Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/julian-assange-why-i-founded-wikileaks-294283 <comment><USER2> This goes to some lengths to explain why Assange is willing to publish anything, no matter how damaging in the short term it may be to particular interests.

He doesn't want to be a curator or a decision maker about what information is or is not available. He is interested in solving the architectural problem of _removing_ the ability to having political interests or personal bias influence control what gets published. From his perspective, he is merely a cog in that system he's trying to create - an automaton who doesn't get to make decisions about the content of diplomatic cables, etc.

In this sense it's probably better to think of Assange as an engineer as opposed to a journalist, dissident or politician. It's just that this system he's been trying to create crosses those circles - when the system effects knowledge/power relations and to the degree his system is successful what's left to do is to effect Wikileaks.

Another note: I am in agreement with and happy that Assange recognizes that Wikileaks in a young and incomplete prototype. There are tons of operational questions left: Who gets Wikileaks when Assange passes away? How do you vet a new member? How do you prevent bribery? Isn't it a problem that there is any centralized control of Wikileaks to begin with? Countries have been successful in preventing journalists from partnering with Wikileaks - how does one secure that pipeline?

<comment><USER3> Nonsense. Assange goes to great lengths to spin his political agenda. For example the "Collateral Murder" video. He did not publish raw source material, he published his narrative:

[http://www.collateralmurder.com/](http://www.collateralmurder.com/)

He is no Snowden. Snowden was upfront and honest from the start about what he was trying to achieve.

I used to admire Assange, now Assange is caught up in his own myth and he seems desperate to keep that myth alive.

The world needs a WikiLeaks 3.0, one that looks like the original 1.0 (the actual wiki before the cable leaks). For those of you that forgot what it was originally:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080102184708/http://www.wikile...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080102184708/http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks)

<comment><USER4> There's a wonderful article[1] in London Review of Books in which Andrew O'Hagan, hired to be Assange's ghost writer, gradually becomes convinced - from a position of admiration - that Assange is a confused and vainglorious narcissist who has little interest in spreading information and far more in spreading the cult of Assange. It's long but utterly engrossing.

[1] [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew- ohagan/ghosting](http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting)

<comment><USER5> Frankly, I'm willing to enable the cult of Assange if it furthers the free spread of information. He's clearly a megalomaniac, but he provides a very useful bulls-eye for those governments wishing to oppress the free flow of information. While he is serving as the sacrificial pig of Wikileaks, the information is getting out and it's being publicized. Snowden did it without WL, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect all leakers to become info- martyrs like him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The parent article links to Assange's comments after meeting with Schmidt "Google is Not What it Seems" [1] which has some interesting discussion of the links between Google's senior level and politicians. Published yesterday, I don't recall seeing it linked.

[1] [http://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it- seems-279...](http://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279447)

<comment><USER7> [https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it- seems/](https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/)

<comment><USER8> The article makes many assertions of connections, without really backing up those assertions.

<comment><USER9> You don't have to depend on an article to provide evidence of a connection between Google's execs and the political leadership.

The fact that those execs were getting cheap gas for their private jets is more than enough for anybody to put 2 and 2 together and get the right result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Therefore the only playing field left is: what do they have and what do they know?_

This portrays people as something akin to a Markov process: if you know these two properties, you can make meaningful predictions about the future. Are people so memoryless? It strikes me that at a minimum, history, experience, and culture would all influence behavior and aren't so neatly stateful.

<comment> at-fates-hands >>> It strikes me that at a minimum, history, experience, and culture would all influence behavior and aren't so neatly stateful.

At least in the US, clearly history has taught us nothing. Our leaders continually make the same errors in regards to foreign policy, military intervention, and myriad of other things.

<comment><USER11> Those are not mistakes, they [the leaders] benefit directly from that.

<comment><USER12> This is spot on. The 'right' decisions are profit for a very small minority. Those same decisions are nearly always negative to the majority, especially in a global arena where Iraqi civilians for example don't have the chance to vote democrat or republican!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As I moved out of my teens (and after watching GoT) I learned that nothing often resembles to what is claimed and nothing can be painted in black and white.

Assange or Snowden are not really white knights. While Snowden did an heroic act without being biased towards any specific political ideology, Assange has made a good enough career by playing his cards with good political acumen as people have shown in the comments.

Honestly, I think Assange is just as bad as our politicians but in a way he brings some balance to an otherwise tightly controlled political narrative.

</comment><comment><USER14> Assange is a honeypot, please, PLEASE - everyone who is sitting on some documents worth sharing, either wait or use a different aproach

</comment><comment><USER15> Assange is an arsehole who's only interest is in publishing documents to damage short-term political interest without interest for morality, the safety of other human beings and the disregard for all things right.

<comment><USER16> While I wasn't 100% on board with the cable leaks, I do think disrupting political interests and forcing transparency in government is a good idea.

<comment><USER17> Maybe so, but when you take on a role associated with the media, you take on the responsibilities associated with being the media.

Assange wants it both ways: he wants to be a media-like outlet, but not have the moral responsibilities. It doesn't work that way.

Worse, by all accounts its mostly because he _knows_ it would be a lot of time and effort to safely disclose the types of things he did/advocates should be. There's a very great personal convenience for him to "believe" he's no responsibility to safely redact documents.</comment></comment></comment>


The Road to 2M Websocket Connections in Phoenix (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoenixframework.org/blog/the-road-to-2-million-websocket-connections <comment><USER2> Comments from last year when this was posted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10500488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10500488)

</comment><comment><USER3> Who is using Phoenix Framework in production?

<comment><USER4> Me. Feel free to ask me anything.

<comment><USER5> How good is the "dynamic but functional and immutable" nature of the language good at catching potential bugs?

<comment><USER2> The immutable nature helps with 1) reasoning locally (you can always understand exactly what happens in a function by reading the function itself) and 2) debugging. Additionally, dialyzer provides a very nice (optional) typing system for erlang / Elixir.

<comment><USER6> And with the new deprecation in 1.4 of bare words, a disambiguation goes away where when looking at a function you sometimes had to go "is this a variable or a function". Now functions with 0 args have parens, always.

I've found the locality of everything in the function that you mentioned helps IMMENSELY in refactoring. Just give a function a namespace and call it, and then figure out where it actually belongs later as you figure out your implementation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You should be able to do this by just expanding some sysctl limits on FreeBSD 10+. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TneLO5TdW_M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TneLO5TdW_M)

</comment><comment><USER8> Has there been any progress since then? The blog has been awfully quiet.

<comment><USER9> Yes! Phoenix creator here. We need to give the blog some love, but in 2015 we had a big year. We released the "Programming Phoenix" book for pragprog and our big "Phoenix Presence" feature, a CRDT backed eventually consistent process group:

[https://dockyard.com/blog/2016/03/25/what-makes-phoenix- pres...](https://dockyard.com/blog/2016/03/25/what-makes-phoenix-presence- special-sneak-peek)

We also have been working on Phoenix 1.3 which I laid out in my ElixirConf keynote. Ask me anything!

<comment><USER10> What does presence use for its persistence layer? For its gossip protocol? Are you using plumtree, a fork, or something home rolled? Are you aware of Christopher's work with Lasp and the delta-CRDTs?

This sounds great and it's very idiomatic to OTP, it's like a web app VM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This post is 13 months old btw.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure what's up with all the old re-posts lately. It's pretty lame.

<comment><USER13> Is there an option to be able to mark such posts clearly as reposts?. Great for refreshing the memory and may even useful for new joiners.

<comment><USER14> As I understand it, reposts are fine as long as a reasonable amount of time passes between submissions. I swear I've seen a few stories that get submitted almost every year, although I can't remember any off the top of my head.

That's "past" button lets you quickly search for previous discussions.

<comment><USER8> Never seen the "past" button before. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Anthrax Redux: Did the Feds Nab the Wrong Guy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/ff_anthrax_fbi/all/1

<comment><USER2> Great article. Worth reading, if only for the "Gödel, Escher, Bach" reference.

