LCS-1 – Oldest spacecraft still in use - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Calibration_Sphere_1 <comment><USER2> More info + photo here: [http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/lcs-1.htm](http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/lcs-1.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Lifetime: 30,000 years

wow.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ran into this while I after reading about Project West Ford, which was also really interesting: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can hardly believe LCS-1 is still in orbit, given how low its density is.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LARES_(satellite)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LARES_\(satellite\)) has a density of 15,833 kg/m^2, and is the densest orbiting object in the Solar System.

</comment><comment><USER4> "[I]t has no power supply or fuel; it is merely a metal sphere."

There's something beautiful about that.</comment>


WWF (file format) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWF_(file_format) <comment><USER2> The criticism section of that page is about as damning as any I've ever seen on wikipedia.

</comment><comment><USER3>
       qpdf --decrypt nonprintable.wwf printable.pdf</comment>


A simple and beautiful GitHub ID card - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pingao777/github-id <comment><AUTHOR> Get a github id card by visit [https://pingao777.github.io/github- id/?q=user_id](https://pingao777.github.io/github-id/?q=user_id), then you can paste to your resume or website. E.g. for the famous r programmer hadley, visit [https://pingao777.github.io/github- id/?q=hadley](https://pingao777.github.io/github-id/?q=hadley)</comment>


Office Life Is Destroying Your Butt - <AUTHOR> https://melmagazine.com/your-office-life-is-destroying-your-butt-b0b19a08cf3d <comment><USER2> Toilet paper might also be causing hemorrhoids.

Consider that our bodies were not evolved to use toilet paper, and that hemorrhoids are virtually unheard of in third-world countries that lack TP.

(I haven't confirmed that latter claim. It's just something I read once, somewhere.)

Anyone who's been sick and had to go to the loo multiple times in a row will notice how painful it becomes. I'm not sure it would be painful if washing was used rather than rubbing.

My comment here is full of assumptions and wildly unsupported by evidence. But I thought it might be best to post it so that it can swiftly be disproven or shown to have a grain of truth.

The topic is gross, but it's a serious issue that you don't think much about until suddenly you have to.

<comment><USER3> I've read that the culprit is not toilet paper, but the face that we sit when we shit, while we ostensibly evolved to squat. So the bowels don't straighten out as they should, and the excessive pushing leads to pressure which gradually causes blood vessels to bulge over time.

Also, baby wipes work for adults too.

<comment><USER4> Don't flush baby wipes, or anything except fences or toilet paper. They clog drains and interfere with the sewage treatment process.

<comment><USER5> I sometimes use tissues when I run out of toilet paper. I hope that's not a problem ... (?)

<comment><USER6> Tissues are not designed to break down in water like toilet paper is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Instead of trying to create a fancy standing/sitting desk workflow, I've personally tried to just take more breaks throughout the day. Unless the weather's terrible, even a brief five minute walk does wonders.

It's also a great way to get some alone time and mull over what you're working on without distraction. Just as when I was a student studying mathematics and doing a bit of research, I've found that with programming sometimes a greater clarity of thought is achieved when you have nothing but your mind -- no pencil, no paper, no computer, nothing to write on, nothing to doodle on. It forces you to consider only ideas that you can fully manage in your head.

<comment><USER8> I think most jobs benefits from this, not just office work. A short time away from work, quick walk does wonders for your mental health. Some people smoke because that gives them the excuse to get outside for a few minutes now and then :-)

<comment><USER9> That's very true, but when you think about it, it's kind of strange that you need an excuse in the form of a cigarette in order to refresh your mind. People somehow seem to think that a cigarette break is OK since the person is "doing something" but if the same person just takes a walk it might be perceived as slacking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think a solution for this is alternating between standing and sitting desk with the recommended time interval being 20 min sitting, 8 min standing and 2 min just generally moving around.

Instead of buying a transitioning desk I just hooked 3 monitors to my desktop where 2 are sitting and 1 (lg 2560px) is standing and created a small delphi app that switches the monitor for me every 30 mins. So far it has done some good for my back but i feel that doing this sort of circus destroys my focus. Still health is over everything so I'm sticking with it.

<comment> crooked-v I just have a standing desk with an extra high drafter-style chair, and everything carefully adjusted so that the keyboard and monitor work for both sitting and standing.

<comment><USER11> I wanted to do this recently but I couldn't find a chair tall enough. I need the seat to be at around 95cm (37.4") otherwise my elbows are too low. The tallest chair I could find was 90cm (35.4").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> talk to any nurse, surgeon, janitor, etc, and they will tell you that working on your feet all day is horrible for your health

working on your butt all day is also horrible for your health

it's as if ... some middle-ground moderation-like situation might be optimal ... my god who would have guessed

<comment><USER13> [https://www.runnersworld.com/health- injuries/a20860422/stand...](https://www.runnersworld.com/health- injuries/a20860422/standing-all-day-is-twice-as-bad-as-sitting-for-your- heart/)

A quick google brings this up. It seems to me that being alive is the leading cause of death.

<comment><USER14> Well, what do they say about lying in bed all day?

<comment><USER15> I've always wondered about that. It can't be good for your muscle tone, but my guess it's healthier than sitting or standing.

<comment><USER16> There are ways to take most pressure of your spine, while still allowing you to sanely use a mouse/keyboard (the later has to be split). It's mostly a fitted seat with a semi-fancy headrest, the latter has to be designed to keep your head from rolling to the side. Also you need slightly channeled armrests, which need to be adapted in extend/channel depth depending on how far your hands have to move. If you use a steno keyboard, likely not at all, if you use a graphics tablet, likely much further.

You still might need to move every once in a while though.

<comment><USER17> Got any examples of what this kinda of arrangement looks like? I'm having trouble visualizing

<comment><USER15> I have no idea either, but perhaps something along these lines? [http://www.ergoquest.com/store/p20/Zero_Gravity_Chair_2b.htm...](http://www.ergoquest.com/store/p20/Zero_Gravity_Chair_2b.html)

<comment><USER16> About this, less hip angle, and with the arms about the same height as the torso (and as such necessitating a split keyboard). For a suitable arm angle you need the head to be higher, which requires some closely fitting head support, which has to even out the pressure on your head. Think a recliner with armrests so your arms can most comfortably type/mouse, and a foam around you neck so you head doesn't roll off to the side. The screen is angled at about 45 degrees downwards, to match the head so you only need to move the eyes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Minor quibble, but halogen-lit offices? Who is sitting under halogen lamps all day? Most office lights are LED these days or maybe fluorescent if they're older.

<comment><USER8> Leds can flicker even worse than flourescent. Test it with your mobile camera, shove it up to the lights real close and see if it starts showing banding all over the screen. The calmest light you get is halogen or a normal lightbulb of the burning rust type.

<comment><USER19> The solution is to have DC powered lighting circuits so you don't have terrible $0.50 AC/DC power supplies in every bulb. It'd be nice to have DC circuits for electronics, too, but that's probably a lost cause.

<comment><USER20> I'm hoping that USB Type C connectors become ubiquitous and people start installing USB C outlets in addition to AC in many wall sockets. Many small appliances can switch to DC and get rid of their transformers. AC will still be needed for e.g. vacuum cleaners, washing machines, refrigerators, loudspeakers, blenders, toasters, hair dryers, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > If you're the sweaty biker type, cycling to work[...] "By cramming that hard > bike seat into your perineum [you may make hemorrhoids worse and impact > urine flow.]"

Though I can't stand the writing style, sitting while cycling is a real problem, especially if you're male. I bike year round here in Toronto, about 200 kms a week for most of the year, and I didn't know. It took almost a year for the ED to go away once I committed to standing while cycling 100% of the time. I was only in my late twenties when it happened and I figured it was something only old men get. I'm super happy I happened to come across a paper that talked about it.

The side benefit is that it made my arms huge and I've got real abs now.

<comment><USER22> If you get numbness or ED from cycling, you need a better saddle! Don't just "suck it up", you need to find a saddle that puts your weight on your ischial tuberosities or "sit bones", not your soft squishy perineum.

Soft wide saddles are actually worse for this. You need a relatively narrow saddle, with a deep cutout in the middle.

And you need to have it adjusted right, so you end up sitting correctly. And if course you should slightly vary your position over the course of a ride.

A good bike shop _will_ be able to find you the perfect saddle and fit.

<comment><USER21> I kinda like biking standing up now though. I have a single speed with an insane gear ratio so I'm constantly flying and standing makes that easier.

I feel like the road runner sometimes.

Beep beep.

<comment><USER22> You found an alternate solution, which also works :-)

But if you ever feel the need to sit down again, taking the time to find the perfect saddle is well worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Or may be just change the way we sit? [https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/08/13/6360250...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/08/13/636025077/to- fix-that-pain-in-your-back-you-might-have-to-change-the-way-you-sit)

</comment><comment><USER24> This really worked for me:

(A) a cheap, DIY standing desk arrangement

(B) a cheap "stability cushion" to stand on so I'm neither standing totally still nor doing some repetitive exercise-machine

(C) squatty-potty (off-brand, DIY options are fine, lilypad or nature's platform style for better real-deal)

<comment><USER25> Concerning point (C):

I've found pooping with your feet on your tippy toes like a ballerina also does the trick (while still sitting down of course) to achieve the elevation of your legs to be in more of a squat position when pooping.

