Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs - <AUTHOR> I use Linux and I have for nearly all of my teenage and adult life. I had a short foray into Solaris; ZFS was nice, and so were the raid tools. Otherwise I found it to be rather tedious.<p>Tell me, why would I ever want to use one of those BSDs over Linux of some sort? What's the allure? <comment><USER5> (Speaking as a FreeBSDer here -- I'll let NetBSD and OpenBSD folks cover those, since I don't follow them closely enough to offer accurate comments.)

1\. We don't let licenses get in the way of making good technical decisions. This means that, for example, we had no problem with importing DTrace and ZFS.

2\. We have more of an emphasis on doing things right. This often means that it takes longer before we acquire new features; but it means that once we acquire new features, they work and aren't likely to be removed or completely rewritten any time soon.

3\. We develop the kernel and userland in tandem. This allows new features in the kernel to be accessed from userland faster (usually immediately) whereas in Linux there will often be a significant lag time before your libc supports everything in your new kernel.

4\. We have stable development branches, and we're serious about them. Not "stable" in the linux kernel sense of "we think this won't crash" -- stable in the sense of APIs and ABIs, so that code you compile on FreeBSD 8.0 will work _without recompiling_ on FreeBSD 8.4 five years later.

5\. Our stable branches apply to the kernel, too. You can compile a kernel module for FreeBSD 8.0 and use it on later versions of FreeBSD 8.x, too -- linux, in contrast, has on occasion broken kernel ABI compatibility in _security_ patches. ("Gee, do I want to apply this security patch, or do I want to keep using the video card driver supplied by my vendor?")

6\. Personally I greatly prefer the FreeBSD ports tree over the linux equivalents, but that's just a matter of taste and what you're used to.

<comment><USER6> I've used FreeBSD for servers and my personal workstation for quite a few years. I love FreeBSD, and the thought of having to support a Linux variant is not a pleasant one. Not that I have a bone to pick with Linux, since I thought it was an excellent OS for the 10 or so years I used it before trying FreeBSD. But once I tried, and became accustomed to, FreeBSD, there was simply no turning back.

However, I take issue with your #1 bullet point above. If the FreeBSD camp truly was about the technical stuff, we wouldn't be stuck with a crusty, substandard version GCC in the base system.

For those not in the loop, the last GCC version with a GPLv2 license was 4.2.1 (from 20070719 according to "gcc -v" on my 8.1 machine). Due to not liking the GPLv3, the FreeBSD developers have stuck w/ this old GCC version, denying users the current set of optimizations and architecture support.

Sure, we _can_ use GCC from ports, but that's not officially supported for the base system or the ports tree. True, they're working on getting the clang LLVM front-end to be the official base system compiler, it'll be 5 to 10 years before it's as stable and usable as gcc is today.

But that is about my only gripe with FreeBSD, and as far as gripes go, it's a relatively minor one.

<comment><USER7> Yeah point #1 is odd. GNU/Linux doesn't let licenses get in the way of technical decisions. DTrace and ZFS aren't in Linux because Sun explicitly designed their licensed to be GPL-incompatible.

Where that isn't the case nobody is seeking to replace code due to license reasons. E.g. you don't see Linux people trying to replace X11 or Sendmail because of their licenses. But the BSD systems are actively trying to phase out GPL licensed code due to not liking the license.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. I always read BSD discussions and think "what a bunch of licensing fanbois". I guess since the OS and the license have the same name...

Anyway, here's why I support Linux and the GPL: the WRT54G. Linksys would have never released the source code for the router's kernel without being forced to. But when they did it, an amazing thing happened, third-party developers made their product one of the most popular wireless routers ever. With open source, everyone benefited -- users got better products, hackers had fun, an d Linksys made more money.

If Linux was BSD-licensed, the WRT54G would be a long-forgotten relic of the past.

<comment><USER9> Imagine if OpenSSH were GPL'd and every vendor who implemented it got sued for not releasing a few patch files specific to their product.

<comment><USER8> I'm imagining it. Posting a patch to your website is surely better than rewriting ssh from scratch or licensing SSH.com SSH. (Sure, BSD requires less effort on your part, but the community gets less in return. That's not good for the continued existence of the project.)

<comment><USER9> Complete secrecy is the typical modus operandi of companies. You'd probably be paying extra for SSL telnet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One nice thing about the BSDs is that their users don't get annoying things like this when they look for basic manual pages:

        The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create info documents
        instead.  The maintainer of tar  falls  into  this  category. This man
        page is neither complete, nor current, and was included in the Debian
        Linux packaging of tar entirely to reduce the frequency with which the
        lack of a man page gets reported as a bug in our defect tracking system.

        If you really want to understand tar, then you should run info and read
        the tar info pages, or use the info mode in emacs.

        Problems with this man page should be files as bugs against the Debian
        tar package, not submitted to the tar maintainers.

There is a fair amount of truth in the old joke that BSD is for people that love Unix, and Linux is for people that hate Microsoft. As the name says, GNU is not Unix, and that shows through in most Linux distributions.

<comment><USER7> That's a bit like complaining that when I use the BSDs they don't have documentation in Microsoft CHM format, or that they put stuff in /usr/local.

Different systems simply have different conventions, and GNU picked GNU Info over man pages. That bastard GNU tar(1) man page was created because Debian has a policy that everything must have a manpage.

I like Unix, but the GNU Info format solved some real issues with man. It has built-in index and cross-reference metadata, scales to the size of entire books (the FreeBSD manual would be a single info page), and is much easier to write. I much prefer reading info pages to man pages for that reason.

A lot of people seem to dislike GNU info because they confuse the GNU TexInfo / info format with the info(1) program. I'm not a big fan of the default reader (I use the Emacs one instead). But the TexInfo format can be exported to multiple formats and read by multiple programs. Here's the exported GNU Tar documentation for instance: <http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/index.html>

<comment><USER10> > Different systems simply have different conventions, and GNU picked GNU Info > over man pages.

Sure, but that's no reason to be hostile to man pages. Ideally you have a man page, which provides a standard quick reference for those how know the command, and then other documents (such is Info) for people who need more detailed information, complete manuals, etc.. In fact, that's how it was way back in the Seventh Edition days of Unix, with the UPM providing the in-depth documentation and the man pages providing the quick reference.

If the GNU people don't want to actually write the man pages, they could at least not stand in the way of those who would like to provide them. Here's another variant of the note from the GNU tar man page on some Linux systems:

        The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create info
        documents instead.  Unfortunately, the info document describing
        tar is licensed under the GFDL with invariant cover texts, which
        makes it impossible to include any text from that document in this
        man page.  Most of the text in this document was automatically
        extracted from the usage text in the source.  It may not completely
        describe all features of the program.

<comment><USER7> > Sure, but that's no reason to be hostile to man pages.

They're not being hostile to man pages. They just don't maintain them. They're no more hostile to man pages than FreeBSD is to info pages.

> Ideally you have a man page [...]

That doesn't sound very ideal. man pages and info pages are formatted differently and take a different approach to explaining things. Having both would mean that the maintainer of each package would need to expend effort on maintaining both.

As an example. Here's the FreeBSD strlen() manpage: [http://www.gsp.com/cgi- bin/man.cgi?section=3&topic=strle...](http://www.gsp.com/cgi- bin/man.cgi?section=3&topic=strlen)

And the equivalent section in the GNU libc manual: [http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/String- Len...](http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/String- Length.html#String-Length)

On FreeBSD I'd do `man 3 strlen' at the nearest terminal. On GNU I'd do `info libc' followed by `m string<TAB>' to find that node.

You can't easily turn that documentation into a man page. E.g. on FreeBSD you'd have one manual page for malloc(3), but in the libc manual the documentation for malloc and other allocation functions is part of an entire chapter on "Virtual Memory Allocation And Paging". You can't easily tear that out into a man page.

> They could at least not stand in the way of those who would like to provide > them.

Well, would the FreeBSD project stand in my way if I started sending them patches to duplicate their documentation in some new format like GNU info or perldoc? Probably yes.

Documentation isn't a one-off thing. It incurs a long-term maintenance cost. So it's best to pick one system and stick to it.

And really, it's not too much to ask that you just familiarize yourself with the conventions of the OS or system you're using. To stick to just ways of reading documentation I use man, info, perldoc, rdoc, phpdoc, javadoc, online tutorials etc. regularly.

<comment><USER10> But FreeBSD would not stand in your way if you wanted to take their documentation and incorporate it into whatever format documentation you wanted on your system. The GNU folks, on the other hand, will not allow people to take text from Info pages and incorporate it into BSD or Linux man pages.

<comment><USER7> Relly? When have they ever stood in someone's way if they wanted to do that? And was that GNU policy or just some lone grumpy maintainer?

<comment><USER10> At least for tar, the info docs are licensed under GFDL with invariant covers, which is not a free license, and so text from it cannot be incorporated in free works. There's an explanation at the Debian site of some of the problems with the license: <http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To add to what cperciva said, there's also the difference between the base system (/bin and /usr) and the ports subsystem (/usr/local). Most user space software is in /usr/local, which makes is convenient in that you could always solve nasty library/installation problems by removing /usr/local and starting from scratch.

The whole of userland and the kernel can also be built with a single command ("make world"). The code is often beautiful and easy to read (my alma mater taught a graduate OS Case Study class where the textbook was "Design and Implementation of FreeBSD" and assignments involved fixing bugs in the FreeBSD kernel) and you get a chance to play with some interesting things (DTrace and ZFS).