</comment><comment><USER3> A guy named Ed Lake has been keeping track of related news articles and analysing them since shortly after the attacks. People reading this thread might be interested in his site:

<http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/></comment>


Elon Musk hits back at those mocking his contribution - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-on-thailand-cave-rescue-somethings-messed-up-if-this-is-not-a-good-thing-2018-7 <comment><USER2> Problem is Elon should not see himself as "a guy who simply wants to help". He's the "a very public guy, with massive money and power, at the center of powerful interests who can help". I think he should behave as the later rather than the former and help the world on problems worth his might.</comment>


Firefox Beta 15 supports the new Opus audio format - <AUTHOR> http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/07/firefox-beta-15-supports-the-new-opus-audio-format/ <comment><USER2> Luckily it's going to be W3C standard, and Apple and MS won't be able to use their lame excuses to avoid implementing it in their browsers, like they did for Vorbis, VP8 and etc.

<comment><USER3> Microsoft actually helped with the development of Opus according to the article. :)

<comment><USER4> I remember when MS participated in MPEG-4 development and then fought MPEG-4 for years.

<comment><USER5> And now getting sued by Google over FRAND patents defined in the H.264 standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where is Google in all this? They must surely be aware of all such IETF projects. I can understand why Apple wasn't mentioned (Apple Island is a world unto itself to the maximum extent possible), but Google has usually pursued the opposite strategy. This seems like the sort of thing they would get behind unless there is some issue I'm unaware of, and it seems as though Mozilla would mention Google in this infomercial if they were backing it.

<comment><USER5> Also we should point out that Google should NEVER be trusted.

Their disgraceful behaviour in blackmailing Microsoft over H.264 FRAND patents is of huge concern to anyone who cares about standards. Companies should be encouraged to get together and define industry standards with fair royalty rates. When that happens we ALL win. Clearly the ITC/EU agree.

Hopefully Google will see the error of its ways and change course.

<comment><USER7> Seriously? Google has owned Motorola Mobility for fewer than two months[0]. And in any case, though it seldom matters to people insistent on seeing the Android manufacturers in a bad light, Microsoft started this war by demanding licensing fees for ridiculous patents, like this one, for "Generating meeting requests and group scheduling from a mobile device"[1].

If you want to talk about bad guys in this mess, it's the companies who ended the détente by suing their competitors. That would be Microsoft and Apple. Asking companies like Motorola, HTC and Samsung to tie their hands behind their backs while Apple and Microsoft shake them down (or try to ban their products) is lunacy.

We need patent sanity in this country. But in the mean time, companies who are attacked have every right to defend themselves by any legal means they have available.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility> [1] [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6370566.PN.&OS=PN/6370566&RS=PN/6370566)

<comment><USER5> I fail to see how it matters how long Google has owned Motorola. They are the ones making the decisions.

And this isn't just about Motorola and Microsoft. This is about the principle of ALL contributors to a standard licensing their patents in a fair way. Regardless of whether they are being sued or not or how 'nice' the counter party is.

Do you not understand that if Motorola gets away with this then it will set in a place a precedent for all H.264 patent holders to go after any licensees ? You may not understand the implication but the ITC/EU clearly do.

<comment><USER8> Google did not own Motorola Mobility when the FRAND stuff went down (in February). If you can't see how that's relevant then I guess you probably can't see much at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I went into the article thinking why isn't OGG good enough, and the xkcd joke about 15 different standards.

I left pleased about this new standard (from an advert, any downsides?) but need some patent assurances. If Mozilla are happy will everyone be?

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately, according to Wikipedia, Skype holds software patents on parts of the algorithm. Even though they said they'd make them avaiable royalty- free, this still means it isn't completely free.

<comment><USER11> in some ways, a perpetual unrestricted license is better than an unpatented algorithm. The big excuse for not adopting webm was "uncertainty" about the patent situation. If skype has the patents and is giving free licenses, there isn't any uncertainty here, you know that microsoft has no basis to ever sue.

<comment><USER12> To some (significant) degree, but you never know that no one else has patents on a technology. That's exactly what is so messed up with software patents.

<comment><USER11> On any specific technology, you absolutely can know that no one else has patents on it. That is the responsibility of the patent office: to grant _exclusive_ rights to an 'invention'. you cannot be held liable for infringement of anything you have a license for.

In this case though, Microsoft only has patents on part of the algorithm, so it is theoretically possible that other parts of the algorithm are covered by other patents.

<comment><USER13> It's rare, but I remember reading that USPTO has mistakenly issued conflicting patents. Legally, any publication is enough to bar others' patents, they're just not good at finding anything in the software literature, so having your own patent sort of rubs examiners' noses in it.

<comment><USER11> But the point is that if the USTPO issues conflicting patents, it is them that is liable instead of you. If you have a license, you're golden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> (2010) Some discussion about CELT / Opus from the author of x264: <http://pbox.ca/16cbg>

<comment><USER15> Just checking, CELT & Opus are the same thing? Seems like they're saying that Opus is a merge of CELT & SILK

<comment><USER16> Yes, Opus is basically a merge of CELT and SILK.

SILK is a speech codec developed by Skype whereas CELT is a general purpose audio codec developed by Xiph.org. Opus can use either of them (to encode speech or e.g. music, respectively) or it can use both codecs simultaneously for high-quality speech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When they say perceptually lossless, by whose perception do they mean? Some definition of the average human?

<comment><USER18> My somewhat educated take on that is that 'perceptually lossless' refers to quality at which the source cannot be reliably picked from the source/encode in any sort of test that would pass as scientific, possibly outside of a few very rare edge cases (sound samples, not people). This happens at lower bitrates than many people might imagine, IIRC v2 lame (~192kbps) has not been reliably identified, nor vorbis v6 (~160kbps). So their claim of 'perceptually lossless' at 256kbps is neither surprising or impressive. (it may be competitive/better at those high bitrates and they are just being conservative with the claims).

<comment><USER17> So if I'm getting this correctly, a computer test (not a person) has to look at two clips of audio and tell which is the source and which is encoded?

I'm surprised that 192k is actually indistinguishable. I thought some humans could tell the difference there.

<comment><USER19> Usually it's double blinded ABX testing: A computer program gives you: Encoding A, encoding B, unknown encoding A or B. You have to choose if X is A, or X is B.

One of the encodings will be "uncompressed" when testing if the format in question is perceptually lossless.

Repeat that a couple hundred times with many different listeners using standardized samples and programs (doom9, an audiophile forum, does such runs every now and then), and you get a rather good idea on what's going on.

As for the 192kbps: It also depends on the algorithms used. bladeenc or 8Hz- mp3 back then created 320kbps files where you can easily hear the difference. Current lame builds at 192kbps? not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Those listening test results are impressive. I wonder how it performs at higher bitrates.

<comment><USER21> It said in the article that it was "percptually lossless" or similar. I'm very, very intrigued.

<comment><USER18> They mention 256kbps in regards to that, at which point all of vorbis, aac and mp3 (lame) are 'perceptually lossless', so it wouldn't be much new. While it is hard to tell (because tests at higher bitrates don't really work out/ produce winners), it seems that any sonic advantage held is at the lower bitrate end.

<comment><USER22> Measuring the point where something becomes perceptually lossless is quite difficult because, by definition, you're measuring at the bounds of perceptibility.

In terms of simple objective measures (e.g. the masking weighed SNR, <http://people.xiph.org/~greg/celt/NMR.v.c.l.png>) Opus does better than Vorbis (and AAC) at high rates too. Between that and the overall better time domain performance, my _expectation_ is that Opus can become perceptually lossless at lower rates, but this is hard to validate.

Getting the lowest possible average perceptual lossless rate is also a product of the encoder having a good psymodel, and released opus encoders have pretty much no explicit psymodel at all (but still manage to be competitive). So this reduces the interest in doing a bunch of very difficulty listening tests to determine the exact perceptually-lossless points, since they'll likely go down with near term encoder improvements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great, when are they going to support FLAC instead of these formats nobody will ever use?

<comment><USER24> It may not be provided by the browser, but it is possible:

<http://labs.official.fm/codecs/flac/>

<comment><USER23> I'm curious how that works. It decodes the FLAC in JavaScript, but it still has to expose it in some format understood by the browser. To my limited knowledge there's no lossless encoding scheme supported by browsers, not even WAV PCM.

/edit: spoken too soon WAV PCM is supported by WebKit, Gecko and Presto: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_Audio#.3CAudio.3E_element>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very exciting if it can deliver on all of its claims, but noticeably absent is anything whatsoever about the patent status of the format.

<comment><USER4> [https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/search/?option=document_sea...](https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/search/?option=document_search&document_search=draft- ietf-codec-opus)

<comment><USER22> The IETF datatracker link is pretty useless. Pretty much anyone can make any claim they want there and there is no way to remove it. Its just a statement collector, not a review.

