Don't Waste Time on User Onboarding - <AUTHOR> https://greaterdanorequalto.com/dont-waste-time-on-onboarding/ <comment><USER2> I get that there are probably established best practices that people follow for designing onboarding but I've never experienced one as a user that I didn't want to immediately dismiss or skip through.

<comment><USER3> Here are our stats for Polar....

Before onboarding our cohort retention was 2%...after 1 week.

This means that after a week only 2% of our users came back to use the app.

After a basic onboarding we jumped to 10%. We're now at about 14-15% (just via improving the app).

About 50% of our users completely skip the onboarding altogether.

I think I'm going to experiment with a video instead of a tour to see the difference.

<comment><USER4> > About 50% of our users completely skip the onboarding altogether.

How is this different than when you had no onboarding? (serious question) Did you make other changes that made the onboarding process less important to end users?

<comment><USER5> The glass is half full, not half empty. About 50% of users DON'T skip onboarding - and for those users, it really matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something I've noticed is a lot of companies use user onboarding and educational messages as a crutch for confusing UX and product experiences.

Many companies also have a one-size-fits-all approach to onboarding, where they send the same messages to all users, regardless of their in-product actions. Instead, it's better to trigger relevant messages if the user has taken a specific action and hasn't taken the next step to achieve Y result.

You can always send onboarding sequence to users who haven't taken any actions at all.

It should also be noted that for some established companies, a lot of their onboarding isn't necessarily to educate you but to force you to take certain actions that their testing has shown will make you active. For example, Pinterest forces you to follow certain topics when you sign up.

</comment><comment><USER7> He has one good point about user testing. The way to test a user interface is well understood, but not done enough. You have a setup to take video of the screen _and the user_ at the same time. You get some people roughly comparable to the desired user base to try it. Alone, with no help. You give them a set task to accomplish.

Then you have someone review and annotate the videos. Where did people get stuck? Where did they back up? Where did they give up? Put together a highlights reel and have the developers and managers watch it. It's usually obvious by that point what's wrong.

</comment><comment><USER8> My only point of contention after skimming through the article is with the trial period. The other side of that coin is that, if it's too short then users bookmark your site thinking they'll sign up later and forget, and if it doesn't exist then users may end up not signing up at all and going with the free option instead. In practice it really depends on the product's criticality.

<comment><USER9> Came to write this. Companies forget that their product isn't evaluated in a vacuum, that for any serious business need, a person or an group is going to evaluate multiple products for a extended period of time. Having no trial period or a very short one means losing out of business simply because of short term greed. Also, it doesn't help that psych pop is used to arbitrarily justify any conversion tactic.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an optimization problem - you lose X% of people if your trial is long enough that they don't prioritize evaluating it before it expires. You lose Y% of people if your trial is too short for them to evaluate it against competitors. If X > Y, shorten your trial. If Y > X, lengthen it.

The problem comes in the fact that it's really hard to identify what X and Y are - there's some voodoo involved in properly attributing actual reasons for not converting a trial.

This is why I like the idea of going immediately paid with a very-long money- back guarantee, though that comes with its own optimization problems.

<comment><USER8> In my mind, there's more to it than a metrics-driven optimization in isolation from the rest of the company.

In your example, the Y% of people you might lose if your trial is too short may very well turn out to be higher paying and/or lower churn customers. What you suggest in your post is the marketing equivalent of sales and support ignoring the colloquial small fry, without realizing that the latter might be sitting on company boards and referring large clients.

Also, if they bookmark the service until they can set aside a time to sign up and evaluate (which as an occasional buyer of SaaS products, I can anecdotally report that some do), you'd have no way to reach out to them and build a relationship unless they contacted you.

By contrast, if you have a free tier, and/or make it clear from the outset that when your trial expires you'll be able to do new ones when the product hits major milestones, then you have the end-user's email, you're building a relationship, you can interview the end-user to understand why they didn't convert, you can try to rescue trials that didn't move forward with a sale for a reason or another, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is great, and full of really helpful advice!

I think the best advice for me was "Add sample data to avoid an empty nest." I just realized that my product has this problem, so I'm going to be adding some sample data for new users. I think I'll also have a toggle switch so you can easily hide all the samples. (It would be annoying if you had manually delete everything.)

Concierge setup is also a great idea, and I've recently been offering that to new customers.

<comment><USER11> Instead of adding sample data when the initial view would be empty, I prefer to replace the empty view with a message about what the user should be doing first.

So instead of "0 photos" and a blank page, it could say "Get started by [uploading some photos]".

<comment><USER9> It annoys me when onboarding basically means having to delete the demo data that was automatically added because I like my apps clean and tidy, and because random data makes it difficult to discover the app's functionality my myself. Maybe there's a compromise where you can suggest to the user that they can import demo data to see the potential of the app?

<comment><USER12> When I tried Asana, they had lots of example projects you could choose to add. These showed what's possible with the more advanced features.

I really like this approach because the use case for products like these varies from one client to another. Just throwing in some demo data that's always the same wouldn't really help everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article talks about "user onboarding" as if it is different from the first run experience. Perhaps it is a SaaSy jargon to separate them. But for us at Sleek, we obsess over the first run as it is how we onboard users - until the user has gone through their use case, we assume they're new to it.

Learn by doing, not by learning.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's one of those weird terms that seems to mean different things to different people. For some, it means "first-run experience", and for some it means "the tooltip hoops you make people jump through". I think for too many, it's the latter.

But yeah, many people only _get_ a first run. You have to obsess over it, because if that doesn't work for you, it can be like pulling teeth to get people to come back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> On the other hand, if you're offering something that breaks with an established paradigm -- i.e. first-time viewers don't know what to expect, a short storyboard to clarify your model might be invaluable, and worth fussing over.

<comment><USER15> I'd venture to say that breaking UI paradigms shouldn't be taken lightly. Your application is not special to me, the user. I don't want to have to learn how to use the interface of dozens of different applications because they all thought they were special snowflakes and could break established paradigms.

<comment><USER14> I was referring to application paradigms, not common UI patterns.

<comment><USER15> What's the distinction? If a user is surprised by what happens when they interact with the UI, the UI has failed.

If we're talking about an application that requires a lot of outside knowledge (e.g. GIS (Geographic Information Systems (mapping)), accounting, video editing), you're not going to be able to "teach" the user what they need to know in the UI or some short videos.

In one case on-boarding is a symptom of a bad UI, in the other it's more-or- less useless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> But how do I get visitors in the first place, this is the first challenge. Twitter is pretty good at hiding my promotion tweets from other users...

<comment><USER17> No idea if this is common practise, but I block any account that promotes a tweet in to my timeline so I don't see it again. If it is, and you're serving a niche market with few people who'll buy from you, promoting tweets _could_ be a really bad idea.

<comment><USER18> I've heard others do this as well and I don't quite understand it. If you don't want to see ads, sure maybe use AdBlock or PiHole, but why block the company?

Not trying to put words in your mouth, but are you offended that the company spent money on a promoted tweet? That it was an overreach on their part?

<comment><USER17> _If you don 't want to see ads, sure maybe use AdBlock or PiHole, but why block the company?_

Blocking the company stops the tweet appearing _everywhere_ I see tweets. That's on my home computer, laptop, Chromebook, office computer, my phone, etc. It continues to block the ads from that company if/when Twitter work out ways around ad-blockers. And it makes me feel like I'm proactively looking after my account.