It really depends on what you're looking for. If you're going to deploy a production web app it may or may not be the best choice (I honestly don't see a big advantage). FreeBSD once used to be lauded for network performance and while it's still excellent, Linux has caught up. Depending on what you're doing e.g., a distributed storage or processing cluster, it may well be worse than Linux (but again, benchmark and stability test it yourself before taking my word for it).

If you're curious about operating systems (or are interesting in building your own custom OS without licensing issues e.g., what Juniper did with JunOS), it's perfect.

</comment><comment><USER12> I used to play the "what distro are we running this week" game. Most were too big, others too small. Some had great communities, but lacked a killer feature. Etc. etc.

Then I found FreeBSD. The learning curve was steeper, you had to know more about how things actually worked under the hood (a plus, in my book) and the system was elegantly clunky.

A cohesive whole -- more or less -- instead of endless re-packaging of the same things.

I do a minimum install, then build my system up from the ports system. (Ports is like apt-get, pacman, other package management systems. Compiling from source can be a bitch, but only for big things -- Emacs, X11, Firefox etc. but it allows unparalleled customization, or at least the option for it.) Installing binaries is also an option if you don't want to compile.

It has had every piece of software I've ever needed (minus <http://joey.kitenet.net/code/mr/>) already in ports.

I even recompiled my first kernel within three days of starting out (thanks to Absolute FreeBSD, by Michael W. Lucas), something that seemed a dark art on GNU/Linux.

I've had no stability problems in the last year or so, and I just upgraded from 8.0 to 8.1 smoothly. Everything important on my laptop is supported.

If I want shiny stuff like webcam, usb auto-mounting, all that, I reboot into Ubuntu. Not because FreeBSD can't (I'm mostly assuming), but because this is my dev box and I'm not supposed to be doing anything shiny or distracting on here, hehe.

In short, think of an older truck with a manual transmission -- it's dependable, gets you there and back with minimum of frills and you can tinker rather than a new SUV with bells and whistles. While FreeBSD is more angled towards servers, I love it as a desktop OS -- at least for coding and light web browsing.

And it's a single community, without the balkanization of GNU/Linux.

<comment><USER13> really usb auto-mounting is _shiny_? that shit should just work.

<comment><USER12> Well, I meant in terms of "plug it in and it appears on your desktop". When I'm coding, I don't _have_ a desktop, nor any wish for one. All I do on this box -- by design -- is code and spend too much time on e-mail/HN/reddit/etc.

If I need to work with a digital camera or a flash drive, I just reboot into Ubuntu and do it quickly there. FreeBSD is strictly for work (in theory).

I've only mounted stuff under FreeBSD maybe once in the past year or two, so it isn't even on the list for me.

So, from my point of view as a software developer who lives in Firefox and Emacs, it's shiny. Others differ. But for me, it's not required, at all.

<comment><USER14> > When I'm coding, I don't have a desktop, nor any wish for one.

How do you read docs without a web browser?

<comment><USER15> He probably means he's using a simple window manager (twm, fvwm, etc) instead of the fancy everything-managers that include desktop functionality.

X alone doesn't provide that -- think back to Windows 3.1 days. You had a background, but not a desktop.

<comment><USER14> I figured something like that. I generally avoid using the term 'Window Manager' because none of twm, fvwm, blackbox, enlightenment, etc. only provide window management - there's almost always some included app launcher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used FreeBSD and OpenBSD for a while, and what drove me back to GNU/Linux was package management. OpenBSD was OK at it even if it had a limited selection, but I never had much luck with FreeBSD ports. Having a nice, stable base system wasn't very useful when ports were always being updated to the latest version; if I wanted a security fix, I had to take all the feature changes and new bugs, too. I tried a bunch of different port upgrading scripts but they always seemed to miss something. And upgrading ports took a long time; I want to be using my computer, not having my work interrupted by compiling in the background and occasional troubleshooting.

I have high hopes for Debian GNU/kFreeBSD - the FreeBSD kernel with the Debian package management.

<comment><USER17> Binary package management in FreeBSD isn't well-advertised, but it's definitely there:

      # portupgrade -rvP --batch foo-1.2.3

This will upgrade installed package foo and anything that depends on it using binary packages from the mirror site, falling back on a build from source.

Installing a new binary package:

      # portupgrade -vNP bar/baz

If you're using portaudit to stay on top of vulnerabilities (it's part of the default install these days), here's a nice way to upgrade everything:

      # portaudit -a | sed -ne 's/^Affected package: //p' | sort -u | \
         xargs portupgrade -rvP --batch

I'm like you, for some vulnerabilities I don't want to upgrade a ton of stuff. FreeBSD is perfect for this though, you can just pop into the port directory, "make extract," apply the patch, and "make reinstall." You can avoid full rebuilds by always passing "-W" to portupgrade whenever you install / upgrade stuff.

<comment><USER16> That example of how to upgrade for security fixes is much more complicated and less reliable than Debian's "apt-get upgrade".

For example, take a Firefox or PHP security vulnerability. Those projects generally don't just release a new version with the security fixes; they'll throw in whatever feature changes they've made along the way. I don't want to sort through the various changes and patches to find the right combination; trust me, it's no fun, I worked on the Debian security team for a while. It's important to me to get just the security fixes because I don't have time for a constant upgrade treadmill and there will be new bugs in with the new features.

I really want my operating system to just work and get out of the way. If I didn't need any packages from ports, I think FreeBSD would fit that bill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Die hard OpenBSD fan. ( <http://www.flickr.com/photos/kc-bike/2894306940/> )

The primary functional differences are a more mature code base (I didn't say more technically advanced or superior) and in general a unified system. What most people have come to know as "Linux" or "GNU/Linux" is a kernel mashed together with the GNU userland. And most distributions then further pile things onto it, kind of assuming they know what kinds of things the end-user will want to do, and picking a few applications that will help the end-user accomplish those tasks. Maybe it's Gnome, OpenOffice, Firefox and Pidgin.

The BSDs provide a system. The kernel and userland are maintained and enhanced by the same group of people. There's a bit more control in what's provided in the base system.

After installing Free/Net/OpenBSD Users are generally left with a text-mode login console where a small subset of non-BSD-based things are installed but often not active. X.Org may be ready to go, as may Apache, lynx and some others. In the case of OpenBSD, these tools are often patched considerably before packaged with the base OS.

Want something other than twm for your Window Manager? Want a graphical web browser? An office productivity suite? You can install them easily via binary packages, or use the ports system.

If you've used Gentoo or Arch Linux, you will probably find that the ports system (/usr/ports/* if you installed it) is familiar.

I use OpenBSD quite a bit, even on the desktop. It's fast, free, and very robust. It's also probably the most strictly audited operating system code base in existence. Those guys (like me) are pedantic when it comes to security.

I highly suggest you fire up one of them (OpenBSD or FreeBSD, I'd suggest) in a VM and give it a shot. VirtualBox is free. NetBSD is primarily geared toward maximum portability between hardware platforms. I personally think that's the only thing it's got over OpenBSD.

I used to be a FreeBSD fan before 5.x. The team had a really rough time after Jordan left for Apple. I became disenchanted and haven't really given it the time of day for almost a decade now. It's probably a fine OS.

<comment><USER19> If you want a desktop-oriented BSD "to try" I recommend PC-BSD. It's a very painless install and the whole distribution is geared towards a fairly non- technical user.

<comment><USER18> This guy sounds plenty technical, though. Also, PC-BSD starts losing the point of the unified system and kernel. It's essentially a FreeBSD fork with more GNU stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've used FreeBSD continuously (as a server, no GUI) since 1995, with some Linux use here and there, and I find myself leaning toward Linux lately, mainly because Ubuntu has done a lot of great work recently to support Amazon EC2. FreeBSD has fallen behind on Amazon EC2 support for some reason.

I was initially attracted to FreeBSD because I had first learned Unix on a BSD system in the late 80s, and the more restrictive licensing terms of Linux made it difficult for my company to use it.

So unless you have a specific need like ZFS or liberal licensing terms, I can't think of a reason for a long-time user of Linux to switch to FreeBSD. Similarly, unless you have a specific need like Amazon EC2, I can't think of a compelling reason for a long-time FreeBSD user to switch to Linux. Both are good, solid systems with some minor individual strengths and weaknesses.

<comment><USER21> I think FreeBSD boxes are generally used as perimeter boxes by most sys admins because of their reliability, therefore compatibility with virtualized environments is not a priority.

<comment><USER22> We once had some sort of explosion regarding mail-servers at a company I worked for. I have no idea, what the actual problem was, other than too much incoming mail combined with some settings goof. The mail server software ended up eating memory and cpu cycles like crazy. This was on a FreeBSD box. I remember the sysadmin saying "You know, linux would have just OOM-killed it at this point, but its a BSD box so it's doing the right damn thing". Ever since then I've carried around this idea that BSD is stable to a fault :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a Linux user, OpenBSD feels to me like using my father's old tools. They are old, have some funny practices, and aren't always pretty, but they are phenomenally functional, simple, fantastic at what they do, and when used properly virtually impossible to break.

Similarly, OpenBSD is sometimes trailing in features, and as a desktop with a pretty UI and all the most recent packages, it did very poorly. But as a server, IMHO it is fantastic.

