Windows 10 Enterprise ignores various privacy settings - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/m8urnett/status/866353982217699328 <comment><USER2> MS Support consistently and repeatedly told me that enterprise allowed me to disable this stuff. If I can't control the egress then I can't verify PCI compliance. I've already had to revert a client to Win 7 because they failed a PCI compliance audit using Win 10 Enterprise. Which, by the way, is very expensive for small businesses. Win 10 Enterprise isn't viable for business. I have a bunch of small business clients and I've had to use a whitelist firewall to pass PCI compliance, someone said here that a whitelist firewall is borderline unusable. I've sunk so much time into that solution and I can attest, it's not viable.

<comment><USER3> Use LTSB. Microsoft tries to scare you into not using it because it doesn't support the Windows store or Edge or have telemetry or any of that fun stuff.

But they keep coming out with respins of it to otherwise keep feature parity with CB Enterprise. A 2017 LTSB based on 1703 should be out soon.

<comment><USER4> > Microsoft tries to scare you into not using it because it doesn't support > the Windows store or Edge or have telemetry or any of that fun stuff.

Scare me? It sounds like those awesome stripped down versions of XP that pirates removed all the cruft from back in the day.

<comment><USER5> You were able to do it yourself with nLite.

Memories!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since the first release of W10 several registry keys and policies have changed in very confusing ways. I can't remember what exactly but I had to change my personal scripts several times based on the changelog of other tools. Privacy and settings like default apps were also reverted (reset to default) when you updated. They installed some apps like Candy Crush Saga on Enterprise. I don't see that much of a problem here, it's understandable since they are letting go of legacy stuff, bugs happens (even more after you cut your QA department). Now it's time to stop with all the excuses. Get your shit together.

From: [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/itpro/windows/manage/con...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/itpro/windows/manage/configure-windows-telemetry-in-your-organization)

> Security. Information that's required to help keep Windows, Windows Server, > and System Center secure, including data about the Connected User Experience > and Telemetry component settings, the Malicious Software Removal Tool, and > Windows Defender.

I have all the possible settings configured, from registry to policies and I still see random connections everywhere. But it's ok because it's not telemetry, right?

> What is NOT telemetry?

> Telemetry can sometimes be confused with functional data.

Is anyone taking legal actions against Microsoft about all of this? Does anyone care? Not everybody can switch all their machines to Linux/VMs, this whole situation makes me angry.

<comment><USER2> I can't agree with this more. A client straight up failed a PCI compliance audit, replete with daily fines, for using 10 Enterprise. They decided to pursue legal measures against MS for false claims. I really hope this gets elevated because reverting to win 7 is a solution with a short life span. The other solution is to rebuild infrastructure on top of a different platform but that's prohibitively expensive.

<comment><USER4> > The other solution is to rebuild infrastructure on top of a different > platform but that's prohibitively expensive.

I really don't have a lot of sympathy for companies that lock themselves in to a proprietary platform.

<comment><USER7> To preface to avoid what might otherwise seem like a bias toward defending use of Windows: I'm a free software activist, a GNU maintainer, and do extensive volunteer work for GNU and the FSF.

It's not fair blame. Many companies simply go for what works and throw money at the problem. Windows historically has excellent support from a large number of third parties.

The other problem is third-party software. I work for an insurance company. The system that they use for managing everything---policies, accounting, brokers, etc---is tied to Windows. This is a specialized program---there are only a few of them that exist, and none as sophisticated as the one this company uses. This system has been responsible for not only tying the office to Windows, but holding us back from upgrading---for the longest time we couldn't even get off of IE6 because it didn't support anything higher.

I'm able to do 99% of my work within a GNU/Linux VM. But on rare occasion, I need to use that system, and it requires Windows. Everyone else in the office ---the majority of the company---requires Windows. This is a system that the company has invested many millions of dollars into.

So while we can do our best to inform others, perhaps before they make these critical business decisions, it ultimately comes down to practicality for most businesses. Yes, they may pay for it. Yes, they're taken advantage of, have issues with vendor lockin, etc, but unless you travel upstream and liberate those systems or provide suitable replacements _that the business is confident will have support for years to come_, there's not much to do.

I'm not defending the situation; it's terrible. But sympathy _should_ be had, because there's much to lament, and much room to help.

<comment><USER4> > Many companies simply go for what works and throw money at the problem

So they went with the easiest option and now they are locked in due to lack of forward planning. Their own short term planning is to blame.

With the third party software you mentioned, how long have the relied on it and have they don't absolutely anything to mitigate this reliance? My guess is that they've done nothing or worse, written a bunch of integration points on top of the software that makes it even harder to replace.

One day the company providing that software will jack up the price and you'll be forced to pay it. Again I'll have no sympathy because the company has done nothing to unlock themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The switch to Linux or other free operating systems is long overdue. If your excuse is hardware support, then (1) your hardware is probably supported these days and (2) you should not buy hardware that is incompatible with the operating system you plan to use. If your excuse is editing MS Office files, LibreOffice supports the formats and works great, and MS Office on Wine is an option. If your excuse is games, then know that with Steam and Wine combined your potential gaming library is HUGE. If your excuse is laziness or resistance to change, then I thank you for being honest, and urge you to overcome it.

Proprietary operating systems work against your interests. Stop using them.

<comment><USER9> > If your excuse is editing MS Office files, LibreOffice supports the formats > and works

For very small values of "works". I've found that even high school projects turn out to be a bit too much for libre office.

<comment><USER10> Well, my definition of "works" is that you can read it. Authoring new documents should use ODF. And again, MS Office works on Wine, so you can use that in the worst case.

<comment><USER11> You're really undermining your own argument here, even though you started out very well.

If I send an ODF to my lawyer, investor or accountant they're going to panic.

<comment><USER12> That's disingenuous. Word has supported odt and odf for both read and write, for nearly a decade already. (2008 version supported it from preliminary checking)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most of his configuration is invalid, due to his misconfiguration of group policy. For example, he disabled the Teredo policy. But here's the help text for that policy: "If you disable or do not configure this policy setting, the local host settings are used."

He made this error countless times, rendering the entire experiment a failure.

Oops.

<comment><USER14> _Most of his configuration is invalid, due to his misconfiguration of group policy._

Yeah, it's his fault that he didn't properly navigate the Kafkaesque nightmare that Microsoft has created in order to thwart people from disabling all this spyware.

<comment><USER15> It's pretty basic Windows GPO knowledge. Lots of them work this way.

<comment><USER16> It's a pretty broken configuration system that makes it needlessly difficult to do things the correct way.

<comment><USER17> It's a pretty shoddy security researcher that doesn't read the documentation before posting a lot of falsehoods to Twitter.

<comment><USER18> > _pretty shoddy security researcher that doesn 't read the documentation_

What an unnecessary insult. If you can read the incredibly confusing Microsoft documentation better than him (or any of us), then please post the definitive step-by-step instructions for turning off all telemetry and privacy-invasive connections in Windows 10.

Then we'll see if your insult was warranted.

<comment><USER17> So, I search for "teredo group policy" and here's the second link I find, a TechNet article with detailed screenshots about how to disable IPv6 via Group Policy, which is one of the things he talks about:

[https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/...](https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5927.how- to-disable-ipv6-through-group-policy.aspx)

It shows how there's an Explain box that describes what the various settings do.

<comment><USER18> That's 1 item[ * ]. I'd still like to see your definitive step-by-step instructions for turning off _all_ telemetry and privacy-invasive connections in Windows 10 -- which is what the OP was attempting to do.

[ * ] How do you know that it even works? Plenty of times I've followed instructions from Microsoft's TechNet that didn't solve the problem it purported to solve.