Most of the results returned are against old versions of the specification, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So is Mozilla going to use VP8 combined with Opus in Firefox 15, instead of Vorbis, for "free" videos?

<comment><USER27> Opus is a (usually) lower bitrate codec for very low latency applications. In other words, a completely different sweet spot than Vorbis, AAC, etc.

<comment><USER28> It outperforms Vorbis and AAC even at their (high-latency) forte, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I understand they were trying to finalize the spec and weren't worried too much about the individual encoder decisions, but check out some of the code at the bottom of this convo, it's scary <http://pbox.ca/16cbg>

<comment><USER22> Thats a conversation from two years ago... But whats scary about it?

<comment><USER29> Specifically, this:

      p=_u[_k+1];
      s=-(_i>=p);
      _i-=p&s;
      yj=_k;
      p=_u[_k];
      while(p>_i)p=_u[--_k];
      _i-=p;
      yj-=_k;

is incomprehensible and basically unmaintainable. The variables are named badly and the control flow is not obvious.

<comment><USER22> What maintenance are you looking to perform on it?

Thats code from the inner loop of the algebraic codebook decoder. Its operation is explained by a 117 line long comment in the source, and by a page long description of a simplified algorithm in the spec. Beyond replacing it with an alternative implementation which would naturally have nothing in common there isn't much to maintain in it (and that code itself has been proven correct through exhaustive testing as well as the partially-exhaustive unit tests for it included with the codec).

Most of the codec doesn't look like that. Though it's not all easy to read— e.g. a lot of the signal processing stuff is intermediated by macros so that it works for both fixed point and floating point. And if you don't like it then, by all means, write your own. Having more interoperable implementations would be great. Most formats don't give you a BSD licensed reference implementation.

::shrugs::</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The age of unreason - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21657023-world-grows-richer-and-older-mental-illness-becoming-more-common-john-prideaux?fsrc=nlw|hig|9-07-2015|NA <comment><USER2> There's still a great deal of stigma around any form of mental illness, even mild and transitory depression or anxiety. It's difficult, after centuries of declaring people "mad," to think that one can be mentally ill as one is ordinarily ill - with the mental equivalent of a cold or flu or allergies. I've had to help friends and family with this idea myself.

Yet people eagerly adopt monikers like claustrophobic and OCD, and admit to an irrational fear of heights or spiders. Depressed is a household word, but we are afraid to use its real meaning. It's a strange conundrum.

An interesting historical perspective on madness can be found in Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," more specifically the introduction.

<comment><USER3> For clarification, what is the distinction between the household usage and real meaning of "depressed"?

<comment><USER4> tl;dr people who say 'oh I've been a bit depressed lately' after having a bad week may or may not be suffering from the mental illness known as depression, which is characterized by long term feelings of sadness, helplessness etc. and which generally interfere with the everyday life of the sufferer.

Depression in terms of the mental illness is much more than just 'feeling sad', and involves many more psychological aspects and outward impacts on the persons life.

<comment><USER5> All true, but there is situational depression too, which isn't necessarily _long_ term, as it goes way when the situation fades or dulls, but it is nonetheless painful and dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are really interested in this subject (how western societies treat the "insane" as the societies themselves evolve) I would recommend Michel Foucault's "Madness and Civilization", more recently published as "History of Madness". It's a very long book and I must confess I only got through about two thirds of it, but it certainly opened my eyes into how definitions of what it meant to be "sane" have changed over time.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> The first reference at the bottom is: Baron-Cohen, Simon, "The essential difference: Male and female brains and the truth about autism" (2004)

He must hate Sasha.

<comment><USER8> They're cousins, they were both at Cambridge. Simon is a world renowned expert on autism, Sasha on comedy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any chance to read the full article somehow?

<comment><USER10> Print version:

[http://www.economist.com/node/21657023/print](http://www.economist.com/node/21657023/print)

Having Google as a referrer also works:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22IT+ALL+BEGAN+when+she+los...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22IT+ALL+BEGAN+when+she+lost+her+head.+According+to+legend%2C+Dimpna%2C+a+7th- century+Christian+heroine)</comment></comment>


Millennials, as Seen by Corporate America - <AUTHOR> https://graphics.wsj.com/glider/millennials-c671d444-6267-4e9b-ba6b-384a5b2fdb03 <comment><USER2> "...The millennial generation [is] moving out of the cities, forming households, having children, looking for better schools and that's going to drive rate demand in the suburbs."

Not by choice, by necessity.

Anecdotal - my friends are moving out of cities. Not because they romanticize or even want a suburban house, but because they can't afford to be within an hour of a city and not be burdened by more debt. The only other option is to move outside the city influence and into the rural areas, which for many is worse than the suburbs.

EDIT - after reading through it all, it's clear this is a bunch of out of touch CEOs who are generalizing some weird psuedo-data trends. Unless every person I know happens to be well outside of the "millennials" presented here.</comment>


Digg Is Pushing More Traffic To Traditional News Sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/15/digg-is-pushing-more-traffic-to-traditional-news-sites/ <comment><USER2> Another option is that traditional media has caught up with the bloggers and is using Digg to drive traffic to their online sites.

NY Times and Guardian both seem to be providing much more "usable" online content that shows up here, on reddit and digg alot more often.

<comment><USER3> yeah almost all of them added social networking links to each of their stories, so people are more likely to submit/confirm a new story, and it goes to the top faster compared to a nobody blog that gets 20 diggs a day

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cross that Chasm! Please ;-)</comment>


Rtail – Terminal output to the browser using Unix pipes - <AUTHOR> http://rtail.org <comment><USER2> Is there a XSS exploit in this? I just clicked on the 'alert' stream, and it displayed two alert dialogs.

<comment><USER3> I think there is. I keep getting redirected to a 10 hour rick roll youtube video

<comment><USER4> Ya loads [http://bit.ly/1LRJuun](http://bit.ly/1LRJuun) that redirects to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BROWqjuTM0g&insecure_code=tr...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BROWqjuTM0g&insecure_code=true)

42["line",{"timestamp":1436363693619,"streamid":"rtail.org","host":"220.127.116.11","port":50049,"content":"<script>window.top.location.href=\"[http://bit.ly/1LRJuun\"</script>","type":"string"}](http://bit.ly/1LRJuun\\"</script>","type":"string"})]

<comment><AUTHOR> I fix this for the demo already :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I got rick rolled :(. Probably an exploit in there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I fixed this for the demo already :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why does it have to be a custom network protocol when using syslog would not only suffice, but also allow for devices that don't run custom code (e.g., switches or routers) to be monitored?

<comment><USER7> Syslog is a little bit warty- if I didn't use it elsewhere[1], I wouldn't necessarily reach for it. It seems like it should also be fairly trivial to just use your OS' syslog as a shim, if you wanted this to be a syslog endpoint.

[1]: many more people should than do

<comment><USER6> Trivial, maybe. Not only does it add a single point of failure, though, as the logs get aggregated on the syslog host, the only "benefit" rtail retains is looking at the logs in a browser instead of tail(1).

<comment><USER7> Not sure why syslogd as a single point of failure is worse than rtail-server being a single point of failure- there are some very, very stable & battle- tested syslogd implementations.

Additionally, it doesn't really seem like that's the case- as long as you were willing to reconfigure syslog on the hosts, you could do syslog -> rtail => rtail-server (-> is local, => is network), as rtail works via UDP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow! This is really cool! I would love to use this at my workplace. I had a small problem, though: it seems the clients don't keep very much data.

For example, I filtered based on an expression that matched about 1-2 lines per second. The lines appeared, but disappeared almost as quickly. I suspect there is some small client-side buffer that I'm overrunning almost instantly; the log stream I used produces about 500 lines per second. Is this too much for the tool? Can I tune it to work with that load?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, so the filter uses the internal buffer which is 100 lines. you can easily hack it to make it bigger (there is a closed github issue to look at for instructions). I don't want to make bigger buffers available just yet. I want to rewrite the webapp using ng2 and use an infinite scroll for the lines view. Feel free to open a new issue if you want!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nicely done - the design is amazing. I had to solve a similar problem a while ago and wrote tailon: [https://github.com/gvalkov/tailon](https://github.com/gvalkov/tailon)

</comment><comment><USER10> What is the difference to using websocketd [1] to stream to a socket.io client?