To give you an idea of the beautiful simplicity; the OpenBSD install environment is... a kernel. You download a kernel that's a couple of megabytes, boot it as if it was any other kernel, it asks you for your install source, and then continues with other questions. That's it.

</comment><comment><USER24> They have a different development model which is not as Linus-centric.

The user-land and kernel ship together as a more tightly integrated package.

In terms of performance, I found that the linux kernel is often optimised for bandwidth at the expense of latency.

eg#1, When the system is under heavy memory pressure, Linux tends to grind to a halt and start killing processes randomly, where FreeBSD responds more gracefully.

eg #2, In highly-threaded environments (eg, 32 or more cores), Linux doesn't really work very well unless you pin processes to specific CPU cores. In fairness, BSD doesn't perform much better, but at least avoids pathological cases.

<comment><USER24> ps. I should add that I really don't use BSD much anymore. The reason is that ease of administration and wider driver support is more important to me than purity of development, and neatness of the user-land.

For that reason I'm using Ubuntu Server for many roles now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The BSDs always _feel_ beautiful to me. (I'm a mixed GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OSX user. ) The kernel configuration feels more simple and the official documentation feels uniform, informative, and almost always sufficient.

If more virtualized hosting providers offered BSDs (FreeBSD in particular) I would choose them over Ubuntu for servers.

<comment><USER26> I had the same dilemma when looking for virutal hosting-I ended up at rootbsd.net because running FreeBSD was important to me. Not as cheap/featureful as linode, but its good enough for rsync.net its good enough for me.

<comment><USER7> You can run FreeBSD on Linode as of FreeBSD 8.*. It can run in domU now.

<comment><USER27> is this true? hot damn, I am behind the times. do you know if it's the paravirtualized kernel? last I checked it wasn't particularly stable... but damn.

I don't see it in their 'distro manager' thing

<comment><USER26> I emailed them about it after 8 was released-they have a 'non supported install method' for OpenBSD that a forum member wrote. They told me it SHOULD work for FreeBSD, but they're currently not devoting any resources to figuring out how to make it go

<comment><USER27> huh. the paravirt OpenBSD stuff is pretty old and dead (Theo, uh, is obviously not a fan of virtualization) I'd be interested to hear if anyone has gotten FreeBSD running on linode or another paravirt xen host, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have been an OpenBSD and FreeBSD user, as well as minor contributor, since the mid-90s. All the answers here are good, and I would like to add:

* FreeBSD is on the cutting edge of performance. Because it is a total OS (as opposed to just a kernel), performance improvements are made and integrated into the binary packages and ports build options of common packages. FreeBSD was one of the first operating systems to implement kqueue, which is now available on OS X. This was part of the reason why for years FreeBSD dominated high-performance web serving. If you asked this question 5-10 years ago, the answer would simply be 'FreeBSD performs a lot better than Linux with web serving', but that is not as true today since Linux has caught up in the 2.6.x branch (with epoll). For more info see the classic: <http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html>

The good servers like nginx and varnish take advantage of these performance benefits that FreeBSD offers.

(there was a similar system here with the virtual memory manager, while the Linux kernel struggled with this issue ~01-02 FreeBSD was miles ahead). FreeBSD is the starting and development point for a lot of new technologies.

2\. Everything is done the BSD way, from directory layout to the rc.x startup system. It is the same and uniform and integrated with the kernel and doesn't vary across releases. There is a single reference handbook, and POSIX compliance. I have always preferred the BSD way of file system layout, and that is what I have become accustomed to. (ie. /usr/local/ really is usr local).

3\. The BSD's are a monolithic kernel (which Linux is today, mostly, if you choose to) which has performance implications. FreeBSD support kernel modules, but the monolithic approach is preferred. It is very easy to build your own custom kernel (I suggest you do for servers) and the defaults are include nothing and build what you need from there, which provides a very small, fast and optimized kernel image. Linux distributions tend to take a 'kitchen sink' approach, since they are aimed at people who don't want to compile and load a kernel module for device XYZ. FreeBSD places the onus on the user to know what they are doing - which forces you to understand the internals of the operating system and how it works. Linux usually has different distributions depending on the target, but FreeBSD is flexible enough to only have a single distro that can be customized from a 20MB install image through to a desktop system that will support your Chinese webcam when plugged in. It can do this without compromising on performance or bloat. I suggest you start FreeBSD with the minimal binary install plus the ports tree (the ISO is 50MB, install is about that).

4\. You can take this one 'distro' and way of doing things across a multitude of architectures.

5\. jemalloc - a virtual memory manager for parallel processing that outperforms Linux, see: <http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/7.0%20Preview.pdf>

6\. The GCC compiler and toolchain are steadily being replaced by the less bloated and much faster Clang/LLVM which are part of Xcode and BSD licensed. It allows much better IDE integration, is modular and a lot lot faster than GCC. Clang/LLVM are already at the point now where they can compile all of FreeBSD

7\. The TrustedBSD event auditing, ACL, stack protection, other security features and OpenBSM make FreeBSD orange book compliant in terms of security. OS X also has this (it is the same security model). This is important if you are in a corporate environment and need to stamp some certifications or meet compliance regulations with the systems you choose.

8\. Zen and VMWare virtualization support available in kernel. Virtualization support is very good in Linux, but the virtualization providers have been supporting FreeBSD for a while now, and have hired core team members to develop software. EC2 needs better support, but I am sure it is coming.

9\. Linux has abandoned the development branch approach (ie. 2.7.x) and instead trails along 2.6 releases with releases candidates. With FreeBSD you can be assured that STABLE is _stable_ and CURRENT is current. Releases are taken very seriously, as can be seen by FreeBSD 5 (one of the best OS releases every, IMO) took years to finalize. Point releases are binary and API compatible with .0 releases (ie. 5.5 binaries are guaranteed to run on 5.0)

10\. You have linux binary compatibility anyway, at near-zero cost.

11\. A more liberal license to use in commercial environments (ie. if you sell a firewall, or an embedded device, no need to release your own code - <USER2> have done this spectacularly).

12\. ZFS (works)

13\. Excellent handbook that encompasses the entire operating system: <http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/>

14\. Average knowledge of a FreeBSD/OpenBSD community member is higher than Linux (personal experience) and since there is usually only one way of doing things, you will find consistant answers and advice on your questions or issues across the web.

15\. FreeBSD hasn't had a default install, STABLE security advisory in ~10 years.

In conclusion, if you like to know what is actually happening on your server or machine so that you can tweak, optimize and better understand performance and other issues, BSD will almost force you into understanding it. If you are running linux and just downloading and installing binary packages, you are simply unaware of what is happening on your system (no different to running Windows, really). BSD will teach you the old school UNIX way of doing things, is consistant throughout and through just using it it will teach you a lot more about your system and operating systems in general than Linux.

<comment><USER29> A reasonable summary, but one that demonstrates some misunderstandings of the Linux world. To deal with the issues point by point:

* FreeBSD has better performance than Linux? This is, as you almost concede, no longer true.

* Lack of kernel modules an advantage? Hardly. Linux loadable kernel modules produce no extra performance overhead, but make life a lot simpler for everyone. The only extra 'bloat' is having ~100MB of drivers of which you probably only need 10% or so. If this an issue for you (ie, you're running an embedded system) you can of course cut down the modules to only those required, or even compile into the kernel just as with FreeBSD.

* The GCC compiler and toolchain aren't optimal, and I fully expect a major Linux distribution to switch to Clang/LLVM in the not too distant future. If this is a success (and I expect it to be), I wouldn't be at all surprised to see most/all Linux distros switch. This isn't a Linux vs FreeBSD issue, this is GCC vs Clang/LLVM - a battle I believe Clang/LLVM will win.

* As far as I'm aware TrustedBSD offers no more features than SELinux, and the Linux ACL system, but maybe I'm showing my lack of BSD knowledge here.

* Xen and VMWare virtualization is there but not 100% in FreeBSD. They're rock solid on Linux, which also has KVM, a very viable alternative to the two.

* The development branch/stable kernel approach is irrelevant - people don't use Linux, they use a Linux distribution (OK, OK, a GNU/Linux disitribution :)). In most distributions point releases are binary and API compatible with .0 releases (RHEL 5.5 binaries are guaranteed to run on RHEL 5.0).

In conclusion, is FreeBSD good? Undoubtedly. Is it better than Linux? It's hard to make a case for that. It has less device support, less software support and a massively smaller user base.

FreeBSD is nice to tinker with, but it doesn't offer enough benefits to justify putting production software on it. It's great to learn about the old school UNIX way of doing things, but that's not what I want to be doing on a live server.

<comment><USER30> >The GCC compiler and toolchain aren't optimal, and I fully expect a major Linux distribution to switch to Clang/LLVM in the not too distant future.

Have you looked through the Linux kernel code? There is a _lot_ of gcc specific stuff in there. I don't think the Clang change will be as fast as you think.

<comment><USER31> The worst that can happen is porting GCC features over to a GPL-licensed Clang fork.

<comment><USER32> It could actually be quite bad - maintaining a large featureset like this in a fork would probably cause major problems. Fortunately GCC compatibility is listed as one of the official goals of Clang.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I work on both BSDs and Linux boxes and this fact struck me recently:

for i in /bin /usr/bin /usr/local/bin; do ls $i|wc -l; done

Linux: 124 2155 67

FreeBSD: 44 430 1067

On BSD, you clearly see which programs are essential for your system to be up & well, which are service additions and which are 3rd party stuff (yeah I missed sbin but you see the picture). On Linux there's a big bag of /usr/bin and a beginner can have no clue if some stuff is important or not.