And by the way, that's a helluva lot of steps to disable IPv6. Multiply that by a hundred other things you need to do, and probably a hundred you don't know about, and changes that get undone by updates, and you have a nightmare trying to create a privacy-respecting Windows 10.

<comment><USER17> IPv6 isn't even part of telemetry per say, it's an IETF standard that can be used to connect with any server that supports it. Yes, some OS-level services require IPv6. Shutting off IPv6 as a way of disabling those services is like... using leeches for bloodletting but for IT practices. If you want to disable telemetry and you're on a supported Windows SKU for Group Policy, here's Microsoft's directions on what you can configure:

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/configuration/confi...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/configuration/configure-windows-telemetry-in-your-organization)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That's surprising. I would expect the Enterprise edition to perform as advertised. It's a major revenue source and this violates all kinds of security policies.

I find the author's point about people using third-party programs to stop Windows spying, and potentially impairing their security, very telling. He's absolutely correct.

I use programs called Shutup10 and WinAero Tweaker to stop the telemetry myself, and both of these programs have settings that would potentially impair your security, primarily by stopping Windows Updates entirely.

So the real question is this-- is this debacle the consumer's fault or Microsoft's? I know which side I'm on.

</comment><comment><USER20> Frankly, "settings" in an OS don't fill me with any more confidence than "settings" on Facebook: software has bugs, and other reasons for not working as advertised. A toggle switch coded with the best of intentions may still not be consulted everywhere that it should, and even software that is correct today can be wrong in 3 months when somebody important quits or a feature is added and nobody thought to check the setting for that new feature.

If this is important to you, demand more open and peer-reviewed source code, and demand that things run behind carefully-controlled walls like sandboxes and limited host files. Don't just run your organization by trusting one software vendor.

</comment><comment><USER21> every few weeks Microsoft validate my decision to move my (declining) use of Windows entirely into VMs

if gaming is the problem you can run Windows in a VM at 97% native speed with GFX passthrough, been doing this for almost 2 years now without any problems

the vfio subreddit has a lot of info: [https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/](https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/)

MS are then free to spy on me playing starcraft as much as they want

<comment><USER22> It doesn't help that Nvidia's drivers intentionally stop working when they detect a consumer card functioning through VT-D in a virtualized environment.

<comment><USER21> you can patch the driver, and next time you upgrade don't purchase an nvidia product

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Scary indeed, I've noticed that a Windows 10 'Pro' VM I have at times seems to reset or change privacy / security settings. A first I blamed myself for doing something silly without realising it affected these settings or installing some software that changed them (which is a little scary in itself) but then I realised it was after windows update had run, every few months privacy or security behaviour would change.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is a little chilling. As a home user on Win7, I've avoided Win10, but thought I'd eventually upgrade, just to enjoy newer hardware. I'd thought I could just invest in Enterprise, about $100 these days, and be able to control the more intrusive aspects. Guess not. On a semi-related note, I'm using uMatrix, and it never ceases to amaze me how promiscuous every single web site is these days. It's not just in Soviet Russia. You don't use the internet. The internet uses you.

<comment><USER25> Well ya still chilling I guess, but so obviously expected it kind of takes away some of the chill factor.

If you want to control your software, run software that you control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I always use Linux as my preferred OS and a "Just Works" OS like macOS or Windows.

I run Linux as a dual-boot and I run it in a VM from Windows/mac.

It's frustrating because Apple has fallen far behind on hardware I want. I need 3840x2160, a touchscreen, a card reader, both USB 3.0 and 3.1, 16GB of RAM, and full-size HDMI. They've jumped too far ahead into their 'revolutionary' view of the future. I can find better hardware for much cheaper. Dell XPS 13, HP Envy 2-in-1, Toshiba Radius 12... the build quality on the Toshiba is pretty bad, but it out-performs a would-be Macbook. I'm not spending 2 -fucking- thousand dollars for sub-standard hardware simply because I like the OS better than Windows. Apple spies on its users, but at least when you turn it off it's actually off.

I can't continue using Windows because it's clearly hostile to users, and I can't go with Apple because the hardware sucks.

Linux requires so much involvement to keep it running "well".

Just argh.

<comment><USER27> We just need a billionaire benevolent dictator to fund a distribution of Linux and relevant programs that turns it into something stable and user friendly.

<comment><USER28> _> We just need a billionaire benevolent dictator to fund a distribution of Linux_

I might be missing the joke here, is this a jab at Mark Shuttleworth?

<comment><USER27> Not intended, but I do think Ubuntu was a missed opportunity by trying to innovate instead of focusing on stability, familiarity, and user-friendliness.

<comment><USER29> I think Ubuntu did a lot of good to the community. Debian was rougher before Ubuntu was a thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The "Year of the Linux Desktop" has been a running joke for a long time, but perhaps it's no longer a joke. Not wanting to lose control as far as updates and privacy is concerned, I switched to Linux when Windows 10 came out.

Running Debian Testing with Gnome has been a joy. In my opinion the user experience is easier and better than that of Windows 7 or 8. Office staff could quite easily be trained to click on the Start key or the drop-down Activities menu or move the mouse to the top-left corner to start a program. Office software is quite good. Program-switching keyboard combinations are excellent. The Evolution mail client is very good. Browser software is the same as on Windows or a Mac. Problems with bad fonts, poorly designed UI, lacking drivers etc. are things of the past (with the notable exception of very new hardware).

This may not be possible due to the necessity of using specific proprietary programs that run only on Windows, for example. On the other hand, the level of tech support required is perhaps not significantly greater than what is necessary for installing and maintaining Windows on a bunch of machines.

On the plus side, everything is very fast, tasks like backing up files or systems are simple with GUI or terminal interface, and if you want to learn iptables and set up that router/firewall you can do that too. Everything you learn is an investment instead of an annoyance. Nobody is going through your company or personal files to serve you ads.

There's no reason any more, besides defaults and inertia, why Linux should have 2% desktop market share instead of 10% of somewhat technical people or even 20 or 30% of the general population.

</comment><comment><USER31> The connections in the first screenshot[0] aren't necessarily from Microsoft. This screenshot shows a DNS lookup for google-analytics.com followed by an attempt to use Teredo. If Chrome is installed then this could be from the Google Update service. It seems unlikely that Microsoft would send usage information to a Google site.

[0] [https://twitter.com/m8urnett/status/866353982217699328](https://twitter.com/m8urnett/status/866353982217699328)

Edited to omit needless words

<comment><USER32> Chrome is not installed according to this tweet:

"Also note this is a system with minimal software install, all default windows store apps removed, and nothing running on it."

[https://twitter.com/m8urnett/status/866354381012189184](https://twitter.com/m8urnett/status/866354381012189184)

<comment><USER31> I saw that tweet but I still doubt that any Windows 10 service would connect to analytics.google.com. It seems more likely that he has a Google application installed.

Edited to reword the second sentence.

<comment><USER33> Doesn't have to be a user installed google app. Google analytics use is ubiquitous for mobile and web apps could easily be something Microsoft bundled into their os like for example candy crush (not implying that's the culprit) or something that carries over that pervasive track every click and mousemove type mentality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If this test was correct, this smells like a class-action. Enterprise users (and home users, for that matter), have a right to control egress.

</comment><comment><USER35> Has anyone done an analysis of MacOS and Chrome OS using similar methodologies? I would be curious as to the extent of the information being sent back to each of the "Mother Ships" in a side by side comparison, if that's even possible.

<comment><USER36> Little Snitch is a popular bit of software on the Mac, and pretty much everyone who uses thst goes through the first week of googling "so what's this weird background process do?"

