Symbian Won - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/06/symbian-won/ <comment><USER4> I used work for Symbian. The OS itself was great at the time (it's open sourced somewhere), and got security correct (I don't recall 'privacy' ever being an explicit goal) but it was an absolute bitch to develop for. It had its own dialect of C++ which looks nothing like modern C++, the learning curve was huge. It tried really hard to have an app ecosystem but it was nothing like what google and apple have today. Network operators desperately wanted an alternative ecosystem to avoid being dependent on Android and Apple (but mainly I believe so that they could build their own walled gardens).

But by the time Nokia took over Symbian it became apparent that they saw Linux as the future OS for high-end devices and Symbian was to be relegated to mid- level devices.

<comment><USER5> I loved symbian and the whole "java on phone" never seemed right to me. I would prefer having a linux phone - I dont ask for much - working camera, working calls, mms and sms, gps, bluetooth). I dont care for anything else.

All my hopes are now leaning into Cosmo Communicator( [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cosmo- communicator](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cosmo-communicator) \- please take care, I have jumped into this with "I will loose my money" mentality - <USER2> still dont trust, they will realize the linux part, but hope dies last), it reminds me of beloved Nokia Communicator and if they realize my conditions (camera, calls, mms, sms - gps already works same as bluetooth ) I will give my foot a very long swing and remove my Android phone (even if heavly modified) from my life.

<comment><USER6> As an owner of a Gemini, the hardware is innovative and good enough, but the OS is really an afterthought. You can browse their current wiki and see how organised it is.

No disrespect to the team, it just seems like taking sufficient care of this is a bigger job than they have the resources for.

But I'm glad I backed the kickstarter, and would do the same for something similar in order to diversify a very un-diverse market.

<comment><USER5> I agree, but they have announced initial voice call support for linux (update 78) and this is actually quite close to what I want :)

<comment><USER7> Still cannot get back to linux. Now just an android phone with a keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I moved from the UK to the US in early 2006 I lost my Symbian-running 6680 Nokia, because it couldn't be ported over, it was locked to a UK network and they refused to unlock it. I loved Symbian at the time, losing it took me back to the dark ages.

In the UK I'd had my Nokia 6680 with front and rear cameras, unlimited 3G, multi-tasking apps, a proper web browser, the ability to install apps, and even some crap ability to watch TV. It also had a memory card for storing and playing music. I had it connected to my Powerbook (17" powerbook was my best laptop ever), and had 3G usable browsing speeds anywhere, wirelessly through bluetooth, and the phone's 3G. It synced contacts, emails, etc.

Coming to the US I got the latest and greatest - a Razor. It had an OS that felt like going back to the 70s. No 3G. No camera at all. No apps or ability to use them. Contacts on the SIM with no decent data. All it could do well was text or call.

Even the first iPhones were well behind the Symbian/6680 combo I'd had for a while in the UK (no 3G, no apps, no multi-tasking, no front camera), and it wasn't until the iPhone 4 in 2010 that I got the front camera back, which meant I had feature parity with what I'd had in the UK in 2005.

<comment><USER9> I was big into Symbian before iOS and Android came around, and I was incredibly excited to buy the N95, the (then) flagship phone. I purchased the US variant of the phone very shortly after its launch date from the Nokia store in NYC.

This was one of the few Symbian phones to make it to American shores with our 3G bands, and at the time it was notable for having the best camera available.

I loved the device, but the same year the original iPhone came out. On the spec sheet it was worse in every way - no third party apps, no 3g, etc etc. But the market spoke quickly, and the N95 became the last Nokia device I would own.

I always thought it was a shame that the high end Nokia devices failed to really target the US market. Usually they were lacking key frequencies, and/or only available unlocked (without any carrier subsidies). Had Nokia been better situated here, perhaps they could have presented some real competition to the iPhone, but there was no way people were going to go specifically seek out an expensive, high end Symbian phone when AT&T had subsidized iPhones and a massive advertising blitz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > With the latest releases of Android and iOS, we're back to where we started. > Both now prompt you the first time an app asks for access. Both give you > regular reminders of which apps may be snaffling your data. Both let you > manage access and selectively deny apps.

Every OS should do this, desktop OSes included. For the last 2 decades I've been using personal firewalls on Windows to do just this, now I use LittleSnitch on Mac (I just hope it's going to keep working on ARM macs), AFWall+ and XPrivacy on Android and miss this level of control terribly on Linux (it sort of can be achieved with AppArmor or SELinux but both are nightmares to use).

If only iptables would allow to filter by the executable path and other process parameters - that would be just so awesome. There was such a feature in some 2.x kernel but, sadly, it was deprecated long ago.

<comment><USER11> I respectfully disagree. Because it's an EPIC pain, and it's absolutely hostile towards "average" users.

Back in the Android 5 (or so) days, I knew what permissions an app I was going to install on my mother's phone was going to ask to be granted _once_, and be done with it. Nowadays, an app might ask for some kind of new permission "on first use", and users on mobile are developing the same habit as users of desktop browsers during the dark ages of expired HTTPS certificates and broken Java Applet signatures had developed out of necessity: "default-ack/OK all the things".

The problem is that these days, even very technical people think that you could realistically expect to lie with dogs, and get up without fleas - i.e., install applications and software you cannot trust, and get away without having something bad (like loss of privacy, or maybe exfiltration of data) happen. All thanks to "modern" security constructs like sandboxing.

But that is not going to happen - sandboxes have been shattered and broken in the past, as they will continue to get circumvented in the future. There simply is no replacement for _trust_ (in an application, its developers, its distributor, and its operator (if any)), and there are no technical solutions that could somehow replace it in full.

Yes, you can make it incrementally less bad to have a hostile agent/app on your machine or phone, but the trouble you're trying to prevent that way will _never_ go away completely.

I guess some people just liked to feel "in control" when clicking away their "Norton Professional Antivirus 95 blocked 17 Viruses from damaging your machine today!" messages back in the day, and some apparently cherish clicking "grant 'Sexy FileManager Free Pro' access to your Photos and Videos" today. Personally, I'm actually rather sick of it, and all the security theatre that "modern" application delivery mechanisms like app stores/mobile platforms or stuff like snaps/appimage/younameit would have you participate in. I'd rather trust my distro's package maintainers to not let developers abuse their users, and have a look at the source if I'm in doubt about the upstream's intentions. I know I can't audit everything, but I feel like I'm much better off with that kind of trade-off, than with the non-solution to the problem I tried to describe above.

Edit: Removed a leftover part of a restructured sentence.

<comment><USER12> The problem isn't the sandbox, it's inherently the issue with lack of fine grained permissions and being unable to revoke permissions after installation.

Wanna see a real permission model, look at the BB10 Android Player model. After installation, you could revoke permissions and the player would basically act as if the data from that permission was just empty. App asks for contacts, here's an empty contacts list.

Edit: I just did a small hackathon and ended up having to request full BLUETOOTH Access and LOCATION access to connect to a label printer... how is this long term sustainable.

<comment><USER13> The reason for location permissions is because BT can track your location through Bluetooth beacons. See [https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/blue...](https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/bluetooth)

This is just Android being transparent. "Bluetooth usage may allow apps to track your location." Which is perfectly true.

There has to be a balance between explaining to the user, e.g. that there are multiple ways their location can be tracked, and permission request overload.

I don't imagine explaining to everyday users the details of the Bluetooth protocol is viable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Both give you regular reminders of which apps may be snaffling your data. > Both let you manage access and selectively deny apps._

But that's cool with users. It's not annoying, it's more or less a one time thing, maybe a hint more if the app is a bit more unusual.

The Symbian notifications? That's a "I hate you, user". Especially the secure connection. Why would it ever ask that?

On the other hand, some of those warnings made sense at the time. Mobile internet was so expensive that I never enabled it. Right up there with MMS one of the things that priced itself out of the reach of regular customers. It was like 3€ to send one single MMS, Internet was also in that domain - <USER3> Megabyte (I should note here that the country I lived in is technologically a third world country). That changed only later. So a more modern iPhone and Android could design those things differently.

<comment><USER15> >>> Especially the secure connection. Why would it ever ask that?

For whatever reason, old Internet Explorers (9? 10? not sure..) do that too...

<comment><USER16> The really old ones didn't even have a "remember this choice" checkbox.

<comment><USER17> The only thing more annoying is when it ignores the remember this site checkbox.

The current ones will ignore the remember this site probably due to a stupid group policy.

Possibly forgets on logoff

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't miss symbian. Maemo on the other hand... was a loss. Nokia N900 was absolutely the best smartphone i ever used. Would use it still, but usb port issues forced me to upgrade.