If you ever go to China and have to squat to poop, that's also a good catalyst to finding the right squat position to best suit you.

<comment><USER24> Although that's certainly better than nothing, it's really not the full deal at all. Even the squatty-potty which is _way_ beyond just tip-toes is only about half-squatting. I've compared and the full squat is the real deal.

People who want to do it (even in prep for a China trip) better work on simply spending time squatting in general. Apparently, westerners with sit-toilets actually lose the flexibility to do a relaxed, flat-footed squat _at all_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Go swimming! I do, and it takes some gravity off your body for a bit. <3

<comment><USER27> <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Staying in a seated position for too long allows gravity to pull more blood > down into the pelvis

I could concede that more blood might end up in the pelvis, but surely this is not the reason?

<comment><USER29> Why "surely"?

<comment><USER28> Because the torso is upright either way, and gravity doesn't care if you're sitting or standing

<comment><USER29> Gravity does the pulling, and sure the blocking is caused by the lack of movement and the sitting position that obstructs the free flow of blood.

I guess we could say it's not the gravity itself, and it would be correct, but also like saying it's not the bullet that kills you, it's the hole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm 31 and my lower back has started hurting and giving me issues, especially while sleeping.

I always assumed this would only happen much later and technology would have advanced enough by then that I could have gotten a robotic lower back. But here we are.

This is even with doing a stairwell run every hour and standing up quite often, and sitting at what some article stated was the best angle, 135 degrees or something.

I also do Pilates... So even with all of this sitting for 14 hours a day has caused back issues for me. Sorry to deviate from the toilet topic. Luckily that is one department where I seem to be healthy :)

<comment><USER31> I had a similar issue. After encouragement from my wife, I visited a chiropractor. A few adjustments later, and my back pain is dramatically reduced. My chiropractor isn't pushing holistic medicine or other garbage, or I would be running from the experience. There are many charlatans out there looking to fleece the desperate, so be careful.

<comment><USER32> There are plenty of good chiropractors out there, especially (I find) ones who do more sports-related work. I still regular MDs about any long term issues, but especially for something sudden or a small injury like falling funny or wrenching a back muscle, a chiropractor can help take off the edge and train muscles for better posture.

But stay away from the ones who think they can treat medical issues with spinal adjustments or weird arts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Never had a serious issue with hemorrhoids until I got a Nintendo DS. Once I started camping out on the toilet, I developed internal and external 'roids.

</comment><comment><USER34> I prefer to take frequent walks, which also helps to clear my head and forces me to do other exercises like climbing stairs. A "standing desk" just seems like a really complex solution that doesn't even address any part of the problem except the sitting.

Also, standing desks are really weird in a cubicle situation where suddenly your neighbor is towering over the wall for an hour, peering into your space.

<comment><USER35> Standing desks in open offices make me feel uncomfortable. I get pretty bad anxiety when I feel like I'm bothering someone else so I tend to try and only stand when my neighbors are standing.

At home office desk is 100% standing, DIY table mounted on top of 2 wooden chairs. If I'm getting tired of standing and leaning around, time for a walk. My productivity is so much higher at home compared to my companies open office. Wish I could convince them to let us just make team "rooms" in the open office, ala Valve style.

They bought us all standing desks with wheels, but were not allowed to roll them around. VP of engineering jokes that after I brought it up all the desks would be wheel-less come Monday. Little does he know that if those wheels aren't gone next week my desk is moving were ever I find a space I feel more comfortable, anarchy in the engineering wing, eyes open, no fear, be safe everyone.

<comment><USER36> Reminds me of the Peopleware story about cubicles being sold as modular furniture, but God help you if you actually reconfigure the cubicles to suit your team's organization.

<comment><USER35> It's like giving a kid a prebuilt Lego model and expecting them to never take it apart and build something else. No sane parent would expect that, I wonder why I keep all my creative ideas to myself and struggle with motivation problems and execution inititive...huh... can't be that I have zero agency granted to me in arranging my workspace. Heh

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Standing desks aren't yet (2016) proven to do anything: [https://www.cochrane.org/news/health-effects-sit-stand- desks...](https://www.cochrane.org/news/health-effects-sit-stand-desks-and- interventions-aimed-reduce-sitting-work-are-still-unproven)

<comment><USER38> Anecdotal proof often precedes formal proof. If the cost is low and there exists potential expected benefit it can still be rational to do it.

<comment><USER39> Sadly, it's generally quite expensive.

<comment> crooked-v It doesn't have to be noticeably more expensive than a normal desk arrangement. Just get a static standing-height desk (longer legs, no special motorized stuff), and a drafter's chair with a seat adjustable to barstool height.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Well, standing cause varicose veins - because a close relative just needed surgery because of standing too long - and she doesn't have the healthiest relationship with her butt, so what gives? Are standing desks really healthy or not?

<comment><USER41> I had a cervical discectomy at an unusually young age, was largely attributed to poor sitting/posture.

My neurosurgeon for the procedure was fantastic, but he basically said "humans aren't made to be in _any_ position for prolonged periods of time". His recommendation was a sit/stand desk and to occasionally but consistently be changing things up -- re-positioning, standing/moving, using an exercise ball occasionally, etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I recently bought a Mi band 3 and a convertible stand up desk at work. There is an idle feature where it alerts you when you do not have enough steps with the hour. It has done wonders for me in terms of changing my sitting habits.

</comment><comment><USER43> >> Humans evolved to stand upright and outrun their predators

Forgive my ignorance, but are there any predators that we actually can outrun? Pretty much every four-legged mammal is faster, except maybe elephants.

<comment><USER44> I thought it wasn't in speed that humans excel but rather endurance. That is, we wouldn't be able to escape a lion chasing us but we can hunt down deer/etc. until they collapse from exhaustion.

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

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Bingo. Over a short distance a tiger or cheetah would maul a human, but over a longer distance a prey species like a gazelle would tire out and eventually a human would be able to catch up with it.

<comment><USER45> So since we evolved to chase our prey rather than run from hunters, maybe we should program by putting our computer on a gazelle, and we have to catch it in order to write code for the [time period]?

It'd certainly lead to more thinking before writing, maybe the tradeoff would be worth it.

<comment><USER46> If you're fine with waiting a couple days for the gazelle to tire out before you can catch up to it, sure. And that's if you know the signs to follow where the gazelle is.

<comment><USER43> From the linked Wikipedia entry it seems that it usually takes 2 to 5 hours, and 25 to 35 km chase. Not sure why you say "couple days". And hunters usually know the signs to follow to track a gazelle, so that's also non-issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Related XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1329/](https://xkcd.com/1329/)

</comment><comment><USER47> This article seemed only to list bad things, which seemed to be just about everything you could conceive of doing, without listing any solutions...

<comment><USER48> That's fine. When problem solving, it's important to lay out the situation clearly before delving into solutions that may only mitigate part of the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Squats!

<comment><USER50> I have been doing weighted squats for about 6 months now and oh my god I am so happy with how big my butt is. I cannot wait for it to become even bigger by next year as I continue doing squats.

<comment><USER51> Throw a few heavy deadlifts in there. You'll develop some hard glutes.

<comment><USER50> I do hex deadlifts, I like how they develop my upper back and neck.

I have a computer nerd neck... I've been thinking how to solve that. I think I should do front squats rather than the standard.

<comment><USER51> What do you mean by computer nerd neck? I do shrugs, which hits the traps, but I find my neck is a bit thicker too.

Front squats isolate the quads more - I prefer to do back squats, then isolate smaller groups with quad extensions and hamstring curls; the latter being good for the glutes too.

<comment><USER50> I mean that I have really bad neck posture: [http://bellefleurphysio.com/wp- content/uploads/Forward-Head-...](http://bellefleurphysio.com/wp- content/uploads/Forward-Head-Posture.png)

And I'm trying to find exercises that work in fixing this

<comment><USER52> Stretch your chest muscles, do face pulls. Do rows and deadlifts. If your posture is really bad, don't train (strengthen) chest until you've improved things a bit and have done plenty of stretching.

Then use postural reminding aids (don't use a brace unless a physio tells you to), I put a small massage ball behind each shoulder blade and the chair when i'm working, if they fall I know i've slouched.

I went from people openly telling me I needed to fix my posture, to being credited with great posture in about 4-6 months. My posture actually still needs work, because I have pretty noticeable anterior pelvic tilt, but the forward-neck issues are mostly gone.

<comment><USER50> Awesome, thanks for the tips.

I have anterior pelvic tilt too— what are you doing to correct this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> People seem to have a harder time recognizing satire these days

</comment><comment><USER54> What about if you're using a standing desk?

</comment><comment><USER55> To summarize the article - work kills!

</comment><comment><USER56> A somewhat odd article, but I like it.

<comment><USER57> A somewhat odd article, butt I like it as well. Hemorrhoids suck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> At least someone is.</comment>


Companies Who Make Money: Virtualmin (YC winter 07) - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.org/2008/09/01/ep1-companies-who-make-money-virtualmin/

<comment><USER2> Summary: Author doesn't know linux and apparently used Virtualmin's product to avoid learning it.

<comment><USER3> Hooray! We love it when that happens.

