Misusing Bootstrap - <AUTHOR> http://10clouds.com/blog/why-you-misuse-bootstrap-and-why-you-should-stop-doing-this/ <comment><USER2> Bootstrap is where Wordpress and jQuery are - "good enough" for a large swathe of problems for a large number of people.

js gurus will decry jQuery - "learn to do it by hand"

php gurus will decry Wordpress - "it's a mess, learn to do it by hand"

and ... wow - front-end developers decrying bootstrap - "it's a mess, learn to do it by hand"

They're all not entirely wrong, but the specialist nature of their roles should not be ignored. Do you have a team of web devs ready to build something that is vital to your business and will be mission critical? Building on something that's not wordpress might be a good choice.

Are you trying to squeeze out every ounce of bandwidth performance and CPU optimization? Yeah, jQuery _might_ not be the best choice.

But these libraries/products work "good enough" for so many people that it'll be a long time before anything dethrones them as the 'go to' tool for problem X. There's too much of an ecosystem built up around each one.

EDIT: I say this as someone who is generally pretty anti-wp, but I still recommend and use it for certain projects, it's just not my default go-to for everything.

<comment><USER3> I can see your point but, as someone who works with Bootstrap and jQuery, don't mix them. :) It's not the same kind of problem.

Even seasoned pros can gain something from jQuery. I know, I know: most jQuery-based code is bad, and the need for jQuery is becoming smaller everyday, but it still is among the nicest pieces of JavaScript. jQuery can save you time and boost your productivity without "imposing", as Bootstrap does (and any other CSS framework, as CSS is inherently global).

<comment><USER4> Bootstrap plugins require jQuery

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've worked on several projects that used Bootstrap to great effect and others where it was probably a mistake.

On the projects where it didn't work well, there were stakeholders who kept insisting on "little" tweaks.

On the projects where it worked, the stakeholders said "that looks awesome" on the first cut.

Not surprisingly, the projects where the stakeholders were happy with generic Bootstrap were the ones that ended up looking and functioning better, in my opinion.

<comment><USER6> This is my experience as well. If people want little tweaks and you're using a CSS framework, you're going to have a bad time.

OTOH Bootstrap's grid system is almost a must have when I'm writing a responsive application. There have been a few projects where I've ripped out the non-grid parts of BS because that was all I wanted.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried building your own grid system or importing "just" a grid- system/mix-ins which generate grid and columns?

<comment><USER6> I have, and every time I do, I basically end up trying to rebuild Bootstrap's grid. It has 4 screen sizes that cascade so you can set a small size and not explicitly declare that you want larger screens to be the same, responsive and adaptive resizing, offset columns, push/pull (this is hard, and necessary if you need to change the order of elements based on size), and BS4's alpha adds opt-in flexbox.

Regarding push/pull, Bootstrap is the only grid system I've used that has had this. The use case is when you want

        [x] [y] [z]

on desktop to be

        [z]
        [y]
        [x]

on mobile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly I think Bootstrap works really well in exactly one role: "utility" interfaces. Your admin dashboard. You 'settings' UI. Your business back-office application.

Anything where you need functionality, not flashiness.

This is because it allows application developers to do just that - work on the application. They have pre-built components to use, that look reasonable and fit together, without needing a dedicated front-end developer to constantly futz with templates or a static version of the app when management asks for an extra form field.

<comment><USER8> If you don't need flashiness, why use bootstrap at all? All this complicated CSS with its inevitable namespace pollution, what problem does it solve exactly, and is that really a problem that needs to be solved?

<comment><USER7> My current project for a client has dozens of pretty basic CRUD screens and a few slightly more complex screens. Its reasonable to look at, and scales to a mobile device, including a side navigation bar that slides in/out on small screens.

I wrote about 10-20 lines of CSS.

Even though it's expressly an "admin" UI for the app (which has no public web UI) they would _not_ accept an app made with no stylesheet and just a page of form elements. It would be practically unusable without any CSS, and the time it would take me to write the CSS for just the navigation bar OR just the pagination system OR just the reasonable form layout on multiple screen sizes, dwarfs the amount of time it takes me to download bootstrap and copy the dist folder.

For a public facing website - I think bootstrap is terrible, and I'd rather see something like Bourbon used, where semantic markup is then styled.

This isn't about that. It's about getting a usable interface that takes almost zero time to implement.

<comment><USER9> Same here, also, I would like to add out that we in generally tend to use Bootstrap only for internal admin interfaces, not for the ones that out end- client would see, though.

Even then, those are prototypes that get replaced by more adequate things eventually. Not to mention, in many situations I would actually write better (as in more robust and more maintainable) solutions than Bootstrap with less CSS and mark-up funk, but that might stem from my misuse or insufficient knowledge of how to use bootstrap.

<comment><USER7> Oh agreed, Bootstrap and concise markup are pretty much mutually exclusive, but for admin/business functionality apps I don't think that's a huge issue.

Another factor I'm considering is that a packaged/sold product(s) that use Bootstrap for the UI means that someone purchasing/using the product(s) can make use of a "bootstrap theme" to apply a new basic appearance (fonts, colour scheme, possibly icon set, spacings, etc) pretty much just by loading in a new theme.css file

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Contrary to the author's opinion, BS isn't hard to maintain and the code isn't messy. I've developed more than 30 projects using BS as the framework. It has enabled me to prototype, as well as build for production, faster, cleaner and better. Might there still be something better out there? Sure, but there are definitely cons to continuously changing your tool set and diverting yourself from actual building. Imagine if a carpenter bought a new power saw every time a company introduced a slightly improved model. The economics of that should be clear.