<comment><USER19> I have two Nokia N9's (running Meego) at home still. I used N9 as my daily driver until about 3 years ago. The failure of that magnificent OS, combined with the failure of the successor (Jolla / Sailfish) still annoys me.

<comment><USER20> Sailfish is still around and is still getting upgrades every quarter with new features and improvements. Android support is actually pretty good and I use it for my daily driver.

It's not a success but it hasn't been a failure IMO.

<comment><USER21> I used an Xperia X with Sailfish until end of 2019 but then I finally dropped it - it mostly worked but got too much annoyed by small bugs that never got fixed 100% (but in the meanwhile the UI got a lot of changes => that would definitely not be my way of prioritizing work). It's a pity but personally I think Sailfish will die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Eh, not really. _Symbian was right for the wrong reasons_. They were right to warn users about apps using internet access, but they were wrong about the reason - it was about data caps, not privacy or security.

Data caps mattered in that era, so from a narrow point of view it was the smart thing to offer those features. But to launch a category defining smartphone, that limitation needed to be broken entirely, and that involves work outside of software; namely, timing the launch such that you can negotiate with AT&T to ease the data restriction.

It's like saying RealPlayer 'won' against YouTube. No, they didn't. They just mistimed an idea, and a few implementation details were the same.

I've written more about this type of dynamic here: [https://nickpunt.com/blog/category-defining- products/](https://nickpunt.com/blog/category-defining-products/)

</comment><comment><USER23> That's like saying because everyone else has 'pervasive multithreading', BeOS won even when it was a commercial failure.

Everyone else did it better. It's not about who invented it first, its about innovating over other inventions.

Symbian still failed commercially in the market and couldn't compete or innovate with the other competitors.

<comment><USER24> They innovated away privacy and security by relying on the human poor ability of impulse control and hardship with delayed gratification. Basically they made everything shiny and addictive. Is that really innovative? Perhaps 'bad' ui is better when you consider higher order consequences as opposed to concentrating only on first order popularity contest?

I'm not saying Nokia and symbian were better BTW. Just noting how our contemporary value system where, "it makes money"="it's good" is short sighted at times.

<comment><USER25> This is a ridiculously shallow dismisal.

Android and iOS "won" because the phones were vastly more capable.

<comment><USER4> Except they weren't. At the time, the US had really crap phones compared to Europe (which itself was behind Japan). The Nokia N95 could do _everything_. The original iPhone was pretty much laughed at by Nokia insiders because it lacked so many features. It turns out most users didn't care about most of these (MMS, DTV, Bluetooth)

<comment><USER26> Except that they didn't have a proper browser.

People tend to forget that you had a desktop quality browser in the first iPhone.

<comment><USER4> Opera was available for it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This analysis elides the fact that all OSes in the Symbian era _had_ to compulsively ask about accessing the Internet because data usage was at such a premium.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not completely correct. My NEC smartphones didn't. Nor did the early BlackBerrys that I used.

<comment><USER28> I guess that's why NEC and Blackberry never took off in Europe, as the data usage would financially ruin you.

With prices of about 5 euro per megabyte you lived in constant fear of accidentally using data.

<comment><USER29> Blackberry was quite popular in the UK amongst the corporate users, however BBM universally came with it's own data plans and they had their software running inside the cell providers as well as within the organization itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I still have my nokia c2-01. It works fine, it stills takes picture, and it's 9 years old. The battery last for about 1 week or less. I do calls with a 2 euro/month plan.

I really wish I could have a smartphone with similar hardware that I could upload some executable on it written in C.

I still cannot believe there are no minimalist RPi-like smartphone that lets you easily do this. Smartphones today are overpriced supercomputers with asthmatic batteries with hardware that is possibly full of backdoors.

I know there's the pinephone, but I would rather have more limited, slower/cheaper hardware instead.

<comment><USER31> I really liked _Viktors amazing 4 bit processor_

[http://www.vttoth.com/CMS/index.php/projects/13-4-bit- proces...](http://www.vttoth.com/CMS/index.php/projects/13-4-bit- processor/134-viktors-amazing-4-bit-processor-architecture)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I actually never understood why iOS and Android don't offer the same system browsers offer for the Web. When you pick a file, the OS prompt a screen to navigate through your pictures to pick the item you want and give it to the webpage. Because this workflow is what most of the apps needs. I don't want apps to have access to all my storage system, but just the picture I want to share. The same system could be applied to contacts as well

<comment><USER33> they do, the default file picker for iOS has a 'pick file' native command that then pops a system picker and then returns just the selected file but many companies would rather have full access to enable their own experience. In messaging apps, it is seeing the photos in a small view. Instagram has a full screen browser to enable their own chosen UX.

Edit: I just saw a really neat alternative view in iOS 14 whereas the 'allow access to photos' modal gives the option to pick and choose what photos are 'shown' by the OS.

<comment><USER32> Wow! It's so rare that I might have never seen it, or completely forgot about it. However, now that you mention it, I think I remember it from my early days on iOS.

Actually the problem is most of apps don't give you the choice between [slick UX + loose control over your data] or [ok UX + perfect control of your data].

If I download Instagram and refuse to access my local storage, I guess I won't be able to share a picture from my phone, right?

<comment><USER34> > _If I download Instagram and refuse to access my local storage, I guess I > won 't be able to share a picture from my phone, right?_

Not from within the app, but if you go into the Photos app and share a photo from there, you can choose to share to Instagram, and Instagram will get only that one photo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> A very small part of the Symbian OS consisted of a useful feature that is now similarly implemented in iOS and Android.

That hardly deserves the extremely click-baity headline of "Symbian Won"

"Symbian Won on User Permissions" would be reasonable, and probably get less attention.

</comment><comment><USER36> Symbian (and Java ME was awful as well) was not developer friendly at all till towards the very end. By then it was too late. You never had a choice to get rid of the annoying untrusted app pop up, and getting code-signing was a nightmare.

Apple was in contrast incredibly developer friendly when they started their store and then Android one-upped them (only 25 usd to join!).

<comment><USER37> I worked in the mobile phone industry 00s. Besides terrible Series 60 UI, Symbian also had non-POSIX (micro?) kernel. For example, file system was a service and handles like a log file handle were not transferable across threads. It made porting apps a pain. Developer tools existed, but were shit and usual failure mode was app crashing without a reason.

Symbian had shitty developer experience because internally they did not have a "Dev experience and third party app development" stakeholder. They had kernel, seats for various hardware vendors, mobile and wifi standards, but not for third party devs. Nokia itself was blind for its mistakes as in-house they could get whatever source code or access they wanted.

Note that there were non-Symbian mobile phones as well e.g. Ericsson. So Symbian was kind of Android, but no default UI and closed source.

<comment><USER34> > _Note that there were non-Symbian mobile phones as well e.g. Ericsson_

There were also multiple variants of Symbian - S60 was the Nokia UI, but Ericsson and Motorola had Symbian UIQ, in Japan they had MOAP-Symbian

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Another thing that Symbian did really really well was networking.

You could choose per app which connection they should be using, or even a group with order of preference. So you could get your work apps to only work over WiFi, some apps always go over VPN, some always use 4G even if WiFi was active. It was brilliant because all these connections could be active at the same time.

Apple and Google are only just catching up to this now with tricks like Per- App VPN but it still doesn't offer the same level of flexibility.

</comment><comment><USER39> it was my impression that a lot of those Symbian warnings weren't so much trust/privacy related, but were driven simply by "european" service plans that charged a lot of money for SMS (sending) and network data, and users were hypersensitive to receiving huge phone bills.

source: I used my Nokia phones internationally by swapping SIMs and there was a huge difference between US and European plans.

</comment><comment><USER40>
        >Symbian: Opening a secure connection. Continue?
        >IE6: You are about to view pages over a secure connection

Why did early 2000' software had such obsession with asking user about secure connection?

<comment><USER41> More importantly, why did they ask you about secure connections, but automatically assume that insecure connections were okay?

<comment><USER42> IIRC https/tls consumes a lot of overhead back then, both on server side and client side. These days https is so fast no one think about its overhead over plain text connection anymore. Not sure if that's the reason for the prompt though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Got depression doing Symbian development. (I am not kidding.)

<comment><USER44> not enough information

was it related to symbian design choices?

<comment><USER45> I don't know what the OP refers to, but using strings was 'different' from doing it in other systems. [http://descriptors.blogspot.com/](http://descriptors.blogspot.com/):

 _"Most programmers come to Symbian OS from some other development environment, and tend to think they've already got strings pretty much sussed. After all, there's not much to C strings to understand, although there are plenty of ways they can go wrong. The Java String and StringBuf classes have about the best combination of power and simplicity that you can get. And the various String and CString classes found in different flavours of C++ environments are usually mastered fairly quickly.