And the sources. On BSD, sources of kernel all system programs are at your disposal in /usr/src and that's it; they represent a coherent view of what meat you have running. On Linux of course you can download the sources and most probably your distro will help you with obtaining the right version. But it isn't the same when you hit the problems, esp. on production. Well even without the need of fixing anything or tracking problems, the sources serve a great educational value with an immediate availability.

In general, the BSD approach seems to come from a longer experience of establishing best practices. I'd say the principle is the same with Linux and BSD, but the devil (pun intended) is in the details, and BSD details look as better engineered for many.

[edited for clarity]

<comment><USER34> That's a distro thing. A slackware or debian setup will not have much superfluous stuff installed.

<comment><USER33> The Linux numbers were actually taken from Debian. On both families of systems you can decide what to rule out and this is healthy thing to do. But, you know, there's still a difference in thinking. On BSD I'm sure what constitutes a core system and what belongs to the ports -- and that's what I was writing about, not the sum of programs installed but splitting them into sub- hierarchies in a sane way. Such distinction provides a subtle kind of hygiene which occasionally can be a savior. But yeah well it can be appreciated when you just use it for a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> My main reason for no longer running FreeBSD (which we used for quite a few years) is that since I've switched my desktop environment to Linux I got caught time and again by small differences between the servers running FreeBSD and my dev box. So I switched everything over to Debian or debian derived distros. Ubuntu notebook remix for the laptop, Kubuntu for the desktop and straight debian on the servers.

Other than that, my experience with FreeBSD is that it was absolutely rock solid and bullet proof, uptimes of many years with machines pumping out data at a pretty decent clip for the time we're talking about.

*BSD is not always as fast with supporting the latest hardware or adding a new feature or technology but what's done stays done. Linux tends to yoyo for a bit before settling.

</comment><comment><USER36> reading this [[http://www.over- yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4lin...](http://www.over- yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php)] might give you a good understanding of *BSDs -- written specifically for linux users ;)

</comment><comment><USER37> I've been using FreeBSD since the 8.1 release a few weeks back and as my first *BSD experience it is fantastic.

The only thing which will keep me from committing to it is the absence of a stable and/or official version of Google Chrome (the only freebsd versions of Chromium I've found have been very much alpha software).

I (like a lot of people I suppose) spend too much time in my browser to have this be a negotiable point.

I have been very much impressed by the cohesiveness of the platform (akin to what Ubuntu has achieved on the linux side) and the documentation is fantastic so if you're a FF user anyway, go for it.

<comment><USER38> I'm using the official port right now with no trouble: <http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=146302>

It's not in the tree yet due to some licensing problems that need to be sorted out. The newest shar file as of this writing is here: [http://chromium.hybridsource.org/chromium- stable-125.shar.tx...](http://chromium.hybridsource.org/chromium- stable-125.shar.txt)

<comment><USER37> Thank you, I'll check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I like OpenBSD the best of them all. The project has principles and they stick to them. It is simple and understandable and people like Stuart Henderson are very helpful with ports and new developers. It's a much smaller and friendly project than you may believe.

Theo and Ted and Marco and OGA and all the other devs are great and they are all very open about everything they do. I only have one majpr concern with OpenBSD:

* Multiple CPUs/Cores

With the lateral move by Intel and AMD to more and more cores rather than more hertz the future of CPU processing seems very clear. The problem is that OpenBSD has primitive SMP support, and is nowhere near FreeBSD or Linux. It's hard to find single core servers these days and in a few years, 12 or 16 cores will probably be entry level and 48 to 64 will be common... maybe more.

In short, I hope OpenBSD can keep up with multiple CPUs/cores. Otherwise it will seem just wrong to load it on new servers.

If they do not keep up, I would still buy the CDs to support the project and its many side projects (OpenSSH, OpenBGP, OpenNTP, the new smtp system, etc.). Even if you, as a Unix user absolutely _hate_ OpenBSD for whatever reason, you should still buy the CDs to support OpenSSH.

</comment><comment><USER40> I have an impression that FreeBSD are being strongly supplanted by Linux in these days of virtualization. There were times where jails ruled the parties, but now these days are over and Linux has a number of great virtualization solutions like KVM or Xen while there is no much progress on jails.

Also, for some reason it's not very popular in enterprise despite of API and ABI stability, i.e. one could hardly find enterprise products like e.g. IBM WebSphere available on FreeBSD. One probably could use Linux ABI support but I'm not sure how reasonable that is.

I used to work at ISPs few years back and FreeBSD was very popular in this circles. At one place we had FreeBSD running on absolutely all servers and in other one we had only one RHEL box which was a requirement for some VoIP billing.

About two years ago I moved to a software development organization which is quite close to enterprise and virtualization and I've seen 'live' FreeBSD only once and the folks are going to migrate to Linux in the near future (I don't know what their reasons are though). And that's quite sad because I really like FreeBSD.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been using FreeBSD and Linux side by side for about 10 years. FreeBSD appeals strongly to the developer side of me: a typical install puts the complete kernel source code in /usr/src, includes a compiler and other build tools, section 3 man pages, and Makefiles for 20,000+ software packages (the ports system). On Debian-based systems at least, these are things I have to ask for later, and there always seems to be a bit more struggle involved in any given developer setup...it's almost like there's a velvet rope separating users from developers.

Maybe other developer-centric Linux distros have caught up in certain ways; I'm actually quite interested in hearing more about them. With FreeBSD though, the low barrier to development has always been there, and when you dig deeper, you'll start to feel like part of a great tradition.

<comment><USER41> I quite like Debian for development - when installing a new system there's a slew of packages I always add (eg "manpages-dev"), and after that it's plain sailing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Because it just works. Uptimes are counted in years. Low loads. Great memory management. Ports are compiled for your system from source pretty easily. It always seems able to stretch your hardware's potential. I'd never use it for a Desktop, but as a server, and a dev server especially, it rocks.

</comment><comment><USER43> If you are using an Apple Mac, then you are using BSD (with bits of Mach and a sprinkling of Apple fairy dust) !

I'm over simplifying, but with Linux or BSD it's really only about the kernel. They both use the same collection of GNU tools and open sourced programs like FireFox, Python, etc. Package management is more a distro issue, than a Linux vs. BSD issue.

If you want to customize your kernel for a specific server configuration, then one of the BSD's might be more optimal. However, if you just want something that works with most devices, especially notebooks, then Linux has a larger collection of drivers.

<comment><USER44> The apple statement is not true:

[http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2303.en.h...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2303.en.html) <http://vimeo.com/6955695>

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Here's to hoping cperciva comments.

<comment><USER5> Ask and ye shall receive. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The FreeBSD Portage System kept me there, until ubuntu did something similar, then the community got bigger and faster, then the portage feature + the community was better... so I stayed with ubuntu. Plus, FreeBSD is an ex- girlfriend type operating system now. Sure, you could go back and teach it... but... (I too used FreeBSD since the '90s, for whatever it's worth. Still love it, but cannot justify keeping it foremost. Besides, I use Mac OS X also, so yes, I still use FreeBSD)

<comment><USER41> Don't tell your current girlfriend that you still love your ex, though ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Put simply, it's more integrated and unified than most Linux distributions. Instead of packaging this thing from here, that thing from over there, and ramming in this new toy from that place there, everything in each release - tools, userland, ports, kernel - moves in lockstep. The result is an OS that's very consistent once you figure out how it does things, and rock solid stable. It takes a bit more tweaking to get, say, your compositing window manager running - but once you do, you can be guaranteed it will _keep_ running - <USER3> when you change or upgrade other things - with all the stupid consistency of a rotating planet unless you screw up and do something very bad. Also, in my experience, it's much more customizable than Linux. The kernel sources are included in the distribution, right there for the building, and the process of configuring and making your own kernel is fairly straightforward, even easy. Contrast with the closest thing I've seen on Linux, Gentoo - which is significantly more involved. That may seem like an obscure point, but if someone walked up to me and told me I needed to put a *nix on a server tomorrow and strip it down to get every last iota of performance out of that server, FreeBSD would be the first thing I reached for.

</comment><comment><USER48> I've been using OpenBSD for several years (since 3.4...wow, that's almost seven years), as my primary OS. I had been running Debian for 2~3 years, and Red Hat (briefly, ick) before that. A lot has been covered already, but:

1\. The BSDs feel significantly more _cohesive_ to me. Other people have mentioned this, but it deserves greater emphasis. The config files, man pages, etc. are quite a bit more consistent, and my first guess about where something is located is nearly always right. Red Hat, in particular, seemed to cavalierly scatter things in /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin, etc. (Around 7.0, IIRC.) The man pages & other docs are consistently _excellent_ , for everything from malloc to spamd, it's a cleanly and consistently designed system for learning Unix / system administration.

2\. OpenBSD has a focus on security. While this isn't my top priority, personally, I _really_ like its secondary effects - it tends towards minimalism, so there are less dusty corners to harbor exploitable bugs, and they pass security patches upstream. OpenBSD's malloc (<http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=malloc>) can also be configured for very aggressive scrutiny. Not quite the same as running everything under valgrind, but it has also much less overhead since it's better integrated. If you're working in C, it's a great platform.