I use ad blockers as well.

 _are you offended that the company spent money on a promoted tweet?_

I just find that Twitter promotes the same tweets over and over again, so if you don't block them it gets very repetitive. If I was actually offended I'd reply first so they had to pay for an engagement as well as the promotion.

<comment><USER19> I don't want to see ads, _ever_. I hope a growing number of people feel the same way.

I don't care about the business model of the whole internet. It is obviously a house of cards. A business model based on bad UX? I hope it collapses.

No, I don't know what will replace it. I don't care, as long as it doesn't involve ads.

I really don't care if the ads are innocuous or labeled or relevant. I don't _ever_ want to see an unsolicited nudge to spend money on something. _Ever_. I can't be any more clear than this. I hope there are more like me every day.

<comment><USER20> I completely agree.

I don't care if your ad is clever, relevant, organically sourced, environmentally friendly, necessary for financing your product, something I actually want, need, or didn't know I wanted yet.

The internet is plagued with this cancer everywhere you go, no matter what you do. Somehow it's become acceptable that every second of our attention and time is competed for by corporations trying to sell us things.

I simply do not want to see ads, ever.

<comment><USER21> I don't understand this overreaction. Ads are there, so what, they don't even make noise or tend to cover parts of the screen like they used to.

<comment><USER22> You need to look at what powers the ads.

It's never "just" an ad. Like the way you see an ad in a newspaper. It's the spyware that comes with it and the fact that tons of them are animated!

And yes, I consider it spyware and virus-like behaviour to track me wherever I go and I will actively do what I can to stop it. Even if it means you don't get paid... you chose that seedy medium to make money, not me. It's not my job to validate your business model.

By all means block me. I will go elsewhere.

Browsing the internet without an ad blocker is actually impossible for me now... whenever I rebuild a machine I have those few hours or so before I get the ad blocker installed where the internet is a horrific assault on the senses with everything trying to steal my attention away from the thing I am there to see and slowing down the page load (significantly in some cases)

I still remember when plenty of the internet was running fine from hobbyists and whatnot without resorting to ads and tracking... it costs practically zero to run a website (granted, at scale it's a whole other ball-game but how many people have that problem?)

The internet would survive fine without ads. It would have a different mix of behemoths and hobbyists sites but it would survive just fine.

That being said... I do remember trying to punch the monkey to win :D

Edit: added stuff for clarity

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was a bit sceptical when I read the title, but the author raises a good point about calcifying users into suboptimal ux decisions.

Wofkflow breaking UI changes are always hard and there's always someone whose use case [you're breaking]([https://xkcd.com/1172](https://xkcd.com/1172)). Then again, you can't please everyone and it might hurt to stick with older decisions.

Onboarding itself is extremely valuable. No application is so self explanatory that everyone gets it without a guide. When should you onboard then? I'd say when you're sure that you're not doing any major changes within the next few months.

All UIs can and should be iterated upon and it helps if you have a timeline on when you're upgrading which views and components and it'll help you decide when to launch the initial onboarsing process.

<comment><USER15> > Onboarding itself is extremely valuable.

As a user, I find them extremely annoying. They stop me from achieving what I want to achieve and I try to get rid of them as quickly as possible. I also find them as the hallmark of a bad UI -- if you have to tell me how to use your product, then it's not well designed.

<comment><USER24> > if you have to tell me how to use your > product, then it's not well > designed.

VIM users, licensed drivers, and pilots would disagree. Powerful tools require training. If you're pushing an app that I'm already familiar with before I've ever used it, then you are obviously not innovating.

<comment><USER25> As VIM user, a licensed driver, and a pilot, I would like to point out that there's a huge difference in risk of death and injury between those.

Learning vim can be done quite safely by trial and error, then googling for how to do specific things when interested. The other two, not so much.

So unless you're product has a risk of death or severe injury then I will agree that it shouldn't need training.

About planes. Unlike cars, they don't have a standard cockpit layout which leads to lots of bad design In my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Don't waste too much time on user on boarding, but putting some time towards user on boarding is good exercise to see if your product is understandable and are any holes that may off put users.

</comment><comment><USER27> It has it's place for the right use case. Superhuman requires you to go through a 30 minute on-boarding one on one with a person. Superhuman isn't the most intuitive if you don't take the time to learn it as it's efficiencies come from keyboard shortcuts and features that differ from established email norms. For this kind of B2B app with a certain level complexity a seamless on- boarding makes all the difference. I never would have use the app long term if not for the process.

</comment><comment><USER28> While the article has done good points about what to do instead of an on- boarding, I'd also suggest on-boarding can be good for the user. Video games tend to do on-boarding, and often it's not skippable and covers very basic idioms (use the left stick/WASD to move).

The difference I think it's the novelty of the new environment and a sense of accomplishment that it rarely is a chore. So go ahead and on-board if the user gets to see something very cool.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you need to create on-boarding your product is to complicated. Add features over time, measure there impact and remove them if they don't work.

<comment><USER30> I disagree. there are products that are complicated, because the underlying problem your product helps to solve is complicated. And if there are existing solutions that tackle this problems differently to you, you might have to give users a pointer.

If you e.g. design a software for electronic circuit design, good user on- boarding will allow you to highlight specifically why your product shines in comparison to other products.

Another objection: some "products" are specifically meant to work for power users and a increased software complexity can increase the working speed and power you give to the user at the cost of making it harder for new users (e.g. vim for text editing).

Of course if your product is the equivalent of a egg timer, it should be 100% self explainatory. And even if you do a electronic circuit design software it is always good to keep things self explainatory where you can.

But sometimes you have to explain things in order to equip your users with a new, innovative and powerful concept they might never heard about before. Removing that concept to avoid complexity could them be akin to changing your target group. You can fl this, but it needs to fit the concept.

Oh and sometimes you can just do both. Give your app an expert mode.

<comment><USER31> Do you honestly believe you can onboard someone to electronic circuit design software, by having a bunch of annoying modal boxes popping up showing you where some key features are? I agree there is complicated software, but that isn't made less complicated by silly onboarding. And if your software is not complicated, you're just pissing people off having to click away from all that junk. If it's not complicated, but confusing, that's a UI design issue that will not be solved by a 3 minute intro.

<comment><USER30> So you take the idea of on-boarding in it's most horrible manifestation and use it as a argument against the fundamental idea of introducing users to new concepts within the software they are using?

<comment><USER32> Is that really the most horrible manifestation or a typical onboarding experience in practice?

Most of the onboarding I've seen clearly has some real thought put into it, but it still _feels_ modal.

They usually involve widgets that pop up and must be dismissed. Often they pretend to not be modal by not covering the screen, but I assume I have to chase them down and make them go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> One of my favorite resources for onboarding is Samuel Hulick's [https://www.useronboard.com/](https://www.useronboard.com/)

His teardowns are particularly valuable to see how others do things and what does and doesn't work. Plus they're entertaining.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely an inspiration of mine. If anything, my only quibble is that he doesn't go far enough. I'm working on a similar series, except I'm examining the entire Trial-to-Paid flow, from the moment you sign up to the moment you convert, including lifecycle emails, payment flow, etc. Takes a while to do, though, since you usually have a month or more before the email cycle is exhausted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Don't waste time on writing an article about introducing new members either. just go immediately into another customer manifesto. I appreciate that the customer has to be the focus, but this article was a bit bait and switch, and didn't give any time to the legitimate issues of growing a startup team.