But then they encounter Symbian OS descriptors. If there was anything invented to bring a high flying C++ developer firmly back to ground during their first week of Symbian OS development, it's descriptors."_

<comment><USER43> It was a combination of bad APIs, bad and Windows-only IDE, problems in OpenC, and pressure from client.

For the lack of a better word, development in Symbian was "tacky", was like walking on mud, everything took 10x the effort it should.

It was a time when Nokia was the only game in town (think N93, N95) and they thought they could get away with mistreating developers forever.

Funny how they sabotaged their own efforts to make development easier e.g. Python for Series 60, let alone Maemo.

<comment><USER46> iPhone is Mac-only for development. Some things never change..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> No they didn't. They made a huge mistake: not forcing their own AppStore globally.

The way to get app was by content aggregators and premium sms sites. Developers were lucky if they got 10% of the purchase price.

So please people, stop complaining about 30% for discovery, security checks, big number of payment methods, tax-consolidation, and global availability.

</comment><comment><USER47> It is unfair to compare. An application with an offline map is different, by design, that one where you can download the map or require a connection. Compare TomTom and Garmin with Google Maps and Apple Maps. Which one's used much more nowadays?

What has won is capability-based design, and the fact that the review system in iOS is better (but not perfect) compared to Google. The install base is also much larger though, and the amount of personal data on a smartphone has also increased greatly.

The question we need to ask ourselves is the following: do we really need all this data available on our smartphone? Or, put different: do you need to be able to access this data while on the go, 24/7? Do you need to take your smartphone with you 24/7?

<comment><USER48> It isn't about need, it's about _want_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> We don't want _erase all data_ permission. We need only very specific permissions. We should have custom permissions that we can get certified/approved.

Like with browser extensions I don't want access to all pages and tabs. I want [say] access to the `href` attribute `value` of the `link` elements that have attribute `rel` that is `alternate` AND `type` that is either `application/rss+xml` OR `application/atom+xml`

To be described to the user as: _" Permission to discover RSS and Atom feeds."_

I pay 25 euro, I wait, the platform ppl sign of on it, I update the tool with the new permission.

</comment><comment><USER49> So in 2003, before the iPhone came out, I was a mac developer doing Cocoa/Objective-C development.

I then tried to learn Symbian and I found the IDE hard to setup, the API was hard to learn, and I believe it only ran on windows.

At the time I thought to myself "the NeXT/Cocoa API and utilities are so awesome, so easy, so mature that if Apple ever makes it possible to write mobile apps with them, they are totally going to absolutely destroy everyone else in the mobile development marketplace. Especially Symbian."

</comment><comment><USER50> This kind of reads like the exact counter-point to the title: Symbian was doing the right thing, but in such a horrible fashion that ios and android were able to capitalise on "we offer less friction" at the expensive of what history has shown we had to pay for that convience. And history equally shoes we collectively quite happily did?

</comment><comment><USER51> > Because, as it turns out, a Libertarian free-for-all doesn't work. It > requires rational people to have an educated understanding of the risks they > face. Millions of people installed dodgy apps, saw the one-time prompt, and > lost control of their data.

Doesn't the premise of the article disprove this statement? There's been no regulatory movement forcing the "Symbian" granular permission approach.

I'd argue the pseudo-regulated app stores were a bigger source of the problem, not the "libertarian free-for-all". That is, having an app store with Apple or Google's name on it is what encouraged users to let their guard down and trust all the apps on it. If you had to download the "battery charger" app from Bob's Phone Tools' site instead of the Google Play store, you'd maybe be a little more skeptical of that permissions list.

<comment><USER52> And also, people usually take a people-concept and apply it to tech. "It can't work in tech, so it won't work for the market". On the contrary. Libertarianism does not forbid a company to implement whatever jailed garden it wants, so long as it does not force or lie to its customers. And the problem with the lying corporations does not come from the free market, it comes from government lobbying and protections. Regulations are only a way for the monopolists to curb competition, nothing more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I think the connection this article is trying to make is sort of a stretch.

The way modern iOS and Android handles asking for permissions doesn't seem all that similar to me.

Symbian was asking about network connectivity because, at the time, mobile phone networks charged for data in ridiculously small increments at high prices.

One of Apple's biggest innovations was to convince Cingular to sell an unlimited data plan at a price acceptable to the general consumer and not just for businesses.

If I recall correctly, there was a good period of time where BlackBerry service plans cost more than the iPhone by 10 or 20 dollars per month, and yet a BlackBerry really didn't have a fast/usable enough web browser to even consume as much data.

The iPhone was so popular that it was bringing Cingular's network to its knees, especially during sports events and things like that.

</comment><comment><USER54> > With the latest releases of Android and iOS ... Both give you regular > reminders of which apps may be snaffling your data.

But what about _Google_ or _Apple_ accessing my data? I can't prevent that, and they're some of the dodgiest corporation with the dodgiest apps in terms of privacy - after all, we know they send your data to the NSA.

</comment><comment><USER55> A truly sane platform would use capability-based security with a Powerbox UI, as Sandstorm does: [https://sandstorm.io/news/2015-06-10-network-access- permissi...](https://sandstorm.io/news/2015-06-10-network-access-permission- android-vs-sandstorm)

</comment><comment><USER56> Symbian was great! I got a used Nokia 6110 Navigator around 2008 (I was 12/13) and it was mindblowing to me. It had GPS, and I could download apps from the internet that would do stuff with the GPS and send data in real time to my computer.

</comment><comment><USER57> _I witnessed NEC and Sagem and a host of companies launch smartphones and then disappear._

I don't know about Sagem, but NEC is alive and kicking. Its glory days of the 80s are very much over, but they managed to stay on the market.

</comment><comment><USER58> Except your apps are all built using SDKs that sell your data to the highest bidder and even if that can be mitigated, your cell company is doing the same thing on the network level.

They just brought back the illusion of control.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think a better title would have been "Symbian did it right first!"

and this then illustrates that doing things wrong were about priorities, and a better focus for user-focus was the winning play by others.

</comment><comment><USER60> Or from another, more accurate, perspective, Symbian didn't win.

</comment><comment><USER61> I owned every generation of the Nokia 9xxx Communicator series and especially the 9500 with Symbian 7 was a joy to use.

Nothing beat laying by the pool and doing a little office work on the brick.

</comment><comment><USER62> I don't really understand why setting up permissions for apps are seemingly so hard get right for Android and apple. It's not complicated at all yet they fuck it up endlessly.

It seems screamingly obvious that I might want to give apps access to some of my files but not _all_ of my files. Some of my contacts but not all of my contacts. No such options exist. Many other permissions are also needlessly coarse grained for no particularly good reason.

I probably want to see apps flagged which ask for permissions which are ridiculous given what they do and justifications from developers. Not possible.

These things aren't intrinsically hard at all.

<comment><USER52> It's not hard per se. It's hard to do correctly only when you side with the advertisers' interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Last Symbian phone I used was a SonyEricsson P910 (Symbian UIQ3?). I loved the on device programming - writing a script answering SMS based on content was the best.

</comment><comment><USER64> The other problem here is the lack of regulation.

It's reasonable for a non-technical person to assume that any app whose provenance is known (thanks to the App Store's policies and requiring a valid DUNS number or similar) would be investigated & punished if they end up doing something malicious, so as long as traceability can be ensured (which it is) then it must be safe.

I myself used to think that as long as I use apps from a major brand (so like Facebook, Google, etc) I should be safe because there's no way they're going to pull spyware-like tricks and steal personal data... right?

</comment><comment><USER65> I hope this is the stupidest thing that I read today.

</comment><comment><USER66> You can't really manage your data if you don't include your service providers

</comment><comment><USER67> People didn't like Symbian and PalmOS when shinier alternatives came out but, these two OSes did a lot fundamental things correctly and efficiently.

The iOS lockscreen is a modernized version of the Today app from PalmOS. Current iOS homescreen is a slightly modified version of PalmOS homescreen to be precise.

PalmOS and Symbian are the pioneers of mobile OSes and they were pretty good at that.

</comment><comment><USER68> I don't remember this "decent ecosystem for developers". Did I miss something?

</comment><comment><USER69> Nokia had a chance with Meego. But internal politics killed it, and Symbain followed.

</comment><comment><USER70> I worked for Nokia between 2005-2012. During that time, roughly, it managed itself into its own eventual demise. Symbian, it's technical limitations, and general many spots across senior management for the types of qualities actually valued by users kind of set the stage for both Apple and Google to come in and disrupt the market with an initially remarkably mediocre effort: it didn't take much to disrupt the train wreck that was Symbian.