In all seriousness, though, being the Open Source nerds that we are, we cleverly trick our users into learning lots of interesting stuff about Apache and Linux and other stuff. When things need to be complex (as things occasionally do in a virtual hosting deployment) we don't make up our own complexities and leaky abstractions and slap them on top of the existing ones --we allow the user to see through to the Apache/Postfix/BIND complexities. For example, with redirect rules and match patterns. Very basic match patterns can be setup automagically, with very little effort...but when things get complex, the user can dig down to see the actual Apache rules. Likewise for almost all of the services we manage, if the user _needs_ fine-grained control they can get to it without having to completely break out of the comforting Virtualmin UI. Baby steps to system administration competence.

We also spend a lot of time in our forums talking about the whys and wherefores rather than just the "Click here, click there, and save it".

We genuinely love the software our products manage (mostly). And we've both written books on the topic of system administration, in total ~1100 printed pages, which have now been combined into a massive wiki ( <http://doxfer.com/Webmin> ) and that's also a pretty good source of traffic and potential buyers for our products. Interestingly, our books are still selling a reasonable amount five years after publication (folks like tangible products, I guess).

We actually view education as a good marketing tool. The more people know about system administration, the more they'll understand why our products are dramatically better than cPanel or Plesk. The first time someone hits the command line with our competitors products they'll learn a hard lesson in the difference between template generated configuration files, and a product that understands the configuration files and respects non-generated directives and comments and file order. People don't go back to other products after spending enough time with Virtualmin and Webmin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So wait. He doesn't know Linux and he wanted a GUI front-end for apache. So he downloaded a free gpl'd product from Virtualmin. But this is a blog about companies who make money. How do they make money?

<comment><USER3> We have a color copier in the shed out back printing money. The whole software thing is just a clever ruse.

Actually, we have both an Open Source version and a proprietary version. The proprietary version adds a few nice features, primarily in automating installation of about 85 popular web applications, as well as some other features related to making money with virtual hosting systems. And, it has a price, and people pay us money in exchange for the software.

I don't know the author (I don't think, though maybe I've talked to him on our forums or issue tracker; we have 1400 or so paying customers, and many thousands of Virtualmin GPL users, I can't really keep up), but we're happy to have him as a Virtualmin GPL user, regardless of whether money changes hands, and not just because he wrote a really nice blog post about us. We have absolute confidence that if ever he _does_ need the features that Virtualmin Professional offers, he'll buy from us. We've found the single best marketing we can do is to get people to try our Open Source projects...nothing else is as good an indicator of whether they'll eventually buy our product than use of Webmin, Usermin and Virtualmin GPL. Which is good news, since we have several million Webmin users that haven't bought anything from us yet.

So, perhaps the interesting question will be whether we can build a company bigger than Parallels (or even cPanel) on a mostly Open Source basis. We're doing OK, so far, and growing at a nice pace, but nothing anyone would point to as an overnight success. But, we'll see.

Anyway, the author is not mistaken. We do make money, and the amount of money that we make is increasing at a respectable pace. It's enough money that I feel like my initial optimism about the business was well-founded (I feel like I picked the winner from among my stable of ideas) but not enough that I can slack off. So, it's probably just the right amount of money for this company at this stage.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the answers and reminding me why I love this site.

It's great to hear about success stories like this especially using the dual- license model.</comment></comment></comment>


How I Built a Performant and Measurable Content Marketing Engine - <AUTHOR> http://tomtunguz.com/content-marketing-engine/ <comment><USER2> In your experimentation, have you ever come across cases where certain content strategies improve metrics but you ultimately felt they didn't improve the quality of the content?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really good question. Link baiting is the only example I can think of - creating a questionable title to drive views.

Other forms of lazy content creation might be copying and pasting big chunks from other blogs and adding some commentary. Oddly enough, that seems to work pretty well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Since when is a mailing list of 1,000 readers considered massive?

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting post.

I'm curious, how much time do you spend every day on this process?

<comment><AUTHOR> About 60 minutes writing a post. The daily analysis is just a minute to check the dashboards. And then two or three hours each weekend. Maybe 10h a week.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I wished I could write posts so quickly!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> beautiful blog. What platform/theme is your blog on or is that hand-rolled?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. it's hand-rolled on jekyll/github.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's Linux Kernel - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/microsoft/WSLv2-Linux-Kernel <comment><USER2> This is really Microsoft catching up to the Mac in terms of integration with the open-source ecosystem which importantly drives the web.

In the mid 2000's the Mac really took off due to being a good-enough Linux replacement on the command line, while taking care of all the hardware integration and providing a sleek desktop experience. This really helped the Mac take off among hackers. This system wasn't as open-source as Linux, but it was good enough: Most of us don't want to mess about with the desktop stack. If the stack we care about is open-source and runs across many systems, then we still have the freedom. I find it fairly easy to work on both Mac OS X, Linux and WSL2 -- but not pre-WSL Windows.

The inclusion of a Linux kernel really seems to cause a lot of confusion. No, Microsoft is not about to remove the NT kernel. No, they're not about to supplant Linux. WSL1 did what the guys from Illumos and FreeBSD have also done: since the Linux syscall interface is quite stable, the NT kernel can simply implement these syscalls and handle them appropriately. The was that the NT kernel was still sufficiently different that the filesystem performance was quite poor and complex applications like Docker required more kernel features than was provided by just the syscall API.

Including a Linux kernel is really the nuclear option: rather than trying to fit Linux applications in Windows, they're running in their own world and providing integrations into this world. This means you can now run Docker on WSL2 for instance, but it's also complicated: Kernels really like to think that they own the world, for instance they keep memory around to use for later. WSL2 dynamically grows the amount of RAM allocated to the VM, which is quite clever, but I don't know how/if they're going to handle freeing memory again -- here the NT kernel really needs to communicate with the Linux kernel.

Anyways, the upshot is that no, Microsoft is not going to take over the world, but perhaps it will be easier to use a Windows laptop which supports all the stupid Enterprise software I need but still have a Linux shell for actual work.

<comment><USER3> > I find it fairly easy to work on both Mac OS X, Linux and WSL2 -- but not > pre-WSL Windows

The thing that annoys me most on Windows is Windows itself. After using Linuxes for almost two decades now, the notion of the OS taking tens of minutes to self update when all I wanted was to quickly reboot it is unbearable.

> I don't know how/if they're going to handle freeing memory again -- here the > NT kernel really needs to communicate with the Linux kernel

Usually "free" memory only happens when a Linux machine starts. During normal usage most of the memory is being used to cache things and, when some large app frees its own memory (such as when Slack quits) it'll eventually be used for other things.

Not sure how that would work. Memory doesn't stay unused in Linux for long - whatever programs free will end up being used to cache information that's slow to access.

<comment><USER4> > The thing that annoys me most on Windows is Windows itself. After using > Linuxes for almost two decades now, the notion of the OS taking tens of > minutes to self update when all I wanted was to quickly reboot it is > unbearable.

This is definitely a problem especially considering that the shotgun approach to some Windows updates actually hurt the performance of some machines, even breaking Windows on occasion [0]. However, in fairness I would say that I've spent just as much or more time fixing rolling release issues on Arch/Manjaro, or troubleshooting the package stopping me from sudo apt upgrade. The worst experience for me was having to reformat after the update from Ubuntu 14.04 crashed.

What annoys me most about Microsoft's overarching paternalistic philosophy is is how creepy their telemetry initiatives are. Granted plenty of companies do this now, for the same profit-driven motivations, but Microsoft goes above and beyond in terms of disabling or even ignoring opt out options [1]. I've found the Winaero blog [2] to be a good source of tools to stop some of the Windows telemetry shenanigans.

[0]: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/05/19/microsof...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/05/19/microsoft- admits-updates-are-freezing-windows-10-computers-again/)

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/a4lpg0/windows_1...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/a4lpg0/windows_10_still_collecting_activity_history/)

[2]: [https://winaero.com/](https://winaero.com/)

<comment><USER5> So after a very long hiatus I have decided to try installing linux on a raspberry pi - and wow, the results were amazing. Using my decade-old knowledge of using fstab I added some drives to /etc/fstab and rebooted. Oooops. Raspbian would fail boot with a message "root account locked, couldn't open console".

Fantastic - so if any of the fstab entries are missing, the entire system effectively bricks itself. The only way to fix it was to remove the SD card, put it in another machine, and manually remove the offending entries from the fstab file. Fantastic. I Don't think I have ever managed to get windows to self-brick itself with something so simple.

<comment><USER4> With great power comes great responsibility, I guess. I agree it would have been nice for Linux to come with a few more sanity checks by default, like maybe a warning flag for rm -rf /* and dd commands...

<comment><USER5> I'm just more offended that the default behaviour on an extremely popular distro is failed boot = brick. You don't even get a basic command prompt to fix something, the default behavior is to lock everything down and forbid access, making it impossible to repair the machine from itself. Windows will reboot a few times and then automatically start in safe mode when this happens, you don't need to extract the drive to manually edit some text files before the system can boot again.

<comment><USER6> FWIW, you're using the word "brick" incorrectly. Bricking is when the only fix is to throw the device away and buy a new one, which clearly is not the case here.

<comment><USER5> I don't think I am. I've been fixing hardware for years and any device that doesn't switch on is "bricked" \- its utility has dropped down to zero, it has turned into a literal brick. Just because you can revive it through some arcane procedure doesn't make it any less bricked to the end user.

<comment><USER6> Flashing a new OS onto the SD card is not "some arcane procedure" for the RPi's target audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well that is pretty nice. WSL gets that much more exactly like Linux.