[1] [https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd](https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd)

<comment><USER11> This is a full solution with web app and such; websocketd is just a communication tool, which could be used to build something like rtail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am curious. What is the usecase of this?

<comment><USER7> _ring ring ring_

Hello?

The smoke tests are failing and Kibana isn't returning anything from the past 10 minutes

 _inaudible_ $ for i in grotty_old_server{1..10}; do ssh root@i "tail -f /var/log/froznob/goddamn-custom-logging-system" | rtail &; done

Are you still there?

Half of the servers are spewing the same stacktrace 200 times a second.

<comment><USER12> I meant whats the advantage of viewing it in browser? Couldnt you go through the output in a terminal with multiplexers and tail?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good stuff. Kudos!

I really like how they ask for sponsors.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yes, flash 0days piped via terminal :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Superb, just installed it, setup took 1 minute and now I'm tailing 24 logs on one single page.

Thanks A LOT!

</comment><comment><USER16> lol. nice rickroll

</comment><comment><USER17> Nicely done and fantastic landing page!

</comment><comment><USER18> This is really nicely done, thank you!

</comment><comment><USER19> nice work, web app's sweet!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, all credits to the amazing designers!</comment></comment>


Show HN: A Tiny But Powerful Entity-Component-System on Node - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/YellowInnovation/node-necs <comment><USER2> It would be awesome if you could provide an online demo!

Also, you should check out the JS formatting guide (I can recommend you prettier). Your code looks like being written by an C# developer :D

<comment><USER2> Also, from C# dev to C# dev, you definitely should check out TypeScript. Checks like this:

if (parent !== null && !(parent instanceof Entity)) { throw new TypeError('parent must be an Entity instance or null'); }

will be as short as

constructor(parent: Entity | null, ...)

... and entirely checked during compile/design time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your help!

It actually run only on Node (but could be adapted on browser). Yes an online demo is a good idea!

I did used prettier and Xo in the past. I know I'm in the wrong but my eye are so much adapted to that C/C# style that it is way easier for me to read. For a next update/my next open-source projects, I'll think twice about it.

I have no doubt Typescript is great. I've tried use it in previous very complex projects pushing JS to limits. It had a few quircks that made it unable to use, same thing for Flow. But same thing here, I'll think about it twice next time!

Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Feel free to ping me on twitter (@hediet_dev) if you got stuck with typescript on your next project!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


People Who Think Programming Is Shit Are Missing The Point - <AUTHOR> http://e2open.org/people-who-think-programming-is-shit-are-missing-the-point/

<comment><USER2> I think that the point of the article is half true. You can definitely create code that doesn't save you time, and in fact, over the long run, taxes your project with bugs and other issues.

But I agree with the general sentiment. No one who's automated a task using applied math and the power of some sort of environment, be it windows office, ios, or the web, can understand the feeling of power and understanding one gets from it.

Not only am I completely understanding a flow, a process including most if not all of it's edge cases, I'm fixing/completing a process while writing code.

I remember when going to school, everyone talked about coding as a chore for real computer science, but I always viewed it as a craft, one which takes dedication and practice, and one that can have tangible effects, like carpentry or painting. I'd also like to add that IMO any science based in the realm of computers need some form of applied math scripting for any tangible results. You can't just wish things to happen!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm young (just a recent University graduate), so I expect my viewpoint to change over the next few years after I get into the shit and start getting run down by large companies grinding away at me (it's happened a couple times already - had to decompress for a few weeks after finishing my contract on both occasions).

I cannot think of anything more rewarding than what I'm currently doing though. I'm quite literally creating things that people will be using. It's quite possibly the most amazing form of artwork because users will actually be interacting with systems I'm creating.

The only analogy I can think of is that it's like combining a Monet with a can opener. A can opener is something that's incredibly useful, used by everyone, with many thinking "why didn't I think of that". A Monet on the other hand is respected as an art that most believe is far outside the realm of their possibilities of ever creating. Programming is quite literally being the impasse between the two - something that not everyone can do, but is useful to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER4> Saying that programming is 'spending all dap tapping in code' is like saying drawing is 'spending all day holding a pencil.' That isn't a perfect analogy, but programming can be equally about what is being created as it is the code itself.

<comment><USER5> I agree completely. You can make anything sound awful with that kind of analogy. And some people use it to devalue the things they don't like or understand. There should be a name for this behaviour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Programming is an information technology, and being a technology facilitates > greater efficiency.

Which is not always a good thing. Sometimes the fact that a task is tedious or confusing should cause us to re-think the necessity of doing the task. Thanks to IT we can wind up doing something stupid really well, rather than realizing that maybe we shouldn't do it in the first place.

(I love programming, but I sometimes despair at how useless most of what I do really is)

</comment><comment><USER7> I always like to think of programming has being able to play with an unlimited supply of legos that can actually do stuff.

Your friend thinks programming sucks? Guess he doesn't like video games, action movies, smartphones or anything else programming makes possible.

<comment><USER8> the second bit is bad logic - programming may make a lot of great things possible while itself being a sucky but necessary part of the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find programming very intellectually satisfying, and have for many years. I now find myself in competition with people from all over the world, making it much more difficult to maintain the income I came to depend on. I have some anecdotal evidence that many of these "programmers" don't really like the job, and view it only as a stepping stone in their careers. I wish only Programmers programmed; as software users, we might all be better off.

</comment><comment><USER10> Programming is not a job I think I will ever be able to retire from. I might _have_ to retire, but I don't think it will be willingly.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not at all convinced that popular sentiment in the world we currently live is that "programming is shit".

There was no About page on this blog so I couldn't tell if the author is just very young or if this is dated. Either way the post was half baked, with the author ultimately coming to the thoughtless conclusion: "That's a crock of shit! ... It's not programmers that are wasting life , it's the non- programers!"

</comment><comment><USER12> Agree with author's main point. But:

>>It's like anyone who programs is essentially, at heart, a mental masticator, happy to forgo "real life" in order to do what could have been done "by a real person" in the same time.

Mental masticator? Does he mean masochist?

</comment><comment><USER13> meanwhile your friend is scratching his balls and saying ding tots are done...</comment>


In My Programming Backpack - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-programming-backpack-saeid-moradi <comment><USER2> I second Martin Fowler's book on refactoring. I read it at a time when I had no idea what I was doing (Arguably still don't.).</comment>


Are the BSDs dying? Some security researchers think so (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.csoonline.com/article/3250653/is-the-bsd-os-dying-some-security-researchers-think-so.html <comment><USER2> There's also this other BSD derivative out there called Mac OS: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3446231/how-closely- are-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3446231/how-closely-are-mac-os-x- and-bsd-related)

Depending on your point of view this is or isn't BSD. But either way it undeniably includes a lot of BSD variants of tools (like grep, sed, etc.) and BSD licensed code.

Other than that, I've not really encountered BSD in the wild, ever. I know some companies still use it. It's just that I've never crossed paths with such companies in my career over the last two plus decades. I've encountered some companies sticking with Solaris for unclear reasons (pain in the ass to deal with these days) but that's been a few years.

The "it's more secure" argument seems to come up a lot and indeed is a strong value in the BSD community. However, you could legitimately wonder if this is more a case of security through obscurity than a technical reality these days. So few people use BSD these days that hacking it has got to be a pretty specialist skill for a wannabe hacker and probably not worth investing a lot of time in given the limited number of interesting targets. Not necessarily a bad thing if you want to keep hackers out but not exactly a user growth strategy either for any of the BSDs.

</comment><comment><USER3> The impression I got, and it's only an impression based on various blog posts, articles and mailing lists over the years, is that OpenBSD is the most secure operating system even though it's mostly programmed in C (and that they're not looking to replace that with Rust, et al) with mitigations like W^X and pledge, etc; and the fact that their code base is the smallest. I mean I know this is a wide and complicated area with different classes of bugs and vulnerabilities, but still I thought it was generally accepted.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be my impression as well.

Linux does have a much wider user base, however, and that enables the community to even stumble across problems more frequently, while a smaller project like OpenBSD might have to orchestrate specifically-themed hackathons and auditing sprints (as they have). But I would take "security by choice" over "security as a byproduct" any day of the week.

Keeping in mind the breadth of resources that aspiring kernel hackers have access to when introduced to Linux, contrasted to OpenBSD's relative scarcity, it makes the latter quite the underdog success story.