The first IOS versions had quite a few limitations and a long list of stuff that it basically did not have at all. Yet it was better in only two ways:

\- it had a well thought out UX; users loved that \- it did not crash all the time and wasn't riddled with bugs; unlike just about anything that Nokia shipped.

There was a long list of stuff Symbian could technically do but sucked so hard at that few users actually bothered with using those things. Like using the web, taking photos and sharing them with friends, or doing some video conferencing. Technically you could do all those things but it was a combination of painfully awkward to do, unusable and extremely likely in your phone resetting randomly. All that was probably fixable technically but none of that was something Nokia was able to actually pull off due to it's management structure, priorities, and a general complete vacuum at the top in terms of leadership and vision.

Looking back, Nokia's bad decision making started around the time Linux became an obvious future choice for phones (late nineties) and just a few years ago before a tiny startup called Android actually started dreaming of making a linux & Java based phone. Instead Nokia ignored the signs of the time (and the many embedded hardware manufacturers experimenting with linux) and went for a little known 32 bit successor to 16 bit OS from the nineteen eighties and threw its weight behind it.

Google bought Android around the same time Apple kicked it's IOS efforts into gear, which was around the time I joined Nokia and also around the time Nokia Symbian phones actually started shipping in more meaningful volume (it was late and not great initially).

Symbian was not what made Nokia rich. That was actually two other platforms called S30 and S40. The S here is often confused for Symbian but actually means Series. Series 30 dates back to the early nineties and still ships in some volume in developing markets for a few dollars. That infamous indestructible Nokia phone that always comes up in Nokia nostalgia? S30. Snake, Calls, and SMS. All it did. (OK and a little WAP if you got any value out of that walled garden).

S40 started shipping around 1999 (the flip phone in the Matrix was the first model). Initially with black and white screens. Later with color screens, multi media capabilities, etc. This was the backbone of Nokia's revenue right until MS came in. Not Symbian either and actually kind of a cool OS design for its time.

Only Series 60, 80, and 90 were actually Symbian based. Nokia did not actually start shipping Symbian in volume until about 2004/2005, right when it's competition was basically going from prototype to eventual reality at Apple & Google.

The e-series phones (the ones with qwerty keyboards) were popular but comparatively a niche market. Initially that was S80 (the business variant) and later the two remaining Nokia Symbian platforms merged and S60 became the only version (initially this was positioned for multi media and gaming devices). Technically all of these were UI layers on top of Symbian. Ericsson had its own version called UIQ.

There were a quite a few flagship S60 phones that were basically variations of candy bars until after the iphone shipped. Nokia actually killed off S90 in 2005 which was intended as a touchscreen variant. Yep, that's the same year Google bought Android and Apple was moving ahead with IOS. And, yes, Nokia was well aware of those two facts (very much a public secret at the time).

For the next 3 years the only touch screen devices Nokia sold were Linux based. Only in 2007 Nokia woke up and went "oh F __* " and gobbled together a company killing version of a touch screen phone on top of S60. I can't emphasize how rushed and how bad this was. Especially considering it had a perfectly good shipping Linux tablet running basically the same kernel as what later became Android.

It spent the next five years convincing consumers how much S60 didn't suck while failing repeatedly and hard. Especially a few years after Apple ate their lunch it became increasingly painful to watch. Lots of desperate moves happened during that time.

Fun fact, Nokia shipped an internet tablet running Debian Linux with X, GTK and a Mozilla Gecko based browser around 2006, almost half a decade before the ipad shipped. This thing was awesome and the reasons for it shipping without phone capabilities were entirely political and non technical (think management having a hard-on for Symbian). This little tablet eventually became a phone and then the whole MS thing happened. Meanwhile Google bought a lot of these because it basically ran the same kernel and drivers as early versions of Android and you could dual boot them to whatever; which was a nice feature to have before they shipped the first Nexus phone.

Nokia basically helped bootstrap Android but was too occupied moving deck chairs around on the sinking ship that was Symbian.

So, no, Symbian did not win.

</comment><comment><USER71> Sybian is a great product. It works well, but is a little expensive.

</comment><comment><USER72> I believe this is the same reason why [https://hey.com](https://hey.com) will win too.

Product engineering where the app/service is one big A/B test is how you truly figure out what your users want and need.

</comment><comment><USER73> J2ME also asked about permissions for everything. Miss that!

</comment><comment><USER74> It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

</comment><comment><USER75> Being too early is the same as being wrong.

</comment><comment><USER76> > "Because, as it turns out, a Libertarian free-for-all doesn't work."

But isn't that how the Internet works? No one "approves" a website for release.

<comment><USER77> Right, but browsers are "regulated". The attack surface that a website has against a user is much smaller than what an app has. Or at least was, I think websites and apps are converging now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I love the word snaffle now.

</comment><comment><USER79> Mostly decent article, but one point - Android is hardly a libertarian free for all. Google controls the way apps must ask for permission.

If anything it shows that with just a single choice and no competition, android apps just all have to do the same shity thing. Opposite of libertarian.

</comment><comment><USER80> I like the screenshot in this post about the permissions Android apps ask for. At least this matches my experience. Android apps by and large just ask for everything so it's a choice between giving them everything or not being able to use them.

Apple OTOH does two major things different:

1\. Apple's approach is to ask for individual permissions it needs when it first needs them. I can't overstate how much better this is than the Android all-or-nothing permission dialog.

2\. Apple's permissions make more sense to users. Things like:

\- Your location

\- Run in background

\- Your contacts

\- Your photos

\- The camera

Android's permissions always struck me as what engineers would do if they designed a permission system.

> Because, as it turns out, a Libertarian free-for-all doesn't work.

TRUE. Big true.

Honestly though I don't really see the author's point. I don't see iOS 14 and whatever the next Android version is to be back to what Symbian did.

<comment><USER81> Android has prescribed apps to request individual permissions at runtime since Android 6.0 (released in 2015):

[https://developer.android.com/training/permissions/requestin...](https://developer.android.com/training/permissions/requesting)

iOS switched to the runtime permission request in iOS 6 (released in 2012), so they switched earlier than Android, but both platforms have had runtime permissions requests for years.</comment></comment>


Mayer $23M golden parachute as Yahoo names post-Verizon deal executive team - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/13/yahoo-names-post-verizon-deal-team.html <comment><USER2> People who are criticizing Mayer's deal are failing to realize that Mayer had better options than taking over as head of yahoo. She was a bright star who could have gone to any number of companies.

Nobody in the tech community would have categorized Yahoo as "ready for a turn around". Companies that large that have been mismanaged for so long are filled with middle managers that are better at internal politics than driving initiatives. The odds of yahoo turning around were extremely low. They had to put a deal together to entice someone who had a good reputation from a leading tech company to put their name on the line to go try and sort out a giant mess.

If your gripe is the difference between her salary and the lowest paid then I understand. That doesn't mean you bash Mayer for playing by the rules that society has set up. Good for her for getting paid. That makes you no different than the middle manager who isn't helping their team push forward but instead is sitting in meetings taking pot shots at everyone else.

Support a law that says the top executive can't make x times the total comp of the lowest paid. Of course every law like that will create incentives to structure companies to maximize payments to execs. those conversations would add more to our discussion than just throwing rocks.

<comment><USER3> > People who are criticizing Mayer's deal are failing to realize that Mayer > had better options than taking over as head of yahoo.

Could you provide sources for this? What opportunities were available to Mayer better than being an executive of a multi-billion dollar giant like Yahoo?

Edit: I'm seeing a lot of speculative replies but none that demonstrate an 8 to 9 figure payday from 5 years of sitting in place. Does anyone have an example of an alternative that would've yielded her this much wealth?

<comment><USER4> > Could you provide sources for this?

Do you think that Yahoo's board decided to grant Mayer the golden parachute out of kindness, or out of sympathy to a fellow member of the nobility?

Mayer and Yahoo's board negotiated the terms of her contract. The parachute is meant to lure an executive who would normally not want to risk taking the helm of such a high risk company.

<comment><USER5>
      Do you think that Yahoo's board decided to grant Mayer
      the golden parachute [...] out of sympathy to a fellow
      member of the nobility?

A number of explanations have been posited for the fact executive pay has soared in recent decades while other workers' pay has remained stagnant.

Bebchuk and Fried's "Pay without Performance" attribute this to the fact that boards routinely approve pay packages that serve the CEO rather than shareholders, instead of bargaining with the aim of maximising shareholder wealth.

They identify several factors underlying this - shareholder inactivity bears a big part of the blame - but one factor is essentially yes: It's in the interests of people who are at the top of business to approve high pay for people who are at the top of business.

<comment><USER4> > A number of explanations have been posited for the fact executive pay has > soared in recent decades while other workers' pay has remained stagnant.