3\. I can install and configure an OpenBSD system in under ten minutes, easy. Its installer is spartan and based on text prompts. Once you know what to expect, it's a snap. Also, they put all recognized drivers in the kernel (ostensibly since debugging weird custom-kernel issues would be tough with a smaller community) - if the dmesg doesn't say "... - not recognized" at boot, you're usually set. No rebuilding kernels or modules just to get things working. I haven't dealt with much _really_ weird hardware, but any random crappy old x86/amd stuff has worked fine. (Cheap old Thinkpads run BSD brilliantly, by the way. I'm typing this on a T41.)

4\. The BSDs have less GNU stuff in the userland. This is probably a matter of taste, but a lot of the GNU stuff seems really bloated by comparison - <USER4> vs. BSD make, gawk vs. awk, etc. (That said, I'm also an Emacs user. :) ) The BSDs also seem less political. It isn't Linux or GNU/Linux, it's just BSD.

5\. I really like source / ports-tree-based packaging. You can still use binary packages (especially if you're installing KDE, doing that from source is just silly), but ports+flavors works quite well. Some Linux distros (Arch and Gentoo) have similar packaging systems, now. Of course, some programs are hard to bootstrap - GHC, in particular, has lagged behind.

I've only used FreeBSD a bit here and there, but it also seems like an _extremely_ solid OS, and most of the same advantages apply. It doesn't have as much focus on security, but its community is much larger, and it's probably more newbie-friendly.

<comment><USER17> > 5\. I really like source / ports-tree-based packaging ... Some Linux distros > (Arch and Gentoo) have similar packaging systems, now.

FreeBSD user here. I've always been curious about the ports-tree-based packaging systems found in these Linux distros. Is anyone familiar enough with both to offer a comparison?

<comment><USER48> While I've done very little with Gentoo, Arch's packaging seemed to me like running OpenBSD's ports tree from cvs, but without the option of an updated- every-six-months super-stable milestone release. It's inherently a "bleeding- edge" distro, which is not necessarily true for OpenBSD. (I run OpenBSD from snapshots/source and update a few times a month, but I also maintain some ports.)

I've only experimented with Arch, though, and I'd also like to hear from others who know both well.

<comment><USER49> I have been an Arch user for about 6 months now. jumped the ship from Gentoo. Since I like to stay bleeding-edge, on Gentoo that meant often-broken packages that took a lot of time to fix. Arch has been very smooth till now, despite my using a lot of AUR packages.

<comment><USER50> Arch user here. The great thing with a rolling release is that when something breaks there is usually a lot of people trying to solve the exact same problem at the same time. I think I learn a lot in problem solving because of that since I switch to Arch! And now every bug is a fun thing that almost never last long, you must be quick if you want to be the first to write the patch who will solve it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> My first unix like system was FreeBSD. I then moved to Linux because it is more widely used and supported.

I still have a sweet spot though for FreeBSD. The main reason is that they have figured out the perfect balance of how much to include without being overwhelming. It is also a great learning system because FreeBSD forces you to understand all the pieces of *nix.

</comment><comment><USER50> I love OpenBSD's philosophy and documentation and enjoyed testing FreeBSD but I always return to Arch for my desktop and laptop and Debian for my servers. Except for two project that are on my todo list for years but never been completed: a router firewall using OpenBSD (with the wonderful PF) and a NTP server using FreeBSD and a GPS with time pulse signal.

I hope someday I will give them the time because I feel that I could have a lot of fun with that.

</comment><comment><USER52> Doesn't look like anyone's mentioned another unique feature of a BSD: every OpenBSD release comes on a CD with funky artwork, stickers, and an original song. See <http://openbsd.org/art1.html> and <http://openbsd.org/lyrics.html> for more.

</comment><comment><USER53> In my opinion, operationally speaking, there really isn't a lot of difference these days between Linux and BSD.

Personally, I like both OpenBSD and Arch Linux.

</comment><comment><USER54> and if it comes to HPC, the world tends to think it's a Linux box, while we still have this ( <http://people.freebsd.org/~brooks/papers/bsdcon2003/> )

<comment><USER55> That's 7 years old! I'm not sure it helped make your point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Plain and simple, FreeBSD is the horniest OS around.

</comment><comment><USER57> First of all, they only happen on Windows boxes and...

</comment><comment><USER58> I miss TechTV.

This question reminded me of this episode.

Pt. 1 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91igg2UX7o8>

Pt. 2 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU88fQkwfws>

</comment><comment><USER59> Wasn't BSD originally just another Linux fork?

I'm kidding.

The cathedral nature of BSD likely gives it a security edge.</comment>


Make users read before they vote - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hiremebecauseimsmart.com/post/2167716518/read-before-you-vote

<comment><USER2> "Somebody should have stopped me before I voted on something I knew nothing about."

Yes: yourself. Is that really so hard?

I'd like to think that we can manage at least that much responsibility on our own without it being forced on us through technical restraints.

<comment><USER3> But people won't stop themselves. From a user's point of view: yes, you should stop yourself, but that takes effort to remember to read the article first. From pg's point of view (as this argument goes): no matter how many times you ask, people will still vote without reading the article, so if you don't want people to do so, the website needs to prevent them from doing so.

Your argument could be made for many features, like "please don't downvote comments before you have 500 karma", or "rather than protect against SQL injection, I'll ask the users not to do so".

Besides, this could be a way to detect accounts that are votebots -- why would they click on the article unless they know that you're tracking it?

A downside to this change would be that sometimes I'll read an article somewhere else _first_ , and then see it here. I don't always re-open it before voting; I don't think this behavior is bad.

<comment><USER4> You can protect against SQL injection, but you can't _make_ anyone read the article. The best you could do is make them click the link first.

Just like you can't make anyone read a EULA before clicking "I agree". You can force them to scroll through it, but then you sometimes end up with the comical scroll-all-the-way-down button as well. (Can't remember where I've seen that, but it's more than once.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. But I think the extra level of annoyance is enough of a "sin warning". If I _really_ want to vote something up w/o reading, I'll sin.

But the annoyance of having 25 new tabs would dissuade me enough of the time to make the tweak worthwhile.

As for spammers -- you have to take a separate approach with them. What I'm targeting are not the malicious but the _careless_ rulebreakers.

(I didn't go into this level of detail in the article because I thought it would come up in comments.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use voting as a way to mark a story to be read later, so I'm guilty of upvoting before reading. I don't think there should be a mechanism to require a click-through, but I think a way to save a story to a "to be read" later queue would be nice.

Otherwise, upvoting is the quick way that I mark an article with an interesting headline for reading. Most articles with a well-written headline do deserve the upvote.

Although I wish there was a way to revoke an upvote if the headline misrepresented the article... maybe I don't have enough karma to revoke an upvote?

<comment><USER6> I started upvoting to book mark things as well when I discovered the "Saved Stories" section of my profile. Instapaper is a better solution to this though--<http://www.instapaper.com/>

<comment><USER7> How does one save a story? I don't see a "Save" link in the menu bar and it's not mentioned in the guidelines or faq.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad I didn't upvote before I read that.

</comment><comment><USER9> I voted for this before reading.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm voting for the discussion here.

Mechanisms are worth a try. Votes from people who haven't clicked the article should be weighted differently. Also worth trying is a timer after you click the article. If the user skims the article in 20 seconds, that vote should weigh less than a vote after several minutes.

Then see if weighing votes differently increases the quality of top stories.

<comment><USER11> The article linked above took me about 20 seconds to read...

I like the idea of a timer, but there's no way you can set a timer that will equate well to all the links submitted.

<comment><USER10> Yes and tweets have the same problem. A thorough fix would scrape the article and measure the length.

<comment><AUTHOR> > tweets have the same problem

Can you explain what you mean?

<comment><USER10> Sometimes tweets show up as top stories on HN. A tweet takes a few seconds to read and vote on. So the timer idea would not allow tweet stories to get to the top unless the timer knew the story was a tweet.

But most stories are not tweets and not short, so should take over a minute to read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What would be more useful IMHO would be a way to flag spam on the New page without needing to hit the 'discuss' link first. Most spam is glaringly obvious, but discuss-flag-back/close is a 3 step operation. I don't think this will be a problem for actual content except for the occasional big news events where everyone races to post 20 links to the same story.

</comment><comment><USER13> What is the font used for the headline? Reminds of the Vertigo poster font.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, it's Vertigo rendered via SiFR, in one of the standard tumblr styles.

Scroll to the bottom of the blog for credits.

PS I'm rubbish at CSS so the sidebar may not render correctly for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've banged my head against this User Generated Content ranking problem several times, and I keep getting back to there being some kind of trade: the user does something, then the site allows them to vote.

That "something" can be clicking through to the article, categorizing or tagging the article, or even betting or spending karma for the privilege to vote.

But site developers know that if they make the user do "something", then they will lose users. To which I ask: is it worth having a user who is going to knee-jerk vote?

I don't think so, but heck if I know anything about growing a huge site like HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> HN is piggybacking on YCombinator fame for its success.

I don't believe HN would lose users if it required you to click through before voting.

Also -- how come you can't take back an upvote?</comment></comment>


NPM adds `funding` support to package.json - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/npm/rfcs/blob/latest/accepted/0017-add-funding-support.md <comment><USER2> From RFC:

> Add notification at the end of output of package installation that > references the number of packages with funding defined

> ex. 23 packages are looking for funding. Run "npm fund" to find out more.