<comment><USER37> A software firewall is useless, the OS can hide from it. You need something external to your machine to be sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This might actually be a pretty huge opportunity for a company which can hand hold the transitioning from Windows to Linux in an enterprise. After all, if the new Windows OS is provably non-compliant, shouldn't the enterprise customers be very willing to investigate this option? Are there already companies which do this?

</comment><comment><USER39> Another year of another decade; Microsoft as dishonorable as ever.

<comment><USER40> But look, then allow you to run their database on Linux now!!

It's proven time and time again that if the entire org isn't behind something, the good deeds of some get vastly overshadowed by these kind of games.

<comment><USER41> I really wish that the company that makes .net and azure could be split off from the rest of msft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I read that Windows 10 uses peer-to-peer file sharing with any other Windows hosts it locates on the same network.

This way each Windows computer does not have to connect to Microsoft to download, e.g., the Windows 10 "upgrade". It seems like this could also be used to evade attempts by users to block such downloads by blocking Microsoft IP addresses.

Windows 10 could propagate itself through a network of Windows computers, like a ...

Seriously, how does this work in pratice?

Windows 10 does peer-to-peer file sharing automatically without requiring any user interaction?

<comment><USER19> Yes, this is called "delivery optimization" and it's on by default. By default, Windows Enterprise/Education only pull updates from Microsoft and the local domain, while Windows Home/Pro will also pull updates from other peers on the internet.

You can turn it off, or disable pulling from internet peers, but given the OP, who knows if MS actually respects that setting? I guess we have to roll the dice now.

[https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-windows- updat...](https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-windows-update- delivery-optimization)

<comment><USER43> Maybe they changed it, but I just checked my fresh install of Pro build 1703 from MSDN and it was disabled.

<comment><USER19> Odd, their docs say it's on by default.

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/deployment/update/w...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/deployment/update/waas-delivery-optimization)

<comment><USER43> One of the handful of tools I installed from Ninite must have turned it off then. After a quick look, I'm guessing it was Classic Start Menu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is the other reason WannaCry happened: 97% Windows 7 machines without updates. Because _users can 't trust Microsoft not to mess them around_.

</comment><comment><USER45> Does anyone know a good updated firewall whitelist to allow just Windows Updates and nothing else?

<comment><USER46> Any reason why you believe it would respect those rules? Note the one example where a rule was dynamically added to the firewall in the tweets listed here.

<comment><USER47> That doesn't matter if you're using a DNS blackhole or hardware firewall. Of course, MS could hard-code some IP addresses, too.

<comment><USER48> I was deeply tempted to setup a Windows 10 Enterprise machine at work, then have my OpenBSD firewall add any IP the W10 machines tries to get to a block list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I run Windows in a Parallels VM on my Mac. This VM needs to, on occasion, connect to the Internet. Any way I can--from the outside, without needing to trust Windows--be forced to whitelist what the VM is and isn't allowed connect to?

<comment><USER50> outside /etc/hosts redirect to 0.0.0.0 inside (c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts) assuming it is being respected, but how to find list? is very difficult I think, as can change by Redmond c&c server at no notice,

<comment><USER51> microsoft hardcoded IPs of all its spy^^^value added services. As a matter of a fact DNSCache is one of the services used for uploading telemetry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Keeping in mind that Google and AdNexus have both been caught permitting malicious advertisements on their ad networks. As well as Microsoft :-)

</comment><comment><USER53> Frankly, I am fed up trying to block the "phone-home" connections between our PCs and Microsoft and we're still only using Windows 7. There is absolutely no way we would ever use Windows 10 unless we could guarantee that we could totally sever all such connections permanently and not have to worry about them again.

Moreover, for some years now we have considered our Windows operating systems as 'hostile' privacy-busting code on our PCs and if there was some easy way we could get rid of them then we would do so in an instant (please don't come at me with the Linux bumph/argument because in many instances it's not a possible option).

This really is tiresome, why can't we just buy Windows/Microsoft busting routers that have a big red button on them that says: _" Stop all Phone-home to Microsoft"_ or alternatively ones that have easily updatable blocking lists/text files that we can easily administer/download to them?

This ought to be an easy no-brainer but it isn't! Why is it that router manufacturers, etc. aren't falling all over themselves to provide such devices? I'm amazed that they're not, one would think there'd be dozens of available by now; are manufactures that timid and afraid of Microsoft that they're not game to make them?

Furthermore, it is not only a Microsoft Windows O/S problem, as these days just about all software talks home without seeking the user's permission to do so beforehand, and none of them tell you exactly what information is being transmitting home. It seems to me that we users will never solve this "talk home" problem until we have easy to use gateways that are external to our PCs, phones etc. that automatically block all "phone-home" addresses.

BTW, anyone thinking of developing such a device needs to keep in mind that for years Microsoft has hard-coded within Windows certain IP address that bypass the hosts file irrespective of how it is set so that it is impossible to block Windows completely from talking home. _Thus, there is no other option other than to block these addresses by means that are external to the PC /device!_

A final point: Microsoft could claim that as it has provided the upgrade to Windows 10 free and that entitles it to sap the private life info out of its users. I would counter that by saying that if alternatively I actually _buy /pay for_ the operating system then I'm entitled to have complete control over it—and that means no talkback to Microsoft by the OS.

Of course, none of this would be a problem now if the Microsoft monopoly had been busted years ago (i.e. if our fearful democracies had been game enough to use already existing law to thwart the monopoly early on).

<comment><USER54> Sometimes Linux may not be an answer, but with routers it. Buy a router, put LEDE on it, and block the domains.

You didn't buy/pay for the operating system. You bought the rights to use the operating system under the terms Microsoft stated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Microsoft went Google evil on this product...

</comment><comment><USER56> Just a reminder for Windows users: in most cases, you no longer need Windows. All your pain is completely voluntary.

<comment><USER57> Your pain after you switch to Linux will be completely voluntary, too.

<comment><USER39> Windows pain costs few hundred $ more :)

<comment><USER58> Only if your time is worthless.

<comment><USER59> That is quite a stupid argument which you seem to just rephrase without having thought about it, as you could aswell say then that healthy eating takes some more time and consideration than running to the next fast food burger, thus you can only eat healthy if your time is worthless. Or how about developing new energy sources if we can just burn all the oil much easier? Sometimes some efforts have to be done to have nice things. See how dumb this 'Only if your time is worthless' sounds now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Ignoring people who need to control what leaves their systems for legal reasons I always find it odd how much the hardcore Windows users freak out over stuff like this.

I mean you trust your entire digital life to this OS yet the idea of analytics being sent back to the people who made the OS terrifies you? They also seem to freak out and declare certain versions near unusable when I've recently started using Win 10 after not using Windows since Win 2K and honestly it's 90% the same thing to me.

Also interested as to how many people freaking out over telemetry use Google software.

</comment><comment><USER61> [https://docs.microsoft.com/lv- lv/windows/configuration/manag...](https://docs.microsoft.com/lv- lv/windows/configuration/manage-connections-from-windows-operating-system- components-to-microsoft-services)

</comment><comment><USER62> time to switch...

</comment><comment><USER9> I actually like this. Fuck the enterprises who degrade the experience for their users. Disable this disable that. Install shit like McAfee. They just need an excuse for their existence. And the users are the ones to suffer, and the company loses precious productivity without knowing it.

I know companies that will pre install McAfee in the brand new MacBooks they give out to employees! It's insane. Microsoft should just say, if you want to use our OS, stop fucking with it.