I think a simpler explanation is supply and demand.

If you want to hire as CEO someone who has worked in a close competitor's most profitable business unit and is credited for much of its success and culture, the pickings for Yahoo were quite slim. Also, Yahoo had brought in several other highly successful CEOs, including its original founder, who had all failed miserably. Mayer was clearly a last-ditch attempt to salvage the company.

> pay packages that serve the CEO rather than shareholders

You are describing incentives that do not simply reward share price growth? If so, and if you think supply and demand for qualified executives has nothing to do with it, what kind of pay package do you think Yahoo should have offered?

I'd argue that there has to be a time bias in the package. Share price growth is fine if the board is OK with Mayer taking 30 years to grow the company into a bigger valuation just before deciding to retire. But if more action in the near term is desired, and behavior other than the typical private equity style fat trimming is desired, what options are left?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So nearly a $100M pay cut from the original exit package valued at "up to" $110M[1]. I still think she is the perfect pick for COO of Uber.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/07/technology/marissa-mayer- sev...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/07/technology/marissa-mayer-severance- package/)

<comment><USER7> Or CEO. They need a change at the top IMO.

<comment><USER6> I was thinking more about the "optics." What says you are serious about sexual harassment in the workplace then putting a woman in the role of being able to evaluate and fire the harassers. I also think Marissa needs a bit of rehabilitation in her career, the Yahoo! period did not, in my opinion, improve her 'brand'. So the COO job where the 'company killing decisions' are someone else's and the execution against goals is all on her, would give her a chance to show that she can move the company to achieve its goals, and thus burnish her reputation for more than just product focus. In my experience watching the comings and goings of executives in tech it's rare when there are two executives that need each other this much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm assuming this amount was agreed upon before she accepted the job at the helm of a company that was expected to go the way it did, e.g. split from its most valued asset, Alibaba? I don't see that as being a "reward" for failure. Although I do wonder what was the point of having a high-profile CEO when most shareholders were waiting to cash out on the Alibaba sale?

In 2013, Bloomberg estimated that Yahoo's non-Alibaba worth was "as little as $4 billion" [0], so getting sold for $4.4 billion 3 years later isn't success, but it isn't abject failure either.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-10-16/how- much-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-10-16/how-much-is- yahoo-worth-without-alibaba-not-much)

<comment><USER9> That's an annual return of 3.2% during a period of time when the S&P500 did 18.9%. That's a pretty shit return if you ask me.

<comment><USER8> The 10-year chart of Yahoo's stock shows that the company had sunk to a plateau of ~$15/share from 2008 to 2012, after peaking at $31 in 2007. I'm assuming the stock's steep rise post-2012 was related to the anticipate sale of the Alibaba stake: [https://finance.yahoo.com/chart/YHOO#eyJtdWx0aUNvbG9yTGluZSI...](https://finance.yahoo.com/chart/YHOO#eyJtdWx0aUNvbG9yTGluZSI6ZmFsc2UsImJvbGxpbmdlclVwcGVyQ29sb3IiOiIjZTIwMDgxIiwiYm9sbGluZ2VyTG93ZXJDb2xvciI6IiM5NTUyZmYiLCJtZmlMaW5lQ29sb3IiOiIjNDVlM2ZmIiwibWFjZERpdmVyZ2VuY2VDb2xvciI6IiNmZjdiMTIiLCJtYWNkTWFjZENvbG9yIjoiIzc4N2Q4MiIsIm1hY2RTaWduYWxDb2xvciI6IiMwMDAwMDAiLCJyc2lMaW5lQ29sb3IiOiIjZmZiNzAwIiwic3RvY2hLTGluZUNvbG9yIjoiI2ZmYjcwMCIsInN0b2NoRExpbmVDb2xvciI6IiM0NWUzZmYiLCJyYW5nZSI6IjEweSJ9)

Maybe the rest of the market was growing, but it didn't seem like Yahoo sans Alibaba was heading in that direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> that is a sweet way to fail. don't blame her, though. there is only one real solution to this problem, unfortunately: much higher taxes once you start raking in absurd dollars. odds of that happening in US in near future: low.

<comment><USER11> "You get what you incentivize."

If you want efficient production, you don't tax production. You tax consumption. While I may personally think million dollar paychecks are silly, and that the value created doesn't align with the compensation, I'm not convinced that increasing taxes along with income (i.e. loosely correlated with production) is the way to go. Instead, tax consumption.

In other words, if you're going to get taxed all to hell to buy a pointless yacht and $250 million homes, you might not want to do that, quite as much, so you might not care as much about making an extra $20 million, so you might not negotiate such an obscene paycheck. (Maybe you'd even care more about the value you bring to the table and the humans in the picture.)

<comment><USER12> History tells a different story. When the income tax was first implemented it was not long ere any income over one million dollars was 100% taxed. During Eisenhower's two-terms in the 1950s the top tax bracket was 75%. It is interesting to consider that when the modern conservative wants to return to the American prosperity of the 1950s if, like you, conservatives would be willing to return to Eiesenhower's tax brackets and tax production.

A better historical argument can be made that America should have never switched from a dividends approach to the stock market during the late 1970s. Our current system rewards quarterly gains for long term losses and this has lead to the various bubbles. I can easily argue we should return to Eisehower tax brackets and also a dividends approach to stock market gains and in doing so history is on my side.

<comment><USER13> There is a huge difference between top marginal rates and actual effective tax rates. Since 1950, federal taxes have consumed 17 to 20 percent of GDP in taxes. Most economists are opposed to very high marginal tax rates though due to the inefficiencies they introduce - compensation being moved to non-salary, money wasted on CPAs, lawyers and lobbying congress for special deductions, dead weight losses for economic activity that isn't done, etc.

Currently the effective rates are fairly close to the past for high wage earners, lower for low wage earners.

>...In 1958, approximately two million filers (4.4% of all taxpayers) earned the $12,000 or more for married couples needed to face marginal rates as high as 30%. These Americans paid about 35% of all income taxes. And now? In 2010, 3.9 million taxpayers (2.75% of all taxpayers) were subjected to rates that were 33% or higher. These Americans—many of whom would hardly call themselves wealthy—reported an adjusted gross income of $209,000 or higher, and they paid 49.7% of all income taxes.

>In contrast, the share of taxes paid by the bottom two-thirds of taxpayers has fallen dramatically over the same period. In 1958, these Americans accounted for 41.3% of adjusted gross income and paid 29% of all federal taxes. By 2010, their share of adjusted gross income had fallen to 22.5%. But their share of taxes paid fell far more dramatically—to 6.7%. The 77% decline represents the single biggest difference in the way the tax burden is shared in this country since the late 1950s.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873247051045781516...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873247051045781516..).

<comment><USER14> "There is a huge difference between top marginal rates and actual effective tax rates. Since 1950, federal taxes have consumed 17 to 20 percent of GDP in taxes. Most economists are opposed to very high marginal tax rates though due to the inefficiencies they introduce"

Most economists who say that are responding to incentives.

It's a rare economist who would admit in the same breath that this 'inefficiency' coincided (not coincidentally either) with the highest growth rate in recent American history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If only I could make that much by reading children's stories[0] to thousands of professionals at a time in obtuse fashion.

[0] [http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-childrens- book-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-childrens-book-bobbie- had-a-nickel-2015-1)

</comment><comment><USER16> Question to folks here. Is it still worth joining Yahoo as an engineer (if yo u are not able to manage Goog/Facebook/Apple/Amazon? What are the risks due to Verizon takeover?

</comment><comment><USER17> Because the Yahoo-Verizon merger is kind of confusing: this is _not_ about the parts (Yahoo.com, Tumblr, Flickr etc.) which are about to merge into Verizon. This is actually about the spinoff containing the assets which will stay separate.

Who eventually is going to run the parts at Verizon (which will not be Mayer) is as of yet unknown I believe.

</comment><comment><USER18> meanwhile, the median wage is ~ $30k.

things are only getting worse.

</comment><comment><USER19> Quick reminder, there is no correlation between CEO pay and performance:

[http://www.motherjones.com/files/blog_ceo_pay_performance.jp...](http://www.motherjones.com/files/blog_ceo_pay_performance.jpg)

<comment><USER20> I wonder how that chart measures "CEO pay". Since the majority of executive pay is equity (in this case, $20m of the $23m quoted figure), I'd say that CEO performance (as measured by stock returns) pretty directly affects their pay?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting that the future CEO will work out of NYC (presumably the 229 West 43rd Street building) rather than the Sunnyvale headquarters.

<comment><USER22> The Sunnyvale headquarters will be part of Verizon. The future CEO will be managing a company that is basically just a holding company for Alibaba stock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Absurdly ridiculous.