(That is not to say that Linux or the larger of the BSDs is the product of monkeys randomly typing on VT100s -- there is considerable and commendable skill in these projects as well.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nope. They are alive, well and kicking arse on multiple fronts.

</comment><comment><USER5> (2018)

<comment><USER6> Added. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Testing with Cucumber – best practices - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codeship.io/2013/05/21/testing-tuesday-6-top-5-cucumber-best-practices.html

<comment><USER2> When I was first starting to really TDD with rails, cucumber was my framework of choice.

I remember the battles with myself for writing tests, how should I test, and the step definitions.

With cucumber there's just too much plumbing, not only that you need to figure out the test, you need to figure out how to set up the test and the definitions.

It never worked for me, it was just never in a state of flow like Rspec or any other testing framework for that matter, too much magic going on.

Today, I do 100% Rspec on the projects I work on, of course test-unit when I am working on rails, but other then that, I have never seen anyone using Cucumber outside of tutorials and just testing things out.

I think Thoughtbot are using Cucumber if I remember from their blog posts, for me it didn't work.

That being said, I love seeing companies share knowledge, especially in the form of videos, the editing time and recording time are not something that most companies want to invest. For that you deserve a kudos from me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tip #2 "Insert a Narrative" or describe what the test is and why it is important seems to be a lot more about "literate programming" than BDD. I am actually coming to TDD/BDD not for the testing but for the fact that it seems to be a more useful way of writing specs that can be integrated with UX design quite well. I keep feeling like maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick with my approach to cucumber...

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a big fan of TDD. But BDD is just such an overkill for me. I could never understand it. It takes all the joy out of programming away by introducing the level of abstraction that's just to much to deal with. Sometimes layering up must stop.

</comment><comment><USER5> Best practise is to not use cucumber! By the time yoi have wanked away the afternoon writing stories, the client found a real developer who already coded the feature, leaving you - the failed liberal arts major, and now failed developer sobbing over your hipster hot beverage of choice.

<comment><USER6> It's a lot of overhead for smaller shops or those with simpler requirements, and executable specs are only as good as the people who've written them.

Just the same, I've never seen a place use Cucumber as an integral part of their workflow.</comment></comment>


Mozilla bends on 'built-in' Firefox DRM so it can keep streaming Netflix - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/14/mozilla-bends-on-drm/?ncid=rss_truncated

<comment><USER2> All this for B-serie movies that can't compare to other plateform like YouTube in term of diversity. And once this is in, what stops anyone from building DRM for EVERY format / medium / ...</comment>


Why I Migrated Away from MongoDB - <AUTHOR> http://svs.io/post/31724990463/why-i-migrated-away-from-mongodb <comment><USER2> > _Lesson learned - Be very circumspect when turning your back on 40 years of > computer science._

So true. We moved away from Mongo for very similar reasons, but we moved to Cassandra instead of Postgres only with great trepidation (we were worried about scalability issues).

Only time will tell if this was a good move or if we should have just done as you did. Good luck out there!</comment>


Dean Wampler on Programming Languages (Scala, Clojure, Java and Ruby) - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/interviews/wampler-programming-language

<comment><USER2> His example (around minute 12) doesn't sell static over dynamic typing for me. He asserts that using static types makes a program more provably correct but then he doesn't really back this up. In my experience a type system helps avoid mistakes in API calls and (more recently) with refactoring in IDEs. I've never seen an example where a type system makes a program more correct. I suspect we need just as much unit testing in a statically typed language as with a dynamically typed one.

Scala's type system tries to improve on Java's Generics, but in my opinion it makes things worse.

With Scala we end up with a part of the language where library writers use advanced things like covariance and contravariance, and a smaller part of the language for us mere mortals (a similar situation to C++ and Ruby). I'm preferring the Lisp style where the normal developer uses the same tools as a library writer (e.g., first class functions, closures and macros). And as far as implicit conversion, I agree with Dean's assessment that it can easily be too magical. It's necessary because everything is an object along with the static typing.

On the evolving Java front, I'd like to see JVM based languages move farther away from their Java underpinnings. Having interoperation is fine, but I'd like to only use it for third party libraries.

Finally, sounds like Dean is moving away from the everything is an object thinking similar to Rich Hickey. I find this sort of alternate very interesting as I explore functional programming after doing OO most of my career.

<comment><USER3> This is exactly why I think Scala is the JVMs C++: a powerful, but highly complex language with every feature imaginable crammed into it. I think it was Gilad Bracha that remarked how Scala's type system is nearly Turing complete (maybe in the meantime, it actually is).

I always strive for simplicity, and Clojure fits the bill much better, at least imho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would really help if people would actually write some large programs in "best of breed" languages like Haskell _and_ Scheme (or on the JVM, Scala _and_ Clojure) before they proclaim the superiority of run time type checking over compile time type checking (or vice versa) .

This isn't aimed at anyone in particular(least of all Dean Wampler , or any commenters here), but I suspect that without such hands on experience, people are arguing whether the elephant is a big wall like thing or a slender rope like thing.</comment>


Truckers Forum: What do you think of self-driving trucks? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threads/self-driving-trucks-are-here-licensed-in-nevada.280439/ <comment><USER2> It would appear we are in between the ignoring phase and the laughing phase, with respect to the attitude of the incumbent.</comment>


Oh, By the way: The Palm Pre phones home with your location  - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/08/12/oh-by-the-way-the-palm-pre-phones-home-with-your-location/ <comment><USER2> I think this settles my decision to consider only Android when deciding whether to get a smart phone. If Android is doing something I don't like, well, I'll just change it and recompile. I've said before that if there is any DRM, you don't own it. I think now it may be time to say what GNU and the FSF have been saying all along: if you can't control it, you don't own it. If you can't take it apart and put it back together however you like, _you don't own it_.

</comment><comment><USER3> discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758787>

</comment><comment><USER4> That sounds like something Apple would do. I think they should be more upfront about it, and set the default to "disabled" like most other phones with GPS do. While it would be very useful to know where people are and what programs they are using, this should be weighed against the (arguably) more important privacy concern.

<comment><USER5> It is disabled by default, you have to explicitly enable it when you first use the phone.

<comment><USER6> Does it explicitly tell you want it's going to be sending on a daily basis?

<comment><USER5> For the location stuff, yes.

<comment><USER7> I don't have a pre, but I want to get to the bottom of this. The interwebs is saying that this is enabled by default, not by user prompt. Can you clear up my confusion? It's a propmt when you first turn on the phone? Does the carrier maybe turn it on before sending the phone (for some carriers) causing the confusion?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How I ended up with Mac - <AUTHOR> http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2013/Mar-05.html

<comment><USER2> I'm always amused by these posts praising how everything just works on the Mac, and how it's so nice not having to worry about [annoying linux/windows stuff #351].

Am I really the only one blind to this effect ? I've used a mac. It's nice. But it "just works" only until you want to productively use Finder, or you want to connect to a Samba server, or you want to shuffle files with UTF-8 filenames around, or a dozen other things like that.

I suppose I'm just not the target market. But I would have expected someone like the author not to be in it either, so.. _shrug_

<comment><USER3> Agreed. It doesn't just work. It works until you want an opinion, then it stabs you in the face repetitively.

My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction iPhoto decided to enforce upon me. After removing iPhoto, it was bearable. This slowly cranked on until I ended up with basically OS-X as a window manager for a terminal emulator, browser, ViewNX and Apple Mail connected to GMail (which didn't work properly either and ended up just being done in a browser). As iWork was shit and corrupted documents left right and centre, I had to use Parallels with Windows Vista + Office 2007 as well. Granted I could have used Office for Mac but it was the 2004 version which was a POS that relied on Rosetta.

As for the iPhone, ugh that was hell. Nothing worked properly and each iOS release was literally scary. My pregnant wife actually begged me not to upgrade my iPhone in case it knackered the battery more and she got left without being able to communicate with me (I'm dead serious there). I actually bought a shit Nokia with a GiffGaff SIM in it to carry around in case the iPhone died.

<comment><USER4> > My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction iPhoto > decided to enforce upon me. After removing iPhoto, it was bearable.

This makes no sense. iPhoto stores your photos in a directory structure on your system. This directory is like any other. If you want to extract the photos from them you can. You can also just right-click on your photos from within iPhoto and extract them.