</comment><comment><USER63> Notice at least two MS employees responded to this thread. I posted myself in another one: [https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/863463634281746433](https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/863463634281746433)

</comment><comment><USER64> Twitter has this thing called "moments" for combining multiple tweets and avoiding what this person has done.

I guess he's only an IT security analyst so perhaps isn't up to speed.

[https://support.twitter.com/articles/20174961#](https://support.twitter.com/articles/20174961#)</comment>


Stop Using Arial and Helvetica (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.64notes.com/design/stop-helvetica-arial/ <comment><USER2> The article didn't really explain why they are bad, and why is Arial worse than Helvetica, and why is Helvetica Neue is better. It just went on with ramblings and snobbishness about some hinting problems and unexplained screenshots with big, intrusive labels. As a person with minimal knowledge about typography, I understand what hinting is, but I don't see the problem unless it is clearly pointed out to me. So my general thought is maybe they are not the best, they are just as bad as MP3 sound clips and JPG screenshots ;-) are -- i.e. It gets the point across for most people.

A bigger problem is, to many international users (and news publishers that have articles with names in international characters), it matters if it works. In that regard, Arial and Times New Roman are the winners hands-down. They will display whatever you can possibly imagine. Part of the reasons why many people chose those fonts over the "fucking amazing" fonts that the author suggested (Georgia included) is that most of them have abysmal international support. "日本語," "中文," "ไทย," or "Tiếng Việt," for example, reads just as well as rectangular boxes in Georgia [1] (fallbacks will cure the rectangular boxes but Georgia with fallbacks looks like crap in the case of "Tiếng Việt").

Verdana and Tahoma are not compact enough for many of the applications I was planning to do. The capitalized "I" character in Tahoma is annoying at best and plain ugly to look at at worst.

On a personal level, the Ubuntu-esque font in TFA somehow rustles my jimmies.

1: [https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/microsoft/georgia/](https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/microsoft/georgia/)

<comment><USER3> Neither Arial nor Times New Roman have any of those non-latin languages included either; you're just seeing fallbacks when they work.

<comment><USER2> You are correct - I was wrong. "Tiếng Việt" works here without fallbacks [1], though.

My theory is that the fallbacks are designed to work well for those popular fonts so it doesn't look off when the system falls back. The consistency in the width of the stroke seems to be the most important factor to my eyes. Here [2] you can see the mix looks natural, while in Georgia in dev tool it looks inconsistent. The screenshot is made on my Ubuntu computer.

1: [https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/microsoft/arial/](https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/microsoft/arial/) 2: [http://imgur.com/a/hBl0A](http://imgur.com/a/hBl0A)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just because Helvetica wasn't designed or hinted for modern displays doesn't necessarily imply it looks bad on them, far from it. It's handsome typeface and its legacy lives on in typefaces like Roboto and San Francisco, which _are_ designed and hinted for modern displays.

And as for Arial, most of the attitude directed towards it is nothing more than anti-Microsoft snobbishness.

<comment><USER5> I agree. If most of the people viewing your site/app/whatever are using high DPI screens, use whatever font you want to. Most accusations of 'looks terrible on screens!' apply to low DPI screens (which, I'll admit, most people still have, and will continue to have).

<comment><USER6> I am going to go even further, and admit most people on those low DPI screens don't think they look that terrible. Designers have extremely high standards, and often err to the side of stylish instead of readable.

You might be surprised how many people prefer 17pt comic sans to the crisp 7pt pale-gray-on-white designers usually label "joy to read" or "beautiful".

<comment><USER7> > to the crisp 7pt pale-gray-on-white designers usually label "joy to read" or > "beautiful".

Perhaps because they are actually neither and many designers are not well- versed in typography. Making text beautiful (but not necessarily readable) is design; making text readable (but not necessarily beautiful) is typography. They of course, overlap, and good typography usually looks good as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article nicely demonstrates that .jpg is not a good format for screenshots of text.

<comment><USER9> Yes! It really subverts the "less contrast" argument if reducing the contrast turns the screenshot into a blurry mess.

Also, I don't really buy that "less contrast" argument. Not everyone uses a HDR Retina screen, so by dialing down the contrast in CSS, you're reducing the available contrast range on sub-par screens. People with high-contrast screens should just dial down the brightness a bit.

<comment><USER10> It's generally accepted (rightly or wrongly, trends change) in UX that black on white is a "bad thing"(TM) and that a dark grey text (#333 thru #262626) makes for better readability. Or that black text on an off-white 'paper' is also better.

The problem is when inexperienced developers read about this UX rule and do both grey text and off-white bg, or use a grey text that is far too light and removed all contrast making the eyes strain to see the text at all, something that is all too common.

I use a sub-par screen regularly, a 2007 T42 screen, and the app I use most on that PC is FocusWriter, that has low contrast text aimed toward longer periods of writing .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Helvetica is a bit of an acquired taste (I can't stand its grotesque x-height), but regardless of whether it looks good or not (which is a subjective judgement in any case), I agree with the article that it is for many people just not a very good typeface to read _larger amounts_ of prose in.

If readability of multiple paragraphs of text is your goal, than there are many alternatives that are measurably easier to read (e.g., for sans-serif typefaces: try DejaVu Sans, Open Sans, or Calibri, or consider a typeface with serifs suitable for screens).

A lot depends on your target audience of course (age and eyesight matter as well), and HiDPI screens help a bit — but unless your demographics consist exclusively of Apple fans or mobile users only you can't rely on that. On average though reading Helvetica (and Arial) is cognitively more taxing than a lot of good alternatives. I'm surprised this isn't common knowledge in the HN crowd.

</comment><comment><USER12> I recently went back to using Helvetica (well, Arial) more often. I have to do a ton of powerpoint presentations at work (at least two or three group reports a week).

In the beginning, my personal template used to be very complex. Header, footer, a cloud chamber image as a watermark, custom fonts. Over time, I simplified it more and more, removed the watermark, the header and footer backgrounds, and so on. The only extravaganza remaining was the font (Source Sans Pro, and Source Sans Pro Light for the titles... I found it looks quite elegant to make the titles _lighter_ instead of _bolder_ , they draw enough attention already.)

Long story short, today I just droped the custom font and went all Arial. I'm surprized how clean and professional it looks (like "I don't have to pretty up my slides, I have confidence in my content :-D"). I think I'm going to try this out for a while. It also has the benefit that everybody can now edit my .pptx files.

<comment><USER13> You can go full openbsd mode and switch to Comic sans :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Site seems overloaded.

Here's a mirror: [https://web.archive.org/web/20160404030737/http://www.64note...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160404030737/http://www.64notes.com/design/stop- helvetica-arial/)

Ironically, the CSS didn't load for me, so I read this site with the "browser defaults", which do many of the things the site was complaining about.

</comment><comment><USER15> "they are unreadable" is a pretty exaggerated and subjective statement. I don't find them unreadable at all. A little over-used in logos and such, but I don't see them particularly often in the body text of websites.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Prevalent reason is ignorance... > Second reason, which makes most sense, is > availability

I think these arguments are in wrong order. Availability and page performance are huge things in webdev. Accessibility profit from correct fonts does not always cover usability cost of waiting them to download.

Arial and Helvetica are good readable fonts which always exist on every platform and don't require additional download.

<comment><USER11> > Arial and Helvetica are good readable fonts which always exist on every > platform […]

This used to be the case, but it is no longer so. The Microsoft Core Fonts are not necessarily present on each OS (except for Windows of course), although on GNU/Linux and Android (IOS as well I guess?) you often do get a set of comparable replacements that are automatically substituted. Helvetica is always present on Apple devices, but it is certainly not present on each common OS.

There are no fonts that are guaranteed to be present everywhere (and this is fine).