<comment><USER24> In what sense? 3 million cash for an executive of a high profile public company that's quite a conservertive cash payment for that scenario.

<comment><USER25> The fact that "3 million in cash and 20 million equity" is considered a "conservative cash payment for that scenario" is basically the point: failure on a large scale is rewarded with grotesquely obscene riches while the peons are told to eat cake (or, rather, to stop buying iPhones so they can afford health care).

<comment><USER26> She was hired by people who agreed to pay her that under the conditions they did - those people didn't consider it grotesquely obscene and it was their decision - the only "problem" I see here is that you believe your opinion on her compensation and performance should matter. It's literally none of your business (even if you were an employee, and as a stock holder you could have voiced your opinion by selling, hell you could have even bet against them)

<comment><USER25> > the only "problem" I see here is that you believe your opinion on her > compensation and performance should matter

Given that point of view, none of our opinions here matter, so why did you even bother commenting at all?

I don't think I have some right to change her compensation, but medium/long term I worry about a real breakdown in society when there are such gross displays of outsized rewards for failure.

<comment><USER26> Our opinions on this specific case don't matter but HN should have higher standard than Reddit style political feelings rants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good for her. A ton of CEOs have done far worse for their shareholders and done as well with their exit package.

</comment><comment><USER28> California + probable 280G = 70%+ tax</comment>


Ask HN: Starting Service on Top of B2B SaaS. Thoughts? - this-ali Say there's a niche B2B SaaS. Plans vary from $50-$200 per month.
Funnel is slow, but retention is high.
You realise there is a set of customers, who don't care about your product. They care about result. Your product is very well able to deliver.
Does it make sense start a service vertical, where instead of offering the product/platform, you deliver results to clients?
1. Hire a few people 2. Train them to use your SaaS 3. Charge customers 10x and deliver results weekly or monthly
thoughts? <comment><AUTHOR> Opportunity is opportunity, but you're not building a viable long-term business and you can't guarantee anything since you don't own the underlying B2B SaaS.

The provider could pivot and remove the fundamental functionality you require and you're instantly out of business.

Wouldn't it make more sense to license/white-label the B2B SaaS, or joint- venture with them so they have some skin in the game, and you have some guarantee of continuity? If this is an option, make sure you get an option-to- manage or code/data escrow agreement to protect you in the event they go out of business.

The only other solution I see is to duplicate the functionality they offer over the next year and then jump to your own version, but many SaaS have a no- clone clause in their user agreements stating that you agree not to duplicate their systems.

If this is how you want to go, make sure you own the domain they are coming to so that when the time comes, you simply redirect your DNS and you're up and running.

Just remember, until you own and run the entire system, you don't have a business... the B2B SaaS has a side business they don't know about.

Cheers</comment>


The chaos of Tony Wilson's digital music revolution - Anthony-G https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/aug/10/youve-been-smoking-too-much-the-chaos-of-tony-wilsons-digital-music-revolution <comment> Anthony-G I thought this was an interesting piece of Internet history that shows the importance of timing (luck), good UI and content.

As fan of Factory records (in particular the music of Joy Division and New Order but also the graphic design of Peter Saville and Tony Wilson's attitude), I was drawn to this article. I also have fond memories of the late 90s and early 2000s as a time when interesting people were coming together and doing innovative things e.g., collaboratively building operating systems and encyclopedias (there was a lot of dot-com bullshit as well but I didn't pay too much attention to that).

Anyhow, I found it amusing that this brave attempt at using micro-payments for digital music downloads back in the days of dial-up Internet was stymied by a very user unfriendly DRM / user interface that Music33 had rolled themselves:

> Songs purchased came in a PDF; users tapped in a password to play the music.

To their credit, Music33 were trying to ensure the artist got a (much) bigger slice of the pie than artists were then getting as royalties from record labels.</comment>


Dune, 50 years on - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/03/dune-50-years-on-science-fiction-novel-world <comment><USER2> Dune is a fine work and stands on its own pretty well, but Kunzru gets fixated on the first one and misses out on the depth of the latter books. The first 3 (including Dune) explore the Muad'Dib's rise to power and his new imperial system, book 4 is his son's very long reign and books 5-6 explore the dissolution of that system over the centuries. The story arc spans thousands of years. The central theme as I'd see it is the domination of humans by 'oracles' \-- creatures with access to resources that dominate by both predicting and shaping the future.

Paul Atreides is not merely a "white man who fulfils a persistent colonial fantasy", he didn't arrive in a vacuum. Fremen culture has been shaped by the oracles, their religion, traditions and prophecies were planted to suit the aims of the oracles. Paul recognized first that Dune is not merely a central position worth holding, but _the_ source of power in that universe, control over Dune means control over the universe. So it's very much a story of hydraulic despotism, of the natural resource curse. How do you break the curse? Herbert's answer is 'technology'. Technology created the problem but it's also ultimately the solution.

<comment><USER3> > he central theme as I'd see it is the domination of humans by 'oracles'

That is exactly what Herbert set out to write. In his own words:

> I conceived of a long novel, the whole trilogy as one book about the > messianic convulsions that periodically overtake us. Demagogues, fanatics, > con-game artists, the innocent and the not-so-innocent bystanders-all were > to have a part in the drama. This grows from my theory that superheroes are > disastrous for humankind. Even if we find a real hero (whatever-or whoever- > that may be), eventually fallible mortals take over the power structure that > always comes into being around such a leader.

> Heroes are painful, superheroes are a catastrophe. The mistakes of > superheroes involve too many of us in disaster.

From Dune Genesis by Frank Herbert:

[http://moodleshare.org/mod/page/view.php?id=2453](http://moodleshare.org/mod/page/view.php?id=2453)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thoroughly enjoyed Dune. It had an interesting story, set in an even more interesting world.

However, it's also the kind of book that should never have had a sequel; other books in the series not only don't measure up, but actively undermine what made the original interesting. It's possible that other good stories could have been written in that universe, but they weren't. I highly recommend reading _only_ the original.

<comment><USER5> > it's also the kind of book that should never have had a sequel

The first two books are meant to be read as one. I recommend, _at minimum_ , Dune and Dune Messiah.

<comment><USER6> I agree. A little like the Ender's Game series. The first two are great, and the rest seem a little like nothing more than a revenue source.

Obligatory XKCD link - [https://xkcd.com/304/](https://xkcd.com/304/)

<comment><USER7> Am I the only one who didn't like Speaker for the Dead? To me it felt like a big let down after Ender's Game.

<comment><USER8> You'll like the "Shadow" books then.

Enders game is a space battle thriller with a great twist.

Speaker is all about what do you consider "human" and what do you consider "alien". It was very mind expanding when I was 14.

<comment><USER9> The alien-vs-human issue was covered in the beginning setup and then the end of ender's game, when ender realized what he had done. Do you need a whole other book to drive the point home?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The writer missed one of the most interesting points of the Dune future history: it is one that rejected machine intelligence, and relies only on human abilities (however augmented by training, drugs and mystical handwaving).

The original Dune books mentioned, as part of the past, a war against AIs called the Butlerian Jihad, which humans somehow won. Frank Herbert's son later wrote it up in three prequel books.

This is very much against the grain of 1960s and later SF, which, when not ignoring the issue, largely developed into a range of AI friendly views going from blithely assuming machine submission (most SF) up to admitting that humans would be the amusing pets of AIs (e.g. Iain M. Banks and Neal Asher).

On the hostile side, there were dystopian stories that posited human persecution and extermination by machines, but I can't remember off-hand another major SF setting where AI was achieved and beaten back.

<comment> jon-wood The shunning of computers is probably the aspect I found most interesting at first. Are the Butlerian Jihad books actually any good? I'd love to read more about it, but I don't want to ruin my love of the universe with some shoddy fan fiction, even if it is written by Herbert's son.

<comment><USER11> I read one BH/KJA book and it's name/content is not worthy of recollection. Horrible, fourth grade reading level stuff, IMO.

The Butlerian Jihad was very intriguing to me, as well. As a youth I found it hard to imagine such extremes that would bring about such a rejection of technology and it's benefits. At 45yo, however, I find the drawbacks of modern systems have become too 'costly' to my person and am embarking upon my own cleansing of over-bearing, insinuating devices in my life. Cupertino, Redmond or Mt. View(any Corp, for that matter) will never be allowed to become my masters, my moocher bff nor my nanny beyond a static, transactional relationship. Despite what the marketeers would have me believe, they are doing me no favors entrenching further dependence to their systems. Long live the fighters!

<comment><USER12> > _the drawbacks of modern systems have become too 'costly'_

In terms of distraction, privacy, nudging or something else?