What I really appreciate about WSL is that you get the accessibility of a bunch of OSS projects and a machine which has legit drivers for all of its component bits. What this means to me is that searching for a "linux laptop" won't be a chore, if it runs the latest Windows it will run Linux. And I can do development on the Linux side while communicating with senior management in power point on the Windows side :-). If they come up with a better/credible USB allocation scheme it will be icing on the cake.

I also think they should buy one of the X server vendors and bundle it (comments about X.org from Redhat not withstanding) I use Xwin32 on my laptop with WSL and its pretty seamless in terms of things that want to pop up a GUI.

<comment><USER8> There are a few annoyances with WSL2. For me the most important are:

1\. You can't connect to a port listening on WSL localhost like in WSL1, you have to figure out the WSL IP address and use that.

2\. From WSL you can't connect to a Windows TCP port on localhost, you must figure out the Windows IP (cat /etc/resolv.conf) and use that.

3\. The WSL remote interpreter on PyCharm is not working anymore. The suggested workaround is "use SSH remote interpreter" but given #1 you can't connect to localhost (and the WSL IP changes every time you restart it)

In order to use the SSH remote interpreter in my favorite IDE I'm using this script (on Windows):

        import subprocess
        import re

        output = subprocess.check_output('wsl.exe ifconfig')
        match = re.search(r"\sinet\s+(\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3})\s", output.decode('utf-8'))
        if match:
            ip = match.group(1)
            with open(r"C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts") as i:
                content = i.read()
                new_content = re.sub(r"(172.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)\s+wsl", f"{ip} wsl", content, re.M)
            if new_content != content:
                try:
                    with open(r"C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts", "w") as o:
                        o.write(new_content)
                except PermissionError:
                    print(new_content)

First I use the Windows Scheduler to start SSH (wsl service start ssh) on logon. Then this script is executed on logon with elevated privileges to update the hosts file. Instead of "localhost", I use "wsl" and it works well enough for me while I wait for the fixes.

Despite the above, the combo Windows 10 + WSL2 is the best "Linux Desktop" for me.

<comment><USER9> > you must figure out the Windows IP

The existence of c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts cracks me up. Supposedly [citation needed] Windows uses/used part of the BSD network stack.

<comment><USER10> Ahhh, the eternel dilemna they face. Either recreate the wheel and get complaints about that, or re-use the wheel and have people "crack up" about you doing that.

<comment><USER9> What cracks me up is the irony of seeing ...\etc\hosts on Windows, not the entire decision.

<comment><USER10> Then I don't understand your comment. What's the irony in there ? Or do you mean humor instead of irony / is it not irony at all ?

<comment><USER11> The irony is that "etc" makes no sense whatsoever in Windows, and particularly in that place. It probably came about because it was easier to have it there than to patch whatever bit of code they borrowed, and it's now likely vestigial, but probably there is too much stuff relying on it to change things. The irony is in an OS trying extremely hard to _not_ be a unix, ending up with unixy folder names because laziness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish Microsoft would release their own linux-based OS with a compatibility layer to let me run Windows apps. I'm not overly impressed with the direction Apple is going but I really enjoy a *nix-native environment too much to go back to vanilla Windows. It would change the math a lot for me if it was full- blown linux under the hood.

<comment><USER13> Disclosure: I work at Microsoft but not on Windows (and my work machine is a MacBook Pro FWIW)

WSL 2 is a lot like that -- it's a VM in the sense that it uses Hyper-V, but it's super lightweight. And in fact, when WSL 2 is enabled, both Windows AND Linux are running in the same type of VM (separate, obviously), so it's near- native performance in a lot of ways. There are still some I/O issues that the team is actively working on, but early benchmarks are quite promising.

<comment><USER14> I'm nervous about WSL 2. I use WSL at home quite a bit and I'm on the Fast Insider ring. My PC hasnt been able to boot Win10 for over a year with virtualization support enabled in my BIOS. No errors or anything, just hangs at boot. Ive left feedback in the hub, but crickets. Don't know what the problem is. It used to work, but at some point an update broke it. Not bleeding edge hardware, either. About a 4 to 5 year old PC. Intel i7 CPU, think it's an X79 chipset (not at the computer, so cant verify). Its just weird...

<comment><USER15> I had similar problem. With Hyper-V my PC BSODed like every other day. I did some investigation on dumps and I think that problem was in nvidia driver (not entirely sure, though, but stacktraces were from that driver). I don't really know whether it resolved or not, because I decided not to use Hyper-V ever again, VirtualBox is much better.

<comment><USER14> I never got BSODs, just hangs at start, so I don't have any dumps to look at. I'm also using nVidia (1080 GTX) and it has probably been a few months since I updated drivers, but I've been having the issue I think since at last the 1803 update.

I havent been on the PC for several weeks, so I don't have a link to my feedback. I'll post next time I'm on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My brain threw an exception when I read this title. Awesome that this is a reality though. Now that we have a Linux kernels running and accessible on both Windows and Chromebooks I feel like we can finally say: 2019 actually is the year of Linux on the desktop. It's not a meme anymore, it's finally just a true statement.

Edit: To those questioning if this really counts as Linux on the Desktop. Yes, I understand what you're saying, I too am a bit of a blowhard about Linux and prefer to use the real deal, not some kernel on a kernel bs. But I think this is still a huge deal in terms of the accessibility of Linux, think of how many young programmers will be able to dip their toes in the Linux pool on their gaming rigs without having to go through an Ubuntu install process (I write, thinking in the back of my mind that I had to go through that, and so maybe they should too.) Yes there is something of an ideological compromise here, because the Linux they're running is sitting on a binary blob and not truly free... but Linux still exists in it's gloriously free form for them to use when they decide that's important to them, I see no harm in them reaping some of the other benefits of Linux without the freedom, it will hopefully become an on ramp to more Linux adopters and programmers.

<comment><USER9> While people nitpick over what "linux desktop" means, don't lose sight of the fact that general purpose computing is slowly dying and being replaced by iOS and Android. Roughly as many iPhones are sold per year as desktops and laptops combined.

<comment><USER17> iOS doesn't use Linux and on Android userspace doesn't actually see it.

[https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis](https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis)

So it is meaningless.

<comment><USER18> There's more than one Android userspace.

[https://github.com/termux/termux- packages/tree/master/packag...](https://github.com/termux/termux- packages/tree/master/packages)

<comment><USER17> Which isn't fully POSIX, breaks down with every Android release that clamps down security, and most of it is just plain ISO C, ISO C++ and OpenGL, hardly Linux specific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Microsoft: put a good POSIX layer into Windows. The times are mature now, and this allows your platform to benefit from a lot of open source system software easily, without portings and compatibility layers. At the same time, now that developers start to be annoyed big time by Apple nonsensical Mac handling, this gives a lot of devs, not developing primarily for the Win arch, the ability to evaluate Windows as a development machine.

<comment><USER20> The pure geek in me really wishes they'd bring back SFU. Windows has a really impressive mechanism for implementing subsystems (I can't remember for sure, but I believe win32 is actually implemented on top of this layer).

I'm sure there's far more complexity involved than I could imagine, but I've always loved the idea of having a bunch of different subsystems running without the need for virtualization.

<comment><USER21> V1 of WSL (which isn't going to go away IIRC) was essentially an iteration/improvement of the subsystem model, but with new things like picoprocesses.

This article[1] has a good overview of the design goals, which mainly was to let unmodified binaries run.

[1] [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows- subs...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subsystem- for-linux-overview/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm sure that I'll have a nightmare tonight where I'm stuck in a Scooby Doo episode, and they unmask the ntoskrnl.exe binary to reveal this Linux kernel underneath....

</comment><comment><USER23> The apt name would be Microsoft/Linux. But that would give Stallman an aneurysm.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h WSL 1 was GNU/NT, I would think.

<comment><USER24> GNU/LinuxABI@kWindows actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've only imagined a Microsoft version of Linux (or BSD or ...). I figured it was the only way to get a polished consistent experience much like I have gotten (mostly, but not perfect) from Apple and macOS. The reason I left Linux on the Desktop in 2006 for macOS. I was tired of inconsistent experience, constantly tweaking, sleep/suspend/hibernate haphazardly working (or not).

However, the one problem I have with switching to Windows, even with a flawless WSL (2), or full Linux/BSD/whatever OS under the hood, the whole Apple ecosystem integration, seamless syncing between all my devices and accounts will be hard to let go unless something from MSFT / Windows and company can provide that same convenience. From what I have researched, it's close, but still not there.

It's too convenient. I know people will say they have problems with it (iCloud/macOS/iOS syncing/integration), but my experience and all my fellow constituents and family haven't. So, I have not witnessed nor experienced these issues people bring up in threads on HackerNews, Reddit, etc that I have seen (yet can't seem to find exact examples of at the moment with links).

I really admire this work. I hope MSFT continues down the path they have been. I've always had a soft spot for them. I'm rooting for them.

</comment><comment><USER26> I admire what Microsoft have done with WSL and now WSL2, it's really pretty cool. Satya has done an excellent job revitalizing Microsoft from the Ballmer days.

However, WTF. Why has the "Microsoft" directory got a leading capital. I mean every.other.directory.in.linux.is.lower.case!!!!!! Look around folks! Every other vendor in that tree has their name lowercase, please respect the local customs!