<comment><USER11> What are your thoughts on Bootstrap v4?

I just did a side project and used 4 because they _finally_ moved to rems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a word, possibly related to "humblebrag", for this habit of putting down and insulting popular tools?

Don't use Bootstrap, don't use jQuery, etc.

I mean the basic concept of the article is the assumption that you, the average reader, were going to use it in the first place, which means it's probably wildly successful.

And the comments fall into the same kind of area, "Sure, if you're some kind of big baby amateur idiot who doesn't know what they're doing, then go ahead and use one of the most popular tools in this space."

[https://xkcd.com/378/](https://xkcd.com/378/)

<comment><USER13> "Hipsterism", perhaps? Of course classic English words like "snobbery" or "contrarianism" probably also apply.

<comment><USER14> It's tech hipsterism. Plus, it's a quick-and-easy way to create a hierarchy in an industry where somebody who's been working for a decade has the same job title, dresses the same, and looks basically the same as somebody who's in their second year. "Oh, you still use jQuery? Yeah, I pretty much just write pure JS." It's ridiculous tech dick measuring (which is to say it's par for the course when you get three nerds together in a room).

It's the exact same impulse that says you're not a real dev if you use language X or framework Y.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > If you care about code maintainability and carefully plan your CSS, you > should definitely reconsider using Bootstrap in your project.

All the points resonate with me and my experience (actually, they're all quite well put), but this one is the biggest. Bootstrap isn't quite brilliant in terms of CSS architecture (which is a tricky subject per se, due to many factors such as the global nature of CSS). And the biggest issue is that CSS architecture is very much snowball-like: a bad decision will imply future bad decisions or practices. The example given in the article is quite demonstrative: an excessively-specific selector which, to be overridden, would need a even more specific one.

In my opinion - and I've had the bad luck to join two big projects which used Bootstrap from the beginning - if your project is to be maintained or has at least a medium-ish size, forget Bootstrap. It doesn't give you that much. A normalization solution, typography, buttons and a grid system, just roll your own, with your own presets and much less bloat. It's not a big effort at all, you can look at what Bootstrap and others have done (to borrow what you like), and your team will have a firm understanding of their code.

<comment><USER15> Bootstrap gets 80% of the work done before you begin.....its getting the last 80% complete thats the tricky part ;)

I back up what you say 100%. Bootstrap is not acceptable for production code, its supposed to be a rapid prototyping tool.

I have found whenever it is added to a project, the technical debt it bring that you have to keep fighting is never worth whatever the initial savings was. I build without it wherever possible and avoid a lot of problems and maintenance.

<comment><USER16> Why isn't bootstrap acceptable for production?

For smaller projects why shouldn't I be able to use it? If I'm building a 5-10 page website for a small business it's a prefect fit. I can customize the colors and use the image sliders and other features already given to me. Add what I need and I have something that's easily to remember at a later point.

If I created a larger app why would I want to rewrite everything for prod. It makes it easier if multiple people are working on the UI because we are all working with bootstrap. Newer people are able to get up to speed on the project faster since it's a common framework.

<comment><USER15> Using Bootstrap for a small 5-page site is like taking a cruise ship for a canoe ride.

It's not that hard to build really lightweight HTML and then just only write the CSS you need. I specialize in taking sites and making them responsive, and the first thing I do is go in there and get rid of all the classes extra tags everywhere clogging up the works.

With tools like Bootstrap you end up using bloated, heavy HTML to get a few mediocre responsive breakpoints, but it's no comparison to a properly responsive page.

Here's some button and input styles in a single-file HTML5 app: [http://staticresource.com/encode](http://staticresource.com/encode)

Here's a set of responsive content blocks where the breakpoints are measured based on the width of the block, not the browser: [http://staticresource.com/block-styles.html](http://staticresource.com/block- styles.html)

Or check out the CSS of [http://elementqueries.com](http://elementqueries.com) to see how a simple, easy to read layout can be done with just a touch of CSS at the top of the page.

None of these use Bootstrap, and if I had even so much as linked to them, I'd be working against the defaults they bring in.

Here's what I use as my 'reset' that I bring in to every project, it's a much smaller set of opinions and leaves me more free to just build what I want: [https://gist.github.com/tomhodgins/c4988b9d9878763ae861](https://gist.github.com/tomhodgins/c4988b9d9878763ae861)

<comment><USER16> Thank you the links are very appreciated. I do feel like I am fighting against parts of bootstrap at times. Responsive websites are the reason I used bootstrap in the first place. It's very easy to build a responsive website with out of the box bootstrap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The reason I use bootstrap: It looks good enough, and I don't have to spend time arguing with the UI guy over the "integrity of the design".

The people paying my bills would rather have functionality that looks good enough now than the same functionality that looks beautiful three months from now.

<comment><USER3> Bootstrap has a righteous _dominant_ position in that kind of solution. When "good enough" is really "enough" and, mostly, when "now" is really mandatory, Bootstrap shines. To quickly deploy something that works, that's what I'd do anyway.

My pet peeve with Bootstrap, however, is its usage in larger applications, in applications with very customized styles and/or a defined styleguide. If you're spending a minimum effort in developing a web app and/or specific styles, then Bootstrap will - very, very soon - be a liability (performance and mantainability-wise).