</comment><comment><USER35> Strange title for an article analyzing onboarding.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is terrible advice. And Click bait.

I'm fact the article gives a lists several things you should do to onboard customers.</comment>


HPE Drive fail at 32,768 hours without firmware update - <AUTHOR> https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-a00092491en_us <comment><USER3> Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Just seven years ago Crucial sold tens of thousands of their "M4" SSDs with a firmware bug that made them fail after 5184 hours: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/5424/crucial-provides- a-firmw...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/5424/crucial-provides-a-firmware- update-for-m4-to-fix-the-bsod-issue)

Do they still not test these things with artificially incremented counters?

<comment><USER4> Boeing didn't even test their 787 aircraft for integer overflows, and that's in a safety-critical environment, so I'm not sure I'd expect SSD vendors to be any better.

[https://www.engadget.com/2015/05/01/boeing-787-dreamliner- so...](https://www.engadget.com/2015/05/01/boeing-787-dreamliner-software- bug/)

Not that throwing an exception on integer overflow is any better, unless you catch the exception. The classic example here is the Ariane 5 failure:

[http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/Ariane5accidentreport.html](http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/Ariane5accidentreport.html)

<comment><USER5> This same problem also led to the loss of the Deep Impact spacecraft on its extended mission:

"On September 20, 2013, NASA abandoned further attempts to contact the craft.[77] According to chief scientist A'Hearn,[78] the reason for the software malfunction was a Y2K-like problem. August 11, 2013, 00:38:49, was 232 tenth-seconds from January 1, 2000, leading to speculation that a system on the craft tracked time in one-tenth second increments since January 1, 2000, and stored it in an unsigned 32-bit integer, which then overflowed at this time, similar to the Year 2038 problem"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Impact_(spacecraft)#Conta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Impact_\(spacecraft\)#Contact_lost_and_end_of_mission)

<comment><USER6> Your superscript got eaten. 2^32

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> According to this page, the SMART hour counter is only 16 bits, and rollover should be harmless:

[http://www.stbsuite.com/support/virtual-training- center/powe...](http://www.stbsuite.com/support/virtual-training-center/power- on-hours-rollover)

If you look elsewhere on the Internet, you'll find people with very old and working HDDs that have rolled over, so I suspect this bug is limited to a small number of drives.

(What that page says about not being able to reset it is... not true.)

Likewise, I'm skeptical of "neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered" \--- they just want you to buy a new one.

Tangentially related, I wonder how many modern cars will stop working once the odometer rolls over.

<comment><USER8> >Likewise, I'm skeptical of "neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered"

If the firmware crashes during boot with negative hour counter, it probably could be only fixed by manually flashing new firmware over JTAG.

<comment><USER7> ...and likely some of the data recovery companies already know about and are prepared for this.

<comment><USER9> $500 ~ $1k for a JTAG flash. I'm sure they have plenty of other drives that come in and they price at $1k but that take days longer than expected, so it probably all balances itself out eventually.

<comment><USER10> Or they swap boards and you eventually end up with the same problem...

<comment><USER11> In an SSD the board is the drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since most drives are started and used concurrently this bug would blow any RAID set up. There's a dark day coming for some sysadmins.

<comment><USER12> This is why I never use drives from the same batch, ideally never the same model, and usually not the same manufacturer. It happens way too regularly that drives start failing around the same time.

<comment><USER13> > I never use drives from the same batch

Note that it wouldnțt help in this instance, as the bug is caused by the amount of time a drive was running. Different manufacturers would work, yes.

<comment><USER12> That's true. But it's easier to sell people on avoiding mixing batches, and it catches the most common reliability issues. I'd never personally trust my own files to drives from a single manufacturer, though - I've seen too many problems with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > HPE was notified by a Solid State Drive (SSD) manufacturer [...]

That's a curious bit of context. It seems to imply they're shifting some of the blame onto their manufacturer? I makes me wonder if this firmware is 100% HPE specific, or if there a 2^16 hours bug about to bite a bunch of other pipelines.

<comment><USER15> This is a _2^15_ hours bug, not a 2^16 hours bug. Odds are, somewhere in the SSD firmware source code, there's a missing "unsigned". And in the Makefile, probably a missing "-Wextra".

<comment><USER16> Using signed integers for values that are always positive isn't necessarily a mistake. Most notably because for signed integers (in C and C++) overflow is undefined behavior. This allows for more aggressive optimizations by the compiler.

Some advice I've read is to only use unsigned integers if you want to explicitly opt-in to having overflow be defined behavior.

<comment><USER17> > Some advice I've read is to only use unsigned integers if you want to > explicitly opt-in to having overflow be defined behavior.

I read somewhere that the true reason for that advice is that it allows the compiler to silently store an "int" loop counter in a 64-bit register, without having to care about 32-bit overflow. If you use size_t for the loop counter, that's no longer an issue.

<comment><USER18> I haven't seen an example where that's the case.

It commonly factors in loop analysis around unrolling and vectorization, e.g. the loop will run exactly 16*n times OR an integer will overflow and it'll run some other number of times.

Use of signed precludes the overflow and the exact bound enables efficient vectorization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >The issue affects SSDs with an HPE firmware version prior to HPD8 that results in SSD failure at 32,768 hours of operation (i.e., 3 years, 270 days 8 hours). After the SSD failure occurs, neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered. In addition, SSDs which were put into service at the same time will likely fail nearly simultaneously.

Looks like some sort of run time stored in a signed 2 byte integer. Oops.

<comment><USER20> But how does that brick the device? I guess the hour counter overflows, goes negative and that screws up a calculation later on, causing the firmware to crash (over and over again..)

If only SSD vendors would do the usual cost-cutting measure of loading firmware from the host computer, this could be trivially fixed.

<comment><USER21> Please no. I may actually want to boot from one of those devices.

<comment><USER22> Somewhere in the UEFI kitchensink there certainly is firmware loading support already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Would be nice if the standard firmware update mechanism on Linux (fwupd/LVFS) could be used for HPE products.

[https://fwupd.org/lvfs/vendors/](https://fwupd.org/lvfs/vendors/) [https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devices/](https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devices/)

<comment><USER24> This so much. Even if you hate uefi with the fire of a thousand suns, there are some good things there. Like GPT, and the UEFI capsule thing that fwupd uses.

<comment><USER25> HP actually has a working firmware update mechanism for all their gear. Its a bootable Linux liveDVD that starts into a browser talking to a local Tomcat instance which applies necessary patches. For many cases its also possible to invoke patching from your normal Linux installation. However, a reboot is mostly still necessary, e.g. for disk firmware which the controller applies after its own new firmware has been loaded (sometimes takes more than one reboot).

The system is quite a lot older than fwupd and less flakey usually. Google for hpsum or HP SPP

<comment><USER24> Yes, hpsum / SPP is what we use now. Not happy about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ouch. I wonder how many non-enterprise SSD's come with similar bugs, _and_ zero support by the firmware vendor.

<comment><USER27> > neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered

It looks like such a bug isn't necessarily SSD specific if it completely bricks the drive.