<comment><USER27> Because it's an English proper noun?

<comment><USER28> You mean like 'linux'?

<comment><USER27> Sure, but if I worked at Microsoft there might be guidelines on the use of the company name. I doubt it's worth reading into as some nefarious situation.

<comment><USER29> The complaint is that it's gaudy, not "nefarious".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Question for those with more technological knowledge than I have: will this allow AF_PACKET support on windows so I can run monitor mode stuff? CUDA acceleration?

If I could avoid spending time getting nvidia drivers working on my laptop, that would be a massive help. And yeah, I know, I'm supposed to buy AMD stuff so I can use open source etc. But all the best hardware is nvidia, and so top hardware ships with nvidia. I've got to use this thing for my work as well, so it's not really an option, and I don't have the technical chops to quickly debug my drivers or wm or whatever.

<comment><USER31> These are two of their highest requested features at the moment [1] [2], and if I recall correctly they specifically remarked on passing through hardware as one of their main priorities going forward with WSL2. Unfortunately it requires some vendor support so it's not an easy task to solve right away, but I would stay optimistic.

[1] [https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/266908-command-prompt- con...](https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/266908-command-prompt-console- windows-subsystem-for-l/suggestions/17817685-support-af-packet-address-family- tcpdump-wireshar)

[2] [https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/266908-command-prompt- con...](https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/266908-command-prompt-console- windows-subsystem-for-l/suggestions/16108045-opencl-cuda-gpu-support)

<comment><USER30> I am indeed very optimistic. As much as I love linux, not having to get optimus GPUs set up on it would be a massive relief. I've voted on both before; here's to hoping!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Honestly, I would kill to see real shifts and development in operating systems space and computing space in general. I would rather love to be in a world where the industry incrementally adapts newer kinds of operating systems in their workflow, a world where different kinds of ideas (example plan9, inferno, lisp, oberon) are regularly experimented with in the marketplace. Here we are stuck with the same kinds of systems which just work in one way, and working on standardizing it; where CLI programs are still considered professional;

This is spent effort to be lazy.

Having said that, it is technologically worth studying.

</comment><comment><USER33> We've come a long way from Bill Gates' original characterization of open source (long before it was called that) as thievery - [https://worldhistoryproject.org/1976/2/bill-gates-writes- ope...](https://worldhistoryproject.org/1976/2/bill-gates-writes-open-letter- to-hobbyists)

I'm still sure as ever Microsoft is no friend of free (as in Freedom, not price) software and can't help but shake my head at this latest publicity stunt. I wouldn't trust their software any further than I throw it.

<comment><USER34> "Open source" has a precise definition [1], and your comment does not use the term correctly.

[1] [https://opensource.org/osd](https://opensource.org/osd)

In particular, if the software or "work" was never made freely available by its lawful owner, it is not open source.

<comment><USER33> Bill wrote his letter 21 years before this definition materialized and it actually served to inspire the free software/open source concept altogether.

> There is a viable alternative to the problems raised by Bill Gates in his > irate letter to computer hobbyists concerning "ripping off" software. When > software is free, or so inexpensive that it's easier to pay for it than to > duplicate it, then it won't be "stolen".

—Jim Warren, July 1976

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Microsoft gained a lot of respect back! Great move executives, well done. But I believe in your intentions, keep it right, people like this.

</comment><comment><USER36> They still don't have a terminal application that deserves the name. The crap they built into the Ubuntu app is still the same torturous parody that's used in the DOS cmd interpreter. Even Cygwin has a much better terminal than that.

<comment><USER37> [https://github.com/microsoft/Terminal](https://github.com/microsoft/Terminal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Too many free / non-free / Linux / OSS ideologues.

Does this let users do more? Does this give users more options? This is a good, practical feature. I'm excited to, hopefully soon, fully ditch Linux on desktop for something that actually works.

<comment><USER39> This system even installs new Microsoft software and tracks all your actions without any respect for you turning it off. Finally you can forget about the pain of deciding what is going on in your computer. Microsoft just knows the best so it indeed "just works(TM)". /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's hard to win harder than this. People finding a way to see this as a betrayal or trick—it's what total victory looks like.

</comment><comment><USER41> What is this repo based on? Was Microsoft working on this since 2004? It's commit history shows it was started in 2004??

</comment><comment><USER42> I already use WSL1 as my main setup for web dev at work. If Windows comes to a point where doing anything doesn't immediately make the fan spin to maximum RPM, I'll be very happy to call Windows my digital home.

</comment><comment><USER43> "Embrace, extend, and extinguish"

These words are not made up by journalists, these are the exact words Microsoft used internally.

They do this, every. Single. Time.

Everyone keeps falling for it, talking proudly about how MS changed so much and they are now somehow totally turned around. Yes.. ok, whatever you need to believe in. Just be warned, they will utterly drstroy everything they come into contact with.

Or should I say: denial is the most predictable of all human responses. But, rest assured, this will be the umpteenth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.

</comment><comment><USER44> No no no. Can't be. They thought it is cancer ...

The new Microsoft may finally let me go back to windows. Mac is too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER45> Please could someone point me to a practical guide for a layman on how to run Linux apps on Windows 10? I want to give users compact installation instructions for shell and Node.js apps (1) mostly written for Linux/Mac OS, but I couldn't figure out what Windows version (Professional?) is required for WSL/WSL2, and how to install it.

(1) Node.js of course runs natively on Win; however my apps makes particular assumptions wrt file paths, shared-reading/locking semantics, and spawning external shell scripts

<comment><USER46> WSL can be installed on any version of windows 10 from home up.

Users first need to enable the WSL optional feature in their windows install, then they can install their favorite distro's userland from the windows store.

More detailed instructions here: [https://aka.ms/wslinstall](https://aka.ms/wslinstall)

<comment><USER47> Additionally, if you don't wish to use the Microsoft Store you can download the distro packages individually. [0]

You then open/unzip the '.appx' package with any archiver such as 7Zip and place the files in a folder of your choosing; simply launching the distro executable ('ubuntu1804.exe' for example) to install and register the distro.

You can then use that same executable to launch WSL for that distro in its own window, which makes it easy to add the icon as a shortcut to your taskbar for quick access like you would any Windows program, without having to open command line first.

Added benefit is that you can store all your distros as folders (with individual rootfs and config files) in a parent location of your choosing such as a fast external array, without having to use the MS Store or an MS Account.

[0] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install- manual](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Just noticed the contributors as showing "∞ contributors" :D

<comment><USER49> Same for the official linux source [https://github.com/torvalds/linux](https://github.com/torvalds/linux)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.

Still, the same until they:

1\. Will give up FAT and exFAT patents

2\. Stop racketeering Android vendors for their patented "inventions"

Also, what happened with NTFS-3G[1] project? Seems dead for many years, while still not supporting some of the NTFS features. They should at least upload it to GitHub.

[1] [https://www.tuxera.com/community/open-source- ntfs-3g/](https://www.tuxera.com/community/open-source-ntfs-3g/)

</comment><comment><USER51> As a dev and Linux/OSX user I'm still struggling to see who exactly this is for. All of the tools I want to use are very well supported on OSX and I don't have much use for Microsoft software like Office these days with Google Sheets et cetera. Is this being geared more towards corporate customers who have chosen to standardise all of their IT on Microsoft products, but who need easier access to dev tools/environments?

<comment><USER52> I recently switched to Windows after 10 years of Macs, because I didn't fee like forking out €3k for a decent 15" laptop. I switched to a Razer (€1700) which can actually game + with WSL I can actually do Rails development. After a month of using this machine, my carpal tunnel pains dropped off significantly (in part because I ditched the Magic Mouse for a Logitech MX) and my fingers don't swell or hurt from bashing a non-existant keyboard on the MBP. So to me when it comes to computers, Apple is dead.

<comment><USER53> FWIW, when I switched from Mac to Windows, I was able to still do Rails development in Windows itself (I guess it ultimately depends on your Rails app complexity and the gems you rely on) and deploy my solutions to Linux servers. This was before WSL came out.

<comment><USER52> For sure, but it was pretty slow (every page reload took ages) and with WSL it is much faster.

<comment><USER53> Really? That's interesting.

I don't have that experience running Rails on Windows. Having said that, I do use thin for my development instance, so maybe that's why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Now we only need a Windows-native Wayland server, which integrates seamlessly into the Windows desktop and of course just uses the Windows graphics stack.

<comment><USER24> Windows-native and _.NET-based_ Wayland server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is truly amazing. I have always developed on Windows and recently got a new contract where whole development environment is based on OSX/Linux. It has saved me hours and hours of work (and $$$) since I can run their environment in subsystem, while keeping Windows interface. Thank you, Nadella.

</comment><comment><USER56> What's the bet that MacOS will switch to the Linux kernel within the next five years?

<comment><USER54> What would be the motivation for Apple to do such a thing? MacOS is already a Unix, with a BSD-based userland. Also, they are doing active kernel development - as in architecture development - to enhance the system security, so that even root cannot compromise the system. One part of this is moving kernel extensions into user processes thanks to the fact that Mach is a microkernel. They couldn't do that with the current Linux architecture.

<comment><USER56> Not only can you do it with Linux, a lot is already done; with SELinux, apparmour, grsecurity, PaX, qubes.