<comment><USER17> I haven't found that to be the case...but I do mostly LOB apps, which honestly aren't all that demanding from a UI perspective.

Requirements gathering is hell though, which is where my team actually earns their money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "This, multiplied by another few imported components, will result in too heavy code."

Let's have a little chat about "how people misuse measurements to talk themselves into premature optimization"...

</comment><comment><USER19> Some of you may frown on this but I treat bootstrap like a compiled resource. I always grab the packaged version and over write as necessary. I dislike fumbling with all the variables and since I use Rails my overrides will be compiled into scss anyway. I'd hate bootstrap too if I dove into the deep end for every project.

</comment><comment><USER20> I agree that bootstrap is probably a beast for a lot of projects but the primary reason most of us "misuse" it is the fact that it just damn works for the majority of use cases where Time and Money is of essence.

I run a bootstrapped product and would LOVE to create my own css rules from scratch but bootstrap gives the team flexibility to build on top of it quickly and just about good enough that our clients give us money. That is what matters to us. Could we care a bit more about the selectors defined by bootstrap ? Sure. Does it matter to our paying clients. Not a single bit.

</comment><comment><USER21> > When starting a new project, there is always a need to find an appropriate > way to scaffold the front-end

This isn't a good premise to start with. I think a lot of people would be surprised that plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript is a great solution to small- and medium-sized problems. Overuse of frameworks and libraries is why the modern web is such a horrible place, especially on mobile or slow networks.

<comment><USER22> Hear, hear. Learn to use your tools. They aren't actually that hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a non-developer of any sort (web front end or otherwise) with just enough HTML/CSS/JS under my belt to be dangerous, I've found Bootstrap to be a great framework for quick and dirty landing pages. I've also found it to be nearly perfect for simple but responsive, beautiful, mobile friendly websites for showcasing art and literature without the complexity and requirements other frameworks demand.

That said, I agree with the author that it's not the best tool for every, or even most, jobs. You _could_ use it to run a blog, but why? You _could_ build an online e-commerce site out of it eventually, but _dear God why_?

And that's the beauty of the modern Web. There are so many awesome frameworks out there that do a few things very well, and others that do just about everything decently enough; it's an embarrassment of riches for anyone involved in the industry.

</comment><comment><USER24> He says that bootstrap is too bloated and big and yet recommends Zurb Foundation. Wat. It's even bigger than bootstrap.

<comment><USER25> She _

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I believe Bootstrap has been an incredible boost for web development. For people new to the profession/craft, it is an unbelievable tool.

For those more experienced and possessing sound design knowledge and more complex/detailed development goals, there are better choices.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think YOOTheme's UIKit is a great modular framework that not many people know about.

<comment><USER28> What are the advantages of UIKit over bootstrap?

<comment><USER27> It's small, without over-complicated class names and has all kinds of add-ons like dropdown etc. available as modules.

<comment><USER27> And also – easily tweakable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> That blog is built with Bootstrap 3.3.2.

</comment><comment><USER30> So what's the alternative? All of the suggested alternatives mentioned in this article seemed like they were even more low-level and _less_ functional than Bootstrap.

If I'm primarily a coder who doesn't really understand CSS and doesn't have time to become a front-end designer, what _should_ I be using? Ideally I want something that will look pretty enough for end users, and have customizable themes that they can play with--without involving me.

Is there a better out-of-the-box solution than Bootstrap?

<comment><USER31> Unfortunately, if what you want is an out-of-the-box solution, then alternatives to Bootstrap are either likely to be as complicated as it, or require you to know how to write a bit of css.

Although there are lightweight grid solutions such as skeleton[0] which I personally really like, which make layout easy, you would still probably need to override some of the presentation styles.

[0][http://getskeleton.com/](http://getskeleton.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Interesting that the 10clouds site itself uses bootstrap....

</comment><comment><USER33> Contrary to the author, I think Bootstrap is not used enough! The value it adds to a company to have their own hand-craft version of a CSS grid is sub zero.

</comment><comment><USER34>
        Bootstrap was never meant to be used as a website development framework

This seems odd. Most Bootstrap styles aren't namespaced, so it's a nightmare to add Bootstrap to existing projects of moderate size. In my experience, it only makes sense to incorporate Bootstrap at the early stages of a project as a "web development framework."

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't know, I mean, there are OK arguments against using bigger libraries, but if I'm just making a basic front-end for my toy application or for a hackathon I'm gonna just use bootstrap to get something that looks decent fast. I'm not going to spend time designing the front end (unless that's the whole point of the project)

</comment><comment><USER36> From my personal experience, Bootstrap is pain if you need anything beyond its default style. You spend too much time in removing the style of its components and introducing new ones. In many of my projects, I have used bootstrap not because of its 'good-enough-defaults' but because it has reusable components - grids, tabs, pills, labels.

For the latter use-case, I am consider using inuit.css[1] which provides the components but without any defaults which seems perfect for my use case.

[1]: [https://github.com/csswizardry/inuit.css](https://github.com/csswizardry/inuit.css)

</comment><comment><USER37> The other alternative that is not mentioned in the article is Basscss: [http://www.basscss.com/](http://www.basscss.com/)

</comment><comment><USER38> On the contrary, there are many companies out there who started (and still is for the most part) using Bootstrap, ie) DigitalOcean and Coinbase, and killing it.

</comment><comment><USER39> TBH, I am still using Boostrap 2, because it is simple to start with, and is still compatible with old version of interent explorer

</comment><comment><USER40> One of the anti-Bootstrap websites she links to looks like total crap in Firefox. Oh the irony. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> If anything, this article enumerated reasons why I _do_ want to use Bootstrap.