And while 32.768 hours may seem like a long time for a drive, it's under 4 years of continuous operation. Not unheard of if used in a NAS.

<comment><USER26> > It looks like such a bug isn't necessarily SSD specific if it completely > bricks the drive.

Maybe. OTOH, plenty of people have been running spinning rust drives with way more than 4 years of power-on operation - if this bricking bug was common there, I'm pretty sure we would've noticed. SSD's are a newer tech and it's more common to replace them anyway as specs improve.

<comment><USER28> There was actually a similar drive-bricking bug in the SMART implementation of some of Seagate's hard drives about a decade ago. Not quite as deterministic as this one, but essentially uptime-dependant. After denying it for a while, they finally fessed up once a member of the public figured out that affected drives could be unbricked by connecting over the serial debug interface and wiping the SMART log. They ended up offering firmware updates and free unbricking of affected drives at their cost including shipping to their facility. (I don't think the unbricking process was terribly easy either - <USER2> publicly-known version required booting the drive with the heads disconnected from the controller to stop it from reading the data, or it'd get stuck in an infinite loop and not respond on serial.)

<comment><USER29> I have one of these drives. Apparently a model that the known procedure doesn't work on. I'll never buy a shitty Seagate product again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Whatever the counter is, the fact that it's 32,768 instead of 65,536 suggests they used a _signed int_ for something that presumably starts at zero and increases monotonically... Avoiding just that mistake would've given them twice as much time - nearly 7.5 years - which seems like it'd be longer than these drives would typically last anyway.

<comment><USER31> It would have avoided the problem in the first place because the SMART counter is allowed to roll over back to 0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Amazing. A repeat of the "Windows 95 crashes after 48 days uptime" and other timer rollover bugs.

<comment><USER33> I've always appreciated the humor of the fact that Win95 was so unstable that no one noticed this bug until years later.

<comment> kube-system It also used to be very common for people to turn off their computers when they were done using them.

<comment><USER34> Yup. Those were power-hungry times, without deep sleep modes, or even _useful_ hibernation. Heck, most machines then didn't even bother to reduce clock speed when idle.

<comment><USER35> "It is now safe to turn off this computer"

I remember when I saw my first ATX computer, and it turned itself off. That was cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I just want to know how many of these failed at 32768 hours before they had their oh sh*t moment.

<comment><USER37> Beats me but I happen to have a fleet of HP SATA (not SAS) drives and they just crossed this boundary, 32813 power on hours typical. I guess if their SATA firmware had this bug I'd be having a bad week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> >By disregarding this notification and not performing the recommended resolution, the customer accepts the risk of incurring future related errors.

How is this work legally? For one, how would HPE prove that the customer read the bulletin? I don't imagine they're sending these out via certified mail.

</comment><comment><USER39> At the hospital where I work, almost all HP desktops crashed within a few months...

<comment><USER40> This is for HPE (not HP, which is now a separate company). I haven't heard anything about HP (who makes desktops not storage arrays) experiencing this problem.

<comment><USER41> Considering 900 drives out of 1800 crashed in HP computers at a Swedish hospital in the last few months I suspect there is a connection.

Maybe HP and HPE were more tightly connected 3 years, 270 days 8 hours ago.

<comment><USER40> All of the impacted devices in this issue are SAS-connected enterprise-class SSDs. While it's not _impossible_ that someone installed a SAS controller and used SSDs that can cost upwards of 10x the price of an equivalent-capacity desktop model using SATA... it's probably pretty unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Probably related to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21471997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21471997)

</comment><comment><USER43> I did some recon on eBay looking for used units w/ the affected SKUs for sale and they appear to be Samsung units.

</comment><comment><USER44> Whew, dodged that bullet, looks like I'm not using any of the affected drives. Lucky me, for now.

</comment><comment><USER45> Yikes! This is why when I built my home NAS I used five different drives and manufacturers.</comment>


"Apps may facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies" - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/approval/guidelines.html "11.17 Apps may facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided that they do so in compliance with all state and federal laws for the territories in which the app functions" <comment><USER2> This document reads like an enumerated list of why the web is better than apps for most things. Unfortunately, apps will likely prevail until OS producers work directly to empower the mobile web.

<comment><USER3> Indeed.

It also contains a severe condescending tone how 'big daddy' is doing all this for our own well being. And of course, think of all the children!

<comment><USER4> It's a blaming tone. "And we think that you will also know it when you cross it." is a statement that will assuredly not be true for everyone whom they believe 'crossed a line'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh how blessed are we that the landlords allow such mischief...

Seriously people are pissing themselves all over with these announcements as if they weren't possible before.

<comment><USER6> > Oh how blessed are we that the landlords allow such mischief...

That's a fantastic quote! I couldn't find it via DDG, Yahoo and Google. Is that original to you? It really resonates with me.

<comment><USER5> I may have heard it somewhere so I can't claim originality but it came out of my head at the time in a sarcastic rage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Section 11.17

> Apps may facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided > that they do so in compliance with all state and federal laws for the > territories in which the app functions

<comment><USER7> > "of approved virtual currencies"

... which begs the question: Are there _approved_ virtual currencies? I'd also be curious whether litecoin is on that list as well.

<comment><USER8> So largely the US is out since the Fed said Bitcoin is not a currency, right? Or the term "virtual" makes it not required to be approved by the Fed? Who is the approver then?

<comment><USER7> > _So largely the US is out since the Fed said Bitcoin is not a currency, > right?_

I guess I missed that. I remember the IRS said bitcoin would be taxed using non-currency rules, but the specifics of how something is taxed doesn't necessarily impact whether Apple "approves" it as a virtual currency.

<comment><USER8> I wasn't even criticizing Bitcoin and got downvoted already? Aww..

I was talking about this, which amounts to almost the same thing:

[http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/02/27/yellen-on- bitcoin-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/02/27/yellen-on-bitcoin-fed- doesnt-have-authority-to-regulate-it-in-any-way/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> OT, but: "We have lots of serious developers who don't want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour."

Really? Searching for "fart" in the app store just returned 969 results. Give me a break.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, they do mention this issue:

 _2.11 Apps that duplicate Apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them, such as fart, burp, flashlight, and Kama Sutra Apps_

<comment><USER11> > _2.11 Apps that duplicate Apps already in the App Store may be rejected, > particularly if there are many of them, such as fart, burp, flashlight, and > Kama Sutra Apps_

Interesting. It looks like Apple may be trying to clean up the market by encouraging devs to consolidate these critical functions in one app

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Spoiler: The only approved currency is Dogecoin.

<comment><USER13> To the moon!

Seriously though, I'm a little surprise to see Apple do this. It will be interesting to see if they actually _approve_ any currency, or if this is just a hedge they can use to keep Bitcoin (etc.) apps out of the store but let you trade EBay Bucks and Linden Dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Title changed from "Apple now allows Bitcoin-transmitting apps" because the article does not mention Bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER11> It appears that this bitcoin wallet app, which the developer previously announced was being removed by Apple, was quietly reinstated in the iTunes store sometime recently.