They'd also save on kernel development AND get docker and a lot of other goodies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I wonder if they fixed this yet? from 2017 when wsl was beta and not a default component.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/12/microsoft_downplays...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/12/microsoft_downplays_bashware_malware_threat/)

apparently a bash on linux in wsl can deliver a payload to the windows environment.

if windows is going to ship with its wsl turned on by default, bashware has to be addressed.

</comment><comment><USER58> I see it as another publicity stunt by the Big 5 tech companies to save their reputation amidst years of anti-privacy violations. From buying Github, to "supporting" open-source software. Yeah right, more like marketing to save your reputation. I'll keep moving further and further away from Big Tech. Will Microsoft send themselves more "aggregated" user data on how their new Linux kernel is being used? Will this have to be another rule for my firewall to block?

<comment><USER38> How do you guys have time to get any work done with all this zealotry?

<comment><USER39> It is possible. First, sometimes it is more benefitial to just pass on the shiny corp gadget. They are new, they look cool, everybody talks about them, but you often find that you can save attention span and protect privacy by ignoring it (e.g. facebook). Second, this stance make you look for alternatives. First you give up a lot, you have to work harder to work around. But if you do, you will have to go deeper into technology and think about how those things work. So it gives back so much in terms of brain development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I think this will benefit windows users because now they have easy access to Linux but also probably to Linux users who now can write Linux programs that can access resources on a Windows machine.

Conceptually it amounts to having England and France whose people speak their own languages and now there is an European Union language translator program that allows them to talk to each other in their own language. No?

<comment><USER60> I'd expect it to be mostly one way - Windows can access the Linux stuff.

If I could do COM calls from Linux to a Windows hosted Excel.Application, now that would be amazing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Maybe this will be one of my reasons for returning to Windows.

</comment><comment><USER62> would this have been at all possible if linux had been GPLv3?

</comment><comment><USER63> Are they going to push this to upstream ever? How are they, or we, are going to catch up when thousands of lines of code are added every day.

<comment><USER64> When I remember right, Microsoft is already a big contributor to the Linux Kernel. Do not forget, Azure has tons of Linux machines hosted. I think they know exactly how to ha ndle this.

And I think currently they are just patching their own Linux together like any distro does

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Is WSL2 more than just a VM? How is it different?

<comment><USER66> for starters, it's not your typical VirtualBox VM running off your host OS. The Linux kernel in WSL2 runs on top of Hyper-V _alongside_ Windows, which is _also_ in a VM.

Microsoft is leveraging the same technology they use to run Windows on Xbox alongside the game OS, so it's really like an OS with 2 kernels

<comment><USER65> I get that it's on a hypervisor but from a user standpoint how is that beneficial or any different from just running a normal VM in a hypervisor, is my question? Like I could've already run Hyper-V and installed Linux, so (how) is WSL2 different/better?

<comment><USER64> I cannot answer your question. I can just tell you that they brought back Dave Cutler from retirement for this concept found in XBox and now Windows 10. This is definitely not that everyone's VM.

And if you do not know Dave Cutler... Well he is a VMS veteran (a system which was also ground up virtualized) who designed the Windows NT Kernel. He is essentially a legend in the field of operating systems and engineering. There is a nice documentation around him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Give it a few years, and Windows will be using the Linux kernel while shipping NT in this way for compatibility reasons.

</comment><comment><USER68> Hello, folks,

With this kernel we could use unix commands in somekind of terminal? Maybe node executations will run faster?

</comment><comment><USER69> So where are the github repositories with the source code of drivers of the companies?

</comment><comment><USER70> Didn't Microsoft agree to never ship a Unix again when they sold Xenix?

<comment><USER15> Linux is not Unix.

<comment><USER70> I can't find details of the sale so maybe I'm wrong, but I thought it also applied to clone products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I'll keep using my Arch linux with Windows in a virtual box. Win win.

</comment><comment><USER72> It's really good - I was able to build extra modules for WSL2 with ease.

</comment><comment><USER73> "I have a dream that was not that of Bill Gates."\--MLK

</comment><comment><USER74> Haha. Linux really was a virus. The good kind that eventually won out because it was open and solved real problems that people wanted it everywhere.

MS really playing the "we'll go wherever the developers are" game really well.

</comment><comment><USER75> As an aside, which laptop do people here prefer for windows dev? I am split between Surface laptop and Lenovo X1 Carbon.

<comment> Const-me Thick ones, able to house active cooling, and therefore fast CPUs. Where you can upgrade RAM and SSD with a screwdriver, without a heat gun. A brand doesn't matter.

<comment><USER75> I travel quite a bit, so lightness is a requirement.

<comment> Const-me I have an upgradeable 13.3" laptop, with active cooling, which weights 1.6kg. Light enough for all practical applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> The cancer grew so much that it now metastazed even in Microsoft Corp !

</comment><comment><USER77> Embrace, extend...

<comment><USER78> ... extinguish [0]

This makes me nervous. This is a win-win now, but who can say they won't just do what they do and destroy desktop Linux as we know it when theirs gets the traction necessary? If I were a nefarious assembly of MS execs, my long-term plan would be to use Windows' UI friendliness and compatibility to attract Linux users (embrace) and, when there would be a critical mass of users, extend MS Linux to break compatibility with true Linux (extend and extinguish).

What about the memorable MS exec quote "Linux is cancer"? For MS, Linux is cancer. For the consumer, MS is the cancer. Don't use their products. What's a company got to do to be shunned by the market?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish)

<comment><USER79> >This is a win-win now

I don't see how this is a win-win. It incentivizes people (like developers who might otherwise stick to linux) to run a proprietary operating system.

<comment><USER78> It's a win for the Linux user, because it increases the reach of Linux software. Think the uninitiated co-worker being able to run your scripts or something. It's a win for MS, because it makes their platform more powerful.

Of course, to repeat myself, I don't think Windows is a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Now get GUI apps and CUDA working, and I'm in.

</comment><comment><USER81> Who cares about the year of the Linux desktop when the world is still turning into 1984? There was a reason we wanted Linux to dominate and it wasn't so it would end like this.

<comment><USER82> Linux desktop means little when people log into Google, Facebook et al.

<comment><USER81> Exactly. Linux won on technical merits, but we failed to educate people about the really important part about freedom.

<comment><USER83> > Linux won on technical merits

Arguably. It's hard to say Linux won on technical merits of networking compared to FreeBSD or OpenBSD, or on storage compared to FreeBSD+ZFS, or say that generally when devs chose MacOS X.

I suggest Linux won for being: the most popular out of the things which cost $0.

BSD lost for not being popular, commercial Unix, Windows and MacOS lost for costing money.

<comment><USER84> > BSD lost for not being popular

People used to say that BSD lost because of the ambiguous copyright status of the early 90s, allowing Linux to glide in unopposed as the "free unix-like os for PCs".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc._v._Berkeley_Software_Design,_Inc).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution#History)

<comment><USER82> While others say the GPL license is what created an ecosystem, whereby the BSD-3 won't create an ecosystem of same quality.

<comment><USER84> It'd also be fair to say *BSD development is more centralized ("cathedral- like" to borrow from ESRs 1990s work) and that may have some repercussions in development speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> All the Linux with none of the freedom. Yaaaay?

<comment><USER86> To be fair, plenty of people care more about the "Linux" than they do about the "freedom" part. Case in point: macOS. Basically everything that makes it "macOS" is proprietary, but it gained popularity because it was mostly Linux- compatible.

Unix compatibility is worth quite a bit on its own, Linux wouldn't have gotten half as far without it. And Unix is historically proprietary and closed- source.

<comment><USER87> > _And Unix is historically proprietary and closed-source_

"Unix" the brand name, maybe, but "Unix" the source code less so. BSD was based on Unix. The story of why Linux became popular instead of BSD is that BSD was mired in a copyright fight with AT&T over that relationship at the time.

Per [http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html) who was active at the time (and before he became today's wingnut)

"It would take another two years and the great Internet explosion of 1993–1994 before the true importance of Linux and the open-source BSD distributions became evident to the rest of the Unix world. Unfortunately for the BSDers, an AT&T lawsuit against BSDI (the startup company that had backed the Jolitz port) consumed much of that time and motivated some key Berkeley developers to switch to Linux.

> Code copying and theft of trade secrets was alleged. The actual infringing > code was not identified for nearly two years. The lawsuit could have dragged > on for much longer but for the fact that Novell bought USL from AT&T and > sought a settlement. In the end, three files were removed from the 18,000 > that made up the distribution, and a number of minor changes were made to > other files. In addition, the University agreed to add USL copyrights to > about 70 files, with the stipulation that those files continued to be freely > redistributed. -- Marshall Kirk McKusick

The settlement set an important precedent by freeing an entire working Unix from proprietary control, but its effects on BSD itself were dire. Matters were not helped when, in 1992–1994, the Computer Science Research Group at Berkeley shut down; afterwards, factional warfare within the BSD community split it into three competing development efforts. As a result, the BSD lineage lagged behind Linux at a crucial time and lost to it the lead position in the Unix community."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> If it ships with Windows, doesn't that mean Windows is GPL now?

<comment><USER89> No more than running Linux in a VM makes the hypervisor GPL. They are distributing it via their store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> The only reason I'm sticking to my Macbook is the Linux based kernal, which makes it easier for me to use the command line, install NodeJS, build an application, install Redis Server on my local.

Though everything can be done in Windows, it's not easy to do so.