</comment><comment><USER41> If your firm is too cheap to hire someone with actual design skills, use Bootstrap. Otherwise, don't.

If nothing else, it raises the bar of mediocrity.

</comment><comment><USER42> Do they have vertical column alignment and equal-height columns yet?

</comment><comment><USER43> As far as I'm concerned, any use of Bootstrap is misuse. The classes are absolutely hideously named. Anytime you have to break the mold it's way more painful than it has to be.

I default these days to building up CSS from scratch. The decision to use a framework has always bit me bad in the past. I do not want to have to become an expert in a framework, but it seems you need to just to be able to use it effectively.

<comment><USER44> As someone who wrote HTML and CSS from scratch and then put a little time/effort into learning Bootstrap, I can do so much more in the same amount of time it took me to do my old layouts, and it looks so much better and is actually responsive.

All that to say, there is value in "becoming an expert" in a framework.

<comment><USER43> > All that to say, there is value in "becoming an expert" in a framework.

You can spend time learning Bootstrap's eccentricities, or you can learn something useful like OOCSS. One will make you really productive at making websites that are instantly recognizable as Bootstrap-based, the other will make you productive implementing any kind of design.

Time spent fighting Bootstrap is wasted time from this perspective. Time spent fighting your own designs is time spent learning valuable lessons about front- end coding. You may gain a marginal speed improvement with Bootstrap, especially (and perhaps only, I find Bootstrap slows me down) if you're new at front-end, but you're paying a steep price for it down the line, if you ever plan on building a site that doesn't work with the framework.</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing New AWS Deep Learning AMI for Microsoft Windows - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/11/announcing-new-aws-deep-learning-ami-for-microsoft-windows/ <comment><USER2> The article doesn't make it easy to find the actual AMIs! The calls-to-action on the linked page [https://aws.amazon.com/machine- learning/amis/](https://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/amis/) go to Marketplace search pages (or tutorials that lead you to them) that don't actually seem to have the Windows AMIs in question (there are third-party Windows deep learning AMIs, but with very different stacks.)

This seems to be the correct page, with a full technical specification and AMI identifiers: [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/dlami/latest/devguide/WIN_2016.ht...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/dlami/latest/devguide/WIN_2016.html)

You can copy-paste, for instance, ami-d50381af (for us-east-1) into the Community AMIs search box in the Launch Wizard.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do they provide access to GPU's?

<comment><USER4> From the post

 _The AMIs come prepackaged with Nvidia CUDA 9, cuDNN 7, and Nvidia 385.54 drivers, and contain the Anaconda platform (supports Python versions 2.7 and 3.5)._

CUDA support and Nvidia drivers imply access to GPUs.</comment></comment>


2016 Guide to User Data Security - <AUTHOR> https://www.inversoft.com/blog/2016/05/31/user-data-security/ <comment><USER2> Do you have the eBook version on iTunes, Amazon etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not just yet. We will have that available down the road. You can view and download directly from the site. Look for the downloadable link in the post. Thanks for asking and happy coding!</comment></comment>


A new web server interface for R announced (titled "Rack") - <AUTHOR> http://www.r-bloggers.com/introducing-rack/

<comment><USER2> It's pretty bad taste to take the same name for such a similar product, IMO, even if the original is the inspiration.

Neat project though.

<comment><USER3> Did I say Rack? <http://jeffreyhorner.tumblr.com/></comment></comment>


Jupiter: A high-performance job-matching service - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/222017798302928/ <comment><USER2> I can't find the source code. Anyone else? Looks like a competitor to Grid Engine or LSF.</comment>


Hillary Clinton Is Wrong About Edward Snowden - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/hillary-clinton-is-wrong-about-edward-snowden <comment><USER2> There was only one candidate in the first Democratic debate that had the courage to say that Snowden should be brought home a hero, because the government was breaking the law, and that was Lincoln Chafee. He didn't equivocate.

And he gave one very stupid, but very honest answer to a question on Glass- Steagall. And he is being mocked for it.

Wolf Blitzer took the opportunity to kick him when he was down [1] . If you look at Lincon's Twitter feed he was so excited to be on Wolf Blitzer's show, because he thought he was going to be able to talk about his ideas.

He was naive, and that makes him a bad politician. But he had interesting ideas he wanted to talk about even if he knew he couldn't win, namely pardoning Snowden, ending drone strikes and the benefits of switching to the metric system.

The only legitimate criticism I can level against him is that he didn't assemble the proper campaign staff that would have prepared him for the debate properly.

His answer to the Glass-Steagall question was unfortunate, because we did have one candidate that could have brought attention to Snowden, and the cruelty and futility of drone strike warfare.

He hasn't tweeted since the Wolf Blitzer bullying episode. An article has been written that he has disgraced the legacy of his father. [2]

I think he deserves thanks for bringing some attention [3] to the response a democratic nation should have to heroes like Snowden.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SExMtNDS5hk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SExMtNDS5hk)

[2] [http://wpri.com/2015/10/15/john-chafee-loyalists- anguished-o...](http://wpri.com/2015/10/15/john-chafee-loyalists-anguished- over-lincoln-chafees-white-house-run/)

[3] [https://www.thenation.com/article/lincoln-chafee-adds-a- prop...](https://www.thenation.com/article/lincoln-chafee-adds-a-proposal-to- the-2016-debate-lets-bring-edward-snowden-home/)

<comment><USER3> I was not familiar with Chafee prior to the debate and I liked some of the things he said, but he really did blow the Glass-Steagall question very badly. You don't get to be President by making excuses. He should simply have said "It was a mistake. I did not educate myself properly on the issue before voting, and I regret it." I think everyone would have been fine with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why does the United States constitution grant the president the power to grant pardons and reprieves? I'd argue that it's for cases exactly like this one. Where someone indeed broke the law, but did the right thing in doing so. We want people to do what is right, not shake our heads tragically and say that the law is the law, and must be followed blindly even if it means punishing a hero for his heroic deeds.