(I only say "appears" because it's hard to know if and when it was removed.) Anyway, the app's features do now include 'Send and receive payments'

[https://blog.coinjar.com/2014/01/09/coinjar-wallet-to-be- rem...](https://blog.coinjar.com/2014/01/09/coinjar-wallet-to-be-removed-from- app-store/)

[https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/coinjar-for- iphone/id7252098...](https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/coinjar-for- iphone/id725209873)

<comment><USER11> The same app is about to become available in Apple's app stores in Europe and parts of Asia (no US, though)

So it now seems even more likely that there this is a real shift in policy and Apple is considerably more positive toward bitcoin payment apps now: [http://reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/276w8l/just_sent_some_b...](http://reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/276w8l/just_sent_some_btc_from_my_iphone_with_the/chxyq5l)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Combined with these clauses, You clearly can't use virtual currencies to purchase in-app items, but you possibly could use them to buy real-world items and also other virtual currencies?

11.2 Apps utilizing a system other than the In-App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an App will be rejected 11.3 Apps using IAP to purchase physical goods or goods and services used outside of the App will be rejected

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone have historical snapshots of this document for comparison with previous statements about virtual currencies? The Wayback machine appears to only have redirects to the developer login page here. This is being presented as a change, but without a previous version I don't see how we can consider it one -- the language might be unchanged but have been interpreted strictly by the review process, for example by defining "approved" very narrowly.

Off-topic, but I notice that the guidelines prohibit buttons for external purchase of in-app content, but as I recall, they used to prohibit buttons for external purchase of any digital content; why is why the Amazon app could not sell Kindle versions of books. I would be curious to see whether there is a change in policy or if Amazon was either being overly cautious or the restrictions were being applied more severely than a literal reading would indicate.

<comment><USER17> This post has some text of rejections from Apple in the past: [https://blog.gli.ph/2013/12/09/the-state-of-bitcoin- mobile-a...](https://blog.gli.ph/2013/12/09/the-state-of-bitcoin-mobile- applications-in-the-app-store-and-google-play/)

They used the generic "this is not legal in all jurisdictions" clause.

<comment><USER18> So it depends on which stores you submit the app to? Makes sense – and should be relatively easy to figure out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What about flattr? Apple denied podcast apps that had a flattr button before... is this now ok again as well?

<comment><USER20> That might have been banned for making an in-app purchase without giving Apple their cut.

<comment><USER19> No, flattr cannot be used for in-app purchases. The idea behind flattr is that you voluntarily honor a podcast (or some other work that somebody has created and put online) by putting them on your personal list of people that will get a fraction of some amount you decided to donate at the end of the month.

The key concepts being "voluntarily donate" and "not a fixed amount", which differentiates flattr completely from in-app-purchases.

Apple was apparently uncomfortable with such a strange concept that it could not bring into line with its capitalistic mindset, and promptly banned it.

Sad to hear that Apple hasn't changed its mind on this front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Would it suffice at _all_ for Apple to make the same assertions over your financial practices using say, a browser that runs on OS X?

I'm going to ruminate on this one a bit but I don't like it.

</comment><comment><USER22> "...with all state and federal laws for the territories in which the app functions"

Total United States Bitcoin companies that meet this criterion: zero.

</comment><comment><USER23> What I found interesting was the style of this document. This is much less formal than what I would expect front Apple, it's sort of jarring ... "brace yourselves" ... I doubt this would have gotten through in days of old.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is no mention of Bitcoin in this document. The title should be corrected.

</comment><comment><USER25> Time to spend the next 24 hours hacking on a Bitcoin app. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER26> Flappy Coin: You pledge a small amount of imaginary money before launching a game. For each gate you fly through, the sum gets smaller. The longer you manage to play, the less money you lose. Target 14 year olds with "Bitcoin YOLO, are you cool enough to gamble?" Teaches them how Kevin's negative funny fail record from a week ago is nothing to boast about because the bubble burst and he only lost 2 cents, not 5 dollars. LOL, what a wanker!

<comment> slipstream- fun fact: there's already an altcoin called flappycoin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Someone should resubmit their bitcoin app and see if it passes this time.

</comment><comment><USER28> The coinpocket html5 web app renders this issue moot.

</comment><comment><USER29> "If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps."

subtitles: "do not exercise your 1st amendment rights or else."

<comment><USER30> 1st amendment rights only apply to the government.

<comment><USER31> And government grants corporate charters. They, and we need to remember this fact.

And, corporations can be unmade as a punishment.

<comment><USER30> Do you have a legal precedent to point to? The Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the constitution) didn't even apply to state governments until the 14th amendment.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Ri...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights)

<comment><USER32> > Do you have a legal precedent to point to?

For revoking corporate charter? Every jurisdiction which grants them also already reserves the power to revoke them. E.g., Delaware: [http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/decode/8/1/X/284](http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/decode/8/1/X/284)

<comment><USER30> For revoking a corporate charter for violating a customer or partner's 1st amendment rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Cryptocurrency" is a misnomer. Bitcoin is an asset and even its biggest supporters agree with that. "Cryptoasset" \- yes, "virtual currency" \- no.

</comment><comment><USER34> Bitcoin isn't a "virtual currency," it's a "digital currency." "Virtual" means "simulated." Money in video games is "virtual currency."

<comment><USER32> > Bitcoin isn't a "virtual currency," it's a "digital currency."

Maybe to you, but not to, e.g., the US Department of Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). See definitions at: [http://fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001....](http://fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html)

The FinCEN definition is probably more widely used than whatever rule you are using that excludes Bitcoin as a virtual currency.

<comment><USER34> FinCEN is incorrect. Go look up the definition and history of the word "virtual." And I've been making this point since before FinCEN started caring about bitcoin.

I don't know if you understand that the government does not create truth.

<comment><USER32> > FinCEN is incorrect.

No, they aren't.

> Go look up the definition and history of the word "virtual."

Even if that supported your argument (which it doesn't, see next paragraph), it wouldn't matter, because the meanings of phrases aren't necessarily determined by the meanings and/or history of the component words in isolation.

But FinCEN's definition of "virtual currency" _is_ consistent with the common definition of "virtual". Their definition of "virtual currency" is exactly the #1 definition of virtual [1] applied to the uncontroversial definition of "currency". (And calling Bitcoin virtual currency would _also_ be consistent with definition #4, particularly definition #4a, though some non-electronic entities that would meet FinCEN's definition would be excluded by that definition.)

> And I've been making this point since before FinCEN started caring about > bitcoin.

You being wrong for a long time doesn't make you any less wrong.

> I don't know if you understand that the government does not create truth.

I don't know if you understand that legal definitions established by government _do_ create _meanings_ that are used in legal documents such as contracts, terms of service, etc., whether or not they are "truth" in some abstract, idealized sense.

[1] from: [http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/virtual](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/virtual)

<comment><USER34> In what sense is bitcoin NOT a currency?

It has to not be a currency to be a virtual currency, by the definition you favor.

Any answer I can imagine that you would give would invalidate other things we all consider currencies, unless you draw a line based on non-fundamental properties (e.g. such as backing by government force or market cap). And you can't form a proper concept using non-fundamental properties.

So the definition you favor actually supports my view, though I think the definition you favor lacks appropriate context and nuance (which is often true of dictionary definitions).

Talking about the government defining something creating meaning is just irrelevant. You're obviously telling me things I already know, but the government is technically incorrect on this. Just as they are on calling capital gains "unearned income," for example, since many successful investors work hard and do earn their income.

<comment><USER35> > It has to not be a currency to be a virtual currency, by the definition you > favor.

incorrect.