I specifically remember trying to install Redis on Windows and had to give up after the end of the day. Ended up creating a server and installing Redis on that on AWS.

Also, people are complaining that Microsoft once said "Linux is Cancer" at some point. A lot has changed since then. Ubuntu was released after that which IMO helped to adopt Linux by an end user.

<comment><USER91> What did I just read.

MacBook userspace is derived from NetBSD. The kernel is so far removed from BSD UNIX it's not worth even mentioning.

This link you commented on points to the kernel used in WSL2 which gives you a full Linux under Windows. Unlike Mac where you probably will use homebrew to install Unix packages, this is a full, unadultered Linux machine. Even WSL1 allowed you to install anything from Ubuntu although some (very, very few!) didn't run, most importantly (for us) some debuggers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Is this why they say to never push to production on Friday?

<comment><USER93> Why? This seems to have been available for at least four days and there's no obvious problem/mistaken with it.</comment></comment>


Things I'd Do If I Ran a News Organization  - <AUTHOR> http://mediactive.com/2009/09/12/eleven-things-id-do-if-i-ran-a-news-organization/

<comment><USER2> "11. We would never publish lists of 10. They're a prop for lazy and unimaginative people."

He just did publish such list. Also he neither explains why he believes these will improve journalism, nor how they can be done in practice.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't agree with the first point about anniversary stories; there should be more follow-up in journalism, not less.

<comment><USER4> He's a little contradictory about it. A followup story is a great way of correcting errors (#4) and describing what isn't known (#3).

#1 is also undermined by #6: crusades, even when you think you have the facts on your side, are of a piece with commentary.

So I'd replace his #1 with "no fluff pieces masquerading as news" and call the list good as far as it goes.

On the topic of anniversary stories, I think timelines are badly underused in hard-news stories. A clear and thorough chronology, in chart format to make different threads clear, helps explain complicated scenarios. But newspapers seem to think of graphics as a way of dumbing things down, not as legitimate tools. If I ran a newspaper, it would be full of complex visual analysis. (Complex as opposed to the stupid three-bar graphs you sometimes see in margins.)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Career pivot to games, production coordinator in big studio – good move? - <AUTHOR> Hello =)
I'm 38 years old, been a freelancer or project/program manager for the past 20 years. Hardcore gamer before, still love this industry.
Hence why i've applied to several studios for the past few years, usually in Production. For two reasons: 1) I'm not a game designer, programmer, artist... 2) I like enabling teams, some aspects of project management, and want to be better at it and grow in leadership as well.
I've got an offer in a big studio for a Production Coordinator role. I feel the level is a bit low for my age, salary as well. But at least they give me my chance (on the contrary to all the other studios i've reached), my manager is experienced and believes in me, and it would be for a triple A game.
Questions:
- How do you feel about this?
- Ultimately, i would see myself being a Product Manager for a tech company, or a Game Director in a studio. So not only managing projects and teams, but also having a vision for the product/games. Do you feel being a Prod Cord would be a good move toward this career? Knowing that i feel i already have a good "product sense", but i may be lacking in terms of execution.
Thanks for your help =) <comment><USER2> I worked at EA for eight years.

 _> I feel the level is a bit low for my age_

My experience is that game companies don't value experience out of the game industry very much, so you should probably expect to take a bit of a ranking hit on your first job. From their perspective, you're a blank slate. In theory, you'll climb back up quickly once you've shipped a game or two.

 _> salary as well_

Game industry salaries have always been a notch or two lower than salaries for comparable jobs in other fields. Working on games is a perk, and there is a _lot_ of competition, which drives wages down.

 _> Knowing that i feel i already have a good "product sense", but i may be lacking in terms of execution._

For what it's worth, everyone thinks they have a knack for game design. In practice, very few do. It's _very_ easy to make a game that sucks and incredibly hard to come up with a novel yet fun play experience.

The game industry tends to be long hours and a lot of stress. The emotional and professional maturity of your coworkers may be less than you're used to. It could end up being a death march.

 _But_ it can also be very rewarding. If it's something you want to try, the sooner you find out and either get on that career path or get it out of your system, the better.

Even if it works out well, don't plan to stay in the game industry forever. Few do. So try to make sure your resume and network is in a state where you can gracefully leave the game industry if that's what you want to do later.

<comment><USER3> I work at a game company now. When I started 6 years ago it was on a contract basis and the salary was lower than I had hoped.

Your advice seems spot on to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You are on the cusp of major salary increases for your age and experience outside of the game industry. Time spent inside the game industry is generally viewed outside of the game industry negatively . Only gamers give the game industry respect, in a professional sense, as technical creatives tend to view the high levels of unpaid production overtime as mismanagement and abuse with the game industry's eternal crunch time schedules. Those less on the inside think making games is "playing games all day". If you ever leave the industry, your time in the industry will be treated as a professional negative by any company outside of the entertainment industry. Speaking as a 15 year veteran of the games industry, I strongly do not recommend taking the job.

<comment><USER5> Depends - when it comes to tech, its like hiring a formula one mechanic at a local car shop. Those guys know to optimize though. No excuses to not know your stack their.

And we all had that idealistic phase, where we worked for the idea, not the dough. The are those of course who are bitter, for not having the courage (or stupidity) to follow theire dreams for once in their lifes.

<comment><USER4> Tech shops say their work is too boring and you'll leave them; if they don't say that, they think you played games all day and suspect you do not have a serious work ethic. When I left the games biz, I had to hide my time there, describing the years as embedded software development. (I was an OS Dev for the 3DO, then OS dev again for the first PlayStation, then lead for a decade after at places like EA & Sony. I finally left for VFX, but that took two career turns to get there.) In general, games are only now getting professional respect.

<comment><AUTHOR> So it's getting better, right?

<comment><USER4> Yes, it is getting better, from dismal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd say give it a try because I think it's the only way you're going to know if you enjoy it or not. I mean what's the worst that's likely to happen? You hate it and go back to freelancing?

I'd considered something similar myself but, as you seem to have discovered, most studios want experience in the industry for roles above entry level.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are a lot of stories about worker exploration in the game industry. I guess as long as you don't end up in one of the bad ones or find one with a labour union [1]. GL!

1: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/23/17156472/game- developers-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/23/17156472/game-developers- unionization-exploitative-toxic-workplace-culture-gdc-2018)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm starting tomorrow new post as a game producer. I was in a web development before and was making quite decent salary without any stress. Now my salary is 1k less in a month and I know that I will face more stress and pressure. Still I didn't hesitate to make a switch. Making great games has been my dream for a long and I knew that if I'd skip this opportunity I'd regret it later. Life is too short to not follow your dreams because it pays less and involves more career risks.

I believe that your position is a good path on becoming Game Director. Good luck to you!

</comment><comment><USER9> Big AAA games companies are like any other big entertainment product companies as far as I can tell, or any other industry that mass produces stuff on a production line for that matter.

If you can manage the drones, whether they are crapping out a risk free uninspired committee designed, game, or film, or screen door, it hardly matters I think.

</comment><comment><USER10> > see myself being a Product Manager for a tech company, or a Game Director in > a studio.

In the absence of clarity, take action. This role will give you the insiders perspective you currently miss as a freelancer.</comment>


My new start-up - ad bid - <AUTHOR> http://www.adbid.biz/

<comment><USER2> I think that if you work hard and believe in yourself you will have an awesome life.

I am not sure if ad bid (your spelling) will be successful. I had a similar idea a few years ago and actually started building it. I quit when I realized I hate advertising and had no passion for advertising. I would not be happy working on something that supports something I dislike for the rest of my life.

Let it be noted that what I think about your startup, even though the response was requested, does not matter. If you believe in it do it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> what do you all think ?</comment>


Woz: Apple Almost Launched A Phone In 2004, Android Will "Win The Race" - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/18/woz-apple-almost-launched-a-phone-in-2004-android-will-win-the-race/ <comment><USER2> Win the race in terms of volume, most likely: their product is pretty decent, and they aim at comoditizing phones and carriers.

But the race that matters is the race in terms of profits, and Apple seems on track to remain the most profitable company, without producing the most common phone:

\- they have indecent margins;

\- they have a credible strategy to comoditize carriers (cf. their not-so- secret deal with Gemalto);

\- they cash in at all stages: on the hardware, on the software, on carrier fees, on the App store;

\- a significant part of their R&D effort is shared between iOS devices (not only phones) and OSX.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Google's approach is to lose money on creating the OS and promoting it (give it free to handset manufacturers) but hope to make money off the users that use it. I am sure they can make money from this, however, I am also sure Apple will make more money per user by selling an actual phone to them AND making money from the user.

<comment><USER4> I'm guessing that's debatable. I don't know anywhere close to the numbers, but effectively, you're saying that the iPhone (a few hundred dollar purchase up front, plus maybe a few hundred dollars every couple years) is worth more than the lifespan of how much revenue per user those users will be worth using search.

The flip side of the gamble is that Google makes money of search and ad revenues even if they don't sell an Android. Sure, the users aren't AS likely to use gmail, or picasa web sharing, or what have you, but they likely make some money off of almost every smart phone user, regardless of whether their phone is an Android, iPhone, Blackberry or Windows Mobile.

You might be right, for sure, but I think Google is the long-term winner here.

<comment><USER5> This post, factually correct though it is, just shows the absurdity of setting up these arbitrary contests.