In HTML/CSS (and many other GUI APIs) you can always rely on getting _a_ serif, sans-serif, or monospaced font when you use their corresponding reserved family names, and with @font-face you can load whatever you want (providing you use a font that can be redistributed by you that way). So if you want all users to see text on your website in Comic Sans Neue, then that is (trivially) possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's a difference? Would be nice if author actually pointed what he thinks is a problem.

<comment><USER18> Completely agree. As someone who has zero knowledge in typography, it would have been nice to get some explanations as to why Arial and Helvetica are so horrible.

<comment><USER11> The exaggerated x-height — the height of the 'body' of each letter compared to the height of the ascenders and descenders (the stem of the 'h' is an ascender, the letter 'x' has no ascenders or descenders, hence x-height) — the narrowness of the typeface, and the (relative) lack of distinction between letters, makes the letters harder to distinguish in large bodies of text, increasing cognitive load (your brain needs to work harder to decipher the glyph), and thus reducing readability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >Programmers spend shit loads of time staring at text (code) on their screens and most of them prefer low contrast themes. For a good reason, it's easy on eyes.

Oh? Most programmers know how to adjust the brightness and contrast on their monitors. If you have more contrast than you can use then your text is too large.

</comment><comment><USER20> I started using 'sans serif' for almost everything. Because every device, OS, user is different. So let them decide what sans serif is.

<comment><USER21> That's a great idea in theory, but bear in mind that (in most target audiences) few people will know how to change the default typeface and even fewer will bother. I'd be willing to bet that 95 percent of your visitors will be seeing Arial, Helvetica or Roboto.

I'm not trying to dissuade you, just make you aware (if you weren't already) that you're making a choice by not making a choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> You can pry Helvetica from my cold, dead, hands.

</comment><comment><USER23> He should write 2 lines of css for quora and use the browser stylish extention.

I just recently made wikipedia sane for myself: [https://userstyles.org/styles/137180/clean-wikipedia- minimal...](https://userstyles.org/styles/137180/clean-wikipedia-minimalist- white-or-black-dark) (and I like black on white and change screen brightness if I want less contrast)

<comment><USER24> Keep in mind that there's a reason for Wikipedia's slightly cluttered interface: it's meant for editors as much as it is for readers—although I agree that paragraphs are too wide, a better strategy for line wrapping than letting lines use the entire width of the screen would be good.

You may like Wikipedia's "mobile" site: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop)

<comment><USER23> I understand a bit, but I think that's no excuse for the clutter :)

The mobile site on desktop looks indeed great, quite close to what I built (just sans-serif, but that's a matter of taste).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Bear in mind that Arial and other fonts will look quite different across platforms depending on how they render text. Small text on Windows is optimised for crispness and pixel-aligned (so it looks more like the old non- antialiased and pixel fonts; personally I think it looks hideous), whereas on macOS/iOS it scales smoothly at all sizes.

</comment><comment><USER26> As a UX/Typography rant post, it explain very badly why those two fonts suck.

What's with the jpeg images and labels? I had to closely look at it to see when did font A ended and font B started.

Author should've explained better imo, as I don't think I got the message, except "don't use it because...reasons"

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd be interested to see what the results would be if you took that jpeg and asked 1000 people which font was best.

Also, if the designer is focusing on "readable" they need to make the text of the jpegs very much larger.

</comment><comment><USER28> So the author speaks about readability and then argues which Sans Serif font is better?

My answer is: he chasing the wrong animal. The serif fonts are more readable for me. The serifs matter. I hope I'm still not in a minority.

</comment><comment><USER29> am i wrong if i think in most of his screenshots looks helvetica or arial as superior don't compared to his recommendation? his recommended fonts either waste lot of screen estate or look childish or both

<comment><USER30> Yeah, for me the article proves the exact opposite of what it was set out to prove. Verdana today is an abomination (just like DejaVu fonts), Tahoma is a little better.

Arial though renders well on low pixel density devices (like todays FHD screens) and when rendering small characters, that is, I think, why it is still used in many business webapps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well, that title certainly gets this to the front page.

Glad to see some Georgia love, though.

<comment><USER32> My own love for Georgia is basically due to distinguishing oO0 and |l1. It also helps that it looks nice. But it still seems uncommon, so I appreciate its increased exposure too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Verdana has problems as well: too much spacing at anything but tiny font sizes.

</comment><comment><USER34> I switched to Georgia for all of my paperwork... I love it :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I know all the UX "rules" say don't use a serif font on a screen, but I love me some Georgia, Bookman et al. There's nothing like a well designed serif font, imo. Just like the common hate of Comic Sans, in the right context, it's a good font.

What we really need is to purge ourselves of these so-called rules and design sentient fonts that can speak up and say "I can't go there! I'm serif/sans/fantasy/mono!".</comment>


Guerrilla Grafting: Grafting Fruit-Bearing Branchesto Ornamental City Trees - <AUTHOR> http://www.odditycentral.com/news/the-guerrilla-grafting-movement-secretly-grafting-fruit-bearing-branches-onto-ornamental-city-trees.html <comment><USER2> So long as they are able to insure that the fallen fruit doesn't become a slip and fall hazard this sounds like a wonderful project.

It seems odd that "her efforts were repeatedly thwarted by [...] San Francisco nonprofit Friends of the Urban Forest", as that sounds like the type of organization that would support such an effort.

<comment><USER3> My impression, although I don't live there, is that San Francisco has a fair number of homeless people. Surely they might be recruited to pick and dispose of ripe fruit before it becomes a hazard? In those locales that require refundable container deposits for the purchase of beverages, the homeless contribute a great deal to the fact that such refuse is absent from most streets. A piece of ripe fruit is surely worth more than 5¢.

<comment><USER4> In my neighborhood, the homeless root through everyones' garbage and recycling bins in search of redeemable cans. In the process they scatter trash everywhere. It more than counteracts any litter they might also pick up.

<comment><USER3> Presumably this issue would not arise when picking fruit from trees?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Except municipal trees use heavy doses of systemic insecticide at the roots to avoid having to spray them. I wouldn't eat the fruit from a branch grafted onto a municipal tree.

[http://www.nyis.info/?action=eab_municipal_tree_management](http://www.nyis.info/?action=eab_municipal_tree_management)

[http://citybugs.tamu.edu/factsheets/landscape/sapfeed/ent-60...](http://citybugs.tamu.edu/factsheets/landscape/sapfeed/ent-6006/)

<comment><USER6> These are interesting links, but they have to do with treating individual ornamental ash trees that are infested with a particular insect. Fruit can only be grafted onto the same species (or a very closely related one) so this has no particular relevance. Information about standard treatments for ornamental plums or crabapples would be relevant, though.

<comment><USER7> Emerald ash borer is a noxious pest that is just devastating. It's going to kill something like 15% of all of our urban trees. Just staggering. [http://www.courier- journal.com/story/tech/science/environmen...](http://www.courier- journal.com/story/tech/science/environment/2014/07/11/emerald-ash-borer- wiping-kentucky-trees/12499839/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The obvious target would be fruit-bearing apple branches grafted to those noxious Bradford pears. But I wonder if there's any good fruit or nut candidates for grafting to all those zelkova trees.</comment>


Web Consistency Testing - <AUTHOR> http://webconsistencytesting.com/

<comment><USER2> This. More of this. I can't wait for this to be more accessible and natural.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's what I'm hoping for. Obviously I've built a commercial offering around the process, but I'd honestly love to see others take a stab at it. It'll help keep us honest and benefit all. That's a big reason I wanted to share this with everyone.</comment></comment>


Rumors hint that Google has accomplished quantum supremacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/rumors-hint-that-google-has-accomplished-quantum-supremacy <comment><USER2> Maybe the initial hint of skynet or hopefully more likely impressive calculation to come

From [https://pastebin.com/RfUMXJZE](https://pastebin.com/RfUMXJZE) referenced in article:

Here, we report using a processor with programmable superconducting qubits to create quantum states on 53 qubits, occupying a state space 253 ˘1016. Measurements from repeated experiments sample the corresponding probability distribution, which we verify using classical simulations.