I'd further say that it's the responsibility of the president to use his or her constitutionally granted powers for this purpose, and say that a president that refuses to use the powers of the presidency for the purpose they were intended for is a simply bad at the job of being president.

<comment><USER5> Snowden didn't break the law. He uncovered other people breaking the law. If it is illegal to do something (like the NSA surveillance techniques) and that something is done then the rest of the laws surrounding state secrets automatically become devoid. That is the only way a sane working democratic society can function. If it is illegal to uncovered illegality then it sets a precedent that every witness to a crime will have to be tried as a defendant. The Snowden situation is absurd and anyone who says he broke the law is revealing themselves as the enemy of the people and of the country.

<comment><USER6> _He uncovered other people breaking the law._

Despite an appeals court decision on illegality, because of the way that Congress revamped what was previously Section 215's language, and ended some of the previous programs, it has not been officially taken that what they did was illegal - that is, named as culpable certain groups or individuals that broke stated laws.

As a result, under common law and procedures of the courts/congress, technically the only one who has broken a law was Snowden.

I'm not arguing right or wrong, I am just say that you are technically wrong under legal statute.

<comment><USER5> My comment was more a reflection on how messed up a system is if this is how it works. Morally the law is unjust therefore it can't be right and I'm with MLK on this one:

"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's disheartening to read that 53% of Americans agree with Hillary and only 26% do not.

It's also surprising that ~81% of Americans polled had an opinion at all.

<comment><USER8> 53% agree that he should stand trial. That's not the same as being convicted. He did break the law, so it stands to reason that he should stand trial. Snowden himself said something similar if I recall, that if he was sure he would stand a _fair_ trial he would return to the US.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. A guy working in the US intelligence service who fled with stolen information to China then Russia is not someone that should automatically be granted clemency. He should be investigated and tried. He might be the hero everyone here and on reddit imagines he is, or he might just be another shady character in geopolitics. It's frustrating to see people so blindly picking sides or misinterpreting opinions.

<comment><USER10> >"fled with stolen information to China then Russia"

Typical misconception, sad to see it on HN.

He did not flee to Russia, he got stuck on his way, because the US revoked his passport. Russia was the only country who could stand up to the US. Few other countries dared to offer him asylum.

Unfortunate it had to be Russia, given their civil liberties record, but he HAD NO INTENTION of going there.

<comment><USER11> Also he wasn't "with stolen information". He did not keep a copy with him on his way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The whistler-blower angle has been discussed to death and she knows it is complete BS because whistler-blowers in government have an extremely tragic history.

She only takes that position so she seems "tough on crime" like so make democrats are afraid to appear otherwise to the "undecided voters" (whomever those idiots are).

Just like why she had an email server in her home (which everyone should have) because her husband knows damn well about the six month limit where any government agency can read your email without a warrant, which is why he set it up in the first place.

It's a shame she is the only realistic presidential candidate and the only one out of all on both sides who I'd want picking the next few supreme court judges.

Everything else coming out of her is basically going to be whatever she thinks is going to get her elected, just like every other candidate.

Oh and she'll be the fourth president residing over our war in Afganistan - certainly we'll "win" any one of these years, or decades and when we finally do leave, certainly it won't revert back to what it was before like Iraq, right?

</comment><comment><USER13> More disappointing than Clinton's response is Bernie Sander's middling 'respectable' response:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-greer/bernie-sanders- woul...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-greer/bernie-sanders-would- make_b_8297414.html)

<comment><USER14> Why do you think that's disappointing?

<comment><USER15> I read this paragraph

> "I think Snowden played a very important role in educating the American > public ... he did break the law, and I think there should be a penalty to > that," Sanders said. He went on to say that the role Snowden played in > educating the public about violations of their civil liberties should be > considered before he is sentenced, and that as president he would > "absolutely" end the NSA spying programs in question.

and I would have disagreed with the analysis

> To read between the lines: Bernie thinks Edward Snowden did the right thing, > but hey, laws are laws. If elected, though, it sounds like he'll make sure > Snowden gets a really nice jail cell.

and said something along the lines of "the political system pardoned President Nixon without even going through the trouble of actually charging him with a crime. If a man like Nixon deserves pardon, I'd say Snowden does as well." But I am not Bernie Sanders and I can't put words in his mouth. He urged Snowden to come home and face trial. This may be a comforting thing for the people at home who watch the 8 PM news but this is not the right thing to do. Not in a nation that pardons people before they are convicted of a crime. No, I don't mean we should dig up Nixon's grave and hang, quarter, and draw his body (I wouldn't oppose doing so to Margaret Thatcher as the UK a historical precedence of such actions but that is off-topic). I don't even want to charge Nixon. All I am saying is there is a way to grant Edward Snowden the same amnesty and immunity that we gave President Nixon. Not because what the the two did were similar but I bring it up just as a demonstration of the things we have forgiven and forgotten as a nation.