<comment><USER34> > being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted

Here is the definition he favors, it has to be not formally recognized or admitted as a currency to fit this definition.

I shouldn't even have bothered responding to such a worthless comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Help me propose to my girlfriend - <AUTHOR> https://helpmepropose.live <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! I'm excited to share this website with you all. It's very important to me (obviously), and anything you could do to share it with friends/family/whoever would really mean a lot. (If it doesn't pick up steam then it goes from being a romantic gesture to just being sad.)

Feedback and questions are more than welcome. <3</comment>


Ask HN: Hire Us? - <AUTHOR>
 We are a small group of engineers out of Paris. We are expert at cloud costing and handling the large infrastructure. We are about to start our consultancy service. I would like to take help of the hackernews community to get the first few clients. We can help with hosting, cloud costing, web development, search engines, scaling issues or normal devops stuff. We will soon launch our website as well. We are quite flexible with our pricing and contracts :)<p>Feel free to reach out to me on this email id - email@example.com <comment><USER2> There's a reason the previous post from 30min ago got flagged: job posts are against the guidelines. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) Feel free to add yourself to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797592)</comment>


Justin didn't invent WinAmp (2004) - johnx123-up http://betanews.com/2004/11/10/death-knell-sounds-for-nullsoft-winamp/#comment-291693861

<comment><AUTHOR> Somehow his post doesn't inspire any trust. It's like hearing a drug addict tripping...

<comment> johnx123-up I think, he's responded to the article [http://betanews.com/2004/11/10/death- knell-sounds-for-nullso...](http://betanews.com/2004/11/10/death-knell-sounds- for-nullsoft-winamp/)

</comment></comment><comment> johnx123-up Actual text:

 _mewse 9 years ago

When you read this, please understand, that this is by any means no complain, but expression of my emotions trying to bring some truth to the internet community about events that took place which have been hidden from public. Although, this may read as some sort of conspiracy, this is a true story, how history really happened.

Let me begin stating that my life for the past 5 years was hell.

Truth is, Justin didn't invent WinAmp. Actually Justin Frankel is a liar, but he paid me (Dmitry Boldyrev) off to not say anything. The reason why I had to take the gag and not bring the case, which I intended to do at the time, was because I was poisoned (but who did it? hmmmmmm good question, I am still trying to figure that one out) and couldn't deal with court proceedings. For the past five years I was in hawaii trying to deal with the poison, breathing it out of my body. Try day long meditations, Mr Frankel, maybe it will bring you a better understanding of the world surrounding you. Or I guess you're not interested in the truth, the money has blinded you completely. Sure, having few millions in the trust account you probably have a different view on the world.

I would like to share what I have done with the money that I received from the miniscule settlement that I received.

1) Started a vegan restaurant in Hawaii, which was rated #1 by PeTA this year

2) Helped many musicians

What do you have to show for your millions, Mr Frankel? Yes, we've heard about your love for cars. Is this best you can do? Lets not mention your guitar playing skills, because I dont know how many people are laughing behind your back.

Before I begin, I'd like to introduce the reader to the fact that I am very sad for this country, and result of its so called elections. It just shows to me that democracy isn't happening here. The result of my history of events that took place in my life, I am starting to question, the very reason why AOL bought WinAmp. My realization led me to believe that AOL needed WinAmp to establish control over media on the internet, music media and radio media in particular. I've met a guy (right hand man of Steve Case @ AOL) Dave Cole?, nice guy actually. Interesting, at his lecture he kept referring to people as software, maybe he needs a break from his work and learn to understand people on more personal level.

As I was so closely involved, nobody even asked me about Nullsoft sale to AOL. I guess they never considered me anything more than a stupid russian who we can fuck over as much as possible. But personally, I always considered myself a 50% cofounder of Nullsoft (any thoughts on this, Mr Frankel?). So is this the American tactic that we keep hearing about, invite people from other countries, rip off their ideas, enslave them, use their ideas and talant to make money, and then take it off shores to further enslave everyone around? Long live WTO?

So, now to the story: what TRUELY happened with the whole WinAmp thing.

I met Justin Frankel at CADE lab at University of Utah in mid 1997 where we both attended engineering school. He was at the time interested in computer graphics, working on Plush 3d gfx engine. Goruraud shading, nothing too fancy. I guess it was quite fast. I was an old-skool music demo coder person. In 1989 I discovered Scream Tracker for PC, which inspired me to write music software, and ever since I've been amazed by computer music, which led me to creation of first gui mp3 player-MacAmp. Beforehand, I wrote many other music-players (for PC and Mac), like MacMikMod, DSM player, MusEd and so on. I've been programming music editors and players since my x286 in DOS in 1988. I had to switch to Mac because of my boss, professor of chemistry Jack Simons, where I worked at the time, who was a big Mac head. I am thankful to him eternally! As much as I like Windows (which is probably not true ;) I think Mac is just a better platform. Funny, I was just at my friend's ISP place, where he'd fix virus problem for all the PCs. There was quite a few of them lined up. Heh eh :)

I introduced Justin to my project MacAmp and suggested he made windows version out of it. Him and I were friends back then. Eating dry ramen, college students, what more to say. Until that point, when it became clear that big money was going to be involved. Quickly (with help of his father, Blake Frankel who recently changed his name, just in case? who was a lawyer) I was "nicely" thrown out of company, like I was never even a part of it. Nice plot. Sure it's easy to fuck somebody over when they are only in the country for five years and whose parents, are actually distinguished scientists from Russia, who had absolutely no sense of business. School of hard knocks? I remember going around telling people at chemistry department that mp3 is going to be future of music, and everyone laffed saying they already happy with CDs. If you ask me, I have a Technics MK3D sitting next to me. Nothing beats LP mastering ;) and I am starting to like CDs again. ;)

At some point I suggested that we make mp3 radio out of MacAmp and WinAmp, he of course understood what I was talking about, but didn't implement it until it was safe to do so.

I even know that Nullsoft sent out spies into Napster, which later resulted in creation of Gnutella. I know Shawn, and everyone involved in Napster in early days, and they know. I talked to them on the phone, they called me and told me the story.

If you doubt this, ask creator of unix code Amp, Tomislav Uzelac, who actually had to sue Justin to prove that Nitrane was AMP based, which Justin said it wasn't.

What about countless hours of time my friend Tima spent supporting WinAmp at early days? Did you help him out? After all he was the inventor of the WinAmp's moto ("It really whips the Llama's ass").

Reason why I am writing this, is because I am finally better, yes I have a lot of anger in me, still, which I'd like to let go. And best of all I don't give a shit anymore, I am going to talk, and this is my public statement. I am going to post this everywhere I find a lie mentioned. We can't continue lying, if we do, we'll destroy ourselves and our world. This is my FINAL realization.

You want to ask me why I created MacAmp and WinAmp? I didn't create it for five majors (record companies) to take their music oppression, which we've been hearing in the stores for a decade (same shit) online and sell it. I created it to free music completely, help mind evolve and awaken everyone's emotions (what government doesn't want us to have apparently or why can't we gather and celebrate life together without alcohol?). I am not here to say that Nullsoft is bad or not, whever they did more good or bad, but to state what kind of people they are, and by far not heros they proclaim to be. Unfortunately for me, my health was compromised, and I was unable to carry on my mission. Sorry world. Although I still have a lot of anger towards these guys. Despite this, I would like to acknowledge the hard work of Justin Frankel and Tom Pepper, they are great programmers, and wished, they were better people, and for the record: they didn't invent the idea like they claim it. BTW, I don't know why Tom Pepper has so much anger towards me.