> After removing iPhoto, it was bearable.

What was bearable? Why didn't you try and fix the problem? I've been using iPhoto for almost 10 years, across ~6 different machines, and have never had any issues with it.

<comment><USER3> It was unbearable because the abstraction was inconsistent when it came to:

a) talking to the library from the command line - the mapping between the UI and the filesystem was completely abstract.

b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent.

c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at.

Bearable was removing iPhoto and installing Nikon ViewNX which came with my D70. This has no abstraction - the filesystem is the abstraction.

(I know how to access the source files BTW).

<comment><USER4> > a) talking to the library from the command line - the mapping between the UI > and the filesystem was completely abstract.

So... doing "find . -type f -name '*.jpg' -print" is outside of your capabilities?

> b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent.

What were you trying to do?

> c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at.

man mdls

<comment><USER3> _So... doing "find . -type f -name '_.jpg' -print" is outside of your capabilities?*

No but doing that when iPhoto stores backups of your images is a pain in the arse.

 _b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent_

Automator + Photoshop.

 _> c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at._

Yes but that doesn't deal with folders which aren't indexed. For example if you do an iPhoto import it can lag for a while before Spotlight catches up. Bang - synchronisation problem.

This shot me badly.

The whole solution is just bad.

<comment><USER4> > No but doing that when iPhoto stores backups of your images is a pain in the > arse.

In what way?

> Yes but that doesn't deal with folders which aren't indexed. For example if > you do an iPhoto import it can lag for a while before Spotlight catches up. > Bang - synchronisation problem.

Moving goalposts. First you said the metadata was opaque. It wasn't. Now you're saying there is lag.

What were you trying to do? I do a lot of photography, and while I am no means a pro -- or even a semi-pro -- I have done automator scripts against iPhoto with zero problems. You still haven't said what you were trying to accomplish.

<comment><USER5> The problem is, you're moving the goalposts too. "It just works" wouldn't apply if you need to hack together automater script...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps I'm strange. I always seem to be going the opposite way to everyone else.

I've fallen in love with Windows again. It just works. Power management rocks, battery life is good (8 hours on my 2007 Lenovo T61!), the hardware is damn cheap, the licenses cost me virtually nothing, literally everything I plug into it works, the tooling is pretty damn good, utils I wrote for Windows NT4 literally 14 years ago _still_ just work flawlessly. My Linux machine is just a VirtualBox VM.

Yesterday I bought my second Windows Phone (Lumia 820). This also just works. Email is the same everywhere, all the apps just works, plays any mp3 without complaining (my sodding iPhone never did!), Nokia Drive just works, maps actually work (again something my iPhone shot down), talks to exchange without problems, is exactly the same as my old Windows Phone 7.8 device (no who moved my cheese), opens all my documents nicely, reads any pdf fine.

Seriously, it's just all boringly functional and uneventful these days.

Bear in mind I am coming from a background on hardcore UNIX machines (big Solaris, HP-UX machines), through FreeBSD to Linux to OS-X.

The worst pain I had was with Solaris (on Tadpole SPARCbook) and just about everything Apple, particularly their unreliable hardware (4 Macs returned for repair!), app compatibility problems, piss poor battery life on iPhone 3/4, shit crock of a POSIX environment and shoddy attempt at online services.

<comment><USER4> > I've fallen in love with Windows again. It just works.

You and I have had vastly different experiences.

I have spent the morning trying to get Rails installed on a Win7 box. This has required numerous painful hoops to jump through, and I am actually not even finished. I finally got 1.9.3 installed, but am hung on some OpenSSL requirement. It has been a massive, huge waste of my day.

The default command shell sucks rocks, so I'm using (or attempting to use) cygwin, specifically zsh. I have no access to tmux, and while screen works it is not my preferred multiplexer. Even under zsh, though, the typical Ruby commands (ruby/irb/gem/etc.) have to be run with their .bat equivalents, which is a needless pain. The latest issue is with something related to OpenSSL, and I'm still digging through that one.

These are all issues that have been specific to Windows. I ran this exact same code with zero problems on my home OS X box not 4 hours ago. git pull/bundle/rails server, good to go. On Windows this has taken the better part of a day to get going.

You sound like an astroturfer, honestly. "I'm honest, I use other systems. It's just that they all are just _awful_ compared to Windows. Here are generic reasons why, with few specifics."

> shit crock of a POSIX environment

What does this even mean? OS X is POSIX certified. Windows is not. Are you saying POSIX is crap, or that OS X's implementation of it is? Either way I would challenge you to back up that statement up. OS X is the best Unix I have personally had experience using.

<comment><USER6> believe it or not Windows has actually had a POSIX subsystem since the NT days, and MS still provide it for Windows 8.

I'm not sure what POSIX certified means, but Windows is UNIX in the same way Mac OS X is...

<comment><USER7> Wikipedia has this (and more) to say on POSIX:

Not to be confused with Unix, Unix-like, or Linux.

POSIX (pron.: /ˈpɒzɪks/ poz-iks), an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...

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

The old MS POSIX subsystem was replaced by the amusingly named SFU (Services for UNIX). Then that got replaced by the bought-in Interix.

Mac OS X is UNIX because it's certified under the Single UNIX Specification: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification>

Windows is not in any way UNIX. There aren't even any certified Linux distros (AFAIK). Mac OS X is UNIX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My main gripe with Novel and now Xamarin is that they don't provide packages for Debian and Ubuntu, arguably the most popular Linux distributions.

For instance if you go to Mono's download page to checkout the options, the only Linux distribution supported by them is OpenSuse: <http://www.go- mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html>

Of course one could argue that Debian (and Ubuntu that relies on Debian's repository) has a culture of packaging stuff by themselves and indeed in the case of Mono there are people that do just that. But those packages are always behind the current version and you can't blame the maintainers for that. And lots of software companies, including Google and Mozilla, are providing packages for Debian/Ubuntu for the latest versions by themselves. It's actually the norm with Ubuntu to setup third-party PPAs that provide packages for something missing from the main repository.

So Miguel here complains about fragmentation on the Linux desktop. It's funny, because they ignore the largest distributions around. At least if instead of OpenSuse they supported Red Hat, I would understand.

Also, my experience with OS X has not be so pleasant. Miguel is a damn good developer, but he must be using a really simple toolchain.

When you are working day-in day-out with Java, Ruby, Python, Javascript, Mysql, Postgresql, GCC, Casandra, MongoDB, Memcached and dozens of other technologies, installing that stuff and having it work on OS X is amongst the most frustrating experiences I ever had, no matter if you're doing it by hand or with MacPorts or with Homebrew. All available options on OS X suck. I couldn't give a fuck about binaries of commercial software packages working, as long as I can't manage the toolchain I depend on daily.

Another thing with OS X is that it just works, until it doesn't. After that you're in Windows-land again, the preferred option being to just reset/reinstall everything. Linux can be painful sometimes, but for most problems you can find documented fixes.

Also, he's a little out of date. Ubuntu has been rock solid for me on my Thinkpad for the last couple of months since I got my current laptop. Of course, I preferred a model with Intel HD 4000 instead of a Geforce, so a little research into hardware may be needed to ensure good compatibility, but on the other hand you can't run OS X on anything else other than a couple of Macbook models. Try building a Hackintosh sometimes and your appreciation for Linux will change.

<comment><USER9> > When you are working day-in day-out with Java, Ruby, Python, Javascript, > Mysql, Postgresql, GCC, Casandra, MongoDB, Memcached and dozens of other > technologies, installing that stuff and having it work on OS X is amongst > the most frustrating experiences I ever had, no matter if you're doing it by > hand or with MacPorts or with Homebrew. All available options on OS X suck. > I couldn't give a fuck about binaries of commercial software packages > working, as long as I can't manage the toolchain I depend on daily.

As a non-Mac-user (and fellow ThinkPad user!) that occasionally gets roped in to that crazy land, I feel your pain. MacPorts seemed the most useful option before, simply because it seemed a direct port (heh) of the BSD ports system. Honestly the whole thing reminded me of trying to get stuff to work on Solaris 10-15 years ago.... if you can just get your compiler working it works great, just set up /my-usr over here and make sure nothing from the real system ends up in $PATH.