How can you possibly compare Google's business model with Apple's? Google seeded the world with Android to jumpstart the smartphone revolution faster. That means that more people will see more web ads sooner. For every day that X people view web ads, Google makes money; this is especially true if that day is _tomorrow_ , rather than five years from now, because Google's share of the web ad business is really good now and doesn't seem likely to go up from here. [1] So Google increased the area under the smartphone-users-vs-time curve for the next few years, and will then make money on that.

Google also makes money on Apple's products, of course. If Apple were capable or interested in saturating the near-term market with iPhones, Google wouldn't have needed to bother with Android, and maybe they wouldn't. And, to the extent that Apple _does_ eventually saturate the market with iPhones, Google might slack off on Android. Though that also depends on what happens with iAds.

Meanwhile, Apple primarily sells gadgets. They make money by selling more gadgets or by maintaining high margins, or both.

Their businesses are intertwined, and the actions of one affect the other, but they're not in the same business and you can't run a horse race between them. Companies don't win some prize by having a higher market share, or higher total market cap, or higher total revenue. Zappos isn't a failure just because its $1B revenue is 65 times smaller than Apple's.

\---

[1] Though who knows? There are other ad businesses in the world than the one Google currently dominates.

<comment><USER4> A year ago I would have had nothing further to say on the matter than what you just did... then Apple introduced iAds which I think will keep Google on its toes regarding Android until they've cemented/protected their revenue stream, which may be indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How the hell do you win a race that doesn't end? i.e. - "Aug 30, 2006 ... Why MySpace Won The Social Networking War." There is no "winner" there is only the current leader.

<comment><USER7> Your words are true, but think of the news as subjective and a snapshot of time.

The MySpace headline you mention was referring to MySpace's effective killing of it's competitors (Friendster, Orkut, etc). So for that period of time, they did "win". But yes, the race never ends, it's a journey not a destination, and so on.

Some day when my kids have kids, they'll have to explain this antiquity called "Facebook" to glassed-over stares. "That's lame mom, I'll be back, I'm going and check my HolodeckFurrySpace.com page"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is something missing in Woz' argumentation: "He likens Android's success to that of Microsoft's Windows operating system, along with the flaws and challenges of that model."

Problem is: there has for a long time been such an OS on the market: Windows Mobile. It didn't become dominant over time, on the contrary, it is currently in survival mode.

Android is more like Linux. Linux didn't become dominant on the Desktop, but Android (i.e. Linux) will fare better on smartphones because smartphones don't rely on an huge existing base of applications and IT-support departments.

If Woz' argument was true: Why did RIM (and in Europe, Nokia) and other vertical integrators get the lions share[1] of the smartphone market when the "winner" strategy was already present in the market? They did because the rules are different for the smartphone market than the desktop PC market.

[1] [http://www.asymco.com/2010/11/03/what-do-you-have-to- believe...](http://www.asymco.com/2010/11/03/what-do-you-have-to-believe-for- an-android-dominated-future/)

<comment><USER9> I don't believe that was what he was trying to say.

I think his point was that Windows was successful by bringing features made popular by MacOS to a wider market and more diverse hardware, just as Android is doing that with the iPhone concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apple did help release a phone in 2005, the badly-received ROKR - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_ROKR_E1>

Collaboration on this started in 2004. It's not a smartphone but I wonder if this is what Woz (mis-)remembers.</comment>


Möbius Music Box - <AUTHOR> http://youtu.be/3iMI_uOM_fY

<comment><USER2> From 5 and 13 months ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1967554> <\- Some comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290367> <\- No comments</comment>


The Unreliable Startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jescalan/the-unreliable-startup-69461f629383#.3h4b12t2a <comment><USER2> I agree that this is a problem, but it applies not only to startups but every proprietary service. The only way, that I can see, to eliminate the risk of losing a given service is to make a personal archive of everything (for primarily data-based services), and only use free/libre software (for computing services). Without the ability to run the service on your own machines, modify, and redistribute; I don't think you can have any hope of long-term availability.

</comment><comment><USER3> This doesn't strike me as a problem. Large companies also shut down initiatives and projects, and everyone knows that startups are inherently risky, because they don't have a business model yet.</comment>


Hardcore Maker's Schedule - <AUTHOR> http://42floors.com/blog/posts/hardcore-makers-schedule

<comment><USER2> "Shit's gotten real with 42Floors."

How do you start a blog post on your company's site with this sentence? Are you going out of your way to look unprofessional?

<comment><USER3> That depends on their brand, and who their customers are. I, for one, find it refreshing.

<comment><USER2> It's an unnecessary distraction. I'm not a fan of the overly saccharine approach to interacting w/ customer/clients but I don't think it's necessary to swear. I agree with your branding comment.

I also think swearing is a cheap ploy to make someone look "authentic" or "edgy".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does he link to 42floors.com every single time he mentions 42floors? Is that a SEO thing, or what?

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh nice,I didn't knew there was a term for heads-down company-building. Pushing out distractions is just a side-effect of reaching ambitious goals such as building product/business so you shouldn't apologize for it imo.

</comment><comment><USER6> Guys, looks like all activities are free for both tenants and brokers. Any upcoming surprises in the future, when you will start money-making activities?

BTW, like your site design - very clean look.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> Do you want to grab a coffee?</comment>


Vermont Bill Proposes Ban on Cellphone Use for Anyone Under 21 - <AUTHOR> https://www.mynbc5.com/article/vermont-bill-would-ban-cellphone-use-for-anyone-under-21/30456265# <comment><USER3> > "I have no delusions that it's going to pass," [the state senator who > introduced the bill] told reporter Eric Blaisdell. "I wouldn't probably vote > for it myself."

So it's not a serious bill. But I don't get what conversation the guy's trying to start. The full bill -- under two pages of generously spaced text [1] -- cites four justifications, conveniently arranged by decreasing plausibility:

> (1) The use of cell phones while driving is one of the leading killers of > teenagers in the United States... (2) Young people frequently use cell > phones to bully and threaten other young people, activities that have been > linked to many suicides. (3) The Internet and social media, accessed > primarily through cell phones, are used to radicalize and recruit > terrorists, fascists, and other extremists. (4) Cell phones have often been > used by mass shooters of younger ages for research on previous shootings.

And then it proposes prison sentences up to a year just for possession? Yeah, weird.

My best guess is it's a publicity-seeking protest against Vermont's recent decisions to raise the tobacco [2] and firearm [3] purchasing ages to 21. The last bit of the cell phone bill suggests this.

> (5) In light of the dangerous and life-threatening consequences of cell > phone use by young people, it is clear that persons under 21 years of age > are not developmentally mature enough to safely possess them, just as the > General Assembly has concluded that persons under 21 years of age are not > mature enough to possess firearms, smoke cigarettes, or consume alcohol.

[1] [https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2020/Docs/BILLS/S-...](https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2020/Docs/BILLS/S-0212/S-0212%20As%20Introduced.pdf)

[2] [https://liquorcontrol.vermont.gov/Tobacco21](https://liquorcontrol.vermont.gov/Tobacco21)

[3] [https://dps.vermont.gov/content/new-vermont-gun-laws- faqs](https://dps.vermont.gov/content/new-vermont-gun-laws-faqs)

<comment><USER4> Good ol' America, where you can enlist at 17, but can't drink, smoke, or own a firearm until 21. Also where it's illegal to pay somebody to have sex, unless you're filming it.

<comment><USER5> If you are 18 and arrested for drinking alcohol, you get charged as an adult with underage drinking. Because you're now old enough to know better.

<comment><USER4> Wow, that's just absurd. Never heard that one before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bill proposals are rarely on topic for HN. Most bills never go anywhere.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20bills&sort=byDate&type=comment)

</comment><comment><USER7> "I have no delusions that it's going to pass... I wouldn't probably vote for it myself."

Well, at least he's not _totally_ out to lunch.

</comment><comment><USER8> OK, if we explore this idea, I think there is a valid question of what are the effects of prolonged cellphone/laptop/screen on development. There _could_ be negative consequence to individuals (micro-level) and society (macro-level).

</comment><comment><USER9> We only gave our kids cell phones when they were old enough to be out without parents (so they could call home if needed.)

I wouldn't like not being able to do that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone have an alternate link? "Sorry, this content is not available in your region."

<comment><USER11> Maybe you are not 21 yet :)

Seriously, I guess it's one of that web sites blocked for EU readers because of fear of GDPR. Well, I guess I can survive without that article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Sorry, this content is not available in your region."

Second time today in HN while reading from the EU.

<comment><USER13> [https://web.archive.org/web/20200109230545/https://www.mynbc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200109230545/https://www.mynbc5.com/article/vermont- bill-would-ban-cellphone-use-for-anyone-under-21/30456265)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What on earth is their justification? You can drive a car, vote, and go to war at 18 but not use a cell phone? What politician would put their name behind this?

<comment> munk-a Gosh yea, other than this specific proposal all laws in the US make sense - <USER2> sure am glad you can drink when you're 18 and no states have stupid religious laws limiting sales on Sundays to tiny bottles.</comment></comment>


Scala 3 on GitHub: The Fourth Anniversary (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/commit/2308509d2651ee78e1122b5d61b798c984c96c4d <comment><USER2> Really looking forward to Dotty. Will be interesting to see how the preference of type members over type parameters will change they way to write code.</comment>