> _cleansing of over-bearing, insinuating devices in my life_

Are you eliminating apps which send data to 3rd-parties, with something like ownCloud or Synology?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For the kids: though technically the RTS genre existed earlier in one or two games, it was essentially nearly singlehandedly popularized by _Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty_. The graphics and sound, probably inspired by the Amiga, were awesome in the era! So many elements of modern RTS were already present: multiple civilizations, each with specialist unit types. Level- oriented progression. Resource harvesting. Terrain types. Unit speed as a key differentiator. High level weapons with the capacity for massive remote destruction. NPCs on the map. See the intro video on Youtube @ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4sj2Rf1RFg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4sj2Rf1RFg)

<comment><USER14> Erm. Let's not forget Dune the adventure game by Cryo as well, which was some kind of Adventure game mixed with real time strategy in the later parts of the game. Very well done.

<comment><USER15> Yes, it's the highlight of Cryo's output. Everything from this game is great from the music by Stephane Picq to the mixture of adventure game, trading and strategy.

Lost Eden follows a similar concept but it's nowhere as good.

Dune 2 by Westwood which came out around the same time was also very innovative for the time and is really the father of all RTS.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, Picq even made a music CD based on his music from Dune, and it's really good.

<comment><USER15> Yep, he released it on soundcloud by the way: [https://soundcloud.com/st- phane-picq](https://soundcloud.com/st-phane-picq)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Dune and the Foundation series are by far my favorite SF series. The reason? Both have unparalleled universe depth. To today I still recite the Dune fear prayer to myself once in a while, I still think about how the Foundationeers used technology as a means to control the Galaxy after the fall of the Empire, I still think of spice as several natural resources on Earth today, etc.

I believe all the books in the Dune series are valuable and even enjoyed the prequels since they gave a background to the story that was just lightly touched in the originals. For me, they completed the Universe and helped me answer the "Why did they do/think...?"

P.S. The Dune 1 game also ruled! It was the first game on my 486 and boy did it help me get a lot of ladies :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Dune was first scifi book I read at age of 12 and reread couple of times. Other scifi of the era was all about spaceships, colonies and what so ever. I still love these classics from gold era of sci-fi, but Dune is different, it is still relevant and don't age at all.

It is all about "religion" fundamentalism, movement/revolution creation and philosophy. Really great book, highly recommend.

</comment><comment><USER18> Y'all have seen Jodorowsky's Dune, right? This documentary changed my life:

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935156/reference](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935156/reference)

<comment><USER19> I saw that movie, I thought it was very good.

Just curious, what did you like about it that it changed your life. Did you mean the how it was shot (i.e. impressed by director's work), Jodorowsky as a person, his story how he worked on Dune with other people (the complexity, dedication, the obsession), or Dune itself?

I found interesting how Dune influenced all these other blockbusters that came after, most importantly Star Wars. It was also fascinating how Jodorowsky never actually read Dune. EDIT: that is not correct as someone pointed out by Nemcue, I (and others apparently) misremembered. It was both the financier, Michel Seydoux and the illustrator Chris Foss who hadn't read it.

Or say, why anyone thought Jodorowsky, based on his previous track record of making surrealist films, would be a good candidate to make Dune. I just don't see the obvious connection from "Holly Mountain" to blockbuster "Sci Fi" for the masses. Now, of course in a funny twist, David Lynch, another surrealist author, actually made the American (Universal Studios) version, and it was terrible I thought.

<comment><USER20> "It was also fascinating how Jodorowsky never actually read Dune."

It's so bizarre how people keep saying this, because you're far from being the first; like you all fell asleep during the exact same segment.

He _did_ read the book. He clearly says so in the documentary.

He hadn't read the book before he got the go-ahead from the producer.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for pointing that out. I misremembered. Edited my comment accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Those who want to learn more about Dune and Frank Herbert, I strongly suggest to read Tim O'Reilly's interview / autobiography book:

[http://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/](http://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/)

I am a long-time Dune fan, and this book and the background information it provides makes me read it and Dune again, and again.

</comment><comment><USER22> Dune is one of my favourite books and I actually enjoyed David Lynch's film.

I would love to see a modern cinema adaptation, but with the current political climate it might be impossible to make a movie about a messiah leading religious fanatics on a jihad against an empire for control of the commodity on which all civilization is dependent.

<comment><USER23> Most classic sci-fi is deeply anti-liberal. Liberal utopian stuff like Star Trek is the exception. Dune is loaded with implicit acceptance of aristocracy and religion.

<comment><USER24> Herbert said his whole point in writing Dune was to criticize the tendency of people to rely on Messianic figures for salvation, to show how our reliance on charismatic heroes and saviors can destroy us. Ironically, there's so much propaganda in favor of these things in fiction that most people read his criticisms as support. He also wanted to explore the idea that reading about characters who operate with advanced levels of consciousness might inspire readers to expand their own thinking, especially into thinking about long-term consequences on our environment, to get people to think about living more sustainably as neo-peasants, which he attempted to do himself. So the characters are meant to be inspiring, but their flaws ar meant to be obvious enough that we can avoid the mistakes they make while thinking more broadly and surpassing them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Another TV adaptation worth mentioning is SyFy's miniseries "Frank Herbert's Dune" and "Frank Herbert's Children of Dune". They are much more faithful to books than Lynch's movie and better show the epic universe that Herbert imagined.

<comment><USER26> I really disliked the that Dune miniseries[1]. There was some really awful acting and very cheap looking sets through a lot of it.

I also thought they got the tone of Paul's character completely wrong. To me he came across starting off as an arrogant thug whereas my perception of him from the books was a very thoughtful if not perhaps demonstratively emotive young man. (Obviously subjective viewpoint, but it put me off right from the start.)

OTOH, the audiobook produced by Audible I thought was very good. I've probably read the book four or five times, the last time well over a decade ago. I listened to the audiobook recently and really enjoyed it and reminded me how much I liked the first book[2].

[1] Have not seen the Children of Dune miniseries.

[2] I'm in the "first book was good, the rest was crap" camp. I read through 'til about halfway through Heretics of Dune before asking myself why I was still reading and stopped.

<comment><USER27> I took it as "filmed theater" rather than a movie. Aside from William Hurt, all actors are playing their roles, not "acting". So if you see it that way it's enjoyable. Everything is theatric, from the costumes to the dialogs, it doesn't really feel like a movie at all.

I prefer this to Lynch's film which has great costumes and design but you can't tell Dune in less than 2 hours, like one cannot tell lord of the rings in one movie.

However,there is certainly room for a real trilogy movie. I'm sure it will happen in the next 10 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _Dune_ shared the 1965 Hugo for Best Novel with Roger Zelazny's _This Immortal_...which says something about how good Zelazny's work is despite its relative obscurity (compared with Dune).

<comment><USER29> This Immortal is terrific. And Zelazany in general. Dune and Lord of Light ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Light](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Light)) are a few of the only SF books I re-read on a regular basis.

<comment><USER30> Seconded - Lord of Light is really awesome (and just as politically nuanced as Dune, but with better characters, IMO)

<comment><USER31> No love for Creatures of Light and Darkness?

<comment><USER30> Well, I read both, but LoL made a bigger impression on me.

To be honest I found CoLaD too much "experimentalist" for my taste (I read both when I was much younger, so it probably went over my head, while LoL I reread and enjoyed through subsequently rereadings).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've heard people say they find inspiration in the Litany Against Fear (Fear is the mind-killer...) but I prefer the stripped-down version introduced in the 5th sequel: "Face your fears or they will climb over your back."

</comment><comment><USER33> I thought it odd that the article did not mention the SciFi mini-series Dune and Children of Dune that came out a while back [1][2]. These were actually quite good, much better than the David Lynch version.

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/) [2] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287839/?ref_=tt_rec_tt](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287839/?ref_=tt_rec_tt)

<comment><USER34> I haven't seen the second, but the first was...unfortunate in its casting, I suppose; it got everything else pretty much right, but the performances were so leaden that I've only been able to watch it the once.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, fair. The second one was much, much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Check out the Destination: Void series (but start with The Jesus Incident). Inspiration for Avatar and similar.

</comment><comment><USER36> "If The Lord of the Rings is about the rise of fascism and the trauma of the second world war" \- well, no it isn't.

"Actually, the great Dune film did get made. Its name is Star Wars."

This would be a better essay if I could take it seriously.

</comment><comment><USER37> "If The Lord of the Rings is about the rise of fascism and the trauma of the second world war,"

Which it isn't, as Tolkien makes clear in the foreward.

<comment><USER38> I'm not sure I agree with Tolkien on this front. Yes, I know: I'm disagreeing with an author's assessment of his own work.

