is this post[1], which gives a very nice introduction to smap/smep.

[1]: [https://forums.grsecurity.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046](https://forums.grsecurity.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3046)

<comment><USER4> As taken from spenders twitter, here are the relevant parts of the patch:

<http://grsecurity.net/~spender/jit_prot.diff>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hardly think that this exploits hardened Linux systems since the JIT it exploits it is currently disabled by default. Maybe it should be titled "Attacking softened Linux systems...".

<comment><USER7> I think you're missing the point. The kernel module he exploits is also something that no sane sysadmin would choose to load. The technique "JIT spraying" targets JITs, however the broader methodology is "finding places to put stuff in memory without the NX bit set", the JIT used here is just one example. A relatively simple example. There are other things that do this too.

It's much like a "hello world" tutorial. You choose simple goals, use simplified but demonstrative non core parts, and show the overall method/technique/code/whatever in an easily digestible manner.

Further, I think a bigger takeaway than even the technique here is the good use of many different parts, each innocuous on its own, but in combination a path to owning the system. Its a clever combination of side-effects and primary effects, but with goals never considered by the original authors.

<comment><USER6> That is fine take away and I agree with it and really your whole comment. Except for the missing the point part. The title was inflamatory, link-bait and mostly inaccurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can I just say that putting a JIT into a kernel is a really bad idea? That putting /any/ executable code in a trusted environment that isn't utterly static, cryptographically signed, and well armored, is just going to end badly, over and over again?

We have enough trouble with user-space code generation, and with return- oriented-programming. Actual code generation at the driver level seems utterly wrong.

<comment><USER9> _Actual code generation at the driver level seems utterly wrong._

"Utterly wrong" is a pretty black-and-white judgement. A JIT in the kernel has costs and benefits. You could as easily say that the ability to load modules dynamically into the kernel is "utterly wrong," since it opens up a code- injection vector that makes rootkits and other malware much easier to write. In some ways dynamically-loadable modules could be seen as even more risky than a JIT, because a JIT can only generate a subset of all possible machine code. It would be pretty hard to write a rootkit as a Berkeley Packet Filter program.

<comment><USER4> However, it wouldn't be impossible. I am quite sure (although I don't have a proof) that the BPF bytecode can be made turing complete, so an arbitrary program (maybe a rootkit, much more likely patches to a few kernel structures) could be implemented in it. Examples of things that are very unintendedly turing complete include HTML5 without JS(the clicky rule 110), ELF relocations (you can write a program to be interpreted by the loader in a few symbols and relocations without changing code, see elf-bf-tools on GitHub) and the Intel interrupt handling mechanism(unreleased, see talk at 29c3).

Furthermore, you don't need dynamically loadable modules in the kernel for kernel code injection, see [http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?id=7&issue=58](http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?id=7&issue=58)

<comment><USER9> elf-bf-tools is an impressive hack, thanks for the link! To add to your list, you might want to mention that simply _parsing_ C++ is turing-complete; see <http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/web-vs-c++.html#misfeature-3> . The short of it is that you have to perform full template instantiation in some cases just to parse code that uses those templates!

As to your point about /dev/kmem, to me that is just another argument against the idea of banning JITs from the kernel. There are already lots of vectors for getting attack payloads into the kernel; the JIT angle only helps an attack if you somehow can make the kernel jump to a specified address but don't have root.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think this just goes to illustrate that not only are non-self-synchronizing instruction sets bad for decoding, they're also bad for security. In point of fact you could use this method to execute one arbitrary instruction in a modern variable length instruction set like Thumb-2, but only one.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why was this only tested against grsec but not SELinux? Is there some reason that it's not interesting to test SELinux against this exploit??

<comment><USER4> SELinux does not aim to protect or harden the kernel. SELinux aims to enforce a more complicated(maybe expressive), MAC policy on the filesystem and a few related objects. The SELinux threat model is helpless against a kernel vulnerability because it does not address application security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> innuendo galore.</comment>