Edward Snowden did is a huge public service and he deserves our thanks for it. I am not the person above but this is why I am a little disappointed. I am a little concerned about Bernie Sanders saying as president he would "absolutely" end the NSA spying programs in question. Does the POTUS have access to everything that goes on in the NSA? Can't the programs continue/reboot under a different pretense? Worst case, if a president can put the program to sleep, what is to stop the next president to reanimate it?

<comment><USER13> I'm the person above and I endorse your comments generally.

That said I am Canadian, so American laws concern me less. Snowden did the world a favour, not just the US public, by exposing what many of us already suspected was happening.

Sanders has exposed himself in this as far less radical than he likes to market himself as.

As a person running in an election to be a _lawmaker_ he has every right, actually responsibility, to criticize the laws that would imprison Snowden, and to agitate to recognize the problems Snowden pointed out.

<comment><USER16> Actually, he is currently a lawmaker. He is running to be the person who executes the laws.

Of course, this just makes his position worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It says:

>Did Snowden break the law? In passing classified information to reporters, he did. The Espionage Act explicitly prohibits such actions. But this violation surely needs to be balanced against the public service that Snowden carried out in informing the American public about the extent to which their government had been spying on them.

I don't think you can say that someone broke real laws and then excuse it because public opinion or a subjective idea of public "service" somehow trumped the laws. The U.S. is a nation of laws. If something doesn't work as expected, laws are changed. The laws are either good or bad, but the nation runs because of these laws. You can debate the merits or lack thereof in what Snowden did, because that is a subjective opinion. You cannot debate the laws he broke. You cannot say "yeah, he broke the law, but...." because then, what is the value of law? It is possible to agree with Snowden's actions while still accepting that he broke laws. As soon as you excuse the law because it doesn't "feel" right, you walk a shaky path to anarchy.

I see I am downvoted for this, but ironically it is not because I disagree with Snowden. I support what he revealed. But this article is not proper logic, in my opinion.

I think it is interesting that Snowden himself prefers to be punished for breaking these laws, and spend his life in prison, rather than live out a life in another country. He accepts that he broke laws, why doesn't everyone else? Hillary's attitude on this is not "wrong" as the article claims. If you are running for president and think that you can excuse the Espionage Act, of all laws, that to me seems like the wrong attitude.

<comment><USER17> In response to the commenters, we're talking about the Espionage Act, not jaywalking. What message does it send to excuse someone from breaking this law? It's a very important law, do we want anyone exposing national secrets? Giving him a pass on this particular law sets a dangerous precedent. I support what Snowden revealed, but why didn't he go about it legally? Can anyone provide a good reason why he didn't follow whistleblower laws?

<comment><USER18> _" What message does it send to excuse someone from breaking this law?"_

It sends a message that if, in good conscience, you believe that what we're secretly doing is wrong enough that you need to reveal it to the American people, you can do so without facing inordinate punishment.

This is the best possible message we can send! If we are going to have secret programs doing this kind of stuff, this is an important check that we're not being horrendously evil in the world.

Remember that we're not polling a random collection of people, but people who have chosen to work on this kind of thing, whose paycheck relies on accepting it, who are regularly thinking about how to make it do more good and less bad and want to believe they're being somewhat competent at that, and people who have already been extensively vetted for security access. If one of _those_ people are sufficiently concerned to raise this kind of alarm, it needs to be raised.

<comment><USER17> But somebody in good conscience could use our existing whistleblower laws to expose it right. Deliberately breaking a major law on national security isn't a risk we should recommend anyone to take.

<comment><USER19> > Clinton said that Edward Snowden could have gotten all the protections of > being a whistleblower." A key 1998 law focused on intelligence community > workers does lay out a pathway Snowden could have followed. However, there > is at least a significant legal debate over whether the issues Snowden > wanted to raise would fall under that law.

> Additionally, legal experts including an Army inspector general have said > that the 1998 law does not protect whistleblowers from reprisals.

> The protections that Clinton referenced do not seem to be as strong as she > suggested, and most of the expert opinion suggests they would not apply to > Snowden.

> We rate this claim Mostly False.

[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2015/oct/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2015/oct/14/hillary-clinton/clinton-says-nsa-leaker-snowden- failed-use-whistle/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a politician, she just reflects popular public opinion. "Right" or "wrong" is what the majority feels, unfortunately. If the public is strongly concerned about privacy, they shouldn't vote for her or likes. The headline should actually read "A majority of Americans are wrong about Edward Snowden"

<comment><USER13> We should expect leaders to lead.

Here in Canada last year the majority of the public was (according to polls, 80ish %) on side with the government's very repressive Bill C-51. The only major political party to come out against it was the NDP and all the pundits predicted disaster for them. But they made the case and campaigned it and although the bill passed parliament, the NDP in fact had a major rise in the polls and public opinion swung the other direction and the bill became very unpopular.

IHMO the reason we have political parties is to represent polarities of interests and opinions and principles and in a functional democracy the leaders within them should be making the arguments and trying to lead the public so we can hash the debate out in the public sphere.

When everybody follows the polls we sink into a quagmire of mediocrity.

<comment><USER21> And the NDP has since fallen from those heights in the polling. We (privacy concerned techies) might care about single issues, but the public doesn't (at least not our kind of issues).

<comment><USER13> Yes, that issue has vanished from the public eye for now. It was always hard to make it a focus. But is an example of good effective leadership to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Who cares if Snowden broke the law if our own country is no longer ruled by law?