C'mon man, you made $10mil out of the deal for hosting (winamp.com) website and writing a tiny little server application.

And Robert Lord, what's up with all this sabotage with macamp.com domain. You people are... I have no words for you. Make money and sink a sick person down the drain. Would you do that to your own mother too if you could make money off it?

Do you people realize WHERE you live? Maybe you should.

In the end, I invite the reader to refresh on an article on cnn I gave interview for stating about freedom of music.

[http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9803/26/saltzman_mp3/index...](http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9803/26/saltzman_mp3/index.html)

Thank you for your time reading this, I know it's a bit long, and formatting might be a bit off.

May love fill our lifes and may god(s) help us reunite and bring peace! This is why I am making this post. To resolve my anger towards gods who created this situation for me, to teach me something? I will continue to trust, and have faith in humanity, as I've ever done.

So now that I feel better, I'd like to send my love to all my friends who helped me through hardest years of my life, I love you! You know who you are.

Dmitry, the inventor of MacAmp and WinAmp._</comment>


WordPress download server is a SPOF for 26% of top 10M websites - <AUTHOR> http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/11/21/3 <comment><USER2> ... If all those sites blindly rely upon automatic updates.</comment>


GCC ownage - <AUTHOR> http://feross.org/gcc-ownage/

<comment><USER2> Funny but not really news: this was fully documented in the GCC manual at the time...

"The @samp{#pragma} command is specified in the ANSI standard to have an arbitrary implementation-defined effect. In the GNU C preprocessor, @samp{#pragma} first attempts to run the game @code{rogue}; if that fails, it tries to run the game @code{hack}; if that fails, it tries to run GNU Emacs displaying the Tower of Hanoi; if that fails, it reports a fatal error. In any case, preprocessing does not continue."

... and didn't I read it on Wikipedia... ah it was removed from the "Undefined behavior" article some months ago:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Undefined_behavior...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Undefined_behavior&diff=605612350&oldid=598884449)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very, very old news.</comment>


The Illumos Syscall Handler - <AUTHOR> http://zinascii.com/2016/the-illumos-syscall-handler.html <comment><USER2> That's a lot of mess to use movq and movl to populate the on-stack register image. Using pushq would save a lot of code and significantly reduce register shuffling.

<comment><USER3> Illumos (Solaris) has been around for a while. It was probably written in the 32-bit era.

<comment><USER4> It's been a long time since Solaris worked well on a 32-bit CPU. UltraSPARC replaced SPARC in the 90s, and Solaris on x86 was not a very common thing then. It wasn't until Solaris 10/OpenSolaris (around 2005) that the x86 port was really viable, and then 64-bit CPUs were really recommended (especially after ZFS came out in Update 1)

<comment><USER3> Even so, the syscall handler would have been written early in the development of the x86 port, well before it was "viable" for customers. Relying on quad- word instructions in hand-written assembly for such a crucial part of the OS would have meant no 32-bit support at all. That's probably not a good product decision even today, but at the time, it would have been crazy.

<comment><USER5> If there is going to be a debate over how mov performs versus push/pop, someone should just go ahead and change it. The time talking about it would be better spent on other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slightly off-topic, but what do I have to do to boot Illumos on QEMU? There's always some kernel fault and it doesn't start to boot.

<comment><USER7> You might want to try booting without graphics and accessing it via a serial port, to see if that makes a difference. See this e-mail thread for a discussion:

[https://www.mail-archive.com/smartos- email@example.com...](https://www.mail-archive.com/smartos- email@example.com/msg00788.html)</comment></comment>


"Secret Intelligence Service - Target Elimination Specialist" wanted - <AUTHOR> https://jobsearch.direct.gov.uk/GetJob.aspx?JobID=270089

<comment><USER2> Obviously a joke. "This role is particularly appropriate for those who like their martinis shaken and not stirred."

Made me wonder though, how MI5 do advertise. Found this: <https://www.mi5.gov.uk/careers/mobile-surveillance.aspx>

"A valued member of a diverse team, you'll follow subjects of national security investigations by foot and by car. Your observation skills, quick thinking and ability to fit into your environment means you'll be able to make a big contribution."

<comment><USER3> Doesn't Bond work for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) rather than the Security Service (MI5)?

<https://www.sis.gov.uk/>

<comment><USER2> You're right, MI6 is external, MI5 is internal.

<comment><USER4> That's what they'd like you to think...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Q, get on it!

Screenshot in case they do: <http://i.imgur.com/0UAcJ.png>

<comment><USER5> Thanks, good thinking! It was taken down in the brief time between me seeing it and my friends trying to see what I was linking them to.

<comment><USER4> Don't worry, our intelligence services are great at covering up the evidence. Oh wait... [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1614&bih=969&sclient=psy- ab&q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fjobsearch.direct.gov.uk%2FGetJob.aspx%3FJobID%3D270089&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fjobsearch.direct.gov.uk%2FGetJob.aspx%3FJobID%3D270089&gs_l=serp.3...42320.46380.0.46705.22.13.7.0.0.2.115.664.11j1.12.0.les%3B..0.1...1c.1.Kp2f7WvF3ak&pbx=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Skyfail: UK government's official job site advertises fake 007 position"

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/23/3681630/uk-government- off...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/23/3681630/uk-government-official-job- site-advertises-fake-007-position)

</comment><comment><USER7> ?: But your Majesty, I swear, we've outsourced the entire people disposal department! Q: The job adds you're posting say something different...

</comment><comment><USER8> Job reference code 007

</comment><comment><USER9> Salary is £50-60K per year plus bonuses - not worth to risk your life for this sum ;)

</comment><comment><USER10> Smells like test data to me...

</comment><comment><USER11> Everyone deserves an upvote in this thread. Great post!</comment>


Nintendo Projects First Ever Annual Loss, Misses Half-Year Forecasts  - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/38055/Nintendo_Projects_First_Ever_Annual_Loss_Misses_HalfYear_Forecasts.php

<comment><USER2> There's a great deal more factors aside from the rise of the iOS platform that are relevant to Nintendo's poor performance.

\- Extremely strong yen.

\- 3DS is an expensive platform in the youth space at a time of economic uncertainty. (They've since price dropped to ~$169)

\- 3DS appears to be a mere Nintendo DS 0.5 update until you actually experience the 3D in person.

\- Weak 3DS games.

\- Nintendo got over protective parents concerned by stating themselves that young kids (Nintendo's core market) shouldn't play the device.

\- The Wii is dead.

The iOS platform is popular but we have to consider how many of the folks engaging in iOS gaming were likely to buy a 3DS in the first place. I'm not convinced yet that we're seeing a mass switch over. I think Nintendo does have to treat this competition very seriously, but I think some of the other points I listed above have had a larger negative impact on the 3DS and Nintendo's recent performance than the rise of iOS gaming.

<comment><USER3> I'm actually pretty underwhelmed by the 3D on the 3DS. I was really looking forward to it but it doesn't seem to add anything to the games.