This strikes me as a good balance to between users and package authors. I think people would've accepted this level of notification in their console output from the start. Some pivoting occurred among strategies around the messaging. If this is where the dust settles, people will largely be okay with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. This is a good starting point to at least let users know that they can take action to provide funding to OSS if they wish.</comment></comment>


France Says Fight Against Messaging Encryption Needs Worldwide Initiative - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-internet-encryption-idUSKCN10M1KB <comment><USER2> I'm French and I can honestly say that we have the dumbest government the world has ever seen.</comment>


Offer HN: Free startup idea / designs - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
A while ago I tried to sell these designs, as well as the domain. That didn't go over so well. I've learned a lot since then, and my co-founder and I on this idea decided not to pursue it, because we wanted to pursue our other startup ideas. So far, we've both progressed greatly with them.
So what I'm offering is the domain name crowdtutor.com, as well as 4~ PSD's + any more that I can find. We probably also have some docs and sitemaps floating around. If multiple people are interested, I'll do my best to judge who to give them too, although ideas on how to work this out would be appreciated.
The designers were done by a VERY good startup designer, currently working at a YC and VC funded startup.
Designs:
- http://cl.ly/0N0r0a170k340c2c1i05 (Homepage)
- http://cl.ly/2E2a051A0Y1l223H1w1J (Dashboard)
- http://cl.ly/1L2T3k302r0E3H0H3J3F (Dashboard Teacher)
- http://cl.ly/1X1s342E3i1I0z442J19 (Tutor Teaching View)
- http://cl.ly/0M0g1H1l1C3P0x1f1q3x (Tutor viewing Student Whiteboards)
- http://cl.ly/0I352V3a0F0C2k3f2w1s (Student Whiteboard View)
Hope someone can find a home for these!
Edit: I would be happy to give these away free to someone I know who will actually develop. But I would be happy to sell it to someone too. A lot of money went into this. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

\- <http://cl.ly/0N0r0a170k340c2c1i05> (Homepage)

\- <http://cl.ly/2E2a051A0Y1l223H1w1J> (Dashboard)

\- <http://cl.ly/1L2T3k302r0E3H0H3J3F> (Dashboard Teacher)

\- <http://cl.ly/1X1s342E3i1I0z442J19> (Tutor Teaching View)

\- <http://cl.ly/0M0g1H1l1C3P0x1f1q3x> (Tutor viewing Student Whiteboards)

\- <http://cl.ly/0I352V3a0F0C2k3f2w1s> (Student Whiteboard View)

</comment><comment><USER2> A friend of mine was visiting his hometown over winter break. While he went to a nice private school, he also grew up in a pretty bad part of town, just about everyone else in his area went to these completely sub-par public schools. He tells me there are many problems (political and financial) with the teachers, and few kids are getting the instruction they need to pursue a higher standard of living than they were born into. The college we both go to has many low-income schools nearby and has put a lot of money into improving them, started some lab schools, and has many programs for students to volunteer at those schools. But like many other towns, there is no rich university nearby to help out with the schools in my friend's area. So when we got back from break, he asked me how feasible it would be to build a site very similar to crowdtutor, where the tutors are volunteering college students and the students are 6-12th graders who are dissatisfied with the education they are receiving. I think it would be awesome if whoever did build this (or something similar) offered options for tutors to teach free classes iff the students for their classes are lower-income students from schools that aren't meeting their needs. If it catches on, it could be great publicity too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to suggest that you consider creative commons licensing the designs with right of modification to multiple parties. There are locality-related aspects to tutoring, and success may depend on factors difficult to assess. I mentor startups in Singapore and there are multiple founders looking at this area. Why not let a bunch of people try out the templates and see what happens? Thank you for your very generous offer regardless, John Young alkimie.com

</comment><comment><USER4> My wife (a physics professor) and I have been considering doing a tutoring service just like this - there's an immense need for it. I'd love to do the development, but we were both at a loss as to how to find an initial set of tutors. Also, how does this differ from other tutoring services out there?

I'd definitely develop it. I just don't know diddly about (the social end of) running it. Anybody interested in that end of it? firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER4> And now I have an interested party willing to work on the social end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Our company (<http://udemy.com>) has been pursuing a similar vision for a while. Good luck with your next venture.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great designs. Was the whiteboard software ever developed or were you thinking of using some third party software for this?

Btw I run <http://www.UniversityTutor.com>

The whiteboard idea is attractive (Tutor.com has made a pretty large business out of this). I haven't seen it be very effective though, especially for math/science tutoring.

\- you can't write equations/diagrams nearly as fast/well with a mouse.

\- purchasing a tablet surface for every tutor AND student (similar to what Sal Khan uses) is usually cost prohibitive and a technical hurdle for some.

\- also, just simple stuff like looking at their textbook together can't be done well over the internet.

Btw didn't mean for this to come across as critical but was honestly curious what your ideas were around solving some things like that and taking on tutor.com? If you want to chat more I can be reached through the site on my profile.

<comment><USER7> Brian, your UniversityTutor site is impressive. Do you have any financial incentives for running the site, or what's your motivation? Why do you do it?

I've put a lot of thought into creating a similar site but for mentorships, in particular for the growing population of autodidacts, unsatisfied school students, and in general people unhappy with their education.

<comment><USER8> +1 Impressive site. Clean design sets this site apart as a great example in this nascent niche.

One constructive criticism: I would add some more space around the "Search" functionality. This area is a little cluttered at present (too close to the preview image on the right and the high level process text/images below) and my eye I think you would improve conversions by emphasising this section a little more (since performing a search should be the "call to action" for visitors).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a college student myself and it would be great to people with tight schedules and also a way to get yourself some specific classes quickly without the burden of signing up for long term academies, whom will charge you even if you don't find the classes useful afterwards!

Trial classes, user clustering to look out for specific classes... There's a lot of very neat stuff to be done.

</comment><comment><USER10> Excellent designs! I am working on a new start-up (completely unrelated to on- line tutoring) and we are knee deep in the design phase. We want to apply to YC for the summer 2011 session and hope to have a beta ready for the fall. I am a business guy and my friend is a developer...neither of us could do as good a job designing as you have. We don't need the tutorview pages, but your home page and dashboard pages are very nice and we could use them as a template for our site if you are willing to share the them? It would certainly help us save considerable time if we could leverage your photoshop, html and css files. Email me at ted at advsportsmedia dot com if you are willing to share these. If we end up using them, I am certainly open to throwing a few bucks your way in return for helping us get a better looking product out the door faster.

Thank you,

Ted

</comment><comment><USER11> Great UI / UX Looks like the money ... maybe another start-up who's main pain point is closely related would be interested crowdtutor good domain too ... would be interested in where all your work and effort goes ... flamechill AT gmail DOT com

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice concept & designs! I run a startup that makes software for other tutoring companies (<http://www.tutortrove.com>), including a whiteboard with a focus on math tools (inline equations, drag & drop graphing) and homework help (ability to import images and full documents).

I'm super-interested in these designs & maybe the domain and happy to share them with others if you go the CC route. Also just interested in talking with any edu-startups-- that's what gets me up every morning.

Good luck with whatever comes next & thanks! Eli (email@example.com)

</comment><comment><USER13> Really like the UI/UX work. Hope this gets picked up by someone who can develop the site. Looking at the designs I would hazard a guess the designer responsible is the guy who does the dailybooth designs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your guess was spot on!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For our startup <http://skyara.com>, we thought about pivoting in that direction... but we think online video lessons isn't as engaging as real life interactions even though it's easier to gain traction through virtual services.

It's definitely an interesting area though, would love to discuss more to see what went wrong with you guys. Email me if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hey, could you contact firstname.lastname@example.com please? This sounds very interesting :)

We were thinking of pursuing something similar.

<comment><USER7> I navigated to your smartlyedu site. Looks nice. What in particular is unique about your product though? There are a number of other sites that do the same things mentioned on your landing page ("create lessons, assignments & more").

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hi, my project is a language education portal with an element on social networking (something that resembles livemocha.com). The dashboard design you have is fantastic and we'd like to build on it. If you're willing to share it, contact me at arthur DOT ax AT gmail.com. Also curious to hear what went wrong.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think you should try to find someone here who has put some work into a tutoring service, and is clearly moving in a positive direction in tutoring like your project. Give it to them and help them get going on their ambition. Great designs and name, and I hope you find a home for it :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Want to make it viable & non-commercial? I can think of a killer game architecture for a venture like this. Folks interested should email me firstname.lastname@example.com Warning: it won't make you money, but it might just address social inequality.

</comment><comment><USER19> Hi,

I run www.dumeet.com, it supports a whiteboard and 6 live conferencing participants, We were planning to pivot to educational, your designs are real good, i would like to modify some parts and add other stuff, Can you email to firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER20> Hi, I am in the process of building a Ruby on Rails app involving a homework/studying for tests/quizes. It will have some social networky type parts. I would really benefit from these designs. Thanks. Email: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER21> great design work, who was the designer?

</comment><comment><USER22> I run <http://vidinotes.com> \- suitable for eLearners and the DIY crowd.

I like the interaction of your site. Its a very helpful function.

<comment><USER7> Cool. What's your motivation for running this site?

<comment><USER22> I created the site to solve a problem I had: needing cheatsheets of HOW-TO and exercise videos I found on youtube. I'm growing the site while considering monetization strategies and additional features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm running an eLearning startup and we would LOVE to include this as part of our release/continue to build upon this functionality. Can you contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com?