I hear a lot of talk of whether Snowden should be punished or whether he should get a trial, but no talk about the punishment for the NSA. Until I see someone from the NSA going to jail for life, these kinds of questions are moot.

</comment><comment><USER23> >The exchange began with host Anderson Cooper asking Lincoln Chafee, a former governor of Rhode Island, "Governor Chafee: Edward Snowden, is he a traitor or a hero?"

The answer really should be "both." Snowden supporters readily tout his commendable whistle-blowing of unlawful domestic intelligence gathering while at the same time ignoring, denying, or outright excusing stuff like this:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached- ch...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-chinese- servers-seen-as-spy-peril.html?_r=0)

Snowden fled first to China and then afterwards to Russia with as much as a terabyte of classified information, at least some of which--specifically information concerning intelligence operations the NSA conducted against Huawei--we know for a fact he shared with them.

Even William Binney, another NSA whistle-blower (who, by contrast, did not seek asylum in two separate major geopolitical adversaries of the US), criticized Snowden's subsequent leaks:

>But now he is starting to talk about things like the government hacking into China and all this kind of thing. He is going a little bit too far. I don't think he had access to that program. But somebody talked to him about it, and so he said, from what I have read, anyway, he said that somebody, a reliable source, told him that the U.S. government is hacking into all these countries. But that's not a public service, and now he is going a little beyond public service.

> _So he is transitioning from whistle-blower to a traitor._

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowd...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden- whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/)

While Binney has since referred to Snowden as a "patriot," he has yet to publicly disavow his past criticisms of Snowden:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/william-binney-and-edward- sno...](http://www.businessinsider.com/william-binney-and-edward- snowden-2014-10?op=1)

<comment><USER24> He didn't flee to Russia, he was stopped there in transit.

<comment><USER9> You seriously believe that? You're willing to buy that explanation but not the far more reasonably alternatives?

I mean ffs, he was claiming to be going from China to South America. Via a connection that just happened to go through Moscow of all places. Even Russia initially claimed that they had no evidence of his final destination. I cannot believe how so many people are so gullible as to imagine that ending up in Russia wasn't intentional.

<comment><USER24> Yes, if I remember correctly his passport was revoked during the flight. There are not so many flights from Asia to South America, and many that do transit in Los Angeles, or other countries with extradition treaties.

Do you have any concrete info?

<comment><USER25> His passport was revoked the day before he left Hong Kong.[1]. He traveled to Russia on what turned out to be an invalid travel document issued by the Ecuadorian embassy in London [2] (same one that Julian Assange is holed up in).

[1] [http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker- snowdens...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-snowdens- passport-revoked)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/ecuador- rafael-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/ecuador-rafael- correa-snowden-mistake)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's sad that even after all this time, the diversionary topic "hero or traitor?" gets more attention than the actual issues exposed.

</comment><comment><USER21> No remotely electable candidate will have a view that differs much from Hillary. And no, L Lessig is not a remotely electable candidate, outside of our little circles of like minded activists and writers.

</comment><comment><USER27> More correctly: 'liary Clinton is wrong about everything.

And if she happens to be right, it's because polling said that was the right answer and she's lying to you to get elected.

And there seems to be more opinions saying BS won the debate "hands down" than saying HC did.

</comment><comment><USER28> Snowden took classified and sensitive information and went to 2 countries that are the major geopolitical rivals of the United States (and that probably care less about their citizens' privacy).

He claims (with no way to verify) that he did not give them any classified information. So Russia and China provided sanctuary to a member of the intelligence community without getting any classified information? Has, even the US done something like that for members ofRussia's or China's intelligence services? I find that very hard to believe.

If he had stayed in the United States, he would have had a trial. Even if convicted, I think he would have portrayed as an unequivocal patriot and with the intense pressure would have been pardoned by now. Now, he is seen as a traitor and not without cause.

<comment> vezzy-fnord _Has, even the US done something like that for members ofRussia 's or China's intelligence services?_

Yes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Soviet_intelligence_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Soviet_intelligence_personnel_who_defected_to_the_United_States)

<comment><USER29> Not that I disagree with you, but literally everyone in that list _did_ share information with the CIA.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Well, the political climate of the Russia at the time meant they were full defectors and not merely asylum seekers as in Snowden's case. Snowden hasn't actually renounced his citizenship, from what I know.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SkyDrive in Windows 8.1: Cloud storage the way it's meant to be - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/skydrive-in-windows-8-1-cloud-storage-the-way-its-meant-to-be/

<comment><USER2> Wow, this is evil.

 _The Documents library even uses the SkyDrive location as its default write location, so any file saved to the Documents library will automatically go on SkyDrive._

Most office workers won't even notice this. Any time someone hits save in Word, their document is sent directly to the NSA for review. This is like the 'url bar goes to google' problem in Chrome, but 1000x worse.

<comment><USER3> In other words: Saving a document in the Documents library means sharing it with the government.

<comment><USER4> I have been with my head under a rock lately and don't know much about this NSA stuff. So please enlighten me: is there hard proof that all or some of your SkyDrive/GoogleDrive/... documents are passed directly to the NSA? Also if you're outside the US?

<comment><USER2> It has been stated that all data - this includes SkyDrive or GoogleDrive files - is available for government agencies if a warrant is issued.

In the case of being outside the US, it has been stated that the warrant is not necessary, and any communications or data between US and non US citizens is also fair game.