While our processor takes about 200 seconds to sample one instance of the quantum circuit 1 million times, a state-of-the-art supercomputer would require approximately 10,000 years to perform the equivalent task.

This dramatic speedup relative to all known classical algorithms provides an experimental realization of quantum supremacy on a com- putational task and heralds the advent of a much-anticipated computing paradigm.

<comment> Avi-D-coder What quantum tasks are relevant to AGI?

I'm not aware of any concrete evidence that the human brain uses quantum superpositions, so why would a quantum computer be necessary for artificial general intelligence.</comment></comment>


Okuna.io - <AUTHOR> https://okuna.io <comment><USER2> Does anyone else hate these super-vague headlines? A domain by itself should not be an acceptable headline.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apparently it's open source, the repos can be found here:

[https://github.com/OkunaOrg](https://github.com/OkunaOrg)

Most of the reactions I saw here are rather negative. Did just no one of the other commenters dig deeper and simply react pessimistic to anything with the label "social network" or are there substantial issues, that I missed?

<comment><USER4> The Google/Fitbit acquisition is still fresh in everyone's minds. That's going to color the perception of any new app/site that has the potential to gather information about you for some time to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Privacy friendly.

Source: dude, trust me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't care enough about accessibility/usability to make a simple content page noJS-accessible...

Centralized...

Uses Recaptcha for contact form...

I think I'll have to pass.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks great. Any idea who is backing it financially?

<comment><USER8> Looks like it started as a Kickstarter project, but it would be interesting to see who's funding it now: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook- pri...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1520156881/openbook-privacy- friendly-fun-and-honest-social-ne)

[https://www.okuna.io/en/faq](https://www.okuna.io/en/faq)

They're apparently looking for an Angel investor: [https://www.okuna.io/en/angel](https://www.okuna.io/en/angel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In case you read the comments before clicking the link:

> an ethical social network for a brighter tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Beta coming mid 2019"

Oops.</comment>


Trump administration 'officially putting Iran on notice', says Michael Flynn - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/iran-trump-michael-flynn-on-notice <comment><USER2> There's a terrible sickness in America, perpetual war.

<comment><USER3> But it is so profitable (for some) that we just can't go back!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is dumb move. There's much more money to be made being their friend than their enemy.

<comment><USER5> But there is much more domestic political gain from having an external enemy than a friend.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The drums of war start pounding.

</comment><comment><USER6> what does it mean that it's "officially"?

<comment><USER5> It means that the Flynn was looking for an intensifier to underline the saber rattling.

<comment><USER7> "Wag the Dog" part 45, this time it's official!</comment></comment></comment>


Boeing has temporarily stopped making 737 Max airplanes - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/21/business/boeing-737-max-production-halt/index.html <comment><USER2> According to the article Boeing has halted production, but this leaves the door open to producing them again in the future after design updates. I predict they'll try to rename the model and fly it again after making changes and certifying.

That being said, I never want to fly on a 737 Max or whatever they plan to rebrand it as.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I imagine the rebranding will be as ineffective as Comcast rebranding as Xfinity, where everyone knows they are the same.

<comment><USER4> I don't know what you're talking about, Comcast has had amazing support the last few months in my area. We even had a rep come to our house, and leave a handwritten note on the door when we didn't answer, asking if we had any questions or concerns and to give them a call if there was anything they could do for us.

... I'm sure this has nothing to do with the city fiber to the home buildout that is going on in our neighborhood... ;-)

<comment><USER5> I just got comcast installed in a new home, and the experience was completely different from what I've experienced in the past -- think "apple store", rather than "we're the phone company; we don't have to care". The customer service rep that helped me said they just finished six months of training, and even they were surprised that the system "just worked" when I went in to pick up the gear (my choice to pick it up two hours after calling them rather than waiting for delivery). I won't go into detail about all the other things that "went right" to avoid sounding like a marketing bird, but from what I heard it is a corporate initiative and not just for the fiber buildout.

<comment><USER6> My kid recently moved apartments from one served only by Comcast to one not served by Comcast. He filed the cancel request online and took his cable modem to a Comcast office in a nearby mall. The cancel process took about six minutes total; nobody called to beg for him to stay or stall him on the phone for over an hour.

My view is that the indication is how a company treats you when you leave versus when you arrive and, at least this once, Comcast did well on both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r Total clickbait. Based on the title "Boeing has officially stopped making 737 Max airplanes" I thought maybe they had finally decided the plane was unsalvageable. No, they just finally implemented the widely reported decision to temporarily stop construction.

<comment><USER7> Reminds me of the exaggerated news stories about "Pewdiepie QUITS YouTube!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Warning: CNN has autoplaying video with sound enabled.

<comment><USER9> What browser still allows this?

<comment><USER10> I think there is a new way to bypass this; FF recently missed an autoplay video on Bloomberg (?). Arms race as usual.

<comment><USER11> You can't autostart it when the page loads anymore, but you can autostart it as soon as the user interacts with the page in any way (including scroll)

<comment><USER10> My settings for these are not the defaults, I didn't get the option to block autoplays on the domain menu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't wait to read a senior Boeing manager's future book about the way the company mishandled the development of the 737 Max and how the upper echelons of decision makers managed the ensuing crisis. How many screaming matches occurred between VPs and engineering directors behind closed doors, how many angry emails were exchanged, how many panicked phone calls from the investor relations department to Muilenberg, etc.

<comment><USER13> What's incredible to me is how this could be allowed to happen. Are the higher echelons of these industries staffed by charlatans? Has something changed in the engineering culture? Did greed override diligence and if so, how was this allowed to happen when the consequences can be so catastrophic both to passengers and to the company? It just doesn't make sense to me how, with such high stakes, a company could manage to let things go so awry. Seems to me like the entire management team for years should have the entirety of their assets seized, as I assume they were _very_ well rewarded for presiding over failure.

<comment><USER14> At some point, engineering gets displaced by short-term business concerns, driven by managers who have incentives to cut costs and deliver faster even if it destroys the company in the long term. Make a management chain long enough, and most of the decisions will get made this way. Each layer in the hierarchy serves both to insulate decision-makers from the impacts of their decisions and to amplify perverse incentives (e.g. a VP is asked to cut costs, who asks a middle manager to use cheaper solutions for problem X and recoup costs where possible, who asks a direct manager to spend no more than $Y and Z weeks on problem X, and the engineers can no longer do it safely).

This happens all the time, everywhere. I think of "good company culture" as a temporary, unstable situation. Any movement away from that position will accelerate towards failure.

The entire system is not necessarily engineered to avoid accountability, but the system encourages people to figure out a way to avoid accountability, and so you end up with this.

As another example, take a look at clothing companies which use child labor to produce cheap clothing. The companies don't directly employ the children, but they use a chain of contractors and subcontractors. Each layer in the chain makes it more likely that leadership is unaware of ground truth, and with this many links in the chain, a top-level directive to cut costs will inevitably end up with something like child labor at the bottom, because it's cheap. If you get bad press coverage for it, you look to assign blame to a specific link in the chain, fire that contractor, and then rehire someone else (but the chain repairs itself around the missing link and you end up with the same child laborers working for you).