<comment><USER7> Eric, I'm interested in the eLearning space. Would you mind contacting me (or mind if I contact you) concerning what you guys are envisioning and what your motivation is for getting into the space?

<comment><USER23> Absolutely! Email me at email@example.com :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These are indeed very good designs, and it looks like a lot of thought has gone into the mockups (hopefully after a proper UX/UI thought phase).

Good luck on finding someone to continue it. I was just thinking that Mozilla's implementation of this same idea was proof that the idea has merit, and with as many "what's a good startup idea" posts as we see around here, there should be someone to pick it up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our focus was UI/UX. It took up a huge portion of our time. And yeah, I think this would be a great idea for someone to pursue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How do I learn to design a website like you?

</comment><comment><USER26> my friend started a similar site www.educator.com

<comment><USER7> Wow, best interface I've ever seen for a learning site. It's a great idea to be able to view the teacher in addition to their screen. Very impressive.

A few things bothered me though:

\- I just listened to part of a lecture that began with, "...my purpose for this course is for you to do well on homework and exams." Wait a second, I thought the purpose of a teacher was to assist in the learning process of a student? Statements like that inculcated into us are seriously damaging to us as human beings.

\- Some of the professors speak very slowly and aren't especially engaging/inspiring.

\- The site caters to our very broken system with a focus on AP courses and what not. I could see the financial benefits of such a method but that's about it.</comment></comment>


Linux user told he must use windows - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-admin-monitored-by-us-government-forced-to-dump-linux/

<comment><USER2> That's pretty crazy, but as one of the commenters said, he is a convicted criminal, that has repercussions. Could be a great opportunity for RedHat or Suse to sue the government on the basis of unfair competition though... :)</comment>


This is item 10,000,001. Here's to another 3088 (or) 3220 days - <AUTHOR> Hacker News
Officially launched February 19, 2007. 3088 days ago.
10,000,000 posts/comments in 3088 days.
1,165,680 posts/comments per year.
97,140 posts/comments per month.
22,668 posts/comments per week.
3,238 posts/comments per day.
135 posts/comments per hour.
These are all averages, obviously. Looking forward to all the crazy statistics and number crunching I'm sure some of you will manage to amaze us with.
Fun link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1
The very first post, which is posted 3220 days ago for some reason.
So numbers for 3220 days:
1,133,540 posts/comments per year.
93,168 posts/comments per month.
21,739 posts/comments per week.
3,106 posts/comments per day.
129 posts/comments per hour. <comment><USER2> 129 post/comments per hour

1000 0001 in binary = 129

It's a conspiracy!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 10,000,001...

Almost got 10M, but my title had 85 characters and the limit is 80.

<comment><USER3> Someone with the same idea, sorry for stealing the spot! :-)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10000000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10000000)

<comment><AUTHOR> Your post is dead for some reason.

Idea isn't worth anything without execution :P

<comment><USER3> Not dead at all, alive and kicking :)

> Idea isn't worth anything without execution

Well, funny to hear this from you :P

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://i.imgur.com/JXcaIWM.png](http://i.imgur.com/JXcaIWM.png)

<comment><USER3> Well, not sure who had to kill it and why. It still shows up in my FF for some reason, even after clearing the history.

<comment><USER4> The software killed it. A minute ago I got curious what item 10M was and saw that and unkilled it.

I think we can declare you both the co-champions of item 10,000,000.

<comment><USER3> Haha, great, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Title changed from "This is item # 10M. Here's to another 3088 (or) 3220 days" to be less misleading. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> modhax</comment>


The BitScoop platform is a radically simple way to work with any API - <AUTHOR> https://bitscoop.com <comment><AUTHOR> I love it. The BitScoop platform makes developers jobs radically simpler saving them time and money on development and maintenance.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth using an email client or the web-interface? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently using gmail's web client but I'm wondering if I would be better suited or have more options if I used native client on my macbook.<p>Any downsides to this? <comment><USER2> The benefit of using email client is that you get to keep copies of your emails and delete them from servers, so that when your Gmail account is hacked, you don't lose anything important.</comment>


Nomad – experiences and best practices at Trivago - <AUTHOR> https://tech.trivago.com/2019/01/25/nomad-our-experiences-and-best-practices/ <comment><AUTHOR> I thought that was interesting. They propose some novel patterns, like the dedicated cluster for data persistent workloads, and the use of standardised Makefile targets for operations.</comment>


Perpetual Window into Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/02/perpetual-window-into-gmail/

<comment><USER2> "Anil Dash counted 88 apps using his Google account, with nine granted access to Gmail." - I'm amazed he can sleep at night. While twitter and facebook aren't that bad, I wouldn't allow anyone to access my gmail account. Additionally I just checked the tokens list and removed 1 out of 3 apps authorised for google docs, because I don't use it any more. With the amount of security issues for web applications these days, you can safely assume that even if you trust the company, they're going to get hacked at some point in the future and copy/delete all information they have access to.

Again - even if "fortunately, Unroll.me is a totally legit NYC-based startup providing a useful service", that says nothing about their security practices. For all we know, someone already has access to their servers and they will never detect the breakin.

<comment><USER3> And really, 88 apps? I don't even use a single one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I proposed a solution to this problem a couple of years ago. Service providers could monitor how the OAuth token is used by the application and provide a report to users. If a few users could then audit their logs and rate applications, we would quickly flag malicious apps. Services providers would have to make only a few changes to their current OAuth implementations.

My colleagues and I developed this idea in a paper (see: [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5421...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5421609)). Back then we also had proof of concept running on our server.

</comment><comment><USER5> FTA: "If one's hacked or the list of tokens leaked, everyone who ever used that service risks exposing his complete Gmail archive."

Is that even true? The advantage of Oauth over the "password anti-pattern" is that you can grant limited rights. i.e. sharing my address book with Facebook. That's personal information, but it's not my entire email archive.

I believe this list is the scope of possible Oauth permissions: <http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/faq.html#AuthScopes>

It looks like granting access the Gmail Atom feed allows access to new Inbox emails (but not the entire email body, I think.) But if you haven't granted that permission, your emails should be safe. (I think. Any expert opinions?)

<comment><USER6> The Gmail OAuth system pretty much grants developers unfettered access to your inbox. I built a service called Syphir on top of it that literally examined _every_ email you receive, checked the subject/sender/body against some customer filters, and then acted on the email (starred, deleted, marked as read, delayed, pushed to your phone, etc). Google profiled our mobile app when they launched this service: [http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/03/oauth- access-to-imaps...](http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/03/oauth-access-to- imapsmtp-in-gmail.html)

There are two reasons they built this system: (1) So apps won't have to ask for your Google password. This password would give them access to much more than just Gmail. And if you wanted to revoke their access, you'd have to change your password, whereas with OAuth you can just flip a switch in your Google settings. (2) So apps won't have to do hacky stuff with curl to interact with Gmail. It's much easier to use an official API.

That said, if it's possible for an application to read/act on your email, it's possible for them to store your email. And if it's possible for them to store your email, it's possible for a hacker to hack it. So if you're going to use something based on Gmail OAuth, make sure you trust them and that they aren't actually _storing_ your data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It all comes down to trust and this author is right, he shouldn't trust these companies. If it isn't clear who they are and how they handle your data then you shouldn't trust them.

This highlights a growing problem I see with newly launched consumer oriented sites (many posted here on HN). Startups are ignoring legal and regulatory requirements around privacy and seem completely insensitive to customer's feelings in this area.

That is going to hurt them in the long run. They'll lose customers like this author. Things are moving fast with regard to privacy around the world. The FTC tagged both Google[1] and Facebook[2] last year for privacy violations. The EU is pushing forward with new, much tougher, regulations[3] and still week after week I see sites come out that don't even have a privacy policy[4].

[1][http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/privacy/2282000...](http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/privacy/228200049)

[2][http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/facebook-s...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/facebook- settles-ftc-privacy-complaint-agrees-to-ask-users-permission-for- changes/2011/11/29/gIQAqyJC9N_story.html)

[3][http://ec.europa.eu/justice/newsroom/data- protection/news/12...](http://ec.europa.eu/justice/newsroom/data- protection/news/120125_en.htm)

[4]<http://fandalism.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, unroll.me got a huge traffic influx from being linked in Wired, but when I follow the link it won't let me sign up due to not being on their beta list. It did offer a beta sign up link after that, but that page was broken. Even if it wasn't, having the extra step will destroy the conversion rates. The amount of sign ups they are losing is making me cry. There are startups that would kill for that kind of free, good press, link from a huge site...

<comment><USER9> They appear to have fixed it? When I click on sign up, it goes to the gmail oath page...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Your email is often used as the master key to all your other accounts. Especially if you have old signup or password reset emails hanging around, controlling it makes it easy for someone to control everything else.

So there's more than just privacy at stake here. I go to almost paranoid lengths to protect it from attacks known and unknown because once someone takes it, they can take over almost everything else.

Just something to think about.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been seeing a lot of adverts recently for Google security. This third- party authentication system for Gmail, as described, seems like a complete step in the wrong direction if they're trying to educate regular users about the importance of keeping email - one's online master key - secure. Lock you screen, use a 2 step password, oh, and this new startup with a nice website would like to read your entire email history: Allow/Deny?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAaSBvUD3_w>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ0TgHKDDkw>

</comment><comment><USER12> How do I check how many apps I've given authorization to for this kind of thing?