Market saturation is another one. Nintendo is traditionally strong in it's home market, but I was watching a TV program in Japan prior to the 3DS launch saying that one in four Japanese owns a DS. Hard to imagine they can sell more hardware units.

<comment><USER4> The genres that ought to really benefit are mostly not out yet. Which is one of the general problems the device has.

I'm going to end up getting one because my DS Lite is biting the dust after 5 years of service, and they've structured the prices so that I have no real reason not to just go for it. (I have a significant enough DS backlog that it isn't economical for me to just abandon it, either.) For me, the touchstone game will actually be Super Mario 3D Land in mid-November. Does 3D solve some of the problems that have plagued 3D platformers since day one, like the extreme difficulty in judging depth that we've just sort of hacked around but is still a problem, or not? If it doesn't add anything to that genre, stick a fork in it, 3D is done, or at least portable 3D. But I'd like to see it before I make that call.

Even Ocarina of Time isn't a good judge, because that was built for 3D-on-2D screens like everything else. SM3DL will have been built for 3D from the beginning. If that doesn't cut it, nothing will.

It's still possible for the 3DS to follow the DS trajectory of recovering from an initial release slump, but only if there's some sort of real benefit to the 3D beyond the first two minutes.

<comment><USER5> Nintendo has said that none of the games for the system are allowed to _require_ 3D to play, so I don't know if you should expect anything too groundbreaking there.

I think the 3DS's biggest problem is the overwhelming success of the original DS. Damn near everyone owns one, so people are still making titles for it. Aside from the 3D feature, this leaves little incentive to upgrade, unless your original DS is on its last leg and you still want to play those games. Otherwise, you've still got a working system, a stockpile of games and you still have access to newly released titles. Until there are some worthy 3DS exclusive titles, sales will continue to be pretty slow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really curious to see what Nintendo do in the face of devices like the iPod Touch. Portable gaming has always been more casual than "static" gaming, and the iPod Touch is absolutely dominating casual gaming. I sold my DS a long time ago because I simply couldn't be bothered to carry it around any more- I don't think I'm alone on that, and I'm not sure how Nintendo can solve that problem.

I won't be surprised if we see them take an approach similar to Sony- partner with a phone manufacturer to make a top tier casual gaming device that is also a phone, connected to an app store.

<comment><USER7> They can't, it goes against the company core philosophy.

Anybody can program for the iPod, and anybody can program for the DS(with the homebrew libs), but you can't officially do so for the DS without paying huge amounts of money and "proving" that you are a professional(You can't program in your house), and giving a big share of the profits to Nintendo.

So developers just go away and the only games you have are those made by Nintendo itself: Zelda, Mario and the like...the same games over and over again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> iOS is a gold mine for 3rd party. Someone needs to look at how well Scribblenauts [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scribblenauts- remix/id4448447...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scribblenauts- remix/id444844790?mt=8) is doing on iOS vs. DS as an example. This affects the casual market for DS. Why spend $250 (can't believe they launched at that heinous console-level price) to play casual games?

Beyond that though, is terrible timing and business decisions on Nintendo's part. Remember the DS Phat? The 3DS actually sold really well initially relative to the DS phat. What did well before were titles like Mario Kart, Tetris, and Jump Superstars in Japan timed during peak season with the release of the aesthetically pleasing DS Lite + the convenience of the r4. Then Nintendo went ahead and released 2 new versions to annoy customers. Now they release a 3DS and expect early adopters? Their main titles come now during the holidays and we'll see how well the system sells before making a firm opinion.

Additionally they're shelling tons of cash on Wii U whose innovation is nowhere near as revolutionary as the Wii. I demo-ed it @ E3 and there's simply nothing but a tech demo to showcase anything worthy of hype.

So, I think they've realized their mistakes. And it's not surprising at all that they've projected an annual loss. Also, 1st party games ported out? Never, I don't know why people keep bringing that idea up.

<comment><USER5> Nintendo has always done that with their handheld game systems though, at least the successful ones. They iterate the thing to death and then come out with something new. The 3DS's problem is that it looks like simply another iteration of the original DS, not something new. Whether or not that's really true, that's definitely how it looks. Games don't look significantly better, they are lacking any "must have" 3DS titles (the holidays might change this, time will tell) and the 3D feature doesn't really add that much to the games (in my case, I get a headache after a few minutes with 3D enabled).

<comment><USER8> Graphically speaking it's actualy a pretty huge jump from the DS. But yes, you're right, there's nothing added. Most people play it with 3D turned off. Augmented reality isn't used at all. And yep, we'll have to wait until their core titles come out to really see what's up.

For me though, I told myself "I'm playing Zelda 3D. That's what's happening next". But, I still haven't bought the damn system and game yet. It just doesn't feel right to early adopt it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious, how far back does 'First Ever Annual Loss' run? I remember hearing Nintendo used to make toys and playing cards, long before the NES, does this refer to pre video game Nintendo?

<comment><USER10> The articles says 1981, when they first started reporting financials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nintendo's days as an independent company may be numbered. With no clear path forward on either the handheld or the console side, their greatest strength is their content. Possible suitors? Their neighbor Microsoft might benefit. Or Apple, which is rumored to be entering the console space. Sony seems to have its hands full right now. How about Disney, they'd love to add Mario and company to their IP. Out of left field, maybe Samsung would jump in.

<comment><USER12> I think Apple+Nintendo would probably be the best fit in terms of corporate culture, much more than Sony, and Disney is a maybe, but that's really an industry they don't have much internal knowledge of.

That said, Apple+Nintendo may never happen due to nationalism. I can't imagine a Japanese national treasure like Nintendo being sold to a uniquely American company like Apple. I'm not saying it's impossible. It would just be a very big deal if it did happen.

<comment><USER13> If we're talking Japanese cultural ego, America > Korea >> China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's not going to get any easier for them: iPhone 4S and iPad2 apps that play with Apple TV look to encroach on living room consoles. [http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/07/real-racing-2-shows- off-i...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/07/real-racing-2-shows-off- iphone-4s-graphical-chops-brings-split/) Fortunately for them, the iPod Touch can't do the mirroring so they have a year to defend the living room.

Project forward a generation or two, though, with improved and widespread Apple TV and better graphics, and it's hard to see how the Xbox and Playstation won't be affected - the Infinity Blade 2 demo might not be state of the art, but it be enough for functionally similar ports of console games. I think we're at most 3 years away from having iOS be the lead platform for Madden and/or FIFA.

<comment><USER15> Only if Apple (and not some random third party) releases a wireless gamepad as an accessory for iOS devices. Then it could really take of.

<comment><USER14> Did you watch the video? If the game video is beamed to the TV, the iPad and even iPhone can be very competent controllers. Once you can use the gyroscope/accelerometer freely and use the entire screen for gestures (without worrying you're obscuring the gameplay), they can make fantastic gamepads. Plus, since every kid is using their own device, everyone has instant access to their preferences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nobody wants to carry around another gaming device in addition to phones that are completely capable of doing the same things. 3DS' 3D abilities seem more gimmicky than useful. Putting classic titles on the App Store and Android Marketplace (that are no longer being sold or generating revenue) seems like a no brainer to me.

</comment><comment><USER17> 2 words: iPod Touch

<comment><USER18> 4 words: Port Everything. Sell Apps.

<comment><USER19> For $0.99? Or $29.99? That's the question.</comment></comment></comment>