Systems are usually to blame more than people are.

<comment><USER15> >Systems are usually to blame more than people are.

IDK, honestly. Systems are created by people who think or ought to think about the incentives they are setting. But in the end, the lower echelons are still "just following orders" by employing child labourers or pushing out a plane with a crippled design.

I don't know about US companies, but I think most big enterprises have an internal whistleblower system, that can and should be used if unethical decisions are pushed down.

<comment><USER14> > Systems are created by people who think or ought to think about the > incentives they are setting.

You can think all you want, but the system is larger and more complicated than you are. You might as well ask a gear to think about the engine.

The system has, in it, people who are smarter than you. You can't hope to understand all the implications of incentives you create in a system.

> But in the end, the lower echelons are still "just following orders" by > employing child labourers or pushing out a plane with a crippled design.

I feel that a statement leading with "in the end" is too reductionist. These are complicated problems, and pointing fingers is too simple a tool to solve them.

The system is set up so that you can blame the people who hired child laborers, fire them, replace them, and still end up with the same child laborers making the same clothes in the same factory. Same with Boeing—no matter who you point fingers at with the 737 MAX, you can fire those people and rehire new ones but the disaster will happen again as long as the system encourages it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >Boeing is in talks with banks to secure a loan of $10 billion or more…

…

>Banks that have already committed to contribute to the loan include Citigroup, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo and J.P. Morgan…

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/20/737-max-crisis-boeing- seeks-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/20/737-max-crisis-boeing-seeks-to- borrow-10-billion-or-more.html)

<comment><USER17> They are betting that a key component of the US Military Industrial Complex survives long enough to pay back the interest or whatever profit tool the loans operate under. I'd take that bet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What is the cost to restart both the supply chain and production line? If this lasts long enough, then there are portions of the supply chain that will start to simply disappear as vendors go under or switch away to different customers and de-prioritize Boeing.

It isn't just the monetary cost to re-calibrate machining and tooling, also the staff time and monetary cost to fill in gaps that appeared during the shutdown, both material and vendor relationships. And an abundantly clear lesson (as if the domain experts in sourcing shouldn't know this already) from the debacle is that outsourcing is not plug-and-play: there will be both product and relationship re-alignment and re-certification going on anywhere vendors are swapped out in the supply chain.

If Boeing was forward-looking, then they would bite the bullet and keep production going, but use the downtime to crawl through every aspect of production to look for and fix any quality and safety-related concerns on the line (including absolute bottom-up authority for production line escalating concerns through to engineering and design) and in the supply chain. It massively slows down the production, which is perfectly fine right now. It wouldn't matter if they slowed to 10% of normal output, if the deliverable was absolute confidence in what is built on that line; they should have started this a long time ago when the shutdown passed 90 days.

Even after the design is amended, planes modified, re-certification awarded by all the aviation agencies around the world, there will be a titanic push to run the line as fast as possible. And if they don't completely debug every piece of that line to an inch of its life, there will be guaranteed production quality problems when it restarts, and if those problems lead to more crashes, Boeing is getting bailed out by taxpayers and unalterably changed. Better to keep the line on "warm standby" while debugging it before the pressure is on.

<comment><USER19> > If Boeing was forward-looking, then they would bite the bullet and keep > production going, but use the downtime to crawl through every aspect of > production to look for and fix any quality and safety-related concerns on > the line (including absolute bottom-up authority for production line > escalating concerns through to engineering and design) and in the supply > chain.

Where would they put them? These things ain't small.

Airliners are expensive. The manufacturers do not build a large number speculatively and then find customers. They find customers, then build what has been ordered. They have enough storage space to serve as a buffer between output and delivery so that minor glitches on either don't affect the other.

Also because airliners are expensive, and they get paid on delivery not on order, once past the initial production current production is paid for from recent deliveries. If deliveries have to stop for an extended time, there is no money to fund more production.

<comment><USER18> Good point. IMHO the company's survival is on the line, and the storage opex expense is worth it if it takes dropping production rate to 1% (about 0.6 737 MAX per month) or less to find out what other quality problems are lurking outside of the design realm, and catch technical debt that they would regret later. This is far preferable to writing off the entire product, and would be a concrete start to re-establishing the old company culture's emphasis upon quality. They're under a regulatory and compliance microscope now, and any production problems when they restart are going to get a lot of negative attention.

They're tapping more debt and _still_ plan on issuing dividends. Those dividends are likely going to be accompanied by equity buybacks. Those buybacks are measured in billions [1]. Carve out from the buyback funds what it costs to ensure quality where they can control it while waiting for clearance to reassure regulators, politicians and the general public, and tell the investors that it is either hold on with the team until quality is re- established within the culture, sell and come back later, or eventually zero out the investment because no one wants to buy from a plane manufacturer with suspect quality.

[1] [https://articles2.marketrealist.com/2019/06/boeing- enhances-...](https://articles2.marketrealist.com/2019/06/boeing-enhances- shareholder-wealth-through-share-repurchases/#)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm amazed to see such a big fleet grounded for such a long time. Since MCAS was employed to avoid retraining of pilots, I'd assume that at this point retraining the pilots out of their pockets would be cheaper for Boeing than paying airlines' damages for grounded planes.

Is that training of no use because disabling MCAS would also need re- certification? Is the process of getting certification for a MCAS-free version roughly the same as getting the fixed version certified? Speculating way out my depth now: maybe it would still be worth it to pursue parallel certification to have the option of retraining when MCAS should be deemed uncertifiable.

</comment><comment><USER21> EDIT: And an hour after writing this Boeing just now announcing (surprise, surprise) they don't expect return-to-service until July and stock is currently trading down 5.5%)

I shorted BA for a few months based on many HN posts after the crashes, but covered my position after it seemed to stabilize at ~320. I think it will probably head lower, but as a general rule I try to find companies I believe in rather than companies I don't.

It was a very interesting choice to maintain the dividend for now. I think they will have to revisit that and it will kick-off the next big swing downward.

Last week the WSJ reported [1] that they are in the process of raising a new $5 billion round. Now [2] the word on the street is they're looking for $10 billion over 2 years - a "mid term" debt round, structured as a line they can draw on over several years - somehow this is supposed to limit the effect it will have on their debt rating. A significant Moody's downgrade seems like it's past due, and Moody's recently announced they put BA "on review". [3]

Their debt at the start of Q4 was $15 billion and then rose to $20 billion by the end of Q4. Back in 2018 it was closer to $12 billion. I wouldn't be surprise to see it near $25 billion at the end of Q1.

Supposedly Boeing keeps about $10 billion in liquidity "available" but they've burned through that by now.

The "charges" they take against the MAX disaster which started at $5.6 billion could balloon as high as $20 billion as the ramifications continue to unfold. [4]

Lastly I would point out that over the last decade plus timeframe the FAA hollowed out as a regulatory agency into a box checker. Today they have as I understand it just ~750 total pilots and engineers on staff to review technical data from the plane manufacturers. The FAA said last year to do it themselves they would need 10,000 more. [5]

> _"It would require roughly 10,000 more employees and another $1.8 billion > for our certification office," Elwell told the Senate subcommittee on > aviation and space._

> _The FAA Aircraft Certification Service had a budget of $239 million for > fiscal 2019 and about 1,300 employees, 745 of whom are pilots, engineers and > technical staff who oversee design approvals and production._

I recall news articles claiming Congress recently approved significant new funding for the FAA, but looking at their budget [6] PDF page 37 it seems like "Regulation & Certification" remains level-funded at $1.3 billion the last three years.