There is also speculation that the NSA is legally allowed access to any data transfers going through peering points out of the US, and that internal US traffic can be diverted specifically to allow this to occur.

SkyDrive in particular is very likely to be sharing this information as any link placed into a document in SkyDrive is visited by Microsoft, and any pornography or other 'invalid' content is deleted from SkyDrive. This implies Microsoft must keep records of all files you store there and the likely content of those files, and that 'metadata' appears to be freely available for law enforcement in the USA through the PRISM and similar programs.

EDIT: In addition, it is believed that the NSA pays Microsoft for access to Skype communications, and one would assume that they would also pay for access to SkyDrive data.

<comment><USER5> _There is also speculation that....is very likely...and that 'metadata' appears to be....it is believed....and one would assume..._

Thanks for the concrete feedback. I was wondering for a sec if this was just blatant fear-mongering and imagination stretching.

<comment><USER6> Oh come on. Please, the documents Snowden revealed, _if_ true, show all of the parents comments to accurate and with no need to be hedged by "appears".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think I like the part where it mocks up your UI to look like your files have synced, but they're not actually sitting on your drive.

I've been burned enough times by "Delayed Write", where you stick a bunch of files on a USB drive, pull it out and hop in the car, while back on your machine it pops up a little box saying "Whoa! hold up! we didn't actually copy any of those files yet, even though we said we had." This seems like another version of that same idea, except this time designed to leave me without any of the music and video I'd "synced" onto my new road machine right before hopping that month-long riverboat down the Congo.

Given a choice, I think I'd prefer that my machine actually did the things with my files that I've told it to do. Copy them when I copy them, sync them when I sync them. I hope there's an option to do that here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't tried it yet but I hope the visual icons (green, blue) would help me see which files have been actually synced.

And yes, I know the USB drive scenario, I got burned myself many times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They will delete your account if you upload pornographic images. Since your data is private, the only possble reason for this policy is to make the job of spies more comfortable. The way it's meant to be.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cloud storage the way it's meant to be? Without client-side encryption support? Hmm...

BTW, can someone share the experience regarding the syncing speed? Lastly I had been evaluating both Dropbox and Skydrive, I found the DB to be quicker to upload modified files - the uploading started almost immediately, which was not the case with Skydrive.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Cloud storage the way it's meant to be" \- what a frickin joke! They should be ashamed of themselves to come up with such subjects after all that has happened!

<comment><USER11> Fair enough complaint really, but keep in mind this article is around 2 weeks old at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes, go ahead, trust Microsoft again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Asides from PRISM/privacy concerns, the integration is pretty interesting.

<comment><USER13> Well, except for the lack of Linux integration

[http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windowslive/forum/skydriv...](http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windowslive/forum/skydrive-files/when-is-skydrive-going-to-be-released-for- the/0e4d175a-3370-4e6c-8604-3db4f1b642ad)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think I'm going to write my own cloud storage app, to use Azure Storage or something, while encrypting everything on the client.

</comment><comment><USER15> Serious, snark-free question: is this a paid review by Microsoft? I've never been an Arstechnica reader but I thought they had more integrity than this.

Talking up SkyDrive is like extolling the virtues of ivory from elephant tusks. In both cases there is a horrible hidden cost.

</comment><comment><USER16> "The files themselves use the reparse point mechanism first introduced in Windows 2000. During that first sync, stub files ("reparse points") are created to mimic the directory structure stored on SkyDrive. Any operation on these files is intercepted automatically, allowing SkyDrive to download the file on-demand."

Being a long-time luser, I hadn't heard of NTFS reparse points before. Somehow, every time I read something about NTFS features, it strikes me how well thought-out that FS is, especially for its time.

<comment><USER17> Prepare for some disappointment. Reparse points weren't added until Vista, and they require admin privileges to make symlinks.

<comment><USER18> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_reparse_point](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_reparse_point)

Seems to be from Windows 2000 according to Wikipedia.

<comment><USER17> This article is a mess. It's talking about a whole variety of NTFS redirection features, but only some of them existed in 2000. It also got me confused, I should have said ' _those_ reparse points', not just 'reparse points'.

In 2000 you could make junction points but they only worked on directories. 2000 also supported multiple hard links to a single file. But what the article talks about, individual soft links for files, didn't get added until Vista. Despite it being a standard feature on filesystems going back decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm actually interested in this. I'm out of space on my Macbook Air, but I have gigabytes of photos that I'd like to be able to use with Aperture or Lightroom without using an external drive.

Has anyone tried a solution to mount an online server/drive/storage as a network drive in order to do the same things that this new SkyDrive will do?

</comment><comment><USER20> I just can't trust any big corp after the whole NSA thing. Never. Period. Unless they take some very drastic steps. This looks pretty slick, but I can never use this. I hope microsoft and others are reading this. All the recent flack has seriously damaged public image, at least in the power user world.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm just thinking, maybe the NSA should start their own cloud storage service, cut out the middle man, you see.

Think about it, free, no size or bandwidth restrictions, and if you use encryption they'll probably keep a backup for you, forever.

</comment><comment><USER22> Cloud storage should, first of all, be OS agnostic, secondly it should be content agnostic (meaning the provider doesn't review the content for compliance to its policies). Skydrive fails on both counts.

</comment><comment><USER23> RMS called this "Windows: PRISM Edition" @ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045421](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045421)

</comment><comment><USER24> Paid content the way it meant to be.

How Google Drive is less meant to be cloud storage?)</comment>