<comment><USER13> Under your 'Account settings', go to 'Authorizing applications & sites' in the first section (Security).

<comment><USER14> curious. i had "localhost" listed there. what does that mean? i revoked access and am still logged in to gmail.

(i know what localhost means, in that it is the name associated with 127.0.0.1, but how is it a "connected site, app or service"?)

<comment><USER15> Perhaps someone showed you a web app demo on their desktop or laptop (and said app was installed on the same machine) and you used Google to sign in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _It's so simple and pervasive that even savvy users have no issue letting dozens of new services access their various accounts._

No, that's patently false.

<comment><USER15> For certain values of savvy, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why do OAuth tokens invalidate upon password change? I have some apps that need feed posting access for Facebook pages and users are often confused when they stop working after they change their password.

<comment><USER18> Makes sense as a security feature. Changing your password implies your account's been compromised; killing OAuth authorizations is a way of making sure no one snuck in any authorizations without you noticing in the process.

<comment><USER19> _Changing your password implies your account's been compromised_

While it may be in response to a compromise, it's generally good security practice to change your password periodically.

<comment><USER20> 2-step verification has made that practice obsolete.

I've read that it's better to use 2-step in conjunction with a strong password that you'll remember, versus regularly migrating from one weak or medium strength password to another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What are the steps required by random service before they can start requesting access to Gmail? Is there any form of review before Google issues them an application key, etc?

</comment><comment><USER21> I think this is difficult to avoid as more apps authenticate logins though sites such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook.

You could always create a special GMail account that you use to sign up for spam generating offers or deals and use that to authenticate logins you're not sure about.

</comment><comment><USER22> <https://accounts.google.com/b/0/IssuedAuthSubTokens>

That's the link to list the apps that have access to your account, but for the life of me, I can't work out how to get there from any of the other settings pages...

 _EDIT_ it's second from the bottom, in the "Accounts and Import" (3rd across) <https://mail.google.com/mail/#settings/accounts>

It's a little scary that the authorization is all-or-nothing. Many sites use OAuth just for sign-in (like Stackoverflow), so surely it makes sense to have different levels of access (I was under the impression that fine-grained access control was the whole point of token-based OAuth).

</comment><comment><USER23> The title needs a s/Perpetial/Perpetual/, badly. Aargh.

</comment><comment><USER24> i'm not deeply familiar with OAuth, but it seems that each access token should have not just a revoke ability for the granter, but also a TTL/expiration date which can be altered or seen. i'm also not sure if there are more granular permissions or differentiating tokens, perhaps i want to share my contacts/address book but not my email, and only up to a max of 3 requests per month...

<comment><USER25> Or just to login with a service as that's probably most people's most prevalent reason to use oauth? I'm surprised that gmail don't have a permissions system like facebook, it concerns me that right now it's such an all or nothing option.

<comment><USER26> You can use OAuth with your Google account to login to other services without granting them any other permissions. The few apps I've granted access to have a single permission that says "Sign in using your Google account."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> On a related note, do you ever wonder how strong the passwords the authors of the Chrome extensions you use are?</comment>


How to delete large amounts of data from SQL Server - <AUTHOR> https://the.agilesql.club/2019/05/how-to-delete-a-lot-of-data-from-a-sql-server-database?h <comment><USER2> One thing I never understood is why it logs the data deleted? It obviously logged it on insert, it could just log the row ID's deleted.

They say its for rollback, but why wouldn't you just mark rows deleted during transaction, then actually delete them later in the background?

Anyone know if other database do this differently, I think Postgres doesn't log the full row on delete but haven't been able to find much on it.

This is always a big problem when I try and use SQL server to store things like logs where you want to retain them for a period of time then delete them. At high volumes the logging overhead becomes an issue especially in the back up system. Usually have to do a separate DB in simple mode or start doing partitioned tables with truncate, would be so nice not to have to think about it much.

<comment><USER3> Hi,

> They say its for rollback, but why wouldn't you just mark rows deleted > during transaction, then actually delete them later in the background?

> Anyone know if other database do this differently, I think Postgres doesn't > log the full row on delete but haven't been able to find much on it.

Yes, postgres doesn't do that. But that has substantial disadvantages too: It's why postgres then needs to VACUUM that relation later - to remove all the deleted and updated rows. Postgres cannot reuse space on the page with the deleted rows, even if the the transaction that performed the DELETE also would like to reuse the space (in some UNDO based systems the space won't be reusable if _another_ transaction wants to reclaim it, because there needs to be space for ROLLBACK to put the tuples back).

> This is always a big problem when I try and use SQL server to store things > like logs where you want to retain them for a period of time then delete > them. At high volumes the logging overhead becomes an issue especially in > the back up system. Usually have to do a separate DB in simple mode or start > doing partitioned tables with truncate, would be so nice not to have to > think about it much.

Using partitioning usually is the right approach for this kind of load, in postgres as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The thing about triggers being able to do anything, I have seen triggers make webservice calls - it was horrible and caused so many issues it was unbelievable</comment>


China paper warns Google may pay price for hacking claims - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/06/us-google-china-idUSTRE7550CV20110606

<comment><USER2> This is something I wonder about a lot.

It seems like it would be SO easy to carry out a false flag attack with computers. What stops a random malicious person from popping a few boxes in Country X and using them to base his attack? And if Country X was engaged in bad behavior, why wouldn't they take a similar step?

Now, if it's true that the attacks focused on human rights workers that gave China trouble, the claim is a bit more substantial, although it's not hard to imagine tacking those names onto your list to disguise what was really important in your unrelated attack.

However, attributing attacks to Anonymous really makes my head spin. By definition, Anonymous doesn't even exist as a group, it literally means anonymous in most contexts, yet the media report as if they're saying something other than 'unknown'.

Craziness, and as far as I see, details about the foundation of these claims are never released. How the hell does Google know the Chinese attackers weren't proxy boxes?!

<comment><USER3> I think we should keep in mind that the damage done to Google's business interests as a result of this conflict is massive. That's why I tend to think that the data they see leaves little room for other interpretations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting to see Chinese government (assuming this piece went through the usual vetting process of the propaganda dept) respond publicly to a companies blog.

I often wonder why Baidu does not receive as much press, as it has experienced astronomical growth, and is clearly a strong(er?) contender in terms of users.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure it does in China. There are other foreign mega-corps like this that you probably don't hear much about in the US, specially, Tencent comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Chinese government responds to all insults like a hurt child. I don't think truth matters as much in asia as does perception, or "face".

</comment><comment><USER7> If it's just a perception of the west why not tell the Chinese people about Tienanmen square? Perhaps then the Chinese people would have similar 'perceptions'

<comment><USER4> Most of the chinese people I have spoken with know most of the facts around Tienanmen square. It is the constant pro-communist propaganda that shapes their views. Just as constant pro-west propaganda shapes ours.

<comment><USER8> Tell me about some of this "pro-west propaganda".

<comment><USER4> News constantly portraying non-western countries as 3rd world, or axis of evil? Or terrorists? For no better reason than their interests do not align with various western countries.

Watch much of Fox News? Even if you don't, a lot of people do.

More obvious case: The reasons for going to war in Iraq were entirely agg- prop, that was later _proved_ to be false.

We "the west" don't have an explicit "Propaganda department" like communist countries generally do. But our media, and government still use propaganda to control peoples opinions.

<comment><USER9> > We "the west" don't have an explicit "Propaganda department" like communist > countries generally do. But our media, and government still use propaganda > to control peoples opinions.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Influence>

<comment><USER4> Wow, I stand corrected.

Not quite the same as China's Propaganda Department, which vetts all media (great firewall is under it's control).

Wow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps the Chinese government would like to explain why 99.9% of SSH attacks on my server (which has password auth disabled) come from China.

<comment><USER11> If you ever had a look at PCs in China, you would know why. You get copied Windows CDs for a few cents everywhere, no doubt pre-loaded with all sorts of virii and trojans. The botnets in China must be massive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess I can disclose this now...

I got a Google warning of my gmail being access from the Jinan province back in January with also a break-in of twitter account. Since my security changes no break-ins.

Despite China's denials the threat is real.

<comment><USER4> The Peoples daily article didn't deny the threat, it objected with the obvious implication google were making about the hacks originating from within the government.

Why did google choose to publicise the event at all? surely that only tells the attackers to find a new attack vector (rather than thinking there existing vector is still okay).

<comment><USER13> From the horses mouth: "we believe that being open about these security issues helps users better protect their information online."

The attacks relied on the victim's naivety and lack of knowledge. If you read the blog post [1], I think it's pretty clear that the purpose was to educate users on how to improve their security when using Google products.

[1] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/ensuring-your- informa...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/ensuring-your-information- is-safe.html)

<comment><USER4> You can educate, without expressing specific details of the attackers.

The usual practice is to warn of potential issues, not publicise a specific attack, and then say "beware!" -- In fact the article didn't even give the common advice of 'check url, https, etc' to avoid phishing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why so defensive, China?</comment>


The link between alt-right and pseudo-intellectualism of James Damore - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/13/james-damore-google-memo-youtube-white-men-radicalization <comment><AUTHOR> The open question for our community is how do we stop young techies from falling into the propaganda of alt-right which is also anti-women (eg. females cannot succeed in programming)?

Here is something for people to read who do not believe that alt-right/nazi is anti-women as well [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dissecting-trumps- most-...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dissecting-trumps-most-rabid- online-following/)</comment>