A more recent report on the MAX specifically [7] said;

> _The report said the FAA had just 45 people in an office overseeing Boeing > 's Organization Designation Authority (ODA) and its 1,500 employees._

...

> _The FAA 's office oveseeing Boeing has just 24 engineers and they face a > wide range of tasks to ensure compliance in overseeing Boeing's 737, 747, > 767, 777, and 787 programs._

> _The review added there are only two technical FAA staff assigned per Boeing > program and some are "new engineers with limited airworthiness experience."_

The full report which this article is excerpting I believe is this one. [8] See specifically PDF Page 47 but put down any objects you might be prone to throwing before beginning to read.

I would imagine engineers qualified to actual critically review detailed 737 specifications aren't unemployed and take a long time to hire. How long will it take the FAA to even staff up to the point where they can _start_ doing their job if they are only just now getting the money to hire? Pundits saying they expected the 737 return-to-service to happen before New Years and now say it's happening any day now I think don't comprehend the massive gap between what the FAA used to do and what they are now tasked with doing, and that they literally don't have the qualified people in-house to even start doing much of this work. All that assumes necessary funding has even been appropriated and there are the people and the culture in place to even do the work. Big IFs.

To me that points to a extremely delayed return to service as new engineers are hired and brought on to critically review documentation which used to be rubber stamped — let alone dealing with the actual software failures and faulty design specifications which straight up didn't/don't conform to modern safety standards.

In short, my prediction is that BA will inevitably have to suspend its dividend, it will take a charge upwards of $20 billion for the MAX, return to service will be extremely delayed beyond analysts wildest expectations, they will be downgraded by Moody's and their debt load will increase to nearly $30 billion over the course of 2020 into 2021, and there is a remote chance of a debt squeeze, and the company declaring bankruptcy and having to restructure.

I don't currently own any position in Boeing (other than through holdings in the S&P500) and do not plan on initiating any BA position in the next 72 hours. This is not investment advice.

[1] - [https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-considers-raising- debt-a...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-considers-raising-debt-as-max- crisis-takes-toll-11578308401)

[2] - [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/20/737-max-crisis-boeing- seeks-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/20/737-max-crisis-boeing-seeks-to- borrow-10-billion-or-more.html)

[3] - [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/boeings-debt-on-review- for...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/boeings-debt-on-review-for- downgrade-by-moodys-2020-01-13)

[4] - [https://apple.news/AcnxFGCurRfW3l1BNvzr6aw](https://apple.news/AcnxFGCurRfW3l1BNvzr6aw)

[5] - [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2019/03/27/want-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2019/03/27/want- faa-to-do-aircraft-certification-alone-give-me-10000-more-employees- and-18-billion-chief-tells-congress/)

[6] - [https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/miss...](https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/mission/budget/334316/faa- fy-2020-cj-final508-compliant.pdf)

[7] - [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-boeing-faa- certificat...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-boeing-faa- certification/faa-must-ramp-up-staffing-to-oversee-airplane-certification- after-737-max-panel-idUSKBN1WQ28B)

[8] - [https://www.faa.gov/news/media/attachments/Final_JATR_Submit...](https://www.faa.gov/news/media/attachments/Final_JATR_Submittal_to_FAA_Oct_2019.pdf)

<comment><USER22> They have 1300 total employees and only 24 review all of Boeing's planes? That's insane! What the fuck are the others doing? Can't be all HR (no offense to HR)

<comment><USER23> There are more airplane manufacturers than Boeing (although none of Boeings stature other than Airbus)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> ELI5: why can't the auto safety system be removed and the plane be sound?

Is the design so flawed that it can't be safely flown by a human without this system that causes random catastrophic failures?

<comment><USER25> Briefly: It could be, but that would mean reclassifying the airplane.

Maybe think about it like anti-lock brakes. Cars without ABS can be driven safely in many/most circumstances, but most drivers are accustomed to ABS. (This is necessarily a limited analogy)

Also, there are government requirements per aircraft type, and removing this system would change the aircraft type, triggering a significant amount of required re-training.

\---

Not directly related to your question, but I think [pure speculation/psychological theory] one thing that went badly wrong here was engineers thinking about this as a convenience system. Because it was thought of as a convenience system, they didn't fully consider the safety aspect of it.

<comment><USER26> It cant, the forces have to linearly increase per FARs, so MCAS has to be a thing, same type certificate or not.

<comment><USER25> Ah, that's the first time I've heard that. I'm certainly not an expert, I've just read/watched a number of reports.

<comment><USER26> The problem with reporting around this issue is that its emotionally driven and done often by people who have little experience with how the aviation industry works. So while the exact details are accurately reported in aviation industry news, the mainstream news keeps parroting things that are false and confirmation bias keeps people from picking up when those things are false.

The departure from reality in this case is pretty severe:

1\. There were severe issues with pilot's performance on both flights.

2\. Airline maintenance is culpable in the Lion Air flight.

3\. MCAS is required irregardless of what type certificate is used.

4\. Boeing's "new problems with the 737" are not as much a result of faults previously ignored, but new issues created by reassessing the risk factors related to those systems.

5\. The 737 MAX is not aerodynamically unstable.

6\. The 737 MAX issue has brought to light severe issues in the aviation industry that may require retraining many pilots in the industry or being way more aggressive with refresh training (also see the Atlas Air crash recently).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One question in my mind is: what would it take for the old "engineer" faction of Boeing to come to the top again? Or is this unrealistic as the "management/costcutting" faction is just inherently better a "management" politics to ever be dislodged?

Failing this, what is the likelihood a competitor with old-school Boeing values might emerge to compete, in such a capital-heavy industry?

<comment><USER28> It's basically impossible for a competitor with "old school" values to emerge. The regulatory hurdles and foreign competition are daunting. There are only two companies in the world that can do what Airbus and Boeing do.

<comment><USER29> What are the two other companies? Lockheed and Tupolev?

<comment><USER30> They didn't say "two other," just "two."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Mods: headline should read "paused" or "temporarily stopped" rather than the blunt "stopped". The original article's headline says it's temporary.

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't know about anyone else but personally, I would never fly a 737 max. Yes it could be fixed and yes it may be the same as other models going forward but the amount of coverage it has received and the fear it has created, I would always check if I am flying a 737 max or not. Yes that doesn't necessarily mean anything but it is now tainted. Boeing is smart to just discontinue the name even if it repackages it again with a new name.

<comment><USER33> What? Why? We have duct-taped even more safety features now.

It must have made it safer to fly.

<comment><USER34> The simple fact for Boeing to continue "operating as usual" without real consequences dis-aligns incentives that have been present until now in air travel making it so safe. The precedence it creates can ripple so that e.g. Airbus also slacks on safety to stay competitive if this is the new normal...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> wouldn't they just reuse their software on their new models? There's no way they are going to rewrite their software from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER36> And hopefully it will stay that way!

</comment><comment><USER37> I assume the CEO will be on the first commercial 737 flight after its re- certified /s

</comment><comment><USER38> Surely there's a better source than CNN for this?</comment>


Will copyright extensions ever end? - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8759524/Will-copyright-extensions-ever-end.html <comment><USER2> Of course not. That's the original purpose of copyright: to limit copying. We're just now finding that out again. Copyright is more important than Human rights, now that copyright is "intellectual _property_ ".</comment>


The economic case for decriminalizing heroin - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/08/the-economic-case-for-decriminalizing-heroin/ <comment><USER2> the case against drugs is that, it makes you loose your judgement, when you get high, and whatever you do in that condition, might not get undone.

tobacco for example is a cash crop in India, yet, people in many areas choose to grow something with lesser margin over it.</comment>