But authors are necessarily a part of their environment. It is -- literally -- inescapable. The good Professor was directly involved in the first World War, and the second was at his doorstep. His aversion to modernity could have led to him simply denying a a conscious connection between those real world epics and those created by his own mind.

But the works themselves put doubt to his claim. If we take him only at his word, and stop there, then that is the end of it. But if we recognize the imperfect ways we self-assess, well...

<comment><USER39> What Tolkien was largely dismissing is the notion that his world was a direct allegory. He readily acknowledges that the comraderie and sacrifice he experienced in the trenches of WWI manifests itself in Frodo and his companions, as well as the doomed but defiant determination of the people of England/Gondor in the face of assured destruction, etc. So there are themes that bind the two worlds but he was adamantntly dismissive of any direct mappings (ie Germany as Mordoe or whatever).

Really LotR is about mortality and power.

<comment><USER40> I believe Tolkien directly said it was about mortality, and that power was a sideshow to move the plot along.

The power of the ring is primarily to delay the inevitable and it corrupts all who cannot accept that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I enjoyed Dune, but it has much to do with software/hacking as installing a kitchen garbage disposal.

</comment><comment><USER42> It is interesting indeed but the best Sci Fi fiction work in my view is Hyperion.</comment>


Show HN: ePaper.js – Easily create an ePaper display using JavaScript and HTML - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/samsonmking/epaper.js <comment><USER2> Looks very cool and promising.

I'm wondering what's the power draw for the Pi with this one since it "Loads index.html in a headless instance of Chromium, using Puppeteer". Isn't Puppeteer quite a power hungry process?

Would it run on Pi Zero with a battery attached and how long would it last with updates once a minute or once every 5 minutes?

I'm thinking about possible projects that would not have AC power all the time, maybe something solar powered for a dashboard outside.

<comment><USER3> I built something that's similar to what you're describing, here's an article about it: [https://www.hackster.io/lukehaas/e-ink-display-for-daily- new...](https://www.hackster.io/lukehaas/e-ink-display-for-daily-news-weather- and-more-3dd7b1)

It combines a Pi Zero with a 2000mAh lipo, updates every 6 hours and lasts for around 90 days per charge.

<comment><USER4> Thanks I like the idea of a git pull on boot up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When using my reader, sometimes mutations require a full screen invert. Sometimes stuff just seems to change trivially. What governs that? Is that done by the display or driver or higher level code?

<comment><USER6> The problem with e-ink is that redrawing pixels without cycling leads to ghosting after a few draws. Most displays automatically cycles the entire screen now and then to mitigate this. I guess it's up to software or firmware to detect when to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Waveshare displays do support partial refresh, but I haven't had time to look into exposing it into Node, yet.</comment></comment></comment>


FTC Issues Warning Letters to App Developers Using 'Silverpush' Code - <AUTHOR> https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/03/ftc-issues-warning-letters-app-developers-using-silverpush-code <comment><USER2> IIRC, there was US legislation in the 1990s that required phones to have an indicator to be _wired in_ that lit up when a microphone was enabled.

Either this was relaxed, or reinterpreted (or I'm mis-remembering), and it was deemed okay to activate the LED with firmware. Clearly a mistake. And it probably only applied to land-line phones.

<comment><USER3> iOS really ought to put a "currently recording audio" icon in the menu bar, in addition to the existing one-time permission request. Sophisticated hacks could bypass it, but it would at least help in more pedestrian scenarios like this one.

<comment><USER4> It already does! The menu bar turns red, with the name of the app using the microphone, as shown in this example[0] where Shazam is backgrounded but listening for songs.

[0][https://imgur.com/a/OzS4Z](https://imgur.com/a/OzS4Z)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I know about that. But that doesn't really help if the app only listens while foregrounded. (In that case the red bar does usually show up briefly before the app responds to the backgrounding event, but that's not very noticeable and basically a bug.)

Location Services is a model here: like sound recording it asks for permission first, like sound recording it flashes the menu bar if an app is using precise location in the background, but there's also a small icon that shows up in the menu bar whenever it's being used, even by the foreground app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It must have been nice while it lasted.

Android's capabilities system is much better with Android 6.0. Apps targeting the latest SDK require users to accept permissions at runtime, and those built with previous SDKs can have capabilities disabled through settings:

[http://inthecheesefactory.com/blog/things-you-need-to- know-a...](http://inthecheesefactory.com/blog/things-you-need-to-know-about- android-m-permission-developer-edition/en)

<comment><USER6> That's not really going to fix these things - if you can open a mic in the background without any UI to indicate it's happening, it will be abused. If I write an app with a legitimate need for the mic and get permission to use it, I can abuse it.

<comment><USER5> Initial research suggests that few or none of the apps using SilverPush had a legitimate use for mic permissions:

[https://public.addonsdetector.com/silverpush-android- apps/](https://public.addonsdetector.com/silverpush-android-apps/)

<comment><USER7> I'm getting a redirect loop on that for some reason. Archive.org version does work for me:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160320170615/https://public.ad...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160320170615/https://public.addonsdetector.com/silverpush- android-apps/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Based on the letter, it looks like a weak statement by the FTC:

 _if your application enabled third parties to monitor television-viewing habits of U.S. consumers and your statements or user interface stated or implied otherwise, this could constitute a violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act. We would encourage you to disclose this fact to potential customers, empowering them to make an informed decision about what information to disclose in exchange for using your application._

Note that there's a violation only if the developer's _statements or user interface stated or implied otherwise_. By my reading, if the dev says nothing and collects the data then they are not in violation; the violation occurs if they lie about it. Also, the FTC doesn't require the dev to disclose anything, they merely _encourage_ it.

However, I have no experience with these issues. Does anyone know more about it?

<comment><USER9> The FTC would probably argue (not saying it's a good argument) that _not_ implying that you _are_ collecting data is implying that you _won 't_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be cool to have an app that could alert you to the production of these sounds. Then you could complain to the station/channel, and to the FTC. Complaint to the FTC, with recorded evidence, could be included in the app.

It would be cooler still if the FTC made this app available.

<comment><USER11> There are benign use-cases for this technology, though. For example, any TV/Radio ads containing the phrases "Hey Siri", "OK Google", or "Alexa" definitely _should_ contain an audio beacon so that your iPhone/Android/Amazon Echo knows that a TV or Radio ad is playing, and not a human legitimately asking for a command.

<comment><USER12> …cue someone playing that inaudible signal continuously to block all people nearby using their Siri or what have you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've always been annoyed at hitting a few accept dialogue boxes with first launch apps on iOS. Kind of glad now that they exist.

<comment><USER14> Yes, in hindsight (and I say this as a full-time app developer) Apple had exactly the right amount of trust for app developers - almost none. In the few instances where things didn't require approval (for example querying a URL scheme to allow for for crude inter-app communication), they were abused by even reputable developers like Twitter. Glad to see Google finally catching up with Android 6.

<comment><USER15> The J2ME/MIDP platform also had runtime permissions; for example, when I used Opera Mini on my Nokia S60, it would ask for permissions to write to the Downloads directory.

The MIDP security system probably had its flaws, but it seems weird that Android simply ignored it and went with an exclusive ask-on-install model.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, but Android's made some pretty good strides on that front with Android 6.0. Just got it yesterday and, while a few apps were confusingly broken until I went digging (my audiobook app looking in a no-longer-extant path for the SD card, as apps get their own virtual storage path in 6.0), I'm pretty happy with the changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is not this wiretapping? Recording someone without consent is illegal in some states.

<comment><USER18> I think it's illegal in all states if no subject of the recording provides consent, the split is between states with a one-party consent rule and an all- parties consent rule.

<comment><USER19> But doesn't agreeing to the ToS mean you agree to be surveilled?

<comment><USER20> ToS doesn't trump local law!

* By reading this post you give me the right to steal all your underwear

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It amazes me that television viewing data is still valuable to someone in 2016.

<comment><USER21> You think people, or enough people, don't watch TV any more?

<comment><USER14> Consumption of TV has moved almost entirely to platforms that can track that data themselves (for example through a set top box or directly on the web), without requiring someone to have a smartphone turned on, running spyware, in the room.

<comment><USER22> I think this data is still useful because there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between those devices and the viewers. A box might be left on with nobody around, or it might be the center of a viewing party with twenty people. They also want to know who is watching, since demographics count for a lot.

<comment><USER23> And the people using such invasive apps aren't the people running those boxes, either, so they don't have access to the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It'd be nice if iPhones had an indicator symbol for when the camera or microphone is enabled.

<comment><USER25> Agreed. There's an indicator for when the mic is activated in the background, but not when the use utilizing app is in the foreground. Nothing at all for camera activation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if it's technically feasible for the TV to filter these kinds of inaudible beacons out, without severely degrading the sound quality?</comment>