Lately I heard that MacPorts isn't cool any more so I didn't use it for my most recent Mac-oriented client project that needed some installs. I am a stubborn goat, but if I've learned one thing it's that when the trendy open source crowd on Mac wanders off, good luck getting _anything_ to work, especially because Apple loves to change things. So I looked around and it seems Fink is a really nice option. So far everything went great. If you are familiar with Debian it's like that, and it carefully segregates everything into /sw, so just make sure /sw/{bin,sbin} are first in $PATH and you'll be good. I was recently reminded of Gentoo Prefix and wish I'd tried that out.

Now here is the thing that cracks me up. I am of all things a Gentoo partisan. My workstations? Gentoo. Servers for my business? Gentoo. Client systems? Gentoo. LAN server for a moderately technical friend? Gentoo. And I do get some gentle mockery from friends for how much of my CPU time is spent on compiling. Yet here are the Mac acolytes, with the most consistent hardware and OS platform one could ever hope for, and they always have a fetish for compiling things from source. Are they showing off that they know how to do "./configure && make && make install"? Well congratulations, you got my respect for that, now please make binary packages. I mean shit, the only reason I am into Gentoo is I got tired of that rigmarole and managing $CFLAGS manually on my precious Slackware boxen.

<comment><USER10> You got tired of manually managing CFLAGS, so you moved to... Gentoo? Home of "hope you didn't want to view a GIF in Firefox, because you forgot to build it with that USE flag"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Trivia:

 _Miguel de Icaza (born c. 1972) is a Mexican free software programmer, best known for starting the GNOME and Mono projects._

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

</comment><comment><USER12> I just want to add, that once you want packages and such, for a tool chain, you'll at least discover some problems, as there is a package anarchy out there compared to GNU/Linux! But <http://macports.org> has a solid repository of packages. When it comes to "private packages" packages I have found outside repos, I do install them as "account installs", that is ~/opt/bin, ~/opt/man/man1 .. and so on, so it is easier to upgrade the OS, and less conflicts with the different packet managers.

Having said that, most things do work, and people are friendly and easy to reach.

Most GNU packages just work, shouldn't you find what you are looking for elsewhere.

I think Mac Os X, (or just OS X now adays), is the greatest platform for free software ever!

My reason for starting out with a Mac was Applescript (<http://macscripter.net>) and inter application communication IPC. I haven't regretted that a single day.

<comment><USER13> > But <http://macports.org> has a solid repository of packages.

The problem comes when you start wanting to use things that aren't on Macports, and are only on homebrew (or maybe fink). But homebrew won't work with macports! So either you have to install one package or the other manually, or you have to install both macports and homebrew, which means that not only are you dealing with an unsupported setup, but you're also dealing with using _two separate_ package managers for the same operating system.

Oh, and don't forget that anything installed via the App Store is completely independent of all of the above.

As a Linux user, I find this concept mind-boggling. I don't have time to keep track of a thousand different package managers. I just want one that handles everything.

<comment><USER14> It's not that hard, really.

You install libraries and console stuff from homebrew, gui applications from app store and forget about macports.

<comment><USER12> I'd say the opposite, forget about Homebrew and keep Macports. The whole thing may not be so easy to use at first, but when you have read the docs for the port system, it all makes much more sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had nearly the opposite experience. In ~2007, after the birth of my first child I had very little time. So I thought to myself "I don't have time to keep up with maintaining a Linux desktop" and I bought a nice iMac, and moved from Linux to Mac.

The experience I had was that everything that was a royal PITA on _nix at the time (web browsing, audio, skype, video, photo management, suspend/resume, printing) "just worked" on the Mac. Hurray!

But the problem I had was that the unixy stuff stuff I needed to do my job (X11 across multiple monitors, emacs, serial console control, local command- line tools, etc) did not just work, and was more a PITA to maintain on MacOSX than the flashy stuff was to maintain on _nix. The final straw was when I upgraded to Leopard, and multiple monitor support in X11 was totally hosed.

In the end, I wound up giving the iMac to my in-laws, building another whitebox for 1/2 the price of the iMac, and I have been happy ever after.

</comment><comment><USER16> So after Miguel did everything possible to fragment and screw up Linux desktops, he's now complaining about fragmented and screwed up Linux desktops.

Color me surprised.

<comment><USER10> Well, and after years of his project slavishly imitating Windows, its latest iteration is slavishly imitating OS X. So, good work all around.

Edit: vvvv I stand corrected.

Double Edit: What exactly do you mean, anyway? Things like <http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2002020601120OPGNMS>, dated 2010, seem to indicate he's still active within GNOME.

<comment><AUTHOR> That seem to be dated to 2002.

<comment><USER10> What is wrong with my brain I don't even know

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is ridiculous. The reason that things "didn't just work" in this case is surely that the OS was fiddled with to the extent that the kernel was recompiled more than once every 3 weeks.

It is hardly valid to compare that to a bog standard release of an OS.

If you are reading this and for some reason have not tried Linux, this experience is not remotely representative.

The laptop I am typing this on (Thinkpad, Ubuntu) - sleep works, audio works, camera works, wifi just works, 3g JUST WORKS, printers just work - better than in Windows, DisplayPort just works, USB devices just work - and I have been running and upgrading the OS for several years.

<comment><USER18> I have the same setup and the same experience. More importantly, I've had the same setup for many years, so there's no pain, ever. I'm baffled as to why people keep changing OS and setups and repeatedly incurring the cost of change. It's just an OS, it's mostly a solved problem. Spend time fiddling with stuff that can actually make you more productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recently switched over to a MBP from using windows exclusively...ever. For the most part it is awesome, really love it. But not everything "just works" as people like to say.

The one thing that stands out to me the largest is A2DP, idk if this is exclusive to the MBP(late 2011) but it is simply broken. Works 1/2 the time and when it does the quality is horrible.

Another annoyance is theme engine is non existent.

My favorite is the trackpad + osx, such a pleasure to use compared to any other laptop.

With that said i love both windows & osx, each has there advantages.

<comment><USER20> What does A2DP stand for? I've likely never used the feature personally.

<comment><USER19> Advance Audio Distribution Profile [1].

I actually had to look up the name, but it is a bluetooth profile for passing audio over bluetooth. I personally use it to connect my MBP to my audio system wirelessly. It barely works even when the distance between between the MBP and the receiver is less then 3 feet.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_profile#Advanced_Audi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_profile#Advanced_Audio_Distribution_Profile_.28A2DP.29)

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I've definitely never used it. I barely use any of the bluetooth stuff. That explains why I'v never run across any problems

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Many open source advocates like Miguel a decade ago have really been motivated by two things: Their love for Open source as a concept; and their love for Unix. This particularly shows in Miguels great essay "Let's make Unix not suck".

And the Mac achieves 2/3 of that. It made Unix not suck. It provides most of the open source goodies on top (using something like brew). And it also provides the kind of proprietary software that simply can't be matched by available open source software (like most of the Adobe tools).

Although I can sense some bitterness in his recent essays, he simply acknowledges the fact that the classic Linux desktop won't make it. (However I think it may actually succeed even on the desktop in the form of something Android related.)

As I see it, there will be a peaceful coexistence of proprietary and free software. Free software succeeds a) where collaboration is needed (Webkit) and b) to provide the kind of pluggable modules that OO programming promised to deliver but never did. Just think of all the stuff on github that you probably pull into your projects all the time.

</comment><comment><USER22> This wasn't all that interesting until I read the authors name. Wow.

<comment><USER23> Maybe he would have stuck with linux if gnome hadn't been so terribly managed. Poor bastard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remember reading the Reddit AMA with Linus Torvalds where someone asked him what his home computer setup was and Linus said MacBook Air. Running Linux of course, but I thought that was interesting.

Good hardware can make a huge difference in the experience whatever you are running. I sometimes think people don't give enough credit to Apple for the power of sweet homogenous hardware to make a whole OS/software ecosystem that much smoother. Or maybe they give too much credit to apple for the other parts of the stack.

I run a Scientific Linux desktop at work and have a MacBook Pro for personal stuff, with Virtualbox for (mostly) Ubuntu. Granted Ubuntu is pretty easy wherever, but Virtualbox setup for me tends to have fewer kinks. I wonder if it's down to the same environment homogeneity.

Props to Miguel de Icaza for writing this. Talk about being transparent.

EDIT: typos

<comment><USER25> Looks like he might be switching to the Pixel: [https://plus.google.com/u/0/102150693225130002912/posts/dk1a...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/102150693225130002912/posts/dk1aiW4JjHd)

<comment><USER24> Nice.

> I despise widescreen displays, but I had gotten resigned to them. Until now. > 3:2, baby!

Who knew.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I was always a windows developer. In my internship I was forced to use an Macbook pro and simply hate it. I was doing an TCP stack for blackberry and working with serial/Bluetooth communication for testing was a pain, in the end I just installed Windows on parallels. I really don't understand this cult of Mac. I really think that is a way to be "cool" and follow and wear the "nice start-up guys" mask.

<comment><USER27> Thats because you are used to your environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I can't believe all the talk about Finder here..

I bet Miguel is more like me than most of you, that is, living in a unix/linux terminal for the last 15 years or more - AND doing file management in that terminal!

I've also gone to the Mac from unix/linux as my primary machine as it just works. What I mean by that is suspend/resume, wifi, and all that stuff that you shouldn't think about anymore.

Sure, all I use on it is a browser, iTerm, emacs and dev tools installed from MacPorts, but it provides me with a good environment - that just works. Updates have never broken anything for me - not even the OS updates. Can't say the same about Linux.

<comment> wes-exp Absolutely. I don't use much more than iTerm2, a web browser, emacs + various developer stuff, and Homebrew.

The base OS is rock f-ing solid. All my unix stuff works flawlessly. Time spent f'ing around with drivers and random upgrade issues? Zero.

It even syncs with my phone (iPhone), which happens to work great!

Finder? Who gives a crap? That's what the terminal is for!

<comment><USER10> This is the attitude that puzzles me. I install Debian. I launch X, with no configuration. My WM starts in the optimal resolution. Sound, which has for years been a major pain point, pretty much just works; Pulse and ALSA may suck, but I've used both with great success and no fiddling of drivers

As for upgrade issues... I apt-get upgrade weekly because things are getting fixed. OS X is still shipping the same out-of-date copy of BSD tools they've been using for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The interesting part about this part for me is how subtly differences in software and hardware change what we use.

 _Without noticing, I stopped turning on the screen for my Linux machine during 2012. By the time I moved to a new apartment in October of 2012, I did not even bother plugging the machine back and to this date, I have yet to turn it on._

That represents to me exactly how new technology is adapted and how old ones die off. Fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER30> If I only could to quit mac apps with a single click...

<comment><USER31> Command+Q?

<comment><USER32> This.

I don't see why you'd spend hours writing a system utility to close apps on a Mac that provides a perfectly easy to use keyboard shortcut.

<comment><USER30> Because I want to close apps with a single [mouse] click with my right hand, without displacing my left hand to press that keyboard shortcut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I used to be a Mac basher, as my first MBP gave me a lot of trouble (ended with video card recall). Then I got a beefy ThinkPad W520, which gave me even more trouble (random power-offs at least once per week). Now my work laptop is a 16GB RAM 500GB SSD 2.7GHz i7 late 2012 rMBP, I run VMware Fusion with Windows, Ubuntu and CentOS VMs, which feel faster than my w520 running Windows natively! Past lessons have taught me not to use OS X for dev besides for iOS :)

Retina display is so much better for reading papers. There is no way I'd use even a 1080p display given a choice! It has only given me minor issues so far (failed to wake up in some external display combination in rare occasions). Knock on wood :)

</comment><comment><USER34> I am very disappointed to see this posted where, when, and how it is. Comparing Linux to Mac is like comparing apples to Lamborghinis. I can get an apple, cheaply if not for totally for free, locally, anywhere at any time. Lamborghinis are very expensive, both in up-front cost and maintenance, and truly don't perform relative to the cost. What i hear is someone moaning about how much effort it takes to choose the best kind of apple, Gala? Granny Smith? Sour Green? Golden? Macintosh? I'd rather have an apple than Apple.

</comment><comment><USER35> Someone should add (Miguel de Icaza) to the end of the title.

</comment><comment><USER36> This story sums up my own experience quite nicely as well. While I really enjoyed using Ubuntu/Debian for almost 6 years, when time came for a new laptop, I just didnt want to deal with yet another issue with nvidia cards or any other oddity. Paying the Apple premium price was a bargain when compared to hours spend getting little issues here and there worked out.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've had to use Windows again for a work project, it reminded me exactly why I switched to OSX. People have really different needs from their OS, we should be thoroughly glad we have 3 real contenders these days that you can use.

Although after using Explorer again I think Finder is no where near as bad.

</comment><comment><USER38> Reading this comment thread, it's as if Mac OS X is the most horrible operating system in existence.

<comment><USER39> Well it's probably on the top 5 list of most horrible commonly used desktop operating system in existence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> _(Note that I fully expect Mac OS X and Windows fanbois to vote this down for stating unconvenient facts)_

That developer has always been _very_ controversial in the Linux world amongst serious Linux users. He's been trying to poison Linux with mono and that was a huge lot of energy lost (I'm sure some people will still come here and defend mono and saying how great the CLR is and why C#/F# is the future, etc. But sadly for these the world changed quite a bit since then [cough, iOs, cough, Android]).

Now what I find _very_ ironic is that basically he says that in 2005 OS X rocked because it had no virus, while Windows was full of viruses and that this is why he switched to OS X.

And what do we have today? A _major_ OS X vulnerability issue due to Java applets which infected a gigantic number of devs, giving access inside major target companies like FaceBook to bad guys.

Besides that I can't possibly even begin to understand how OS X would be better than Linux for a developer.

On Linux I can install Java in a user account without needing to be root.

On Linux I can install a browser in another user account, which has no access to Java at all.

On Linux I can display that browser from that other user account to my graphical session if I want to.

On Linux I can have several users and two graphical sessions (or more) simultaneously and switch from one to the other if I want to.

On Linux I can set per-user ID firewalling rules using nothing else but iptables (or whatever suits you):

iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW,RELATED -m user --user-ID 1001 -j ACCEPT

Here only one user (the one with the account which only has a web browser installed, no Java, no nothing, just a browser) is allowed to emit trafic to port 80.

etc.

There are just so many benefits from using Linux as a dev. Security, performances, control, mutliple graphical sessions / mixing windows from several user accounts, KVM, etc.

There's simply no way the walled garden that OS X is allows me to trivially do all this.

Once again: we're talking about someone who's always been controversial in the Linux community because of its love/hate relationship with Linux.

Honestly I don't want of a Linux developer who's telling the world that OS X on the desktop is better for dev than Linux.

Thankfully virtually all of the _others_ Linux developers out there are eating their own dog food.

And who are these others Linux developers? The ones who didn't try to poison Linux with MS technologies.

<comment><USER41> You didn't answer my question here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5246603>

Also, OS X can run multiple sessions, install a browser with no root access and Java is not installed by default.

But I see you are one of those users that drop their misguided wisdom and ignore all the replies, so I won't expect you to reply here either and keep believing your false facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> >Once a virus got on your machine, that was pretty much it. And Microsoft wasn't doing much to stop the infestation. For a long time they didn't even see it as their problem. In retrospect, it was the computer equivalent of Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.

They want to protect users with Secure Boot, and still they get a lot of crap for it.

Remember Palladium? That would've stopped malware in its tracks. It was railed against big time, and later the same people gave rave reviews the iPad/iPhone more even though Apple implemented the Palladium spec pretty much to the letter.

Also, wasn't Miguel supposed to be Microsoft's shill or something for introducing Mono for Linux and pushing C# on Linux and Mac? Now here he is, selling a Mac!

Maybe he was just a technology lover all along!

I am sure the anti-Microsoft folks' heads are exploding with the contradictions!

<comment><USER43> > They want to protect users with Secure Boot, and still they get a lot of > crap for it.

No. That's only to make it difficult/impossible to boot anything that wasn't signed with a Microsoft key. It protects against one kind of rootkit and that's it.

> Apple implemented the Palladium spec pretty much to the letter.

Apple wasn't trying to force the PC industry to implement Palladium (or UEFI Secure Boot). If you buy Apple, you are buying Apple. When I buy Dell, I don't expect to be forced to also buy Microsoft (although I often am).

> Also, wasn't Miguel supposed to be Microsoft's shill or something for > introducing Mono for Linux and pushing C# on Linux and Mac?

People change careers.

> Maybe he was just a technology lover all along!

Maybe I just don't agree with his taste for technologies.</comment></comment>